Month: September 2017

On Sept 22 We left New London Ct, from Thelmas house to the Brooklyn port to board the QM2. All bags were delivered and all put away by 6pm dinner. We have lovely table mates, robes and slippers in our tiny cabin, music in many corners of the ship, good shows, and generally all is good except for the deep longing in my heart to get home and help my friends. We did not get into the first cruise port, Newport, due to winds from Hurricane Jose, but the ride has been very smooth. As alternative to port day in Newport we got 2 lectures on Buddy Holly (wonderful… Left me singing"Peggy Sue" "Everyday" etc.) And a talk on the Vikings… Very historic. Today is Sunday and I am celebrating meeting Connie and Joe from near Lady Lakes and Murphy’s North Carolina. They are with a group with 2 priests and they invited me to daily Mass and talks and to go with them to St Ann Basilica in Quebec! Chuck too. God is good. I’m typing this with beer and clam chowder in Quincy Market! We have a man on site on Big Pine Key who has dried in and covered holes in the 2061 roof…. Miami roof had a threatening leak, but friends saved the day…. Hoping Trudy’s roof (on our small keys house) is OK. Look up. Thank God. God bless you!

With Puerto Rico getting blasted, I feel Narcissistic worrying about my little troubles. Islands are so vulnerable because if hit full on, devastation can be total. Our renters have been down to Big Pine and 2061, the big house" had ceiling damage that indicated more than "just a few roof panels torn". The next day our next door neighbor’s friend texted that he has a "dry in, mold clean up, roofer business" and he will dry us in today. So he is at it probably as we speak. We sent him over to 1963 "Aunt Trudy’s house" as our renter reported the back wall has buckled and windows don’t close … Sand and grit got in. So send the roofer guy over there too. Meanwhile we have friends who are looking for contracting work going down to work on electric connections to house and other issues roofer guy doesn’t handle. Meanwhile we are in the final packing mode to go on New England cruise starting tomorrow. I tried to cancel but it’s too late and we would lose full price paid… Throwing away $4500 just doesn’t fit into our world view. Besides there’s no room at my house! I have Keys friends and renters in 2 rooms and friend Karen Skipp in third room while she works temporarily in Miami. So, there’s no room at Chez Peabody "the Lake house" for the Peabodys. Hope the Keys electric and water sewer issues are resolved before we get home October 10. God bless you!;

Darn it… We just got video from a friend… Both Keys houses had downstairs blown out and in the case of the big house… empty. Chuck had cleared a lot of stuff out of the downstairs recently but he left an air compressor and a generator that are gone. All the walls are gone on downstairs and some of the eaves are gone on the underside of the roof. We do not know about the integrity of anything…. Hope A/C is OK and don’t know if electric can be connected…. wires all over the place … Oh well…

Meanwhile we spent 3 beautiful days in the berkshires and visited Norman Rockwell museum, Berkshire Gardens, Edith Wharton home and gardens called The Mount, and the Clark gallery up in Williamstown. We spent 2 days at a Founders festival in Lee a sweet small town. It is a beautiful place! God bless America.

Not rubble. The house next to us at 2016 Coral Way was badly damaged … We have photos and it reminds me of Hurricane Georges… Our dock is gone and the stairway down the back to the water is chewed up. Some of the roof panels are chewed up. Hurricane Irma acted like a buzz saw. We have not seen the 1963 house (Trudy’s) except from satellite and it looks pretty good. We have a friend who was living at 2061 downstairs and stayed there… but we can’t speak with him…. no cell service down there. But the downstairs shutters at both houses seem to be open…. God bless you Wayne!

Meanwhile we have visited Katie Alberte and eaten great meals in Ossining and Tarrytown, seen beautiful gardens and lovely small towns. We are now in the Berkshires at a Founders festival in Lee near Stockbridge and Great Barrington. Last night was "A Taste of Lee" on Main street with about 600 citizens strolling past vendors and musicians! Fireworks at 8pm ended the evening. We ended the evening with some great clam chowder and a lovely wine. Today is a town parade at Lee and then the Norman Rockwell museum and Botanical Gardens in Stockbridge. God bless you.

Cruising the internet today, I looked for the photo of the eyewall I saw on the TV set on the weather channel, but I can’t find it… It showed the eyewall and under it was I guess superimposed a map of the keys and we could run up to the TV and say "there’s Big Pine Key…" but the bottom half or the south east side of the eye wall was gone and I saw only blue beautiful blue…. I am sure and I believe it is the hand of God that this storm was lessened in intensity as it hit the Keys. We might lose a lot of property, but, I am certain it lessened and I thank God for that. I pray those who stayed behind all lived as the flooding and winds were awful. Who can withstand being out in a surge of say 15 feet? We don’t know as we have never stayed, although Chuck did stay in our bigger Keys house during Hurricane Rita and he said the house shook like it was coming apart. Very scary. So I hope everyone is OK and we wait…. for NOAA to get the photos of the island done and we can look at our houses. God bless us!!!

