My lack of posts is not representative of my writing activity. I have been writing too much. Is there such a thing? Well there is for blogs. I have been writing feverishly about Louisiana, New Orleans, and specifically FEMA trailers, but each piece has turned into pages and pages of writing much too long to post on my blog. It is good that I am writing. And the longer pieces will make the transition to book a bit easier, I think. But maybe I need to edit myself better? I don't know; I am definitely a rambler but that is part of my charm.
Earlier today I ran across an article written by someone at FEMA about FEMA trailers. It was written prior to Hurricane Katrina (in fact it was from May 2000, in response to Kansas Severe Storms and Tornadoes; it was written just like that), and made note of the fact that the trailers were to be "interim" housing, but would remain in use for as long as needed. Don't interim and as long as needed cancel each other out? Thought so.
The Kansas Severe Storms page also says this: "FEMA's Disaster Housing Program is a temporary housing program designed to help people with their short-term housing while they work to solve their permanent, long-term needs." Call me crazy, but doesn't over two years seem like something different than short-term, and temporary?
So why are people still in trailer homes more than two years after the storm? I am sure that there are many reasons, and I want to address many of them here in the coming days. Even though there are many reasons, I think that they all have one thing in common; the reasons are all rooted in fear.
By staying in the temporary housing FEMA has provided, it is easy to ignore what has happened, well, not so much ignore it, but not digest the enormity of it. It is sort of like the denial stage of the twelve steps. By staying in the trailer, the resident can remain in a state of flux; they don't have to move on with their life, acknowledging all that has happened. Even if the trailer is in the driveway of someone's ruined house, they still don't have to go inside and see the gutted interior. And honestly a lot of the houses look fine from the outside. It is sort of like they are staying in the trailer in the driveway while the house is being fumigated. It is easy to fool yourself into thinking that everything is okay when you are not smacked in the chest by the fact that it is not everyday.
I know; I did this with my grandmother's death. When I was in Louisiana, I didn't drive by her house that some other family was living in every day. In this way people don't really need to acknowledge that their house is ruined, if they don't sit in the empty dining room staring at the beams where the baby pictures used to be. It is easier to pretend sometimes.
I still have my awful cold, and am sleepy, so forgive me if this post wanders a bit at the end.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Sunday, October 28, 2007
A tale of two houses
To the left are the two homes that I lived in while in New Orleans. The first is in New Orleans' Mid City neighborhood. Our house flooded to a depth of eight feet. The landlord had the double shotgun remodeled shortly after the storm. This house was the only house occupied on the block the entire year that we lived there. All of the other houses were in various states of decay; some had been gutted to the studs, some were gutted to a height of four or five feet from the ground; some were falling over, and some hadn't (and weren't the entire time we lived there) even been entered since before the storm. We worked very had on the house when we first moved in. There was sludge covering almost every flat surface outside, we hosed, raked and scraped until it was all gone. We planted flowers, made it look pretty. Eventually, things fell a part; there was no reward for living in the empty neighborhood except the occasional prowler or missing garden tool. I was very tired of looking at FEMA trailers, dirty streets, flooded out cars, and plain old loneliness. Once this started to happen I gave up; I didn't have the energy to make our house pretty any more. No one else cared so why should I? Such a bad attitude to have but the neighborhood's emptiness certainly fostered it.
The second house was in a much better neighborhood; situated between the French Quarter and the Marigny. It was a beautiful house that received absolutely no damage from the hurricanes (why? because people knew where to safely build houses when the city was founded). The interior of our part of the house had been redone in the theme of a sailing ship; beautiful wood everywhere. It was absolutely charming; lying in bed at night I could hear the midnight carriage tour as it passed our house: "This is Farbourg Marigny..." But this loveliness carried a hefty price, one that we simply couldn't afford. But it was a last chance play for happiness in one of the saddest cities of all. We just couldn't take it there any longer. I couldn't, you couldn't, we couldn't. Our bedroom is behind the left window and false door; I think the rooms in the front of this house used to be a pair of formal, double parlors when the house was young. We didn't have anyone break into this house, as we did the other, probably because revelers wandered past the house at all hours; it wasn't uncommon to be woken by couples drunkenly cuddling outside our window at four in the morning. Sometimes we would find the unmistakable scent of urine outside our gate; people are animals sometimes.
Ben still lives in the second house, for now anyway; I doubt he will for much longer. It is too hard. And I live in a motorhome in Idaho. Oh the changes a few months will bring!
Friday, October 26, 2007
Fiery Flood
I have been hearing so many comparisons between the disaster response for the California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina. Yesterday there was a story on NPR about it, and it made my blood boil. I had to think about it for a while, and figure out why it got me so excited. Part of it was that I was jealous, that I wasn’t there. I know it sounds horrible, but I think that my time in Louisiana made me a sort of disaster junkie. And it wasn’t just the volunteering, helping those in need, giving your all for a good cause Red Cross Disaster Relief Operation moments either. It was every minute I spent in Louisiana.
Louisiana, New Orleans in particular, is the modern equivalent to the Wild West; kind of a backwards sort of analogy, but I really don’t know of any other way to describe it. Roads are bad. The infrastructure is very poor; I read a statistic a few months back saying that an astounding sixty (I think that was what it was) percent of the water in New Orleans water system leaks before it reaches its destination; crazy. Crime is rampant. The government is corrupt. It is filthy. Bourbon Street is wild; every Western town had its share of brothels and bars. And it is hard to do anything, just as I imagine it was in the Wild West—or New Orleans 150 years ago. New Orleans is always like this, but pile on top of it the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and well, you can see what happens.
I felt like kind of a pioneer living in the city. When I first moved there, mail wasn’t yet being delivered. It was 2005 in the United States of America and there wasn’t mail being delivered. I understand; hurricane, flooding, etc., but that just takes us back to the “How could this happen in America?” theme that we have all heard a thousand times. It was just weird, eerie even. Imagine living in your neighborhood of normal, family homes, and then take away all of the people. Oh and throw in a flood that damages and covers in mold everything below eight feet above the ground. Now move back in without all of your neighbors. Electric service was scant when we moved in, and yes my house had been remodeled, but it was still creepy to be the only house on the street; even the church in the backyard was abandoned.
There is no way this could happen in San Diego. There are many reasons for this, the majority of the areas evacuated were younger than New Orleans and had better infrastructures being the main reason. But I think the key difference between New Orleans and San Diego (and I feel silly even comparing the two because the things that happened were so different) is the people. I think that the majority of people in New Orleans are out of touch with reality and live in some alternate universe, which only operates during banker’s hours mind you, where things like goals, ambition, self-responsibility and even small things like being on time for appointments do not matter a whit.
Think about the city’s moniker, the Big Easy. Where did this come from? The overarching attitude of the city. Everything slows down a bit in the city, and not in a good way. It is impossible to get anything done between all of the stores closing before you can even get off of work (or maybe they just didn’t open today because there was a Saints game?), the tourists and the heavy, horrible air. And try and do anything on a Sunday? That is just crazy thinking!
People lounge in New Orleans. Drive through any neighborhood—rich, poor, black, white—it doesn’t matter, and you will see people milling about porches and corner stores, at any time of the day. Don’t these people have jobs? And why aren’t the kids at school? I have a friend who teaches in one of the city’s urban schools. She told me that it is the culture for students not to show up the entire first week of school. The culture? This is absurd! No one would even think of doing something like this where I grew up, or in most other places in the United States.
The biggest symbol of people not, no refusing to, take care of themselves in New Orleans, is the unbelievably large chunk of society depending on the government to take care of their every whim; I am frankly surprised that some of them can even use the bathroom without being told to do so. (I have to write a disclaimer here: let me state that I am not racist, classist or anything of the sort. I think that all people are equal, some simply chose to make the best of the attributes they have while others do not, and this has nothing to do with race, heritage, sex, anything; it is a personal choice. ) Many of the people living in New Orleans public housing have lived there for generations. Public housing was built as a temporary solution to the lack of housing for the poor, now it has turned into a lifestyle.
Someone told me that kids in the projects had two paths. If they were a boy, they aspired to be a drug dealer. If they were a girl, they had babies. How unbelievably sad is that? It is sad, and having lived in the city, it is definitely believable. People are born in the projects, watch their parents, and sometimes grandparents, live off of the system. They don’t need to work, so why should I do well in school so that I can get a good job? The government will take care of me! For some reason there is this attitude (among those stuck in the system) that the government will take care of me (food, shelter, money to buy rims, but not birth control) because I am owed it; my great, great, great grandfather was a slave after all. This attitude angers me to no end, but explains a good deal about why and how so many people were stuck in the city following the disaster.
As I noted earlier, the government in the city is corrupt; members are looking out for their own welfare, not their constituents (William Jefferson? $90,000 cold cash). The project living people waited for the government to step in and rescue them when the hurricane’s howl was starting to wane and the flood-waters were beginning to rise. But they weren’t there; they were looking out for their own well being. I have heard about the poor people in the city being stranded. Are you kidding? I honestly don’t believe that if someone had really wanted to get out of the city they couldn’t have. Everyone was leaving; I am sure that a church group, busload of carpoolers, for God’s sake they could have hitchhiked, and found a way out. But they didn’t. They waited for the government to step in and take care of them like it had for their entire lives. Come on, show some personal responsibility people!
There aren’t nearly as many folks living off of the government in San Diego. Granted the fire burned in much more affluent areas (strange since New Orleans was once the wealthiest city in the world; what happened? Laziness?) but why were these areas more affluent anyway? Because people took responsibility for themselves, and didn’t look to the government to care for their every need. And when the fires came, people listened, packed their things and got out, when they were told to; they didn’t wait for anyone to come and rescue them. My 82 year old grandmother has lived in Poway for over 50 years and got out of the way. My brother-in-law in Fallbrook got out of the way. My various aunts, uncles and cousins scattered about San Diego county got out of the way. Why? Because that is what they were supposed to do, they were concerned about their personal safety so they got out of the way; they didn’t wait for the government or someone, anyone else to come and get them.
The information card in the seat pocket of the Boeing 747 is emphatic about placing the oxygen mask on yourself before placing it on your child, or anyone else needing assistance; it doesn’t show everyone waiting for the flight crew to come and put the passengers’ masks on for them. That would just be silly. And so is depending on a (corrupt) government to take care of you during a disaster.
Louisiana, New Orleans in particular, is the modern equivalent to the Wild West; kind of a backwards sort of analogy, but I really don’t know of any other way to describe it. Roads are bad. The infrastructure is very poor; I read a statistic a few months back saying that an astounding sixty (I think that was what it was) percent of the water in New Orleans water system leaks before it reaches its destination; crazy. Crime is rampant. The government is corrupt. It is filthy. Bourbon Street is wild; every Western town had its share of brothels and bars. And it is hard to do anything, just as I imagine it was in the Wild West—or New Orleans 150 years ago. New Orleans is always like this, but pile on top of it the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and well, you can see what happens.
I felt like kind of a pioneer living in the city. When I first moved there, mail wasn’t yet being delivered. It was 2005 in the United States of America and there wasn’t mail being delivered. I understand; hurricane, flooding, etc., but that just takes us back to the “How could this happen in America?” theme that we have all heard a thousand times. It was just weird, eerie even. Imagine living in your neighborhood of normal, family homes, and then take away all of the people. Oh and throw in a flood that damages and covers in mold everything below eight feet above the ground. Now move back in without all of your neighbors. Electric service was scant when we moved in, and yes my house had been remodeled, but it was still creepy to be the only house on the street; even the church in the backyard was abandoned.
There is no way this could happen in San Diego. There are many reasons for this, the majority of the areas evacuated were younger than New Orleans and had better infrastructures being the main reason. But I think the key difference between New Orleans and San Diego (and I feel silly even comparing the two because the things that happened were so different) is the people. I think that the majority of people in New Orleans are out of touch with reality and live in some alternate universe, which only operates during banker’s hours mind you, where things like goals, ambition, self-responsibility and even small things like being on time for appointments do not matter a whit.
Think about the city’s moniker, the Big Easy. Where did this come from? The overarching attitude of the city. Everything slows down a bit in the city, and not in a good way. It is impossible to get anything done between all of the stores closing before you can even get off of work (or maybe they just didn’t open today because there was a Saints game?), the tourists and the heavy, horrible air. And try and do anything on a Sunday? That is just crazy thinking!
People lounge in New Orleans. Drive through any neighborhood—rich, poor, black, white—it doesn’t matter, and you will see people milling about porches and corner stores, at any time of the day. Don’t these people have jobs? And why aren’t the kids at school? I have a friend who teaches in one of the city’s urban schools. She told me that it is the culture for students not to show up the entire first week of school. The culture? This is absurd! No one would even think of doing something like this where I grew up, or in most other places in the United States.
