I realize people will think I've gone all sentimental. Maybe I am. Today, though, I witnessed hundreds of people out in the cold, the mud, working together to clean up the homes and properties of perfect strangers. People who had never met before today managed to work together, to organize, bring in the occasional bobcat and cherry picker for heavy hauling and high work. We stood around on breaks drinking coffee out of the back of a pickup truck. We laughed at jokes, warned of nails on the ground, shook our heads together over some of the destruction - steel gates bent and twisted by the force of the tornado; aluminum siding wrapped around trees; an eight foot two-by-six jutting out from the second floor of a house where it had been blown, projectile-like (a church member and I were looking at it, and he said, "This is a reminder that there's no safe place"; indeed. It had punched through clapboard and into the house). So in a spirit of good feeling, of the kind of community that people talk about but seems to come out best in times of need, I offer this oldie-but-goodie by the Youngbloods. Don't think too badly of me for it.
