I Once Was Lost

Some stories are so amazing, you just can't stop thinking about them. Two come to mind, of very recent vintage.

Our married daughter, Stephanie, lives in Lenoir, North Carolina. (Happy Birthday, Steph! Can't believe it's been 28 years since we met.)

When we were together for Labor Day, Stephanie excitedly told me about the miraculous rescue of Amber Pennell, who works in Lenoir and lives in a neighboring town.

On the night of August 20th, Amber, a 21-year-old wife and mother of two, left her job at Hannah's Barbeque in Lenoir. She called her husband to tell him she had one stop to make, then she'd be home to kiss the babies goodnight.

Surveillance cameras at the brand-new Wal-Mart SuperCenter in Lenoir confirm that Amber dropped in to buy a birthday card for her daughter, Gracelyn. Only she doesn't remember running that errand -- or her next stop, at a gas station.

Because when you add panic to exposure and fatigue, you drown; right?

When Amber failed to come home, her husband became frantic and called the police. Authorities and citizens alike began a concerted search the next morning. Five days went by. No Amber. No car. No nothing. They decided it was time to give up; perhaps Amber had run away. It's been known to happen.

Amber's husband stood firm and wasn't too proud to beg. Amber would never leave us, he said. She would never leave her babies. Please, please keep looking.

He pled with rescuer Tommy Courtner, who knew Amber, not to give up.

Tommy went out to look one more time along the route Amber would have traveled. That's when he noticed tire tracks on the side of Route 321, the road leading up the mountain into Boone. He looked a little more closely ... and he saw something white in the kudzu.

Specifically, kudzu overgrowth so thick it concealed a steep embankment and a deep ravine into which Amber had plunged her Toyota pickup, her legs becoming trapped by the crushed dashboard.

For five nights Amber had waited, reaching her hand out of the window to get stray drops of rain to drink. (She only remembers bits and pieces, but she heard the helicopters overhead and somehow she knew they were for her.)

Tommy Courtner called Amber's name. A moment later, she waved weakly from the open window of her truck. "It was such a blessing to us," Tommy said.

Amber is recuperating at Frye Regional Medical Center in Hickory, where our granddaughter Allissa was born in April. I know they'll take good care of Amber there. Seems to me the odds were pretty long for her making it, but make it she did, and I'm happy for her and her family.

# # # #

And then there's the 13-year-old autistic boy who, while swimming in the Atlantic near Daytona Beach, Florida, last Saturday, was borne out to sea by a strong current. His father jumped in to save him and was swept away as well.

It happened in the afternoon and although rescuers scrambled immediately, both the boy and the man had disappeared.

Father and son spent more than 12 hours -- all night -- treading water to stay alive. Neither were wearing life vests, and they were not together. The only thing between them and drowning was their ability to keep their heads above water until help came.

That one night must have seemed as long as the five nights Amber spent buried in the kudzu. I can do a decent dog paddle in the pool (for a few minutes) but I'm scared of the dark. Factor in fear of sharks and I'm pretty sure the outcome would be no more Jenny. Because when you add panic to exposure and fatigue, you drown; right?

Thank you, Lord.

But they didn't.

On Sunday morning a fisherman rescued 46-year-old Walter Marino. The Coast Guard kept looking for Christopher. They found him an hour later and plucked him from the waves. Both are doing fine.

I believe God was with Amber, and with Walter and Chris.

And I believe He's with me. I once was lost but now am found.

Thank you, Lord.

Dumpster Muffin

Dumpster Muffin? Yes, folks, you heard that right. Dumpster Muffin.

Dumpster Muffin (she has another, real, name ... quite a nice one, actually) emerged from the tippy-top of a venerable oak, where she had been tree-sitting in protest of said tree's being cut down to make way for a $140 million sports center at the University of California at Berkeley, on July 3rd ... just in time for hamburgers and fireworks.

Millipede is long gone too, and Squirtle. Upon descending from the aerie which had been his home for months, Squirtle cited his pressing need for a hot meal and a cigarette.

How about a bath, dude?

... delicious irony ...

