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Sunday, September 4, 2005
Website
The website for my neighborhood is at http://cprv.org From the community garden to the neighborhood oyster-raising project, it's all cheery, I think.
Thursday, September 1, 2005
Hurricane Horrors
The news at 6:00 A.M. today was a nightmare from beginning to end...all about Hurricane Katrina's residue in New Orleans. The footage was horrible. People still sit up on their roofs waiting to be rescued, watching as the swirling waters around them carry dead dogs/cats/people as well as live alligators and snakes. Alligators feed on dead people and animals.
Then what about the inside of the Super Dome with 10,000 people still trapped without water or food or air-conditioning. None of the toilets work. Desperate, disconsolate souls are jumping off the upper levels trying to kill themselves.
A hospital has barricaded its doors because mobs of hoodlums outside keep trying to break in and steal the drugs. Doctors and nurses have stayed onsite since the hurricane, afraid to leave. Meanwhile patients die like flies in the heat, lacking water and food and medication.
Government estimates that New Orleans will not be habitable for at least six months. The water situation is the worst challenge. Electricity could be restored earlier but so far no crews have tried to begin repairs...afraid of all those snakes in the water.
Then Lydia called to say that one of her three best friends is coming here to wait out the hurricane clean-up. Lydia's friend lives in the French Quarter. Her building is still there, but the place is not habitable. This friend spent the hurricane outside of New Orleans holed up in a shed on someone's ranch. All of her possessions are gone. She literally is left with what she wore when she left her house. She has to beg someone for a ride to the airport in order to come to Norfolk. Lydia got her a ticket but is uncertain whether that flight will take off as scheduled.
Tell you what, if a hurricane threatens Norfolk, I will be one of the first people out of town and into the mountains of West Virginia, watching it all on TV from a safe motel.
A couple of years ago, Hurricane Isabelle beat down Norfolk and quite a bit of that damage is still waiting for repairs. Lydia and Dan rode it out and stayed but they were sorry. The worst part was what came after the hurricane...no electricity for over a week, no air conditioning, nothing hot to eat or cold to drink, no hot showers. When Dan finally navigated streets without downed trees and reached Home Depot, all the generators had been sold already. All the food in their refrigerator and freezer spoiled. No milk for Benny. No coffee for Dan. No lights at night. No TV or radio. No land line telephone, and after the cell phone charge ran out, no cell phone either. Dan had to take business calls on his cell phone plugged into the car charger, driving up and down his street between downed trees, keeping one eye on the gas guage. No computers. Gasoline lines stretched forever at the few stations running their pumps on generators. Restaurants were closed and only a couple of fast food places stayed open. They soon ran out of almost everything as long lines waited outside. No one could get into or out of Norfolk due to flooding that closed all the bridges and tunnels. I've heard all the horror stories about Isabelle. Now I'm seeing this dreadful misery caused by Katrina. As I say, if another hurricane comes to Horfolk, I'll be the first person out of town.
This A.M. on TV I heard knuckleheads criticizing those in New Orleans who have stolen food, bottled water, and baby formula. Well, duh.... Others spoke disparagingly of those who stayed in the city in spite of numerous warnings to get out before the storm hit. Apparently it does not occur to some that not everyone has access to transportation. Even in the USA every city has a percentage of the deep down, truly poor. These people exist on government programs that provide basic food and shelter, but they have very few choices. Most of them are mentally ill and because the governemnt in the last twenty/thirty years has chosen to close down lunatic asylums, these poor souls live in half-way houses located in the inner city where no one has enough clout to keep them out. Staff at those places are not able to manage a client base of ten/fifteen adults with big, strong bodies and badly damaged brains. Here are those weird characters who wander the urban landscape burdened with enormous garbage sacksful of their possessions. Yesterday I saw one of them being given a ticket by a policewoman. The poor old guy laid up against a tree across from the hardware store between my house and the ghetto grocery. He spent all day there, yelling inappropriate comments to passersby. At 5:30 P.M. as I drove by, there was a policewoman writing him a ticket, I suppose, for vagrancy. Crazy. What's he supposed to do with that piece of paper? A man on a bicycle rode around and around the policewoman yelling, "You're mean!" Well, she had her job to do and I suppose someone complained about this pathetic individual. He's the kind that in New Orleans today sits up on a housetop watching alligators eat those who went to sleep and fell off during the night, lies over two or three seats in the Super Dome, a toilet-free zone with ten thousand similarly inconvenienced citizens. Those who even before the storm had no home, few possessions, no one to care about them...all of those people are the sad sight we see on TV today in the aftermath of Katrina. Those with money or with friends living elsewhere, used those resources and made an exit in time to avoid the horror.
