An Open Letter of Gratitude to You, Connecticut, in the Wake of Henri

I finally passed out early Sunday morning after watching 4 paranoia-inducing hours of television coverage of Impending Doom - Hurricane Henri, which was, as of 2AM on 8/22/21, going to make landfall, as a category 1, somewhere between New Haven and New London. I thought that I was going to wake up around 7-8AM to torrential rain and 30MPH winds.

Even with that forecasted track, I felt a little better that, being in Waterbury, we were going to be on the heavy rain side of the hurricane, with less damaging winds. I didn't expect the wave of euphoria that I felt though, when I woke up and found out that the hurricane was now a weakening tropical depression, and was making landfall in Rhode Island.

I'm an apartment renter, that doesn't live on water, but I still was worried about the initial reports of 5-10 days of 50-75% of Connecticut being without power, with a potential heat wave coming right afterwards. Then, the memes started.

The first one that made me laugh was a map of the CT, RI border, with the current track of the storm, and it said "Connecticut, so bad, a hurricane will change course to avoid it". My buddy Pete Morcey put up a video on social media of himself stopping on the side of the road, pleading for help as he picked up a leaf that had blown across the road in front of his massive GMC pickup truck.

There's part of me that felt like that, mocking all of the non-damage that had occurred while this storm took a different route. But, I mostly felt gratitude for the every day worker.

Thank you to the Asplundh truck driving tree crews, who've I've seen here in Connecticut for a couple of years, taking down all of the old trees over the past couple of years helped keep the power outages down to a minimum today.

Thank you to the civil engineers, bricklayers, road crews, and city workers, who have made storm drains and roads that are passable. Because of what you do everyday, we all can get to our workplaces and keep it going.

I've written about coastal Rhode Island and the Connecticut fishing industry taking a beating a few times this year, unfortunately, Henri gave them another direct hit yesterday. I'm going to support the local seafood industry as much as I can over the next couple of months. The hardworking clammers and day boat fishermen go out and dig up and catch our meals, so we can sit in air conditioned comfort. Thank you.

For a short time yesterday, Governor Lamont banned empty tractor trailers and motorcycles on some of the state highways, due to the threat of high winds. Thank you to the truck drivers who had to wait it out to pick up our Amazon deliveries and fresh produce.

And finally, thank you to the gas station, grocery store, and restaurant workers, and public works/utility/Eversource employees. You are ultimately the backbone of us feeling normal. I watched numerous CT tv stations grill you as everyone rushed in to pick up their water, or gas up the generator. 4,000 hard workers were on standby to get those transformers fixed, and power back to our homes in case we needed it.

Eastern CT, especially Canterbury, needs it now, we're good here in Danbury, Waterbury, and Southbury, because of you.