perfidy

While I'm making fun of the editorialists at the Boston Globe (see below), I might as well bang on the piece by Ross Gelbspan (a rental, not a staff member of the paper) earlier in the week, informing me, among other things, of Katrina's real name:

THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.

Now, I know - the two foot snowfall in Los Angeles has been thoroughly debunked, for the simple fact it didn't happen, and Gelbspan's article is full of inaccuracies, not least of which is that, you know, actual meteorologists think he's blowing bubbles here. There's nothing out of the ordinary about the cycles of hurricanes in recent years, and while that doesn't diminish the pain felt by the Gulf Coast victims of Katrina, it does invalidate hurricane season as the jumping off point for another slobber-fest about global warming. Perhaps more important, it gives me a reason to cite an interesting article in today's UK Telegraph on the matter.

I'm a global warming skeptic, relative both to the importance of the small changes alleged to have occurred over the past couple centuries and to the asserted causes. You see, I remember only too well the claims of last century that we were heading for a new Ice Age. And, heck, I've even seen stories about global warming being caused by the sun, for cripes' sake, and I don't want to hear that this, too, is within Bush's purview.

As to causes, and the blame for their existence, it's probably not helpful to Mr. Gelbspan's already weak case to find, all gathered up in one place, the purported cause for a significant fraction of all global warming:

Burning peat bogs set alight by rainforest clearance in Indonesia are releasing up to a seventh of the world's total fossil fuel emissions in a single year, the geographers' conference heard yesterday.

It would be a lot easier to take the alarmists on this and other matters more seriously if they did their homework. From the Taranto column linked above, Gelbspan gets tweaked pretty hard by a reader, excerpted here for anyone who doesn't care to go read the entire piece, even though you should:

(from reader Eric Free of Oceanside, Colo.)
You are way too cynical and know-nothing in your mockery of RFK2 et al. The flood in Genesis was caused by Global Warming. So was the Johnstown Flood. So was Curt Flood. So were the Ten Plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea.

The Chicago Fire of 1871 was caused by Global Warming. So was the Panic of 1873. So was the Panic of 1837. The bubonic plague too was caused by Global Warming (how could you forget this?). So was the fall of Constantinople (note the parallel with the war in Iraq). And the Red Chinese onslaught across the Yalu River in the Korean War was caused by Global Warming. So was the Normandy Invasion in World War II. So was the Norman Invasion of 1066. And the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and Haley's Comet. And for that matter the Hale-Bopp Comet.

The title weather in "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" was clearly caused by Global Warming. So was the pink snow in "The Cat in the Hat." So was Andersonville Prison during the Civil War. So was the entire Civil War. So was the Amityville Horror. So was the Dunwich Horror. So was the failure of the Colorado Rockies to make it to the World Series every single year that they've been a Major League franchise. So was the failure of any of the three "Matrix" movies starring Keanu Reeves to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.

AND GEORGE W'S ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY IN 2000 WAS CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING!!! (Why do you think he opposes an end to it, after all?)

Lack of homework + alarmism = not being taken at all seriously. But then, if folks like Gelbspan did their homework, while they might still hold the same opinions, in very few cases would they remain alarmists.

And that don't sell newspapers, now do it?

Anyone with pretense to staying current on the news of the day is going to trip over a lot of tripe, and most tripe isn't worth commentary.

Important ideas & issues, discussed among adults? Sure, I'll opine on those, whether I agree or not with the idea's originator. And sometimes, I'll even become convinced I was wrong. Goofy ideas? Not generally worth the bother of comment, because they're spun out with enough centrifugal force that nothing I can say or do will change the spin for those who encounter the idea after me.

However, I was reminded, via an opinion piece in the Friday Boston Globe, that there's a level of goofy that is worth, nay, demands commentary, even if only for my own sanity.

In the piece, one Derrick Z. Jackson of the Globe fulminates about the looting that's the result of Hurricane Katrina. I was initially prepared to ignore it, because we've seen the "looters", good and bad, in many repeats on the news over the past week, and I didn't care to listen to yet another complaint about how so many African Americans, yet so few persons of pallor, had been shown treating plasma TVs and Nike shoes as base necessities of life. Feh. They'll sort it out amongst themselves, I figure, and no amount of concern on my part will change it. I'd much prefer that time be spent on medicating, housing, clothing, and feeding the victims.

