My motto as an editor: Authors are the authority on their work. I'm a full-service editor. For a reasonable fee, I'm your writing coach from the first suggested revision to the correction of the final typo.
Hurricane Milton decided to take a turn away from us. Although we got quite a bit of rain and have a few branches down, it's not as bad as post-Hurricane Helene. The electricity flickered off and came right back on a few times overnight.
We got off so easy!
Lake Junebug doesn't have enough water for me to bother with opening The Lake Junebug Resort & Rumpus Room. Sorry, everyone. You'll have make your reservations for next summer.
I feel for the people in Tampa, Sarasota, and other locations where the water is deep and they have a lot of damage.
I stayed up until 4 a.m. keeping an eye on things. Keep this top secret, confidential information to yourself: I took a new job with the Biden administration. I'm the one who hooked the weather control device to the giant faucet. I hope I can continue my work when we elect Vice President Harris.
Uncle Milty, as my great good friend Lorraine at Rocking Retirement called the latest and greatest hurricane, arrived in Florida as a Category 3 storm, then settled down happily into Category 2. According to CNN, more than 1.6 million people in the state have lost power. Wind gusts of 100 mph were recorded near Tampa. The center is 75 miles southwest of Orlando. DisneyWorld closed this afternoon. Multiple tornadoes hit other parts of the state today.
In my part of Jacksonville, we had light rain on and off most of the day. Heavy rain started at about 5:30 p.m. The wind picked up a while after that. It's now 11:54 p.m. EDT, October 9.
We are fine. Lake Junebug is very wet but the sparkling waters haven't accumulated sufficiently for me to even consider the possibility of opening The Lake Junebug Resort & Rumpus Room. I'll probably be telling a different story by morning.
About 7:30 p.m. the power flipped off and right back on three times.
We filled the bathtub with water. We have water in pitchers and some of my beloved Tupperware bowls. We have plenty of non-perishable food, just in case it gets worse, and it probably will.
Rebekah and I also took showers so when rescue workers find our bodies, at least our bloated corpses will be clean. (I'm kidding!)
Someone who evacuated from another area last night posted on Facebook that the interstate was packed and it took seven hours to travel 200 miles. Plenty of people in evacuation zones don't leave because it's so difficult. And what about people who have no transportation? What are they supposed to do? The governor said the state will have a "robust response" to storm damage, but the issue to work on next is how to get people out of evacuation zones smoothly and safely. At least Ron admitted to receiving assistance from President Biden. DeSantis is such a trump kiss ass that he's been refusing to take calls from the president and from Vice President Harris since Hurricane Helene. Who the hell does he think he is?
Anyway, the word from the Dept. of Emergency Management this afternoon was if you haven't left, then it's too late. Shelter in place.
I don't know if I'll get much sleep tonight. If the electricity goes off and comes back on multiple times during the night as it did during Helene, I wake up every time it goes off.
Just to reiterate, I am not in an evacuation zone and never have been. If we were not able to stay in the Little House On The Swamp for some reason, I would find the nearest Hilton still standing and head there with Rebekah and the dogs––Maureen, too, if she needed to leave.
Speaking of dogs, Princess is asleep on the couch next to me. Penelope is hiding in the bedroom closet. Fritz The Wonder Dog is in bed with Rebekah.
It's now Oct. 10 so I'll say good night. If you don't hear from me later, it will be because the internet is out, but that would be very unusual.
Thank you all so much for your concern and kindness.
Here we are, waiting for Hurricane Milton to arrive, although we have a second big pile of debris from Hurricane Helene at the curb still waiting for a big truck to come to whisk it away. Wouldn't you know we'd get the yard cleaned up only to have another storm move in?
My messy yard stuff is nothing compared to the suffering so many other people have experienced because of Helene.
We expect a lot more rain this time, along with the wind. *big sigh* The Little Pump That Could is back in the yard (I had just put it away in the garage), and we have plenty of hurricane appropriate snacks and drinks.
This morning I'm going to head to the pharmacy for my flu shot and the latest COVID vaccine.
I had my yearly physical last week. My blood pressure was low, low, low.
A few weeks ago I had a medical colonoscopy/endoscopy, as opposed to a screening colonoscopy. The doctor said afterward that I don't have cancer and I do have acid reflux, so I have yet another pill added to the handful I take each morning. I need to go in to see his assistant to find out what else is wrong with me, other than I'm full of shit.
I'll do my best to report on Milton. We still miss Franklin, the Weather Watch Dog. When Franklin went out and came back with wet fur, it was raining. When Franklin panted, it was hot. When Franklin decamped for my bedroom closet, it was thundering.
I hope you'll stick around for the Another Junebug Production video below, starring Fritz The Wonder Dog.
