Nikki Barranger’s Journal
on
Hurricane Katrina
On
Saturday September 10th, after days of hard work interspersed with
boredom and then more hard work, I decided we needed a little Christmas, right
this very minute so we gathered together Howard and Sue Nicholls, doyens of
the History and English Departments at Southeastern, Gail Hood, (one of the
best painters in the south) and her husband Henry who has been killing himself
with insurance claims at his Edward Eaves office and David Benac, a protégé
of Howard in History (Public History – training people to handle and
conserve archives) and together with Carol Darley (my lady friend) and I, we
forgathered for a symposium and dinner at JacMel Inn.
Our
conversation quite naturally turned to the hurricane and other historical
matters ranging over the areas of how New Orleans came to be, and the effect
of all such on the current crisis. Carol is a staunch Bush Republican and the
rest of us (who aren’t) tread carefully around her at moments like these.
And the manner in which the careful tread proceeded was to turn the
conversation somewhat away from the current criticisms raging about the
government’s performance or failure to perform – for these criticisms are
all very much on everyone’s mind – and we tended toward the larger
question of what Truth is and whether it is ever possible to know it, either
objectively or even subjectively. It is interesting that the disciplines
represented round the table approach this epistemological inquiry from the
remarkable diversity of views represented, Gail with the painters’ eye and
hand, Henry with the insurer’s checkbook, two historians (one of them a
specialized archivist), a litterateur and a lawyer, steeped in the formal
rules of evidence. And all of us relatively blind men are here and now facing
the considerable elephant of this hurricane and the necessity of dealing with
it – or in the words of Ram Das: “getting on with it.” And while we’re
at it, wondering just what W’s responsibilities are, now that he has
admitted that he has some.
We
discussed the decision of our State Department to turn away the fleet of Greek
cruise ships who had offered accommodations to displaced New Orleaneans and
the consensus was that this was a dumb thing to do, particularly since the
port has been closed down as a result of the diaspora of workers who have been
dispossessed of their homes; and those port workers are a necessity, if that
grain harvest is to get to the rest of the world. This led me to remark that
this would never have happened if Condoleezza Rice were alive.
But
back to the question of the Truth. We find ourselves in the peculiar position
of being at the heart of a crisis and suddenly deprived of any of our
accustomed sources of information, whether biased by the right or indentured
to the left – which we have all come to take for granted. Carol can’t
listen to Rush Limbaugh. None of us can hear network media coverage either
airborne or cable carried. CNN? Fugetaboutit. No news papers to speak of. We
get bounces of eyewitness reports from New Orleans and the New Orleans
Expatriates (pc objections have been raised to us of the use of the word “refugees,”
a word that seems right on point to me, but what do I know – so let’s
try expatriates instead?) and many of these reports are in conflict with one
another and what little media coverage comes from our transistor and battery
radios. Even creative gossip is slowed to a trickling halt, since our
telephones are practically useless and we spend all day running about from
place to place to see and talk to people – even to set up a dinner
symposium.
Hurricane
Katrina
For
several days before the storm the air was dead calm. The mosquitoes
mysteriously disappeared and the birds were flying in strange criss-cross
directions. Then it was beginning to look like another George type false
alarm. And then on Katrina eve we dined on roast brisket brought by Stella
Masterson, Jeff’s elderly (senior to me by some twelve years) guest. (Jeff
is a good friend who rents my mother’s old studio down the hill from the
main house at Red Bluff.) There were also two bottles of red wine and before
bed, several cocktail hour slugs of Capt. Morgan’s Special Reserve spiced
Rum – strong enough for liniment and good enough to drink. I was riding out
a case of stress induced diverticulitis and went to sleep with half a Percocet
for the pain and a tetracycline chaser. There were a few gusts of wind as we
turned in, but only a few.
By
4 am the power had failed and Carol reports that for no apparent reason the
toilet in the pink bathroom flushed. So she turned off the spigot that
services the tank – not a good move for with the failure of the power, the
pump stopped. Since then I have been toting rain-buckets from the down-spouts
for flush-water and getting drenched in the process each time, so I do the
collecting in my birthday suit. The animals are calm and agitated all at once.
As I write this, Morgan (my white split-eared Manx) is sprawled on the Herman
Miller ottoman trying to sleep, but whenever the roof creaks he jerks to
alertness with eyes wide open and ears laid back.
10am:
The house was breached when the French doors in the dining room flew open and
could not be coaxed to remain closed. At length we forced a Phillips head
screwdriver through the hasp as a pin by way of first aid. I dismembered the
merlot case that had been holding my notes for my novel and used the shards of
wood (with their same nails) for patches. I nailed that puppy shut while Carol
held the doors closed, leaning against them like Sisyphus going up his hill.
All of which just goes to show that merlot is indeed good for something.
For the moment the ice supply is holding strong and while that lasts together
with the scotch and rum, who can stand against us.