The biggest symbol of people not, no refusing to, take care of themselves in New Orleans, is the unbelievably large chunk of society depending on the government to take care of their every whim; I am frankly surprised that some of them can even use the bathroom without being told to do so. (I have to write a disclaimer here: let me state that I am not racist, classist or anything of the sort. I think that all people are equal, some simply chose to make the best of the attributes they have while others do not, and this has nothing to do with race, heritage, sex, anything; it is a personal choice. ) Many of the people living in New Orleans public housing have lived there for generations. Public housing was built as a temporary solution to the lack of housing for the poor, now it has turned into a lifestyle.
Someone told me that kids in the projects had two paths. If they were a boy, they aspired to be a drug dealer. If they were a girl, they had babies. How unbelievably sad is that? It is sad, and having lived in the city, it is definitely believable. People are born in the projects, watch their parents, and sometimes grandparents, live off of the system. They don’t need to work, so why should I do well in school so that I can get a good job? The government will take care of me! For some reason there is this attitude (among those stuck in the system) that the government will take care of me (food, shelter, money to buy rims, but not birth control) because I am owed it; my great, great, great grandfather was a slave after all. This attitude angers me to no end, but explains a good deal about why and how so many people were stuck in the city following the disaster.
As I noted earlier, the government in the city is corrupt; members are looking out for their own welfare, not their constituents (William Jefferson? $90,000 cold cash). The project living people waited for the government to step in and rescue them when the hurricane’s howl was starting to wane and the flood-waters were beginning to rise. But they weren’t there; they were looking out for their own well being. I have heard about the poor people in the city being stranded. Are you kidding? I honestly don’t believe that if someone had really wanted to get out of the city they couldn’t have. Everyone was leaving; I am sure that a church group, busload of carpoolers, for God’s sake they could have hitchhiked, and found a way out. But they didn’t. They waited for the government to step in and take care of them like it had for their entire lives. Come on, show some personal responsibility people!
There aren’t nearly as many folks living off of the government in San Diego. Granted the fire burned in much more affluent areas (strange since New Orleans was once the wealthiest city in the world; what happened? Laziness?) but why were these areas more affluent anyway? Because people took responsibility for themselves, and didn’t look to the government to care for their every need. And when the fires came, people listened, packed their things and got out, when they were told to; they didn’t wait for anyone to come and rescue them. My 82 year old grandmother has lived in Poway for over 50 years and got out of the way. My brother-in-law in Fallbrook got out of the way. My various aunts, uncles and cousins scattered about San Diego county got out of the way. Why? Because that is what they were supposed to do, they were concerned about their personal safety so they got out of the way; they didn’t wait for the government or someone, anyone else to come and get them.
The information card in the seat pocket of the Boeing 747 is emphatic about placing the oxygen mask on yourself before placing it on your child, or anyone else needing assistance; it doesn’t show everyone waiting for the flight crew to come and put the passengers’ masks on for them. That would just be silly. And so is depending on a (corrupt) government to take care of you during a disaster.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Broken
A week before I left New Orleans, the day before my last at work, I called you at home with something exciting to tell you.
I had gotten tickets to an exciting event I told you.
When, you asked.
Tonight.
I can’t. I already have plans.
What kind of plans?
Dinner?
With who?
Someone.
Like a date?
Yeah.
And then my heart fell out. I don’t know where it went, but I hope I find it again.
This whole thing was very strange. We lived together, shared a bed. You kissed me goodbye before I left for work that morning.
Of course I had to come home immediately. I didn’t know what else to do. My ears were ringing, my face bright red. I had to leave to keep the tears from exploding out of me at work; certainly not the way I wanted them to remember me.
When I got home, I was very upset, but it took awhile for the tears to come. The entire time you maintained that you hadn’t done anything wrong. That in fact, you had been out of our relationship for over a month now. This was news to me. I knew I was moving away, but for you to start seeing a girl (the one who had been sending you messages at all hours of the day and night) while my side of the bed hadn’t yet cooled? This wasn't us. This wasn’t you. What was going on with you?
I cried, and cried. You were sorry that your actions had hurt me, but assured me that you had done nothing wrong. You weren’t planning on seeing her for long, she was just someone different that you wanted to hang out with, someone who was not me.
You made me take a nap with you, telling me I would feel better with rest. I would calm down. I couldn’t sleep, but you did. I washed my face and went back to work, sickened.
I went back to work, and told a few people what had happened. I explained what you had done, and no one could believe it. They all thought that you loved me very much; I had too.
You called me several times. I didn’t answer. You sent me a message telling me that you wanted to make plans with me.
I got home and didn’t know what to do. You weren’t there. When you walked in the door you asked if I had gotten the messages. Yes I said. You said that you wanted to make plans with me so that I could see that she meant noting, that I mattered more than her.
So we went to dinner. What else could I do? I loved you. I wanted this all to be some horrible mistake. Dinner was strained. You were somewhere else, thinking about her I imagine. You tried to explain her to me; I didn’t want to hear it. When you told me her name, you instantly ruined that name for me forever. Too bad that the food was some of the best I had had in New Orleans; it was tainted.
You eventually told me that you weren’t going to see her, and you weren’t planning on seeing her. I don’t know if I believe you. I don’t know if I ever can.
After I returned to Idaho, I wrote you a hasty message about being on a date with someone else when I didn’t hear back from you right away. You told me you were asleep. You said that if I didn’t trust your intentions with me that I was more than welcome to have my friends spy on you. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this.
How could you have done this? How could you make my heart disappear?
I am so excited when I talk to you now, but it isn’t the same. It is guarded, safe, I am not giving you everything. Always in the back of my head is the way I felt on that Thursday; betrayed, beyond hurt, I don’t even know how to describe it except, that my heart died.
How do I bring it back to life again? I want to love you the way that I once did; freely, not afraid. I don’t know how to fix it. You call me every night before you go to sleep. You send me emails and messages almost everyday. You love me. You miss me. But you broke me. I don’t know how to fix it.
I need to. I can’t fully enjoy your love again until I do. And more importantly, I can't really love without it.
I had gotten tickets to an exciting event I told you.
When, you asked.
Tonight.
I can’t. I already have plans.
What kind of plans?
Dinner?
With who?
Someone.
Like a date?
Yeah.
And then my heart fell out. I don’t know where it went, but I hope I find it again.
This whole thing was very strange. We lived together, shared a bed. You kissed me goodbye before I left for work that morning.
Of course I had to come home immediately. I didn’t know what else to do. My ears were ringing, my face bright red. I had to leave to keep the tears from exploding out of me at work; certainly not the way I wanted them to remember me.
When I got home, I was very upset, but it took awhile for the tears to come. The entire time you maintained that you hadn’t done anything wrong. That in fact, you had been out of our relationship for over a month now. This was news to me. I knew I was moving away, but for you to start seeing a girl (the one who had been sending you messages at all hours of the day and night) while my side of the bed hadn’t yet cooled? This wasn't us. This wasn’t you. What was going on with you?
I cried, and cried. You were sorry that your actions had hurt me, but assured me that you had done nothing wrong. You weren’t planning on seeing her for long, she was just someone different that you wanted to hang out with, someone who was not me.
You made me take a nap with you, telling me I would feel better with rest. I would calm down. I couldn’t sleep, but you did. I washed my face and went back to work, sickened.
I went back to work, and told a few people what had happened. I explained what you had done, and no one could believe it. They all thought that you loved me very much; I had too.
You called me several times. I didn’t answer. You sent me a message telling me that you wanted to make plans with me.
I got home and didn’t know what to do. You weren’t there. When you walked in the door you asked if I had gotten the messages. Yes I said. You said that you wanted to make plans with me so that I could see that she meant noting, that I mattered more than her.
So we went to dinner. What else could I do? I loved you. I wanted this all to be some horrible mistake. Dinner was strained. You were somewhere else, thinking about her I imagine. You tried to explain her to me; I didn’t want to hear it. When you told me her name, you instantly ruined that name for me forever. Too bad that the food was some of the best I had had in New Orleans; it was tainted.
You eventually told me that you weren’t going to see her, and you weren’t planning on seeing her. I don’t know if I believe you. I don’t know if I ever can.
After I returned to Idaho, I wrote you a hasty message about being on a date with someone else when I didn’t hear back from you right away. You told me you were asleep. You said that if I didn’t trust your intentions with me that I was more than welcome to have my friends spy on you. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this.
How could you have done this? How could you make my heart disappear?
I am so excited when I talk to you now, but it isn’t the same. It is guarded, safe, I am not giving you everything. Always in the back of my head is the way I felt on that Thursday; betrayed, beyond hurt, I don’t even know how to describe it except, that my heart died.
How do I bring it back to life again? I want to love you the way that I once did; freely, not afraid. I don’t know how to fix it. You call me every night before you go to sleep. You send me emails and messages almost everyday. You love me. You miss me. But you broke me. I don’t know how to fix it.
I need to. I can’t fully enjoy your love again until I do. And more importantly, I can't really love without it.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Bourbon Street 1
My first time visiting Bourbon Street was very different from most visitors. In early October, someone in the technology group decided that we all needed to make the drive from Baton Rouge to New Orleans to go to Bourbon Street. We had heard that there were a few bars and clubs open again, but that was about all we had heard. So, someone created a sign up sheet and passed it around our group. Fifteen, maybe twenty of us signed up. We had a Ford cargo van and a Chevy Impala, but somehow we managed to all fit; granted one of the smaller guys and a tiny girl were crammed in the cargo area and my butt was half on the seat and half on one of the guy's laps, but we all managed to fit.
The drive down was fairly uneventful. I remember passionately discussing how I really needed to find the sound that the communicators on the old school Star Trek (aka the good Star Trek) made somewhere on the Web so that I could download it to my new flip phone. This led to a discussion about Star Trek’s influences on technical design throughout the past few decades. (Remember, I was part of the Response Technology group; many of our group members were in fact volunteers because they had made their fortunes Silicon Valley Pirates style and were now retired, free to devote their time to other interests.)
As we got closer to New Orleans, we were able to see a bit of the unbelievable damage before it got dark. Near the La Place exit on I-10, we started to see crazy wind damage to almost all of the trees. It wasn’t that they were all broken, although a good many of them really were, but they were leaning. Everything growing thing, not broken, had a slant to it. The ground is so wet in Louisiana that it was easy for the powerful winds to simply move the centuries old cypress and oak trees, roots and all. Rather than uprooting them, the wind simply nudged them a bit. Considering Katrina knocking over countless buildings, his is a testament to the strength of the plants.
The sun was almost set as we flew out of the vegetation at the Bonnet Carre’ Spillway beginning to cross Lake Ponchartrain. I had absolutely no idea that the lake was this large (looking back, I suppose that looking at a map may have cleared this up for me). The railroad tracks parallel I-10 at this point, and they were a mess. Some places were flooded, and some were mangled. It was a crazy sight. But things kept getting more interesting.
There was a blue house (I think it is still called a house, despite its obvious use as a fishing camp) once on stilts in the soft earth beside the freeway. There was a dock, and an outbuilding. The house was not destroyed, but was knocked on its side, everything shoved off square. It looked like a rhombus (if I remember my junior high geometry correctly). A very strange site to see. And, the last time I crossed Lake Ponchartrain, almost two years later, the rhombus house was still there exactly as it was the first time I saw it.
By the time we made it across the lake, it was dark, very dark. It was so strange. There were only a handful of other cars on the road, and there were plenty of buildings around, but there were no lights, and no people around. . This was one of the strangest experiences I have ever heard. It felt so strange to see all of this abandonment, and this was only a taste; a few days later I would experience the desertion even more so. I realized technically where all the people were, but where is everyone still played through my mind over and over again. The feelings of confusion at something this horrible being allowed to happen to American citizens flew through my mind again and again, but we were dealing with these issues all day everyday, and this was supposed to be a night out, so we all quickly turned back to the plan for the evening; going to Bourbon Street and imbibing as much alcohol as humanly possible before our ungodly wake up call at 5 the next morning.
As the interstate went deeper and deeper into the city, there were fewer vehicles, and most off ramps were blocked with incredibly young looking National Guard soldiers with big guns and even bigger vehicles. But this wasn’t a problem for us, we weren’t any evacuated residents trying to go back to our homes, we were volunteers, our Red Cross emblem on the windshield explained all of this for us. Because we were Red Cross, we could go anywhere, Bourbon Street included.
We took the Esplanade exit and headed directly to the French Quarter. We parked on the sidewalk on one of the still dark streets near Bourbon, because that’s what everyone was doing; it was like the volunteers, FEMA personnel and military officers had completely lost contact with simple everyday things like how to park like a normal person.
We all piled out of the van and made arrangements to meet up later in the evening so that no one was left behind.
The drive down was fairly uneventful. I remember passionately discussing how I really needed to find the sound that the communicators on the old school Star Trek (aka the good Star Trek) made somewhere on the Web so that I could download it to my new flip phone. This led to a discussion about Star Trek’s influences on technical design throughout the past few decades. (Remember, I was part of the Response Technology group; many of our group members were in fact volunteers because they had made their fortunes Silicon Valley Pirates style and were now retired, free to devote their time to other interests.)
