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Title : Hurricane Maria Response: Trump is Garbage, My Mom is an Animal, and My Friend in the Coast Guard is a Badass
link : Hurricane Maria Response: Trump is Garbage, My Mom is an Animal, and My Friend in the Coast Guard is a Badass
Hurricane Maria Response: Trump is Garbage, My Mom is an Animal, and My Friend in the Coast Guard is a Badass
"Wait WHAT?" I asked my mom over FaceTime Friday night.
My parents had just returned home from a play, and we were watching the end of the Yankees/Astros game when my mom casually dropped that she was headed to the U.S. Virgin Islands to do mental health/PTSD relief work for hurricane victims.
She'd done this before.
She spent six weeks in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan and made several trips to post-genocide Rwanda. So it's not like this doctors-without-borders routine is out of character or unexpected. It's just that each time she does it, I'm amazed, because at age 72, she is by far the oldest doctor on these missions and is only getting older with each trip. It makes me anxious, but also awed.
I'm not a fan of invidious comparison, so I try not to think about the fact that while my mom is trying to step in and do something real and compassionate for humanity--something not even our own President seems capable of doing without revealing himself for the steaming pile of hot garbage that he is--I'm on the internet writing jokes about my period and checking every ten seconds to see how many people reacted to them with a laughter emoji.
Everyone has their niche and their strengths, I suppose, and I'm not going to sit here and say my mom can "do it all." She definitely can't. Like there is a shitload of stuff she can't do. She's a terrifying driver and her idea of cooking is "foraging" for takeout at the various bodegas and farmer's markets in northern Manhattan and the Bronx.
But when it comes to activism, she's an animal. "I'd go to jail to resist Donald Trump," she said before attending one of many post-election protests. "You have kids to raise, I don't recommend jail.” She's probably the only person I know who hates Donald Trump more than I do.
Now she's headed abroad yet again. This is why she went to medical school.
A friend of our family's--another total badass--is in the Coast Guard and stationed here in Juneau. He is away from his wife and two daughters for at least a month on deployment to Puerto Rico and the USVI. Here's his report from October 12, reposted from Facebook with permission:
My parents had just returned home from a play, and we were watching the end of the Yankees/Astros game when my mom casually dropped that she was headed to the U.S. Virgin Islands to do mental health/PTSD relief work for hurricane victims.
She'd done this before.
She spent six weeks in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan and made several trips to post-genocide Rwanda. So it's not like this doctors-without-borders routine is out of character or unexpected. It's just that each time she does it, I'm amazed, because at age 72, she is by far the oldest doctor on these missions and is only getting older with each trip. It makes me anxious, but also awed.
I'm not a fan of invidious comparison, so I try not to think about the fact that while my mom is trying to step in and do something real and compassionate for humanity--something not even our own President seems capable of doing without revealing himself for the steaming pile of hot garbage that he is--I'm on the internet writing jokes about my period and checking every ten seconds to see how many people reacted to them with a laughter emoji.
Everyone has their niche and their strengths, I suppose, and I'm not going to sit here and say my mom can "do it all." She definitely can't. Like there is a shitload of stuff she can't do. She's a terrifying driver and her idea of cooking is "foraging" for takeout at the various bodegas and farmer's markets in northern Manhattan and the Bronx.
But when it comes to activism, she's an animal. "I'd go to jail to resist Donald Trump," she said before attending one of many post-election protests. "You have kids to raise, I don't recommend jail.” She's probably the only person I know who hates Donald Trump more than I do.
Now she's headed abroad yet again. This is why she went to medical school.
A friend of our family's--another total badass--is in the Coast Guard and stationed here in Juneau. He is away from his wife and two daughters for at least a month on deployment to Puerto Rico and the USVI. Here's his report from October 12, reposted from Facebook with permission:
For the last week, I've been back and forth between Miami and Puerto Rico coordinating logistics for the Coast Guard's hurricane Maria response.
I have traveled the north coast of PR; the damage is extensive, but the vast majority of building are made of concrete and are structurally intact. I have talked to people who were handing out relief near Humacao today (near where the eyewall made landfall), they reported that even there, though many houses were destroyed, most were not.
The biggest issue is the devastation of the utility grid. Most of the island does not have electricity or potable water, and there are widespread landline and cell outages. The electric grid was on life support before Maria and this storm pulled the plug. We are expecting to operate on generators at our bases for 6 months+. Even the Coast Guard bases did not have reliable or sufficient backup power before the storm, and getting the right generators airlifted and installed has been a major effort.
I have heard talk that the grid will be restored to current standards and be much more resilient that the previous version, which could be a good thing to come out of the storm. Coast Guard, National Guard, Air Force, Navy, Army and Marine aircraft are all delivering aid to the remote areas, but aid has not made it to all parts of the interior.
Many people I have encountered in San Juan are piecing things back together and getting back to work in a city with very limited electricity. Shops and restaurants are opening back up, gas stations are open and regular commercial flights have returned to the airport (though the terminal had no air conditioning when I arrived). Leaves are growing back on many of the trees amazingly quickly. I have noticed a marked increase in green in just the past few days.
I am flying to St. Croix and St. Thomas for the next couple days and will report what I see there.
@ Viejo San JuanI spoke to him on the phone yesterday, and he noted that the above update was mostly about the coast and not as much about the interior, which is still struggling to get aid.
He is now on St. Croix on the east end of the island. He says the population centers are okay, but that folks in the hinterlands aren't necessarily getting services, there's no refrigeration, and it's miserably hot. In St. Thomas, he reported, about a third of the island has electricity and people are settling in to a new normal. Overall there was a mixture of hope and frustration, and I plan to share his next update separately.
I thanked him for his service and being a credit to our country. He responded: “This is why I joined the Coast Guard.”
I thanked him for his service and being a credit to our country. He responded: “This is why I joined the Coast Guard.”
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