But then I read on, and he's not talking about the good, the bad, and the ugly of New Orleans.

PRESIDENT BUSH yesterday told ABC-TV, ''there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud."

Zero tolerance is meaningless when the White House lets the biggest looters of Hurricane Katrina walk off with billions of dollars.

He's talking about the oil companies, those rotten bastards!

In the midst of this charity, big oil looted the nation. The pumps instantly shot past $3 a gallon, with $4 a gallon well in sight.

That couldn't have had anything to do with the shutdown of roughly 25% of our national refining capacity, or the price of oil, world-wide, rising to $70/barrel, because both of those would just be crazy-talk. So he must have a point, right?

If Bush really meant what he said, he would call for a freeze or cap on gasoline prices, especially in the regions affected most dramatically by Katrina. He would challenge big oil to come up with a much more meaningful contribution to relief efforts.

Insurance companies are expecting up to $25 billion in claims from Katrina. For ExxonMobil, which is headed to $30 billion in profits, to jack up prices at the pump and then only throw $2 million at relief efforts is unconscionable.

Wait a minute, Derrick Z. - I just came back to my senses, and there's a typo in your story. You meant "Carter" where you said "Bush", right? I'm a grizzled-enough veteran of life to remember those days, and they sucked like a Hoover, because the economy did just what economies do when confronted with the bleatings of economic idiots such as yourself who think that prices can be arbitrarily controlled without unintended consequences. Of course they can't, any more than supply can be changed arbitrarily without affecting price.

Price controls never, ever work in the markets for scarce commodities. Ever. And if the government makes it illegal to charge market prices in a market where the non-vertically-integrated producers have only ephemeral control of their raw material costs, then the oil will just go to other markets, such as China, where price is distorted in a complementary manner - gasoline prices are subsidized there, and the people are therefore insensitive to the raw material cost, consuming oil as fast as they can buy the machines required to burn it. Because that's what markets do when you fiddle with them. The act poorly.

Oh, and the bit about ExxonMobil heading for $30 billion in profit this year while the insurance industry is looking at a $25 billion payout for Katrina? Just a coincidence, I'm sure, slipping in that bit about insurance companies, who presumably aren't gouging us on gasoline costs and otherwise have nothing to do with his storyline. But if I didn't know better, Che, I'd think you were sneakily advocating that the oil companies should pay the costs of the damage, rather than those who were actually paid to assume the risk. Word games are funny that way.

My sincere hope is that anyone with at least a high-school quality understanding of basic economics will roundly ignore the maunderings of Mr. Jackson and those in his circle of illiteracy. The alternative is oil shortages and prices that don't come back to earth when market forces say that they should.

And, for the record, for the first time in my personal experience, I paid more than $3.00/gallon for gas on the way home from the office today. My first $50 fill-up in anything smaller than an 18-wheeler, in fact. It pained me at some level, but I understood, and while the ladies at the Diamond Shamrock fell all over themselves trying to explain to me that they weren't just boning me on behalf of their evil corporate masters, I politely asked them to stuff a sock in it, as I already knew that.

Unlike Derrick Z. Jackson, you see, I don't attempt to reshape the observable facts to justify my feelings of victimhood.

Video: Anderson Cooper of CNN loses his shit on Sen. Mary Landrieu. And he's right to do so. Man's been in New Orleans since Tuesday; he's seen some things, and to have a Senator go on his show and pat her colleagues on the back for all the stern attention they are surely paying to the situation seems a little... crass. Thanks to Crooks & Liars for the video hookup.

My first reaction upon hearing that the governer of Louisiana had ordered the National Guard to shoot to kill looters, was "good."

Then I got over myself. James Joyner runs down only a few of the ways in which this is a very, very bad idea: there's a little thing called the Constitution; posse comitatus; the right to trial by jury and the presumption of innocence; and so on. Not to mention the "Jean Valjean" effect, in which it is impossible to tell whether that guy over there is after bread, water, and blood pressure meds for his mother or just a scumbag. One needs helping and the other arguably needs shooting, but since when do the scumbags wear big helpful signs reading "I Need Shooting?"