As we got closer to New Orleans, we were able to see a bit of the unbelievable damage before it got dark. Near the La Place exit on I-10, we started to see crazy wind damage to almost all of the trees. It wasn’t that they were all broken, although a good many of them really were, but they were leaning. Everything growing thing, not broken, had a slant to it. The ground is so wet in Louisiana that it was easy for the powerful winds to simply move the centuries old cypress and oak trees, roots and all. Rather than uprooting them, the wind simply nudged them a bit. Considering Katrina knocking over countless buildings, his is a testament to the strength of the plants.
The sun was almost set as we flew out of the vegetation at the Bonnet Carre’ Spillway beginning to cross Lake Ponchartrain. I had absolutely no idea that the lake was this large (looking back, I suppose that looking at a map may have cleared this up for me). The railroad tracks parallel I-10 at this point, and they were a mess. Some places were flooded, and some were mangled. It was a crazy sight. But things kept getting more interesting.
There was a blue house (I think it is still called a house, despite its obvious use as a fishing camp) once on stilts in the soft earth beside the freeway. There was a dock, and an outbuilding. The house was not destroyed, but was knocked on its side, everything shoved off square. It looked like a rhombus (if I remember my junior high geometry correctly). A very strange site to see. And, the last time I crossed Lake Ponchartrain, almost two years later, the rhombus house was still there exactly as it was the first time I saw it.
By the time we made it across the lake, it was dark, very dark. It was so strange. There were only a handful of other cars on the road, and there were plenty of buildings around, but there were no lights, and no people around. . This was one of the strangest experiences I have ever heard. It felt so strange to see all of this abandonment, and this was only a taste; a few days later I would experience the desertion even more so. I realized technically where all the people were, but where is everyone still played through my mind over and over again. The feelings of confusion at something this horrible being allowed to happen to American citizens flew through my mind again and again, but we were dealing with these issues all day everyday, and this was supposed to be a night out, so we all quickly turned back to the plan for the evening; going to Bourbon Street and imbibing as much alcohol as humanly possible before our ungodly wake up call at 5 the next morning.
As the interstate went deeper and deeper into the city, there were fewer vehicles, and most off ramps were blocked with incredibly young looking National Guard soldiers with big guns and even bigger vehicles. But this wasn’t a problem for us, we weren’t any evacuated residents trying to go back to our homes, we were volunteers, our Red Cross emblem on the windshield explained all of this for us. Because we were Red Cross, we could go anywhere, Bourbon Street included.
We took the Esplanade exit and headed directly to the French Quarter. We parked on the sidewalk on one of the still dark streets near Bourbon, because that’s what everyone was doing; it was like the volunteers, FEMA personnel and military officers had completely lost contact with simple everyday things like how to park like a normal person.
We all piled out of the van and made arrangements to meet up later in the evening so that no one was left behind.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Green
All routes lose their novelty when driven daily, some when driven even weekly. Everyone knows that we drive in familiar places much like our cars would if they had an autopilot. We stop “seeing” anything around us. Our mind simply remembers our surroundings from all of the previous times it has “seen” the red house on the corner, and the sugar cane field over there. It is easy to miss something with our mind working this way. The I-10 corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans lost its freshness for me quite a while ago. Now that I am back in Idaho, it is much easier for me to connect with my first thoughts about the road; it must be that I don’t see it everyday any longer. I am not lulled into a trance as my jeep drives over the rhythmically placed slabs of concrete road sections.
On a normal day (think of a time before the storms, think of heavy commuter traffic flying from to and from the suburbs) traffic screams down the expressway, with heavy forest, swampland; I’m really not sure what all grows there; it is simply the greenest, densest spread of deep dark green growing things I have ever seen, closing in on the road from either side. The growth is so thick that it is impossible to separate the individual growing things from one another. The freeway is literally carved from the growth, intruding on the growth. The power of the plants is almost scary; it is easy to imagine the plants taking over the minute people stop using this path. The only breaks in the overpowering green, aside from the interstate, are the narrow, groomed areas surrounding gas pipelines and powelines gliding off into the green.
Years ago, before Louisiana, I would wonder at the stories on the evening news featuring a pair of brothers or a little girl going missing, only to be discovered three days later in the woods, a quarter mile from their home. Why didn’t they find them as soon as they went missing? I would wonder. Here, in the West (at least the high desert portion) you can literally see miles in any direction. It is impossible to get lost in the woods that close to home. Green; that is how people can go missing and bodies can be buried literally in their own back yard with no one noticing the body for sometimes years.
Not only is there more vegetation in general in Louisiana, everything is a different color. The green of the plants is different; the brown of the earth is different; everything looks different. With my sheltered view of the world, I assumed that plants were plants, dirt was dirt, people were people and bugs were bugs (that is another story all of its own) anywhere you went. Louisiana taught be differently. The dirt has a red tinge in Louisiana, though not as red as the dirt in Tyler, Texas, which seems to rust before your eyes because of the earth's incredible red color. In Idaho, it is a soothing gray brown. Plants in Louisiana are green, very green. In Idaho, plants are healthy, getting enough water, but still aren’t as bright; they seem to have a brown quality to them even when completely saturated.
So where am I going with this? I don’t know. I was thinking about the road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and how often I used to travel it at break-neck speeds until I forgot what it looked like. Now the wonder that I first experience when driving the route is coming back to me a bit, and I wanted to write about it. That is all there is to it.
On a normal day (think of a time before the storms, think of heavy commuter traffic flying from to and from the suburbs) traffic screams down the expressway, with heavy forest, swampland; I’m really not sure what all grows there; it is simply the greenest, densest spread of deep dark green growing things I have ever seen, closing in on the road from either side. The growth is so thick that it is impossible to separate the individual growing things from one another. The freeway is literally carved from the growth, intruding on the growth. The power of the plants is almost scary; it is easy to imagine the plants taking over the minute people stop using this path. The only breaks in the overpowering green, aside from the interstate, are the narrow, groomed areas surrounding gas pipelines and powelines gliding off into the green.
Years ago, before Louisiana, I would wonder at the stories on the evening news featuring a pair of brothers or a little girl going missing, only to be discovered three days later in the woods, a quarter mile from their home. Why didn’t they find them as soon as they went missing? I would wonder. Here, in the West (at least the high desert portion) you can literally see miles in any direction. It is impossible to get lost in the woods that close to home. Green; that is how people can go missing and bodies can be buried literally in their own back yard with no one noticing the body for sometimes years.
Not only is there more vegetation in general in Louisiana, everything is a different color. The green of the plants is different; the brown of the earth is different; everything looks different. With my sheltered view of the world, I assumed that plants were plants, dirt was dirt, people were people and bugs were bugs (that is another story all of its own) anywhere you went. Louisiana taught be differently. The dirt has a red tinge in Louisiana, though not as red as the dirt in Tyler, Texas, which seems to rust before your eyes because of the earth's incredible red color. In Idaho, it is a soothing gray brown. Plants in Louisiana are green, very green. In Idaho, plants are healthy, getting enough water, but still aren’t as bright; they seem to have a brown quality to them even when completely saturated.
So where am I going with this? I don’t know. I was thinking about the road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and how often I used to travel it at break-neck speeds until I forgot what it looked like. Now the wonder that I first experience when driving the route is coming back to me a bit, and I wanted to write about it. That is all there is to it.
Midday Whiny, Cold-Induced, Pre-Period Post
Well, the title pretty much explains it all.
Sometimes...
my heart is growing cold to you. Not because I love you less, but perhaps because I love you more. As time goes on the slights you dealt me become magnified rather than diminished. I cannot believe some of the things you have done to me, and all without even a second thought.
my heart is on fire for you. The breadth of the entire country disappears, and it is like you are here, holding my hands, looking in my eyes, listening to me, really listening, being with me. The past hurts don't matter, only the prospect of seeing you, touching you, feeling you again. The future is what matters. I want you to see me again. I want you to be proud of me again. I want you, again, here (or there, it really doesn't matter) with me.
I hope that one day it will be constant, hot or cold, not flickering. Flickering, glimpses, moments are comfortable for you, but I hate it. I want you to love me all of the time, constantly. I don't want to matter the world to you one moment and then matter less than someone you met drunk in a bar and don't even really remember, the next moment. I don't ever want any random girl with fat ankles to be the right person for you to share a Thursday evening with rather than me. I am so hurt by that. I wish you knew how much.
Sometimes...
my heart is growing cold to you. Not because I love you less, but perhaps because I love you more. As time goes on the slights you dealt me become magnified rather than diminished. I cannot believe some of the things you have done to me, and all without even a second thought.
my heart is on fire for you. The breadth of the entire country disappears, and it is like you are here, holding my hands, looking in my eyes, listening to me, really listening, being with me. The past hurts don't matter, only the prospect of seeing you, touching you, feeling you again. The future is what matters. I want you to see me again. I want you to be proud of me again. I want you, again, here (or there, it really doesn't matter) with me.
I hope that one day it will be constant, hot or cold, not flickering. Flickering, glimpses, moments are comfortable for you, but I hate it. I want you to love me all of the time, constantly. I don't want to matter the world to you one moment and then matter less than someone you met drunk in a bar and don't even really remember, the next moment. I don't ever want any random girl with fat ankles to be the right person for you to share a Thursday evening with rather than me. I am so hurt by that. I wish you knew how much.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Five Dollar Chair!!!
I have come down with a nasty cold, so the creative juices are a bit congested today. So, I thought I would post some before and after pictures of the awesome chair that I redid last weekend. This is a picture of the chair as it was when purchased from Savers (I Love Savers! Another thing I missed in Louisiana; no thrift stores, understandable, but still...). If you look closely, you can see the $9.99 price tag. But I got it on a half off day. It is a sort of Danish Modern knock-off, dining room-doctor's office waiting room, kind of chair, and it is sweet!
(Apparently there are issues with Blogger's photo upload capabilities right now, so I will post the photos later; I know, I know; everyone wants to see the chair photos. Who doesn't like pictures of furniture?) Issue fixed! Take a gander now! I like the blog as is, so I am not going to update the will bes etc..
Anyway, this is what I did to the chair in the above picture (well, it will be in the above picture):
1. Took off the nasty orange cushions; I thought the color was kind of cool, but the fabric was literally disintegrating under my fingers, and well, you can only imagine what diress my voluptuous behind would cause.
2. Took the horrible fabric off of the cushions using scissors, pliers, and a screwdriver. I found the screwdriver to be the best tool; it pried the staples out with the least effort.
3. Rather than cutting new foam (I was lazy and cheap), I hung the old pieces of foam (nasty yellow, with a few "water" spots) on the clothes line, and sprayed a good half bottle of Fabreze on them. Then, I let the country wind have its way with them.
4. Cleaned the wood with Murphy's Oil Soap. Hmmm. Not so pretty when the grime is scrubbed away.
5. Sanded off the original finish with a palm sander I found in the garage. I used approximately ten sheets of sandpaper, which is a good indicator (to me anyway) that I was using the wrong grit. Oh well.
6. Scrubbed the bare wood with Murphy's Oil Soap. Why? It just seemed like the right thing to do.
7. Applied some stain that I found in the garage. My parents just finished a major kitchen overhaul. My mom refinished all of the cabinets by herself. I am assuming this is the stain she used, because the chair is camouflaged (when naked, minus
cushions anyway) in the kitchen. Where's the chair?
8. Reupholstered the cushions in an awesome retro-ish fabric. I used an ingenious (I thought so anyway) technique of hot glue gunning the final piece of fabric to the back of the top cushion so that staples were not seen on the finished chair.
9. Screwed the seat back in place.
10. Swore at the chair a few dozen times as I tried, with the dogs and cats as an audience, to screw the back in place.
11. Waited for my sister to get home to hold the chairback so that I could screw it in place, sending her more than one anticipatory (that's a nice word for it) text messages.
12. Accosted my sister as she walked in the front door, grocery bags in hand, explaining the chair situation.
13. Screwed the chairback in place.
14. Viola! (Did I spell that right?) Fabulous chair, as you can of course (or at least will be able to soon) see in the picture below (actually to the left; hadn't decided on a layout when I originally wrote this).I feel awful. Off to a bath and book, and then out to my house for bed. Can you say excitement?
Friday, October 19, 2007
Abuela?
Today was the roughest day I have had in quite awhile. But, thinking about it, most of the stuff was actually pretty funny. Here is what happened:
At six this morning, I headed out to my jeep with my hands full of work-related necessities. I had with me, my laptop, One Hundred Years of Solitude, purse, keys, bottle of water, cup of hot tea and a piece of toast with peanut butter and honey on top of a paper towel. Anyway, to my surprise I made it into the vehicle without incident. When I was no more than a half mile down the road, I managed to drop my piece of toast upside down on the center console. No worries; I saved it. But, in the process, I drug my paper towel through my cup of tea, and knocked it over. By this time the honey was dripping all over my hands and steering wheel, but I wasn't about to give up; I was hungry! So I shoved the rest of the toast in my mouth, and cleaned off my face with a wet wipe from the glove box. Disaster averted. I wiped down the steering wheel, console and I was good to go. Down the road aways, I felt something sticky; turns out I had honey on both of my shirts, and my jeans. Super! I wiped myself off the best I could while going 35 on the freeway, and made it to work without further incident.
