From Asheville: GOOD water this time

Also: a full accounting of the money you trusted me with

Here’s a shot I took three days ago looking into the Southern States feed and supply store about half a mile from my house. I’ve bought so much stuff for our garden here. They had a great store cat, Peanut. Peanut is okay.

Greetings from Asheville—where (despite the grim photo above) it’s a very happy day indeed! Because at 11 a.m. this morning the City of Asheville announced it was lifting its boil water advisory.

The cause of the earthquake felt across the South Atlantic Seaboard at 11:02 this morning was 100,000 Ashevillians jumping into the shower. Catherine and I are so excited! After 54 days of living terrified that if a single drop of water from our faucets touches our skin or gets into our eyes, we’ll immediately get pink eye or a flesh-eating disease or Athlete’s face or whatever, we are finally free to . . . well, shower and cook, to name two. (But those are the biggies!)

Or we will be free to cook and clean, right after we flush our pipes, sanitize all our faucet screens and aerators, flush the water from our refrigerator, run sanitizing cycles on our dishwasher and washing machine, drain our water heater, change our whole-house water filter . . .

Oh, forget it. I’m sticking with bottled water and Dude Wipes.

Take it from me: Dude Wipes needs to come with a package warning that reads, DO NOT USE PRIOR TO CLOSING ALL YOUR LIVING ROOM WINDOWS. But it doesn’t. So what happened isn’t my fault.

It’ll be so nice to return to the pre-Helene pristine machines that Cat and I have always aspired to at least consider becoming. And yet I know that after we’ve resumed our normal way of life (as much as that’s possible with so much of Asheville still looking like it was bombed), I will, now and again, miss certain things about the way we’ve been living for almost two months now.

For instance, the way we’ve been washing our hair. There’s just something about leaning over the kitchen sink while Cat slowly pours a bottle of water over my head that has made me appreciate, in a way that I’m not sure I ever have before, how much we need to move because of how our garbage disposal smells.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about the money so many of you entrusted me to give to others in Asheville and its environs whose lives have been so terribly upended by Helene.

Here is the final accounting of those funds:

In a previous post, I noted that you all had given me $3,375.00 total to share with others. Since then, I’ve received in $480.00 more.

So total monies donated to date: $3,855.00

PayPal, Substack and Stripe fees charged against that money totaled $389.59. (After my post on October 11, I counted every upgrade to a paid subscription to my Substack newsletter as a donation to the cause of my helping others; Stripe is the company Substack uses to process its collections and payments. Together they take about 13% of whatever Substack writers get from subscribers to their newsletters—which . . . I mean, I’m used to paying my literary agents 15%. So I’m cool with this. )

That left me with donations totaling $3465.41.

$500.00 of that amount was given to me by a reader who wanted me to put it toward the medical bills I incurred via my recent hospital stay. (Thank you so much, JV!)

That left me $2,965.41 to give to others.

And here is how I spent that money:

Four $500 VISA cards (as touched upon in this post)
$500 to a local artist whose studio was destroyed by the hurricane
$200 to a woman whose house was ruined by the hurricane
$200 to a woman whose business location was totaled by the hurricane

So that amounts to $2,900.00.

And that left me, as of yesterday morning, with $65.41 left to give.

I split that money between two GoFund me campaigns: Help Carolina and Marco Rebuild Their Home After Hurricane, and Support Brooke's Studio Recovery Post-Hurricane

And there we have it.

Thank you, more than I can say, for what so many of you did to help make so many people’s lives here in Asheville a little—or even a lot—better. That you allowed me to serve as the conduit of your love and largess is an honor that will stay with me forever. Thank you again.

Till next time, your friend, John

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