Milestones Tuesday included getting going on drywall (now wetwall) and insulation extraction, from floor up to four feet; arrival of electrician saviors to secure the box and then put in temporary outlets in the garage, that with city approval may get some juice for powering power tools and fans by Wednesday; and a visit from a FEMA inspector, who almost didn’t come because he was running late, but i persuaded him that his next appointment would understand how busy he was.

I had started Tuesday in a different head space altogether–with a radio interview about my book CHINA INK, and Chinese journalism generally, with Madison, Wisconsin, listener-supported station WORT-FM. The station archives programs for 60 days, and you can look up mine in the 8 am slot for Tuesday, June 24. My lovely host was Stan Woodard, who handles the “8 o’clock Buzz” program every Tuesday. He and his wife spent six weeks teaching at a teachers college in Hefei, Anhui Province, in 2005, so he knows a bit about the “real” China. Lovely guy, said he’d call me back for another on-air interview after the Olympics. I was nervous as heck before the station’s phone call came to hook me in, but during the actual conversation, I found the experience of talking to a live audience a state away while sitting on my friends’ couch in my nightgown quite pleasant. Wisconsin’s had its own flooding catastrophes, so first we commiserated about emergency woes.

My notion of emergencies has shifted somewhat in the process of living within one. When everything is an emergency, it turns out most things aren’t–and the only way to deal with the disruptions is to be exceedingly patient and calm.

I’ve posted photos from the cleanup effort on my Facebook site, here…

You need an account to see it, but accounts are free and fun and you can sign up and “friend” me and follow the progress of our cleanup and reconstruction.

We have a neighborhood meeting at the Iowa City public library today and shall see what information that brings. Beforehand I have an appointment with the FEMA inspector who’s come to town–I’m to look for him in his green van in the Perkins’ parking lot in Coralville!

Tuesday was a flood-centered day: In the morning, I spent half an hour on the phone with a lovely FEMA gentleman in DC, who took down information for my disaster assistance registration — and expressed amazement that in the space of two days i was the second caller with the same birthday as him ! (July 29) Then I drove a circuitous route to the high ground above my neighborhood, parked the car and walked down as close as I could get to my block without starting to wade.

For awhile I stood right down the street from my house, separated only by a stretch of brownish waters. A rescue boat with about six uniformed people and a TV camera came halfway up my block and I shouted to them: “Hey, can you take me to my house?” A guy responded: “You’re supposed to evacuate!” I replied: “I already did!” He said: “You’re not supposed to be here!” I thought they’d come further and check me out — who was I? was I a looter? did I have a problem? But no–they turned around and putt-putted the other way!

A young fellow came down from the hill to survey the waterscape — turned out to be an engineering student who was just coming to take a look. We had a nice chat, and then he left. I continued to gaze wisfully at my house, not quite having the gumption to begin wading.

Then another young guy with cameras and long lenses, followed by a gal with the same, emerged from behind some bushes. They were wading, and gave me fortitude. “Hey,” I said, “wanna visit my house?” Of course they did — they were photographers for Iowa papers, one a regular with the Cedar Rapids Gazette and the other borrowed from the Cincinnatti Enquirer to snap for the Des Moines Register, and I’d be giving them exclusive access to the inside of a flooded homestead!

So we felt for the sidewalk, hitting about butt-deep water at the deepest, and got to my front door, which I unlocked, and I gave them and myself a tour. The water had sunk from what was probably its highest of about three feet on my ground floor to about 18 inches. A few stray shoes floated by. The fridge door had swung open and a pickle jar, a ketchup bottle and a few other things were bobbing around. Underfoot we could feel the linoleum coming up, and in the living room the carpet already was billowing — at least it will not be difficult to pull up.

How did I feel? That’s what reporters for the papers asked me afterwards. Not sad, not upset, just weirded out. It’s strange to be on the other side of a news story–we’re used to seeing those affected by calamity, whether man-made or natural disaster or combinations, which no doubt this flooding is, from a distance. Now my story is the one being mediated. I feel somehow removed from myself even as I know I’m in the middle of it.

We are lucky to have that second story where we moved a lot of things. STUFF. The only possessions I’m truly sorry to see damaged are our old upright piano and a new wood floor laid in a big back room two summers ago. The house itself, of course, will be the biggest challenge — ripping up floor coverings, cutting out soggy drywall and insulation, trying to get everything drained and dried and disinfected before reconstruction can begin will take who knows how long?

