Absent

In the past seven years, I’ve written about my life almost every day on this website. If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve been absent for the past week.

I went to Joplin for the Memorial Day Weekend, and in addition to trying to process the tornado damage, a series of other events happened. I only returned to Hutchinson late Thursday.

Here a week later, everyone is okay, and I’m thankful for that.

In addition, part of what I went there for – to do some freelance radio news pieces – is done. I’m quite pleased some of the work and am grateful to those who shared their stories to help the rest of us understand what they’re going through.

I have a hundred stories to share, and I was only gathering them for a couple of days. I hope to share some of them here eventually, but other things are pressing on me at the moment.

It’s hard to believe it’s only a footnote to the past week, but we did receive press credentials for President Obama’s visit and it was great to see him again – now that he’s president. “See” is a bit of a misnomer because during the event I was near the radio mult box, which did not allow a good view. But, I did get to see him when he was shaking hands afterwards. Unfortunately, I was not in the “hand shaking zone.”

I hope to be back to a more normal schedule here, but other things in my life are taking precedence at the moment.

I’ll just wrap by saying, if you’re looking to aid the people of Joplin, you have not missed your window of opportunity. They are going to need assistance for some time to come. If you want to give directly to a church in the area that’s doing relief work, I was very impressed with Grace Baptist Church and their approach. Obviously, give to who you wish..