Woofy!
DJHJD
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Friday, September 09, 2005
Friday night thoughts
Well, here I am - it's been quite the day. After 4:45, when CP brought my check by, I ran hither and yon, paid bills, paid more bills, made phone calls, chatted up Michael (from Atlanta) and got ready to go meet Chris about starting a musical theater production company.
As I was leaving the parking lot from Mama's Restaurant, I was thinking to myself "am I crazy thinking of taking on another project?"
Perhaps.
Anyway, Michael called me and asked to borrow forty bucks and offered to meet me over in the Gulfgate area. He's a hoot. Anyway, after meeting up with him for a few minutes, I drove over to EJ's to meet Mikey and the other Whores of Baghdad, hung out there a while, had Jarred flirting with me. Blah. After leaving, I was nearly out of gas (which, I guess means that I really NEED it) so I filled up at the Big Gay Diamond Shamrock; $53.00. Wow. Then, I think about it, and I just really don't care. I'll just pay it.
We have (counting) possibly six loans in process now. At least four of those should close yet in September. Wow. That should mean a great month for me financially. I may have sold another set of books today, which would rock. I've decided that I'm going to take a diversion and write a definitive book on loan processing (which a former employer nagged at me to write for him for nearly three years, but since he wasn't paying me squat, he can go hang) and sell it. Nationally. Maybe I'll work on that .. um, when?
Tomorrow morning, Ruby goes into the shop for an alignment and etc. at 0700; then, I'm going to work on mailing stuff out and maybe going back to bed. And drinking coffee. I've been so sore that I broke down and called Travis the chiropractor (who's just the best, but annoying) and am seeing him at 11:00 tomorrow.
I had to buy a ticket for the MegaMillions tonight. $171MM. After taxes with the cash option, that would be some $55,000,000. Couldn't help myself.
Working on going to see E over the weekend of the 24th. I just HAVE to take a Sunday off every now and again. Urk. I have to remember to come up with a flip chart and markers for Sunday.
Anyway, that's enough for tonight. I'll post a couple of pictures of Michael (from Atlanta) who is so damned fun to talk to.
As I was leaving the parking lot from Mama's Restaurant, I was thinking to myself "am I crazy thinking of taking on another project?"
Perhaps.
Anyway, Michael called me and asked to borrow forty bucks and offered to meet me over in the Gulfgate area. He's a hoot. Anyway, after meeting up with him for a few minutes, I drove over to EJ's to meet Mikey and the other Whores of Baghdad, hung out there a while, had Jarred flirting with me. Blah. After leaving, I was nearly out of gas (which, I guess means that I really NEED it) so I filled up at the Big Gay Diamond Shamrock; $53.00. Wow. Then, I think about it, and I just really don't care. I'll just pay it.
We have (counting) possibly six loans in process now. At least four of those should close yet in September. Wow. That should mean a great month for me financially. I may have sold another set of books today, which would rock. I've decided that I'm going to take a diversion and write a definitive book on loan processing (which a former employer nagged at me to write for him for nearly three years, but since he wasn't paying me squat, he can go hang) and sell it. Nationally. Maybe I'll work on that .. um, when?
Tomorrow morning, Ruby goes into the shop for an alignment and etc. at 0700; then, I'm going to work on mailing stuff out and maybe going back to bed. And drinking coffee. I've been so sore that I broke down and called Travis the chiropractor (who's just the best, but annoying) and am seeing him at 11:00 tomorrow.
I had to buy a ticket for the MegaMillions tonight. $171MM. After taxes with the cash option, that would be some $55,000,000. Couldn't help myself.
Working on going to see E over the weekend of the 24th. I just HAVE to take a Sunday off every now and again. Urk. I have to remember to come up with a flip chart and markers for Sunday.
Anyway, that's enough for tonight. I'll post a couple of pictures of Michael (from Atlanta) who is so damned fun to talk to.
Somewhere in the City of Louisiana
While innocently watching MSNBC last evening to get the latest on the relief efforts, I was fortunate enough to hear the editorial below from Keith Olbermann. I have NEVER heard such a hard-hitting, honest, emotional, pull-no-punches editorial on TV in my life. It perfectly coincided with my outrage and contempt over the past horrible week, and I bet it respresents the feelings of, hopefully, a substantial percentage of the rest of the citizenry of the U.S. Please, please forward this editorial on to others. And now, read carefully, and picture the editorial as delivered by Olbermann -- in a voice dripping with disgust and anger.
The "city" of Louisiana (Keith Olbermann)
SECAUCUS - Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: "Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."
Well there's your problem right there.
If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government's response to a crisis, this was it.
The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might've saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could've brought last Monday and Tuesday - like the President, whose statements have looked like they're being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.
But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called "The Department of Homeland Security": "Louisiana is a city..."
Politician after politician - Republican and Democrat alike - has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the "I-Me" switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were - congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded - even the internet's meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural... and government-made.
But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans - even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection - or at least amelioration - against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.
Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?
I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.
For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been - as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be - whether or not I voted for this President - he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government - our government - "New Orleans."
For him, it is a shame - in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."
In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself - it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.
As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government's credibility.
Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.
E-mail: KOlbermann@msnbc.com
The "city" of Louisiana (Keith Olbermann)
SECAUCUS - Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: "Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."
Well there's your problem right there.
If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government's response to a crisis, this was it.
The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might've saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could've brought last Monday and Tuesday - like the President, whose statements have looked like they're being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.
But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called "The Department of Homeland Security": "Louisiana is a city..."
Politician after politician - Republican and Democrat alike - has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the "I-Me" switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were - congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded - even the internet's meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural... and government-made.
But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans - even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection - or at least amelioration - against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.
Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?
I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.
For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been - as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be - whether or not I voted for this President - he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government - our government - "New Orleans."
For him, it is a shame - in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."
In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself - it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.
As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government's credibility.
Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.
E-mail: KOlbermann@msnbc.com
Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences
This was posted on DailyKos. I did a google search on Lorrie Beth Slonsky and Larry Bradshaw; they are paramedics and SEIU activists stranded in NOLA when they were attending a paramedics conference in the city:
Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences
Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.
The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.
We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators
running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured
the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.
Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.
On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen
them.
We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses
never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits,
they were commandeered by the military.
By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the
Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".
We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there." We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told
them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.
Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.
All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.
Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).
This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.
If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in.
Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.
From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its lades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.
Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.
In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.
We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.
There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.
Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.
This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.
Hurricane Katrina-Our Experiences
Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky
Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City. Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry.
The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.
We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter.
We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators
running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured
the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.
Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.
On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen
them.
We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses
never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits,
they were commandeered by the military.
By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the
Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".
We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials. The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there." We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told
them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.
We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.
Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.
All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot. Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.
Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts. Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).
This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out for yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing a community.
If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in.
Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.
From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its lades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.
Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.
In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.
The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.
We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op. After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas.
There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds if us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) we were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches.
Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.
This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.
"Those Looters Should be Shot, Praise the Lord, and Pass the Guacamole!
A God with Whom I am not Familiar
By TIM WISE
http://www.timwise.org
This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today,
in Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt:
You don't know me. But I know you.
I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the
restaurant where we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you
prayed, and thanked God for the food you were about to eat, and for
your own safety, several hundred miles away from the unfolding
catastrophe in New Orleans.
You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then
proceeded to spend the better part of your meal--and mine, since I
was too near your table to avoid hearing every word--morally scolding
the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not
heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you
attacked them--all of them, without distinction it seemed--for the
behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like
guns, or big screen TVs.
I heard you ask, amid the din of your colleagues "Amens," why it was
that instead of pitching in to help their fellow Americans, the
people of New Orleans instead--again, all of them in your mind--chose
to steal and shoot at relief helicopters.
I watched you wipe salsa from the corners of your mouth, as you
nodded agreement to the statement of one of your friends, sitting to
your right, her hair neatly coiffed, her makeup flawless, her jewelry
sparkling. When you asked, rhetorically, why it was that people were
so much more decent amid the tragedy of 9-11, as compared to the
aftermath of Katrina, she had offered her response, but only after
apologizing for what she admitted was going to sound harsh.
"Well," Buffy explained. "It's probably because in New Orleans, it
seems to be mostly poor people, and you know, they just don't have
the same regard."
She then added that police should shoot the looters, and should have
done so from the beginning, so as to send a message to the rest that
theft would not be tolerated. You, who had just thanked Jesus for
your chips and guacamole, said you agreed. They should be shot.
Praise the Lord.
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.
Two thoughts.
First, it is a very fortunate thing for you, and likely for me, that
my two young children were with me as I sat there, choking back fish
tacos and my own seething rage, listening to you pontificate about
shit you know nothing about.
Have you ever even been to New Orleans?
And no, by that I don't mean the New Orleans of your company's sales
conference. I don,t mean Emeril's New Orleans, or the New Orleans of
Uptown Mardi Gras parties.
I mean the New Orleans that is buried as if it were Atlantis, in
places like the lower 9th ward: 98 percent black, 40 percent poor,
where bodies are floating down the street, flowing with the water as
it seeks its own level. Have you met the people from that New
Orleans? The New Orleans that is dying as I write this, and as you
order another sweet tea?
I didn't think so.
Your God--the one to whom you prayed today, and likely do before
every meal, because this gesture proves what a good Christian you are-
-is one with whom I am not familiar.
Your God is one who you sincerely believe gives a flying fuck about
your lunch. Your God is one who you seem to believe watches over you
and blesses you, and brings good tidings your way, while
simultaneously letting thousands of people watch their homes be
destroyed, and perhaps ten thousand or more die, many of them in the
streets for lack of water or food.
Did you ever stop to think just what a rancid asshole such a God
would have to be, such that he would take care of the likes of you,
while letting babies die in their mother's arms, and old people in
wheelchairs, at the foot of Canal Street?
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.
But no, it isn't God who's the asshole here, Skip (or Brad, or
Braxton, or whatever your name is).
God doesn't feed you, and it isn't God that kept me from turning
around and beating your lily white privileged ass today either.
God has nothing to do with it.
God doesn't care who wins the Super Bowl.
God doesn't help anyone win an Academy Award.