There was no good place for Irma to turn to… By the time she set her eye on little vulnerable Big Pine Key… The turn options were Houston or the extremely fragile Gulf coast east of Louisiana … Oh the options were awful so Big Pine Key and Cudjo Key took it for the team. Emergency Management reports can be found on keysweekly.com. At this point the government is inspecting roads and bridges, airports, water, electric, cellular (nothing is working). We are in a wait mode still visiting cousin Carol in Ohio. My whole family is affected. Family in Jacksonville, la Grange Georgia, and of course our Miami and Big Pine Key houses. Thank God for our friends in Miami who took such good care of us. So far everyone is OK. God bless you.

When we lost the porch roof of the Lake house in Katrina it was as the eye wall passed over. It sounded like a freight train. The hurricane is most viscious in that part of itself. The eye wall is just about to hit Big Pine Key (730 am Sunday). If I was ever property proud, I think I will have little left. I am hoping everyone on our street has left. We don’t know where our friend Wayne went but we do know that all our other friends are spread over Florida and Georgia. God bless us.

Chuck and I are at cousin Carol’s waiting… For Irma to turn away, waiting for Irma to get destroyed by the hand of God… Waiting for it all to be over. Most friends from Keys are evacuated to Tampa, to Georgia, out of the Keys. With storm headed for the Keys, Chuck and I can only rejoice that our friends got away and we will deal with property after we get back from this (who knew ill conceived) long trip out of Florida. God, if you will, destroy this hurricane… Please make it turn away from our homeland and destroy its strength. God bless America. God bless my friends.

Yesterday I got into my flee mode…. "Go home" was screaming in my head… My neighbors are working to make my home safe and I’m driving across the beautiful Michigan upper peninsula… All I could think of was "I75 south…. At least go quickly to cousin Carol’s and hunker down with family to pray and watch the eather channel…" But Chuck insisted we stay with the plan which was cross the Mackinaw bridge south and head south on route 31 which drives along the beaches and dunes of Lake Michigan. We had a few towns in our sites to stop for the evening… but it got to be lunch time and Chuck said we should stop for lunch. I spotted a cafe at an intersection and I yelled, "Turn left here!!!!" Chuck is pretty good at following directions and he managed to turn into the parking lot of the Torch Lake Cafe. There was a sign, "Music tonight." The cafe was really nice! We had a great bottle of Pinot Noir wine and some appetizers and Chuck said, "If there’s a hotel nearby, we could do music tonight. " I asked the hostess who pointed across the street. "You go there, or you drive a long way." We are truly in the middle of nowhere on the coast! We finished lunch and drove across the street and found a sweet little motel with a beautiful room for us! Read for a while and took a nap and headed out to see sunset on a beautiful sandy beach on what is called Traverse Bay. It was pretty cloudy, but some colors and the lazy waves and sandy beach might make a nice photo. Back to the Cafe for the music, pizza, 2 more bottles of wine… Made friends with a table of 4 gentlemen at the next table who are here to play golf!!!! Spent the evening 2 hours dancing and singing to late 60s and 70s music. A lot of Margaritaville Jimmy Buffet and other favorite singers!!!! We closed the restaurant and went back across the street to tumble into our beautiful room. Tonight will be wine and left over pizza. All our friends and renters are evacuated from the Keys, and To my friends in Miami who are working hard against being in the "cone" of hurricane Irma… I say God bless you dear friends. Use my house, use my pantry, take anything you need, fill my bathtub with water. God be with you. God bless south Forida with a hurriane that goes east…. and God bless Texas.

We went out for breakfast at a deli and ate homemade bagels (Chuck’s with egg, bacon and cheese and mine a cherrybagel with cream cheese). We ate with 2 other couples and taked about about the Army, Vietnam, and one whose grandfather was in the 101st Airborne and landed at Normandy!!!! It was an exciting discussion. Headed over to the cruise desk for a noon cruise and… cruises cancelled for rain and wind. Oh darn. So we went into the interpretative center and watched a video of the Pictured Rocks which started as a single man taking people for cruises to see the beauties of the lakeshore here at Munising… Then his son took over and finally sold it a few years ago to 2 Musining natives. Keeping it alive locally! We bought a book of pictures and tried to keep warm until the craft market at 4pm and the outdoor in the park concert at 6pm. It wasn’t easy to stay warm in drizzly 53 degrees weather! When the concert started I tried to sit outside but was freezing in the wind and drizzles… About 1/2 hour later Chuck and I realized all the people there were huddled in the pavillion/band shell so we picked up our chairs, my blanket, my extra jacket and went into the pavillion and finished the concert out of the wind!!!! We are eating microwave Popcorn for a snack and we have made plans for tomorrow…. heading east to cross the Mackinaw bridge down to the sand dunes on the south side of Lake Superior. Thinking constantly of Miami and the Florida Keys who are facing the threat of Irma. God bless you my Miami and Keys friends. God bless Texas.