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June 25, 2008 Newsletter
Resiliency in Katrinaland. Plus: Where There's A Will, There's A Way in the "Plain of Jars"
This past weekend my husband's clan...several hundred strong...made their way to eastern Lousiana for a reunion, and we joined them (minus our daughter who had a more fun-filled previous engagement for an extended period). Drove to El Paso and spent Thursday night there, then early in the morning on Friday hopped a plane to Houston where we picked up our son, the Sea Aggie, and took a rental car to relatives just east of Baton Rouge, then the following day worked our way with these relatives to a plantation-luxury hostelry northeast of Katrinaville, aka New Orleans, for a fun filled and "I haven't seen you in fifteen years! How y'all doin?!?" day...and, having spent that Saturday night with said relatives, drove back to Houston, dropped off our son to his own pickup truck, then flew back to El Paso, and drove home on Monday to a garden which, but for the grace of God, would have been dried up mince meat...or bird fodder, whichever you prefer. Well, that's the trip in short, and while I skip the boring and personal details, what I am about to tell you is true, and, further, reinforces the idea that in the case of natural disaster the best course is hunker down, UNLESS you must leave to save your life. Further, what is happening in Iowa now due to flooding--what with law enforcement preventing people from returning to their homes in some cases by unethical, to put it mildly, means, these events only reinforce more the point I will make. And just to lighten the atmosphere, I'm going to put to rest some of the myths about airport security you may have read on certain "conspiracy" sites lately. Reading about the barage of TSA "police state" tactics makes for good reading, but, folks, while TSA DOES use these tactics sometimes, I think a lot of these stories are blown out of proportion. For one thing, thousands of people fly every day, and yet you only read about a few very unfortunate people...in fact these articles almost had me convinced I was on the "no fly list"!
First of all, they don't--yet, anyway--have those cameras that "see through" clothing at El Paso's airport, but I must say (giving you an "advanced notice") that El Paso's airport security, compared to the similarly-sized Hobby Airport in Houston (okay, okay, Hobby is bigger), seemed stricter. Houston's Bush, which used to be called Houston Intercontinental, which was bigger than Hobby when I used it in 1975 and is huge now, might be the kind of airport where TSA "thugs" hang out, but not at El Paso or at Hobby. I can only speculate why El Paso's security was stricter. Could be all the drug violence going on across the Rio Grande in Juarez, Mexico. Could be the presence of Fort Bliss, where a lot of soldiers going to Iraq are trained in desert conditions. In fact it seemed as if half the people standing in the security line were soldiers dressed in desert camouflage. Well, my husband (who did the research) suggested that I pack everything in the suitcase going into the cargo hold, and bring no carry-on luggage whatsoever, and I did not take his advice. Thus I suffered the consequences of having to take everything liquid, such as anti-bacterial hand cleaner and squirt container of liquid soap I carry (because many bathrooms have so soap at all), and everything in a tube (including lip balm, denture adhesive, etc.) and stick them into a small plastic baggie--everything must fit into the baggie, and whatever didn't fit would be confiscated (thank goodness I packed the alcohol and the suntan lotion into the suitcase!). They may not be thugs as TSA, but they sure know how to discriminate against women! What woman doesn't carry cosmetics or baby wipes or hand cream in their purse? And if you happen to carry pepper spray or mace for protection--or a knife!--you had better leave them at home, period! As well as the nail clippers, tweazer, nail file... As for your hair clips, best bet is to take them off before you go through the metal detector, and stick them in the bin with your shoes, baggie, purse, etc. And you men? Take off your belts. Do not remove essential jewelry like wedding rings--the metal detectors seem to have made allowances for this sort of thing. Now I had learned my lesson for Hobby airport on the way home--I packed everything in the suitcase that I had to put into the baggie in El Paso. No surprise, I went through with flying colors, and I don't mean idiot "terrorist alert" color codes either. But here's the rub: at El Paso, everyone and his uncle seemed to want to see my ID (Texas driver's license). At