Attribution: Quincy Gordon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in greeting the news that the keeper’s great grandson Bud and his wife Jessica were untouched by the vicious tornado that devastated parts of the Fox River Valley where they live.
It is a fact of life and death that the meteorologic circumstances that signal the possibility of a tornado are broadcast with the ultimate priority and heeded by everyone. A sudden rush to the basement to huddle next to the wall to listen to the roar and the chaotic banging as the wrenching power of the twisting force does what it will with your home.
Not many things disrupt a life like crawling out of the basement to find that your house is gone along with every item that gave meaning and order to your daily existence. It happens like that of course with the victims of hurricanes, floods and other kinds of natural excesses.
It is purely by chance that, like Bud and Jessica, most of the keeper’s crowd escapes being tornado targeted and can only sympathize and offer help to those who are not so lucky.
Any lessening of the governmental machinery to facilitate that help, as is recently indicated by the occupying White House gangsters, is inhumane beyond measure.
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