Still living in Harveyland. Life has gone back to normal: people back to work, football games and homecoming parades, the businesses that didn’t flood are back in business. We’re eating and sleeping and mowing grass and checking Facebook and getting flu shots and buying pumpkins for fall.

But. As many, many people have said and written, it’s not really normal around here, anywhere in southeast Texas, and it won’t be for a long time. I know dozens of families who are living with friends, crowded into other people’s houses, living in hotels halfway across Houston because that was the nearest place available, living in RV’s in their own driveways, living in the second story bedrooms of their own houses. Others are living in houses with bare concrete floors and with sheetrock torn out and possibly mold growing because they have no other place to go.

And then there are the piles. Wherever you drive you see the piles of “trash”, not really trash but rather people’s lives strewn across the front yard or piled neatly into categories on the edge of the front yard. Some people just ripped stuff out and piled it up as fast they could. Others got the “memo” (many days late) that the county and the city preferred that the “trash” be sorted into as many as six different piles: normal household trash, vegetative debris, construction and demolition debris, electronics, appliances, and household hazardous waste.

I passed one house where the first pile I could see was a tower of once-beautiful wooden furniture: a broken dresser, parts of a bed, other odds and ends of furniture and wooden slats and pieces. It was all broken, all wood, all sad. Which of those wonderful categories fit these pieces of a family’s life? It’s certainly not “normal household trash”, not hazardous, not vegetative, not construction debris. How does a person divide the pieces of a home into debris categories, and what do we do with the leftovers?

Yes, we are thankful that so few people lost their lives during Harvey. Yes, we have a great deal of compassion and concern for the people of Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands who lost so much more than we did and who are suffering the lack of basic necessities like food and water. But we don’t have time or emotional energy for much more than a quick prayer of gratitude and another of supplication for the needs of those we cannot reach or help before we need to turn back to the task at hand.

The piles are real, but also symbolic. There are piles and piles of needs and wants and tasks to be done here in Harveyland. Those of us who didn’t flood are busy helping those who did, trying to figure out their complicated piles of needs and sort them into some kind of order so that we can get a handle on beginning to meet those needs. It’s messy. Do these people need help now with rebuilding, or is it more important to find them a temporary place to live? If I find a refrigerator or a stove for that family who can’t make meals for themselves, will they have a place to put the appliances? Do the children and teens need to “get back to normal”, or is it important for them to be involved in the work of rebuilding? Or can they do both? How much can I do or should I do to help one particular family when there are so many needs?

Finally, I’ll tell you what I really don’t have time or energy to engage. I don’t care whether the NFL football players stand or kneel or turn cartwheels during the national anthem. I don’t care whether our president supports them or disses them. I don’t care about the newest iPhone. I don’t even care whether Congress repeals or replaces Obamacare or who’s to blame for global warming. Right now I care about the piles and the people behind them and the work that must be done. I care that people are loved and that God is glorified in all of it.

You guys who are not living in Harveyland (or Irmaland or La Tierra de Maria) can worry about all that other stuff. Or you can pray, and give, and come help out here in Houston or in Florida or in Puerto Rico. We’re all going to be dealing with the piles for quite a while.

It’s the beginning of the –brrr months, as my husband calls them, our favorite season of the year. We’ve started school, had our disasters and reluctant bouts with self-discipline, and now it’s time to settle in, learn, and enjoy the autumn. Autumn is a lovely word, by the way, “from Old French, autumpne, or directly from the Latin, autumnus.”

I’ve done several autumnal series of posts about food over the years of this blog:

Apples: Fact, Fiction, Poetry and Recipe.

Pecans, the Nut of the Gods.

Autumn and Pumpkins

Potatoes: a Positively Ponderous Post.

You might enjoy reading about these autumn-ish foods as we head into September.

September Events and Books:
September, 1914. During World War I, after the Battle of the Marne, both sides reach a stalemate in northern France, and the armies face each other from trenches along a front that eventually stretches from the North Sea to the Swiss border with France. Reading about World War I.
In September 2009, Abby Johnson was called into an exam room at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas to help with an ultrasound-guided abortion. What she saw in the ultrasound picture changed her mind about abortion, about the pro-life movement, and ultimately about her own relationship with a loving God. Read more in Abby’s book, Unplanned.
September 1, 1939. Germany invades Poland. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Spain and Ireland declare their neutrality. Later in September U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt announces that the U.S. will also remain neutral in the war. Mila 18 by Leon Uris tells the story of the Jewish people of Warsaw, Poland as they fought and hid from the Nazis who were determined to exterminate them.
Sept 1, 1983 – Russians shoot down an American commercial airliner and kill 269 innocent people. See this post at Hidden Art.
September 7, 1977. The U.S. signs a treaty with Panama agreeing to transfer control of the Panama Canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.
September 8, 1492. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus on the Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta begin. Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card includes both history (Christopher Columbus, native Central American cultures, and slavery) and futuristic/dystopian/utopian elements.
September 8, 1900: A deadly hurricane destroys much of the property on Galveston Island, Texas and kills between 6000 and 12000 people. The Galveston hurricane of 1900 is the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. Reading through a hurricane at Semicolon.
September 16, 1975. Papua New Guinea gains its independence from Australia. Peace Child by Don Richardson is a wonderful missionary story set in Papua New Guinea.
September 17. Constitution Day.
A Reading List for September 24, National Punctuation Day.
September 28, 1961. A military coup in Damascus, Syria effectively ends the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria. Mitali Perkins recommends a couple of books set in Syria, and asks for more suggestions, in light of the present crisis in that war-torn country.

Birthdays and Books:
Jim Arnosky, writer of nature and art books for children, was born September 1, 1946.
Elizabeth Borton de Trevino, whose historical fiction book I, Juan de Pareja, won the Newbery Medal in 1966, was born September 2, 1904 in Bakersfield, California. Also born on September 2nd: Poet Eugene Field and children’s humorist Lucretia Hale.
Aliki Liacouras Brandenberg was born September 3, 1929.
Children’s author Joan Aiken was born on September 4, 1924 in Sussex, England.
Lost Horizon author James Hilton was born on September 9, 1900.
Short story master O’Henry was born September 11, 1862.
On September 13th, Carol Kendall (1937), children’s fantasy writer, Else Holmelund Minarik (1920), author of the Little Bear easy readers, Roald Dahl (1916), humorist, and Mildred Taylor (1943), historical fiction writer and Newbery medalist, were all born, greatly adding to the breadth and joy of children’s literature.
September 15, 1890 was the birthdate of Dame Agatha Christie, still the Queen of Mystery Writers. Also born on 9/15 were James Fenimore Cooper, novelist, b.1789, Robert Benchley, humorist, b.1889, Tomie de Paola, children’s author, and Robert McCloskey, children’s author.
Essayist and lexicographer Samuel Johnson was born September 18, 1709.
September 19th is the birthday of Arthur Rackham, illustrator, b.1867, William Golding, novelist, b.1911, Rachel Field, children’s author.
Poet T.S. Eliot was born on September 26, 1888.
September 29th is the birthday of Elizabeth Gaskell, novelist, b.1810.

Autumn is my favorite season.