N.O. Pundit

The Midwest - Part 4

Once a year, dad has a group of men over from the Wesley Willows Assisted Living Community. What fine Christian charity.

Dad pulling a wagonload of fogies off to the woods.

Again, I strove to be of use. For the men I was with, I suppose I was a kid. And being pulled from the Katrina undertow just days before simply added to the thrill. Yeah.

Holding court in the woods.

The woods you see here (and have seen in previous posts) is here today for one reason and one reason only: my great grandmother refused to let the trees be cut down when all the men in the family explained to her in 1942 how beneficial it would be to have five more acres of tillable land.

A simple pleasure along the way.

The simple touches.

After the wagon trip some of the men partook of raspberry picking. Earlier today I alluded to the pleasure and sustenance of work.

Raspberries. Is there anything the can't do!

Lunch!

Yum!

A final indulgence: the tractors!

Farmalls!

I've been biting my bloggy tongue for most of the last several posts. Short and sweet:

Dad has hard work money. He does not have multigenerational family money, nor does he have lottery money. All the beauty, the touches, the tractors, the ability to have high maintenance guests is a result of money. Hard earned, well planned for capital.

If you've been paying attention, this is his childhood home. Never a lack, but also never a luxury. Since the early 1800s, the Greenlees and the Ralstons and the Andrews and McEachrans and the Pickens, and all the rest settled in northern Illinois in towns with the Scottish names of Argyle, Caledonia, Belvidere. Farmers all.

Dad broke from the farming ranks and became a medical doctor. For probably forty five years he broke his back working 70-, 80-, 90-hour weeks providing for his family. When I see him being able to finally give to himself, it gives me great pleasure.

And it does not surprise me in the least that the way he gives to himself is to give to others. I love you dad.

The Midwest - Part 3

Canning.

How many Lake Wobegon soliloquies were devoted to that most Midwestern of enterprises? It's what you do when you have enough vegetables to replace the lost Louisiana gulf coast.

The Beginning of "Ol' Herb's Tomato Tonic".

It must be understood (by me mainly) that canning is a perfectly normal thing to do in the Midwest. It is not normal in New Orleans.

Watching two silver pantomimes get in a fistfight over who will stand still at the corner of Orleans and Bourbon, that's normal.

A New Orleans couple showing their commitment to each other by having their faces permanently tattooed with clown makeup, that's normal.

Go cups. That's normal.

Well, one of my first chores was to be of use during canning day. Follow the fold to see more photodocumentation.

We had two juicers in use, extracting juice from several varietals of tomatoes, peppers, carrots, beets, garlic, onions, radishes, and who knows what else.

Another juicer.

Not only does the juice get simmered, the bottles and lids are sterilized as well.

Boiling and toiling.

Dad.

... 15, 16, 17, - Hey Dad! - ... 1, 2, 3, ...

Mission accomplished. And I helped (yes, a 44 year old man uttering the line from a 70s era cookie baking commercial)!

65!

The Midwest - Part 2

There is a passage in the book The Richest Man In Babylon which speaks of the pleasure of work. My copy is currently gathering mold in New Orleans. A rough paraphrase of this quote might be that man not only derives pleasure from work, but that he is sustained by work.

My dad is sustained by work. It takes on average 3 full days to mow the lawn. There is a little more to it. It takes a day and a half to mow the actual lawn (5+ acres), repeated every week depending on precipitation. It takes a day and a half to mow the lanes (the pathways for the tractors); this only happens 4 or so times a year. The woods also take over a day and are mowed maybe half a dozen times a year.

Mowing the lanes. I'm in the small mower chasing the big mower.

I've also discovered Photostitch in the Canon software supplied with my camera. Cool is the word. Follow the link below to see the woods in panorama mode.

The big mower.

The small mower.

The following shot is actually four shots "stitched" together by software. A couple of clicks and whammo:

Freshly mowed woods.

The Midwest - Part 1

I am not originally from New Orleans (no one is).

The pictures you are about to see is of the farm on which I spent many weekends and summers as a Chicago child. My now 78 year old dad was raised on this farm and has since retired on it, "retired" loosely meaning: work only ten hours a day, six days a weeks, raising produce and beauty for those he cares for.

Dad in the garden. He's only as wide as an ear of Indian Corn!

More pictures and text below the fold:

There is a uniquely Midwestern beauty, different from mountain beauty, or feminine beauty, or fine art beauty. It is honest. It captivates in the sense of bringing peace and not wanting for words.

The Farm

Morning Dew

Red Water Pump

My grandfather was brilliant in his silence. I wrote about him eleven months ago, a paean to a Christian man unmistakenly molded by the honest beauty of the Midwest.

I have more to share, but later. After all, we haven't covered "chores", or "canning", or "the church bazaar" yet.