11
am: The new tin roof is making some rather alarming noises of fatigue over my
bedroom bath but so far (August 29th) there are no visible signs of
rupture. For breakfast: scones and cowboy coffee made by Stella who is proud
of being a Texan, or was until W was elected.
11:30:
I have been reading The Master by Colm Tóibin. It is more engrossing
than anything by Henry James who is the subject of the book.
Carol
has no storm sense whatever. How could she, having never seen a Betsy or
Camille as I have. For example, she refused to start the dishwasher after
dinner last night and bitched a fit when I begged her to do it, claiming she
would wash them by hand this morning. But try doing that with no electricity
to produce water to fill the sink. And of course no dishwasher engine. She
simply refused to believe me when I tried to describe what sustained gusts of
one hundred twenty-five mile per hour winds would do. (In the event they may
have reached gusts of two hundred.) This morning she wanted to drive the
Mercedes down the hill to visit Jeff and Stella’s dogs who are staying with
him in his apartment. This on a pure whim, until I put my foot down just in
time for a 70 foot pecan tree to come crashing down across the driveway to his
quarters. I used to climb that tree at age 8. This is the first major tree to
go – at least that I know of. (Carol has taken great exception to these
remarks after reading them off the screen over my shoulder and in the interest
of keeping peace I was tempted to delete this section, but I have kept it in
as an illustration of the kind of tiny irritation that grows to something much
larger in the face of crisis exacerbated by much larger irritations, like high
ambient temperature and unbearable humidity. I take this opportunity however
of apologizing publicly in advance, and of praising yet again, her very
welcome energy and ebullience and sense of humor in the face of a very nasty
and interminable situation.)
By
12:30 the phone lines are out to Jeff’s apartment though we still have a
dial tone. No reports (thank God) of any storm surge or levee breach in New
Orleans, though this had been expected yesterday. By 2:00 Larry, my
cardiologist cousin, called to say that there was serious tree damage to his
house on Military Road where he and Sally are holed up. As I talked to him I
could look through the plate glass windows on the bar porch and see that the
beautiful sycamores down the bluff are now splintered off like matches in the
teeth of an angry gambler. Both the FM and TV antennae are downers (as we say
in the world of mad cow disease.)
By
2:30 the wind had died sufficiently for a walkabout and to view what Mr.
Hardcastle would call “the improvements.” The devastation is nearly
complete although the major live oaks are still standing, their foliage much
thinned and the ground beneath them like jungle, covered with that very
foliage. All the water oaks and living pecan trees are gone together with the
major sycamores west of the south porch of the house; they mercifully fell
away (to the west), almost chivalrously. (Ironically, the dead Pecan elder
Ents stood straight and tall through it all.) The water oaks are scattered
about like so many pick-up-sticks. All major driveways are blocked and all
this will have to be cleared before any hope of regaining electricity and
water. The pool is black with pine-straw and the filtration system out for the
foreseeable future; but my prescience in parking both Jeff and Stella’s cars
on the front lawns – where we used to raise watermelons during the war, has
paid off so we are at least mobile, with only minimal sacrifice of a small
part of the azalea hedge near the road to get the cars to the gate. This gives
us access to the distal end of the driveway and with that, the outer world.
But a survey of the highway by Carol (I was unable to negotiate that block and
a half safari trek, formerly lawn but now a tangle of tree-trunks and vines
because of my bum leg) reveals that Folsom Road is so covered with pines that
our access to it will do us very little good for a while.
August
30: Jeff took Stella back to her house in Mandeville and Carol and I were
finally able to get to Carol’s house to check on and feed her cats. Phantom
has disappeared but Fatcat was skulking about the margins of the lawn looking
hungry. This will teach them not to come when called before the next big
storm. The demarque between lawn and woods which used to be quite plain at
Carol’s is now no longer there. The lovely forest is now a prickle of
match-wood pine, most of the trees severed at about the 15 foot level. (These
were one and half to two feet in diameter measured at shoulder level). One
popcorn tree has clipped the back of the house but miraculously it did but
scant damage. The power junction box where electricity enters the house had
been ripped off and lay a mast’s length away on the lawn among a dizzy hill
of bewildered though distinctly angry fire ants. My sure and certain sandal
foot found one of these, and before I could say ouch (to the tenth power), the
little bastards had taken their revenge. My right leg now looks like it
belongs in a leper colony. I think Carol’s cats will have to join us at Red
Bluff or else go feral for a while, but it shouldn’t be too difficult for
them, their pride having been just that before Carol’s advent to the old
farmhouse where they all live.
A
trip to town revealed many trees down but no flooding in Covington other than
Christchurch’s Kindergarten which floods if you spit at noon on a sunny day.
