It seems NY Yankees future hall-of-famer Derek Jeter is getting hate-mail for dating “outside his race.” But wait a minute here – Jeter is mixed-race – half “white”, half “black”. How absurd.
OK, I just took a telephone call from Mr. Tran, in California, whose family was incredibly worried about me, after seeing all the Hurricane Rita coverage and visualizing San Antonio as some sort of suburb of Houston, and spent a couple of hours trying to call me on their cellphone (and not getting any results, which frightened them quite badly)…
I am OK, I am fine, the skies here are hot and blue and cloudless— and we were actually sort of wishing that we would get some fall-out rain at least from Rita— and it is about 400 miles from Houston. San Antonio is stuffed full of evacuees, and the worst that has happened to me was that I had to go to three gas stations yesterday on the way to the radio station to find one that had any gas or anything but the top-grade. Hurricane news has filled the local paper to the exclusion of practically anything else for the last two days.
I have heard from a coworker that Sequin (the town just to the south of us, where the highway contraflow along I-10 ended) was all but a parking lot, with evacuees camping along the side of the highway, and in every available place in town, too tired, exhausted and pissed-off to drive any farther.
At the radio station, they had the room and phone banks we have for pledge drives being used by a community disaster preparedness group soliciting and registering volunteers who wanted to help, routing them to the organization that could use them to best advantage. We were running announcements all day today about the schedule for returnees.
So, I am OK, San Antonio is OK, nothing else of importance to report from here. It’s hot, it’s a Sunday, it’s my day where I don’t have to go anywhere. I’m OK. Wish it would rain, but we can’t have everything.
Earlier this week, I returned from doing what I could to help in the wake of hurricane Katrina, finding disaster at home, but we’re on the road to normal again, as are the victims of this destructive storm. The President spoke last night of the courage of those who survived Katrina, and I got a chance to witness that up close and personal. Here’s what we did and how and when….
After the first roadblock, losing the transmission in my van, I got underway again, in my wife’s Dodge Durango. I have no idea why she wanted to buy a 4wd, but I’m glad she did. However, it doesn’t hold nearly as much as my Lumina! BTW, the van is now in the shop, the transmission is out, and a new used one should be installed by Monday. I opted for the used one instead of a rebuilt not only due to cost, but as the van has 155,000 miles on it, I probably will replace it sometime next year. We just pray that a used transmission will hold up better than the one that just gave up the ghost! You see, the original one failed at 100,000, and this one only lasted 55,000 miles. OK, it was some 3 years ago that it was put in. It probably would have lasted for a good long time without such a heavy load, but I had it loaded to the gills, so it was hauling about the max weight, which I believe is why it failed…..
I have already blogged here about leaving home and stopping for the night at our son’s home in Alabama. That post has the links to the earlier posts about the trip. Visit those links, and that brings you up to date with the whole history of this adventure.
Leaving Birmingham, I took I-20/I-59 west and south, entering Mississippi a couple of hours later. I had picked up an additional radio that I had purchased from a fellow ham in Atlanta the day before, and the materials I needed to construct an antenna for it in Birmingham. I already had VHF radios, and the new one is a “low bands” rig, for frequencies from 1.8 MHZ to 50 MHz. I had earlier sold my low band radio, and regretted it the day I did! I like the new one a lot better, though, it’s a lot more advanced technology. For the fellow hams, it’s an Alinco DX-70-TH. Enough of the technical stuff.
Damage seemed to start like a switch being turned on as I entered Mississippi. We have a niece who lives in Laurel, and they took a couple of trees on – and in – the house they had just moved into. Thank God they had spent the night in a shelter, as one tree went through the roof over their bedroom, and another wound up with a huge limb in their baby’s crib. I talked to her on her cell phone as I was going through Laurel, she was out buying furniture, they have an apartment now while their house is being repaired…glad they’re OK. I dropped off the interstate at Hattiesburg, some 60 miles or so from Gulfport, and that’s where I got my assignment, to Gulfport. From Hattiesburg, which had significant damage with trees and power lines down everywhere, I took US 49 south. The road was mostly clear by this time, and I had a lot of company on the trip south. All kinds of vehicles, especially 18-wheelers with loads of relief supplies.
About 25 miles out of Gulfport, I managed to make contact with the Harrison County EOC (Emergency Operations Center – the hq for coordination of all relief efforts) and got directions to my operating location. We had taken over an elementary school in Gulfport, and it was the comm center coordinating with the Red Cross locations throughout the Mississippi coast region. Other radio operators were already there, and some seemed really glad for the relief.
They sent me over to Biloxi, to the largest RC distribution center, to get orientated, and I was in for a big surprise there. Special recognition is due the Alabama Baptist Convention for their massive Disaster Relief Team. They had several 18-wheelers with such things as a kitchen for cooking the food that was distributed daily to residents, and they were coordinating delivery of food by Salvation Army vans throughout Biloxi and Ocean Springs. Located at a very large Baptist church on Popps Ferry Road, they were together with the Red Cross, giving out everything from soap to soup, clothing, ice, water, just everything. And not only for the residents, the ABC was also providing everything for relief workers, from showers to food to ice and water. They even had a laundry trailer, where they were doing laundry for us. Incredible! I had never seen such a large effort by any one organization, and my hat is off to those great Baptists from Alabama. Especially to one guy, Rick, a ham op who gave me the tour and orientation. I don’t think he stopped the whole time he was there, every time I went over to Biloxi he was there, doing one thing or another. Wish I had gotten his last name, and I’m gonna try to get it from the ABC, he was just such a super guy, tears in his eyes as he brought me up to speed. Like everyone I met there, Rick really cared about what he was doing there….