Once I was at work, I worked away pretty intensely until noon or so; I am a technical writer/editor at a research firm, and all of the documents must pass by my eye before leaving our hands. That said, I had finished drafts for five different documents, and headed out onto the network to work on a Draft 4 of my sixth document for the day when I opened the folder I needed and only found versions 1 and 2. Hmmm. that was weird. And my logic models folder was gone tool. That was weird. I did a search of the entire network and didn't find the later drafts or my logic models. Okay, so maybe I was crazy. Maybe Draft 2 was the latest draft. I opened it up, and it was blank; someone went in and deleted all of the text from the document. Okay; let me go to version 1. Version one was rough, and someone had altered the logic model.
Luckily I had hard copies of all 4 of my drafts, and had saved the latest to my Mac and my My Documents folder. But, I wasn't able to find the logic model folder; all logic models are created in Visio and are just a pain in the ass. So I had to recreate the incredibly complex logic model I had already done once, and incorporate the new information in the Draft 1, and cover my ass. I went to the CEO of the company and told him what had happened. He told me to make a local copy of everything I do in a day and save it all out to the network at the end of the day; this way we can monitor what is going on via backup tapes, etc. Screw that! I know exactly who deleted my files; the problem is, she won't ever be fired; she is one of the head researchers, who couldn't cut keeping up with the document workload; that is why they hired me.
After I didn't have a total meltdown at work, I left at the completely reasonable hour of 4:30 (I arrived at 7:30, worked through lunch). It was drizzly, freezing, just ugly outside. And of course when it rains people loose all ability to drive with any more skill than a four year old. Traffic was horrible! I didn't make it to the county line until after five (should have taken 10 minutes).
I finally exited the freeway at 5:30, and still had to go to the bank. The bank is open until 6 so I still had plenty of time. There are many Mexican farmworkers living in the area that I do. Like most of the country, the Treasure Valley is experiencing an increase in our Mexican population. The bank that I use caters to the ever increasing clientele,and many of the migrant workers are paid on Fridays and go to my bank, specifically, to cash their checks. I walked up to the door and there was a large group of Spanish speaking men standing around. One of them opened the door for me and said "Habra la puerta (not senorita, not senora, not any other word remotely resembling woman in Spanish, but) ABUELA." (Or it was something like that; I am certain of the abuela part, the rest, well my Spanish is not so good.)The crowd of Spanish speakers burst out at the man's joke. It was funny to call the white girl a grandmother. "Fuck you!" I wanted to yell in the man's face, and add a kick in the crotch for good measure. But I didn't; I said thank you and walked on by. I have no idea why it made me so mad; must have been that I was cranky from earlier events.
I lined up in the appropriate path, directed of course by the ropes, and waited a good half hour. While I waited one of the male tellers was looking at me admiringly, which was nice; maybe things weren't that bad. Of course he was the teller that opened up, and I headed up to his station to withdraw forty dollars; I was waiting for a new debit card to come in the mail, and I was out of checks. For some reason, actually I know exactly why, there was a block on my account, making it impossible for me to pull out any money, despite a positive, high balance. The teller didn't know why the code was on my account or how to remove it. After going through three other tellers, supervisors, maybe even the janitor, someone cleared my account. They didn't say anything to me except that they were sorry, etc. They hadn't experienced anything like this before. They did their best.
I however know exactly how the code ended up on my account. On Tuesday, I went to a bank branch near my office. I hadn't been here in years, certainly not since I had returned from Louisiana. Shit. There was Amy. (Amy is an ex boyfriend's sister; she never liked me, and has always been at a minimum, unpleasant to me. Things ended very badly between the ex-boyfriend and I.)I almost turned around and walked out the door, but didn't; I really needed to deposit some money. Anyway, I went to an open teller, and Amy followed immediately behind the teller, and hovered there looking over my documents the entire transaction. She didn't say anything to me, and I refused to make eye contact with her. I completed my transaction and left. BUT I knew she was up to no good; I am sure she is the one who put some mysterious code on my account, making it incredibly difficult to access my own funds.
Anyway, back to today. Once I was done at the bank, I headed out to my car. I searched and searched for my keys and couldn't find them. So, I headed past the laughing Spanish speakers back into the bank and the cute teller who flirted with me was about to bring them to me (nice that he was flirty, crappy that I left my keys behind).
I started to head home, but was met with a train. I was trapped in town for a good half hour, while I waited for the train to move on; there are only a few ways out of the town where you don't have to cross the railroad tracks, so I just waited.
As soon as I walked in the door, carrying all of the same things as I was this morning, save the honey peanut butter toast, Susan immediately handed me pile of towels, telling me to take them upstairs and put them away, and that we needed to leave right now. Not that there was anything urgent for us to do. She had simply come up with a whole list of errands for us to run once I got home. Here is what we did: took dresser, tv, (I managed to smash my thumb between the tv and truck so badly that I am sure it will be black tomorrow),and other horribly heavy goods to the storage place (oh, and it is still raining), dropped off the recycling, stopped for a horrible Mexican dinner (my stomach still hurts), and went on an epic Target shopping trip.
Now I finally am in bed, well my parents' bed (they are in North Carolina for my cousin's wedding), because my bed is wet from some leak in the motorhome's super exterior; I will find the leak tomorrow, because my parents fly in tomorrow night; no more big house sleeping for me! Crazy day, but at least there was some humor in it; I thought so anyway!
At six this morning, I headed out to my jeep with my hands full of work-related necessities. I had with me, my laptop, One Hundred Years of Solitude, purse, keys, bottle of water, cup of hot tea and a piece of toast with peanut butter and honey on top of a paper towel. Anyway, to my surprise I made it into the vehicle without incident. When I was no more than a half mile down the road, I managed to drop my piece of toast upside down on the center console. No worries; I saved it. But, in the process, I drug my paper towel through my cup of tea, and knocked it over. By this time the honey was dripping all over my hands and steering wheel, but I wasn't about to give up; I was hungry! So I shoved the rest of the toast in my mouth, and cleaned off my face with a wet wipe from the glove box. Disaster averted. I wiped down the steering wheel, console and I was good to go. Down the road aways, I felt something sticky; turns out I had honey on both of my shirts, and my jeans. Super! I wiped myself off the best I could while going 35 on the freeway, and made it to work without further incident.
Once I was at work, I worked away pretty intensely until noon or so; I am a technical writer/editor at a research firm, and all of the documents must pass by my eye before leaving our hands. That said, I had finished drafts for five different documents, and headed out onto the network to work on a Draft 4 of my sixth document for the day when I opened the folder I needed and only found versions 1 and 2. Hmmm. that was weird. And my logic models folder was gone tool. That was weird. I did a search of the entire network and didn't find the later drafts or my logic models. Okay, so maybe I was crazy. Maybe Draft 2 was the latest draft. I opened it up, and it was blank; someone went in and deleted all of the text from the document. Okay; let me go to version 1. Version one was rough, and someone had altered the logic model.
Luckily I had hard copies of all 4 of my drafts, and had saved the latest to my Mac and my My Documents folder. But, I wasn't able to find the logic model folder; all logic models are created in Visio and are just a pain in the ass. So I had to recreate the incredibly complex logic model I had already done once, and incorporate the new information in the Draft 1, and cover my ass. I went to the CEO of the company and told him what had happened. He told me to make a local copy of everything I do in a day and save it all out to the network at the end of the day; this way we can monitor what is going on via backup tapes, etc. Screw that! I know exactly who deleted my files; the problem is, she won't ever be fired; she is one of the head researchers, who couldn't cut keeping up with the document workload; that is why they hired me.
After I didn't have a total meltdown at work, I left at the completely reasonable hour of 4:30 (I arrived at 7:30, worked through lunch). It was drizzly, freezing, just ugly outside. And of course when it rains people loose all ability to drive with any more skill than a four year old. Traffic was horrible! I didn't make it to the county line until after five (should have taken 10 minutes).
I finally exited the freeway at 5:30, and still had to go to the bank. The bank is open until 6 so I still had plenty of time. There are many Mexican farmworkers living in the area that I do. Like most of the country, the Treasure Valley is experiencing an increase in our Mexican population. The bank that I use caters to the ever increasing clientele,and many of the migrant workers are paid on Fridays and go to my bank, specifically, to cash their checks. I walked up to the door and there was a large group of Spanish speaking men standing around. One of them opened the door for me and said "Habra la puerta (not senorita, not senora, not any other word remotely resembling woman in Spanish, but) ABUELA." (Or it was something like that; I am certain of the abuela part, the rest, well my Spanish is not so good.)The crowd of Spanish speakers burst out at the man's joke. It was funny to call the white girl a grandmother. "Fuck you!" I wanted to yell in the man's face, and add a kick in the crotch for good measure. But I didn't; I said thank you and walked on by. I have no idea why it made me so mad; must have been that I was cranky from earlier events.
I lined up in the appropriate path, directed of course by the ropes, and waited a good half hour. While I waited one of the male tellers was looking at me admiringly, which was nice; maybe things weren't that bad. Of course he was the teller that opened up, and I headed up to his station to withdraw forty dollars; I was waiting for a new debit card to come in the mail, and I was out of checks. For some reason, actually I know exactly why, there was a block on my account, making it impossible for me to pull out any money, despite a positive, high balance. The teller didn't know why the code was on my account or how to remove it. After going through three other tellers, supervisors, maybe even the janitor, someone cleared my account. They didn't say anything to me except that they were sorry, etc. They hadn't experienced anything like this before. They did their best.
I however know exactly how the code ended up on my account. On Tuesday, I went to a bank branch near my office. I hadn't been here in years, certainly not since I had returned from Louisiana. Shit. There was Amy. (Amy is an ex boyfriend's sister; she never liked me, and has always been at a minimum, unpleasant to me. Things ended very badly between the ex-boyfriend and I.)I almost turned around and walked out the door, but didn't; I really needed to deposit some money. Anyway, I went to an open teller, and Amy followed immediately behind the teller, and hovered there looking over my documents the entire transaction. She didn't say anything to me, and I refused to make eye contact with her. I completed my transaction and left. BUT I knew she was up to no good; I am sure she is the one who put some mysterious code on my account, making it incredibly difficult to access my own funds.
Anyway, back to today. Once I was done at the bank, I headed out to my car. I searched and searched for my keys and couldn't find them. So, I headed past the laughing Spanish speakers back into the bank and the cute teller who flirted with me was about to bring them to me (nice that he was flirty, crappy that I left my keys behind).
I started to head home, but was met with a train. I was trapped in town for a good half hour, while I waited for the train to move on; there are only a few ways out of the town where you don't have to cross the railroad tracks, so I just waited.
As soon as I walked in the door, carrying all of the same things as I was this morning, save the honey peanut butter toast, Susan immediately handed me pile of towels, telling me to take them upstairs and put them away, and that we needed to leave right now. Not that there was anything urgent for us to do. She had simply come up with a whole list of errands for us to run once I got home. Here is what we did: took dresser, tv, (I managed to smash my thumb between the tv and truck so badly that I am sure it will be black tomorrow),and other horribly heavy goods to the storage place (oh, and it is still raining), dropped off the recycling, stopped for a horrible Mexican dinner (my stomach still hurts), and went on an epic Target shopping trip.
Now I finally am in bed, well my parents' bed (they are in North Carolina for my cousin's wedding), because my bed is wet from some leak in the motorhome's super exterior; I will find the leak tomorrow, because my parents fly in tomorrow night; no more big house sleeping for me! Crazy day, but at least there was some humor in it; I thought so anyway!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Blog vs. Conversation
Blogs are wonderful because I can share my deepest feelings with everyone and no one at the same time. A blog is unrequited by its very nature. You don't, I don't anyway, nor do I think most people, sit and wait for comments or replies to pile up at various posts. When a comment does show up, it is a pleasant surprise. Blogs are the flip side of an intimate conversation. In a blog, I can write I love you as many times as I like and happily not expect a return. If I were to say or write via post, or the twenty first century equivalent (email, text), I would of course wait in expectation for a reply, it really doesn't matter if the reply is affirmative or not; a reply is expected.
