November thoughts

Well, there have been a lot things I have wanted to post over the past 2 months.

Of course, I do hope to eventually post about our trip. It would be great if I could figure out the photo software first. I now have a new expression "England tired" (a type of exhaustion from a day of driving and sighting seeing Roman and Medieval sites, along with much walking.)

Since the end of August...

I survived the Sept. 11th anniversary. [If you don't know me it is hard to explain - I and my immediate family was fine - although many panicked phone calls. But we had a hard time finding out about friends who worked IN or very near the WTC and a friend did die, but not in NYC, but here at the Pentagon. We did not know that when standing in our front yard, looking at the smoke from the Pentagon - 4 miles due north.]

In a horrible way, Hurricane Katrina made it so that here in the D.C. area, people went a little less insane (or at least the gov't was better behaved, as they had too much else to worry about.) They didn't put the anti-aircraft battery along the GW Parkway as was done in previous years. That's a start. I was okay until that Sunday night. Then bad dreams for a week.

And the hurricane meant that the news actually had to be on "news" and not re-inflicting the trauma of that day four years ago.

Of course, one of the worst fallouts from Hurricane Katrina was it became clear that the federal government has no more of a clue than it did in September of 2001. And that is very frightening. After all the yelling and screaming and we are putting in these changes (their phrase "in the post September 11th world") so the government can respond, spending money foolishly on thousands of projects, color coded threat levels, it is obvious that they have no idea of what to do in a disaster.

But certainly the worst fallout from Hurricane Katrina is that the U.S. can not take care of its own citizens. No, I am not talking about paying for people to stay at hotels for six months afterwards. [which I am okay with.] I am talking about actually SAVING people. This was not like the tsunami. They had warning about the hurricane. We will never know exactly how many people died because of neglect just prior to, during, and after the hurricane.

We know from U.S. Census data (taken every 10 years) how many people live below the poverty line in New Orleans (or any given area.)

For those without a clue, living below the poverty line means

- you probably don't own a car
- if you do own a car, it isn't reliable
- you have no safety net, no "mad" money, no credit card that you can just charge a bus or plane ticket to and get out of harm's way or for you to stay in hotel away from the flood plain
- you frequently do not have medical insurance or homeowner's or rental insurance. Everything you own is in your space. If it is gone you have nothing. And if you have medical problems, you may not be physically able to leave or may not have any extra supplies of medicine.

The rapper Kanye West was wrong. It isn't that Bush doesn't care about black people - it's that he doesn't care about any people who don't have money. In New Orleans that meant the majority of those people were African-American. But it also included people who were European-American, Hispanic-American and Asian-American. We do not blip on his radar.

Remember, we are talking about wealthy, conservative Republicans who think that middle class includes people who earn $200,000 a year!!!!

What else has happened?

October was busy with the semester in full swing. We have a new textbook for the introductory course which I love and hate by turns. I missed my college's 20th anniversary reunion because I (along with the spousal unit) had the cold from heck which was making its way thru the Washington, D.C. area.

But more importantly, there was plenty of political activity for the Governor's race (plus Lt. Governor, Attorney General and House of Delegates races.)

In November, we had a victory, a loss, and a victory which is waiting for the recount (the difference in the Attorney General race is under 410 votes. NEVER let anyone tell you that voting doesn't count. It does!!!!)

Then comes the sober holiday: Veteran's Day. It is also known as Armistice Day.

It is all the more sobering now. Here is the poem I wished to post for Veteran's Day.

It is Eleanor Roosevelt's Wartime Prayer.

Dear Lord,

Lest I continue
My complacent way,
Help me to remember that somewhere,
Somehow out there
A man died for me today.
As long as there be war,
I then must
Ask and answer
Am I worth dying for?

From The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers at George Washington University.

Wow.


Until the next time we met....

The geek