At one point the timber-glommed protesters asked for (and were denied) ...  a pound of marijuana (what's up with that ... one would think, at Cal Berkeley, if you couldn't get anything else you could get your hands on some decent weed). Hmmm. Methinks wacky tobaccy is the one thing these yardbirds DON'T need. One of them bit a nice arborist who was working by the hour.

Tetanus, anyone?

But a few tree-sitters remain at this writing, and Cal Berkeley -- which by midsummer had spent roughly $370,000 on security and other issues related to the sit-in, which began in December of 2006 -- is tired of playing games. At last we've attained zero hour.

The University wants the precarious perchers out of the oak grove.

TODAY.

(This is going to be better than a high-speed car chase on cable news. Almost.)

So the authorities -- on order of the University -- are preparing to cut the final supply lines ... something they should have done nearly two years ago when this nonsense started.

How many trees are at issue, you might ask? Forty-four, originally ... but only three remain. Forty-four ... that's actually my favorite number. And even though I am no stripe of a tree-hugger, I for dead sure would rather look at trees than a sports arena. Mercy. Talk about a no-brainer.

But the University has offered to plant three trees for each one it cuts down. That sounds fair to me. One hundred thirty-two trees instead of forty-four trees.

I know it will take time for them to grow, but then, most worthwhile things take time.

While we wait, I find delicious irony in the fact that arguably the most radically liberal university in America must resort to decidedly establishment-like tactics (i.e. wholly justifiable force) in order to remove deranged hippies from its trees and destroy the landscape with a big arena that will use lots of electricity.

That's almost as good as the guy who had to cut down several mature trees in his yard because they blocked his neighbor's solar panels.

And the almighty dollar wins again. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Greenville On Monday, Charlotte On Tuesday ...

... Columbia today. To stay for a few weeks. I hope.

What butterflies are to blossoms, yours truly has been to the Carolinas of late. Flitting from place to place, never in one location for very long.

On Monday many members of our family converged on Greenville, South Carolina, where we assembled at the home of my mother. There we celebrated Labor Day in fine style thanks to Mom's gracious hospitality and excellent cooking. Stephanie and Joel were there, the babies were there, Audrey and Erica were there ... we missed our Andrew, who is away at school, but my nephew Michael and his lovely bride, Marie, joined us. They recently moved to Greenville from Colorado.

Back to Columbia we trooped on Monday evening, with Stephanie's family in tow. After settling in, we all enjoyed a refreshing swim. Melanie didn't care for the temperature of the pool when she visited a few weeks ago, but this time the water was a degree or two warmer and if her bright eyes and giggles were any indication, she was cool with it. Allissa, chilling in her carrier and noshing contentedly on her Binky, watched the activities from poolside.

Self-portrait of Mamaw and Allissa ... I could only manage to get three-fourths of my face and her forehead from the eyebrows up ... oh well ... bad aim, but at least it got me close to her.  Click it to see more (and better) photos if you care to!

Later, giving busy mom Stephanie more time to splash around, Erica bravely volunteered to bathe-and-jammie both of the girls. Or maybe she got snookered into it; I honestly can't remember the details. Either way I believe The Boo has lately gained a more profound appreciation for the rigors of motherhood.

Stephanie and Joel headed home to Lenoir, North Carolina, after lunch on Tuesday. I missed them even before their car disappeared around the bend of our street. Erica and I weren't far behind, however. We merged onto I-77 North ourselves a few hours later because I was due in depositions early the next day in Charlotte. If I'd slept at home Tuesday night, the alarm would have intruded on my slumber at five o'clock Wednesday morning. Hitting the snooze button would not have been an option.

Let his skewed perception ripen into unmistakable reality.

(It takes at least ninety minutes to reach Charlotte from Columbia. Tack on an extra thirty for rush-hour traffic, high-rise parking, and negotiating post-9/11 security hurdles at the Bank of America Corporate Center.)

And I would have had to wake up first. And prepare the remains for viewing. Not a happy prospect.

So, around dinnertime on Tuesday, Erica and I checked in at Four Points by Sheraton in Charlotte. We secured takeout and piled up in our comfy multi-pillowed and plushly-duveted beds to watch TV until we got sleepy. Mostly we watched the RNC. I adore Fred Dalton Thompson.

