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The most coveted of all opera recordings–for me anyway–is currently up for auction on eBay. It’s a three disc set of the complete Mathis der Maler by Hindemith with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the title role. This has been listed on eBay many times before, and I have repeatedly bid, but the price always soars beyond reason in the final moments. It will this time, too. I wrote to EMI a couple years ago to point this out to them, and request a reissue, but I have yet to see one. They replied something to the effect that the initial release failed to sell even 100 units per year. I am afraid that should a reissue come along, unless it were part of the Great Recordings of the Century series, it would lack the text and translations that this original CD issue includes. Meanwhile, I might try to bid again this time, but the odds of my winning are remote. Alas.

This week I am recalling the 2004 hurricane season, and remembering the inconvenience of it all. Thank God it wasn’t more than inconvenience for us.

At the time, we lived at The Paddock Club, on Fort Clarke Boulevard in Northwest Gainesville. Miriam, wary of any tropical-type storm activity felt it would be in our best interest to leave town with the approach of Hurricane Charley. The forecasts called for the storm to come ashore near Cedar Key, on a path that would take it directly over Gainesville. We packed up our van and got on the road to Miriam’s sister’s house in Orlando. Along the way we were I made a telephone call to my grandmother in St. Petersburg and got my Uncle Mike. He told me to turn around and go home; Charley had made an early turn to the east, and was coming ashore near Port Charlotte. At that moment we had to make a choice, continue to Orlando or turn back. We were listening to weather reports on the radio, and one broadcast a tornado watch, which is one of the most severe warnings, and one which always warrants an interuption of regular programming. The warning stated that tornadoes had been spotted in Howie-in-the-Hills. At that instant we passed a large green highway sign reading “Howie-in-the-Hills”. The sky was terrifyingly ominous. We feared turning back through tornado alley, and pressed ahead. When we reached Orlando I helped my brother-in-law Gerald board up the windows. It was pouring rain, and the lightning was so close I was certain I would be killed. We had to quit after covering only half of the windows, and we slept that night in a well-protected room, watching round-the-clock weather coverage (WESH had developed state-of-the-art radar which could display, in miles and minutes, the distance of the storm’s eye from any point) and listening to the wind whipping the house. In the morning we surveyed the damage to their house, which included some downed trees and debris from other homes scattered across the yard. Driving back to Gainesville–which appeared untouched–we saw countless fallen trees and shingle-less roofs.

That was just the beginning, though. Other storms, particularly Frances, dumped rain, and left us without power, even as we opted to stay home. Among my most vivid memories was lying in our candle-lit apartment, listening to the rainwater gushing from the storm sewers, which were incapable of handling the volume. The manhole covers were clanging from being blown clear off. The pasture behind our complex was submerged.

I took a tour of the UF campus to assess the damage, and snapped many photographs. Elmore Hall was under feet of water. They would later gut much of the interior, replacing furniture and carpet. Lake Alice overflowed; Museum Road was nearly impassable. The VA Hospital, which had had, until that point, a lovely grove of tall pine trees, was littered with broken limbs (of trees, not soldiers), and a crew came within days and felled all of them. It was sad to seem so many cut down.

Of course, the 2005 season is remembered for Hurricane Katrina, which, least among its destructive powers was the toppling of a great old tree in the back yard of Sandi and Jeff in Miami. That was also the season that saw the list of named storms exhausted, so that it was January 2006 before Tropical Storm Zeta fizzled out in the Atlantic.

We have been blessed in Florida never to have suffered the same fate as New Orleans in 2005, or Puerto Rico and South Carolina in 1989. Hurricane Hugo left Miriam’s family without power and running water for some time that year. Now that we own a house, I am that much more worried about storms, since any damage is my responsibility. Considering how many trees we have in our yard it may be just a matter of time. It’s a good thing that our insurance is paid in full.