I've had no phone service since the storm. My electricity was gone until Monday afternoon. (I had to pay an electrician $100 to replace my functional "riser," the pipe on the roof the power company hooks its wire to, because it was bent--due to the toppling of the telephone pole my wires went to; it was still fine but the power company won't hook up to a bent inlet pipe.) The worst of the aftermath was nearly ten straight days of heat and humidity, but I slept okay. I think it wasn't worst than the Connecticut Augusts of my younger days. I missed, and still miss, the Internet more than about anything else. Can't remember much of what I did on Friday after the storm. I yanked the intruding branch out, and inspected my damage. I guess I moved a few things out of the living room to protect them from the ceiling if it caved in. The house next door seemed to have sustained about the same damage my house did, but the next one over is now a shell. It was the worst hit in the neighborhood. Few lanais or pool cages survived but I'd say half the roofs held up okay. Mine, now fourteen-years-old, was close to its end, anyway. A neighbor of Lee's gave me a tarp, and her son and and friend of his nailed it over the bad section of the roof. I'd gotten bad leaks during the rain that soonest followed the hurricane--the next day, I guess--but then I got the tarp, and have had no more leaks, despite a good deal of rain, some of it the usual Florida afternoon downpour variety. On Saturday, I biked to Lee's. On the way, I wanted to get a saw, for I'd stupidly left mine on the lanai. It seems to have been the only item I lost. So I stopped at the Ace Hardware store on the way to Lee's, or would have, except that it had been flattened, the worst-hit structure I've so far seen. Lee's house seemed to have done all right. She didn't answer the door when I rang the doorbell, so I figured she'd stayed with neighbors or something. I forgot that her doorbell uses electricity. No one had any of that. I returned later and found out her Florida room had gotten badly damaged: It still had a roof but was leaking so badly that its celing and insulation kept falling. Lee has lost a lot of keepsakes, and some furniture. She's pretty depressed about it. She had trouble with the heat and humidity, too. Her neighbors have been terrific to her, though, one of them hooking her fridge up to a generator he bought. While I was at her place, a Red Cross truck came by with excellent meals for us: beef stew, peaches and string beans. I had to toss all the food in my refrigerator, but got five or six passable free meals from the Salvation Army, which had a truck at the middle school near me. I got ice from Lee, or the Sheriff's department, or Marty Balzer, my tennis partner from a half-mile north of me on Hayworth. He showed up fairly early in the proceedings, and has been helping me out with rides and pick-ups. Both he and Lee had phone service throughout! No one seems to have television. I'm not sure what's going on with my gas service except that I don't have it, so have no hot water. The Saturday after the storm I spent doing a lot of sawing, using a saw Lee loaned then gave me. I did less and less each day, but have now leared out just about all the killed branches. The oak branch that was on my roof took nine days to saw small enough to push off the roof. It's still too heavy for me to drag to the swale so it can be picked up by the garbage men, and too thick to be easy for me to saw smaller. I may leave it in my lawn. The damned Brazilian Peppers survived without trouble, by the way. I've sawed off a few of their branches, but not been able to do any serious damage to them. Money. On Sunday, I got through to FEMA, the federal agency responsible for helping us out financially. I was surprised to learn I might be able to get an outright grant, which I did get--Monday a check for about $5650 arrived in the mail (which we lost for three days or so). The previous Tuesday, an examiner got to my place and assessed the damage. I was hoping for a low-interest loan--but now that I've gotten much more than that am disappointed I didn't get more. I doubt I got enough to pay for the roof. On the other hand, I would soon have had to pay for a new roof, anyway. What I most want is a new, improved lanai--mostly for Shirley, who now has no facsimile of an outside to go out into. (She terrified me the second night when I did something on the lanai, then slid the door in open without thinking about her and she started to dart out; I screamed and jabbed down at her, basically shoving her into the side of the door; firghtened, she backed up and ran back into the house.) Lots of roofing material all over the lawn, which I've picked up. Newspapers throughout, from which I've gotten most of my information. Charlotte High got hit pretty hard. Classes will start this coming Monday, but will be at Port Charlotte High. Marty gave me a ride there yesterday afternoon, so I was able to visit with Bonnie and Orchid a while. Bonnie has had a horrible summer: both her brother and mother died (not unexpectedly, but still. . . .) and she had just gotten back from the second funeral when Charley arrived. I guess her house came through the storm about the same as mine. Orchid's house did okay, but Orchid was pretty stressed because of all she has to do helping the school get ready to start again. I said a few hello's to other teachers, but didn't stay long. Orchid now has Marty's phone number and will let me know through him about my subbing. I've visited Marty and Lee once a day most days. Have helped Lee moving trash, etc., a little, and brought her some vegetable soup yesterday. Haven't been able to do much for Marty, who lost his pool cage but had little other real damage. He went away last weekend, so I took care of getting an electrician to his place, his inlet pipe having been ben the same amount, from the same cause (telephone pole down) as mine. My impression is that others have done a lot more for me than I've done for them, as seems generally the case with me. Not because I'm a free-loader but because I usually need more help than others. My usual weariness continued throughout the ordeal. I rarely felt much like doing anything, but read some. Two days ago, in fact, I finished CP Snow's In Their Wisdom. A slow book but one of his best, the characters getting to me by the halfway point. After a few days I got creative, working up one sketch for a mathemaku that should be one of my better ones. I tried for additions I could make to the two plays I had roughed out in my mind during my Norwalk trip but nothing came. I had a couple of ideas for my afterlife book, and what may be a good idea for a whole book of Dear Abby letters and responses. It would be very satirical and gross, needless to say. At one point, I gabbed to Lee about my recent play ideas, and