Back in Gulfport, it was 24/7 on several radios. One was the separate freq for the Red Cross, another for VHF, a repeater that covered the area well, and the other a low-bands radio used for more distant comm. I finally got some sleep late the first night, moving stuff out of the back so I could lie on my air mattress bed. I was so tired I was gone by the time my head hit the pillow. Some of the guys slept in the building, but there was no power except generator power, and no A/C, so it was about 90 degrees inside. Others did like me, sleeping in their vehicles with the engine idling, running the AC. Worked fine, and didn’t use much gas.
I woke up about daylight, some 5 AM or so, and went inside to work radios for the day. A couple of hours into the shift, one of the Biloxi guys was calling for a technician to help put another repeater on the air. Since they knew I was a radio tech, the finger pointed to me, and I was off for the 10-mile trip to Biloxi via I-10. You couldn’t get there by Beach Boulevard or by Pass Road, two of the main roads. And Popps Ferry road was impassible just west of Biloxi, a bridge had washed completely out. It is unbelievable just how powerful was the storm surge, about 30 feet in the MS area, and so wide spread. Can you imagine how much force it takes to completely destroy a bridge weighing tons? The bridge across Lake Ponchartrain in LA, from Hammond to New Orleans, is just gone! It was only recently that they constructed a second bridge alongside the old one, making it a 4-lane road. For many years it was a 2-lane, 24 miles over water, and a lot of people, including the folks that Jen worked for, had to commute daily across the lake. I will say this: I wouldn’t have wanted to be there to watch those bridges being destroyed.
From Biloxi, the US-90 bridge to Ocean Springs to the east, is totally gone. Good Lord, the power of that water seems to have been many times more than just wind alone. Well, that’s backed up by the National Hurricane Center, who warns every time that the storm surge will get ya if you don’t get out of the way. (We saw the same results in 1989, hurricane Hugo, in SC. The small town we were sent to had been mostly flattened by storm surge. Shrimp boats were 1/2 mile inland!) Back to Katrina, it is, or was, really difficult to get through many of the streets in Biloxi, and I just went with the flow, deviating where I had to. At the Biloxi center, Rick gave me a map, showing how to get to the repeater site. It was only a few blocks away in one of the Cable Company’s buildings. We needed the second repeater to take some of the strain off the 13/73 machine, which was nearly constantly in transmit mode. They were afraid that it would quit, and we’d be left without a repeater to cover the area.
For the most part, we had to tune the duplexer, a device that keeps the transmitter signal isolated from the receiver, enabling one single antenna to be used for transmit and receive. Now, tuning those “cans” isn’t fun even with proper test equipment, which was very noticeably absent at first, but it was nearly impossible with nothing but my portable, handheld radio, to work with. Finally, one of the local techs showed up with the right equipment, and we got a 28/88 machine on the air, taking up slack from the other one. The numbers I put there are for the hams. They are part of the frequencies of the TX and RX, and that’s what we use to identify a repeater. For instance, 13/73 means that the repeater receives on 146.13 MHz (Input) , and transmits on 146.73 MHz (Output). Now you all know one more “ham” secret…..
While at the cable building, since they had power, I plugged in my cell phone charger to an outlet, as I had misplaced my vehicle charger and it was getting low. I also took advantage of enough room, to build my tree-mounted antenna for the HF, making what is called a “folded dipole” for 80, 40, and 20 meters. That’s a simple, old-fashionedlong wire antenna that can be configured in a number of ways, making multi-freq ops easier. Now we were ready for boondocks ops if needed.
By the third day, Sep 7, someone noticed that he had some amount of cell signal. Sure enough, there was a fairly good signal on my phone, but it was impossible to get a channel. I guess, as the day went on, cell techs got more channels up and running, and by evening I was able to talk to Jen. That was really a pleasant surprise, as these days we don’t usually have TDY’s like this, and we miss each other! It was really nice for each of us to know the other was fine. Jen’s a big worrier (ducking!) and (LOOK OUT!) she was glad to know I wasn’t lying in a ditch bleeding to death. (That’s an inside joke. It’s what we used to tell the kids when they were teenage drivers and they didn’t let us know where they were when they were driving around)
Having cell phone signal back was great, and at first we thought it would ease the traffic load, but what we were doing didn’t lend itself to phone contact. When one of the shelters, or distribution centers, needed something routed to them, they called us, and we had to find the resource and direct it to them. There was lots of that, calls for more ice, calls for more MRE’s, and such. I went over a couple of times to Biloxi to pick up things like that and take them to the Gulfport area. Ice and water were really important to everyone. It was 90 degrees in the daytime, not much better at night until just before dawn, and really easy to get dehydrated. People working in debris removal or traffic control had it rough. I kept my cooler full of ice, sitting on the right front seat, water inside, and when I came to an intersection where traffic was being directed by a NG troop or a police officer, I got into the habit of passing him a bottle of water as I passed. Sometimes some of those guys had several empty bottles at their posts, so others were doing the same thing. Around Thursday of last week – I lost track of the days – power came back on at our base location. Then it went off. Then back on. OK, by that evening, we had AC working, and it began to be cooler in the building.
