Hurricane: An audio montage

Early last week, I was vaguely aware of Rita as something that was out in the Gulf of Mexico, the nursery for so many storms and hurricanes. I thought little more about it. I was to go have dinner with friends Friday and attend a Tupperware Party Saturday and hopefully gather enough information from my reconnaissance to do a blog on this exotic feminine ritual to enlighten my male readers/listeners. But Rita veered slightly, long-term hurricane prediction is not exact, and everything changed.

I went to my brother's on Friday afternoon. His electricity went out around midnight and stayed out until Saturday morning. Electricity, that modern genie that fulfills all our desires: cool air, hot water and food, TV, radio, tape players, and more. We have become so dependent on a gossamer web that slingshots electrons who eagerly do our bidding, providing the conveniences of modernity!

My brother paced Friday night looking out the windows checking for downed limbs as did his adopted sons, Monte and Sneaux, despite his repeated threats to put them in their carriers. (Yes, they are cats; Sneaux, an older white Persian, and Monte--named for a blues guitarist--a scrappy, black and silver, random-bred nipster, just out of the kitten stage.)

I reposed steamily on the couch listening to Dreams of Iron and Steel, a book about engineering marvels of the 19th-century and early 20th. I was appalled at the callousness of the builders of the Hoover Dam as regards worker safety. Capitalism, ever-triumphant!

I was hoping the electric would come back on before my tape player died. I can't endure being without books. I truly have an addiction. My monkey mind goes crazy, and books are its morphine!

Addendum: I just heard that my older brother who lives in Beaumont, Texas, may be without electricity for a month because that area was badly hit by the hurricane. The little town of Delcambre, Louisiana, known for its shrimp festival, is mostly underwater. Such a vast swath of destruction.