Sunday, September 30, 2007

Tin Roof Blowdown

I'm angry today. Not Andy Rooney whining about little things such as people talking through movies angry. No it's more like I'd love to take someone by the scruff of the neck and wop them on the ass angry. I'm reading James Lee Burke's latest "The Tin Roof Blowdown". His fictional character, Police Officer from New Iberia, Louisiana Dave Robicheaux, is showing us the aftermath of Katrina from his viewpoint and it isn't pretty. My anger comes from the knowledge that it isn't much better two plus years later.

But from this anger comes a solution to the problem that frustrates me and most people today. It's the old, how come we are spending billions in Iraq trying to build a stable society and New Orleans and our Gulf coast still sits in ruins waiting for the greatest country in the world with a free capitalistic economy to fix it. If I was a citizen of Iraq, I would be questioning the capability of a country that tore my country apart, to reassemble it again, if that country could not take care of it self.

It has become a cliche to say that it is disgraceful that the Gulf Coast is still suffering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. People are getting into that mind set, which I'm sure the current administration was counting on, that nothing can be done about it. Wrong! My suggestion for the solution is entirely doable and I am confident will produce results faster and fairer than any solution Bushwacked can come up with in the few months of his disastrous reign remaining.

What we have to do is reconvene the United States Congress, The Louisiana Legislature and move them along with the President of the United States including his cabinet, Officials of the Louisiana State Government and New Orleans City officials to the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. While we're at it since many of the candidates for president would be stuck there, anyone who wants to be the next president of the United States should volunteer to move there. if they don't go they can't run.

They must live in existing homes and work in existing buildings that have been abandon by the owners. If the owners can be established they must pay them rent comparable to their own residence in their home community. (Can you see the cash flow possibilities?) If they can't find existing homes they must reside in FEMA trailers. As to the public buildings and offices that will need to be built, they must be of a quality that will last 100 years. No prefabs or temporary buildings will be allowed

Our politician legislative guests can not go to the French quarter for meals or entertainment more than once a month. They can not go home, however their families can live with them. In short, they must live, work and recreate in the Ninth Ward until such time that the Gulf Coast has the resources and the wherewith all to recover on their own.

It's one thing to pass bills of intention and it's another to fund them. It's one thing to set aside funds for a project and another to oversee the results of the spending in order to ascertain success based on the intentions of the legislature. What our government has done is what politicians always decry as wasteful and that is throw a bunch of money at this problem. What they got for the investment is little or no results to show for it.

Trust me, if they have to live in the squalor, things will be fixed. The Levees will be built to withstand the eventualities. The schools will be funded in order to provide education. The cops will patrol and the judges will be putting the bad guys in jail.

And as far as business is concerned, it's easy. All contracts for rebuilding would be let to local contractors, who hire local people. All property taxes would be suspended until the property could be proven to fit for use with all utilities and infrastructure restored. (Streets, sewers, water, electrical and gas service)

And don't worry about the prohibition on the French Quarter for politicians and their families, the press, that will be living with this story, will take care of them to start with. The lobbyists will have to move in from Washington and that will kick up profits bon sweet. Than there will be the tourists. Can you imagine the number of people that will pay to see their representatives having to work in that environment. They will have to expand the airport.

Once they get this problem solved, we might want to get them on planes and move them to Iraq. If stability in the middle east is so important maybe having the bulls eye on their backs will help getting to some commonsense solutions to the problems, so they and our soldiers can come home. Look for early abandonment of the we have to stay until Iraq is stable theory

Monday, September 24, 2007

The Fine Art of Conversation

My son confessed to me not long ago that he didn't feel as if he was a conversationalist. "I don't make small talk,"he said. Of course this wasn't news to me, but you see the fallacy. Small talk is the opposite of a conversationalist. Small talk is passing time, filling the silence with noise. We all do it in varying degree's. It seems there is nothing so disquieting as quiet. It's the elevator full of strangers or the shared taxi that make people nervous.