Destruction in the Gulfport – Biloxi area was pretty bad, but the speed with which recovery is going is really impressive. Power companies from all over the country are working to get power back on, and other people, such as law enforcement folks are there from nearly everywhere. I met a group of state troopers from Indiana at Hattiesburg, even before I got to Gulfport. They were on their way down. There were groups of Florida state troopers there. Sonar guy asked me in a comment if there were Naval Reservists there. In fact, there were. On Thursday, on a trip to the Biloxi center, I met up with a whole group of Naval reservists, unloading trucks and passing out supplies. They were really working hard, doing the grunt work. Someone else asked me about NG and ANG troops. They were all over. Many of the NG troops were directing traffic in both cities, and that was really needed, as both power being out and many of the traffic lights just completely missing. It was impressive to see that many troops working so diligently, helping others when they could have been home in comfort and doing their civilian jobs.
Getting gas was no problem, as my Durango had been given a placard designating it an official vehicle. A Chevron station across from the school where we were had been designated for official vehicles only, and their gas was only $2.39, while folks here in GA were paying more than a dollar more per gallon. We had to go in at night to fill up, and I tried to keep my tank full, just in case.
On Friday, the EOC sent me to check on a few other towns, small towns west of Gulfport, such as Picayune. I left, traveling on I-10, going west along to Bay St. Louis and Waveland. You may have seen pictures on Fox News of the destruction there, but it was near total. I did take a lot of pictures, which I will try to post on my web site, Patriot Flyer.
Along I-10, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but there were cars just blown off the road lying upside down in the ditch, and even up in some of the trees. Trees, of course, were down everywhere, and animals of all kinds were lying, washed up and drowned, in the median and alongside the road. There were cats, dogs, even hogs and possums, raccoons, it was amazing. Something else brought to my attention, was, “Where are the birds?” There were no birds, no bugs, and I saw only one mosquito the whole time. I’m sure they’re breeding by now, and birds, probably totally blown away, will return. One other thing on that subject: We had a garbage dump at the Biloxi center, and nowhere to be found were the usual varmints, like possums, coons, squirrels, and other scavengers. There were none around! Also along I-10, there used to be these huge billboards, and every single one of them is gone. Every billboard, the frame is blown inward from the gulf, or completely knocked down. Got some good pictures of that.
At Stennis airport, I stopped in at Hancock County EOC, where I found the greatest concentration of NG and ANG troops. I took time to eat lunch there, an MRE, and sat and talked with a guy from I believe, Ohio. The Guard had also set up a medical facility, as the Hancock Med Center had been largely destroyed. They had one of those packaged MASH units, very impressive. I took the time to talk with a Lt. Col, doctor, outside the tent, and didn’t get his name or where he was from.
Stennis Airport is one of those ventures, a “boondoggle,” that was constructed, and named after the late Mississippi senator, John Stennis, in the early 70’s. It was supposed to be a reliever airport for New Orleans, something which never happened. Being some 35 miles away, it was just too far. In 1979, when we lived in NO, I took Jenny and flew over to Stennis, which was at the time just an 8,000 foot runway with nothing else around. I was trying to teach her to land the plane, in case something happened to me, so she could get us down safely. Lost cause. We flew over there in a Cessna 150, old, worn out, with wind whistling through holes in the thing, and she was just too nervous to learn. I think today she could keep it in the air until somebody could get up there to help her get down, but Stennis didn’t work out!
Stennis today has a few hangars, but they’ve all been damaged, and I saw a few planes lying in heaps. I forgot to mention the military airlift into Gulfport. While I was there, it was constant, with a C-17 or a C-130 Herky Bird landing every few minutes. I even saw a few KC-135’s, also one of my past aircraft, on approach. I mean, it was just a constant stream of military aircraft. Reserve and AD both, and that itself was impressive.
While I was at Stennis, I checked my cell phone, and was surprised that there was a good signal. With the return of cell phone service along the coast, the need for ham operators decreased pretty quickly, and time came that I decided to go back home, as my funds were dwindling pretty rapidly and there was no more to draw on, and no ATM’s working anyway. Over the weekend I began the long drive home, some 900 miles. Leaving Picayune, I drove back to Birmingham, intending to drive all the way home, but Jen called and insisted that I stop at L’Joe’s for the night. That was a good call, as I was pretty tired by the time I got there. The next morning, I finished the trip, and was home by Monday night.
It was not like my experience with other storms. Frederick, in 1979, did nearly as much damage to Mississippi and Alabama, but this monster was much bigger, and the damage will take a lot more to recover from. It will happen, though, and will probably take more than five years to replace all the large structures, like bridges, that were destroyed. Imagine the incredible force it takes to destroy something as heavy and strong as a concrete and steel highway bridge! I’m grateful for the experience of meeting the heroes of this storm, the people who live there, and the folks from everywhere who are doing so much for them. The Red Cross is really doing a fantastic job of helping, and their volunteers are great. Give to the Red Cross if you can, as it is really going to the right place, I can testify to that. Pray for those folks who have to start their lives over again, they need your prayers and I know they appreciate everything that is being done for them.
