Is it wrong for me to laugh at the thought of an 11-year-old boy ripped, stark naked, from the shower in his mobile home and thrown 300 yards by a tornado? He's OK; he walked away with a few stitches. His 13-year-old sister sustained a broken arm, his father injured his shoulders, and his mother, the worst of the family, is in the hospital with a broken back. But he walked away. Naked.

Tornado Took Tennessee Boy 'for a Ride,' and Put Family in Hospital

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

MOSSY GROVE, Tenn., Nov. 12 � Stunned and weary, survivors of the tornadoes that tore a 1,000-mile swath of the country sifted through the shards of 36 lost lives and hundreds of homes today.

Quentin Woody, 11, who was sucked from the shower in his mobile home and blown 300 yards away stark naked, tiptoed through a mud-soaked field here that was smeared with his family's belongings as his mother lay in a hospital with a broken back. He found his 13-year-old sister Sarah's camera. She had broken her arm. His father was in the hospital, too, with badly injured shoulders. But Quentin, somehow, only needed a few stitches, which he was only too eager to show the television photographers who kept asking.

"I don't know what I thought," he said, describing the deafening howl that came just before he lost his towel, his footing, and then his consciousness. "I guess I thought, we're going for a ride." He pointed to a "brown spot" where the ride had begun: that was where his home had stood. The trailer's floor wound up across Highway 27, a half-mile away, beyond the tree where Quentin's younger brother's red book bag could be seen shimmering gently in the branches of a denuded tree.

(New York Times)

And there was a seventh grader in Alabama who had a great quotation: "It's good we don't have to go to school. But it's bad because we don't have a school." � Craig Tyndall, Carbon Hill, Ala., after Sunday's tornado.

One of my dreams last night involved me running through New York with Will trying to get somewhere. At least I think it was Will. Could have been Bryan. So anyway, we're trying to get somewhere and we come up to a corner just as the light is about to turn red. Will darts across safely, but I am slowed down by an annoying tourist family that walks, in a line, across my path. I still try to make it across the street, running into the crosswalk just as the opposite light turns green. I'm in front of a fire truck, which begins to move forward, so I sidestep and clear it. But on the other side, an ice cream cart comes speeding down the road, and I'm running like a cartoon character (my head back, my body in an arch with my pelvis sticking out) both away from the ice cream cart and toward the curb.

I went home this afternoon to get the keys for our new door (our nice, sturdy, shiny, light gray new door with a semi-circle window at the top) and listened to "Fresh Air" on NPR. They were interviewing Fred Rogers and he was telling some great stories about his television show.

Like how the staff would sometimes roll up newspaper and stuff it in the toes of his shoes so that, at the end of the show, when he would put his shoes back on, he couldn't get his feet all the way in. Since his shoes wouldn't show up on camera, he'd just walk out the door with his heels sticking out of the shoes.

Or how when Michael Keaton worked on the studio crew before going to Hollywood, he ran the Trolley and also worked Picture Picture, the in-wall "VCR." One time, when Mr. Rogers opened the door to load a tape, Keaton spoke from behind the wall, "I am ready to hear your confession, son."

My favorite, and something that cracked me up when I pictured it, was about the time someone put a "blown-up voluptuous lady made out of rubber, a HUGE one" in the closet. When Fred went to exchange his sweater for his jacket, a blow-up doll fell on top of him. Or, as he said, "there was this lady there waiting for me."

I have no idea what half of my TV stations carry but I am hooked on digital cable after only a few days. Just knowing I have all those HBOs and other movie channels; all those sports channels; Game Show Network AND E! TV makes me happy. There's some giveaway eBay is running that involves watching the Hallmark Channel on Saturday night to see if your contest number is announced. I'm not going to watch Tony Bennett on the Hallmark Channel on Saturday night, but if I wanted to, I could, because I have it! I love it.

I also love iTunes and Quicktime and RealPlayer. Now, if I'm stuck at work, I can listen to music or radio or NPR. When Notre Dame starts playing basketball games (on Monday), I can listen to them as well. Kick-ass!