God didn't get you your last raise, or your SUV.
And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to self-
righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for
their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.
Why didn't they evacuate like they were told?
Are you serious?
There are 100,000 people in that city without cars. Folks who are too
poor to own their own vehicle, and who rely on public transportation
every day. I know this might shock you. They don,t have a Hummer2, or
whatever gas-guzzling piece of crap you either already own or
probably are saving up for.
And no, they didn't just choose not to own a car because the buses
are so gosh-darned efficient and great, as Rush Limbaugh implied
yesterday, and as you likely heard, since you're the kind of person
who hangs on the every word of such bloviating hacks as these.
Why did they loot?
Are you serious?
People are dying, in the streets, on live television. Fathers and
mothers are watching their baby's eyes bulge in their skulls from
dehydration, and you are begrudging them some Goddamned candy bars,
diapers and water?
If anything the poor of New Orleans have exercised restraint.
Maybe you didn't know it, but the people of that city with whom you
likely identify--the wealthy white folks of Uptown--were barely
touched by this storm. Yeah, I guess God was watching over them:
protecting them, and rewarding them for their faith and superior
morality. If the folks downtown who are waiting desperately for their
government to send help--a government whose resources have been
stretched thin by a war that I'm sure you support, because you love
freedom and democracy--were half as crazed as you think, they'd march
down St. Charles Avenue right now and burn every mansion in sight.
That they aren't doing so suggests a decency and compassion for their
fellow man and woman that sadly people like you lack.
Can you even imagine what you would do in their place?
Can you imagine what would happen if it were well-off white folks
stranded like this without buses to get them out, without
nourishment, without hope?
Putting aside the absurdity of the imagery--after all, such folks
always have the means to seek safety, or the money to rebuild, or the
political significance to ensure a much speedier response for their
concerns--can you just imagine?
Can you imagine what would happen if the pampered, overfed corporate
class, which complains about taxes taking a third of their bloated
incomes, had to sit in the hot sun for four, going on five days?
Without a Margarita or hotel swimming pool to comfort them I mean?
Oh, and please, I know. I'm stereotyping you. Imagine that. I've
assumed, based only on your words, what kind of person you are, even
though I suppose I could be wrong. How does that feel Biff? Hurt your
feelings? So sorry. But hey, at least my stereotypes of you aren't
deadly. They won't effect your life one bit, unlike the ones you
carry around with you and display within earshot of people like me,
supposing that no one could possibly disagree.
But I'm not wrong am I Chip? I know you. I see people like you all
the time, in airports, in business suits, on their lunch breaks.
People who will take advantage of any opportunity to ratify and reify
their pre-existing prejudices towards the poor, towards black folks.
You see the same three video loops of the same dozen or so looters on
Fox News and you conclude that poor black people are crazy, immoral,
criminal.
You, or others quite a bit like you, are the ones posting messages on
chat room boards, calling looters sub-human "vermin," "scum,"
or "cockroaches." I heard you use the word "animals" three times
today: you and that woman across from you--what was her name? Skyler?
What was it you said as you scooped the last bite of black beans and
rice into your eager mouth? Like zoo animals? Yes, I think that was
it.
Well, Chuck, it's a free country, and so you certainly have the right
I suppose to continue lecturing the poor, in between checking your
Blackberry and dropping the kids off at soccer practice. If you want
to believe that the poor of New Orleans are immoral and greedy, and
unworthy of support at a time like this--or somehow more in need of
your scolding than whatever donation you might make to a relief fund--
so be it.
But let's leave God out of it, shall we? All of it.
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar, and I'd prefer to keep
it that way.
By TIM WISE
http://www.timwise.org
This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today,
in Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt:
You don't know me. But I know you.
I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the
restaurant where we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you
prayed, and thanked God for the food you were about to eat, and for
your own safety, several hundred miles away from the unfolding
catastrophe in New Orleans.
You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then
proceeded to spend the better part of your meal--and mine, since I
was too near your table to avoid hearing every word--morally scolding
the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not
heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you
attacked them--all of them, without distinction it seemed--for the
behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like
guns, or big screen TVs.
I heard you ask, amid the din of your colleagues "Amens," why it was
that instead of pitching in to help their fellow Americans, the
people of New Orleans instead--again, all of them in your mind--chose
to steal and shoot at relief helicopters.
I watched you wipe salsa from the corners of your mouth, as you
nodded agreement to the statement of one of your friends, sitting to
your right, her hair neatly coiffed, her makeup flawless, her jewelry
sparkling. When you asked, rhetorically, why it was that people were
so much more decent amid the tragedy of 9-11, as compared to the
aftermath of Katrina, she had offered her response, but only after
apologizing for what she admitted was going to sound harsh.
"Well," Buffy explained. "It's probably because in New Orleans, it
seems to be mostly poor people, and you know, they just don't have
the same regard."
She then added that police should shoot the looters, and should have
done so from the beginning, so as to send a message to the rest that
theft would not be tolerated. You, who had just thanked Jesus for
your chips and guacamole, said you agreed. They should be shot.
Praise the Lord.
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.
Two thoughts.
