"Looting"

We break our exhausted silence for this public service announcement:

When you see clean, coiffed national "news" anchors contorting their makeup-heavy faces into expressions of horror and disgust at all "those looters" in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, pause a moment before you let them get your gut all churned up into self-righteous anger at those bad bad looters.

Pause and think about it for a split second.

From Boing Boing:

The poorest 20% (you can argue with the number -- 10%? 18%? no one knows) of the city was left behind to drown. This was the plan. Forget the sanctimonious bullshit about the bullheaded people who wouldn't leave. The evacuation plan was strictly laissez-faire. It depended on privately owned vehicles, and on having ready cash to fund an evacuation. The planners knew full well that the poor, who in new orleans are overwhelmingly black, wouldn't be able to get out. The resources -- meaning, the political will -- weren't there to get them out.

White per capita income in Orleans parish, 2000 census: $31,971. Black per capita: $11,332. Median *household* income in B.W. Cooper (Calliope) Housing Projects, 2000: $13,263.

From Making Light:

First, I believe it was St. Thomas Aquinas who said that if a man’s family is going hungry, it’s no sin for him to steal a loaf of bread.

Second, anything salvageable the kid finds in a grocery store is something that won’t have to be cleaned up later. Besides, where’s the store where he can make legitimate purchases?

Third, yes, I absolutely agree that looting has to be suppressed. Some people will loot any time they think they can get away with it. Others will loot if they see those first people getting away with it. It’s a behavior that’s guaranteed to snowball (which is why I still say we were at fault for allowing the large-scale looting of Iraq to get started and perpetuate itself, right after the first wave of the invasion). Civil order is important.

Fourth, I have yet to hear one mention, one murmur of a hurricane evacuation plan, that didn’t consist of “everybody gets in their cars and drives somewhere else.” This, in a city which was guaranteed to sooner or later need evacuating, and which had something on the order of 100,000 citizens who didn’t drive cars.

New Orleans kept its light rail system during that period when other cities were going over to an all-highway system. It has streetcars. It’s a walkable city. That’s a mercy to the poor: you can live a poor but decent life, get to your job, do your shopping, without having to support a car. Until, of course, the day comes when any prudent person would get out of town.

I heard the city officials, before the storm hit, explaining that the Superdome would be a shelter for people with medical problems, people with special needs, who weren’t prepared to evacuate the city. Malarkey. It was, as they knew all along, the first last and only refuge for tens of thousands of New Orleans citizens who had no way to leave the city.

Not all of them are in the Superdome, or the other refugee centers; but no matter where they are, the majority of New Orleans’ beleaguered and flooded-out residents who’ve remained are the city’s poor.

That’s not looting. That’s plain old survival.

Really, read all the comments at Making Light, too. I know I keep sending you over there to read what other people have to say, but hey--when smart people have already made the points I was fumbling at inside my brain, why not save some time listening to me stammer and just see what they've said already?

**EDITED TO ADD: Somebody else who gets it.

I had a nice conversation the other night with a college friend I haven't stayed in touch with very well. (Oh, wait, that describes all my college friends.)

She told me a story about one of her high school buddies getting in touch with her through something called myspace.com, and said quite a few of our college acquaintances have accounts at myspace. She convinced me to sign up; I doubt I'll use it much, but maybe I'll be able to reconnect with some long-lost friend that way. I like to try to leave the universe as many openings as possible through which it can work its magic.

Soon after signing up, I received a confirmation email from myspace. It was one of those automatic emails acknowledging my new account. The email listed my account name and password, followed by this line:

"Keep it secret. Keep it safe."

It made me a happy little geek.

Murderer's Accordion

Hey, check it out--Murderer's Accordion made the PI's list of recommended self-released albums! "So Little Left to See" was released this spring right before the band dissolved due to Steven and Donna's move to NYC. Like the article says, though, Steven has promised to return for shows, and I'm told the Tractor Tavern said they could play there anytime he's in town.

You can also buy a song or two off of "So Little Left to See" at the iTunes Music Store. Give it a trial run here first, if you like.

Just Imagine How Much More Deodorant I'd Need

I've lived in Seattle for nine years next month. Periodically we talk about moving back down to Oregon at some unspecified future date; most of my family lives there, and it would be nice to be closer to them. Not that my parents are anywhere near feeble or elderly, but, you know, time flies. Housing prices are certainly far lower in rural Oregon than in our urban area, which is a big plus.