mentioned Rabbit Stew. Later, at home, it struck me revising it might be just the kind of job I could do since I felt it didn't need much revision, and I had a good paper copy of it. I could at least refresh my memory about exactly what plot problem I would have to repair. Well, I found it nearly flawless. It's aimless, but it's about aimless people, so I think that's okay (although I generally dislike fiction about aimless people). I made just a few changes, and now consider it finished. And a first-rate minor play. A few days after that, I had a major game idea--the application to Parcheesi of one of the innovations I came up with for Meerkrieg--players having cards they put in sequence and are required to follow without change in making their moves. Yesterday, while out with Marty, I stopped at Toy-r-Us and got a Parcheesi set. Later, getting the vegetable soup for Lee, I got some index cards at Winn-Dixie, so am all set to make a full version of the game. An important accompanying idea is to try to get Sue's son-in-law, Wade, to market it. He's bright and a go-getter, and might be willing to take it on. Note: MCI has a trailer at a shopping center where one can make free phone calls and use the Internet that I've used several times since finding out about it from a paper. I first made a blog entry. I couldn't remember any e.mail addresses, so couldn't e.mail anyone. Geof saw the blog entry and told the people at Spidertangle, who were very concerned, as were my Shakespeare friends (some of whom were calling area hospitals, etc.). I forgot I would be able to post at HLAS till my second trip to MCI but then was able to reassure them I was okay. The first time there, I called Louise and left a message on her answering machine. I called Sherman but he seems not to have an answering machine. The next visit, I called Bill, and left a message. I've had a couple of offers of temporary housing, including one via postcard from Kosti, volunterring his beach house, which apparently is ready finally for habitation but which he is not ready to move into. Since getting my electricity, I've played a lot of losing Civilization. Some losing FreeCell, too. Only this morning have I started writing anything. I was going to finally write my September/October column for Small Press Review but couldn't find the damned poetry terms handbook I wanted to write about. I spent a half-hour, at least, looking for it. It continues to amaze me that this kind of thing keeps happening to me. I got very depressed. Didn't feel like doing anything. So I got on my bike and rode over to Marty's. He was about to leave to help retrieve things from the badly thunked house of a snowbird friend of his, with the help of Stuart, a good guy I've met through Marty, whose house took a major hit and who has therefore been staying with Marty while tending to it. (Two nights ago, Marty, Stuart and I had a great meal at a locak Chinese bouffet restaurant, Marty treating me.) I griped to Marty then came back, feeling a little better. Eating breafast helped, too. My plan had become to put my damned books in order. I thought I might get into a new round of Civilization, too, for when I needed a break. Or maybe I thought I might be able to work on reviews (I have three to do). The file on the screen was this one, though--my diary file--so, on impulse, I thought I'd do a paragraph or two, just to get it going again. I've been typing ever since: 90 minutes and 2600 words. If I were a real writer, I would be able to keep going for tens of thousands of words. Lots of moderately interesting things happened, but the outer world just doesn't interest me enough to report in much detail, or with much zest, really, even when it's had a hurrice go through it. One tidbit: I had trouble getting to sleep the night of the day the hurricane struck. What got me off my worries was thinking about the Authorship Controversy and polishing my arguments. I worked up what should be a good minor essay if I ever get to it about why it is insane to believe Shakespeare of Stratford could not have had access to a reasonably large number of significant books. I got into psychological mentality-typing, too, hypothesizing that we have four brains instead of the three often mentioned: an Aristotelian brain as well as a reptile, mammalian and hominidian brain. I spent some time trying to find a good term for the "Aristotelian brain," but failed. Most people have a very stunted one, or lack it completely. I wanted the four in order to find a way to characterize the insanity that I absolutely believe Gulielmus-Rejectors are afflicted with. They are able to carry out reptilian, mammalian and hominidian functions sanely--that is, they are reasonably successfully in survivial, socializing and earning a living. They can't reason strategically, though. I could call that a hominidian defect but want to distinguish it from the insanity that makes some people incapable of employability. I think of there being four levels of insanity: reptilian insanity would be the malfunction that makes people catatonic and/or incapable of taking care of themselves at any level; mammalian insanity would prevent a person suffering it from interacting with his fellow human beings--criminal insanity; hominidian insanity would be the kind that is essentially harmless but seems wholly irrational to others, and keeps one from doing anything "sane" except for the basic needs, like eating and sleeping: Aristotelian insanity would be that which causes one to believe in something the majority of people consider irrational, but without getting in the way of making a living or getting along reasonably well with others. Vague, yes. I need to read up on insanity, I think. But I'm sure it's not too off. I'm up to something like 3,000 words now, after two hours. I don't know if I'm through or not. I should read through what I've written to see what I've left out. A lot, I'm sure. But I don't feel like it, so will start on my Library now. I feel in much better spirits. This is the first real semi-Aristotelian task I've done. (Note: "Aristotelian" rather than "philosophical" because I consider Aristotle the first rational philosopher.) It's now a little after six. My air conditioner seems to have stopped working properly. It was 85 when I came in. The A/C was pumping warm air into the house. I turned it off for five minutes, then turned it on again, and started pumping cooler air for a few minutes, then reverted to warm air. I turned it off. What a life. I was over at Lee's for a while. On the way to her place, I mailed a copy of Ampersand Squared to a customer in Canada. I had gotten tired of fooling with my books after spending two hours trying to get them in order and not getting too far. I got quite a few properly filed but hardly made a dent in the one bookcase I'm working with, and will return to now.