Sometime in the '50s I came across an "I Like Ike" button. I didn't like Ike then, and I didn't like him this year either.
Our family was fortunate: we had a generator bought shortly after Rita three years ago. We had begun to think we had wasted our money, but it served us well for two weeks. The last few days, however, it was about to give out and sounded like an old car barely climbing a hill, but finally on the Sunday night after 16 days, the power came back on.
During this strange period, businesses couldn't open. There were no perishables at most grocery stores. Traffic lights -- in Houston, no less -- weren't working. Schools were closed. ATMs didn't work. Gas stations -- well, if they had a generator they were out of gasoline as people lined up for hours. We don't do this very well in America in 2008.
After a few days it began to grate on me that there was also no Internet, no cable TV. (For me, to live without MSNBC is like living in Wyoming. No idea what's going on in the world!) I did have a Blackberry that worked and managed to find out a few things, but it just wasn't the same. The stress of all these changes in routine was surprisingly debilitating.
Today in the Houston Chronicle there's an article about Iran's plans for an EBD attack on the United States. That's like a hurricane without the trees falling down. It would be a nightmare.
I haven't been afraid of Iran or any of its threats before now. It's still so hard to know whether such scary articles are based on fact, but this one got my attention.
We came out of this two weeks into a world where the Republicans have imploded, Wall Street is being reorganized, banks are either being nationalized or collapsing, Lehman Brothers isn't going to make good on my bond, I have to give up on the new business I was planning to open, the backyard swimming pool was green and stinky, the sprinkler system and clocks are flashing "Error Error" and the microwave caught fire. Only Barack Obama is remaining calm.
All this just reinforces my long-held belief that we rarely know what we think we know. About anything.