And, thanks for reading this enormous post! God bless!
Although I have still a couple of 192oies New Orleans postcards in my collection, this is the last of them I shall post. The “Big Easy” will live and perhaps prosper: residents and workers are being allowed to return this weekend (according to NPR), the good times will roll, and the party will continue.
All these assurances have a kind of hollow sound to them, though. Many of the evacuees interviewed in the local San Antonio paper are seeking jobs, looking for housing, and putting their children in local schools— no less a person than Mayor Nagin has already done two of those three (albeit in Dallas), and one does wonder if he will be eventually looking for another job, given his performance on national TV over the last three weeks.
Katrina may yet change the political face of New Orleans, given that many of it’s citizens have discovered first hand that the outside world is not so bigoted, flamingly incompetant or politically corrupt as they had assumed it to be, given their experience of living in America’s own Third World city.
I drove the 410 this weekend, for the first time in a couple of weeks, and noticed that at 410 and Broadway, there was a bulldozer, busily scraping away in what was left of one of North-side San Antonio’s retail landmarks. What was physically left of Scriveners’ made heartbreakingly small piles, but then it was never all that large a building to begin with, or distinguished, architecturally speaking. It was one of those places which just grew, organically, bumping out a wing here, an ell there as necessary, incoherently sprouting departments to no particular plan. The gourmet chocolates abutted the garden supplies and the kitchenware, and ran straight into the hardware department. Describing Scriveners’ as a “department” store is kind of like describing “Star Trek” as an old TV show… while technically accurate, it doesn’t even begin to do justice to the reality.
It started as a hardware store, just after World War II: a local GI returning from the service teamed up with two of his buddies, and opened the establishment when the location was the other end of nowhere, adjacent to nothing but the airport, the intersection of 410 and Broadway being respectively, a two-lane roadway and an unpaved lane. Last week one of the assistants at my own local hardware establishment pointed out that independent hardware and department stores in small towns have a tendency— if they pay attention to what their customers ask for—to stock all sorts of oddments, because there is really no other place to buy them. The original founder of Scriveners’ must have had the same philosophy, because he bought out his partners and began paying attention to the suggestions of his sales’ staff.
I was told (or read in the local paper) that they branched out to patio furniture, and tiki torches and barbeques, and paper plates and picnic things in the early 1950ies— all those necessary accoutrements of post-war baby-boomer suburbia. Suggestions to stock this, that or the other inevitably resulted in another addition to an already rambling structure— I don’t think there was a consistent ceiling or floor level throughout the place— and another department: Stationary, gourmet foods, embroidered baby and children’s clothes. A wonderful fabric and notions department, with imported laces and silk ribbon. Kitchenware, fine china and crystal, collectables. Designer accessories, jewelry and handbags, Christmas ornaments, wind-chimes, bird-feeders, and ornamental brass fireplace accessories, and a tea-room that served dainty lunch dishes straight out of the 1950ies. Every menu item came with a little cup of consommé, and for the first course, the waitress came around with a tray of fresh-baked sticky buns, which were legendary in San Antonio, baked by a little elderly lady who came up on the bus from the South Side for years, to bake them specially.
For decades haute San Antonio registered at Scriveners’, bought their wedding-dress fabrics there, bought baby-clothes and barbeques. All of this, and still there was the hardware store; the gentle joke being that women could drop off their husbands in the hardware section, and shop for hours, undisturbed.
I came there mostly for the fabrics— lovely, quality stuff that I could barely afford, but the sales staff in the fabric and notions section knew me quite well as a discriminating customer, if not as rich as some of the other regulars, and one of the very few with the skill to tackle Vintage Vogue, and the very difficult Vogue Designer patterns. They always had wool suitings, and silk— there was no other place in town that stocked silk—and the sales table was always worth a look-see. I did Blondie’s high school graduation dress from Scriveners’, and an elaborate wedding dress for a co-worker, and any number of things for myself. There are just not many other places in San Antonio, or anywhere else, where you could walk out with a spool of thread, an envelope of black cut-glass buttons from Czechoslovakia, a cookie press, a bag of bird-seed and a three-way light-fixture fitting.
Scriveners’ eccentric old-fashioned charm carried it into the 21st century, but some of the original owners’ business principles— as admirable as they were for the employees— probably lost it business to competition, competition that grew and flourished in the decades after Broadway outside-the-loop was paved, and 410 became a ring-road, circling the metropolis. It closed evenings at 5:30, and did not open on Sundays; I am sure this would have cost them. These days, even clientele of up-scale retail establishments have Monday-to Friday jobs.
A couple of years ago, the founder of it all finally retired and Scriveners’ was bought by Berings— a store in Houston which was pretty much the same kind of place, or so they said. They promised that nothing much would change, save the name which appeared on chic new green awnings, all the way around the old, rambling building. But they closed the fabric section, and remodeled the inside to accommodate more china and upscale housewares; I considered that a shrine had been desecrated by barbarians, but still patronized the hardware store, and the kitchenware department, but in April everything was marked down, and the notices went up. Everything was cleared out in short order, by generations of customers in deep mourning. One of the hardware managers told me sorrowfully, they could not find a building large enough in the ’09 neighborhood where they wanted to relocate— where their customer base was— and the real-estate at the corner of 410 and Broadway was just too valuable in the present market.