Yes, I am away from my current home, but it is a pleasure to see my old home again. It is a beautiful place.

Chris Matthews Stuck on Stupid

Radio Blogger has an interview up between Chris Matthews of Hardball and US Rep Peter King. He scores the interview like a prize fight, dividing up the interview into four mp3 clips.

Peter King scores the KO in the fourth round; smelling salts cannot revive Matthews:

Chris, you won't give me a chance to answer the questions. Just because the president doesn't watch you on television, it doesn't mean he's not doing his job. You know, Franklin Roosevelt wasn't hired to listen to radio accounts of D-Day. You're hired to do the job, and the president can do his job without having to listen to Chris Matthews or Andrea Mitchell or Tim Russert, or any of the others. He is doing his job. Now I agree the military should have been brought in sooner, but that was primarily the fault of the local government not being more responsive, and then the president did the best he could. Could he have been there a few hours earlier? Perhaps. But nowhere near the criticism he's getting from you people.

Yeeeeaaaarrrrgghhh!

Nopundit NorthCom: Caledonia, IL

Well, I have been holed up with Dear Old Dad for the last three weeks. I imagine that all around the country Gulf Coast folks are getting reacquainted with friends and family. This is generally good of course, but I also imagine some northern kin are watching the TV for reports of dry ground so they can be sure to pass on the good news to their house guests.

I have not posted a lot in recent days, but I have been watching the news intently. Internet access (both for posting and for plain reading) has been very limited. I have been taking a lot of pictures. I recently got a Canon Powershot SD200 (well before Katrina) and I have been really enoying the hell out of it here at Nopundit Northcom. Caledonia, IL (and dad's farm) is a great reason to take snaps, as I will show in the next several posts.

Up until September 25th, dad had been operating on dialup access, with connection rates not usually greater than 26kbps. Ugh. No chance for DSL. Cellular broadband was quirky and expensive (and not yet here at broadband speeds anyway). Where else to go but satellite!

We ordered with DirecWay only a few days after I arrived (around the 6th), but the installation did not place until the 24th. In the interim, I went out and got a wireless router and wireless cards, and noodled around with them waiting for the dish.

The setup works great. Dad's computer (desktop with PCI wireless card) found the wireless router on the first boot; we can get rid of the second phone line, local timed toll calls, and an ISP dialup account. Plus the speed (download, anyway) is 30+ times faster. Also, my sibs came by with their laptops and they found the network right away as well.

Dad grooves on the notion that the farm house is a hot spot!

The upright gray box with blue lights is the satellite modem. The squat blue-fronted box is the wireless router. One of NIST's atomic clocks is to the left. And all of it sits on the "Gentleman's Gentleman" line of Steelcase modular office furniture.

The Nopundit Northcom bunker. Decorated in farmhouse basement modern.

The wireless antenna on my computer. Even though this technology should not amaze me, it does. I am still amazed that big airplanes can get off the ground as well.

The Goodness of Plain Folk

Real Clear Politics has a "What Went Right?" essay on Katrina. Once again, we see the incredible goodness of regular Americans.

Despite being surrounded by government failures at every level, uniformed and civilian first responders spontaneously organized and saved literally thousands of lives.

Juxtapose this with the ennui of the French when confronted with the Parisian heatwave several years back. The malaise was palpable.

Merde.

Katrina Questions

Being an "affected person", I have received an email which apparently has meandered through several group distro lists. It is a post or article written by a Bill Weiler from Florida. It contains no links to supporting docs, though the original article may have had them. I have read it, and most of it sounds plausible. Click below to read it.