Meanwhile — we’re trying to reach as many of the scattered residents of our neighborhood as possible to convene at a meeting this Saturday, June 21, 3-6 PM in the Iowa City Public Library meeting room A, to form a neighborhood association that will have a collective legal voice in recovery work and the aftermath. Wish us luck.

“I’ve just assembled my — many people on my domestic policy team to discuss the current flooding in the Midwest.  Of course, our hearts and thoughts go to those who lost life.  And of course, we’re concerned about those whose — who lost their homes or lost their businesses. I’ve been briefed by Secretary Chertoff and Secretary Schafer and Director Paulison about the response.  First task at hand is to deal with the flood waters, to anticipate where the flooding may next occur, and to work with the state and local authorities to deal with the response. For example, in the case of Iowa, one of the issues was the need for fresh drinking water or drinking water, and so Director Paulison informed me that we’ve provided about 2 million liters of drinking water.  When I was overseas I spoke to the Governor, and he said, listen, I — the federal — we need federal help on drinking water.  So I sent the word to David and he responded well… I fully understand people are upset when they lose their home.  A person’s home is their most valued possession.  And we want to work with state and local folks to have a clear strategy to help people find — get back into a place that — where they can live…”

Does not that instill us with great confidence?

An update soon: I had an adventure sneaking back into my house! I also had a nice phone conversation with a FEMA rep in DC who took my registration information. We’ll see if they do any better in Iowa than they did in New Orleans. This is much less severe and involves far fewer numbers, but if they can find a way to screw it up I’m sure they will.

Three of us were destined to take off on international trips this Monday. I canceled mine — a ten-day academic fellowship in Israel, which I was so looking forward to as a break from the usual focus on, yes, China. Giving up this opportunity was a real disappointment, but making the decision to stay in Iowa City and face the high tide and then deal with cleaning up the wreckage was a relief.

My younger son was scheduled to go to Israel as well — on a different trip entirely, but leaving the same day. And his dad, the Chinese author Gao Yuan, was going back to Beijing after a month here. I spent a morning on the phone changing their departure point from Cedar Rapids to Des Moines, so we only have to drive about 135 miles to get them to their planes, and they’ll get airborne Monday morning after all. Then I’ll come back to the farm and let this craziness start to sink in.

Everyone in our neighborhood finally was told to clear out this morning, because the streets were becoming waterways and escape routes were closing fast. Having driven out, we’re not supposed to go back, although I sneaked back once already, down a hill through the woods, with a family member who was bound and determined to clean out the refrigerator of perfectly good food. The power was out and the scene was eerily quiet. The birds and squirrels and rabbits were having a fine time in the soggy yard. We got a good haul of food, enough to cook big meals for our friends for several days. The sandbag dike is sitting there partly built, far short of the anticipated water level.

Cedar Rapids got drowned today, so the worst is over there, and it was very bad. No way of telling what will happen in Iowa City, except that it also is going to be bad. Floodwaters are supposed to crest here next week, so we’re just waiting things out. I’m even getting evicted from my University of Iowa office–as a “precautionary” measure, our building must be evacuated by Saturday afternoon. About all I can plan for meanwhile is my reading at Prairie Lights Bookstore in downtown Iowa City — high ground — on Friday evening. I’m hoping for a good sympathy turnout. And I get to think and talk about China for awhile!

The costs of this devastation will be tallied for months and years to come–not only homes and properties destroyed, but in some cases livelihoods lost, and undoubtedly many psychic repercussions. So far, though, it doesn’t even remotely approach the toll of the tornado in Western Iowa that took the lives of four boy scouts and injured 40. My world these days may be surreal, but it’s not tragic. Life and limb around here are sound.

My younger son (turns 22 next week) says this is the start of the global warming era — that we foolish elders have bequeathed to his generation.

Today we’ll continue sandbagging and praying to the Buddha. We did see a beautiful double rainbow as we worked yesterday evening, but then it poured again in the middle of the night.

This is nothing, though, in comparison to real tragedies and disasters. As far as I know, no people have been seriously hurt or killed to date in these floods in Iowa.

FIve years later, I moved into one of the neighborhoods most snarled by the floods–an area that in any case had the nickname “Mosquito Flats.” The homes most affected were those backing up on the river; their street itself turned into a river, and people had to get in and out by canoe. That’s the 100-year floodplain area. My house, perhaps a quarter-mile from the river, backs up on Lower City Park. We’re supposedly in the 500-year flood plain, somewhat safer.

