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Is This the Worst Hurricane Season Ever? Here’s How it Compares 2017 Atlantic storm season churns up record devastation This year’s U.S. Atlantic hurricane season is officially the most expensive ever, racking up $202.6 billion in damages since the formal start on June 1. The costs tallied by disaster modelers Chuck Watson and Mark Johnson surpass anything they’ve seen in previous years. That shouldn’t come as a complete surprise: In late August, Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Gulf Coast, wreaking havoc upon the heart of America’s energy sector. Then Irma struck Florida, devastating the Caribbean islands on the way. Hurricane Maria followed shortly after, wiping out power to all of Puerto Rico. And the season’s not over yet: It officially ends Thursday. “Given our infrastructure today, the question is: Was 2017 unusual? I think we answered that pretty well,” said Watson, a modeler at Enki Research. “2017 wins no matter what you do.” As this devastating season draws to ...

Radio, TV & DJ Journeys I made some mistakes as a DJ and on TV. While on the air and on the dance floor. Here are a few of them... When I first came to New York it was to be a disc jockey on WBLS. It was a big station at the time and I was part of a team in the morning, the other half being E.J. Crummey. So we're on the air one day, about to play Street Fighting Man by the Rolling Stones, and I say, "You know, there isn't an electric guitar in this song. It's all acoustic guitar." Why I said that I don't know and E.J. was incredulous. That's not true was followed by yes it is and then we played the song. For a while I was right and then... Here it came, an electric guitar along with the mud on my face. Go listen and see. You'll hear I was wrong. It's one thing to be wrong in front of one person, it's another being wrong in front of thousands of them. You want more? I'd just gotten to Detroit and was jazzed to be in a market th...

Lyrics There are songs that are just songs but some times songs have words that touch your heart. These are some that touch mine. This is the story of my life. I found a love for me Darling just dive right in, and follow my lead Well I found a girl, beautiful and sweet I never knew you were the someone waiting for me Cause we were just kids when we fell in love Not knowing what it was, I will not give you up this time But darling just kiss me slow, your heart is all I own And in your eyes you're holding mine Baby, I'm dancing in the dark, with you between my arms Barefoot on the grass, listening to our favorite song When you said you looked a mess, I whispered underneath my breath But you heard it, darling you look perfect tonight Well I found a woman, stronger than anyone I know and She shares my dreams, I hope that someday I'll share her home I found a love, to carry more than just my secrets To carry love, to carry children of our own We are still ki...

Sitting With The Girls I found my 6th & 7th grade report cards and it took me back to my Wonder Bread years. When I was younger I used to hold forth or hold court in class. Back then I would blurt out stuff to get a laugh and the teacher would say, "If you don't stop it I'll make you sit with the girls." Really? Cool. That was like putting the fox in the hen house. I spent more time in the girls' section of the class which is right where I wanted to be. I'm a lover not a fighter... I noticed that there a lot of Cs, I noticed three Ds, and lastly I noticed an E. My son asked me what an E was. I had to tell him that's what my school called an 'F.' All the As are in Gym, Math, Art and Photography. Also I took another look, there are numbers around the bad grades. Here's what the numbers mean. * 9-Is frequently inattentive. * 14-Shows little effort. * 12-Displays poor conduct in classroom. * 13-Has poor work habits. All a...

Thanksgiving And NOT Being Sick It was Thanksgiving 2017. For the first time in a long time the big dinner was not going to be at our house. My wife's sister, sweet Michelle, ma belle has two twin children, Scott, Scottie, Kim and Kimmy. Scott is married to Jane and they have a new baby daughter, Evangeline. We were off to Jacksonville for Jane's first foray into hosting a family Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe this will be a tradition. My brother and his wife does the same thing every year in New England and then again for Xmas. There was just one thing. I had been NOT sick, or bedridden, feeling like @%$#, thank god or ....whatever you want to call it, since the previous Wednesday. I was the DayQuil/NyQuil kid in an effort to shake that off. My wife had even slept upstairs refusing to come near me. I have to admit at first it was kinda nice, that being alone thing. Married people will know what I'm talking about. That ended pretty quick and I missed her in bed next to me....

Hurricane Harvey - Irma This was printed in The Orlando Sentinel September 8, 2017. I have to admit to something. Something awful. When you live in the land of hurricanes when one hits and the another back to back, somewhere else I breath a sigh of relief. That's awful but true. Before we go any further the pictures out of Houston tear your heart apart. What I've seen I wouldn't wish on anyone. Did you see the mother, in a shelter, on CNN? Talk about real. She was so shaken up by the ordeal, so shaken up about having her world turned upside down by Harvey, so shaken up by having to save her kids, her kids, that she cursed on live TV. It was the first time I'd seen that since the tragedy of 9-11. They cut away and went to commercial, fast, but I'll bet I wasn't alone in not being outraged by it. I imagined heads everywhere solemnly nodding up and down. The storm there was so bad that if I just say Harvey you know exactly what I'm talking about. We...

Harvey Part Two - Irma In the words of Tom Petty, "The waiting is the hardest part." We've been waiting for Hurricane Irma for like forever and finally here she comes. Our house looks like a hoarder's house, there is outside stuff everywhere. From pool furniture, to big umbrellas to chimes to plants. There's even a cricket in one of the plants who is now indoors chirping happily. We've gone through our check list. Ice, check. Water, check. Lanterns, check. Batteries, check. Every check you can think of. I drove around earlier and it's a ghost town. Everything is closed including 7-11 and I'll be honest, I've never seen them not open. It started to rain and I parked my truck at the nearest Fairfield Inn parking lot and waited. We had filled up trash bags with dirt to make our own sand bags to help with possible flooding and under the sliding doors they went. Imagine this scene: me and my wife in our yard, in the spitting rain, me with a sh...

