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| Sunday, October 23, 2005 |
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The open roll 
Paths
| | I was sure I had some "before" pictures of Cozumel here, but can't find them. Maybe my sister has some I can put up. We were there just a couple weeks ago. |
| | I have lots of "before" pix of Playa del Carmen from a few years ago, but they're on the same dead drive as all other 20,000 pictures I took before July of this year. |
Weapons of Times Reconstruction
| | The New York Times' inability to edit Miss Run Amok is part of a recurrent problem within its editorial agon: a certain inability to distinguish reporting on what is there from interpreting what isn't. |
| | A problem shared by some psychotics. |
Heading for (re)cover
| | Our house is a 2 story on concrete pillars, and we're 1.5 blocks from the water, so I don't think the flooding will be bad that way. The worry will be if windows go, and rain comes in - but we'll see. |
| | Heading inland 8-10 miles, outside of the low lying flood areas, to kim's grandma's house -- complete with nice hurricane shutters, etc. We're not all that worried about personal safety, so much as the inability to have a livable place to come back to. |
| | Best case: we're back home (with power, etc) by Monday evening or Tuesday morning. |
| | Spent a couple of hours putting potentially hurlable outdoor objects out of the way, then attended, along with a whole lot of other people, a showing of Good Night, Good Luck. |
| | He then reminds me about why I enjoyed reading him so much that I'm now mentally kicking myself for letting him slip off my radar: |
| | In our pettifogging era of "bloggers vs. journalists," it has escaped us, what Murrow says at the very opening of the film (to faces who came to praise and bury him) about television used instrumentally "to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us." He is not saying that we need to be better journalists. He is saying that an intricate web of networks, news gatherers, corporate profiteers and advertisers had put the relevance of journalism in question, and television, barely born, had already become a means of subtracting, diverting and deflecting public attention from what could be called, with deadpan absurdity, the Real. |
| | This is different from saying journalists do not have integrity. Or that corporations have allegiance only to capital. Or that the public doesn't care about truth. It's delineating a convergence of money, power, and infantilism clamped in a construct built to withstand hurricane forces. Speak all the truth to power you want: you're competing with Steve Allen, ER, Law and Order, Seinfeld, 24 Hours, The Honeymooners. You cannot escape the syntagm of the medium that relegates news to the status of a rude syncope in the viewer's breastfeeding. TIVO, Comcast, CNN: It's All Suck, All the Time. |
| | As Neo put it so rightly in The Matrix, Whoa. Here's more: |
| | Good Night asserts the part about needing to listen to what Power is saying and doing -- mulling it, giving it the full weight of what it is about. And then deciding, Bill Keller and Pinch Sulzberger take note, whether what is being proposed meets the daily minimum requirement of integrity, intelligence, and honor stipulated by the ideals muttered in the Constitution among other places. |
| | Huge bonus link: Tom's account of what the media didn't see of Punta Gorda after it (along with Tom's house) was wrecked by Hurricane Charlie in 2004. It includes this prophetic explanation of how FEMA had flunked other tests before Katrina: |
| | Others, who should have learned from experience, have not. It was edifying to hear a radio news interview with the head of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who, asked what might happen if one or more additional disasters happened at the same time, encouragingly said his agency was equipped to easily handle several Hurricane Charleys and 911s and more. Thank God for the Media, so we know that Mr. Bush¹s administration is simply bursting with resources, know-how, and ingenuity. |
| | This came as something of a revelation to those who, like me, came to a FEMA center in Port Charlotte early one morning, a few days after the hurricane had left town. Finding the office was not a simple matter. Once there, I found several FEMA people milling about, avoiding eye contact with us, and 15 or so phones, some of which worked. The FEMA agents did not try to take questions or offer information. They simply told us to dial an 800 number. It was 7:30 a.m., and the room was already filling with people who had somehow found out where the FEMA center was located. Apparently in George W. Bush¹s Washington, disasters may only occur after 8 a.m. and prior to 6 p.m. We waited for the emergency experts to arrive at their desks, then we got busy signals for more than an hour, as they handled the first calls, one plodding 25-minute interview at a time. It also seems to be federal policy that victims of disasters come equipped with everything necessary to bureaucracy. There was no water, no porta potties, no pens or paper, although the FEMA interview requires that you be able to take down important information like your case number, etc. After an hour I got through to a FEMA agent, a nice-sounding but somberly legalistic woman who tried to make clear the federal intricacies and limitations of FEMA obligation while taking my info. As I connected, I waved frantically to a FEMA badge to request a pen. It took minutes for him to return — ³it belongs to the black lady over there,² he said, indicating a victim who was talking on another phone. |
| | He also offered constructive advice for "FEMA or a replacement, saner agency". Near as I can tell, nobody listened. |
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