Rumors and realities

Sources:

Michael Fumento, Katrina and the Price of Panic, Townhall, October 13, 2005
Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2, Induction, 1-12

Disruptions

Sources:

La. Investigates Allegations of Euthanasia at Hospital, WP, October 15, 2005
Mary Foster, New Orleans police struggle with upheaval, AP, October 11, 2005

Stats and reformation

Source:

Blueprints From Cities That Rose From Their Ashes, NYT, October 9, 2005

Blinking

Sources:

For President Under Duress, Body Language Speaks Volumes, WP, October 12, 2005
Joe Klein, The Blink Presidency, Time web exclusive, February 20, 2005

Voodoo

Sources:

Graham Sees 'Revival' for New Orleans, AP, October 4, 2005
Famed New Orleans' tombs survive Katrina's wrath, Reuters, October 7, 2005

Sabbath

Sources:

U.S. rejects Katrina meals donated by Britain, Reuters, October 15, 2005
Gospel of Mark 2: 23-26

The Return

Sources:

New Orleans bar owners say curfew is putting a damper... , AP, October 15, 2005
New Orleans Cafe Du Monde and its beignets are back, Reuters, 19 October 2005

Elephants and Alligators

Sources:

Elephants help clean up New Orleans zoo, AP, October 15, 2005
Katrina makes waves in world of fashion, IHT, September 19, 2005

Avian flu

Sources:

Mike Davis, Playing chicken with avian flu, SFGate, October 16, 2005
Pronchau & Parker, The Waiting Plague [H5N1 / avian flu], Vanity Fair, Nov 2005

Value of life

Which is more depressing: that our kind used others of our kind as human sandbags almost a century ago, or that our kind abandoned others of our kind to their fates in locked cells while, as the researcher from Human Rights Watch described, floodwaters rose toward the ceiling, just this last month?

Sources:

David Remnick, High Water, New Yorker, 26 September 2005
Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters, Human Rights Watch, September 22, 2005

The music

I'm glad that Jim Hoagland tried for this story -- one of the hardest stories in the world to write, because hardship has to have penetrated the writer to the point where the writer's language sings it. Delighted, too, that those bluesy guitar riffs are back in NOLA.

As for the song that will be sung a century from now...

Sources:

Jim Hoagland, A Song of Sorrow -- and Endurance, WP, October 2, 2005
Wolfman brings the blues, and hope, to New Orleans, Reuters, October 1, 2005

Journalists and emotion

Sources:

Molly Ivins, column, September 27, 2005
Jonathan Van Meter, Unanchored [Anderson Cooper], New York, Sept 19, 2005

Grounded and ungrounded

SO much depends on the sacred.

The spooked soldiers are, well, unprepared for the terrain, culturally speaking ; )

Come to that, we can't in fact read their chaplain's mind, and the thoughts the reporter imputes to him may very well be off base -- but the issue of "bringing light" to a city of voodoo and cannibals remains.

How much more grounded is Florida Richardson's declaration that God's will cannot be escaped! We cannot in all likelihood know whether her determination to remain was a successful or a failing strategy... but at the very least, its courage rings true and human.

Sources:

Poor New Orleans Neighborhood Floods Again, AP, 23 September, 2005
New Orlean's Blair Dunce Project at BlogCritics, 24 September, 2005

Watch: the video clip

Replays

Whether it's a second hurricane or an earlier (and ongoing) war, it's all a matter of building and rebuilding. Play it again, Sam!

And that means what, exactly? All around us we see the beginnings of the outlines of a connected world -- and what we most need is some insight into how to understand -- to recognize the patterning in that!

Hint: the pattern we are looking for is a pattern of cascading vulnerabilities...
Sources:

Poor New Orleans Neighborhood Floods Again, AP, 23 September, 2005
Juan Cole, Why we Have to get the Troops Out, Informed Comment, Sept 25, 2005

Red Team for hurricanes

The Red Team's job is to devise the kinds of scenarios which intelligence analysts might miss -- blindsiders, out of the box affairs -- but the quality of pproduct such teams can produce is dependent not only on the brightness and diversity of the team members, but also on the kind of facilitation they receive when meeting. As a celebrated Stanford demonstration shows, the best brainstorming often occurs when inhibitions have been lowered, and it is not uncommon for the first clue to a breakthrough insight is thrown out as a joke, and only when a second participant picks up on it and takes it seriously is it seen for what it is.

The report issued by the DHS is enirely lacking in signs of creativity. There are no quirky hypotheses, nothing one would not expect, nothing not previously present within the box. My question: is this because the neat and relevant details have been sucked out of the presentation during write up? or because there were none?

Either way, it's the outliers among the ideas considered that are of greatest importance -- and leaving them in the final document is crucial, since they may trigger further ideas in other readers... but seemingly we're a long way from understanding real creative thinking as yet.

