Today Greene made a stop in Mountain View, a small town where I used to work, every Saturday. His reports are featured on Morning Edition, Day to Day, and Vox Politics (an NPR blog).
Listen to his story now.
Here is an excerpt from Vox Politics's Blog:
We continued reading letters out loud to each other all the way to Arkansas. Winding our way through the Ozarks, up and down the hills, we were forced to stop reading. Car-sickness. But we eventually arrived in a town called Mountain View -- a place suggested to us in one of your letters.
dog in mountain viewEven Panda the dog enjoys the music in Mountain View.
David Gilkey/NPR
Spontaneous bluegrass jams happen all over this town. We braked in front of the Mountain View Music Shop, where a group of pickers gather every Tuesday to play Old Time music, which predates but sounds similar to bluegrass. So as Hillary Clinton addressed the crowds in Denver, we listened to traditional mountain music -- banjos, guitars, and fiddles -- in the state her husband once governed.-- Thomas Pierce
Here is footage of a typical Saturday evening at the town square:
What I find really interesting, that Greene barely touched on, is that Mountain View was one of the areas hit by a tornado on Super Tuesday, while the polls were still open. Greene mentioned that Arkansas was Hillary's home state, and he mentioned the DNC, but he didn't really tie them together. (According to Arkansas News Bureau, Obama shouldn't have any trouble getting Hillary's people behind him.)
Anyhoo, back to the tornado. It was an F4, and it blazed a path of destruction through the town and the surrounding county, completely knocking out electricity and phone service, including cell phones. Even EMS radios were down due to radio tower and repeater damage.
I cannot even begin to fathom such devastation. I have seen photos and I still can't seem to wrap my head around it. I am so glad I was not there when it happened, and I am extra glad I wasn't working there when it happened. The six years I lived in Arkansas I was fortunate enough to never have been near a tornado. I know I would have just peed my pants, or worse. Could I function after witnessing such a disaster? (I don't think so. My knees were shaking for like 10 minutes after our last earthquake, and just one of my pictures fell off the wall.) Could I get to work helping others even as I wondered whether my own family was safe?
The people I worked with at Vital Link did respond heroically. Although their living quarters were pulverized, and one of their ambulances destroyed, and although they had no lights, and no contact with the outside world, and there were power lines and debris strewn across all the roads and (I am sure) chaos everywhere, they responded. They set up aid stations. They found an alternative means of communication. They set up a command center. They went out into the community and rendered aid.
I am proud to say that I used to work with them, and that they taught me pretty much everything I know about EMS, and I am proud to count them as my friends. One of the guys I used to work with won one of the highest honors conferred upon EMS personelle in Arkansas, the Star of Life Award. In my book they all deserve awards, but congratulations to Mark Willis for his recognition.
Each year, the ArAA selects one overall “Star” to be named as the Arkansas delegate to the National Stars of Life program held in Washington, D.C. The 2008 Arkansas Star of Life is Mark Willis from Vital Link. Mr. Willis is an EMT and was honored for his actions during the tornado events that struck the Mountain View area this spring. Willis took extraordinary steps to keep his unit in service during the height of the storm, worked countless hours in the next few days to respond to the community’s needs, and even helped organize relief efforts following the destruction.
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