My office appears powerless but sound, water and wind-proof, and otherwise
unhurt, but we were unable to get to my former home on Jahncke Avenue, so
thick were the windfalls on the roadway. Nor could we get as far as Lincoln
and Heather’s house on Vermont St. Hunters’ Bluff was also blocked where
Heather has her breeding stable and jumping school. Lincoln (my son in law)
had his crew of energetic Mexicans busy with the snarling chain-saws (which
have become ubiquitous). They were working on a driveway into my late Aunt
Hyacinth’s old house where the Mexicans now stay. Once they have cut their
way out, I look for other good things to happen to our rights of way as those
Mexicans are an able team. During this trip (made in the “Dolly V”, Jeff’s
tank of a car), Pepper managed to tread on the down button for the back left
window and that couldn’t be raised when coaxed. Carol parked it back on the
northwest lawn and I put myself down for a much needed nap after the exposure
to all that heat and humidity. I find that I enervate very easily as a result
of all this wonder-weather.
On
awakening, we learned that with Jeff’s return, Stella’s car had bogged
down in the makeshift driveway over the azalea bed. That left us with two
purple hearted cars, so we all decided to take a nap – and stock. Good
thinking. By the time I got up again, both car problems had been solved by
Carol’s resourcefulness and she and Jeff had even hewn a path through the
formerly scenic oak walk to the pool; so we can now lug flush-water to the
house – not with ease, but then nobody ever promised us a rose-garden. I
find that one must be triple careful of getting overtired because then you
tend to make mistakes. Dehydration does that in spades, and increases the
speed of the onset of exhaustion. I went into the pool in my clothes and
retrieved the lawn furniture which I had submerged for safe-keeping during the
storm. It was the first bath in how many days now – I forget. We also gave
Pepper a short swim and sudsed him down so that we all smelled fresh and
sweet, like taking the waters in fresh pine bath salts. And cool. I can’t
remember when I have enjoyed the pool more, even though it looks rather like
The Creature’s Black Lagoon. I can’t say Pepper really enjoyed his first
swimming lesson, but he tolerated it like the brave Yorkshire Terrier he was
bred to be. By cocktail time we were high and dry, with clothes parching in
the less than cooperative air. But aided by the late afternoon sunset, we
finished the last of the orange juice and the last of the Captain Morgan’s.
Jeff disappeared and Carol and I feasted on potato salad and grilled lamb
chops from the rapidly thawing freezer. There was also mint jelly for the
chops and habañero laced cheese for the crackers. At hurricane season you
tend to eat well, extremely well. But only briefly. Then its all lunch for the
possums and raccoons.
The
day after the winds die. We have had no phone service since the land line dial
tones went dead at sunset yesterday. Cellphones are useless as their towers
are either down, or their transponders out with the missing electricity. Very
poor planning by Cingular, and extremely irritating, since emergencies like
this are the very reason why, after holding out for years, I finally broke
down and bought one of the damn things. (I was told today that we may expect
the return of Bell South’s land line service on or before 5:oo PM on
December 15th of this year.) Part of the difficulty is also that
the local governments have been rationing out the cell-tower sites for
sinister reasons of their own. On the other hand my solar powered Infomate
transistor radio has been doing yeoman service and we can even occasionally
get the BBC on it via WRKF in Baton Rouge. We also find ourselves without
natural gas, as a tree seems to have fallen on the line where it enters our
neighbors’ property next door to power their huge generator. Who would have
expected a storm to interrupt the flow of natural gas in an underground
pipeline to a ten thousand dollar generator? Boy, are they pissed! For
us, however the loss of cooking gas seems trivial beside the absent water and
light. Unfortunately, even the Infomate carries no news relative to when
restoration of these services is likely and we are now also extremely worried
about gasoline now in short supply as the pumps that bring it up out of the
ground under the Chevron station are not running because of no power. My
little Prius just sips the stuff, but unfortunately it is safely in the garage
and barricaded in behind the wall of trees across the driveway which are
beginning to look increasingly daunting.
Carol
is making noises about wanting to get the hell out and leave, but I ain’t
going – even after the ice gives out. I refuse to leave the animals and
should we bail out who is going to want three very hierarchically minded cats
who do not get along well, even under the discipline of a shrill Yorkie.
Particularly when accompanied by two very dysunlaundered Caucasians with no
wilderness skills to speak of. So I rewarded Pepper with the lamb-chop bones.
He enjoyed them romantically in the candle-light.
Next
day: What the solar powered transistor box did tell us is that after
escaping the first storm-surge yesterday, the 17th street Canal
flood-wall in New Orleans has been breached and flooded a good part of the
downtown. (It was only later that I could visualize just what happened here as
the initial report was that a levee had broken; this turned out to be untrue
– the thing that broke was a concrete wall which takes up less space than a
levee and until now has been thought to be more effective; apparently not!) We
are told that there are whitecaps on Canal Street and that the quarter is in
spate. (This report about the quarter later turned out to be erroneous; it was
one of the few parts of the city untouched by flooding.) There are 20 K souls
refugeeing in the Superdome under a leaking roof and without working toilets
and no potable water and the pumps (designed to evacuate rainwater) have
failed. Truth to tell, there are no flushable toilets in the whole city
because 1) there is no flushwater and 2) no gratefully gaping sewers to
receive the bountiful urban shit, piss, and corruption. Which makes us happy
to be lugging buckets from the pool to the house. (The rainwater barrel had
long since gone dry.) Regarding New Orleans, there is waggish talk of ceding
the whole place to Westwego and Kenner though if it were up to me, I’d opt
for Shreveport where crap is their main menu entree.