Another nervous situation for most people is the neighborhood party where no one knows anyone of at best very few people. This results in groups of casual acquaintances hanging out trying to sound bubbly and at the same time casting nervous glances at the strays and the unknowns. The strays grab out eagerly for anyone to stand with so they don't appear on the outside.

It's the unusual person who excels in these arenas. I've met a few and I've tried to emulate them with varied degrees of success. They are the ones that can toss the lit conversational grenade into the group and get everyone to comment and often never reveal their thoughts on the subject.

I witnessed a young father at a table of his peers toss this comment into the small talk babble of a lunch table. "Does anyone here think the concept of organized sports for five years old children is a good thing." And then he stepped back out of the center of attention as first one than another comment promoted the degree's of interest in this subject.

I'm totally amazed at how people with this kill can get a conversation that has depth and meaning started in a group of relative strangers. Trust me, mention the fate of the local sports team will get the guys going. If you express and interest in the latest must see evening show you can probably get a rise out of the ladies. But commentary on local politics or the school bonding issue takes skill and nuance.

I remember being at a meeting of a New Comers in my former home in Northern Wisconsin. The folks in this group probably ranged from somewhat liberal to somewhat conservative. An older gentlemen, obviously from the south with his gentle accent asked, what we thought of Newt Gingrich, who at the time had just ascended to the leadership in The House of Representatives. A polite but spirited conversation took up the next hour, spinning off into comments on then President Clinton and other figures of political importance.

Claude, the older gentlemen who asked the kickoff question, was a former newspaper man and true to his profession observed with interest and delight. I got to know Claude fairly well in the next few months, he demonstrated to me that he was no one trick pony by pulling off this gambit many times to great success.

Good conversation to me provides a coupe of things. As in all things, I like to learn something I didn't know before. I think the conversation should have some meaning to everyone involved. And I don't like seeing blood on the floor. We can disagree, but we don't have to be jerks about it.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Time slips through the glass.

If time were unlimited, I could get all I want to get done before...well let's just say before I can't do anything anymore. Of course time isn't everything. The physical ability to perform some tasks is another asset that diminishes with time. I don't have the same dreams for my golf game I once had and walking distances for health reasons is important, but not running.

The clock that bothers me is not so much the one on my wrist but the time lapse my mind tells me has occured. It's been many years since I raced our sailboat. I have three kids that are over forty. Those cuddly little grand kids, I marveled at, it seems like yesterday, are starting school.

I may never get a novel published. It's probable that my blog will never be widely read, but in my heart of hearts, I will be content because I wrote and only mildly disappointed that they are not on reader's shelves.

What I need to do and will never have enough time to do is learn more. I've always
been a scatter brain when it comes to education. I never concentrated enough in one area to be an expert. Instead I wander from this to that realizing that my excitement today will cool, but there will be some unknown in another area that will trigger by curiosity and pull me away from today's must-know. I think you might say that my mind is like the attic of a world traveler, eclectic and yet interesting.

Not only are there remnants of skills there, I've tried oil painting, photography, writing, design, and computer programs of many different kinds. There are thought journeys also. I became somewhat conservative for a few years before I realized the folly in all of that and returned to my liberal roots. I looked at, but did not embrace, atheism, reincarnation, and eastern religions in general. (I still do practice meditation).

After all of the books, films, lectures and classes, I still have not had enough. The only thing that saves my sanity from all of this is that I'm old enough to realize that I never would have had enough time even if I had realized in my youth the value of time.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The Women Who Raised Me

I was privileged to hear Wisconsin Author Michael Perry , Population 465, at an author appearance at Harry W Schwartz Bookstore in Brookfield. Perry is a gifted writer and a magnificent storyteller. He follows the precept that you write about what you know and Michael writes, with love and caring, about his hometown in Western Wisconsin.

He told so many stories worth remembering and repeating, but all of them are from his book, so I would recommend just buying them at you local independent bookstore, or go to his website sneezingcow.com.

What resonated with me most directly was a comment he made when he was talking about the "strong" women in his life. He referred to them as the "women who raised me and continue to raise me". Men don't often admit the debt we owe to the women in our lives and it was particularly timely for me to be reminded of that debt.

