Photo by Wyked111
Sunset here on the fault line that could lead to an earthquake any second any day here in the Coast Range of western Oregon. Maybe because of the acreage, the well, the short bike ride or even walk into town, but I feel safe here. Safe as any of us can ever be.
What’s on my mind about the Hurricane Katrina disaster/fiasco:
—Have we lost the ability as a country to feel compassion in our cells, in the tear ducts that flood our eyes? Is it more important to keep people from stealing consumer goods made by sweat shops in Third World countries than to figure out how to save human lives?
—Where do they find all these incompetent people to elevate into jobs to run important things they then can’t figure out, ignore important details about, bungle and don’t know how to run when they are finally put to the test? I remember reading the anthropologist Marvin Harris’s book Why Nothing Works years ago and wondering how this country kept afloat if as much ineptitude as I worked with at Cornell was at the helm of the rest of the businesses in the U.S. Katrina is making obvious that the country doesn’t work. It isn’t working. It won’t work. It can’t.
—The looters have guns because we are a society that loves the gun, worships the gun, refuses to curb our right to bear arms, has spent the good part of the past three years spreading the fear, the battle cry about terrorism. Why wouldn’t desperate folks, hungry, broke, hot, pissed, mad as well, turn to arming themselves and fighting back?
—Isn’t it pretty damn obvious by now—if this were happening to a predominantly white part of the world, with or without Terri Schiavo near death, Bush would have left Crawford ASAP. It’s black, poor, Creole, voodoo, jazz, gay, and artistic folks without the means or desire to evacuate. So sorry suckers, you are expendable.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
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