First, it is a very fortunate thing for you, and likely for me, that
my two young children were with me as I sat there, choking back fish
tacos and my own seething rage, listening to you pontificate about
shit you know nothing about.
Have you ever even been to New Orleans?
And no, by that I don't mean the New Orleans of your company's sales
conference. I don,t mean Emeril's New Orleans, or the New Orleans of
Uptown Mardi Gras parties.
I mean the New Orleans that is buried as if it were Atlantis, in
places like the lower 9th ward: 98 percent black, 40 percent poor,
where bodies are floating down the street, flowing with the water as
it seeks its own level. Have you met the people from that New
Orleans? The New Orleans that is dying as I write this, and as you
order another sweet tea?
I didn't think so.
Your God--the one to whom you prayed today, and likely do before
every meal, because this gesture proves what a good Christian you are-
-is one with whom I am not familiar.
Your God is one who you sincerely believe gives a flying fuck about
your lunch. Your God is one who you seem to believe watches over you
and blesses you, and brings good tidings your way, while
simultaneously letting thousands of people watch their homes be
destroyed, and perhaps ten thousand or more die, many of them in the
streets for lack of water or food.
Did you ever stop to think just what a rancid asshole such a God
would have to be, such that he would take care of the likes of you,
while letting babies die in their mother's arms, and old people in
wheelchairs, at the foot of Canal Street?
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.
But no, it isn't God who's the asshole here, Skip (or Brad, or
Braxton, or whatever your name is).
God doesn't feed you, and it isn't God that kept me from turning
around and beating your lily white privileged ass today either.
God has nothing to do with it.
God doesn't care who wins the Super Bowl.
God doesn't help anyone win an Academy Award.
God didn't get you your last raise, or your SUV.
And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to self-
righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for
their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.
Why didn't they evacuate like they were told?
Are you serious?
There are 100,000 people in that city without cars. Folks who are too
poor to own their own vehicle, and who rely on public transportation
every day. I know this might shock you. They don,t have a Hummer2, or
whatever gas-guzzling piece of crap you either already own or
probably are saving up for.
And no, they didn't just choose not to own a car because the buses
are so gosh-darned efficient and great, as Rush Limbaugh implied
yesterday, and as you likely heard, since you're the kind of person
who hangs on the every word of such bloviating hacks as these.
Why did they loot?
Are you serious?
People are dying, in the streets, on live television. Fathers and
mothers are watching their baby's eyes bulge in their skulls from
dehydration, and you are begrudging them some Goddamned candy bars,
diapers and water?
If anything the poor of New Orleans have exercised restraint.
Maybe you didn't know it, but the people of that city with whom you
likely identify--the wealthy white folks of Uptown--were barely
touched by this storm. Yeah, I guess God was watching over them:
protecting them, and rewarding them for their faith and superior
morality. If the folks downtown who are waiting desperately for their
government to send help--a government whose resources have been
stretched thin by a war that I'm sure you support, because you love
freedom and democracy--were half as crazed as you think, they'd march
down St. Charles Avenue right now and burn every mansion in sight.
That they aren't doing so suggests a decency and compassion for their
fellow man and woman that sadly people like you lack.
Can you even imagine what you would do in their place?
Can you imagine what would happen if it were well-off white folks
stranded like this without buses to get them out, without
nourishment, without hope?
Putting aside the absurdity of the imagery--after all, such folks
always have the means to seek safety, or the money to rebuild, or the
political significance to ensure a much speedier response for their
concerns--can you just imagine?
Can you imagine what would happen if the pampered, overfed corporate
class, which complains about taxes taking a third of their bloated
incomes, had to sit in the hot sun for four, going on five days?
Without a Margarita or hotel swimming pool to comfort them I mean?
Oh, and please, I know. I'm stereotyping you. Imagine that. I've
assumed, based only on your words, what kind of person you are, even
though I suppose I could be wrong. How does that feel Biff? Hurt your
feelings? So sorry. But hey, at least my stereotypes of you aren't
deadly. They won't effect your life one bit, unlike the ones you
carry around with you and display within earshot of people like me,
supposing that no one could possibly disagree.
But I'm not wrong am I Chip? I know you. I see people like you all
the time, in airports, in business suits, on their lunch breaks.
People who will take advantage of any opportunity to ratify and reify
their pre-existing prejudices towards the poor, towards black folks.
You see the same three video loops of the same dozen or so looters on
Fox News and you conclude that poor black people are crazy, immoral,
criminal.
You, or others quite a bit like you, are the ones posting messages on
chat room boards, calling looters sub-human "vermin," "scum,"
or "cockroaches." I heard you use the word "animals" three times
today: you and that woman across from you--what was her name? Skyler?
What was it you said as you scooped the last bite of black beans and
rice into your eager mouth? Like zoo animals? Yes, I think that was
it.
Well, Chuck, it's a free country, and so you certainly have the right
I suppose to continue lecturing the poor, in between checking your
Blackberry and dropping the kids off at soccer practice. If you want
to believe that the poor of New Orleans are immoral and greedy, and
unworthy of support at a time like this--or somehow more in need of
your scolding than whatever donation you might make to a relief fund--
so be it.