But here's the thing: right now in Seattle it's 84 degrees. I don't want to be any hotter than I feel at this moment. And in my parents' zip code in southern Oregon, weather.com says the current temperature is 94 degrees Fahrenheit. It's more than enough to give me pause. I know I'm a big fat pansy to have reached my heat limit at 84 degrees F, but that's just the way it is. Pass the iced tea, please.

FUH2

All I have for you tonight is more curmudgeonliness. But I can start off on a positive note, with praise for some hard-working janitorial service providers. And really, they don't get enough praise, do they? I mean, have you hugged your janitorial service provider today?

Last Sunday, see, we drove over to Lake Cle Elum to do some fishing. We had to use the facilities, and wandered up to the public restroom above the picnic area. I always approach such structures with great trepidation, but this time I was pleasantly astounded: the campground on the lakeshore had the cleanest public restrooms I've ever seen. Maybe it's just that fewer people are using the facilities since the lake's level has sunk so low? In any case, they were delightfully spotless and odor-free as well. Way to go, Cle Elum facilities cleaners!

Outside the restrooms a sign warned sternly against "mudding" in four-wheel-drive vehicles along the lake. "Don't believe the SUV commercials," it said; "mudding is illegal." I always gripe about those commercials that show jackasses carelessly motoring across meadows and beaches, fucking up the landscape with their stupid SUV's, so I was tickled to see cranky language against such rank idiocy right up on a sign in black and white.

We started moving boxes into the garage of the new place today. We also made the unpleasant discovery that a horde of ants dwells in the kitchen of the new place. I wish I'd seen them earlier so I could have asked our landlady to attend to the issue before we started moving in, but hopefully the ant poison we purchased and set up in strategic locations around the kitchen will take care of the little buggers. We bought some bug bombs as well, just in case we have to resort to more extreme measures, but I hope to find that our initial tactical strikes are efficient enough.

Family-Friendly Friday

It was family-friendly in the sense that I spoke to all four members of my immediate family tonight. There weren't even any family emergencies--I just managed to talk to all of them in a row. I spent about two hours on the phone, and by 9:00 my ear was sweatier than I prefer, but it was worth it. I already talk to my parents about once a week, and to my sister almost that often, but my brother and I don't usually talk to each other except when I go down for a visit. Even then, sometimes I don't get to see him; last Thanksgiving he never showed up at all.

Part of it is that he's just 21 and flaky, and part of it is that he more or less thinks of me as a dangerous heretic. Tonight my sister pointed out a plausible third element in his avoidance, which is that I'm one of the first people in his life to seriously challenge his lifelong assumptions. He and I had a couple of long, serious, argument-heavy discussions a couple of years ago (sparked by his discovery that Mr. Thel and I were, you know, living in sin) which led him to abruptly distance himself from me, and Sister speculated that his shock at finding the stark differences between our faith journeys led to a sort of ego-blow to him.

That makes sense to me, and was my own casual assumption about the distance he's maintained since then, though I hadn't put it so succinctly. The three of us all went to Christian schools and attended a thoroughly conservative, borderline fundamentalist congregation in our hometown. I left for college in 1996, and subsequently had my certainties rattled. My sister married and moved away in 2000, which precipitated her own first major exposure to subcultures and assumptions differing from her own. Brother hasn't yet left our hometown, and we surmise that his beliefs haven't had to face any serious challenges yet; my crazy-ass liberal faith may have really been his first inkling that Christianity isn't a homogenous dish.

I wish that had occurred to me, oh, about two years ago. I might have tried to be a little more diplomatic. On the other hand, Brother was all but accusing me of being the Devil's handmaiden, and I stubbornly kept trying to demonstrate that there are more things on heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophies, and even vast chasms of variance among various Christian sects. But he was still in that state of believing that only his particular set of beliefs reflect the True Faith, and all who disagree are deceived. Naturally, my protestations were just more proof of my waywardness.

Anyway, I didn't take his snit all that seriously (though it did make me a little depressed once or twice when it got really obvious), and talking to him tonight made me shrug it aside even more. The sooner he accepts that people he loves may disagree with him, and accepts that he isn't therefore required to cut them out of his life until they repent and agree with him, the happier he'll be. We chatted for twenty minutes tonight, and it was good. He didn't even try to witness to me.

I hear horror stories of people whose family members truly do cut them off because of their religious differences, and I'm eager to avoid exacerbating that possibility between my brother and me. Keeping those lines of communication open, however casually, can only help that goal.