Civil society exists in order to save us from our worst and most destructive impulses, indeed it exists to channel those impulses where necessary into places where they can do the least harm. I sincerely hope that the Gulf Coast does not descend into Congolese style (or Haitian style, or what have you) anarchy. The Republic is strong, but it's not bulletproof.

The Gulf Coast for the near future is going to be home to the full catalog of human suffering. My esteemed colleague GeekLethal has aptly summed up the feelings of us all directly below as to the dire situation facing the residents of New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulfport, and a hundred other unfortunate locales. But Michelle Catalano has done a great service for us, by cataloging all the good news too. Humanity might be depraved; humanity might be perverse (and this from a secular humanist!); but in the darkest hours the good will out. Go read it, if only to beat back the despair.

I have never been to New Orleans.

It seems I never will.

I am not concerned for the physical structures of the city. The distinctive architecture of a cityscape, of this unique cityscape drenched in history and bourbon, will survive. They almost always do, don’t they, the oldest buildings with the longest memories weather catastrophe in a way that modern homes and mods and pods don’t.

There is a metaphor there, for deeper thinkers than myself to consider: the impermanence of modern creations, built on the same capricious sediments as the old, but lasting only a second. Or a primeval sentiment, the lifetimes of achievement and struggle, erased by a force of nature. I remember Thucydides…or maybe it was Homer? …in the earliest histories of our civilization describing desolation wrought by war as though it were caused by a storm. The most destructive natural force that society of pre-gunpowder, pre-industrial, pre-nuclear seafarers could conceive of was a hurricane.

And so it is again, a prehistoric monster has risen from the sea, storming ashore to rend and break; steal, scratch and kill.

Or we can drop the poetics and just say that Katrina kicked the country square in the balls.

Even though the buildings will stand or fall, and the fallen ones will be rebuilt and the damaged ones repaired, my concern is not for them. Any city is greater than the arrangements of steel and stone that serve as its signature. They’re about people, at their core, not about the Sears Tower or the Empire State Building or every refurbished French Quarter brothel.

And it’s the people I see now that give me pause.

Continual reports of armed gangs roaming, pillaging at will; firefights over both booty and supplies; rescue personnel, helicopters, boats, doctors, and hospitals all coming under fire; hopelessness from those victims trapped between the toxic floodwaters, flowing by high as a house, and the toxic souls of the thugs who prey on them. Even the Superdome, the best-case accommodation for the worst-case scenario, has quickly fallen to a public health nightmare, complete with dysentery and gunfire in the night.

It’s less the people themselves who scare me, though. It’s that they confirm my worst expectations, my deepest beliefs about what would happen if our civilization broke down. In just a matter of days, perhaps 48 hours, New Orleans is what happens. Not Mogadishu, not Ivory Coast, not East Timor or Fallujah. Not them. Us.

And sadly enough, this scenario has come and gone a thousand times in a thousand works of fiction. Roving brigands are a staple of the post-apocalyptic landscape: Jerry Ahern’s The Survivalist; Robert McCammon’s Swan Song; Stephen King’s The Stand; Larry Niven’s Lucifer’s Hammer (which also gave us extensive flooding and a glimpse of coming to grips with an inundated landscape) … and on and on and on, through a deep bench. Film of course has excelled at mirroring our fears of disaster or lawlessness; Mad Max alone did it three times, and there are dozens and dozens more. Even zombie movies seem a tad prescient lately. New Orleans might also suggest what’s to come if someone pops a nuke in a shipping container in Los Angeles or New Jersey or Virginia; see Schreiber and Kunetka's Warday for scaries in that vein.

We are told that it is criminal gangs largely running amok through the city. I am highly skeptical though that MS-13 or the Bywater Crips are up on their eschatological fiction; they’re not following a script, which leads me to believe that there is something deeper, something more fundamentally homo sapiens, that finds delight in making other peoples’ lives hell on Earth. We’ve all seen it before in crises around the world, but maybe there was apart of me that thought our society was above all that.

If I do someday make it to New Orleans, what city will I find? Will it be again the polis that was, or the lobotomized remains?