But let's leave God out of it, shall we? All of it.
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar, and I'd prefer to keep
it that way.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Thursday support hose
Last night, Lisa told me that I needed to be asking for support from the Universe, instead of specific things, and that I needed to be open to support. So, in our board meeting, all of a sudden the President suggests to the meeting that I should be paid something for everything that I do to support the group; they voted to pay for my Prac II expenses over the next eight months.
Then, this morning, I go to the M Clinic to have my bi-weekly check up, and I took with me the book Donna gave me from Gangaji - and, all eight chapters I read are about .. support.
Okay, so I've been asking for support, and it's been working. Sort of.
Let's have a little quote here:
Then, this morning, I go to the M Clinic to have my bi-weekly check up, and I took with me the book Donna gave me from Gangaji - and, all eight chapters I read are about .. support.
Okay, so I've been asking for support, and it's been working. Sort of.
Let's have a little quote here:
"I cannot tolerate an American president, ostensibly meant
to be one of the most articulate and intellectually
sophisticated leaders on the planet, mumbling his
semicoherent support of the embarrassing nontheory of
'Intelligent Design,' to the detriment of about 300 years of
confirmed science and 10 million years of common sense to
the point where America's armies of dumbed-down
Ritalin-drunk children look at him and sigh and secretly
wish they could have a future devoid of such imbecilic
thought but who realize, deep down, they are merely another
doomed and fraught generation who will face an increasingly
steep uphill battle, who will actually have to fight for
fact and intellectual growth and spiritual progress against
a rising tide of ignorance and religious hegemony and
sanitized revisionist textbooks that insult their
understanding and sucker punch their sexuality and bleed
their minds dry."
-- San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford, Aug. 10.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Tuesday with progress
Tuesday that feels like Monday
Well, I at least got the loan finalized. It will go into docs tomorrow, absent another hurricane, and will close Thursday or Friday. Just sucks. Trying to get an underwriting response on the other, little file that I have, which could now close as early as Monday. Then, there’s another one that we’re working – have to get it processed tomorrow, and sent in.
I went out and used Mikey’s bleach water trick on Ruby’s window glass – WOW! Now, the paint looks like someone blew their nose all over it. I want to go out there and wax it up, but I have to work on Fabulair web content tonight. I also need to watch this DVD that’s been sitting here for more than a MONTH about Islam.
Tomorrow, the day is just whacked. I need to call and reschedule my 9:30 appointment, and figure out just what all needs to be accomplished. Nicole has her first surgery tomorrow, and so I have to make time to stop over there when she’s in recovery. I have dinner with Rosita at around 5:30, and then the New Vision board meeting after that.
Today, I did accomplish (I think) finding the models for the first Fabulair images. I’ll find out for sure later on tonight, but I think that’s finally handled. Hopefully, a week from this afternoon, I’ll be able to get everyone together for the first photographs. I talked to Jayson again today about that, he was getting all weird about me paying him for it, and he’s about as reliable as a bald tire going 90 on the freeway over nails. So, I asked someone ELSE who seemed interested, and he’s got a friend who would also be perfect. Please, let’s get this accomplished, finally!
I think it’s time to investigate food, and then start watching this DVD before it grows cultures.
Well, I at least got the loan finalized. It will go into docs tomorrow, absent another hurricane, and will close Thursday or Friday. Just sucks. Trying to get an underwriting response on the other, little file that I have, which could now close as early as Monday. Then, there’s another one that we’re working – have to get it processed tomorrow, and sent in.
I went out and used Mikey’s bleach water trick on Ruby’s window glass – WOW! Now, the paint looks like someone blew their nose all over it. I want to go out there and wax it up, but I have to work on Fabulair web content tonight. I also need to watch this DVD that’s been sitting here for more than a MONTH about Islam.
Tomorrow, the day is just whacked. I need to call and reschedule my 9:30 appointment, and figure out just what all needs to be accomplished. Nicole has her first surgery tomorrow, and so I have to make time to stop over there when she’s in recovery. I have dinner with Rosita at around 5:30, and then the New Vision board meeting after that.
Today, I did accomplish (I think) finding the models for the first Fabulair images. I’ll find out for sure later on tonight, but I think that’s finally handled. Hopefully, a week from this afternoon, I’ll be able to get everyone together for the first photographs. I talked to Jayson again today about that, he was getting all weird about me paying him for it, and he’s about as reliable as a bald tire going 90 on the freeway over nails. So, I asked someone ELSE who seemed interested, and he’s got a friend who would also be perfect. Please, let’s get this accomplished, finally!
I think it’s time to investigate food, and then start watching this DVD before it grows cultures.
Someone's got her panties in a knot
08.31.2005
Mr. Bush, Go Cheney Yourself! (187 comments )
We have no leadership, no captain at the helm as it were. We are, in effect, being led from disaster to disaster by a headless horseman run amok with stuffed pockets and an empty conscience.SUSPENDING HIGHER GROUND
On September 11, 2001, The Vacationing and un-elected President of this country was tooling around on his holiday and even making time to fit in a little PR in Florida too.