Blogs offer freedom from all of the soul bearing that goes along with waiting for a reply. Often, I have found myself holding my tongue, not conveying my true feelings because I am afraid of the reply that will inevitably come along with my utterance. With a blog, a reply is not mandated, nor is it generally expected, because of this, I feel like I have more freedom to be true; I am not worried about being rejected, or hurt, or flattered, none of it! I am able to simply write what I want without worrying about the consequences; it is exhilarating to express myself with that freedom. I am very much trying to use this approach in other areas of my life; It doesn't matter how others react to what I am saying (writing, what have you) if I truly, honestly believe what I am trying to say, then I absolutely need to say it despite the reply I may or may not receive. I am certain my skin will thicken as needed.
I love you, I love you, I love you!!! There.
Blogs offer freedom from all of the soul bearing that goes along with waiting for a reply. Often, I have found myself holding my tongue, not conveying my true feelings because I am afraid of the reply that will inevitably come along with my utterance. With a blog, a reply is not mandated, nor is it generally expected, because of this, I feel like I have more freedom to be true; I am not worried about being rejected, or hurt, or flattered, none of it! I am able to simply write what I want without worrying about the consequences; it is exhilarating to express myself with that freedom. I am very much trying to use this approach in other areas of my life; It doesn't matter how others react to what I am saying (writing, what have you) if I truly, honestly believe what I am trying to say, then I absolutely need to say it despite the reply I may or may not receive. I am certain my skin will thicken as needed.
I love you, I love you, I love you!!! There.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Interesting Side Note (or at least I think so anyway)
Yesterday I wrote about the strange feelings brought on by seeing any sort of image, sound, photograph, movie, what-have-you, of someone who is no longer alive. When I got into my berth (rack maybe? we're talking submarine/train style sleeping) last night, I flipped on my battery powered camper light and started into One Hundred Years of Solitude (for the third time!). The first paragraph I read dealt with the daguerreotype machine Melquiades brings with him to Macondo. Ursula will not have her photograph taken because "she did not want to survive as a laughingstock for her grandchildren."
The writing surrounding the daguerreotype echoes much of what I wrote, or rather I echo the book; Marquez wrote this novel nearly ten years before I was born, and he may have unleashed the idea from his brain many years before that. It was coincidence that I read this segment after I published my post. But then again, I had read the book twice before, so perhaps, no, certainly, Marquez's writing was somewhere in the back of my brain, coloring my thoughts about images, without my conscience even realizing. More to think about.
A note about me: The mainspring behind my desire to improve my Spanish skills, is so that I can read all of Marquez's works as they were originally written, in their original language. They are lovely in English, but I am sure I will find them stunning in their original tongue.
The writing surrounding the daguerreotype echoes much of what I wrote, or rather I echo the book; Marquez wrote this novel nearly ten years before I was born, and he may have unleashed the idea from his brain many years before that. It was coincidence that I read this segment after I published my post. But then again, I had read the book twice before, so perhaps, no, certainly, Marquez's writing was somewhere in the back of my brain, coloring my thoughts about images, without my conscience even realizing. More to think about.
A note about me: The mainspring behind my desire to improve my Spanish skills, is so that I can read all of Marquez's works as they were originally written, in their original language. They are lovely in English, but I am sure I will find them stunning in their original tongue.
Two Dreams
I woke up after having two very strange dreams. I rarely remember my dreams, so it is exciting for me to have not just one, but two dreams that I remember; alright, I only remember one of them well; I only remember (and foggily at that) a single scene from the first.
The scene from the first dream took place at some sporting event, or company picnic, at any rate a place where people mingle while making small talk, all the while wishing they were somewhere else, feeling a bit uncomfortable. I was not the only one that felt this way in my dream, which is rare. When situations come up like this in real life, I am more than likely the only one feeling this way.
Anyway, for some reason, we had to be divided into teams, or certain people were picked to go somewhere or something like that. In other words, people were “picked”. Ben picked a couple of people, as of course he was the captain, for his team or to accompany him on some fabulous vacation; not sure which. He didn’t pick me. I remember him picking two other people standing right beside me, but not me. For whatever reason, I wasn’t good enough, or right for the picking. I felt this. I don’t know if I was angry, or hurt, or what, but I distinctly remember feeling something very strong. I realized that I didn’t need to feel this way, because it was a dream, and I went on to something else; control is also something I generally lack in dreams.
My next dream took place in a rapidly flooding city. The city was a mix of New Orleans and New York. I was with JD, one of my earliest friends; I can’t remember if I met him in kindergarten or first grade. (As a side note, JD moved away in the fourth grade, and returned again in high school. While we were in elementary school, we were really good friends. We were both in the advanced classes. When he came back in high school, he was kind of a loser. He got a girl that I worked with at the grocery store pregnant, and they were married and living in a crappy apartment before we even graduated; honestly I don't even know if he graduated, and he was gifted!).
JD was the JD from high school in my dream. We escaped the first round of flooding by climbing to the top of some steps to a very impressive building (I am pretty sure that I got the images for this from AI). There were people running around like mad. I had my street-level view, but also a view from above, sort of like OJ’s white Bronco super slow chase. Big brother (yep, got the weird British dystopian imagery in there too) was shouting loud things about the water rising, Helicopters were flying all around. Basically, it was madness everywhere.
The second wave came and we climbed to the near-top of a building. The water kept rising. We kept climbing; all the way to the very top of the steeple on top of the building. People were beneath us trying to get as high as they could, they drowned. Only the five or so of us at the very top of the steeple made it through the flood.
After the water stopped rising, military men who all looked like the spitting image of Che Guevera, in pontoon boats (they looked like swamp air boats) came and rescued us. I pointed across the water filled street to the building that Craig and Eddie live in (or at least my mind’s version there of) and JD said to me, “Yep, they could have just gotten on that balcony and they would have made it,” the balcony was higher that we were, and sure as hell would have been easier to occupy when the flood waters rose than the spire I was clinging to.
I jumped into one of the Che-lookalike's pontoon boats, and my mind inserted a video of a black female rapper and her new hit song about the flood that I had just experienced; I was apparently watching the video on TV in my dream. It was like I was remembering the flood because I started thinking about it because of images and such in the rap video. Kind of like now; so many little things make me think of all the things that I have done in the past couple of years. Katrina, New Orleans, Ben, Rock Wolfmann, they all changed me. And references to any of those things are everywhere, all of the time.
I go through the Katrina-Red Cross-Louisiana-Two Years thing a couple of times everyday. People ask about it all of the time. It just comes up. Kind of like the video in my dream making me remember my dream’s flood.
The scene from the first dream took place at some sporting event, or company picnic, at any rate a place where people mingle while making small talk, all the while wishing they were somewhere else, feeling a bit uncomfortable. I was not the only one that felt this way in my dream, which is rare. When situations come up like this in real life, I am more than likely the only one feeling this way.
Anyway, for some reason, we had to be divided into teams, or certain people were picked to go somewhere or something like that. In other words, people were “picked”. Ben picked a couple of people, as of course he was the captain, for his team or to accompany him on some fabulous vacation; not sure which. He didn’t pick me. I remember him picking two other people standing right beside me, but not me. For whatever reason, I wasn’t good enough, or right for the picking. I felt this. I don’t know if I was angry, or hurt, or what, but I distinctly remember feeling something very strong. I realized that I didn’t need to feel this way, because it was a dream, and I went on to something else; control is also something I generally lack in dreams.
My next dream took place in a rapidly flooding city. The city was a mix of New Orleans and New York. I was with JD, one of my earliest friends; I can’t remember if I met him in kindergarten or first grade. (As a side note, JD moved away in the fourth grade, and returned again in high school. While we were in elementary school, we were really good friends. We were both in the advanced classes. When he came back in high school, he was kind of a loser. He got a girl that I worked with at the grocery store pregnant, and they were married and living in a crappy apartment before we even graduated; honestly I don't even know if he graduated, and he was gifted!).
JD was the JD from high school in my dream. We escaped the first round of flooding by climbing to the top of some steps to a very impressive building (I am pretty sure that I got the images for this from AI). There were people running around like mad. I had my street-level view, but also a view from above, sort of like OJ’s white Bronco super slow chase. Big brother (yep, got the weird British dystopian imagery in there too) was shouting loud things about the water rising, Helicopters were flying all around. Basically, it was madness everywhere.
The second wave came and we climbed to the near-top of a building. The water kept rising. We kept climbing; all the way to the very top of the steeple on top of the building. People were beneath us trying to get as high as they could, they drowned. Only the five or so of us at the very top of the steeple made it through the flood.
After the water stopped rising, military men who all looked like the spitting image of Che Guevera, in pontoon boats (they looked like swamp air boats) came and rescued us. I pointed across the water filled street to the building that Craig and Eddie live in (or at least my mind’s version there of) and JD said to me, “Yep, they could have just gotten on that balcony and they would have made it,” the balcony was higher that we were, and sure as hell would have been easier to occupy when the flood waters rose than the spire I was clinging to.
I jumped into one of the Che-lookalike's pontoon boats, and my mind inserted a video of a black female rapper and her new hit song about the flood that I had just experienced; I was apparently watching the video on TV in my dream. It was like I was remembering the flood because I started thinking about it because of images and such in the rap video. Kind of like now; so many little things make me think of all the things that I have done in the past couple of years. Katrina, New Orleans, Ben, Rock Wolfmann, they all changed me. And references to any of those things are everywhere, all of the time.
I go through the Katrina-Red Cross-Louisiana-Two Years thing a couple of times everyday. People ask about it all of the time. It just comes up. Kind of like the video in my dream making me remember my dream’s flood.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Left Behind
It is interesting (sad, confusing, I’m not sure what feelings it brings out in me) to me that our things outlive us. When we die, we are gone but leave behind a host of things from our lives. Physical things, ideas, and progeny are the basic things we leave behind. The groups overlap a bit, but fundamentally that’s it.
Physical Things
In Louisiana it was easy enough to pretend that my grandmother was still alive. Maybe I hadn’t spoken to her because I was too busy to call. Maybe my Christmas card had gotten lost because of the confusion brought on by one too many changes of address; the Post Office just couldn’t keep up. I still had the Christmas card that she had sent to me in early November (always so punctual!) a couple of months before she died. I read it frequently, pretending that I had just received it in the mail. It was full of grandmotherly advice and of course love scribed in her perfect schoolteacher cursive. There had been a few times before I left Idaho that that I hadn’t seen or spoken to my grandmother; I had neglected my granddaughterly duties for a weeks at a time, not visiting, calling, and for no particular reason at all. But I always knew how my grandmother was; someone had visited her almost everyday. Susan and my dad did so without fail. I was the one who was neglectful.
Now that I am home, I am smacked in the chest with the fact that she is gone. I no longer have the greater part of the United States to protect me from the fact. It is strange to drive by her house, noticing other people’s plants in her flowerbeds and different curtains hanging in the living room. There is also a new garage door, a much needed improvement, but the Grandma’s Garden plaque beneath the magnolia tree is missing, and they chopped the hell out of the snowball bush; I wonder if it even bloomed last spring? I spent so much time in that house; she lived there for over a decade. Birthday parties, cousins coming to visit, Christmases. I was no longer welcome there. What a peculiar feeling.
Belongings take on a life of their own. They are never really ours own, we simply get to use them for awhile. My grandma’s hard plastic flamingo pink Samsonite luggage is now mine. So is the diamond from her wedding band; she wore it on her left hand for fifty-three years, and now I wear it around my neck everyday. There are various other things of hers scattered around the house. I found her jewelry box in the garage when I was looking for sandpaper (the jewels are elsewhere). Her linens are mostly stored in the linen cabinet upstairs, as all of the women in our family have a problem with hording linens. Her fantastic coffee table made from acrylic with beautiful rocks, sliced in half and polished to a spectacular state is stored on its side in the rent-some-storage unit. It is crazy that my dad pays for a storage unit; they live on twenty acres. But, with my grandmother dying, my sister’s husband cheating on her, and my taking off for Louisiana, there simply wasn’t enough room for all of our stuff.
Photographs are an interesting thing in their own right. They are meant to be, literally, snapshots of a moment in time. They evoke memories; flattened, constrained glimpses of an instant. But sometimes they do more than that. There is a photograph of my grandmother where she is a young woman of about thirty. Her hair is perfect. She has on a black hat tilted as I am sure was the style. And her dress is stunning; it looks to be a cream colored satin with lovely black lace details highlighting her slim waist and ample chest. She has a matching handbag in beautiful black patent leather. You cannot see her shoes in the picture, but I imagine them to be either black, but hopefully red, patent leather platform pumps with a strap around the ankle. I have no idea where she was going in this picture. A date? Maybe just shopping; women did tend to dress better then.
As beautiful as she is in this photograph, that is not the reason I stare at it so frequently. I look at it often because I look just like her. While my grandmother was alive, I didn’t think I had the slightest resemblance to her; she was 4’11” on a good day, and I am nearly 6’, she was quiet heavy, and I am only slightly plump. I really didn’t see the resemblance then.
I first saw the photograph at her funeral. The funeral home had created a slide show from various pictures that my sister had dug out. This was one of them. A friend of my parents commented on the photograph, noting how much it looked like me. Same I don’t really want you to take my picture right now, but I know I look good smile that I sometimes get. Same stance. Same way of holding a handbag. Strange.