> This is a post from Bill Weiler, freelance journalist, over in Merritt
> Island, FL, who has been researching what went on before the storm hit.
> These are the authors comment - I find them very interesting.
> ........................................................................
> ..
>
>
> Politics over Duty
> I think all of Mayor Nagin's pomp and posturing is going to bite him
> hard in the near future as the lies and distortions of his interviews
> are coming to light.
>
> On Friday night before the storm hit Max Mayfield, of the National
> Hurricane Center, took the unprecedented action of calling Mayor Nagin
> and Governor Blanco personally to plead with them to begin MANDATORY
> evacuation of NO and they said they'd take it under consideration.
> This was after the NOAA buoy 240 miles south had recorded 68' waves
> before it was destroyed.
>
> President Bush spent Friday afternoon and evening in meetings with his
> advisors and administrators drafting all of the paperwork required for a
> state to request federal assistance (and not be in violation of the
> Posse Comitatus Act or having to enact the Insurgency Act). Just before
> midnight Friday evening the President called Governor Blanco and pleaded
> with her to sign the request papers so the federal government and the
> military could legally begin mobilization and call up.
>
> He was told that they didn't think it necessary for the federal
> government to be involved yet. After the President's final call to the
> governor she held meetings with her staff to discuss the political
> ramifications of bringing federal forces. It was decided that if they
> allowed federal assistance it would make it look as if they had failed
> so it was agreed upon that the feds would not be invited in.
>
> Saturday before the storm hit the President again called Gov. Blanco and
> Mayor Nagin requesting they please sign the papers requesting federal
> assistance, that they declare the state an emergency area, and begin
> mandatory evacuation. After a personal plea from the President, Nagin
> agreed to order an evacuation, but it would not be a full mandatory
> evacuation, and the governor still refused to sign the papers requesting
> and authorizing federal action.
>
> In frustration, the President declared the area a national disaster area
> before the state of Louisiana did so he could legally begin some
> advanced preparations. Rumor has it that the President's legal advisers
> were looking into the ramifications of using the Insurgency Act to
> bypass the Constitutional requirement that a state request federal aid
> before the federal government can move into state with troops - but that
> had not been done since 1906 and the Constitutionality of it was called
> into question to use before the disaster.
>
> Throw in that over half the federal aid of the past decade to NO for
> levee construction, maintenance, and repair was diverted to fund a
> marina and support the gambling ships. Toss in the investigation that
> will look into why the emergency preparedness plan submitted to the
> federal government for funding and published on the city's website was
> never implemented and in fact may have been bogus for the purpose of
> gaining additional federal funding as we now learn that the
> organizations identified in the plan were never contacted or
> coordinating into any planning - though the document implies that they
> were.
>
> The suffering people of NO need to be asking some hard questions as do
> we all, but they better start with why Blanco refused to even sign the
> multi-state mutual aid pact activation documents until Wednesday which
> further delayed the legal deployment of National Guard from adjoining
> states. Or, maybe ask why Nagin keeps harping that the President should
> have commandeered 500 Greyhound buses to help him when, according to his
> own emergency plan and documents, he claimed to have over 500 buses at
> his disposal to use between the local school buses and the city
> transportation buses - but he never raised a finger to prepare them or
> activate them.
>
> This is a sad time for all of us to see that a major city has all but
> been destroyed and thousands of people have died with hundreds of
> thousands more suffering, but it's certainly not a time for people to be
> pointing fingers and trying to find a bigger dog to blame for local
> corruption and incompetence.
>
> Pray to God for the survivors that they can start their lives anew as
> fast as possible and we learn from all the mistakes to avoid them in the
> future.
>
> Please pass this on so the World will know another point of view.

Operation Midwest Sunrise

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Final Leg of Evacuation

Dear Friends,

I am finally leaving Greenville, MS to head to the Chicago area for next few (several?) weeks. I will be able to reestablish a more robust Internet and email presence once I am there. Before I leave, I want to thank all of my dear friends who have opened up their homes and their hearts to me and two beloved octogenerian dogs, Rocky and Vito.

Thank you Matt, Julia, Jayne, Jimmy, and Jenny in Galveston, TX, who accepted my call at 1 AM Sunday morning and without hesitation invited me to evacuate there.

Thank you Stanley and Andy who took me in in Greenville.

And thank you to my family in the Chicago area who will keep me for as long as necessary (I am sure my dad would love to keep me up there forever).

I am blessed.

I know that many people lost everything: homes, pets, priceless memories, loved ones. Keep hope.

God bless and keep those who did not make it.

Here is my line in the sand: in a shorter time than anyone can imagine now, New Orleans will be back. It won't ever be what it was. Parts of it will take years to rebound.

But if you want to be a part of the biggest party the world has ever seen, make your reservations for Mardi Gras 2006 now. We will be crying rivers of joy as the floats go by. The French Quarter will be a 21st century frontier town of unimaginable excitement.

I simply will not yield to the forces of nihilism that we currently see on TV. The snipers, arsonists, and looters who feel a fleeting sense of power today will be washed away tomorrow like so many leaves in the gutter. Rock doesn't stand a chance against water.

Let us all pray for and thank the humanitarian and security personnel who are descending upon New Orleans like the angels they are. Mistakes have been made, and more will be made. We are human. Thank you all.

There is only one more thing to say:

Les Bon Temps Roulez

Katrina BB Update

Dear Friends,

The address for the Katrina Bulletin board is www.nopundit.com/bb. I sincerely hope that you find the bb of use in finding loved ones, conditions in your neighborhood, etc.

Some recommendations:

Register with your full name. You can have spaces in your registration ID. A lot of people who may be looking for you but don't know who "catsmeow" is. Reregister if need be.

Be specific in your bb subject line. "Looking for my family" doesn't help as much as "Looking for Gwen and Herbert Smith". People will volunteer information much more readily if you can get them to read your post. Repost if necessary

Good luck, and God bless.

Ken