High Winds of Frustration

(this is what happens when you ask me about the weather while I'm stirring hurricane frustration in my coffee:)

A little windy, incredibly humid, off&on rainydeluge.
During the blowover, it was so fuckin humid that our hardwood floors were damp.
Didn't realize it until I walked across and saw my footprints in dewdrops.
That was odd.
Otherwise, the weather is sniffin around the skirts of Autumn, and I am jittery with anticipation.

No one's really exhaled yet, watchin Ike and Josephine do their Atlantic buildup.
We've got another month of hurricane season left, y'know.
Got friends staying at the house until they've got power.
Gotta get back to town to start workin as soon as possible, but then
the conditions at home are often pretty unearable.
Weather gets like this, and the termites start swarming,
the palmetto bugs running,
the fleas and mosquitoes laying and hatching in diabolical droves.
Got no electricity, got no air conditioning, gotta leave the doors open...y'know?
There's only so many bugs that bug spray repels.
And without electricity, there's not even a fan runnin to break the turbid air.

Coy says most of the cooks and servers are back at work,
but that the utility folks (dishwashers and the like) were largely shipped out by the state,
and thus,
must wait for the state to ship them back in.
Our friend T is in a shelter in Memphis right now
(after bashfully declining our offer to stay out the storm with us).
He lives in a shelter here, regularly,
so had to leave town without any clothes or toiletries or anything after the shelter
locked down for the storm while he was still at work.
Y'know?
This is a guy who makes obvious what debaucherous losers most 'Merican people really are;
he doesn't drink or smoke, he works hard, he's kind as can be, and truly honorable.
But, he's also poor.
Thus, his few belongings are locked away while he is off working to better his situation.
After helping Coy haul home a truckload of perishable food from the evacuating restaurant,
T is packed onto a school bus for the evacuation, with no recourse.
At the shelter, apparently, he and most other folks are being given things like sauerkraut (& nothin else) for supper.
Yes, at least there's some kinda food available, but really...
We Can Do FAR Better Than That.
He's been calling Coy every day to check in, to make sure he'll still have a job when he gets back (not understanding, I believe, that Coy would sacrifice part of his own meager salary to keep our friend employed. Easy). T was surprised when we told him Mayor Nagin had reopened New Orleans. No one bothered to tell the people in the shelters there, even as late as 10 hours after the fact, with Memphis only 6 hours away by car. All those folks sittin caged and hungry and worried, not having any idea what's happening at home, and the people with access to that information refused to share it. I know why they did it. Y'know? People in power, however great or meager that power may be, are always always freaked the fuck out by the thought of their "charges" gettin riled. Like they're mindless reptilian hydrophobes. Like they're not real people who can and will behave honorably if given the information and the opportunity.
Dirty dirty dirty. Just fuckin dirty.

So, the weather here is lovely.
Nice break from the shinythick dog days right before the storm.

Tell you what, though:
you know how fuckin frustrated I get over injustices, especially against poor folks.
You know how tear.myself.apart Angry.
I am ever more so here.
The obviousness of rich vs. poor,
of corruption on a hundred thousand levels,
of overt racism in the most intricate patterns I have ever seen,
everything everything is so unbelievably unfuckinFAIR!
Especially for those who deserve a break of Fate.

But Here,
Here I have a chance to do something about it.
It might not be much, and it might be everything.
Y'know?

So, thanks for askin after us.
It's actually really cool to know other people in the world are keepin an eye on this magical place.

bashful, maybe.

So, we're still alive.
New Orleans made it past another hurricane with little else but wind damage and mild flooding. Not so the parishes west of here. Not so the fishing communities, populations whose primary means of transportation is boating the waters in which they dwell.

Now the city is opened,
but our people are scattered all over the place,
many unable to get home.
People in faraway shelters,
shipped out of hurricane's path on school and touring buses,
unaware they can return,
at the mercy of state transportation.
Losin money so far away from their jobs,
hopin they still have jobs when they get home.
Without their own means, they are
waiting for the city to bus em back.
Wonderin why this reopened metro has not yet given them a turn to return.
Wonderin, sometimes, if they're gonna get a real turn.
Ever.
People in Mississippi, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Delaware, and on.
We've got a friend staying in Alabama, holed up in a hotel room with 12 other people.
Twelve.
People.
In one hotel room,
for several days.
He's desperate to get the hell outta that situation, but unwilling to come back until he's got electricity for his family's home. Understandably.

People left outta here knowin that, if Hurricane Gustav hit those shoddyass levees, they were gonna lose everything anyway, from food to furniture.
That in mind,
they don't have gennys full of petrol waitin at home;
they don't have emergency food supplies to last until the grocery stores open;
they don't have water stockpiled with which to bathe and hydrate;
and they certainly don't have any goddamned air conditioning to battle the brutally humid, inescapably torrid New Orleans September.

All they've got is a fridge full of noxious stank and, with these weather conditions, likely some sort of insect or vermin outbreak.
Fleas. Roaches. Rats. Y'know:
the regular denizens of the world's waterfronts and subtropic climes.

Fuck. That.

While it was nice to have the town to ourselves for a few days (skatin that longboard down Decatur, dodgin trees and wavin to folks), New Orleans is not itself without its autochthonic denizens. Ain't the same without its heart and breath, without its sacred and profane, its far out ends and its everything but the very middle.

Come home soon, y'all, and stop by my place for a bite to eat if yr hungry.



...Just come home.