Chicago Marine killed in Afghanistan Conner Lowry wanted to fight for his country but understood his mother and siblings back home in Chicagowould worry if they thought he was going to be sent into combat. On Friday, less than a day after learning that the 24-year-old Marine corporal had been killed in Afghanistan, his mother and younger sister remembered how even as he was getting ready to leave he tried to protect them as best he could, even if it meant saying something he couldn't possibly believe himself. "I was pretty upset and he saw that (so) he said, `Grace, don't worry, I'm just going to guard some gate in Europe, I probably won't see any combat,"' said 17-year-old Grace Lavin. The family still didn't know the specifics of what happened except that Lowry, a gunner in a Humvee, was killed on March 1. They think "it was just my boy" who was killed, as Modie Lavin said of her son, but she wasn't certain of that either. And as ...

John Silva's World ▼ Survived hurricane Harvey during my born day ...and now Irma... Irma Part Three-The Aftermath And The Cleanup Where I live looked like a war zone after Hurricane Harvey and then Irma. Trees down. Branches down. You could barely navigate the sidewalks and streets for all the debris. Plus it seemed that everywhere you looked the power was out. Let's talk about that last thing for a minute. There are people with their power still not on. Believe you me an hour without air conditioning in steamy, hot, Florida is one thing. It constitutes an Emergency of Biblical proportions. Days without it in your house is a whole new ball game. Imagine folks sitting around in their underwear in the searing heat, now imagine if it was you. When Arby's reopened, when Epic McDonald's reopened, they were packed. A/C hot beer and food? Where do I sign up? The ole HoJos had suffered extensive water dammage, now liquidating contents to complete their renovation sta...

Lessons From Hurricane Harvey: Houston’s Struggle Is America’s Tale The Texas city’s response to a powerful storm says much about polarized visions of the country and diverging attitudes toward cities, race, liberty and science. HOUSTON — The mayhem that Hurricane Harvey unleashed on Houston didn’t only come from the sky. On the ground, it came sweeping in from the Katy Prairie some 30 miles west of downtown. Water drains naturally in this stretch of Texas, or at least it used to. At more than 600 square miles, Houston has grown to be as big as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia combined, a giant spread of asphalt smothering many of the floodplains that once shuttled water from the prairies to the sea. When finished, the newest road to ring the city and propel its expansion, called the Grand Parkway, will encircle an area equivalent to all of Rhode Island. For years, the local authorities turned a blind eye to runaway development. Thousands of homes have been built n...

John Silva's World ▼ I'm A Substitute Teacher "We've got a substitute." Those words have brought grins to students' faces for a long, long, time. I remember doing the happy dance back in school when I heard that. It's different when they start dancing when they see you. Before I tell you about my experience as one let me tell you about a couple of things I've learned along the way. You might think that elementary students, younger students, would be easier to deal with. You would be wrong. It was bedlam, chaos, nuts, any word you want to use, in their classrooms. Why? When they're young it's hard-er to reason with them, hard-er getting them to listen to you. They're busy hanging from the lights, they're at their desks upside down, they're making goofy faces, they're doing things they shouldn't be doing. Just being a kid. I prefer high school students but sometimes they come with some extras. Blue hair, mohawks, a...

John Silva's World ▼ A Few Thoughts A penny for your thoughts, but you have to put 2 cents in, somebody's making money on that deal... A couple of things rattling around in my head... here's my 2 cents... You ever notice that actors and writers want to sing and play onstage? From Keanu Reeves' band Dogstar to a long ago Bruce Willis playing harmonica and singing to Stephen King and his group, Rock Bottom Remainders, there's a story there. That last band had a bunch of writers in it including Mitch Albom, Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Scott Turow, and many more. I'll bet you've read something by someone in that revolving bunch. Heck, my girl, Maya Angelou was an honorary member. And here's something about Rock Bottom Remainders from a guy who played with them, Bruce Springsteen, "Your band's not too bad. It's not too good either. Don't let it get any better, otherwise you'll just be another lousy band." That right there is...

John Silva's World ▼ The Boss on Bdw'y Bruce Springsteen On Broadway Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, known for his work with the E Street Band. Nicknamed "The Boss", he is widely known for his brand of poetic lyrics, Americana, working class, sometimes political sentiments centered on his native New Jersey, his distinctive voice, and his lengthy and energetic stage performances—with concerts from the 1970s to the present decade running at up to four hours in length. His artistic endeavors reflect both his personal growth and the zeitgeist of the times. You want to know how you build a memory? You see Bruce Springsteen on Broadway. That's a good start. They say the neon lights are bright on.... As you can guess, there's a story behind this one. To begin with you have to go back to this spring. Actually you could go back to the summer of '72. Since the tickets were a birthday present ...

Legendary rapper and soon-to-be father of three Jay Z is bringing families together this Father’s Day, as he announced in a Friday Time op-ed that he’s teaming up with the organizations Southerners on New Ground, and Color of Change, to bail out fathers “who can’t afford the due process our democracy promises.” He also wants to rewrite the blueprint of America’s justice system, in which companies selling bail bonds, law firms and other high-interest financial products can charge exorbitant rates to people who can least afford it, but have no leverage or other options. “When black and brown people are over-policed and arrested and accused of crimes at higher rates than others, and then forced to pay for their freedom before they ever see trial, big bail companies prosper,” Jay Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, wrote in the op-ed. “This pre-incarceration puzzle warpped in an enigma, a conundrum is devastating to our families. One in 9 children of colour has an incarcerated parent. F...