Up and at 'em by six on Wednesday morning. Well before nine I was setting up my reporting equipment at one end of a 30-foot table in a 42nd-floor conference room of chandelier law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. Floor-to-ceiling windows provided a breathtaking view to the north. Past the airpot full of fresh coffee I saw the airport (Charlotte Douglas International) towards which, throughout the day, an endless stream of incoming commercial jetliners would gently float.

Despite the minutiae attendant upon taking eight hours of technical testimony and my role in that process, I did a lot of thinking about those planes yesterday. We were situated in the top third of the 76th-tallest building in the world. The tallest building between Philadelphia and Atlanta, if one can believe Wikipedia. It was a beautiful September day. The kind of day you'd rather be playing than working, yet you thank God you have a good job.

(If you're me, you also thank God for the health and strength to do that job, and a loving family who support you, and a nice car to drive to the job, and nice clothes to wear to the job. You're thankful for an unselfish grown daughter who is willing to go with you so you won't have to do everything alone. You're grateful for the kind people at the offices you're visiting for the day, who are so very thoughtful of your comfort. You're thankful for the box lunch they provided from Dean & Deluca. Mercy, that was good. The cookie! The cookie was the size of a frisbee! You're grateful for traveling mercies back home when the day's work is done, and for your own comfy multi-pillowed bed.)

One week from today will mark the seven-year anniversary of the clear blue September day on which four terrorist-controlled planes decimated the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a lonely field in Pennsylvania. So many dreams died that day. So many Americans were cut down in their most productive years, their families left to grieve for what might have been. They died excruciating deaths. I watched the planes in the sky over Charlotte and tried to imagine the horror of one -- or two -- of them turning towards the Bank of America Corporate Center, bent on hellish destruction. Nothing in my experience or imagination gave me the ability to truly assimilate it. I still find it difficult to believe that it really happened in New York City on September 11, 2001. But I know that it did.

I am tired of Americans who hate America criticizing President Bush for having the courage to go after the terrorists. What, no WMD's, you say? I quote my astute and politically savvy husband when I say, Saddam Hussein WAS HIMSELF a weapon of mass destruction. He brutally murdered tens of thousands of his own people. Our enlisted men and women in all branches of the military have volunteered -- and are still volunteering -- to lay it all on the line for the war against terror. Which America is winning, by the way, and will win if politicos such as Barack Hussein Obama -- not to mention John Sidney McCain -- do not bollix up the righteous endeavor.

Please God, do not allow these great Americans to have died in vain.

Just one more thing. Well ... maybe two.

Don Fowler's asinine airborne assertion that Hurricane Gustav's threat to pummel New Orleans on opening day of the RNC "just demonstrates God's on our side" is one of the most heartless and sickening things I have heard in a long time. The fact that a human being -- on either side of the aisle -- could chortle with glee at the prospect of other human beings suffering in that manner, just to score a nebulous political point, is downright diabolical. Fowler should have been lashed to a telephone pole directly in the path of Gustav's fiercest fury for that stupid remark. Let his skewed perception ripen into unmistakable reality.

Allow me to point something out, folks. God is not "on the side" of any political party. God is God, and He is holy, and He is sovereign. It is up to us as created beings to forsake our sinful shenanigans -- such as wholesale slaughter of the unborn in abortion mills more insatiable than the bloodiest abattoir and the deepest, darkest grave -- and get over on HIS side, and the sooner the better ... For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14:11-12 King James).

I do hope that God allows the tens of millions of murdered unborn children -- their souls safe in Heaven now, their tiny tortured and torn bodies once again whole -- to witness the spectacle as B. Hussein Obama and his ilk give an account to Almighty God concerning the reasons why having the moral fortitude -- not to mention basic humanity -- to admit that life begins at conception (which it does) was above their pay grade.

I'd better quit before I get riled.

So for the time being I've imposed a personal moratorium on Carolina-trotting. The typing is piling up, after all; I reported three depositions last week and they impatiently front the queue. A rainy day would be nice because I don't plan to budge from home until Sunday. TS Hanna, if you're coming, come on girl. I'm prepared. Battening down the hatches as we speak.

God Bless America.