[wik] (JOHNO SEZ): GL says it right. The entire situation seems absolutely batshit insane in its apocalyptic sweep, just like something out of the novels we nerdy types read to titillate our jones for simulated eschaton. On September 11, 2001, part of my brain could not help but judge the quality of the special effects used to simulate the collapse of the World Trade Center (wow... it's just like the movies!), demonstrating that I was securely in the grip of a merciful sort of shock that insulated me from the full truth of the horror unfolding before my eyes.

And so again. Nobody, no novelist, no hater of the Gulf states, could write a tragedy this ugly, so outrageously terrible in its cartoonish excess. (A note: I felt the same way about the tsunami earlier this year. Some things are just too immense to feel real.) Think about it: if the water doesn't get you, the industrial chemicals will. If the industrial chemicals don't get you, the raw sewage will. If the raw sewage doesn't get you, the giant rats will. If the giant rats don't get you, the nutria will. If the nutria don't get you, the water moccasins will. If the water moccasins don't get you, the alligators will. If the crocodiles don't get you, the floating balls of fire ants will. If the floating balls of fire ants don't get you, the roving bands of armed marauders will. And if you somehow manage to survive all that, you still stand a chance at getting your ass shot by a New Orleans policeman looting your local Wal-Mart.

When Bill Evans Trio bassist Scott LaFaro died in 1961, the shock of losing his close friend and musical soulmate drove Evans into a yearlong spiral of depression. It was only after Chuck Israels came on board take over bass duties that Evans began to return to some semblance of his former self, either personally or musically.

In May 1963, the re-formed Bill Evans Trio (with Israels and new drummer Larry Bunker) settled down for a short stay at the Los Angeles club Shelly's Manne-Hole. The Manne-Hole was, in the 1960s, what the Viper Room was to LA in the 1990s - a hip room owned by an elder statesman and beloved old-time scenester (The Manne Hole by jazz drummer Shelly Manne, and the Viper Room by jewboy drummer Chuck E. Weiss). Fans of Bill Evans usually point to the LaFaro-Paul Motian lineup as the best trio he ever put together, and surely some in the crowd at the Manne-Hole had that pre-judgement in the back of their minds even then, but hey... not so fast.

Anyway, so there's Bill Evans, not long after the death of one of his closest friends and greatest musical collaborators, playing one of the hippest rooms in Los Angeles with a new band that might well suck the big one because it's not Motian and LaFaro up there. And being Bill Evans, what does he do? If it were Monk, he'd probably have turned in a cold and spiky set of musical 'eff yous' and finished the night off demolishing the piano with his bare hands. Miles would have either not shown up or played one note for two hours with his back to the crowd. But that's not Bill Evans' way. At a critical juncture in his career with the weight of his reputation weighing on his shoulders, with a new band and a suitcase load of bad mojo, what does Bill Evans do? He plays even prettier.

Most people, even people who "don't like jazz," know Bill Evans from his work on Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, which album does surely contain some of the finest moments of his career. It is a fair showcase of his style; the refined, delicate, almost fragile-seeming touch, the string-of-pearls single note lines and the floating, extended harmonies derived from French Impressionist composers like Debussy, Ravel and Satie are all abundant. These are the tools with which Bill Evans crafted a career as one of the finest and most sensitive interpreters of jazz on the piano the world has seen. When he wanted to, he could swing and wail, but usually Evans' playing seemed so cerebral, so human, so personal and humane, that even the wildest moments seemed perfectly in hand.

And so The Bill Evans Trio At Shelly's Manne-Hole, destined for reissue soon by Concord Jazz, is a lovely little record. Evans seems to have developed a form of telepathy rather quickly with his new sidemen. Together the three dig into pieces that Evans knew by heart; "'round Midnight" is here, and so is "Stella by Starlight," but the whole set is magic. "Isn't That Romantic" and "All The Things You Are" (a Hammerstein and Kern composition) are practically master classes in how to play sensitive, textured jazz without the need to rise above a mezzo-forte.

Where the original trio were renowned for their ability to get inside a song, the new lineup is somehow even more sensitive and lovely even without the benefit of years spent together. Occasionally the group erupts into what I'd call a "bop moment," but in general At Shelly's Manne-Hole catches the pianist in a contemplative mood and the band magnifying the effect tenfold.

1963 was the same year that Evans recorded his famous album Conversations With Myself, using then-novel multitracking technology to create three-way piano dialogues with himself. Although I enjoy that album, I have always thought it feels a little closed off, stifling even, as if the conversation were for Evans' benefit alone.