Finally, I blame President Bush for part of the problem. No, he didn't send a storm to New Orleans. However, he sent the entire USA military somewhere on earth to kill people in places we have no right to be. All of our military might is spread around the globe doing dirt and making fools of us. If that vast military were still here at home, we'd have enough helicoptersand personnel to evacuate everyone still stuck in New Orleans. Also, we'd have space and food and beds on our many military bases here to take care of the homeless until New Orleans is liveable once more. Right now those helicopters are all overseas. Those bases are available, but there's no money for extra food, beds, care for the storm victims. I know our president likes to drag out the Bible as an excuse for his silliness. Well, I know the Bible, too. How about that verse, "Let each person study to do his own business." Wouldn't that mean to stay out of Iraq and everywhere else that's none of our business? Mmmhm, I think so. And how about this verse? "The man who does not provide for the needs of his own family is worse than an infidel." Wouldn't that mean that the president who makes it impossible for our country to take care of itself in an emergency is worse than any of these Muslims he's hell bent on eradicating? Yep. I do think so. Imagine that. President Bush worse than a mullah. And according to the Bible, too, the book he always waves around as his excuse to do the outlandish things which have us in this uncomfortable plight. My, my.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Stuph To Read
My most recent grocery store book binge identified a couple of good ones. A grand old man of the genre, Clive Cussler, has a new one out, Lost City. It's per the Cussler formula, but good of its kind. I don't know how many books old Clive has left in him. He's trying to hand off part of the franchise to his son, an erstwhile accountant. This story was written with another man, last-named Kemprecos. Several things you can count on with a Clive Cussler story; frantic hair-breadth action, outlandish scenes and situations, a hero and his side kick who absolutely never give up, horrible villains, at least six-hundred pages. Lost City has all of that.
The more interesting volume was Social Crimes. Probably I was more interested in this because of the TV show, So You Want To Be A Hilton. I've seen that program several times and have wondered what's the point. The book makes the point very clear...what's the attraction of life as a New York A-list socialite. It's quite a funny, witty story...clever, original. In spite of the fact that the book details lives of those immensely rich people who lead New York society, and paints a picture of such incredible wealth, comfort and ease that those people seem like mythical beasts, in spite of that, I'm quite satisfied with my niche on the economic ladder. Realizing that characters in the story mirror the lives of real people doing what they really do, I nevertheless left the book feeling that it, like Lost City was a fantasy. Fun to read, though.
A third book, Frozen, by Jay Bonsaninga, was so feverishly, madly, hyperdramatically overwritten as to be a cartoon. It tries to be about mystery, crime, science, history, and the supernatural, ambitious but do-able. The problem is that after a while all that breathlessly melodramatic language makes the story laughable.
More Bang Bang
A few weeks ago someone with an automatic weapon opened fire across the street, killing a man and injuring others. Police, of course, assumed that the gunman was from the yellow apartments and they spent several days harrassing residents over there with the result that things have been quiet. Then toward the end of last week, things began to heat up again. I heard lots and lots of late night yelling/screaming/cursing.