The
household animals are behaving extremely well. Pepper and Morgan Whiteney have
always gotten on as chums but Isambard Brunell and Tundifur have never liked
anybody much, including each other, even though they are sisters. In the
present crisis, however, truce seems to have broken out and harmony reigns.
All the cats move with stately tip-toe paces and (once the need for it was
explained to them by me) they have made the great outdoors their litter-box of
preference.
Wildlife:
As the fridges fail the food has been put out for the wild creatures but so
far none have shown up and the household ants (as opposed to the fire variety)
have done in the unfrozen boeuf bourguignonne completely. I Conjecture
that the coon children were bewildered by the wind. The bumble bees certainly
have been and one crawled up my sweat trickling torso as I was taking a whiz
off the back upper deck, as though asking me for directions to Innisfree. The
wasps have been distraught about their loss of their condo under the eves but
even they have not lost their usual coexistent tameness and become aggressive.
Every afternoon about three o’clock a large clumpy ball of them falls from
the cluster where they are trying rather frantically to rebuild. They roll
about on the deck outside the library. (About a week to ten days after the
winds died, my faithful wasp populations, simply picked up and moved away en
masse or perhaps I should say en swarm. I miss them.) The mosquitoes
returned last night after a long absence.
We
have been at pains to bring the hummingbird feeders from Carol’s house and
hang them behind the bar porch where we can keep them filled with sugar-water.
Apparently we also brought her hummingbirds, for they are thick as fleas and
have vicious and jealous fights over the sipping spouts, diving on each other
like Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. And they consume enormous amounts of
their syrup. We have run out of sugar for the mixing of it. It is interesting
that the cats take no interest in this running battle whatever, and may not
perceive the hummers as being birds at all. We, on the other hand find them
fascinating. Cousin Larry has spent years going around the world photographing
the different varieties and we have many of his stunning pictures of them
frozen in what only a thousandth of a second exposure would memorialize as
winged flight.
Curiously
we have seen not a single snake.
Irony:
the storm has brought small unexpected pleasures – and all the more pleasant
for being unanticipated. For example, what strange joy to write these notes by
hand on blue-horse notebook paper of the kind one used in high-school, in the
early morning sunrise at the southeast window of the new library, watching the
sun come up while the rest of the household is still asleep. The calm before
the storm is as nothing compared to the tranquility in the days just after,
for not only is the wind as still as sleeping cats, but all the other small
noises that overlie a daily round of activity have ceased, down to the ticking
of the clocks. And at the end of the day, the pleasure of the starscape is an
experience only dimly remembered from the wartime nights of childhood in the
forties, when all the lights of New Orleans were blacked out to protect the
port from air-raids and submarines. The sky vision is one from Tagore who
wrote:
“In
anger I put out the light in my house
and
your night surprised me with its stars.”
*
* *
Evelyn,
my housekeeper has not been heard from, and I’m beginning to worry about her
and the grandchildren. It’s now 8:30 and the library, situated as it is
under a tin roof is growing unpleasantly warm – sunrise joy or no, so it is
necessary to retire once again to the downstairs bedrooms which remain
tolerably cool through the day if one closes the curtains. And coming down the
stairs who do I meet but Evelyn and her friend Clara and Clara’s son. They’re
not exactly beaming it is true, but they’re there and checking on us,
so the road from their house must have been opened. And very welcome they are.
Carol
took the Dolly-V to her house and discovered much to her joy that stove gas
was flowing, so cooking indoors is once more a possibility. Phantom is back
with Fatcat, reporting for duty at the food station. The water is a trickle,
but the toilets flush. And as long as there’s gas, and even a trickle of
water and Campbell’s soup, nobody hereabouts will starve. After a hot water
punch-bath shower Carol went to return to Red Bluff to find that unknown to
her the car has an automated door lock that had locked the keys inside
Dolly-V, so there she was, clean and frustrated. She hitch-hiked back with
some kind Alexandrians and made it back just after dusk. It seems that
everything we do is like walking through glue. This is particularly bad for
Carol’s patience. I am endlessly grateful, however, for her compulsive
workfulness and nervous energy which has mine beat by a factor of ten.
Next
day. The Mexicans led by Hector have arrived and made half a day’s work of
chopping through the driveway so the cars are freed up. We also managed to
retrieve the Dolly-V with the assistance of AAA and pop-a-lock at great cost,
since nobody is taking plastic – not even AAA. Carol’s water supply is now
at about normal pressure. My former tenant and good friend Bruce Nesbitt is in
even worse shape that we so far as trees across the roads, and I had a major
fight with Carol over whether Hector and the forces of Mexico should try to
liberate her (i.e. Bruce and her sister Michelle) or tidy up the tree
situation at Carol’s. Bruce’s need is without question the more urgent.