Helene made herself quite the unwelcome guest last night, but we made it through the storm more easily than a lot of people.
I had the Little Pump That Could ready for floodwaters in the backyard, but it didn't rain much. The problem was the wind. Tree limbs crashed down all night.
Here's Penelope checking out the yard this morning.
More than 100,000 people in Jacksonville are without power. We are not among them. I'm not sure what time it was that the power flipped off and on multiple times, but eventually, it stayed on.
At one point, a Roomba and a mopping robot decided to leave their charging stations to clean the house. Maybe they thought all the noise had dirtied the floors.
I'll have a lot of cleaning up to do in the front of the house, too, but the yard refuse truck came around first thing and picked up a big pile of debris I already had at the curb.
Helene blew in and broke the gate to the backyard. Rebekah and her husband, Franklin's beloved Uncle Eddie, effected a repair so the dogs can still go out.
If you were in the path of the storm, I hope you came out as well as we did. We didn't have any serious damage and no one was injured. We didn't get a lot of sleep, but we're fine.
Here's the calm after the storm:
If Helene came your way, please let me know how you are.
One of my favorite writers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was born on this day in 1896.
I think he looks very sensitive and handsome in the above photo, although he does not seem to have been a very sensitive person in practice. He didn't have a lot of compassion for the people who loved him. If I recall correctly, his daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald [Scottie], didn't talk about him much but once told a friend that her father was a son-of-a bitch.
Would he have been as famous if it hadn't been for his personal life? I've enjoyed reading some biographies and a book with letters Scott and wife Zelda wrote to each other. He and Zelda were the embodiment of the Jazz Age––riding on the roof of a taxi, jumping in the fountain at The Plaza, getting kicked out of a hotel because of their wild behavior. Scott performed gymnastics in the lobby and Zelda slid down the bannister. The other guests tired of them and complained.
Lovely young Zelda
Scott mined Zelda's life, her words, and her writing for his own work. When Daisy recalls the birth of her daughter in The Great Gatsby, her words are almost an exact copy of what Scott quoted Zelda as saying after Scottie was born Oct. 26, 1921. Zelda resented the way Scott used her and wanted her own success.
The alcoholic son of an alcoholic, Fitzgerald struggled to find success after the 1920s. During the Great Depression, readers began to lose interest in his work, which so often incorporated wealthy characters. Flappers were no longer in fashion. He failed in an attempted career as a Hollywood screenwriter.
Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1930. She spent years in and out of mental hospitals. When she was out, she usually lived with her mother and only saw Scott occasionally. Scott wrote short stories and desperately tried to sell them to pay for Zelda and Scottie's care; he seldom had time to work on novels. His drinking ruined his health. A number of people recalled his cruelty when he was drunk. By 1936, the royalties from his books amounted to $80. Scott sent Scottie to a fashionable boarding school. During her breaks, she lived with Scott's literary agent, Harold Ober, and his wife, Anne.
On December 21, 1940, Scott died from a heart attack at age 44. He believed he was a failure. His books were no longer carried in bookstores. On March 10, 1948, Zelda died in a fire at a mental hospital. She and some other women were in a locked ward and couldn't get out. Scottie became a journalist, a writer, a prominent Democrat, and married twice. Her first marriage produced four children. The children played with remnants of their grandparents' lives, dressing up in their old clothes kept in a trunk. Cancer killed her June 18, 1986, when she was 64.
My all-time favorite novel is The Great Gatsby, which is very highly regarded now but was not a success when it was published in 1925. It's beautifully written––lyrical and doesn't have a wasted word with a perfectly planned plot.
Scott Fitzgerald didn't like his own short stories for the most part and thought they were a necessary waste of his time. Many of them are classic stories that are much appreciated now. My favorite is considered "minor Fitzgerald," The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I love it for its whimsy. (I didn't like the movie of the same title that is only loosely based on Fitzgerald's story. The movie doesn't capture the nature of his writing.)
When we moved to Maryland, on our first full day there, I insisted on a trip to Saint Mary's Cemetery in Rockville. In that beautiful churchyard, I visited Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's graves. They are side-by-side. Scottie is buried close to them.
Scott's gravestone bears the last sentence of The Great Gatsby, and oh, what a sentence it is.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Infinities of love,
Janie Junebug
Sources:
Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Matthew J. Bruccoli
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald -- edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks
Thank you to my lovely friend Joanne at Cup On The Bus for posting the link to this excellent Robert Reich video that provides a cogent list of the worst things about trump's presidency––just in case someone is thinking about voting for him and can't remember how awful it was the first time around.
Reich actually gives us more than the 10 worst things during the former guy's term in office, but the list goes by quickly. If you think Reich missed anything, then please share it in your comment.
💙💙💙💙💙💙💙 VOTE BLUE 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