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Later it was the "bring it on" hubris of a boy-king, who had spent his entire life doing absolutely nothing of value, now deciding the fate of thousands upon thousands of people.
Still later, it was a Veruca Salt-like tantrum of "I want it now Daddy, I WANT IT NOW!" demanding of either Rummy or Cheney that he get his golden- egg- laying Goose.
Now this dim-witted and loathed bully of a child still sits on his beach blanket while "his" toy soldiers are sent to kill "his" toy victims. "Daddy, I WANT IT NOW!"Daddy VP Delivers:
So what happens when, once again, our leadership is sun-bathing and there is a national emergency? What happens when children are drowning in attics while others are burning in the sun on Cajun hot roofs? What happens to a great city like New Orleans when funding for emergency spending has been cut so that Bush can play war and "toys can kill toys?"
What happens when the entire military and emergency resources of a nation – the ones not yet outsourced to Project Lying Bastards – are tied up in simulations of being prepared for emergencies, and by being tied up are not prepared at all?Just a few of these simulations listed below, taking place over the last few weeks, have tied up all of our resources that are otherwise needed for a catastrophe like Katrina that is unfolding before our eyes:
Alaska, also hereFort Monroe
Town Hall Set, Roll Camera:
So while children are drowning and others are floating around, dead in the water, the wannabe Yale cowboy struts around the set of his faux town hall meetings, has a bit of cake with John McCain, and takes in some fresh air in Colorado.
Congress? Anyone?
Dick? Where is Dick? Anyone?
Condi? Rummy? Any other Iran-Contra Folks?
Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?
Hello?
So where does that leave us, the citizens of this raped, pillaged, terrorized, demoralized, freedom loving nation?Floating face down, eyes affixed on a once great New Orleans!Screw you and the horse you rode in on:
I am more afraid of my leadership than I am of the looming “terrorist” threat. What is terrorism if not the instilling of “fear” on a consistent basis and negligence that results in massive death tolls? I am more afraid of this psychotic designer cowboy (and Yale cheerleader) and his circle of friends than I am of the color coded boogeyman used by a corrupt corporate brood to frighten the very people they are tasked with nurturing.Are we really this stupid or do we just pretend to be in order to get a tax cut? Where are the billionaires of this country who have so lovingly raped the conscience of a nation in order to get those few extra billions?
I can imagine fleets of private planes sent to Katrina’s ground zero and how many lives could be lifted and flown to safety. Imagination is good; it keeps us from going mad. Pat Robertson, that bastion of Christian pay-per-view values, is worth upwards of half a billion dollars. Care to write a check, Pat?
How about ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and other war profiteers, you guys want to help out for operation Save the Drowning Children?Homeland Front Group:
What happens when Chertoff (whose name actually means "of the Devil" in Russian) decides to forgo civil liberties in general and abuses his office, err, industrial department of Homeland Security? What happens when these Homelanders declare Martial Law in order to keep people from looting, but will not supply them with water, food, and other life sustaining supplies?Apparently not a damn thing.
After all, no blond "good Christian" wealthy Republican children are drowning. Fox News anchors sit laughing at this tragedy but cry and piss on themselves because a blond girl on an island went missing (no offense to the family of the missing girl).
Do you realize that one person - one single person who is white, blond haired, and blue eyed - is more important to the networks than the thousands of black children spiraling to their deaths in a swirl of sewage in a once historic city?Looting is what the networks are covering, as though such activity is "typical" of what "black people" do. The majority of residents left behind were the poor, who - due to the inexcusable mismanagement of emergency resources, coupled with high oil prices - were unable to leave on their own. The poor in this country happen to be minorities, so the people left behind were minorities.Take away food, water, and other supplies and what should someone do? Swim over to an ATM and get some soggy money out? Or maybe dive in, holding their breath, and swim through their underwater living room looking for a lost wallet? Not to worry, the Pentagon is on its way, Martial law is declared, journalists are forced out, and those saved are happily dining on cat food.Bush's cutting of his vacation short by a whole two hours - jetting off to DC, from where he can look Presidential -- is almost as timely as is him finally putting down My Pet Goat.
And where is that treasure of a mother, that national “I love my gay daughter when it works for the campaign” bastion of integrity? Lynn Cheney, the doyenne of Christian values, is probably rehearsing her “I am an indignant mother” routine, somewhere in the bowls of her underground mansion. Because she is not out, carrying buckets or collecting donations or for god’s sake doing something to help the people of “her country.”
Congress is still on vacation even though we are witnessing a national tragedy that could produce the worst death toll in recent US history.Condi’s father – a prominent minister and educator - is spinning in his grave as black women and children drown, while Condi stands and shills somewhere – who the hell knows where – on how we are spreading Democracy. As though such a thing as Democracy could be spread through rape, torture, and murder, like some venereal disease.Where is the god damn leadership of this country? Dick, Condi, Rummy, anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
Screw It:
There is no representation of the people and there is no care for the people, just as long as the consumer keeps on consuming and the breeder keeps on breeding. We are a commodity, nothing more. How else to explain such indifference and barrage of smiling, giggling photo ops?How else to explain the military allegiance to a small group of men and not to the country and its people? A Secret Service agent will take a bullet for a traitor or put one into an innocent person for a group of traitors, but will not come out as a whistleblower against a treasonous leadership gluttonous on its power binge. Yes, what a noble job, to be privy to atrocity after atrocity and still bow down and say “sir, may I have another?”
