Death, Destruction, and No Whammys 
I was casually lounging at my desk this morning checking CNN.com because the IT department had literally blocked out every other site, when I saw something about severe weather and tornados in the Midwest.
I nonchalantly clicked the story and was surprised to see my hometown Springfield, Illinois in the dateline. I scanned the story... "...it was like Katrina," said the mayor, whose name I can't recall. It was so surreal, I didn't even react for a moment...I had no idea if my parents were OK or if my boyhood home was destroyed, but the thought that something could be wrong took awhile to take hold.
One of the pictures of Springfield I came upon this morning After a couple of unsettling minutes, I called my parents. Luckily, everything was relatively cool. Dad was actually at work (He said the governor said only "core" government employees should go to work today, but of course, my dad felt like he was "core.")
The closest the series of tornados hit was about 8 blocks away from my house. My parents lost power for about 12 hours, and were huddled under blankets in the basement with my six-year-old nephew Aidin while waiting for the storm to take its course.
After it was over, it seems that a tornado/tornadoes skipped around the Land of Lincoln and tore up various houses and business all over town. Now, Mr. Springfield Mayor was surely exaggerating when he compared the damage to Katrina (My dad admitted as much, speculating he was just trying to milk out more disaster relief funding.), but the pictures and video I watched still had an emotional effect on me.
In the nine years since I left for Missouri, the biggest things that had changed in Springfield was:
1. The Lincoln Museum was built.
2. A stupid gated community sprung up 3 blocks from my house.
3. My neighbor Keith moved to the burbs.
Springfield always felt very constant, safe and isolated from the disasters and craziness going on in the world.
It was eerie watching a CNN reporter stand in front of a Hucks convenience store I used to frequent to get Big Gulps of soda, or the wreckage of the intersection of Wabash and Chatham which I have driven through about 8 million times in my life.
Now, I spent a week in New Orleans as a relief worker a short time after Hurricane Katrina struck, so it's not like I'm a stranger to destruction. But it's always felt very distant from me.
As callous as it sounds, 9/11 didn't matter much to me personally. The tsunami that struck last year, I agreed was sad, but I never lost sleep over it. Katrina made New Orleans seem like a different planet and it was hard to even relate to it. These were all someone else's tragedies.
But for some reason seeing the picture of the detached head of the huge Paul Bunyan statue that always made me smile and point when I was a kid driving on Wabash eagerly looking for it and the big sunglass-wearing pink elephant with a martini in its trunk made my heart feel like a lump of 25-cent Laffy Taffy from Hucks.
R.I.P. Mr. Bunyan Strangely enough, Columbia, Mo., the town where I spent Stage II of my life also got hit by storms and recieved baseball-sized hail in parts. According to the Columbia Tribune, "Tornadic winds overturned a Columbia College bus traveling south at 9:30 p.m. yesterday on Highway 63, injuring all 13 passengers, including 11 art club students, one faculty member and the bus driver."
Several of my friends had their cars damaged in the hailstorm.
No doubt if I would of stayed in Central Missouri I would of written a storm related story today for the newspaper. It's sad to be so disconnected from the Midwest right now.
R.I.P Mr. Peter Tomarken So, not only did a freak incident hit my hometown, and the town I just moved from, but also right here in Santa Monica, about a half-mile from me. Here's part of the AP story:
"SANTA MONICA, Calif. — A former TV game show host and his wife were killed Monday morning when their small plane crashed into Santa Monica Bay, authorities said. Rescue crews were searching for a third person also aboard the plane.
The bodies of Peter Tomarken, 63, host of the hit 1980s game show "Press Your Luck," and his wife, Kathleen Abigail Tomarken, 41, were identified by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.
The plane was on its way to San Diego to ferry a medical patient to the UCLA Medical Center, said Doug Griffith, a spokesman for Angel Flight West, a nonprofit which provides free air transportation for needy patients. Griffith said the pilot was a volunteer for the group. According to the FAA, the plane was registered to Tomarken and he was the pilot.
The plane apparently had engine trouble and was headed back to Santa Monica Airport, located about two miles inland, but went down about 9:35 a.m. just off shore, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer.
Rescue boats and divers searching for the third person believed to be aboard the plane were clustered about a half-mile southwest of the Santa Monica Pier where the plane went down in about 19 feet of water."
The rescuers actually brought the plane to shore several blocks from my apartment on Ocean Park. Here is a picture that my roommate Joel took on the scene:
It seems rather ironic that a TV-Show host that encouraged contestants to "Press Their Luck" died in such a way. That show was actually one of my favorite game shows growing up, probably something to do with the bizarre "NO WHAMMY!" chants people would come up with to avoid losing all their money to the show's annoying little money stealing imps.
Sadly, Peter Tomarken faced the ultimate Whammy today and lost.
Now, trying to rationalize all this death and destruction is easy for many people. We don't like things that don't make sense and embrace explanations that try to create order from the seeming chaos. Some stick to the academics and science of it, which are answers unsatisfying for the soul. Others simply attribute it to God's mysterious plan, which is often unsatisfying for the mind.
I don't really know all the answers, but I do know that simply seeking Him when times are bad is the best thing to do. For me, when nothing makes sense...everything makes sense.
