I know you are not anxious to take up the mantle and burden of public service Rynar, but this may be the time where your reticence may need to be overruled.
It sounds like in addition to everything else, Rhode Island needs leaders. I'm not suggesting you run for public office, just that you look to organizing in the community, get some volunteer team going to help out those in need by helping them salvage what they can and find places to live. You are a well spoken man, intelligent, and unless I've read you wrong all these years, you can command a team and get things done. Keeping people busy will help get their minds off their own problems, help them regain their confidence, and show those with resources to invest that these scared and shaken people can get things done, are good neighbors, good people and display American spirit and ingenuity.
Be the backbone, the crew boss, the man with the plan. Get your friends and neighbors fighting for their own physical and economic survival. Explain ahead of time that this is volunteer, helping your neighbors in bad times, an American tradition. You don't have to be there all the time, just tell people where to go and what to do and give a choice few your cell number so if things start to screw up you can rededicate them to the tasks at hand. For a lot of them, they have the time to do it. Especially those whose jobs went away with the flood or the economic bust. Teach someone how to make a good cheap stew and those who work get fed.
Then if you know anyone trying to get their shop put back together, or can otherwise afford to pay for help, get them to come down to the day's project and hire someone displaying the skills they need. Talk to some of the larger volunteer organizers, talk to FEMA, see what supplies and aid you can get for free. Any union idiot tries to tell you that you are taking their jobs away just laugh at them and tell them you're just clearing land and trying to keep the rat populations down, there isn't any money here. Tell them they are welcome to volunteer alongside everyone else.
All you may get is laughed at, but even then, you will have tried where others just went into shock and stared at the walls.
You, your family, your friends, and the State of Rhode Island will be in my prayers, God Speed.
"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them" - William Shakespeare
_________________ The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin
"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones
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