Robert "Bear" Bryant, one-time deputy director of the FBI, quoted some sound advice he once received:

Don't kill your mavericks. They might save your life someday, and they're the ones that will always have the great ideas. So try to take care of them.

The thing is, not only are your mavericks important -- so are their maverick ideas!

Sources:

John Mintz, Homeland Security Employs Imagination, WP, June 18, 2004
How Terrorists Might Exploit a Hurricane, IAIP, DHS, September 15, 2004

Perspectives

Sources:

Anger at slow response, KLTV, September 3, 2005
KATRINA: Decoding the Language of Race and Class, Tolerance Org, Sept. 19, 2005

Belief Relief?

Two at the intersection of religion and hurricane relief.

Sources:

David L. Kirp, Faith-based disaster, SF Chronicle, September 19, 2005
Naughton and Hosenball, Cash and 'Cat 5' Chaos, Newsweek, September 26, 2005

The ice next time

Sources:

Federal Government Gears Up in Advance of New Storm, NYT, September 20, 2005
Naughton and Hosenball, Cash and 'Cat 5' Chaos, Newsweek, September 26, 2005

Rebuild V: balance

There's nothing wrong with the gold rush, nothing wrong with the cabbage -- that's how we're primed to work -- but how refreshing to read Quindlen's comment, nonetheless, espousing a balance between Joel Garreau's realism and Naomi Klein's ideals (see Rebuild II)...

Sources:

Naughton and Hosenball, Cash and 'Cat 5' Chaos, Newsweek, September 26, 2005
Anna Quindlen, Don't Mess with Mother, Newsweek, September 18, 2005

Human Subtleties

Human beings -- various, extraordinary, impossible to anticipate...

Sources:

J Tervalon, There're Alligators and Snakes in the Water, LA Weekly, Sept 9, 2005
Bobby Bellew, Escape from New Orleans, New York Press, Vol 18 issue 37

Long Snake Moan

These two quotes come from Ventura's superb essay on the voodoo and New Orleans roots of blues, jazz, and rock, which I believe I first read in his column in the LA Weekly, and was then delighted to find in his sadly out-of-print essay collection, Shadow Dancing in the USA

Source:

Michael Ventura's Hear that Long Snake Moan

Lyric impulse

This one isn't directly about New Orleans / Katrina, but touches on a little-mentioned but enormously significant key to our response to disaster... the lyric voice.

Sources:

James Traub, The Statesman [Bono], NYT Magazine, September 18, 2005

Samuel R Delany, Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones.

*

Thanks to Tom Whitmore.

Rebuild IV: lessons

Sources:

FEMA Unpopular In Millvale, KDKA, September 16, 2005
Marc Kaufman, FEMA's City of Anxiety in Florida, WP, September 17, 2005

Ripples

These ripples are seemingly irrelevant, seemingly insignificant, seemingly unimportant -- but they represent the way in which events trigger cascading effects that ripple across systems and disciplines, often in ways that we are unprepared for and blindsided by. Their importance, significance, relevance, lies in the lesson they can each us about the intricately interwoven nature of the world around us, and our corresponding interdependence with matters to which we tend to turn a blind eye.

It is not the online gamers or telecommuters that are the issue here, but our capacity to plan and to control in a world which continually surprises us.

Sources:

Amit R. Paley, Telecommuting Interest Soars, WP, September 14, 2005
Mike Musgrove, Virtual Games Create A Real World Market, WP, Sept 17, 2005

Rebuild III

Sources:

Firms with Bush-Cheney ties clinching Katrina deals, Reuters, 10 September, 2005
Who's in Charge? Karl Rove! WP (quoting NYT), September 15, 2005

Rebuild II

New Orleans DoubleQuotes #50.

Realism vs Idealism?

I don't think so, not any more -- because we're coming to realize that idealism is now a survival value, no longer a luxury.

What we have here are two voices, or rather two choirs, one of which tends to drown out the other... and both of which deserve to be heard and taken into account in the decision-making process. We need a new view of practicality and sustainability, and a corresponding new mode of evaluation in complex decision-making of this kind -- one which views idealism as an inspiration for, not a fanciful distraction from, reality.

Sources:

Joel Garreau, A Sad Truth: Cities Aren't Forever, WP, September 11, 2005
Naomi Klein, Let the People Rebuild New Orleans, The Nation, September 26, 2005

Question: when?

Sources:

Sen. William Frist MD, Tribute to Ambassador Howard Baker, February 17, 2005
Evan Thomas, How Bush Blew It, Newsweek, issue of 19 September, 2005

Being Presidential

Sources:

Evan Thomas, How Bush Blew It, Newsweek, issue of 19 September, 2005
Carl Bernstein, Watergate's Last Chapter, Vanity Fair, October 2005

It's never that simple

Barbara Bush's off-the-cuff remark was something of a gaffe, no doubt – but it's still interesting to catch a glimpse of the complex ways in which a disaster can play out in human lives. There's some truth in Barbara Bush's observation for Keith Conrad, it seems -- but not enough to buy Oscar Jackson's parents a new home...

