Serious Weather

It's been just a month short of three years since a mile-wide tornado decimated the two small communities in Etna and Denning, Arkansas. They are only a few miles north of our home and a couple of miles south of our business. Three people died in those ruined little towns, and it was astonishing that there were not more fatalities considering the extent of the damage.

Last night, sixteen more were killed here in Arkansas by a similar sized tornado. It struck just over one hundred miles to the east of us this time, a little north of Little Rock. Horribly, it touched down in a more densely populated area. Earlier in the evening, a smaller tornado took the one life in eastern Oklahoma.

The storms tracked north and south of us, and we were lucky yet again. I can't describe more details about the devastation, I can't bear to hear any more about it on the news, and I've been having a hard time thinking of much else today. These are not even the most destructive storms that have happened in our part of the country, but they are the closest and most recent, and nothing has seemed more important today.

But it's growing late in the afternoon on Blog Day, and it's on my self-imposed schedule to write about clothes and shoes and stuff I find funny or perplexing or infuriating. While there's the lingering feeling that it's inappropriate to even think about such trivial nonsense, it's also creepy and self-indulgent to dwell on the catastrophes that happen to others. And it's a welcome relief to remember that I have a thing that I need/want to do, the electricity is on, the internet available and my is computer is secure in my intact home, not lying in pieces in the next county. I'm unscathed and my crew is all well and undamaged. So I have no excuse not to post my blog, but I'm not offering any jokes today.

Thanks for your understanding.  

With storms going north and south of us for most of the day yesterday, the sky was a noxious shade of yellow-gray it often is before very bad weather. It was hot and so oppressively humid that it was hard to breathe. Hard, too, to leave the air-conditioned house for the car, then hard to leave the cool car once we got to Fort Smith. I dressed for the heat. You've seen everything but the Cynthia Rowley top. It's Asian inspired and origami-like, easy to wear and yet another great buy from TJ Maxx.