I remember when I returned to walking during the pandemic ... I had been feeling the need to start again, but there had been a stunning moonlight midnight and all the clouds were bright over the local hills to my southwest, and as I was shocked to see that, I heard within me: "It is time." It was April 26, 2021, my parents' 41st wedding anniversary ... so, within all the celebration of the day, I made time to climb the first steep block up my beloved Buena Vista Hill. And that was the best I could do, not having seriously walked uphill in a year ... I got up that first steep block, came down, and walked home.

SourceFive-year-old Lil' Robert Ludlow went to the big living room window in the home to which his family had “vacatio-vacuated,” as his big sister eight-year-old Edwina said, and sighed. He had no idea that the storm in question was why his family had needed to get out of the way and thus out of their house just a half-mile from where thirty years of bad decisions were being avenged by the order of Creation. All he knew was that it was raining, and he had lots of thoughts about that to share with his cousin-become-adopted big sister ten-year-old Glendella Ludlow, who went and wrapped her arms around him.

Source“Didn't it rain, children – didn't it rain, oh my Lord! Didn't it? Didn't it? Oh my Lord, didn't it rain!”At first, the beautifully aged baritone of Thomas Stepforth Sr. was clearly audible next door to the Lees as he sang the great Negro Spiritual for his family and they clapped and sang along, but then the rain intensified until there was nothing to hear but that from the world outside as the remnants of Hurricane Justicia settled into Lofton County, VA and then slammed into the Blue Ridge Mountains and stalled. Still, there was relatively little wind or thunder … but …

A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09When my husband literally becomes his grandfather on the phone, I automatically know: someone in the commercial fleet industry has messed up for real.“Listen – I BEEN tellin' y'all –!”

SourceMrs. Maggie Lee was not quite sure what to do … she knew her husband's tension level had been slowly going up day by day over this thing that really was not his responsibility … but he had stepped into the gap on a thirty-year disaster in the making in Lofton County and even got around local politicians to make sure the people in the affected neighborhood were evacuated. He had even come up with a reroute plan for all the water that was about to be unleashed from an underground creek system and destroy that neighborhood … the Army Corps of Engineers had even determined the right place to do the work. But they were out of time. Hurricane Justicia was also at just the right location to fall apart in the Atlantic and push major rain bands into southern Virginia.

SourceQuiet in the Ludlow house? “Who woulda thunk it?” eleven-year-old Velma Trent said as she listened from her porch. “Ain't it the truth,” eight-year-old Gracie Trent said.“I mean, they have taken this co-grounding thing George and I had to a whole 'nother level,” nine-year-old Milton Trent said.