The Barker’s Corner Chevron Grocery opened and sold us half a bag of ice so
it was Rum all around, fueling Carol’s appetite for further conflict over
the Mexicans. During all of this we learned that the Lagarde’s new house on
the Gulf Coast had been leveled, adding an element of tragedy to the stew of
emotion over the Mexican situation. This was finally solved by the appearance
of Charlie DeLuca with a chain saw and the tree-on-house problem went away. It’s
fights like this that wear me down to a frazzle. Without all this testosterone
and adrenaline rattling about, the situation would be almost bearable. And all
of this friction is horribly exacerbated by the horrid heat and humidity.
Usually Carol and I get along in near perfect harmony (except for the
politics), and while telling of all this friction puts us in rather a bad
light, it seems rather important that I do tell of it, since it
certainly has implications for the view that must be taken of the poor souls
in New Orleans whose ten-fold violence will appear hereafter. Under such
conditions, folks should not be judged too harshly – or so it seems to me.
If
our battle on the home front weren’t sufficiently disturbing, the news from
abroad is even worse. Reports are now coming in from New Orleans of dead
bodies rotting outside the Morial Convention center and rampant looting –
looting of both the commercial variety as well as from person to person at gun
or knife-point. There are reports that hundreds o New Orleans Policemen have
turned in their badges in frustration and that two have killed themselves.
(One of these, a “Creole of Color” is reported to be Officer Dufilho, a
dear man who acts as spokesman for the Department on television – a regular
and well beloved face on everyone’s screen). About half the Superdome’s
“displaced persons” (as they are now being called) have gone to Houston in
busses but WRKF (the NPR station in Baton Rouge) reports an almost bewildered
ineffectiveness on the part of the Federal authorities to answer Mayor Nagin
and Governor Blanco’s pitiful cries for help. W is quoted (in a sound bite
from his own mouth) to the effect that “nobody expected the levee to give
way.” This I know to be untrue, as any reader of Barry’s book, The Rising
Tide will testify. Whether my own pleas to W ever reached him I don’t
know, but I my little old self was at pains to call the matter of the grave
danger of city flooding to his attention after his first election through his
old chum network with a letter (June 26th 2002) to my old high
school debating partner, Ernest Angelo. Ernest has served as a dedicated (many
term) mayor of Midlands and was one of W’s big double barrels in his rise to
the Governors’ Mansion. It appears that this White House governs by cronyism
and if so, he who lives by that sword, should ought to expect to perish by it.
(Nota bene: That “government by roommate” effect now seems to have
caught up with Mr. Joe Albaugh and Mike Brown at FEMA) Here (in part) is what
I wrote with regard to the generalities of the flood problem on the old boy
network:
Dear
Ernest,
“This
brings me to one more problem that needs Federal attention and immediately.
About eighteen months back New Orleans under it’s now retired Mayor, Marc
Morial, embarked on a scheme to redo the backbone channel of its drainage
program, and the program was well begun, tearing up most of Napoleon Avenue
and the Mid City area, The Corps of Engineers was overseer and possibly major
contractor. You may recall that the city forms a giant saucer between levies
walling out the River on the one hand and the Lake on the other... To make
matters even more grave, the meteorologists tell us that this is likely to be
the year of a major hurricane which could place unprecedented strains on the
already inadequate pumps. If the city were to be flooded, the job of draining
the saucer would be monumental and the estimated loss of life could go above
fifty thousand depending on how well evacuation routes for the people work
(Footnote here in my letter: For the definitive work on the woes of New
Orleans’ drainage see The Rising Tide a truly wonderful read,
informative as well as entertaining although it treats my friend Walker Percy’s
family with something less than kindness. The book deals with the great flood
of the late twenties but the topographical and hydrolical problems are
essentially the same now as they were then, only with more people in the mix.)
I would urge that attention be given the problem at the very highest levels of
the Executive Branch and the most immediate moment possible. As a former
mayor, the problem should be right up your alley.
“W.
has, I am told a warm affection for New Orleans, having spent many happy days
of boozing with his now Chief of Protocol and former Yale roommate, Don
Ensenat (Enso) back in his drinking days. Let us hope he remembers those
halcyon moments. The area most affected by the current demolishment (of the
drainage system as it was then in 2002) and chaos is on Enso’s very
doorstep, or within a pistol shot of it.”
It
is true that in the letter I do not specifically allude to the breakage
of levees, but the fact is patent that the Corps of Engineers has been
pleading for funds against that eventuality since 1927 and that the thrust of
the letter invokes those warnings by implication and the allusion to the Barry
book. And Barry alludes to that threat of breakage at endless length. It is
also a fact that I have no way of knowing whether Ernest ever sent the
suggestions of my letter on to his ole buddy; but if he didn’t, shame on him
– it is just one more instance of why government by roommate may not be the
best method. I think I’ll drop him a postcard and find out.
