There’s nothing like a toe-tapper about a mass casualty event. When it comes down to it, that’s all the blues are about: making the insufferable thing bearable. In High Water Everywhere, Charley Patton sang about the 1927 Mississippi levee break that displaced tens of thousands. Patton lived on Dockery’s Plantation near Greenville, Mississippi, where the Army Corps of Engineers built a system of earthen wall barriers designed to control the Mississippi River. In the spring of 1927, the River flooded. The levee groaned before failing. Greenville residents are described as watching from the streets below as riverboats floated high above them on the topped levees of the cresting river before it broke. In many parts, the disaster was slow-moving. The muddy wall of water (described by some as seven feet high) moved across bottom land at a pace of fourteen miles a day. In the tense aftermath of the flood, riots and violence broke out between whites and blacks – who felt impressed into service of the recovery efforts and were forced into centralized tent camps that may have felt more like prison or slave camps.

None of this is mentioned in Patton’s song High Water Everywhere, but the feeling of dread, chaos, and confusion that permeated the Mississippi low country in early 1927 surely comes through. The blues idiom is like that – simultaneously and intensely personal and universal, putting the singer at the very center of a universally appreciated narrative of difficulty and sometimes tragedy.

Backwater at Blytheville, backed up all around
Backwater at Blytheville, done took Joiner town
It was fifty families and children come to sink and drown

The water was risin’ up at my friend’s door
The water was risin’ up at my friend’s door
The man said to his women folk, “Lord, we’d better go”

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​​There is no normal life that is free of pain. It’s the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.

Mr. Rogers

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Lee Health is evacuating up to 400 patients to hospitals in Collier County because of water pressure losses at two of its campuses. More patients will be transferred in the coming days as beds are found, said Dr. Larry Antonucci, president and chief executive officer of Lee Health.

When Lee Health says “campuses” they mean hospitals. These are not teaching hospitals. And they operate all of the hospitals in Lee County – three in total. So, all but one are being evacuated. Here is the link from the paper of record in Fort Myers, Florida.

Lee Health evacuating 400 patients to Collier hospitals; another 400 will be moved out of county

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The birds knew better. They left ahead the storm. Along with the strange Saturday afternoon cloud formations pushing downriver, this was our prelude to Irma: lifeless air, unadorned with the songs that usually come at the end of a long, hot day. The anti-Opener.

Living near the Everglades, it is easy to imagine the natural world reclaiming what we built. Dragging us back into the primordial ooze of mangrove hammocks and swamp bogs from which we crawled so long ago.

By the time the birds returned, they were greeted by the angry growl from a chorus of gas generators keeping some appliances running in the heat. It was then I realized the birds weren’t singing for us – they were communicating with each other and would be as frustrated as the generator army waging this war against the natural elements.

This time, I think I’ll add the words from one of Florida’s treasured songwriters. I saw JJ Grey and Mofro at the foot of the Punta Gorda bridge during the Big Orange Music Festival a few years back. It was ground zero for Hurricane Ian’s eye, complete with Jim Cantore broadcasting a stone’s throw away from the stage.

I felt the wind blow in
I felt the rain come down
I felt the peace within
That can never be without… ride on
Ride on, ride on, ride on

JJ Grey & Mofro, The Hurricane

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$2.5B Quality Fraud Whistleblower

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21CO Deal With Broward Investigated

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So, in Lee County, we held pretrial conferences a week after Hurricane Irma for the docket starting next month. We’ve mostly lost power (a/c, lights, etc.) and those won’t return to most of us until next week according to FPL. I’d taken extra time and a rare cold shower to fake being presentable. It apparently fooled everyone. I left the Courthouse immediately to resume my new job foraging for gas and ice – the new currency in our disaster economy.

This particular judge is relatively new to bench and her natural disposition could fairly be described as “hard case”. Even so, she handled this docket and all the zombified lawyers in front of her with courtesy, respect and patience. It was yet another display of the best of our qualities: everyone doing their best to meet their duties and helping others out where they can. If she’d barely scratched the surface of any of our psyches, she would have found a soft mass of foul pudding. We all feel it after a week in the sweltering heat without relief. The boredom and restlessness of hot, breezeless nights. The punishing drudgery of keeping generators running and ice from melting during the day.

It is in our best nature to persist. We will overcome – even this.

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