Of course photographs are things, things that we leave behind. I think about the graven image, stealing your soul belief that some cultures have. Photographs certainly don’t have a soul, but I can definitely see where different cultures have come up with the idea. How strange is it to see yourself exactly as you are, but on a piece of glossy paper? And think about how photography was in its infancy—the picture taker was under a dark cloth, and often a large flash, complete with sparks flying accompanied the picture taking. This certainly smacks of the devil, or at the very least, magic. It is easy to see where the belief came into play.
Now we can also leave behind moving pictures and voice recordings. How strange is it to see someone you once loved moving as if you were watching them walking across a park? And, you can listen to them talking as well. But it is not them. It never was them, it is only an image of them. Separating the image from the self is a trick. I understand the mechanics of it all, but sometimes I am still amazed that we can do such a thing. Where is the image making going to take us next? It is so strange to see a walking, talking image of someone you once loved; yet the image is not real.
Physical Things
In Louisiana it was easy enough to pretend that my grandmother was still alive. Maybe I hadn’t spoken to her because I was too busy to call. Maybe my Christmas card had gotten lost because of the confusion brought on by one too many changes of address; the Post Office just couldn’t keep up. I still had the Christmas card that she had sent to me in early November (always so punctual!) a couple of months before she died. I read it frequently, pretending that I had just received it in the mail. It was full of grandmotherly advice and of course love scribed in her perfect schoolteacher cursive. There had been a few times before I left Idaho that that I hadn’t seen or spoken to my grandmother; I had neglected my granddaughterly duties for a weeks at a time, not visiting, calling, and for no particular reason at all. But I always knew how my grandmother was; someone had visited her almost everyday. Susan and my dad did so without fail. I was the one who was neglectful.
Now that I am home, I am smacked in the chest with the fact that she is gone. I no longer have the greater part of the United States to protect me from the fact. It is strange to drive by her house, noticing other people’s plants in her flowerbeds and different curtains hanging in the living room. There is also a new garage door, a much needed improvement, but the Grandma’s Garden plaque beneath the magnolia tree is missing, and they chopped the hell out of the snowball bush; I wonder if it even bloomed last spring? I spent so much time in that house; she lived there for over a decade. Birthday parties, cousins coming to visit, Christmases. I was no longer welcome there. What a peculiar feeling.
Belongings take on a life of their own. They are never really ours own, we simply get to use them for awhile. My grandma’s hard plastic flamingo pink Samsonite luggage is now mine. So is the diamond from her wedding band; she wore it on her left hand for fifty-three years, and now I wear it around my neck everyday. There are various other things of hers scattered around the house. I found her jewelry box in the garage when I was looking for sandpaper (the jewels are elsewhere). Her linens are mostly stored in the linen cabinet upstairs, as all of the women in our family have a problem with hording linens. Her fantastic coffee table made from acrylic with beautiful rocks, sliced in half and polished to a spectacular state is stored on its side in the rent-some-storage unit. It is crazy that my dad pays for a storage unit; they live on twenty acres. But, with my grandmother dying, my sister’s husband cheating on her, and my taking off for Louisiana, there simply wasn’t enough room for all of our stuff.
Photographs are an interesting thing in their own right. They are meant to be, literally, snapshots of a moment in time. They evoke memories; flattened, constrained glimpses of an instant. But sometimes they do more than that. There is a photograph of my grandmother where she is a young woman of about thirty. Her hair is perfect. She has on a black hat tilted as I am sure was the style. And her dress is stunning; it looks to be a cream colored satin with lovely black lace details highlighting her slim waist and ample chest. She has a matching handbag in beautiful black patent leather. You cannot see her shoes in the picture, but I imagine them to be either black, but hopefully red, patent leather platform pumps with a strap around the ankle. I have no idea where she was going in this picture. A date? Maybe just shopping; women did tend to dress better then.
As beautiful as she is in this photograph, that is not the reason I stare at it so frequently. I look at it often because I look just like her. While my grandmother was alive, I didn’t think I had the slightest resemblance to her; she was 4’11” on a good day, and I am nearly 6’, she was quiet heavy, and I am only slightly plump. I really didn’t see the resemblance then.
I first saw the photograph at her funeral. The funeral home had created a slide show from various pictures that my sister had dug out. This was one of them. A friend of my parents commented on the photograph, noting how much it looked like me. Same I don’t really want you to take my picture right now, but I know I look good smile that I sometimes get. Same stance. Same way of holding a handbag. Strange.
Of course photographs are things, things that we leave behind. I think about the graven image, stealing your soul belief that some cultures have. Photographs certainly don’t have a soul, but I can definitely see where different cultures have come up with the idea. How strange is it to see yourself exactly as you are, but on a piece of glossy paper? And think about how photography was in its infancy—the picture taker was under a dark cloth, and often a large flash, complete with sparks flying accompanied the picture taking. This certainly smacks of the devil, or at the very least, magic. It is easy to see where the belief came into play.
Now we can also leave behind moving pictures and voice recordings. How strange is it to see someone you once loved moving as if you were watching them walking across a park? And, you can listen to them talking as well. But it is not them. It never was them, it is only an image of them. Separating the image from the self is a trick. I understand the mechanics of it all, but sometimes I am still amazed that we can do such a thing. Where is the image making going to take us next? It is so strange to see a walking, talking image of someone you once loved; yet the image is not real.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Well fiddle-de-dee!!!
Atlanta. Hurricane Rita came through the South and I was stuck. Stuck in Atlanta. Aside from a few weeks spent in Minneapolis with a boyfriend, I had never been away from my family. Sure, I lived in Boise, the only thing resembling a real city in all of Idaho, but I grew up, and my family still lived, on twenty acres a few miles from the Snake River.
My flight to Atlanta left Boise at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. (or at least I thought it was ungodly then. Now things have certainly changed!). Because of the early hour, or so I thought, my throat was scratchy. Once in Atlanta, I was supposed to board a connecting flight to Baton Rouge, where I would volunteer for the Red Cross. By the time I reached Atlanta, Rita had already started assailing the Gulf Coast. All flights were canceled. What the hell was I supposed to do? Sure most people had flown by themselves numerous times by the time they were twenty six, and I am sure that most were more worldly than I, but bottom line, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do.
Armed with a paper itinerary, a host of phone numbers for the Red Cross, and enough crap in my backpack to sustain myself on a three week Survivor Man style stint, I had to figure out what to do. My first stop was the United information desk. The only thing they had to tell me was that I would be reassigned to another flight, but that it would probably not leave until the day after next.
So I looked at my list of Red Cross phone numbers to call, and picked the volunteer helpline for the DR865, the Disaster Relief Operation, headquartered in Baton Rouge. I was greeted with a recording. I would learn later, that this recording was updated in the beginning every few hours, and near the end, every few days, and supplied volunteers with information such as where to go at the airport to make sure that someone would pick you up and bring you to the headquarters, and weather information for the site. I don’t remember exactly what the recording said, but I am pretty sure that it said something like, “There is a hurricane currently pounding us. That is why there is not a live person answering the phone. You were crazy to think this was a good idea.”
My sinuses were killing me, and my throat hadn’t lost the scratchy feeling. I called my mom. I told her what was happening, and she told me I could come home. I did not want to do that. I may have been scared, but this was the first time I had ever done anything on my own (well sort of) and I certainly didn’t want to fail. Plus, why would I want to come home and be bored again? She asked me how much money I had. I had just about three hundred dollars in my checking account (thanks unemployment!), and absolutely no credit; something else I had messed up in my foray into adulthood. My mom offered to put a night’s stay at a hotel on her credit card. The lady at the United desk told me about a hotel a few miles away, where most of the other stranded passengers had already booked rooms. And the shuttle went there. I was sold.
My next stop was retrieving my luggage, which somehow, was next in line for a flight to Baton Rouge, or at least being stowed until I was finally able to arrange a flight.; I forget which. Anyway, it was quite an ordeal to get my luggage out of custody, since it clearly said right on the tag that it was destined for Baton Rouge.
Luggage in hand, all seventy five pounds of it or so, and all in a backpack so that I could carry it, I traveled on the super fast shuttle train that runs beneath the airport to catch my ground transportation to the hotel. By this point, I was feeling miserable.
Finally, I checked into a sad looking Drury Inn, somewhere in the outskirts of Atlanta (to the South, maybe?); to this day, I really have no idea where it was.
There was a Waffle House in the parking lot! This was the South. I had never seen such a place in person, and half of me didn't really believe that they were an actual chain of restaurants. It absolutely reeked of every stereotype I had ever heard about the South.
Once I was checked in to my modest room, I called my grandma and my mom to assure them that I was safe in a hotel room in Atlanta. Both were unsure of this. Neither of them had been to Atlanta, and I was very naïve, and getting sick on top of that. After I hung up the phone, I cleverly hid the most precious of my belongings, which on this trip included a light that I could strap to my head, and several bags of batteries; both of which were listed as important take alongs by my Red Cross packing guide, (mind you, both the batteries and the strap on light were still in their plastic bags two years later when I came across them in a move; important, indeed.) and set out for a convenience store a few blocks away, to find something to make myself feel better.
Holy shit! was all I could think when I walked in the door; the clerk was actually behind glass, bulletproof I am sure, and you had to pass your money to him through a slot at the bottom. Crazy! This was just like I had seen on TV. I had never been in a place where I had to talk to the clerk through the glass before. It felt so clinical. It felt like they were simply waiting for something to go horribly wrong. So, so naive was I. I found a generic variant of Dayquil, made my purchase, and headed back to the hotel.
Dayquil normally hops me up like nobody’s business, but this time, I took a couple of pills, and woke up fourteen hours later. I was so sick. My head had never hurt so badly. My throat was swollen shut, and I hurt everywhere. It was the good old fashioned flu! I had completely missed Rita, or the coverage of her on the news anyway.
My flight to Atlanta left Boise at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. (or at least I thought it was ungodly then. Now things have certainly changed!). Because of the early hour, or so I thought, my throat was scratchy. Once in Atlanta, I was supposed to board a connecting flight to Baton Rouge, where I would volunteer for the Red Cross. By the time I reached Atlanta, Rita had already started assailing the Gulf Coast. All flights were canceled. What the hell was I supposed to do? Sure most people had flown by themselves numerous times by the time they were twenty six, and I am sure that most were more worldly than I, but bottom line, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do.
Armed with a paper itinerary, a host of phone numbers for the Red Cross, and enough crap in my backpack to sustain myself on a three week Survivor Man style stint, I had to figure out what to do. My first stop was the United information desk. The only thing they had to tell me was that I would be reassigned to another flight, but that it would probably not leave until the day after next.
So I looked at my list of Red Cross phone numbers to call, and picked the volunteer helpline for the DR865, the Disaster Relief Operation, headquartered in Baton Rouge. I was greeted with a recording. I would learn later, that this recording was updated in the beginning every few hours, and near the end, every few days, and supplied volunteers with information such as where to go at the airport to make sure that someone would pick you up and bring you to the headquarters, and weather information for the site. I don’t remember exactly what the recording said, but I am pretty sure that it said something like, “There is a hurricane currently pounding us. That is why there is not a live person answering the phone. You were crazy to think this was a good idea.”
My sinuses were killing me, and my throat hadn’t lost the scratchy feeling. I called my mom. I told her what was happening, and she told me I could come home. I did not want to do that. I may have been scared, but this was the first time I had ever done anything on my own (well sort of) and I certainly didn’t want to fail. Plus, why would I want to come home and be bored again? She asked me how much money I had. I had just about three hundred dollars in my checking account (thanks unemployment!), and absolutely no credit; something else I had messed up in my foray into adulthood. My mom offered to put a night’s stay at a hotel on her credit card. The lady at the United desk told me about a hotel a few miles away, where most of the other stranded passengers had already booked rooms. And the shuttle went there. I was sold.
My next stop was retrieving my luggage, which somehow, was next in line for a flight to Baton Rouge, or at least being stowed until I was finally able to arrange a flight.; I forget which. Anyway, it was quite an ordeal to get my luggage out of custody, since it clearly said right on the tag that it was destined for Baton Rouge.
Luggage in hand, all seventy five pounds of it or so, and all in a backpack so that I could carry it, I traveled on the super fast shuttle train that runs beneath the airport to catch my ground transportation to the hotel. By this point, I was feeling miserable.
Finally, I checked into a sad looking Drury Inn, somewhere in the outskirts of Atlanta (to the South, maybe?); to this day, I really have no idea where it was.
There was a Waffle House in the parking lot! This was the South. I had never seen such a place in person, and half of me didn't really believe that they were an actual chain of restaurants. It absolutely reeked of every stereotype I had ever heard about the South.