The building sat empty for a couple of months, the brave new green awnings unfaded, but the bulldozers have come and gone— I expect the site to be entirely empty, the next time I drive by. If they build something tacky like a McDonalds on it, I shall be really, really annoyed. All unknowing, they are desecrating a shrine, and pouring concrete on the place where one of San Antonio’s memorable establishments once stood.
I’m back. In one piece, got home night before last, still too tired to write a decent post. I can say though, that we should each hug our loved ones more tightly than ever. And if you have a house to live in – you’re blessed. Later on this week I’ll try to write more comprehensively about what life is like from Biloxi to Waveland, MS, these days. (They stationed me at Gulfport for most of the time.) Folks, we have thousands of NG, ANG, and reserve troops to be extremely proud of. (Not to mention our great AD folks!) From an NG private that ate an MRE sitting next to me, to the doctor, Lt. Col, that I talked to outside the med tent at Stennis Airport. Much more later.
Now, I’m not complaining, at all. But, have you heard the cliche that everything goes wrong while you’re away? This is laughable. We have already talked about the dead van: sitting under the carport without a working transmission. Here’s the rest. I’m really thankful that I took enough cash for gas while I was gone. ATM’s didn’t work there, and anyway, when I got home my bank account was overdrawn. My bad, I screwed up a deposit before I left… Then, as I was walking into the house, Jen told me that the washing machine had quit. No kidding. Only had it 2 months – used. Of course. To top it off, my paycheck, which has never had a hickup, was not in the bank this morning. No, there’s more. Sewer workers putting in a new line across my back yard accidentally cut my phone line yesterday! I would ask, “what next,” but I’m scared to! Like I said though, I wouldn’t dare complain, not after the folks I’ve met this past week or so. No sir, I’m really blessed!
To: Various
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Aftermath
The decent thing— which I would really prefer to do— would be to wait to criticize various responses to the hurricane disaster until the dust has settled, the water drained, and every hurricane evacuee neatly tucked up in freshly-washed sheets in a pleasant and semi-private temporary refuge, while the recovery and rebuilding proceeds apace – but what the hell, I have been practically deafened by the chorus of bickering, blaming and second-guessing. I may as well join in and chew a number of good juicy hunks off those who have managed to annoy me the most.
1. To our foreign (mostly European) friends— please understand that this was an enormous disaster. The area most damaged is about the size of entire independent nations, and we have never had a major city so thoroughly trashed: Chicago lost about a third in the great fire, and Galveston was on the far fringes in the hurricane of 1900. Really, only the San Francisco earthquake and fire comes anywhere close. So, the first few federal resources to make the scene were pretty overwhelmed, and spread about as thin as a pat of butter on an acre of toast. And keep in mind that anyone going into the devastated area has to come a fair distance. You can drive on the interstate at a good clip for three days straight, and still only cross two or three states.
2. To the panjandrums of the major media (but I am looking straight at NPR’s croaker-in-chief, Robert Schorr)— please repeat this mantra to yourself: local, state, federal. Again: Local, State, Federal. (I can’t hear you!!! ) That is the order in which civic authority has responsibility for responding to a disaster. Write it on a body part with a Sharpie, if you have trouble remembering.
3. This goes to Sen. Nancy Pelosi, also.
4. Also keep in mind, oh media geniuses, that the Mississippi/Alabama coast was body-slammed directly by the hurricane, and the smaller coastal cities look from the air as if they were nuked. Try and wrap your searching intellects around this: with a similar racial and socio-economic makeup, they managed to not go all lord-of-the-flies on national television. Their communities held, their municipal and state authorities apparently did their jobs, and their police forces refrained from looting retail establishments. From the reports I have seen or heard they are clearing away rubble, banding together against looters and loss, and generally behaving like responsible citizens. Please amuse me by coming up with a rationale for this that does not mention FEMA, the Bush administration or institutional racism – or condescension to the blue-collar working classes.
5. Governor Blanco: you are not being paid to cry on television. You are also not being paid to be vapid, indecisive, and flutter around like a Barbara Cartland heroine, waiting for the big strong, studly hero to rescue you. This is the sort of woman I have always fought down a desire to slap silly. I’d do it in your case, but fear I would have to get at the end of a long line. Thanks for being the sort of woman that male chauvinists always insisted that a women in so-called authority would be. God, please butch up before you embarrass us any further.
6. To the “Reverend” Jesse Jackson; please make yourself useful. Sit down with Mayor Nagin and review New Orleans’ disaster preparedness plan with him. Please pay special attention to the bits about stocking emergency shelters with food, and water, evacuating the sick and elderly, and the use of publicly owned transport to do so. Also, pay special attention to the bit about how long it will take the federal authorities to arrive in force.
7. To “Hizzonor” Mayor Nagin; I’d be laughing at your impromptu performance of the old Coasters’ hit “Along Came Jones”, if your crisis-management skills hadn’t worked out on so many embarrassingly inept— and probably fatal levels. I haven’t seen such appalling news footage since – well, the last humanitarian disaster in a less-than-third-world country. Obviously, you are doing the “Sweet Sue” (Oh, hep me, hep me! He’s tying me up again!) whilst General Honore plays the part of the stalwart rescuer . (See note 4, above.) Frankly, I hope most of your constituents relocate permanently in cities where a simple desire to have a stable job, an adequate housing situation, a police force that can be distinguished from the local gang-bangers, and crisis managers who can actually manage a crisis may actually be indulged. You might be able to win re-election to mayoral office after this. But I cannot imagine where, or by what turn of machine politics.
