Goodbye, Ike: Don't Let the Screen Door Hit You

It's beautiful, isn't it? It's a welcomed sight; the moon coming up in the east through the last clouds of Hurricane Ike. I hope everyone that suffered through Ike's onslaught of Arkansas last night caught a glimpse of this wondrous sight. I'd like to think of this photo as one of closure to the wrath of Ike ...

Three years ago, when Hurricane Katrina was demolishing New Orleans, I sat glued to the TV. I watched hours of news footage of people standing on rooftops just feet from raging water. I saw unrecognizable remains of what used to be, and I felt a sense of great loss that the New Orleans I had heard about all my life I would now never see. It was gone. Most of all, I felt a great anger that news crews would go in and record, but the "help" stayed on the sidelines, safe and sound, apparently too afraid to dive in and get the job done. This was not something I wanted to witness, nor come to conclusions of cowardice and the horror of humanity's pitiful state.

When Hurricane Rita came through three weeks later, I stayed away from the TV. I never turned it on. When Rita came inland and hit Arkansas, I was caught unaware, and it hit hard. Horizontal wind and rain blew out windows and ripped tiles off my roof. I watched a wall bow in from the force of the gale. And it lasted for a long time.

Last night, the remnants of Hurricane Ike hit here. Tornado warnings were going off almost constantly, and it was impossible to tell the all-clears from the warning sirens. The wind would whip up and the rain would pound down for a few minutes, then die down, only to repeat a few minutes later. After a few hours, I fell asleep; in self-defense. I could no longer take the stress.

When I woke up in the morning, I ventured outside after noting that my alarm clock was flashing - the power had gone out during the night while I slept like the dead. There were dark, heavy clouds in the sky patterned in bands and moving east and at good clip. Watching the fast-moving clouds was dizzying. But, no visible damage. Everything was very clean and fresh, and the air was crisp and cool. Hurricane Ike would go out with no further flaps besides the occasional gusts of wind.

This evening, the clouds were almost all gone. Wisps here and there, a few chunks of dark storm clouds, but the banding was gone. The moonrise took my breath away. How perfect to see the full moon shine through the last clouds of that terrible storm! And the sunset proved Ike's demise even more.

It feels like a very marked, very emphasized ending and beginning. My thoughts are with everyone that experienced far more of Hurricane Ike's wrath than I did. I hope many hands reached out to you to help you through your terrifying experience.