Once I was checked in to my modest room, I called my grandma and my mom to assure them that I was safe in a hotel room in Atlanta. Both were unsure of this. Neither of them had been to Atlanta, and I was very naïve, and getting sick on top of that. After I hung up the phone, I cleverly hid the most precious of my belongings, which on this trip included a light that I could strap to my head, and several bags of batteries; both of which were listed as important take alongs by my Red Cross packing guide, (mind you, both the batteries and the strap on light were still in their plastic bags two years later when I came across them in a move; important, indeed.) and set out for a convenience store a few blocks away, to find something to make myself feel better.
Holy shit! was all I could think when I walked in the door; the clerk was actually behind glass, bulletproof I am sure, and you had to pass your money to him through a slot at the bottom. Crazy! This was just like I had seen on TV. I had never been in a place where I had to talk to the clerk through the glass before. It felt so clinical. It felt like they were simply waiting for something to go horribly wrong. So, so naive was I. I found a generic variant of Dayquil, made my purchase, and headed back to the hotel.
Dayquil normally hops me up like nobody’s business, but this time, I took a couple of pills, and woke up fourteen hours later. I was so sick. My head had never hurt so badly. My throat was swollen shut, and I hurt everywhere. It was the good old fashioned flu! I had completely missed Rita, or the coverage of her on the news anyway.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Before Louisiana
The following is an entry from my for-the-time-being-defunct Bemusings in Boise blog. It is dated roughly two weeks following Hurricane Katrina.
So the plus side of not being able to find a job is being able to leave town at a moment's notice for weeks at a time. This is exactly what I am doing in the next week or so with the Red Cross. I have never volunteered with the Red Cross before, nor have I been to the part of the country affected by Hurricane Katrina. This is going to be quite an adventure for me.
I wrote an email to the Red Cross explaining that I wanted to do something for those affected by the hurricane but that I did not have the money to contribute to disaster aid financially. I wrote that I was more than willing to go to the region and volunteer in that way. To my surprise, someone form my local Red cross called me the very next morning and asked me questions about my willingness to volunteer. The questions included:
"Can you make a commitment of three weeks?" pretty mild,
"Do you feel comfortable sleeping in an open-air dormitory?" and the ever popular,
"Do you have any open wounds?"
After several more questions, the volunteer on the other end of the phone told me that they were at that moment (this was the tenth of September or so) compiling a list of people interested in volunteering. e told me that I would probably hear from them in the next couple of weeks. He asked if I had any questions, but I told him I couldn't think of any right then; he told me that is how everyone felt, no one knew exactly what was going to happen and when with the disaster or the response.
To my surprise a nice lady from the Red Cross called on Friday morning. I was not home when she called, but she left a message with my living-with-me-again-ex-boyfriend, asking me to call as soon as I got in. After returning from a lovely afternoon at Art in the Park, I returned her call. The lady asked if I could attend pre-deployment training on Tuesday and Wednesday evening. Wow! This was moving much faster than I had anticipated. It was very exciting.
I have to admit that I have been in kind of a rut, getting quite depressed about not being able to find a job. This is exactly what I need; a way to get over myself while helping others who really need it.
I will keep you posted as to the contents of the upcoming training sessions.
(It is interesting for me to read this over two years later; hopefully it is for you too. I think it is really interesting that I felt that I was depressed because I wasn't able to find a job. I am sure that that is part of it, but I now know that there is a lot more to it than that, the largest part of which was my living-with-me-again-ex-boyfriend; he made me feel horrible, and I didn't even realize it as it was happening. I had lost myself. I had no idea who I was. Louisiana helped me.)
So the plus side of not being able to find a job is being able to leave town at a moment's notice for weeks at a time. This is exactly what I am doing in the next week or so with the Red Cross. I have never volunteered with the Red Cross before, nor have I been to the part of the country affected by Hurricane Katrina. This is going to be quite an adventure for me.
I wrote an email to the Red Cross explaining that I wanted to do something for those affected by the hurricane but that I did not have the money to contribute to disaster aid financially. I wrote that I was more than willing to go to the region and volunteer in that way. To my surprise, someone form my local Red cross called me the very next morning and asked me questions about my willingness to volunteer. The questions included:
"Can you make a commitment of three weeks?" pretty mild,
"Do you feel comfortable sleeping in an open-air dormitory?" and the ever popular,
"Do you have any open wounds?"
After several more questions, the volunteer on the other end of the phone told me that they were at that moment (this was the tenth of September or so) compiling a list of people interested in volunteering. e told me that I would probably hear from them in the next couple of weeks. He asked if I had any questions, but I told him I couldn't think of any right then; he told me that is how everyone felt, no one knew exactly what was going to happen and when with the disaster or the response.
To my surprise a nice lady from the Red Cross called on Friday morning. I was not home when she called, but she left a message with my living-with-me-again-ex-boyfriend, asking me to call as soon as I got in. After returning from a lovely afternoon at Art in the Park, I returned her call. The lady asked if I could attend pre-deployment training on Tuesday and Wednesday evening. Wow! This was moving much faster than I had anticipated. It was very exciting.
I have to admit that I have been in kind of a rut, getting quite depressed about not being able to find a job. This is exactly what I need; a way to get over myself while helping others who really need it.
I will keep you posted as to the contents of the upcoming training sessions.
(It is interesting for me to read this over two years later; hopefully it is for you too. I think it is really interesting that I felt that I was depressed because I wasn't able to find a job. I am sure that that is part of it, but I now know that there is a lot more to it than that, the largest part of which was my living-with-me-again-ex-boyfriend; he made me feel horrible, and I didn't even realize it as it was happening. I had lost myself. I had no idea who I was. Louisiana helped me.)
Friday, October 12, 2007
Begin at the Beginning
Immediately before I went to Louisiana:
We were at an end. It had been coming for a very long time. It had already come in April, when I smashed your guitar and you wrote all of those horrible songs about me. But we were saying goodbye. I was trying very had not to; I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t even like you any longer. I had been with you for so long that I just didn’t know what else to do. We had been camping for what was it, four, five days? Labor Day Weekend 2005. Throughout Idaho. Remember when we stopped at the Ranger Station along Highway 21 to pickup an Auto Tour Tape, only to find out that the tape player in the Goldsmobile was broken? I was so worried about returning that damn tape to the ranger station in Boise. Did I ever return it? The fallout shelter left over from another life at the Shoshone Ice Caves. Camping at Craters of the Moon. Taking pictures at the nuclear submarine forever run aground in the middle of the city park in Arco, a town ever-decaying from its heyday in the atomic age. The rows and rows of taxidermied animals at that strange man’s “museum”. A necklace made of dino-poo, or so the purveyor Bob assured us. A completely dead trip.
We didn’t watch TV or listen to the news on the radio the entire time we were gone, strange for both of us. The only things of concern were your attempt to break free from me, and my resistance to your escape. We had absolutely no idea that Katrina had happened. No idea that hundreds of people were drowning. No idea that in the wake of the mass evacuation tens of thousands of pets were being left behind to die. No idea that fairy tale courtyards and dank projects were drowning alike. No idea.
Once we were home, I reached through the window next to the door to move the chair holding the door shut. You had broken the door a few months back, and now it would not close on its own. Out of habit developed from the months of being unemployed, I flipped on Oprah. What was happening? Rather than an interview with Matt Damon or a Book Club episode, I was smacked in the chest by images of Nate, Oprah’s trusty decorating guru (why him?) talking to crying, dirty people, trying to say goodbye to their pets as they boarded busses(?) out of New Orleans. What the hell was going on? I sat down unable to move myself away from the TV. The front door was open and the trunk sat half emptied into the street. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the images I was seeing thrust before me in 27” portions. You walked in the door and I made you sit down and watch.
The disaster may as well been on some remote Pacific island, for the fleeting mention it received.
Oprah was dressed in what I can only remember as some sort of combat gear, sans makeup, unpretty like a real person, hair frizzy as it should be for that part of the country, flanked by Mayor Nagin, a man, who at that moment like most Americans, I did not know. The Superdome. I did not closely follow professional sports, and upon seeing the images of the Superdome, I assumed that the building was being used as a shelter because it was no longer being used as a venue. It was implausible to me that the building looked this way because residents had been sheltered within for a few days during the storm; it looked like this was a long-abandoned building that had simply served the purpose of providing a large, mostly dry space in which people could take refuge. I could not believe that the filth and damage to the building were caused by those taking shelter there. And later, all of the stories of horror about the place.
How the hell were these images true? And how had I missed all of this over the weekend? How was this happening in America? We were the good guys who were always rescuing the poor people stuck in similar situations have a globe away. We had spent most of the time in the car, and granted we weren’t listening to NPR, or an AM news channel, but I would think that something like this would have made it onto a special report on even Tejano station coming from the desert of Idaho. Maybe it was covered, and I somehow missed it. I am still not sure.
How were people trapped in a city? It didn’t make any sense to me. I grew up in Idaho, a land of big, open spaces. You can literally see for miles in any direction without a thing disrupting your view. With my limited geographical experience, it seemed impossible to me that people could live in a place that they couldn’t get out of. I wonder how many people shared this point of view when the disaster was unfolding? (Should I add a reference at this point, noting the geography of the city, and the very few ways to make it out?)
I had to do something. Never in my life have I been compelled to action as I was after seeing the images on Oprah. I didn’t know what I could do. I didn’t have any money, but since I had been laid-off, I had plenty of time. What could I do? I needed information, and the new channels seemed to be doing so only begrudgingly. The computer he gave me for my birthday had been repossessed, so I didn’t have access to the Internet. I had to get online. I hadn’t seen my parents since the week before when we had gotten into a fight, a real screaming and yelling match, rare for our family, and wanted to make up; plus, I needed to get online so that I could get some information about how I could help. I drove the hour to my parents’ house to search for something I could do, some way that I could help. I remembered seeing something about the Americorps on Oprah, I think. Maybe it was the first President Bush and President Clinton talking about them? I don’t really remember; it is all kind of mashed up in my head. The first place I went was the Americorps website. It didn’t look like it was something that I would qualify to join. So somewhere I got the idea to go to the Red Cross website.
I went to the main Red Cross website, and learned that I to volunteer I needed to contact my local chapter. Local chapter? I had no idea how to do this, but found a link on the main website. I clicked on it, and then found my way to the American Red Cross of Greater Idaho website. Here, I got a number to call. When I called, I was sent to voicemail. I left a message saying that I didn’t have much money, but I did have a lot of time and was really interested in helping the people affected by the hurricane. I really didn’t think that I would hear back from them.
I went home. You were asleep on the couch. I told you what I had done. I asked if you would call too. You didn’t want to, claiming that it would take away from time recording your album. I took it as you not wanting to spend time with me, and am still certain that that is what it was. How on earth did I pretend that everything was okay between us? You wouldn’t even sleep in our bed with me, and when you went out at night to play in the bars, I was definitely not welcome. After I had convinced you to move back in, you had a friend stop by one night, and told me that I was only welcome (in my own house, where I was the only one paying the bills!) if I stayed in the bedroom out of view the entire time. For some reason, I did it. I even listened as you said some terrible things about me. Why did I let this happen to me? Why did I think I deserved to be used like this? I still don’t know, but fight almost every day to remember the way I felt so that I will never let myself be treated that way again. You made me feel very bad about myself for a really long time. I don't think I will forgive you.
Even though I didn’t want to, I knew that leaving was the thing that I needed to do. I needed to get away from my life, completely.
We were at an end. It had been coming for a very long time. It had already come in April, when I smashed your guitar and you wrote all of those horrible songs about me. But we were saying goodbye. I was trying very had not to; I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t even like you any longer. I had been with you for so long that I just didn’t know what else to do. We had been camping for what was it, four, five days? Labor Day Weekend 2005. Throughout Idaho. Remember when we stopped at the Ranger Station along Highway 21 to pickup an Auto Tour Tape, only to find out that the tape player in the Goldsmobile was broken? I was so worried about returning that damn tape to the ranger station in Boise. Did I ever return it? The fallout shelter left over from another life at the Shoshone Ice Caves. Camping at Craters of the Moon. Taking pictures at the nuclear submarine forever run aground in the middle of the city park in Arco, a town ever-decaying from its heyday in the atomic age. The rows and rows of taxidermied animals at that strange man’s “museum”. A necklace made of dino-poo, or so the purveyor Bob assured us. A completely dead trip.
We didn’t watch TV or listen to the news on the radio the entire time we were gone, strange for both of us. The only things of concern were your attempt to break free from me, and my resistance to your escape. We had absolutely no idea that Katrina had happened. No idea that hundreds of people were drowning. No idea that in the wake of the mass evacuation tens of thousands of pets were being left behind to die. No idea that fairy tale courtyards and dank projects were drowning alike. No idea.