8. So many idiots, so little bandwidth.
Sincerely
Sgt Mom
PS As always, those are not “scare” quote marks— they are “viciously skeptical” quote marks.
…but she’s so got me beat. Click and scroll down a little.
After a long, hot day, exhausted, tired of driving, I’m grateful for the nice hot shower and a cot to sleep on, where it’s air conditioned. This may well be the last I see of these wonderful comforts that so many of us, including myself, take for granted, for a few days.
This will probably be my last attempt at blogging for a couple of weeks or so, as after tonight I will be in the area where so much is needed and my efforts just seem so small. I just pray that whatever I may be able to do in the coming days, that it will make some people’s lives more bearable.
To recap, Lovely, wonderful Nurse Jenny’s precious sister, Janis the Great, who is married to Good Ole Mikey (Who grew up across the street from me with his brother and my best friend for life, Johnny), lent us their second car so I could take Sweet Nurse Jenny’s SUV and recover this trip. So far, so good!
I finished transferring things over from my poor, KO’d van last night (Sunday) about 10 PM, then hit the sheets, ever so mindful that I at least had sheets. God, please let me never again forget to be thankful! I don’t think my head had hit the pillow before I was out like a light. The alarm was set for 5 AM, but I think I drop-kicked the clock out the door, and got up about 7. I was on the road by 9, and made a stop in Atlanta to pick up one more radio – I think that gives me a total of about 6 – and then on to Birmingham. First-born – and only – son – lives here, and is senior pastor for Calvary Temple Assembly of God in the Hoover suburb. I’m staying with them tonight, and enjoying every minute with our two teenage grandsons…..
NEWS FLASH! LOVELY DAUGHTER IN COLORADO HAS ANNOUNCED HER UPCOMING WEDDING! TO A JOE! That means that now we will have three Joes in this family….) Now, where was I?….hee hee hee…..
Number One Son had steaks on the grill when I arrived, much appreciated, for sure. After supper, I finished setting up the radios for maximum benefit, and off to the shower. Tomorrow morning, it will be off to the war zone, and I will let everyone know how it goes, when I get back to BHam.
In the mean time, your prayers will be highly prized, and for those of you who helped make this trip possible, my gratitude knows no bounds. I just hope that the radio messages I pass will ease the heartaches of all with whom I meet. Those of you, my friends, who pray, ask only that I will do my best to help, and that many other ham radio operators will jump into the fray.
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FOR THE HAMS
: My call sign is W 1 F K Y, /mobile W5. Look for me on 75 meters; 3965, 3835, and wherever the GCHEN (GULF COAST HURRICANE EMERGENCY NET) happens to be meeting. On 40 meters, 7265, I’m told, is the primary frequency. I don’t know about 20 or above. I will probably be operating physically somewhere between Fairhope, AL, and Slidell, LA. Prime contact will be MEMA, AEMA, LEMA, and FEMA.
Again, many, many thanks to those of you who helped, and God bless each of you!
I was just reading through my daily emails and one of the inspirational newsletters I get was doing a compare and contrast to the hoodlums of The San Fransisco Earthquake/Fire of 1906 and of Katrina from last week. The common denominator being that the folks that lost their minds came from poor areas. That was interesting in and of itself but then the cleric who writes these newsletters started in on the gas companies and took them to task for raising gas prices. This is the first time I can remember him going after any group of folks like this.
From “Watch the Hoodlums,” A Mountain Wings Original.
Perhaps the real disaster was neither Katrina nor the earthquake.
It was the conditions that created such neighborhoods in the
first place while all around them was excessive wealth.Perhaps that is the real disaster, and perhaps the real hoodlums
don’t live in poor neighborhoods. The real hoodlums don’t use
ghetto guns. They don’t shoot at helicopters; they own them.There is nothing wrong with being rich. But there is something
wrong with getting richer and exploiting others to make yourself
wealthier beyond what you will ever need or spend.Tell me if you don’t feel robbed when you fill up your car.
Tell me if you don’t feel robbed when you get your heating bill
this winter and it is double the high bills of last year.Tell me if you don’t feel robbed when you can’t afford the gas
to get to work or to take your child to baseball practice.If you can’t afford the gas to get to work, guess which
neighborhood you are headed to?While you were watching people wade down the street with a few
purloined items, did you notice that YOUR wallet was much lighter?A real good pickpocket takes your money, and you don’t realize
he’s got it.It’s called the art of distraction.
So sit back in your easy chair and watch the hoodlums.
I saw O’Reilly foaming at the mouth about this the other night but I’m not sure anyone’s really paying attention to him anymore, but when a man who normally spends his days writing inspirational bits to brighten your day turns his guns on you, I’m thinkin’ that perhaps the Oil Companies need to start paying attention.
Okay, “Kids of Katrina” over at A Small Victory has moved and has spilled over into other things for the kids. Michele’s also got good links for other ways to get supplies down that way, all of them kid-centric.
