Hurricanes, Maggie and Faulty Electrics

I just took that picture out the back door, after letting Olga out in the garden. The skies are clear this morning and the sun is really lighting up the walls of the apartment buildings behind us. I'm imagining those flats streaming with sunlight. I wonder if their occupants enjoy it, as I would, or if they're cursing so much sun at 7:20 a.m.?

I had a lousy night's sleep. I seem to have come down with the mildest of colds. It's a slightly sore throat and a slightly stuffy nose, but I don't feel feverish or anything like that. I'll probably take a Covid test if we have one lying around. Anyway, I think that's why I didn't sleep. I woke up around 3:30 a.m. and logged in to check on Mary Moon, and was happy to see she'd posted from the strike zone of Hurricane Helene that she and her family were fine.

My brother said a tree fell on his neighbor's house in Jacksonville "and gave our roof a bit of a poke," but he climbed up and found no major damage. His power was still out when he wrote me yesterday, though.

Someone asked in yesterday's comments what my biggest hurricane experience was like. You know, I lived in Central Florida for 33 years, from my birth in 1966 to 2000, except for my two years in the Peace Corps in the early '90s. And during all that time, I never experienced a direct hit from a hurricane. When I was a child, Donna was the storm everyone talked about, but it struck before I was born. (My great-grandmother said afterwards, "I wouldn't name a dog Donna.")

The Tampa area enjoyed a long mostly hurricane-free period in the '60s and '70s. In 1985, Hurricane Elena sat off the coast and caused a lot of flooding, but by a weird stroke of luck I was in Daytona Beach that weekend, on the other side of the state. So I missed that whole thing. And we had some scares in the '90s -- I remember Opal, and battening down the hatches for Georges -- but they weren't direct hits either. Andrew, as far as I know still the most destructive hurricane to hit Florida, struck in 1992 when I was already in Morocco for the Peace Corps -- and it was far to the south of Tampa. And by the crazy summer of 2004, when Central Florida got struck by Charley, Frances, and Jeanne -- two of which pretty much passed over our family home in Pasco County -- I was already living in Manhattan.

So, long story short, I've never been in a hurricane and I hope to keep it that way.

Now, let's talk about Maggie Smith, who died yesterday at 89. I found this photo on Facebook of her as Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing" in 1965. It's so different from the Maggie Smith we all think of, the fascistic Miss Jean Brodie or the doddery Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey. She was a remarkable actress and one of the true originals. She somehow became her characters and yet always infused them with a distinctive bit of herself.

I first became aware of her in 1978 when my church youth group leaders took us all to showing of "California Suite." I laugh about this now because they must have been mortified by the movie's references to prostitution, alcohol, pill-popping and homosexuality. I was 12! But I remember how much Maggie Smith made that movie hum. She won an Oscar for it, and it became (and remains) one of my favorite films, largely because of her.

I also loved her as "poor, poor Charlotte" in "A Room With a View" in 1985. And I saw her on stage in London in April 2000, performing in Alan Bennet's "The Lady in the Van." I sat in the third row and couldn't believe I was so close to her. I was star-struck.

As on "Downton Abbey," it seemed like the Dowager Countess would be with us all forever. Smith's precise, clipped delivery and acid humor will be missed.

Finally, at the risk of overstuffing this post, this (above) was going on in the neighbor's flat last night. I wouldn't have even noticed except when I face the television, that window is directly above it over our patio, and I immediately saw all the flashing. I made Dave stand up and look too, and we tried to figure out what the heck was going on.

If teenagers or young people lived there I wouldn't have thought anything of it -- maybe a strobe light or a party or something. But an older woman lives there, and it seemed like this might be some kind of danger, like an electrical short. Would it start a fire? So I went over and knocked on her door, and the people who answered didn't even know it was happening. I guess they were downstairs and hadn't seen the flashing. Anyway, it must have just been a faulty light bulb. They turned it off, and nothing burned down in the night.

Am I a Nosey Nelly or what?