Once we were home, I reached through the window next to the door to move the chair holding the door shut. You had broken the door a few months back, and now it would not close on its own. Out of habit developed from the months of being unemployed, I flipped on Oprah. What was happening? Rather than an interview with Matt Damon or a Book Club episode, I was smacked in the chest by images of Nate, Oprah’s trusty decorating guru (why him?) talking to crying, dirty people, trying to say goodbye to their pets as they boarded busses(?) out of New Orleans. What the hell was going on? I sat down unable to move myself away from the TV. The front door was open and the trunk sat half emptied into the street. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the images I was seeing thrust before me in 27” portions. You walked in the door and I made you sit down and watch.
The disaster may as well been on some remote Pacific island, for the fleeting mention it received.
Oprah was dressed in what I can only remember as some sort of combat gear, sans makeup, unpretty like a real person, hair frizzy as it should be for that part of the country, flanked by Mayor Nagin, a man, who at that moment like most Americans, I did not know. The Superdome. I did not closely follow professional sports, and upon seeing the images of the Superdome, I assumed that the building was being used as a shelter because it was no longer being used as a venue. It was implausible to me that the building looked this way because residents had been sheltered within for a few days during the storm; it looked like this was a long-abandoned building that had simply served the purpose of providing a large, mostly dry space in which people could take refuge. I could not believe that the filth and damage to the building were caused by those taking shelter there. And later, all of the stories of horror about the place.
How the hell were these images true? And how had I missed all of this over the weekend? How was this happening in America? We were the good guys who were always rescuing the poor people stuck in similar situations have a globe away. We had spent most of the time in the car, and granted we weren’t listening to NPR, or an AM news channel, but I would think that something like this would have made it onto a special report on even Tejano station coming from the desert of Idaho. Maybe it was covered, and I somehow missed it. I am still not sure.
How were people trapped in a city? It didn’t make any sense to me. I grew up in Idaho, a land of big, open spaces. You can literally see for miles in any direction without a thing disrupting your view. With my limited geographical experience, it seemed impossible to me that people could live in a place that they couldn’t get out of. I wonder how many people shared this point of view when the disaster was unfolding? (Should I add a reference at this point, noting the geography of the city, and the very few ways to make it out?)
I had to do something. Never in my life have I been compelled to action as I was after seeing the images on Oprah. I didn’t know what I could do. I didn’t have any money, but since I had been laid-off, I had plenty of time. What could I do? I needed information, and the new channels seemed to be doing so only begrudgingly. The computer he gave me for my birthday had been repossessed, so I didn’t have access to the Internet. I had to get online. I hadn’t seen my parents since the week before when we had gotten into a fight, a real screaming and yelling match, rare for our family, and wanted to make up; plus, I needed to get online so that I could get some information about how I could help. I drove the hour to my parents’ house to search for something I could do, some way that I could help. I remembered seeing something about the Americorps on Oprah, I think. Maybe it was the first President Bush and President Clinton talking about them? I don’t really remember; it is all kind of mashed up in my head. The first place I went was the Americorps website. It didn’t look like it was something that I would qualify to join. So somewhere I got the idea to go to the Red Cross website.
I went to the main Red Cross website, and learned that I to volunteer I needed to contact my local chapter. Local chapter? I had no idea how to do this, but found a link on the main website. I clicked on it, and then found my way to the American Red Cross of Greater Idaho website. Here, I got a number to call. When I called, I was sent to voicemail. I left a message saying that I didn’t have much money, but I did have a lot of time and was really interested in helping the people affected by the hurricane. I really didn’t think that I would hear back from them.
I went home. You were asleep on the couch. I told you what I had done. I asked if you would call too. You didn’t want to, claiming that it would take away from time recording your album. I took it as you not wanting to spend time with me, and am still certain that that is what it was. How on earth did I pretend that everything was okay between us? You wouldn’t even sleep in our bed with me, and when you went out at night to play in the bars, I was definitely not welcome. After I had convinced you to move back in, you had a friend stop by one night, and told me that I was only welcome (in my own house, where I was the only one paying the bills!) if I stayed in the bedroom out of view the entire time. For some reason, I did it. I even listened as you said some terrible things about me. Why did I let this happen to me? Why did I think I deserved to be used like this? I still don’t know, but fight almost every day to remember the way I felt so that I will never let myself be treated that way again. You made me feel very bad about myself for a really long time. I don't think I will forgive you.
Even though I didn’t want to, I knew that leaving was the thing that I needed to do. I needed to get away from my life, completely.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Queen of my double-wide trailer ... well, sort of
I have officially moved into the 1973 Sport King motorhome parked in my parent’s driveway. I think it is nice and cozy. Tom is with me too. He likes being King again. Although, he will still have to go inside to play with the other kitties. We have electricity, Internet, but no cable or water as of yet. Not that we need it. The house is a scant thirty feet from our front door. I just wanted some private space. Not too private, but more so than sleeping in my nephew Jacob’s bed (plastic sheet included!) while he spends the night “camping” in his kid-sized tent next to the bed. Also, I am not too fond of the Cars sheets and Nascar Christmas lights strung across the room.
I am seriously thinking about making a motorhome version of Cribs for YouTube. I think it would be hilarious if someone else were to make it, I am just not certain that my comic abilities, or lack there of, could hack it on YouTube.
I am really hoping that the little hunk of Heaven out here in the mororhome will help me write more. I am really looking forward to writing, if I could just get started!
I am procrastinating. Just like I shouldn’t be. So hard to break the habbit. I have so much that I want to write about, but just can’t seem to do so. I want to write about the last two years. I would read a book written about such an adventure.
I just climbed into the bed on the “second floor” of the motorhome. Not too much headroom. I can lounge and kind of sit up to type, but that is about it. I think that the bed will be comfy. Tom seems to like it.
Back to the writing. I don’t know how I should start. I have an outline of all of my adventures, well the first part of them anyway, in a folder somewhere. Should I start with an outline, or just start typing? I don’t know which way would work the best. I will look at the outline tomorrow and see how that goes.
I am seriously thinking about making a motorhome version of Cribs for YouTube. I think it would be hilarious if someone else were to make it, I am just not certain that my comic abilities, or lack there of, could hack it on YouTube.
I am really hoping that the little hunk of Heaven out here in the mororhome will help me write more. I am really looking forward to writing, if I could just get started!
I am procrastinating. Just like I shouldn’t be. So hard to break the habbit. I have so much that I want to write about, but just can’t seem to do so. I want to write about the last two years. I would read a book written about such an adventure.
I just climbed into the bed on the “second floor” of the motorhome. Not too much headroom. I can lounge and kind of sit up to type, but that is about it. I think that the bed will be comfy. Tom seems to like it.
Back to the writing. I don’t know how I should start. I have an outline of all of my adventures, well the first part of them anyway, in a folder somewhere. Should I start with an outline, or just start typing? I don’t know which way would work the best. I will look at the outline tomorrow and see how that goes.
Overheard
Today at work, I walked into the kitchen to get some more tea. This is what I overheard: "...well, maybe they will just charge him with inappropriate disposal of a human corpse..."
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Wet
So, what gives me the right to say this about New Orleans? I was there. I was one of the rescue workers that put my life on hold at home, to help others in a tragedy that I initially met with confusion and grief. Now the grief has subsided, but the confusion is even stronger.
My primary confusion was purely geographic; I simply couldn't understand how people couldn't get out of the city in the first place. I grew up in Idaho, a land of sprawling fields and open range. In fact, you can see the ski resort fifty miles away from the east side of my parents' house. I thought it was like this everywhere. Sure, I have been other places, quite different from Idaho; Minneapolis, San Diego, Las Vegas; but they all are nothing like Louisiana, or the South in general. Louisiana is wooded, green, and wet; wet being key. New Orleans practically floats atop a very thin layer of earth spread across a wet underbelly of Lake Pontchartrain, Mississippi River, or the Gulf of Mexico, depending on where you are. There are canals, and bayous, and lakes everywhere. The ground is always wet. The air is always wet. It isn't just humid, it is as if you are breathing a slightly drier version of water rather than wet air.
Because of the incredibly wet atmosphere, it takes a lot of work to build a road. Have you ever tried building a road on a foundation that continues to shift as you construct your byway? Think of it like trying to bridge a pool of quicksand with supports not long enough to ever reach anything solid. Hard to do, to say the least. Proof of this is the small number of byways weaving in and out of the city. Basically you have I-10, East and West (remember the pictures of all of the people stranded on them?), and Highway 90 crossing the Mississippi into the western suburbs. There are a few surface roads and highways (River Road to name one) leading out of the city.
Prior to August 29, 2005, there were approximately 485,000, with 1.4 million people living in the metro area. When there are really three roads leading out of the city, and two of them are in directions that you don't want to take (I-10 East, and Highway 90) that is an enormous number of people to cram onto a two lane road. Eventually contraflow was instituted, and both sides of I-10 were running west, but still, that is too many people.
The thing that really confused me was the fact that people needed to be on a road to escape a disaster. Here, if there isn't a road, there is at least relatively flat ground that you could drive, walk, crawl, something on, to get out of the way of a coming monstrosity. That is simply not the case in New Orleans.
Once I-310 branches off of 10, the interstate heads directly across Lake Ponchartrain. Bridges. The freeway travels across them for miles. Unbelievable. To get out of the city, you have to cross a giant body of water across a bridge (two when contraflow is enacted), that are narrow and slow on their best days.
Sure, if people had been organized, if someone told them what to do, if they planned ahead, something, a staggered evacualtion could probably have taken place. But this didn't happen. Why? I am certain that part of the blame should go to the people in charge, those who are supposed to take care of the citizens of the city. The other portion, the larger portion, lies with the citizens themselves. Why didn't they plan? Why didn't they act? I know, I know; there were plenty of times in the past when they had evacuated and hadn't needed to, or they survived Camille, so why shouldn't they fair well in Katrina? Well, the simple answer is, they just didn't. Katrina was too big, people weren't prepared. That is all there is to it.
So this is why people couldn't get away; pure and simply geography, infrastructure and lack of planning. The city was never designed to accommodate a massive exodus of people in a whole lot of hurry.
My primary confusion was purely geographic; I simply couldn't understand how people couldn't get out of the city in the first place. I grew up in Idaho, a land of sprawling fields and open range. In fact, you can see the ski resort fifty miles away from the east side of my parents' house. I thought it was like this everywhere. Sure, I have been other places, quite different from Idaho; Minneapolis, San Diego, Las Vegas; but they all are nothing like Louisiana, or the South in general. Louisiana is wooded, green, and wet; wet being key. New Orleans practically floats atop a very thin layer of earth spread across a wet underbelly of Lake Pontchartrain, Mississippi River, or the Gulf of Mexico, depending on where you are. There are canals, and bayous, and lakes everywhere. The ground is always wet. The air is always wet. It isn't just humid, it is as if you are breathing a slightly drier version of water rather than wet air.
Because of the incredibly wet atmosphere, it takes a lot of work to build a road. Have you ever tried building a road on a foundation that continues to shift as you construct your byway? Think of it like trying to bridge a pool of quicksand with supports not long enough to ever reach anything solid. Hard to do, to say the least. Proof of this is the small number of byways weaving in and out of the city. Basically you have I-10, East and West (remember the pictures of all of the people stranded on them?), and Highway 90 crossing the Mississippi into the western suburbs. There are a few surface roads and highways (River Road to name one) leading out of the city.
Prior to August 29, 2005, there were approximately 485,000, with 1.4 million people living in the metro area. When there are really three roads leading out of the city, and two of them are in directions that you don't want to take (I-10 East, and Highway 90) that is an enormous number of people to cram onto a two lane road. Eventually contraflow was instituted, and both sides of I-10 were running west, but still, that is too many people.
The thing that really confused me was the fact that people needed to be on a road to escape a disaster. Here, if there isn't a road, there is at least relatively flat ground that you could drive, walk, crawl, something on, to get out of the way of a coming monstrosity. That is simply not the case in New Orleans.
Once I-310 branches off of 10, the interstate heads directly across Lake Ponchartrain. Bridges. The freeway travels across them for miles. Unbelievable. To get out of the city, you have to cross a giant body of water across a bridge (two when contraflow is enacted), that are narrow and slow on their best days.
Sure, if people had been organized, if someone told them what to do, if they planned ahead, something, a staggered evacualtion could probably have taken place. But this didn't happen. Why? I am certain that part of the blame should go to the people in charge, those who are supposed to take care of the citizens of the city. The other portion, the larger portion, lies with the citizens themselves. Why didn't they plan? Why didn't they act? I know, I know; there were plenty of times in the past when they had evacuated and hadn't needed to, or they survived Camille, so why shouldn't they fair well in Katrina? Well, the simple answer is, they just didn't. Katrina was too big, people weren't prepared. That is all there is to it.
So this is why people couldn't get away; pure and simply geography, infrastructure and lack of planning. The city was never designed to accommodate a massive exodus of people in a whole lot of hurry.
Always on my mind...
New Orleans has been on my mind. It should be; I lived there for nearly two years. The two years directly following Hurricane Katrina. I have much to tell about my time there. So, I created a blog.
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