Sources:

Barbara Bush Calls Evacuees Better Off, NYT, September 7, 2005
Anne Hull, In Rural Texas, Blessings and Culture Shock, WP, September 11, 2005

Gatemouth RIP

Yesterday evening I heard that Gatemouth had died, afer posting an except about him in a DoubleQuote a day or two ago -- and that made me very sad. Not that I knew him, not that I knew his music, but because that brief news clip about the difficulties he was having at 81 with cancer and emphysema, finding refuge in the chaos, had touched me deeply: the artist weathering the storm, perhaps. And now here, two days after his "escape" -- it had caught up with him.

I found that extraordinarily moving, perhaps because he'd passed through the lens of my own workings.

Sources:

[DoubleQuotes] Blues
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown dies at 81, Seattle Times, September 12, 2005

Rebuild I

I am sure this will be the first in a series...

Sources:

Introduction to Galveston Flood of 1900

Bruce Babbitt, Make It an Island, NY Times, September 10, 2005

Blues

Sources:

Keith Spera, Katrina Blues, LA Weekly, Sept 9, 2005
When the Levee Breaks, Memphis Minnie, 1929

Origins

Sources:

Iraq War Threatens Ancient Treasures, National Geographic, March 21, 2003
Harold Meyerson, Government and Floods, LA Weekly, Sept 9, 2005

Navy Pilots

Sources:

Lt General PF Leahy to Land Warfare Conference, 28 October, 2003
Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded, NY Times, Sept 7, 2005

No photos

Damage control by image control...

Sources:

Gary Kamiya, Iraq: The unseen war, Salon, Aug. 23, 2005

Journalist Groups Protest FEMA Ban on Photos of Dead, E&P, Sept 08, 2005

Theodicy III: details

Notice the refinements on the basic theodicy narrative here: this doesn't have to happen... and this is not a judgment, this is a curse...

Sources:

Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans: God's Judgment For Gaza?
Michael H. Brown, Oh New Orleans, shed ye the darkness or face disaster, Sept 2004

Theodicy II: Spectator

Continuing our philosophical education via news media...

Sources:

Walter Ellis, The grim lessons of Katrina, Spectator, September 10, 2001
Edward Rothenstein, Seeking Justice, of Gods or the Politicians, NYT, Sept 8, 2005

Theodicy I: NY Times

Sources:

Edward Rothenstein, Seeking Justice, of Gods or the Politicians, NYT, Sept 8, 2005
Michael H. Brown, Oh New Orleans, shed ye the darkness or face disaster, Sept 2004

Israeli responses

A diversity of religious responses from Israel

Sources:
Shas rabbi: Hurricane is Bush's punishment for pullout support, AP, Sept 7, 2005

Israelis launch aid efforts for Katrina victims, Israel21c, September 04, 2005

Firefighters

Two quotes from the same article -- not unheard of, but unusual around these parts...

Source:

Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA, SL Tribune, 6 September, 2005

Barbed

Sources:

David Brooks, The Storm After the Storm, NYT, September 1, 2005
Barbara Bush Calls Evacuees Better Off, NYT, September 7, 2005

Hands still clasped

And through it all, the innocence of the innocent...

Sources:

David Brooks, The Storm After the Storm, NYT, September 1, 2005
Matt Welch, The Deadly Bigotry of Low Expectations? Reason Online, Sept 6, 2005

Bipartisan

Sources:

Tallying Katrina's toll, Connecticut Post / AP, 5 Sepember, 2005

Storm Of Criticism, CBS News, September 6, 2005

Intelligence

Intelligent? Sometimes one wonders...

Sources:

Tim Grieve, Antiabortion group celebrates Katrina's work, Salon, Sept. 6, 2005
Chris Mooney, Buzzflash interview, Science Becomes Just Another Tool, Sept. 6, 2005

Two Critiques

Sources:

CaliforniaShoes, The Last Time America Lost a City, Daily Kos, September 5, 2005
If the Big One Hits, New Orleans Could Disappear, NYT, August 11, 2002

Potemkin?

Realities, or rumors of realities...

Sources:

ZDF News, quoted in Idealistic Pragmatist, Lost in translation, Sept. 6, 2005
Landrieu Implores President to "Relieve Unmitigated Suffering" September 3, 2005

Humvees

Insurgency seems like overkill for New Orleans, given what we're going through in Iraq, no?

Sources:

Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans, Army Times, September 02, 2005
Army Seeks Boost in Up-armored Humvee Production, ANS, Dec. 11, 2004