A lot sadder, maybe wiser, here we go again, off to bring help to people who need it most. I have transferred everything from my dead van to Nurse Jenny’s 4WD Dodge Durango, probably a more sensible vehicle anyway, for going to the gulf coast right now. For those who aren’t aware of the mission, reference my earlier posts here and here. (It has been a while since I worked with the html tags. Whew!) It has been quite a saga for the past few days, believe me!
Yesterday, when I got only 100 miles from home and the transmission in my van died, my heart was broken, and I was devastated. But, as we talked about it and cried, on the way home behind a rollback truck, we felt maybe the Lord has a hand in this, as we believe He does in all things – in one way or another. It is just possible that I may need the 4WD, something that had vaguely crossed my mind. Anyway, when I actually leave our driveway tomorrow morning, I believe I will be more careful and a lot more sober in my assessment of situations. (And Mary, maybe we can have lunch tomorrow, after all!)
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the effort, whether to our own small pittance of effort, or to the larger, mega-need ! Now, just so everyone knows, and I would much rather stay in the background without mentioning this; we need help to be able to do this. I am accountable to those who help me, and Jenny is going to keep records of all who help. We have a paypal account, in the name of our email address, come5311@bellsouth.net. Anyone who can and does contribute, will be acknowledged, and we will pass the same thing on to others after this need is over and we again become able to help other people financially.
I spent nearly everything we had getting ready to go on the trip. When I had to pay a tow truck operator to haul the dead van back home, that did it completely. My neighbors have made small contributions, and anyone who feels that you can help, please leave something for us in the paypal account, and the depths of our gratitude will be boundless. As I said before, every single scrap will be accounted for. The accounting, BTW, is necessary on another level, as the Assemblies of God and the ARRL will be holding me strictly to the rules! And, face it, I was raised by my Mama to be honest, anyway…..
Thank you, thank you, thank you! God bless every single soul who helps.
Now, for the next step: We have enough room in our house to accomodate a family of 4 or 5. Would someone please step up and let’s start getting some temporary homes set up for these people who need to get out of those huge shelters and back into a more home-like setting? This is gonna take a lot of work, so maybe we need a committee. NEXT!!
From all Katrina, all the time…
It’s official… I have spotted the first holiday catalogue of the season. It was in my mailbox this afternoon.
September 1… and three months and 25 days of shopping left until Christmas, courtesy of this fine establishment.
(Of course, I can’t afford any of the stuff I want until I land the well-paid executive assistant job… but I can dream can’t I?)
Memo for the Mayor of New Orleans, the Govenor of Louisiana and the President of the United States:
Would you mind DOING SOMETHING?
…just sayin’.
Enough, already! If I never again hear the name of Cindy Sheehan, that will be too soon. I have no problems with anyone who is opposed to the war, in fact no one in their right mind would be in favor of war. War is messy, people get killed and hurt, and countries get laid waste. But, there are times when even the most hated thing becomes necessary, and this, I fear, is one of those times.
Ms. Sheehan has the right, as does anyone, to protest. But, we have heard her, and it’s time to move on. She has allowed herself to get wrapped up with some not-so-nice organizations, and that is a shame. At first, folks would have said, “OK, she’s in grief over the death of her son.” And, who wouldn’t be? But as things progressed, and we found out that the President had already met with her once, I began to question why he should grant her another meeting. He’s a busy man. Even on vacation, he has to work, his responsibilities don’t end, and she should have had enough sense to realize that her demands were not going to be met, especially by anyone like GW.
As I was writing this, FNC announced that she was leaving because her mother has had a stroke. I’m sorry about her mother, and I feel for Ms. Sheehan, who should have been with her family instead of tilting at windmills while her mom got sick. We can now just hope the other nutcases will leave Crawford and go home, let the President get some rest, and give the rest of us some peace. No doubt, the media will go hunting around for the next thing to talk about hour after hour, boring the crap out of us all.
So, what’s next?
It is a sad commentary on our times that this commercial is such a pathetic sequel of the original.
(NPR has revived an old radio series, inviting members of the public to expound on their personal credo: herewith is my potted list of personal beliefs.)
Women of a certain age should not wear mini-skirts. Ever.
Actual proof of Islam being a religion of peace is pretty thin on the ground, and in the headlines these days.
Teabags are a scourge and invention of the Devil. Real tea is made from loose leaf tea. And the pot is rinsed out with boiling water, first.
Children should not be allowed to call their parents, or any other adult by their first name, unless said adults’ name is adorned with an honorific such as “Aunt/Uncle” or “Mr/Miss”.
95 Percent of any popular culture—books, movies, art, music, and fashion— at any one time is utter crap. In five years or less, everyone will be poking fun at all but that quality 5%. Teenagers arrayed in the latest popular fashions, body-piercings and makeup would do well to keep this in mind.
That William Morris had the right idea: “Have nothing in your homes that you do not know
to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” And as my mother said, “The bigger the house is, there more of it there is to clean.”
Only fools and the impatient pay full retail price. And second-hand will not kill you… how many previous owners do you think that expensive antique has had?
One way and another, the whole world is bigoted and prejudiced. To quote Tom Lehrer
“The whole world is festering with unhappy souls,
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
The Italians hate the Yugoslavs, South Africans the Dutch,
And I don’t like anybody very much!”