Furthermore
the absence of our Louisiana National Guard troops in Iraq is compounding the
mayhem of looting in the city. We hear that anyone in uniform is being sniped
at and shot by the looters. The karmic message to W that his prodigal
expenditure of our own home based disciplinary arm in a foreign war for
nonexistent WMD is now responsible for the breakdown of domestic rudimentary
order – would be apparent to a more intelligent leader, but he is busy
setting up photo ops of his helicopter tours, meetings with Greenspan to
strengthen the economy, and the appointment of Clinton and his dad to raise
money for storm relief. That appointment of Clinton is a neat and elegant move
worthy of the genius of Karl Rove (where I’m sure it originated) – for at
one stroke it silences what the Brits would call “the voice of the loyal
opposition” while it makes W look good and “fellowshippy” in a
bi-partisan-reach-out sort of way. This is exactly the moment when that loyal
opposing voice should be yelling itself hoarse about domestic breakdown in a
situation of expectable stress, the testing of that danger as a result of a
prodigality of national manpower resource, the violence to our environment
which appears to exacerbate the global warming that stirs up hurricanes, and
the heedless loss of our southernmost buffer wetland shoreline as a barrier to
utter destruction when the storms arrive. For mark my words – there will be
more of them.
Additionally,
it seems to me that here we have a text-book example of the triumph of Groupthink
that would make Irving Janis jump for joy, another of the hazards I warned of
in an earlier (unquoted) passage in my letter to Ernest.
By
this time I have lost track of what day it is in my notes. I had thought till
yesterday that W’s posturing and compliments to “Brownie” for doing such
a great job at FEMA represented the nadir of political assholiery. Wrong,
wrong, wrong! It has now been eclipsed by Dennis Hastert who distinguished
himself with the helpful suggestion that New Orleans should be bulldozed,
abandoned and raised to an acceptable level above the sea, that such disasters
might be in the future avoided. (While LeBlonde delaTour might with Gallic
insouciance agree, it would seem that this suggestion is a little late in the
coming from our Speaker of the House.) Happily Governor Blanco, usually the
most soft-spoken of lady-like souls, issued a toweringly rage-laden rejoinder
which was firm but distinguished. Had it been me, I would have been a bit more
blunt (and here I censor my original musings for the sake of decency.)
Now
follow a few maxims to aid the aged and infirm in dealing with hurricanes.
They should also be an assist to myself in the future for review every fall:
1)
Do not leave candles or flashlights burning in unoccupied rooms.
2)
Fill all cars with gasoline before the storm leaves Florida, Cuba or Belize.
Also fill all spare gas cans available.
3)
Put cats’ litter-boxes outside as soon as the rain abates and the winds die
to project the suggestion that from now on outdoors will be the lion King’s
bathroom.
4)
Keep hummingbird feeders well stocked: 1/4th sugar to 3/4ths
water..
5)
Re-hydrate yourself even when not thirsty.
6)
Floss and brush teeth before taking the Viagra.
7)
Empty the fridge earlier than you think proper unless your stomach be strong.
8)
The New York Times makes dandy toilet tissue but does not flush well.
Particularly the Book Section.
9)
Test plumbers’ friend for rubber resiliency in late July when the hardware
stores are still open.
10)
Keep Rotorooter snake inside where it will be handy in times of need.
11)
Start dishwasher before the winds rise.
12)
Load the guns before the arrival of marauders.
13)
Explain to the cats that such storms are God’s way of telling us to lose
weight.
14)
Apply Chigger-Rid often and lavishly.
15)
Likewise Lanacane. Though Preparation H will do in a pinch.
16)
Don’t Panic.
17)
Keep an eye on the wasps beneath the eves.
18)
Conserve flushwater.
19)
Reread P.G. Wodehouse. Also his Biography.
20)
If gasoline powered generator is purchased, fill with fuel before sundown.
Also before cocktail time. Do not under any circumstances refuel generator
after the third martini.
21)
Do not chain generator to the wooden deck-beams or aim muffler at air
conditioner intakes.
22)
Place all liquor in freezer August 1.
23)
Make car trips with air conditioning in the hot part of the day when heat
stroke is most likely.
24)
Give money to Salvation Army and Red Cross.
25)
Charge all batteries including Cell Phones, power-drills, Infomate and
Pacemaker.
26)
Clean and oil all firearms after each use.
27)
Try to have enough clean underwear to appear
decent at hospital triage.
28)
Place an order for stock in Husqvarna and
Coleman Corporations; Sell Cingular short.
29)
Lay in the following as necessaries: a)
batteries b) motor-oil for chainsaws c) kleenex d) 1 Husqvarna chainsaw with 6
spare chains e) $1K in medium to small sized bills with traceable serial
numbers f) buy all items referred to in sections 1-28 inclusive) g) one Hybrid
motor car of the Prius variety. h) 1 case merlot in wooden box i) 1 hammer j)
machete k) ax l) sanitizing alco-jel hand-wash against the cholera. m) dry ice
if possible n) enough Citizens’ band radios to keep in touch with all your
folks within a ten mile radius or even larger area if you have the dough. o)
your sense of humor, for it may be, after the event, the only thing you’ve
got left.