On Sunday night the noise lasted until after 3:00 A.M. Last night the noise was right up there, comparable to the worst of the bad old days. Beginning before dark, some woman wasn't happy about the way her children acted and chewed them out at well over eighty decibels. She did this time and time again. After midnight she was still screaming that if they didn't hurry up and come indoors, she was going to lock them out when they did want to come in. They screamed back sassy, disrespectful defiance. Lots of cursing on both sides. Then other voices added to the confusion. I began to wonder why no one called the police. This situation clearly headed for physical violence. Louder and louder and louder and later and later. Foul-mouthed, angry, mean-spirited, hateful and wrong, the dysfunctional family waged a war of words. And finally, there it was...the automatic weapon. Bang. Bang. Bang. Terrible screaming and wailing. And after a while, quiet. I didn't even get up to look, didn't even look toward the window blinds to see if police car lights flashed in the dark out there. My only feeling about it was this; next time I wish the shooter would get started earlier in the festivities.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Deliberate Speed
I read that at the Steinway Piano Company, changes are made no more frequently than once in forty-seven years. That's keeping a cool head. It's also pretty much the speed at which I'm fixing up this glorified doghouse. I'm grateful for my house. However, I'm under no illusions re. it's fitness for human habitation. I've been in better insulated, more carefully finished, much fancier barns. This house is in terrible condition, needs a lot of work of almost every kind.
I'm following the Steinway model in my approach to home improvement, though. Once in a long while, and if the condition is a full-boil emergency, I do a little bit of something. This policy applies to work on both the building and its contents.
Example. Before I moved from Michigan, a charity came through my Michigan residence and took everything they might be able to use. I gave them a couple of sewing machines, boxes or fabric, towels, all kinds of bedding, dishes, pots and pans, kitchen utensils or all kinds, furniture... Apparently I also told them to take all my flatware except for a handful of spoons, two knives, and three forks. That's what I've had to work with since moving in here. All fall, winter, and spring. Now I have dining room chairs, so maybe I'll work up the energy to invite people here for a meal...oops! not enough knives, forks, and spoons. Anyone but me would have taken care of this almost a year ago. Anyone but me and the Steinway Company, that is.
A couple of weeks ago Lydia and I spent most of a day shopping for flatware..without result. I didn't want to pay much, but I did want solid, serviceable stainless steel. Finally I found a set for six dollars. Lydia yelled, "Put that back. That stuff is just ridiculous." It was all so skinny and pitiful that although it was metal, it felt like plastic picnicware. Guess I was being too cheap.
Well. A couple of days ago we were in Target and to my surprise, they stock a great variety of really nice stainless ware. At reasonable prices. So I bought a five-piece service for eight.
The score for recent improvements stands as follows; flatware, leather dining room chairs, one 5'-tall suit of armor standing in my upstairs bathroom holding the roll of toilet paper. For me, this cuts a hectic pace.
I've contracted with a man to install ventless gas fireplaces in both of my dangerously antique real fireplaces. He told me that he'll hope to maybe get done by the first of the year. Then another man was supposed to pour a new concrete driveway sometime during last winter...he sends vague excuses from time to time. I need to call the plumber to install a hose outlet on the front of the house. I need the electrician to install more working outlets upstairs. I need to have a builder turn my two little garage doors into one sensible one big enough so I can put the car indoors. I'd like to have a concrete floor poured in the basement. Plenty of projects. Given the speed at which I tackle things like this, however, the house will be a nice, respectable place around the year 2050.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
F Is For Fat
Just now on TV someone cited a new statistic re. health in the USA and we're all shockingly, obscenely, morbidly obese. Fat, folks.
Then another round of statistics...somewhere not far away, out of 400 kids in a local school, 67 are pregnant. Fat and fertile.
More statistics showed that the average American experiences difficulty getting up out of a comfortable chair. Fat, fertile, and feeble.
I must extend props to Dan and Lydia for their excellent counterculture, anti-fat effort. The way I understand it, each day Lydia enters their calorie consumption and their time on task w. various activities into a software thingy Dan produced. This tells whether or not each of them is going to lose weight for that time period, and how much...or whether all is lost and somebody's going to be fatter. Result...Dan looks like Skeletor and Lydia can now get into outfits she wore pre-Sadie.
Great work. I support this. How? Mostly by unselfishly allowing myself to be their designated displaced matter repository. Huh? It's a law of physics. No matter is ever gained or lost. Whatever Dan and Lydia lose, flies over here to 38th Street and attaches itself to me. I, generously, am happy on their behalf. However...they're killing me.
Here's what I think...we Americans need to negotiate this thing with some wretched, tired, poor third world place with too few calories going on. For a fee, they would absorb all our extra lard. They'd chub up, get a little richer, and we'd slim down, get a little poorer
Oh, wait. Even better idea. We inflict fat on terrorist-supporting states in the Middle East, Africa, Asia...all hungry places. They'd become fat, fertile, and feeble. We'd have a chance to recover our edge. If only.......