We had a lot of snow this past winter, which meant lots of melt into the Coralville Reservoir, upstream from Iowa City, accompanied by a good deal of rain in the spring. The river already had lapped up into the park behind my home and created vast warm shallow-water ponds replete with very large carp. Just as the water seemed to be receding, we got more rain. Last week we learned that the reservoir was nearing capacity, so the Army Corps of Engineers was planning to lift the sluicegates to let more water flow downstream. This means the Iowa River will rise further and start creeping up the back yards of those homes on the river, and the water table will rise above the storm drains and spill into basements, as occurred back in 1993. This time, however, it’s being done on schedule, so people know roughly what to expect. We even can look on the web for lake level forecasts and other “Coral Rez” information.

The Coralville Dam was completed in 1958, and when the reservoir filled up with rain those 15 years ago, it topped its emergency spillway for the first time ever. The overflow propelled torrents of water across a swath of woodland, washing away not only trees but that 10-meter-thick Iowa topsoil and exposing a fossil bed that’s 365 million years old. The Devonian Fossil Gorge is now my favorite place to take out-of-town visitors; you actually can clamber around on limestone slabs pocked with impressions of ancient worms and shells and fish that lived all those eons ago. Yes, this vast stretch of the heartland used to be a seabed!

Back to the present. City engineers have gone through endangered areas in the last few days, visiting every home or business that might get waterlogged and telling people whether they need to sandbag, and if so, where. The city has driven in truckloads of sand, and for the past couple of days volunteers from all over our town and the towns around have descended to fill sandbags and help position them around house foundations. The fortifications have gone up behind most of the houses right on the river. Meanwhile, just about anyone in the neighborhood with a lower level is sump-pumping, and the sidewalks are awash. My home is on a slab, so even though we have nowhere to hide during tornado warnings, which aren’t infrequent here, I feel lucky not to have a basement.

The kids around here seem to find all this commotion pretty exciting. I went over to see friends at a couple of of adjacent houses with backyards on the river. The engineers had told one family the water wouldn’t reach the house, and they don’t have a basement, so they didn’t need to sandbag. Next door, 13-year-old Nick took me out back to show me their barricade, and said the water would likely wipe out the peonies out back and half the back lawn — but that’s ok, he added with a grin, because then he won’t have so much to mow.

All this is nothing compared to typhoons in Burma, the Sichuan earthquake, or even the Parkersburg tornado a couple of weeks ago that basically leveled that small northeast Iowa town. Still, I feel like we’re getting a very scaled-down reminder of the power of nature. Along with the very best of the human response.

Yet I’m happy as well, because my new book China Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism just showed up at my doorstep. The cover is a reminder of my father’s legacy; it features a striking close-up of a Peking Opera monkey king face, one of tens of thousands of images in his archive at the Newseum in Washington DC.

China Ink is based on interviews with 20 young Chinese journalists, and is testimony, I believe, to the high ideals one finds in the field and the crucial role of folks working day-to-day within the system to promote positive social change. We hear a lot about the views and troubles of dissidents in China–and they are important too, particularly in drawing attention to critical problems. But we don’t hear nearly as much about more mundane and subtle efforts to expand the realm of information and expression, which are surely more common and widespread. This book is intended to help fill that gap.

I hope that starting off this blog this way won’t be seen as self-promotion, which is one of my reservations about blogging in general. I do want to promote these journalists’ voices and stories, however, and am likely to return to these individuals from time to time, as fresh news from them reaches me. Although only a few of them are fluent in English, I know they will all be excited to get their copies of the book.

Meanwhile, I will try to address with reasonable regularity matters I’m supposed to know something about: China, journalism and media, sports and culture, writing and teaching.

So how about that Newseum? As a glitzy “museum of news” and one of those cultural institutions that aims to edify through entertainment, it can be criticized; Slate’s Jack Shafer tells why. At the same time, in protecting, sharing and showcasing journalism and photojournalism collections that chronicle our times, the place does an important service. I for one am grateful.

Another time, I’ll relate why–along with those decades’ worth of photos for the likes of Life and Look as well as books and independent projects–a transcript of testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and a 167-page FBI file are part of my dad’s repository.