Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Heartbreak in the East: Hope in the Homeland

This last week has been a hard one for me. Living in the heart of hurricane land, I don't love when a storm comes along, but I don't worry too much.


Florida houses are typically built to withstand a category 3 hurricane (meaning winds as high as 130 mph and crazy rain for days), but the rest of the nation doesn't build to that standard.

As I watched the trajectory of Helene & listened to it being upgraded to a category 4, I knew the results wouldn't be pretty. Although grateful this storm missed us initially, my attitude changed when I heard about Tennessee and North Carolina. Georgia and South Carolina are dealing with the fallout too. I wished the hurricane had turned and hit us more fully because we have the response, the infrastructure, the attitude to face big scary storms and carry on.



Our governor put all the preemptive processes in place -- emergency workers, supply routes, road and electricity line repair -- but he couldn't do that for the other states. 

Especially the ones inland.

The stories... Oh the stories. I was drowning in heartache. (This is why I can't read WWII books, folks.) Two dams were oversaturated and burst, flooding whole towns. Family members lost. Livelihoods swept away. An inability to communicate with loved ones. I went to bed with tears in my eyes and prayers on my lips.


Answers come too. They didn't come from the federal government but from governors of neighboring states, from people whose hearts broke like mine who own helicopters, from good Samaritans who donated cash and goods. Desantis sent aid to the hardest hit areas FROM Florida and I cheered at every new development. Last I heard, he sent a brigade of road workers with bridge materials to help people trapped in the North Carolina mountains.


I still watch and worry and pray, and soon our family will trek out to assist with disaster clean up (as is our way), but it's incumbent on all of us to make the world better -- to find those who are suffering, to lift where we can, to BRING HOPE in place of devastation.


My prayers continue with those who have no electricity, no running water, who are scrambling for food and safety. At the same time, my heart is light knowing good people in the world are responding to the desperation. Lets be those good people, eh?


How is your heart holding up? How have you found peace despite the upheaval in the world? What are you doing to find/bring happiness each day?

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

The Moment Reality HITS: What Do You Do?

What do you do when the world explodes? 


Do you hunker down and hope the storm passes?

Do you strap on your survival gear and explore the changes?

Do you hide behind your window and ignore the pretty, pretty disasters?


Me? I disappear and take up a new hobby. 😆 Apparently. With cheese. 



I don't know if anyone even comes here anymore because I've been so stinkin’ absent. So...
Things I've been up to:

• Teaching. Like literally, in a school setting. (Creating curriculum from scratch.) I taught several writing classes, a music writing class, geography, even preschool. *gasp* (Not full time. Nope. Too busy teaching my own kids the rest of the week.)
• Producing Musicals (and a play). That's right. 4 under my belt, two of which I cast and directed (and designed lights/projection, and so, so much more!). Tuck a talent show in there too (including all production aspects—finding a venue, tech design, all the way down to rehearsals with the talent) and we tally 5 separate shows. In two years.
  
• Running writing contests and playing editor for a couple anthologies.
• Had a son get married.

• Sent a daughter to the other side of the world serving a church mission.

• Graduated a third child.

• Reestablished a Drama Program: from fundraising to tracking down venues to building teams to casting... I've done it all AND wrote the manual for my successors. (Seriously though, 45 pages of best practices.)

Revised and workshopped MY musical. (Two years and counting, baby!) (“My" is a loose term referring to the Collier team, hubby and myself.)


• Held 2 low-key readings of my musical. (I say low-key, but that included creating rehearsal video for ALL music parts for ALL characters for a TWO HOUR SHOW. 1 to 12 vocal parts per song – let that sink in — and holding rehearsals/coaching sessions for performers. Whew!)

• Mixed 2 hours worth of orchestrations for a live performance. 😶

• Begun casting for a professional staged reading for IMMORTAL THE MUSICAL.
Those are just some of the highlights. 

What have you been up to?

Shameless plug: We’re looking for talent local to the Orlando area (singers/actors/sight readers). Know of someone? Send them my way!




Are you hunkering down? Taking the world by storm? Kicking the trash out of your goals? Hanging on by your nails?