.
Sunday,
September 04, 2005
A night of extremely lucid dreaming about being hired to write music and
lyrics for something on Broadway. Pepper stayed by my side and didn’t utter
a peep.
Awakened at Carol’s house where Charlie had sliced through the worst
of the windfall trees. Off to the 11:00 service at Christchurch and found much
to my joy that electricity had returned to my office along with the telephone.
We could if we wished camp out there in peace and comfort avoiding heat
stroke, but returned after a luncheon of leftovers from last night’s dinner
at Tope La in Hammond. Delicious, although credit cards are not being accepted
even at top flight restaurants because of the power outages.
On checking e-mail at the office, the first of the shocking reports
began coming in. I offered sanctuary to anyone in the Jazz and Heritage
Foundation extended family who needed it although nearly everyone had already
escaped to distant parts, some after truly harrowing stories of suffering.
Unfortunately, all and any of them may be out of touch electronically and
unable to get the offer.
We offered the hospitality of our office utilities to the few folks who
came to church but none of them took us up on it. This included
air-conditioning, showers, Scotch and soda as well as telephone and Internet
access. Everyone still seems bewildered, including bumblebees and butterflies.
I was the only one in church with a tie. Still it was a lovely ritual and
Pamela wept freely during her sermon; neither she or John were prepared for
just how bad a Louisiana hurricane can be. Once again and little by little
things get better but normality or anything approaching it is still a long way
off. Gasoline is available after a lengthy wait in line but happily the Prius
with its meager appetite leaves me still with half a tank and can put off such
a wait until tomorrow or later.
Newspapers appeared for the first time today (much abbreviated)
announcing the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist yesterday. As if that wasn’t
enough bad news on the Law front, it appears that all of the early conveyance
records in Orleans Parish have probably perished as a result of sloppy storage
in the basement of City Hall. (Later news indicated that this was probably an
exaggeration, but it is true that a team of freeze drying conservators from
Sweden were turned away at the gates to the city by some overzealous
guardsmen.)
Bad news continues to pour
in of civil unrest in New Orleans. Charmaine Neville was, I understand, raped.
I also understand that she heroically commandeered a bus and drove a lot of
folks to safety. The flooding was mysterious and remains so, although
conflicting reports appear about just what neighborhoods were damaged by
water. Old Metaire was unquestionably under water and we fear for the art
collection of Lois Hawkins. The New Orleans Museum of Art appears to be safe.
Council person Jackie Clarkson has stated that the French Quarter was not as
drowned as we had at first heard, so the Dureau collection may be safe.
Whether George himself is safe is another matter and I am very worried for
both him and Kenneth Holditch who had said he was going to hole up in the
Hotel Monteleone. In light of hindsight this would seem to have proven to be
not the best decision, particularly since he had just had surgery to remove
his gallbladder. I had urged George to ride out the storm at Red Bluff with us
and even offered to drive in and sweep him and Kenneth up but they both
declined.
*
* * *
The
journal in biro ends at this point as there was no time to write for
many days. The work of overseeing recovery commenced and chiefly involved the
busywork of running about and communication because of the Cingular snafu. (Nota
Bene: if anyone in our class is high in the management of Cingular Inc., I
want to talk to them, not simply to vent – I’ve done that here already –
but rather to fix the problem, so please contact me at 985 892 4024 or at
nikkibar@aol.com.) I had resisted the notion of buying a generator as I felt
they were dangerous and difficult to manage with a bad back, but a huge
natural gas driven monster came my way through Rickey, the crew manager for
our cleanup effort and at $7500.00, I snapped it up, to power not only the
main house but the Jeff’s apartment and the pool as well. The pool has
presented a whole constellation of problems since without the operation of its
filtration system, it becomes an incubator for mosquitoes and we are in the
heart of West Nile Virus season. We finally covered the surface with vegetable
oil and God alone knows what chemistry problems this will eventually make once
we can start the filters again, what with the pine straw, the dead larvae and
the oil, but getting power up and running as a disease preventer was a
powerful persuader to the purchase of the Generac.
Then
the task of getting it installed presented itself. It’s about the size of my
office desk and weighs about as much as a Buick engine and we had great
difficulty in placing it and hooking it into the electrical system, with such
mishaps along the way as the following after the third day of wrestling with
the thing:
Rickey:
I got good news and bad news. Whatcha want first?
Me:
God, Rickey, give me the good news!
Rickey:
We found the gas main.
Me:
Terrific! What’s the bad news?
Rickey:
We punctured it with the ditcher.
Two
days later with the main repaired and the gas connected we had fire in the
hole (as they say in the movie making business.) Unfortunately there was no
voltage coming out of the dynamo. This is supposed to be powerful enough to
light up Brooklyn Heights. Eventually however that problem was solved and the
lights came on (even though they quiver and give me a tension headache) and we
all looked forward to the first hot shower since the storm. Then Rickey
returned.