I am horrified at this gross neglect, abuse of power, and absolute disregard for decency. I remember Lynn Cheney, in her smarmy over-glossed way, staging that attack on John Kerry - who unlike her war dodging husband and ruthless corporate dictator, managed to go to Vietnam, come back to fight for the rights of soldiers and against an illegal war, and serve his country for 30+ years. Speaking of Kerry, Lynn said – memorably - “this is not a good man.”
Oh? Mrs. Cheney, Mrs. Bush (all of you, collectively), given that you are mothers, do explain to us what any of your husbands has ever done that did not directly benefit himself and/or his friends financially? One act of note, of real noble value should be easy to locate from such “good men” as these.What have you fine ladies done with your very public time? Well Lynn wrote a little sexy Romance novel, and Laura is in charge of “gangs,” whatever the hell that means.Why are you fine mothers not swimming in the sea of New Orleans rescuing children? Why are you not screaming in horror as the Children’s Hospital becomes slowly submerged under water?How about one Christian act of selflessness that you and yours have done (excluding large charitable donations that pay out in bigger tax cuts)? Such good Christians should have armies of cross-worthy accomplishments.
One example is all that is needed for a full pardon from us, the small “we the people” who can die for this country, bleed for this country, starve in this country, and work to death in this country so that “you, the employees” can have cocktail parties and take the twins to NYC for fashion week.Twins? You girls shopping okay?
This entire lot is nothing more than a bunch of hooligans, all of whom should be held accountable for dereliction of duty, crimes against the citizens of this nation, and crimes against humanity.
My god, cutting funding (alone, without adding the negligence and middle finger to “duty”) for emergency services to pay off the already rich “Bush Pioneers” in tax cuts, results in this: death. What will the Bush minions say now: “We did not know that a Hurricane could or would do that?”
Odd, we knew about hurricanes, especially those of us who went through four of them last year in a three week run. FEMA warned of them for New Orleans starting in 2001. We knew. Scientists knew. So did city of New Orleans via its mayor who repeatedly asked for government funding, over and over, and over. In fact, every rational person on the planet knows that the top priority of a good leader is "the people", not his frat house pals!Tax cuts to the top-already-grossly-rich 2% of the nation over the duties to the other 98% of the people, is unpardonable!We have to sit and watch the myriad of horrors inflicted on us and on others on behalf of us: Dick simulates, Bush tans, Laura reads, twins go shopping, Lynn writes trite tales of love, and a psychotic Rummy tortures, rapes, and murders in our name.That about cover it? Not quite.
Mr. Bush, go Cheney yourself!
And Mr. Cheney, take your war games, your Rummy, Rove, Condi, Hadley, Libby, and especially your over priced and frozen over wife, and shove them up your Ashcroft.RESUMING HIGHER GROUND
Monday, September 05, 2005
Men SUCK. And not in a good way.
Monday but it feels like Sunday and it’s almost over.
Jayson is negotiating with me for the first Fabulair photo shoot; he’s served notice that he expects to get paid for modeling. That’s assuming he can show up. I may just put the whole photo shoot thing off a week and find someone REAL.
Not a word from Michael, I’m giving up on him. Had a message from N8 this evening; he’s “been busy,” and “wants to know if [I] can help him buy a house in San Diego. Uh, if you could lease an apartment it would be a miracle. What the f*ck ever.
I finally, after more than two years, bought some potting soil for the big ceramic pots I have on my patio. I’m going to go buy some crepe myrtles for them (30% off at Teas!) and have something IN them, finally. Amazingly, the patio doors (on the outside) are all mildewed and crappy looking. AGAIN. More work.
Buying another two XM radios; one for permanent mounting in Ruby, and one to carry around – a portable. I’m giving my current one to E, I think. The one I want for Ruby is a permanent mount unit that will fit right where the CD holder is presently. It will look/work a lot better. I also found some Polk book shelf speakers on eBay that were less than the Sonys I had picked out, with better shipping prices. So, I think that it will be Polk speakers in the den and in my bedroom, which will sound nicer. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll be able to get the subwoofer fixed, and the dish network receiver connected up.
Okay, it’s time to see if sleep will follow me. Until the morrow.
Jayson is negotiating with me for the first Fabulair photo shoot; he’s served notice that he expects to get paid for modeling. That’s assuming he can show up. I may just put the whole photo shoot thing off a week and find someone REAL.
Not a word from Michael, I’m giving up on him. Had a message from N8 this evening; he’s “been busy,” and “wants to know if [I] can help him buy a house in San Diego. Uh, if you could lease an apartment it would be a miracle. What the f*ck ever.
I finally, after more than two years, bought some potting soil for the big ceramic pots I have on my patio. I’m going to go buy some crepe myrtles for them (30% off at Teas!) and have something IN them, finally. Amazingly, the patio doors (on the outside) are all mildewed and crappy looking. AGAIN. More work.
