Images of Morristown, post Sandy

I learned a long time ago that if you search for something online, you are the only one to blame for what you find.

But I couldn't help myself.  After my friends in New Jersey started getting their power back, I started wondering... what did my old home look like?

How bad were things in Morristown?

And so, I googled it.  These are all images I found via Google of my old hometown.

This is near my old house.  I used to go trick or treating here.

This is just down the street from my old elementary school.

This is the entrance to Jockey Hollow, where I spent countless weekends with my girl scout troop. 

This house looks terrifyingly like it could be one of my best friends' parents' house.  That part of the roof utterly smashed in?  That's where Jenny's bed was, in her home.  Which means that's a bedroom.  Which means there might have been another little girl, sleeping right there, where that tree completely smashed the house to pieces.

This is what it's like to try to get around Morristown right now.

I know, of the scale of natural disasters, this is actually not bad.  This isn't Joplin, leveled by tornadoes. This isn't Manhattan, with subways full of seawater.  This isn't hundreds of houses burned to the ground in the southwest.

This isn't Katrina, with people being shot as they flee the rising water.

But this was my home.  And it pains me to see it this way.

Please consider donating to the American Red Cross, who are still helping people out in New Jersey.

And please remember, this is a changing world.  This is a changing landscape.  We, human beings, we've only been here a short while.  The earth is so much older than us.  And we hardly know anything about it.  We can't predict it, we don't understand it.

It's one of the things that makes life so precious.

So take disaster warnings seriously.  If someone in the know tells you to flee for higher ground, do.  If they tell you a tornado, or a volcano, or a hurricane is coming... it's better to have your family safe and away from home than to have stayed and been wrong.

Don't play chicken with nature.

You'll pretty much always lose.

Stay safe, lovely readers.  Stay safe.