The night the lights went out in Homer.

       For 5 days this week, I lived in what seemed like a surreal world.  When I went to bed on Monday night, I did not realize that it would be the night that the lights went out in Homer (to quote a rather catchy tune from the 70’s).   Why is that the worst things occur without any warning.  I even watched the weather that evening, and there was nothing… not even a hint of bad weather, in fact, the weather woman told us with a straight face that there is a disturbance, but it will dissipate, so no one should worry.   Can a weather woman be fired for a bad guess? 

         As I think back on what woke me up, it was not the wind, but the lack of electricity.  Lights go out… I wake up.  The strange thing on this evening was that the lights went out at my house, before the storm even started.  It happens so often at my house, that we have the Entergy 800 number written in Sharpie on the back of the antique emergency rotary phone. 

         When the sun finally came up, it was like opening the door after Dorothy’s house landed in Oz, except instead of beauty and color, there was destruction and shades of gray.  Life changed overnight.  During the day, we helped each other clean up the mess that the storm left.  During the evening, we sit in chairs outside and talk about how blessed we were that no one was hurt.  The only things that were lost were material and can be replaced. 

         The biggest impact from this experience has been the way people seem to drop their defenses and preoccupations, and act in a totally different way.  The true human spirit that is released when a community is faced with a tragedy is the way I wish humankind would act every day.  This will probably never happen, due to the fast paced, competitive style world we live in, but it is nice to dream.  Since I cannot create a world in which this feeling is prevalent, perhaps I can create this type of concern within the walls of my classroom with community-based art.