Although not as historically significant, The Bill Evans Trio at Shelly's Manne-Hole is a more accessible route into the beautiful mind of Bill Evans at this critical point in his career. Evans' ability to conjure himself into trancelike state of pure introspective creativity makes this album well worth having for any jazz fan, especially fans of Evans who are curious about the merits of his "other" trios.

(This post also appears at blogcritics.org, your connection for news, entertainment, and the latest in thinly argued partisan politics. Though they would disagree with that last bit.)

Is there a greater soul singer than Al Green?

That is mostly a rhetorical question, or more precisely it's not a question at all but rather a Zen koan meant to clear the mind. Of course there is no greater soul singer than Al Green, unless you like them rougher (in which case Otis Redding is your man) or churchier (Solomon Burke is for you) or stranger (in which case Stevie Wonder rings your bell). There is no better soul singer than the smooth, the beautiful, the seductor, The Reverend Al Green.

Arista recently reissued Al Green's first album, Back Up Train, originally recorded in 1967 when the singer was just 21 years old and still billing himself as "Al Greene." Performing a set of songs mostly written by producers Palmer E. James and Curtis Rodgers, Back Up Train is more or less a promising prelude to what would become an unparalleled career as king of smooth soul. None of the songs are particularly weighty, mostly being generic but likeable soul workouts, although the title song and "Stop and Check Myself" (which was co-written by Green) do stand out as choice cuts.

The real interest on Back Up Train is in hearing Al Green's famous voice before he quite figured out how to use it. All the pieces are there, buried under generic Fauxtown arrangements: the moans, the croons, the shouts, growls and hiccups and the bell-clear beautiful tone, everything that Green would eventually ride to the top of the heap. In general the attraction of the album is in hearing Green dig into this fairly forgettable batch of songs and come up with moments of real emotion. Listening to Back Up Train is like reading Einstein's high school physics papers, scanning for hints of the evanescent brilliance that would one day make him immortal.

(This post also appears at blogcritics.org, your connection for entertainment news and general madness.)

Fat Possum recording artist R.L. Burnside died yesterday morning in his hospital bed in Memphis, according to his label.

R.L Burnside was born in Oxford, Mississippi in 1926 and lived most of his life in the hill country above the Delta. He learned to play guitar from a neighbor, and by a great stroke of luck that neighbor was the great Delta Blues musician Mississippi Fred MacDowell. From MacDowell, Burnside inherited that driving, rhythmic, almost rudimentary one-chord style that distinguishes much of the blues from that region.

However, like most people who play the guitar, Burnside kept his day job. He worked as a farmer and a fisherman, occasionally playing local juke joints or recording a side. It was only in the 1980s that his star began to rise as he played a few European festivals. Subsequently signed to the good people at Fat Possum, Burnside spent the rest of his life releasing a series of outstanding albums that updated his ramshackle Delta style with modern production touches.

In 1992, Burnside recorded an album with indie-rock huckster Jon Spencer titled A Ass Pocket Full of Whiskey which effectively married Burnside's blues sound to the Blues Explosion's chaos and noise. This album catapulted him from relative obscurity to (at least) cult status, and with his third album for the Fat Possum label, 1998's Come On In, his career really hit its stride.

Produced by a fleet of young white hipsters including a member of Atari Teenage Riot, Come On In meshed the Delta blues with electronic and dub sounds with surprising results. Burnside's signature heavy-footed style, reminiscent of other Delta players like Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker, works surprisingly well alongside looped drums, snippets of distorted clavinet, and bass-heavy dub production. Although critics differ on the merits of this album, it is one of my all time favorites in any genre. (This is, I admit, partially because my wife is also a huge fan of this record.)

Over the course of his subsequent albums for Fat Possum, Burnside would continue in this vein, alternating down-and-dirty blues with experimental tracks. The two I own, Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down and Well, Well, Well are equally good but very different. Heaven is essentially a Delta blues recording with some electronic production that at times sounds tacked on but for the most part only supports Burnsides' mile-deep songs. Less driving than Come On In, Heaven engages an atmospheric side at times that is unlike any other blues record I have heard.