New weapon, THE PLUMPATRON 3000. Americans get their draft notices and line up at designated locations. "Step into the Plumpatron, Ma'am. Did you bring your skinny clothes with you? Good." A minute later, a newly slim american steps out of the machine, puts on her 10-sizes-smaller clothes and returns to work. Meanwhile a Palestinian bomber somewhere on the other side of the world suddenly bulges out, popping the waistband on his formfitting bomb vest, feeling like he needs to sit down, blobby, contented, no longer fiery and dangerous. Where is this technology?
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Good
Last night, another in the endless series of marathon grocery store book events, concluded with me reading the first in a series by Alexander McCall Smith. These books take one to Botswana through the eyes of the most unusual heroine for a grocery store book. I read The #1 Ladies Detective Agency and now I want to read the other five books in the series. Just completely delightful. Light and funny, but profound, too. How did these books get past me? I thought I'd read everything.
New Who
In my no-prestige position as the nosiest person on 38th Street, I have been anxious to see the move-in of those new people, the ones who bought the just-constructed house across the street. Wild stories went round and round our little circle. The new people were one gay man. The new people were a big family of white people. The new people were a half-way-house-full of mentally disturbed persons transitioning from an institution...on and on. Then I saw them...I think. It was six people in a small van. Driver was a mountain of a woman both horizontally and vertically. That was a lot of person. In her age bracket was a man who came up about to her armpit. He is one of those people who have had their voice box removed in a cancer operation...and they speak through a tube. An extremely skinny younger woman with a small child appeared next. Then came two teen-aged boys. Then another vehicle pulled in and a large man about in the age bracket of the skinny woman...he hopped out. They all trooped up the steps to the front door and went in. They stayed for about 20 minutes. They came out, got into the van, and left. Finally the man from the extra vehicle came out. He stood looking up and down the street. Here came a truck from a plumbing company. The man and the plumber went back inside. They stayed in there for about half an hour. They came out and the plumber left. The man locked up and he, too, left.
This A.M. a delivery truck arrived at the same time as the large man. He accepted delivery of a washing machine. The truck, left and then returned and unloaded something else...I couldn't see. Then a truck from a company that custom makes leather furniture. They unloaded something into the garage. They left.
As all this happened, I took Porque out for a potty trip. Mr. Jorday came home for lunch and waved hello to me. He got out of his van. The new guy ran across the street yelling as though seeing a dear friend. Mr. Jordan greeted him joyfully. They clasped hands and exchanged loud greetings. The new guy said, "No, It's just me and the boy for now."
Well...progress of a sort.
He Volunteered To Be A Baboon
Nothing is too awful for Benny to try. If he lives to grow up, he will have survived a lot that would kill better-behaved little boys. Yesterday was a good example.
Lydia dropped by early in the A.M., announced that she and the children were on their way to the zoo...did I want to go along? NO. I didn't want to go. Already it was so hot out that had you dropped an egg in midair, it would have cooked prior to hitting the pavement. Besides I had a sack of new stories and planned to spend the day in air-conditioned comfort reading my grocery store books.
I reminded her, though, that I was making dinner for everyone, so she needed to drop by at about 6:00 P.M. Cheery, Bye. Wave, wave. They were off. I went indoors to my cool air and my new books.
Time flew by and soon it was 6:00 P.M. and there were Lydia and the kids on the porch. Lydia was exhausted, looked like she had spent a long, hot day at the zoo. All trooped in and Benny headed like an automaton for the freezer and my supply of ice-cream bars. Lydia was so tired that, knowing she was about to take him home to a dinner he would not eat, she allowed the ice-cream. She slumped onto the sofa and told about the zoo day.
Benny, apparently had been impressed with a new baboon, one with an improbably colorful butt. Approaching its cage, he stared through the bars. Lydia look away. She looked back. Somehow, by twisting his head just right, Benny had managed to get his head between the bars and into the cage. He didn't mind at first, not realizing that he wouldn't be able to get out the same way he'd gotten in. Then he did realize it and was afraid because then the baboon, hearing Benny crying and panicking, headed for him. Baboons have really incredibly, long, sharp teeth. The closer the baboon came, the more Benny panicked.