Rickey:
I got good news and bad news.
Me:
The good first, if you please.
Rickey:
We found the water main when we was lookin’ for the gas.
Me: Splendid job. And what is the bad news, oh father of calamities?
Rickey: We punctured it with the ditcher …
So now it is Thursday, September 15, 2005 and by mid-afternoon when the
plumber returns there should be flush-water, bath-water, and even the
baptismal font may be put back into service. Even with the return of power,
however the television reception will not work because the dishes and antennae
are in disarray. (wait, I tell a lie – the Direct TV dish brought in clear
sharp signals, beautiful as the stars of Tagore.) We make haste slowly, and
like blind men eat the elephant one bite at a time.
Afterword:
I
fear this has become overlong and no one will want to read it. It will be a
good lesson to both Henry Cooper and George Berman about asking me for my
journal entries. Don’t get me started talking or I’ll tell you everything
I know.
News is continuing to creep in on the Internet from friends
abroad. There were 500+ plus e-mails in my box when we finally got access to
it – and only about half of it spam. The other half were pleas for “how
are you?” mixed with anger and alarm at what was being reported by TV and
picked up from Brixton to 97th St. One of the most disconcerting
things about the Truth business is that the rest of the country seems to be
getting lurid news pictures of what’s going on, while we’ve now had that
complete TV coverage. It leaves me surprised and breathless. General
vilification of the FEMA folks in New Orleans is becoming even more pervasive
both here among our immediate neighbors as well as from abroad. We hear on the
street that the National Guard had quelled the sniping that was going on in
New Orleans but how reliable that is, is up for grabs. There have been
unsupported murmurs of vigilante groups. Possible? I hope not but fear it may
be so. I think it was Edward R. Murrow who said “In a war, Truth is the
first casualty.” Sadly, I’m afraid this is true of almost any situation of
chaos, hurricanes among them.
There is, however, even amid the chaos, the Truth that one feels in one’s
heart’s core at the first hint or rumor – and I’m afraid that much of
what’s being said is true, most of it of a discouraging nature. I think the
deaths of all those folks in hospitals and nursing homes is true. I feel in my
bones that there was horrendously bad behavior on the part of many of the
young people of New Orleans though I never would have expected it before the
winds rose. And it seems to me that in an effort to cover its collective ass,
the government has and will continue to do great violence to the Truth we
discussed with such joviality at our symposium supper. One thing remains
constant: whether absolute Truth can ever exist, whether in calm or chaos, one
gets a lot closer to it when one listens only to folks who do not start with a
demonstrated willingness to lie.
May
the God of Hurricanes have mercy on us all.
I
end with a lyric composed during an insomniac darkness when stars in a cloudy
sky gave little light:
I
used to love the Autumn in the softness of the fern
when
the sycamores would rustle
in
the green of summers’ burn
and
the aspen leaves would tremble
to
anticipate the turn
Of the seasons in the years before Katrina.
The
autumn meant the summers’ heat
would
turn to winters’ cool,
the
smell of sharpened pencil points
the
closing of the pool,
the
notebooks with blue horses,
the
drawing in of margins with a Coca-Cola rule
the
buying of new Buster Browns ,
the
going back to school
Before
we knew the temper of Katrina.
For the coming of the Autumn
meant beginning something new
Geography
and Algebra and English lessons too
And reading David Copperfield
and reading Ivanhoe
In the falling of the years before Katrina.
The
later on beginnings are more difficult to sort
the
tournaments of badminton,
the
lunches after court
and
later still the tennis games, when Autumn seemed so short
With
the children in the times before Katrina.
Fall
time
Autumn
time
Leaf
time was fun
when
we never feared the turning year
or
worried with the sun
where
it warmed the summer waters where the gulf streams run
and
only moved the thermostat a notch or two to stun
the
heat inside the bedrooms where a meaner
storm
was stirring up to be Katrina.
Autumn
was the season wherein everybody thrived
Autumn
was the season when the brand new cars arrived
and
each a little bigger
and
smokier outside
while
inside them we were breeding a Katrina
a
leaner, meaner, keener, Queen: Katrina.
But
today I fear the Autumn as I fear the summers’ sun
as
it permeates the wavelets
where
the gulf streams run
to
curl a Coriolis to a spiraling of wind
To
come and kiss the countryside: Katrina.
Where
the air is colored differently
without
the sycamore
to
drop the leaves of Autumn in the yard beside the door
that
opens on to nothingness
but
sawdust on the wind
which
is laden with aromas
uglier
than mortal sin
And
everything remembers you, Katrina.
I
wish that I could seize the time
and
make the hours bend
backward
into seasons when the weather was a friend
and
even snowy blizzards were a welcome dividend
of
living in a time before Katrina.
Yours
in haste from:
Covington,
Louisiana
Saturday,
September 17, 2005
©
G. K. Barranger all rights reserved.
1st
publication rights granted
to
Yale Class of 1956.