Buying another two XM radios; one for permanent mounting in Ruby, and one to carry around – a portable. I’m giving my current one to E, I think. The one I want for Ruby is a permanent mount unit that will fit right where the CD holder is presently. It will look/work a lot better. I also found some Polk book shelf speakers on eBay that were less than the Sonys I had picked out, with better shipping prices. So, I think that it will be Polk speakers in the den and in my bedroom, which will sound nicer. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll be able to get the subwoofer fixed, and the dish network receiver connected up.
Okay, it’s time to see if sleep will follow me. Until the morrow.
I sure am missing N8
I sure am missing N8. Urg. It’s one of the reasons why avoiding new relationship potential can be a good thing.
Time to go outside and work on sprucing up Ruby. Then, to go pick up Mikey and do some shopping.
Time to go outside and work on sprucing up Ruby. Then, to go pick up Mikey and do some shopping.
Monday Monday ver 640.01
Monday, Monday ver. 640.01
It’s Monday that feels like Sunday without church. I’ve done some of the things on my “to do” list, but am stymied by the lack of business offices being open. I’m about to call Mitch and find out if he’s coming by for me to draft some documents he needs, and then I’m going to haul Mikey off to IKEA and Wally-World.
I still have ten months of a client’s bank statements to reconcile; I need to get that done.
San Jacinto College has proposed a Friday evening class session to break the logjam of our miscommunication. That works for me; I like the shortened class sessions, as it doubles my pay envelope on a monthly basis. However, my next pay period from them is October 31. I’ll have eight full classes in that check, though, instead of three or four.
Almost done with today’s “to do” list. I have to go through the Fabulair website and add content; that’s been lying around to do for a long while.
Found a stunning 645Csi on eBay last night; it makes me weak in the knees. Waterhill seems to have sold the townhouse that I loved so much.
Did I blog about Psycho Judy already?
It’s Monday that feels like Sunday without church. I’ve done some of the things on my “to do” list, but am stymied by the lack of business offices being open. I’m about to call Mitch and find out if he’s coming by for me to draft some documents he needs, and then I’m going to haul Mikey off to IKEA and Wally-World.
I still have ten months of a client’s bank statements to reconcile; I need to get that done.
San Jacinto College has proposed a Friday evening class session to break the logjam of our miscommunication. That works for me; I like the shortened class sessions, as it doubles my pay envelope on a monthly basis. However, my next pay period from them is October 31. I’ll have eight full classes in that check, though, instead of three or four.
Almost done with today’s “to do” list. I have to go through the Fabulair website and add content; that’s been lying around to do for a long while.
Found a stunning 645Csi on eBay last night; it makes me weak in the knees. Waterhill seems to have sold the townhouse that I loved so much.
Did I blog about Psycho Judy already?
Interesting afternoon
Interesting afternoon and evening. Of course the first part of my day was absorbed with church and such. Got home around 14:00 after stopping at an outpost of the evil retail empire. Fiddled around after I got home, and Mikey and Denny came by at about 5:30. I had just started to pull the stereo equipment out to re-install it all and clean back in there, and they had fun watching that. I got everything put in so that it FITS and I can close the cabinet doors again.
Once I got everything working again (with Mikey’s invaluable assistance,) I made divo-ghetti. It was quite the effort, I must say. We started watching First Contact (a DVD to test the sound system) and were going to fiddle around with the subwoofer, which doesn’t seem to be working. We moved from that to Sordid Lives, and suddenly Mikey suggested “It’s My Party,” which Denny had never heard of. That was something else again. I hadn’t seen that video in at least two years, and all three of us were sniffling and dabbing with tissues.
Now, the dishes are running in the dishwasher, the apartment smells of garlic, and I am playing the XM.
As per the norm, it’s 23:00 and I’m not sleepy. I could go clean out Ruby’s interior, I guess, but I’m sure I’ll just sit here and fiddle around for a while.
I’m reading people making non-sequiturs in gay.com’s Houston chatroom. It’s so clear why I abandoned it nearly a year ago.
Was supposed to hang out today with Michael – he’s from Atlanta. He blew me off. I don’t even react to this anymore – what’s that about?
Once I got everything working again (with Mikey’s invaluable assistance,) I made divo-ghetti. It was quite the effort, I must say. We started watching First Contact (a DVD to test the sound system) and were going to fiddle around with the subwoofer, which doesn’t seem to be working. We moved from that to Sordid Lives, and suddenly Mikey suggested “It’s My Party,” which Denny had never heard of. That was something else again. I hadn’t seen that video in at least two years, and all three of us were sniffling and dabbing with tissues.
Now, the dishes are running in the dishwasher, the apartment smells of garlic, and I am playing the XM.
As per the norm, it’s 23:00 and I’m not sleepy. I could go clean out Ruby’s interior, I guess, but I’m sure I’ll just sit here and fiddle around for a while.
I’m reading people making non-sequiturs in gay.com’s Houston chatroom. It’s so clear why I abandoned it nearly a year ago.
Was supposed to hang out today with Michael – he’s from Atlanta. He blew me off. I don’t even react to this anymore – what’s that about?
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