The best one can hope for, is to live in a place where they aren’t very much prejudiced about what you happen to be. It’s a human thing— adjust. Relocate, if absolutely necessary.
Children are not possessions, only undeveloped people.
(More to be added, as I think of them.)
I’ve been a little absent from the blog for much of the last 2 weeks, and there are good reasons. We received a settlement from the social security admin, a real surprise, but so very welcome. As a result, I’ve been really busy. Paid off some $5,000 worth of bills, got rid of loans and credit card balances, and purchased a lot of things, some of them toys, that I’ve wanted for a long time. Changed from cable to satellite for TV (Directv, really great), got a satellite XM radio, and finally a new computer. The old one was in really bad shape. The new one, an “Emachines” model T4010, made by Gateway, has a Celeron proc, 2.93GHz, RAM 512MB, lots of extras, really nice. But changing over is really a lot of work and very time-consuming. I took the HD out of the old one, set it up as a D drive, and am slowly copying what I need from it to the new one. Since there are a lot of things I do not want, I’m not just doing a “copy*.*” so the way I’m doing it takes time.
The settlement I received was for my disability. I’ve been disabled since 1995, but the SS folks gave me 1998, don’t know why. Then they gave me back pay, but not all of it. OK, I’ll take what I can get, there’s not a lot of choice. It will be great, though, to have the extra monthly check. For so long, we’ve been struggling, having to borrow and scrape to make it from month to month, I just don’t know what it feels like to be worry-free. But it will be nice to find out. Oh, and we’re finally gonna go on a cruise, one thing Nurse Jenny has wanted to do since we got married. We’re just trying to figure out which one, there are so many to choose from!
Friends, rejoice with us in our good fortune, and thanks for being friends!
You know the drill. You’ve been tasked to put a team together to solve problem X. You gather your team, you gather your resources, you turn some abandoned old hut into your state of the art workcenter. Staff papers and action papers and point papers are all pooled to study problem X. Meetings are held. VTCs happen once the fiber is run to the old hut. There must be TDYs to D.C., Colorado, Hawaii and Nebraska because it’s that serious a problem…we must discuss face to face this serious serious problem. The discovery that the problem is bigger than it seemed is inevitbale. It’s now problem XYZ and Q(?). Everyone’s got the same problem(s) and teams just like yours are set up at key locations for all the commands. The orignal team disbands due to PCS moves and new people come in. Money is projected out for the next five years to ensure success. At some point a smart airman walks into the office with a magazine article from Wired or Computer News with a simple, off-the-shelf, solution to problem X and quietly tries to implement it, but it’s not to be. A Lt Col on loan from the Reserves and who works with Gigantic Aerospace (GA) n his “real” job knows that GA’s Information Technologies section can do a better, more military, solution and the studies begin anew. Manhours are gauged. Software development begins. The company that first released the off-the-shelf software solution is bought out. Software engineering ensues. Testing happens. Tests are studied. The hut gets knocked down and a new building with not enough power outlets and NO phone lines is built…it will be a couple more years before the comm issues are fixed so the military rents office space from GA. More meetings and TDYs occur. One of GA’s subsidiaries (made up of the original, now retired team members) gets the contract. No, military people won’t be able to use the software, this is now serious stuff with an eclectic and stiff learning curve, we need full time contractors on the job 24/7 and they’re all going to need clearances so we should probably hire retirees or actively recruit folks with a fresh new clearance.
The smart airman watches all of this and spits while he goes back to college, goes for his degree, and gets the hell out to form his own group of contractors that he can sell to GA in a couple years.
And that’s just one of the retention problems we’re having.
…end satirical rant…
Anyone speak French? Does that mean what I think it means?
I commented on this post over at Wizbang by Jay Tea earlier today and the thought has stuck with me all day and I think some more discussion is in order:
I think that the average high-school graduate of today is better educated than the men who founded this country and wrote our Constitution and are perfectly capable of grasping the ideas behind it without a lot of external interpretation.
Discuss.
This post over at ASV reminded me of something I saw when we were on vactation. I was shopping with our family at the local WalMart and a kid, couldn’t have been more than 17, walked by. It was what he was wearing the threw me. From bottom up: Doc Martin Combat boots, fishnets, an old plaid shirt tied around his waist kilt-like, a Black Flagg t-shirt, a biker leather with an anarchy “A” and Sex Pistols spray painted in white across the back, face made up like Robert Smith and topped off with a black and red spiked mohawk that must have been 8 inches long.
I stared long enough that he turned and said, “What are you lookin’ at?” I shook it off and simply said, “Sorry, but you look almost exactly like a girl I dated in college. Wear’d you find the Doc Martins?” He shrugged, “They were my Dad’s.”
I know it’s weird, but I’m oddly comforted to know that there’s another generation of punkers around.
And now that we’re out I read/hear from all over the place that Karl Rove was the guy who told the press about Valerie Plame? Really?
I think the word “slimy” applies here.
Update: I want to be clear. My problem here is that Rove and McClellan looked into the camera and lied to me. I don’t care about the definition of “covert.” That’s like arguing the definition of “is.” I simply don’t like being lied to. Don’t care how much I like you otherwise.
Sometimes it just doesn’t go every 88 minutes like it used to. Something happening underground so they tell us.
More on the trip through the park later…we’re not home yet.