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Three years later
Sep. 1st, 2008 06:45 pmBookends:
Three years ago I was all set to spend Labor Day in my favorite city, New Orleans. I still had my vacation money pinned to my bulletin board when Katrina came along and knocked down part of my house. (It spared the bulletin board. Sadly, it was not so kind to my favorite city.) Last week I again had plans to spend Labor Day in New Orleans, having been back twice since Katrina and found a city that couldn't be kept down for long. It hasn't been very many days since some idiot wrote, in response to the news of Gustav bearing down on the Gulf Coast, "It's time to turn the lights out on New Orleans."
How does one say "bullshit" in Cajun-French? 'Cause today I think I can hear echoes of that sentiment echoing over the bayou.
Do I need to say that I didn't, after all, spend my Labor Day in New Orleans? Yeah, I thought not. Instead I decided to roll with the bad times as well as the good, and get to work instead on rebuilding my own vacation house, the one that burned down a year and a half ago. I went to Gatlinburg armed with house plans, met the builder on my (now vacant) lot, and according to him I can have a new house there by Valentine's Day, less than two years after the fire. I raise my glass to New Orleans; nothing can keep us down for long.
But this post isn't just about me, it's about how proud I am, sappy as it sounds, of Louisana and my country. Don't let it be said that we don't learn from hardships. To get to Tennessee I had to drive across Alabama. I saw lots more Louisianaians on the road than I did Alabamians. (My mom got hung up on where they were evacuating all those people *to*. I don't know, but I wonder if anybody suggested to them that they could maybe co-opt those thousands upon thousands of unused FEMA trailers gathering dust in Meridian?) Interestingly enough, not only did I see a very orderly mass exodus from Louisiana, I didn't even see the usual traffic accidents and snarl-ups that I've seen every other Labor Day. Then today, driving back to Mississippi, well, let's just say that I hope that nobody else in the country has a power outage or has a tree fall on their property today, because every power company truck and big orange Asplundh trimmer in the United States is on its way to the Gulf Coast. LOL, good for them. It might be overkill, but it damn sure shows that Katrina taught us all a thing or two. Politics might be giving me a headache, but the response to Gustav has given me a big ol' I-love-my-country smile.
And speaking of trees, er, so, I'm having this log cabin built. Now, granted, I've already got plans to tone the pine interiors!exteriors!furniture! WAY the hell down so I don't start puking up knotholes before I ever set foot in the place. But still, it's a LOG CABIN. So (keeping in mind that Logic is not my middle name, for good reason), WHY am I having issues with my builder's treatment of trees? He's a bit of a maniac -- he proudly showed me his 1 1/2 million dollar "cabin," which has six two-story log columns that he imported from Canada "with the bark and leaves still attached." Okay, dude? Last time I checked the Smokies are friggin' FULL of trees, but anyway. Last night I dreamed I was in an old growth forest in Canada, hugging trees. Now I'm half-tempted to treat the builder like I did both my kids when they had to do their "bug projects" -- they were the only kids in the 4th grade who had to pin already-dead bugs to their project boards, rather than cold-bloodedly murder the poor things. Can one build a log cabin from already-dead trees? Oh, and when I'm in Oregon next month, remind me to hug a few, okay, because that was one of the things on that meme that I meant to do but hadn't.
Now, a poll, just 'cuz.
[Poll #1251994]
Three years ago I was all set to spend Labor Day in my favorite city, New Orleans. I still had my vacation money pinned to my bulletin board when Katrina came along and knocked down part of my house. (It spared the bulletin board. Sadly, it was not so kind to my favorite city.) Last week I again had plans to spend Labor Day in New Orleans, having been back twice since Katrina and found a city that couldn't be kept down for long. It hasn't been very many days since some idiot wrote, in response to the news of Gustav bearing down on the Gulf Coast, "It's time to turn the lights out on New Orleans."
How does one say "bullshit" in Cajun-French? 'Cause today I think I can hear echoes of that sentiment echoing over the bayou.
Do I need to say that I didn't, after all, spend my Labor Day in New Orleans? Yeah, I thought not. Instead I decided to roll with the bad times as well as the good, and get to work instead on rebuilding my own vacation house, the one that burned down a year and a half ago. I went to Gatlinburg armed with house plans, met the builder on my (now vacant) lot, and according to him I can have a new house there by Valentine's Day, less than two years after the fire. I raise my glass to New Orleans; nothing can keep us down for long.
But this post isn't just about me, it's about how proud I am, sappy as it sounds, of Louisana and my country. Don't let it be said that we don't learn from hardships. To get to Tennessee I had to drive across Alabama. I saw lots more Louisianaians on the road than I did Alabamians. (My mom got hung up on where they were evacuating all those people *to*. I don't know, but I wonder if anybody suggested to them that they could maybe co-opt those thousands upon thousands of unused FEMA trailers gathering dust in Meridian?) Interestingly enough, not only did I see a very orderly mass exodus from Louisiana, I didn't even see the usual traffic accidents and snarl-ups that I've seen every other Labor Day. Then today, driving back to Mississippi, well, let's just say that I hope that nobody else in the country has a power outage or has a tree fall on their property today, because every power company truck and big orange Asplundh trimmer in the United States is on its way to the Gulf Coast. LOL, good for them. It might be overkill, but it damn sure shows that Katrina taught us all a thing or two. Politics might be giving me a headache, but the response to Gustav has given me a big ol' I-love-my-country smile.
And speaking of trees, er, so, I'm having this log cabin built. Now, granted, I've already got plans to tone the pine interiors!exteriors!furniture! WAY the hell down so I don't start puking up knotholes before I ever set foot in the place. But still, it's a LOG CABIN. So (keeping in mind that Logic is not my middle name, for good reason), WHY am I having issues with my builder's treatment of trees? He's a bit of a maniac -- he proudly showed me his 1 1/2 million dollar "cabin," which has six two-story log columns that he imported from Canada "with the bark and leaves still attached." Okay, dude? Last time I checked the Smokies are friggin' FULL of trees, but anyway. Last night I dreamed I was in an old growth forest in Canada, hugging trees. Now I'm half-tempted to treat the builder like I did both my kids when they had to do their "bug projects" -- they were the only kids in the 4th grade who had to pin already-dead bugs to their project boards, rather than cold-bloodedly murder the poor things. Can one build a log cabin from already-dead trees? Oh, and when I'm in Oregon next month, remind me to hug a few, okay, because that was one of the things on that meme that I meant to do but hadn't.
Now, a poll, just 'cuz.
[Poll #1251994]
