Devastation

Over the last several days, I’ve let all of the meaningless items on my work, social and literary To-Do lists undone. I just watch CNN. That’s all I do. Perhaps the extra time I’ve logged in front of the ceaseless reportage has made the mix of rage and disbelief and despondency even more potent than it would have been if I had some pressing Powerpoint slides, Gantt charts or discounted cash flow projections to finish off. But it’s a couple of weeks ‘til my “paying work” starts up again, so I have no minutiae to distract me from the images of America’s very own Sri Lanka. 

Like tens of millions, I bear witness via satellite to a tsunami-like catastrophe, which at the end of the day, I’m afraid to say, we will find to be very much of our own making, mostly through acts of omission. 

I read the constant “crawl” on the bottom of CNN’s crowded screen, each disturbing item adding to the feeling that this event may alter America’s views on the competence of our government and even the state of race relations.

So, what to do? What to DO? I made a small donation to the Red Cross and then unplugged from the Internet for at least a few hours. I went to give blood, an activity which I realize we often do merely as a symbol that we are committed to our countrymen, our fellow humans. But it’s something, and I was doing NOTHING an hour before (actually, for any Californians reading this, I was informed that our state imports a great deal of blood from the southeast, so donating blood over coming weeks even 2000 miles away from the disaster area will be critical).

So, then, as an erstwhile novelist, I decided to retreat into the cocoon I’d become so familiar with months ago when creating my fictional tome. I put on my headphones and turned on some Better than Ezra, the Louisiana band my friend Carolyn—a native of the Bayou State—and I always made a point of seeing whenever they played anywhere near us. Hearing their songs brought back memories of Jazz Fest in New Orleans. After an amazing performance from Better than Ezra a few years back, my friends and I ventured to a nearby Shell station, a place where you could get a Twinkie, a coke and/or another beer to continue the party. As a matter of fact, the Shell station itself transformed into a party of the first order. At the improvised “Shell Fest,” visitors and locals alike danced into the station’s car wash, both an act of revelry and a cleansing of a day’s worth of delta dust. In the finest tradition of New Orleans, the scheduled transportation was invariably late and in short supply. Enterprising Cajuns and Creoles alike loaded the loaded visitors into the backs of their pickups and provided transport back to the French Quarter. I recall piling in at various times after Shell Fest with Tom, Brandt, Marshall, Young, Corey and others. The ride was always an adventure in itself and the conversation was amazing—at least the half I remember…and of course I only understood half in the first place. I look forward to seeing New Orleans again soon. 

Please remember to help out our friends in Louisiana and Mississippi in any way you can.

Comments

[Romeo Bravo]

Here are your acts of omissions from the Washington Post:

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. “Quite frankly, if they’d been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,” said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.

Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

“The federal government stands ready to work with state and local officials to secure New Orleans and the state of Louisiana,” White House spokesman Dan Bartlett said. “The president will not let any form of bureaucracy get in the way of protecting the citizens of Louisiana."

New Orleans New Motto:

Stay for the Party, Leave for the Storms.