My mother passed away this year. I've written about this before, but, as we say, time has passed". I told you that my mother suffered from extreme dementia and was gone from us years ago. The nice little old lady that I visited at the rest home passed away on March 24, 2007. She was loved and beloved by many that knew her right up until the time of her death. She had her detractors and they did not relent nor forgive her even in her death. Unlike me who saw her faults along with her many good traits, they couldn't get past a perception of a mistake or slight even after death, but the Blaylock's are like that and you have to have been raised by one of them to know how to handle that situation.

Like many parents, after the game is over it easy to look at the scorecard and see where they might have done a better job. God knows, I'd love to have a few dozen do overs. but it's the little things parents do that never make it to the statistic's that can make such a difference.

While we never talked about "things" in our family, we always had hot meals, clean clothing, a comfortable place to sleep and a safe neighborhood to play in and I must say a sense of why that was important and why we were lucky not better because we had such benefits.

And it's true that the smallest slights were never truly forgiven or forgotten, there wasn't a stray human or animal that couldn't get sympathy and comfort from my mother. She was as I like to say. "A good Catholic girl who wouldn't go to Doctors because she felt you never took your clothes off for any body but your husband and than only rarely and certainly not after your forty." But she had a pat on the head for a kid that did a god thing and a hand on the backside of the kid that got out of line. She seemed to discipline, not in anger, but the frustration of personal failing as to how she could ever brought into the world children that didn't obey her without question.

Typical of the Irish stock she came from, Mary Jane always questioned authority unless it wore "the collar". She voted as a democrat, because the other guys no matter how nice they seemed wore suits and somehow didn't get their hands dirty at work. I never could understand how my dad got by her scrutiny as he was a businessmen all of his life.

I think she passed away oblivious to the fact that she was on the "dole". She wasn't, in her mind, in a rest home. She was in a hospital trying to get better so she could go home to an apartment she vaguely remembered. Mary Jane lived in a world where decades came and went in seconds and reality was whatever she thought it was. Unless... unless she woke up one morning and reality came back to her in a rush. Maybe seeing the condition of her life and the hopelessness of it all she decided it was time to let go. We'll never know.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Credability

The analogy is cliche, but apt. The once proud champion, now older, slower, stumbles about the ring. There is blood in his eyes and his face is stamped with pain and confusion. His opponent is being merciful, respectful. He circles the weaving confused and tired opponent attempting to give the champ a chance to end it. The manager in the corner reaches for the towel to signal capitulation before more harm is done, but the battered hulk waves him off and puts his fists in the air signalling he is ready for more.

In the movies this is good stuff. We may have learned through the story (Raging Bull) to dislike this guy, but we admire his courage and purpose, no matter how foolish it seems. It leaves the impression that maybe the champ may get up off the
canvas and prevail. But that's the movies. It is the seam in the story of redemption and grit. It's the conquering of the old west, It's the flight into space. And it's always against all odds.

But when you're President of the United States and the world is waiting for you to just lay down and get it over with, there's a lot more than your pride on the line. We've been back into a corner in this match and not by a superior enemy. We've done this to ourselves. We have no credibility in the worlds eye's because we don't deserve it. We have against the advice of our allies, invaded a sovereign country, because...well you pick the reason of the week.

First it was a preemptive strike against a terrorist sponsoring state that had WMD potential. Than it was because we could build democracy in the middle east. Than for a very short time, it was justified because they tried to kill Bush I, (My daddy). None of these reasons were worth the price that we are now paying. The price is that we can do nothing right in the eyes of the world. Everything we represent is challenged by enemy and friend alike.

And now it has spread to the domestic front. The Bush administration failure to deal with the domestic problems is an extension of outmoded and reactionary politics's we can't afford to continue. But alas, because of our political system, all our president has to do is turn to Rove and Company and wave off the attempt to throw in the towel. There is so much blood in his eyes, he fails to see that one by one his handlers and managers are leaving his corner and sulking off into the dark areas of the arena to shake their heads and wonder how things all came apart