Well, Well, Well, on the other hand, collects recordings from as far back as 1986 and includes a great cover of the murder ballad "Stagolee" as well as Lightnin' Hopkins' "Mojo Hand" and Howlin Wolf's "How Many More Years." Although arguably a grab bag of odds and ends, the album hangs together nicely thanks to the strength of Burnsides' repetitive, hypnotic slide guitar work and haunted vocals.

In 2003, Fat Possum put together a collection called Early Recordings, a group of solo recordings made in 1967 and '68 when Burnside was farming. A couple of his best songs that would turn up later on his 1990s albums appear here: "Goin' Down South," and "Come On In" in particular. It is fascinating to hear Burnside in his 'natural' element, unsurrounded by a band, drum loops or studio shine: to wit, he sounds exactly the same. Better yet, Early Recordings contains a number of excellent Delta Blues songs that never turned up on his later "official" albums, making it an essential for, well, everyone.

If you are a casual blues fan, but don't know Burnsides' work, I would recommend starting with Come On In or Early Recordings. The latter is a less out-there starting place - if that's your taste - but if you miss out on his experimental stuff you are doing yourself no favors. I also hear very good things about his second Fat Possum album, 1994's Too Bad Jim. A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey is good too, but probably not the best place to start unless you like your Delta Blues with a side of theremin. Also, many songs appear on both Come On In and Ass Pocket, making only one of them (take yr pick!) truly essential for casual shoppers.

Fat Possum deserve a lot of credit for keeping R.L. Burnside's flame burning. They are a great label, dedicated to the artists on their roster to the point of practically parenting them when necessary. In fact, as far as I know, Burnside was able to live off his music income for the last years of his life, a rare blessing especially for an old Delta farmer. Besides Burnside, Fat Possum have revived or started the careers of Junior Kimbrough (whose juke joint is next door to the Burnside residence), Asie Payton, wierdo T-Model Ford, insane wierdo cracker Hasil Adkins, and insane wierdo cracker freakshow Bob Log III, and Akron, Ohio duo The Black Keys, all of whom are worth a listen.

R.L. Burnside was a member of a dying breed of musicians from rural Mississippi who played a music that belonged to an age that fades a bit more every day. That's not to say that he is or was ever a museum piece, but rather he is an emissary from Greil Marcus' "old, weird America," the place where William Faulkner, Johnny Cash, and John Lee Hooker drink together and tell stories.

I hope he is in heaven sitting down.

As I type this, the umpteenth bus has entered my adopted home town of Houston, headed for the Astrodome to drop off refugees plucked from New Orleans' now-fetid Superdome. We'll have something like 25,000 of these unfortunate New Orleans victims before the weekend, along with as-yet uncounted victims from elsewhere to my east. My hope, in common, I'm sure, with that of the city officials from Houston, New Orleans, and the other affected areas, is that the absence of complete natural disaster on the south side of Houston will make the Astrodome a more friendly place of refuge than the Superdome turned out to be, and that we've got enough other housing to provide for the victims' needs.

"Mind-boggling" only begins to describe the devastation along the gulf coast east of Houston. You've seen the same TV shows I've seen, and the pictures of dead bodies, to say nothing of the looters and dreadfully forlorn people who've literally lost everything but their lives and the clothes on their backs are at once heart-rending and overwhelming. We don't know yet how many thousands have died or when the destroyed cities (because it's not just New Orleans, lest we forget) will again be habitable.

I had a call last night from a good friend in Baton Rouge, 80 miles or so northeast of New Orleans, and it seems that the 25,000 heading to the Astrodome are peanuts, relatively speaking. Baton Rouge, a city of 440,000 or so folk, is expecting 500,000 people before the weekend's over. It goes without saying that the infrastructure there is ill suited to a 115% increase in population, but there, I just said it. The ripple effect isn't going to help Baton Rouge or any of the other cities which experience significant influx of desperate homeless folk.

Dr. Mike Crouch, my Baton Rouge correspondent, also informed me of several other interesting bits about the state of things in the Big Easy, some troubling, some less so. Businesses, overall, appear to have been ill-prepared for the catastrophe. Mike's well plugged in to the goings on in the region, and heard repeated anecdotal evidence of untested disaster recovery plans, even though this is "the big one" New Orleans has been scared of for the last century. Many professional services firms are likely to be starting from scratch once this is over. Given the fact the municipal infrastructure is "totaled", a case could be made they were going to start from scratch anyway, but it's hard to overstate the economic ripple impact likely to emanate from this physical disaster, even without reckoning New Orleans itself as a complete write-off for the time being.

