Sweet Home Alabama - Alabama the Beautiful. I see these slogans written all over the license plates of the cars and trucks in Alabama. Yes I am back in Alabama. My good friend has had her surgery and feeling much better.
The people who were devastated by the 60 something tornadoes that blew through the state are recovering. Not quite two months out, the trees that were damaged have turned brown and are piled in fields, along the roads, in parking lots, etc. Many stand torn and stripped.
Homes and businesses are cleaning up and starting to mend and rebuild. It is still a shock to turn a corner and see unbelievable damage on one side of a street, or through a neighborhood and normalcy on another. In many places you can see just wide swaths where homes and businesses use to be. It is chilling, heart stopping. Recovery here will take a long time. Not just the physical recovery of rebuilding, but the psychological recovery.
Saturday, I was in a small town on Main Street taking pictures, antiquing, and thrift store shopping. The skies turned dark and the wind began to kick up. Within two or three minutes shop owners were out watching the skies. I heard one man calling home asking someone to check the weather station. You could feel the fear. I had to stop and say a little prayer for all of those so scarred from the tornadoes.
So, today, this week, I am grateful that my family is safe, with a roof/roofs over their heads. How lucky am I! [please double click on the photographs to see the extent of the damage]
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