Well, it happened.  When you have a flood and a dam failure in Sanford, this had to happen:

With that dam failure in Sanford, it basically destroyed the entire community.  Sanford is gone.  The community that I grew up in is gone.  The hardware store, Sanford Pizza, the Centennial Museum, all gone.

All that’s left is a crushing blow in our community in a middle of a pandemic where the governor still does not to reopen our state.

I don’t buy the cases and deaths narrative.  Both of these have been going down everywhere.  Just look at Georgia and Florida.  They’re both doing really well right now.  Wisconsin is open.  Indiana is open.  Ohio is open.  But Michigan is not open.  And don’t go telling me that it is open because Whitless decided to open up Northern Michigan and the U.P.  What you’re leaving out is the most important parts of Michigan.  Maybe open up every county except Oakland, Wayne, and Macomb, like what Indiana did.  Take a common-sense approach instead of a blanket approach.

I have much more to say about this, but I’ll save it for another post.  Because today is not about getting on my soapbox about reopening the state.  It is about the recent flooding in a community that I love very much.

And when we get down to the very core, we are all human beings.  And when disaster strikes, we look out for one another.  I don’t think that we have quite gotten there yet, but if we can all set aside our differences and learn to work together, maybe we can stop having petty disagreements over matters like power and authority.  Who really decides the balance of power?  And shouldn’t wealth be a tool to help the greater good, instead of a cruel asset to control the weak?  If you take the wealth away and every single possession away, all you have humanity, all bared and exposed.  When a terrible tragedy like a flood takes everything away from someone, that bare humanity is there.  The problem then lies with those who think that their solution is better, or they forget the concept of values.  A tragedy can bring out both the best and the worst in a person, and the whole goal is to find the very best in that person.  Most people will want to pursue that end.

And while we see things slowly heal with these values in Midland, Sanford is beyond healing.  It may come back some day, maybe in the same name or a different one.  All I know is that a dam failed.  Water overflowed.  And as a result, a village was lost.  A village where I grew up in.  In digging through the things that I had to get rid of, one of the things were my Yearbooks.  All of my elementary and high school years were all gone.  I dried the pages that had my pictures and threw the rest away.

And that’s the truth that we’re all faced with.  It doesn’t matter how many things you accumulate in life.  When you die, you can’t take it with you.  You could be buried with it, but in death, you can’t take it with you.  So as I threw my things out, I thought of this.

But in parting, there is a glimmer of hope.  When we lose things like possessions in a basement, it gives us an opportunity to start over.  To begin anew with new memories and new dreams.  Sometimes, the old has to be lost for the new to arrive.  So I’ll let you all with that bit of hope for tonight.

Stay sane, clean, and healthy everyone!

Today’s high is going to be 68 degrees and the silver lining is being able to help my parents, uncle, brother in law, and cousin clean out the basement.

To those of you who are hanging there in the midst of this flood, I hope that you all have a fantastic day.

 

Muse:  That was a terrible flood.  I’m glad that you’re okay.  I’m going to miss that basement.  So many fond memories down there… *sniff* *sniff*