Lydia, meanwhile tried every which way to get Benny's head back through the bars....while hanging onto Sadie with one hand. Desperation fueled the enterprise and Lydia succeeded.
The day ended happily wih Benny having so much fun running through the eight fountains that soon all children onsite did that, too...it was like a stampeding herd of children rushing around and around through the water again and again. At this point in the story, Benny broke in to tell me, "It was a race, and I won."
Extra Dose Of Sermons
Well, on Sunday, I got my wish and heard two sermons, each of which would have been sufficient. This is my usual Sunday practice.
The first sermon arrives via cable TV. I have actually attended this church...once. That experience will suffice for the rest of my life, I think. Too, too exhausting. The service there just really gets going after a couple of hours and the ongoing decibel level is immense. It's all very emotional and regular attendees seem to handle it cheerfully, dynamically, energetically. I, on the other hand, was absolutely wrecked down to zero by just that one time. Took me about a week to recover. So I'm not going back there in person. However, the TV show is great. It's all just the sermon, which runs for an hour and is ALWAYS, without exception, a masterpiece of religious rhetoric. Richly entertaining, funny, witty, brilliantly original, stern, a hard dose of good sense, touching, inspiring...it is too wonderful to be, as it is, free. I do look forward to it from week to week.
The core of this week's message was two stories; the first, of Elijah and Elisha, one being taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire and leaving a double portion of his power to the other, but also exposing him to harrassment by 50 troublemakers from the School Of The Prophets. The thought, illustrated by this story, was that things always get hot for a person who is trying to do better. You no sooner resolve to clean up your act than all hell breaks loose.
The second story was the one of the three Hebrews thrown into the fiery curnace where they walked around unscathed by the fire and God was visible in there with them. The thought being that when things do go south as a person tries to be right, this is merely the prelude to wonderful supernatural support...you have to be willing to do the right things which will lead to your being thrown into the fire, but once there, God meets you.
Need I say, that I was convinced; by the end of the hour I was fully in the correct frame of mind to do right and to get tossed into the flames if necessary. Then I took a bath and got dressed. Lydia picked me up and drove me, herself, and the kids to Christ And St. Luke's Episcopal Cathedral. There she and the kids disappeared. I went into the sanctuary to have an experience at the entirely opposite end of the religious spectrum from the one earlier on TV.
Now, this place is the essence of gothic cathedral. The ceiling is so high that I can't see it to know if bats cling unside down to the stonework way up there. The pews and kneeling stools are so uncomfortable that they have to predate the United States Constitution. Olde and awful. The organ and music are glorious. The congregation have that onsitpated look found on the faces of citizens embarrassed to discover themselves assembled on a religious occasion. The sermon is a throw of the dice. Last Sunday it was unspeakably idiotic drivel about yin and yang from a man who clearly had no dlue what he was talking about. This Sunday the speaker was a young woman headed for seminary. She's planning to become a priest. Her homily was magnificent, so much so that it surprised one and all...particularly, no doubt, those who remembered the ghastly swill from the week before. As she concluded, I heard murmers of, "Wow!" and other whispered recognition of a good job.
Her text was something about looking to the rock from which you had been quarried...and the idea was to stick with what you have always known to be right.
So there, on a day when I needed to get the elbow, I did receive full measure; two sermons, both of them good. As an unlikely candidate for goodness, I do take a lot of inspiring, but if I don't improve this week, it won't be for want of the word in season.
At the conclusion of the sermon at the episcopal cathedral, the children come into the sanctuary to be with their parents through communion. This means that the mausoleum atmosphere disappears completely as babies cry, children drop books on the floor, prayer stools crash up and down, kids talk out loud and annoy their parents while entertaining everyone else. It was a good day for Benny who behaved with amazing propriety. On the way out of church I asked Lydia how things had gone in the children's service. She said that it had been a good story and Benny behaved. When they lined up to return to the adult service, Benny, not fist in line and mad about it, announced loudly that he needed to punch the little girl at the head of the line...but he hadn't actually resorted to hitting...so it was all good.
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