Movin' to the Music

So the living room and dining room are almost completely packed up, and I started in on the bedroom tonight. It's nice to have this much time to get it all done in, but I'm afraid it's making us lethargic about the whole process. Just like everything else, packing and moving will get done in a rush at the last minute, no doubt.

I'm sure nobody cares to hear the details of an apartment move, but that's really all I have for you today. Unless you care to hear more thrilling tales of the petty things that irritated me at work today, perhaps? I spent about half an hour trying to come up with a polite way to say, "Hey, friend, your sloppy disinterest in doing your job thoroughly is directly responsible for making my job harder."

Really, if you're entering data into a database and you've already got a name entered, is it really all that hard to enter the address while you're there? Because really, all that says to me is that you think you're far more important than me, and that you feel free slacking off because you know I'll be forced to do your work for you. And that's just plain mean.

I don't usually assume other people are mean by default, but half the afternoon wasted correcting someone else's mistakes is enough to make a person's mood a little curmudgeonly.

Speaking of curmudgeons, this morning I was merrily toodling along a side street (speed limit: 30mph) on my way to work when a car came roaring up behind me at an alarming rate of speed. I don't think it's an exaggeration to guess that the driver was barreling down that side street at about 60 miles an hour. Well, that just makes me contrary, so I very obnoxiously stayed just under the speed limit. The impatient driver hovered as close to my bumper as she could until we reached a stop light where I was going straight, and she whipped around me to turn left. As she shot by I looked over with a disapproving frown and was startled to see the unmistakable face of local TV personality Jean Enersen! I don't know what she was in such a big hurry for--isn't she on in the evenings? Anyway, this was at 8:00 a.m., so she would have already been hours late for any morning show she was trying to get to. Hey, Jean--slow down!

While I'm on the topic of slowing down, that's what my brain is doing right now. Hey, tomorrow's Friday and I'm off at noon, and maybe we can start moving into the new place. Heh heh...excellent.

That Librarian Was Probably a Partner in Crime

Last night I dreamt I stood in a library with my wallet in my hand. A librarian asked me to help her move something, and I looked around for a place to put my wallet while I helped her. I couldn't fit it into my pocket, and I didn't have a purse, so I opened it and balanced it on its open edge on the floor, thinking, "Meh, it'll be fine. Nobody steals things in a library."

I went off to help the librarian without giving it a second thought. When I returned, my wallet was still balanced on edge where I'd left it, but my debit card and my credit card were missing. I was furious, and stormed off grumbling indignantly to cancel my cards before the thieving library visitors could put them to any nefarious use.

When I woke up I thought, Gee, could the meaning of that dream be any plainer? Let's see...do I ever do stupid things and then get angry at the rest of the world when the predictably negative results of my own damn actions boomerang around to bedevil my life? Hmmmm....

"Social-service Lifers"

Shorter Nicole Brodeur:

OMIGOD, like, I can't BELIEVE you social service working people dared to get upset at the poorly-chosen wording of my recent article! When I expressed my fears that the King County Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness would be twisted and ruined once the "social-service lifers" get their hands on it, obviously the target of my withering scorn was the people who USE social services, not the ones who work in social services! Because those homeless people are the ones who will definitely ruin the plan. I mean, duh, if they would just get their act toGEther, the plan would be such a success!

I so totally did NOT mean to insult social workers and their ilk, and if you thought I did, well OMFG WTF are you stupid. I can use whatever words I want to use whatever I want, and if you misconstrue it, well shame on you. Especially you, Church Council of Greater Seattle, you stupid stupidheads. I love homeless people. You can tell because I once wrote about one of them for a whole year! And if you didn't take the time to re-read my entire archives (which you can easily access through a quick twenty-seven step registration process at SeattleTimes.com) to glean every word I have ever previously written about social services and homeless people, well I wash my hands of you, but not before I take up half my column sneering at your, like, total jumping of the gun, because it's so much easier to fill space that way. Love ya! -Nicole

Boxes

I picked up a cheap pack of boxes at Office Max this evening, the kind with lids and handles, and packed up all ten of them tonight.

Whew, ten boxes! That seems like a lot!

Er, at least, that's what I thought until I looked around and realized that I had only been packing up books. Ten boxes full of books. How on earth did they all fit into this apartment? And how many more boxes will we need in order to move everything else, when ten full boxes has hardly made a dent?

Oy. I'm going to be dreaming about cardboard containers and newspaper wrapping before this month is up.