Mike also tells me that Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, is putting on a performance worthy of Rudy Giuliani's September 2001 efforts, and that the city couldn't be in better hands, so they've got that going for them. Peggy Noonan informs us that Haley Barbour, Mississippi's governor, is likewise acquitting himself well, and that Kathleen Blanco, Louisiana's governor can still get in the game:

She can turn this around. The waters may have peaked; a comeback will at some point commence. She showed anguish and now she can show fortitude, like a fighter made hungry by pain. Go, Kathleen, your state needs you. People will take their cues from you. Butch up, punch back, wade in. Literally. Be there.

So at least I'm not alone in temporarily being overwhelmed by this disaster, which is only a small relief.

I'll hazard a guess (wild-ass speculation, more like) that ten years from now, the area might have recovered some semblance of its past glory and gaudiness. If we're lucky, that is. The indirectly or less seriously affected areas, such as Baton Rouge, Houston, and any other temporary refuges, will likely end up thinking they've got legitimate complaints. At which point, I hope they just shut up and tough it out, because there's no way, absent new acts of a vengeful or random Mother Nature, the comparison will be apt.

It's that bad.

And the enormity of the disaster is such that, when I think about the ongoing attempts to help, they all seem so initially trivial as to be of almost no ultimate help. Witness this, just in from the club where I work out:

The WestLake Club would like to help support the community and the hurricane refugees displaced in Houston. We have compiled a list of ways the Members and Employee Partners of the WestLake Club can help by donating their time, money, or materials to those in need.

Help pay for Hotel Rooms - Help provide shelter at a local hotel with your monetary donations.
Cash Donation in your desired amount or a check made out to Studio 6, $40 will pay for a family to stay one night
**If every Member would donate $10, what a difference we could make. (Actually a $11,500 difference, to be exact).

Donate Material Items (WestLake will donate these items to the American Red Cross)

Paper goods such as plates and cups; Cleaning supplies, such as bleach, Top Job, Mr. Clean; Bottled water (no glass containers); Single serving snacks such as Pop-Tarts and cereal bars; MREs (Meals Ready to Eat); Sheets, pillows and blankets; Disposable diapers; Baby formula; Toilet paper and wipes; Peanut butter; Personal hygiene products; Clothing; Games and toys; Dog and Cat Food (Donated to the SPCA); Gift Cards for gas, groceries, or Wal-Mart

Volunteer your Time (In the upcoming days, the WestLake Club will have a posting of locations around town)
Volunteer Houston, 281-564-6669
American Red Cross, 800-HELP-NOW
American Red Cross Shelters in Houston, 713-313-5480
Houston Food Bank, 713-223-3700

Donate Blood

I'm struck by the "if only" near the top - if every member at the club donated $10, there'd be enough money to provide one night's housing for less than 300 families. And that pretends the hotel in question even has rooms available. While I know it's not a waste of time, this seems to be a task akin to decomposing Mt. Everest using a nail file.

But the folks of the Gulf Coast, in Houston and elsewhere, as well as the broader nation, will surely surprise me with what they're capable of to help those in need.

Keep a good thought, please, for those who've lost so much. And in the meantime, let's butch up.

[wik] Several addenda, based on later information that might, in some cases, even be true. If I could get hold of Mike Crouch, I'd ask him whether Ray Nagin has just gone insane, or whether he really is the antithesis of Rudy Giuliani, contrary to Mike's original declaration.

First, see this bit from Ray Nagin's radio interview.

And then, have a look at this comment on a post over at Donald Sensing's site, One Hand Clapping.

After you do, if you're anything like me, you'll think less well of Ray Nagin than Mike does. Or used to - he may have changed his mind by now.

Perhaps I'm more credulous than I should be, but I'm utterly unmoved by complaints that the Feds are doing less than they could be doing. They appear to be doing a whole lot more than Nagin, and at least they're not complaining profanely while laying the blame at someone else's doorstep.