Hobby, I only showed it to the baggage folks and the middle of the security line, that is twice. In El Paso it was four times! I only saw one person wanded at El Paso and none at Hobby. More advice: fly Southwest Airlines...cheap rates, comfy seats (they don't do first class, BTW), and their staff really does smile. Most user friendly airline I've ever experienced. Second, DO NOT FLY out of or into New York's LaGuardia! Worst airport ever! Delays, up to three hours or more, are a matter of course...in fact I have never heard of any flight (though I am sure they exist...I just never heard of any!) into or out of LaGuardia that wasn't delayed at least an hour! I'm from Long Island and I know what I'm talking about! If you must fly to NYC, use Kennedy, or better, use the airport in Islip, or Newark. I have a theory as to why LaGuardia is so screwed up: it's location, right in the middle of Queens (most airports now are on the edges of cities...but the thing is, Houston's Hobby is smack in the middle of Houston and runs smoothly. What's LaGuardia's excuse?), and, second, it's density...for the traffic it handles, it is a very small airport in size and length and number of runways, etc. Again, this here is my opinion, but I will let any LaGuardia or New York City Port Authority officials who want to sue me over this criticism research the facts for themselves.
Eventually we got the car and our son and headed out of Texas (after eating some darned good Cajun food at a buffet restaurant between Vidor and Orange) into the area of Southwest Lousiana--Cajun country--that I believed was devastated by Hurricane Rita in September, 2005. Well, maybe we were too far north, along I-10, to see wrecked towns. Now, places like Sulphur and Lake Charles were hit hard by Rita, but this far north of Cameron, there was no visible damage to be seen, of places, farms--the rice crop seems to be doing fine--and livestock. I was really expecting to see lingering damage in the Atchafalaya Swamp, which is North America's largest swamp, BTW. None. People were fishing it like they always have. Nothing brown anywhere. In fact at the reunion I didn't here one single "Rita" story even though some of the Lagardes live in that approximate area or Texas around the refinery areas.
It was different for Katrina...several relatives lost everything and a couple, their lives. Some lost everything, left for a while, but are now back, right in the New Orleans area where they came from, because as one said, they "had the mud and crawfish in their blood" and the mid-west wouldn't cut it. Some left permanently, mostly to Georgia and Tennessee. Our immediate relatives got off relatively unscathed, living near Baton Rouge (though an aunt and uncle had the foresight to move from the Mississippi Gulf Coast a couple of years before Katrina...truth be told, they were concerned another Hurricane Betsy would come eventually...Betsy, in the late 60s, also devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.) Some of the relatives though tried to "escape" the possible catastrophe, however, by leaving late at night (the night Katrina hit) at the sound of crackling tree limbs. They eventually wound up back where they started a few hours later. Funny, but during the whole reunion I got a feeling that they all knew this could happen again fairly soon, but they were bound and determined to stay, regardless, with the crawfish in their blood (and let's not forget, blood IS thicker than water!). My husband, who left that area for good in the late 70s after college, was bound and determined to choose a more sustainable alternative--and some of the relatives want us to move to Louisiana! I say "fat chance" (and I hope I am proved right). The humidity alone would drive me insane! Besides, living at 6,000 feet the way I do now, I felt like I had far more energy there than I had in months, with the increased lung capacity high altitude live affords one (one reunion fifteen years ago, I ran almost five miles without stopping! Of course I was 15 years younger...). Still, I had said I would write at least one rather meaty Katrina story, so here goes. This aunt and uncle I mentioned above that had moved inland from the Gulf Coast went back to the property they had sold (and had lived in for about twenty years) in early 2006. They took pictures. The wood-framed house had been two-story, the upper living quarters built on stilts above the utilitiy area and car port--standard operating procedure when you live on a bayou in a flood plain. Well, the only thing left was the original foundation and two of the stilts! The debris was still there, grass and magnolia tree (they so loved that tree!) dead. Not a house stood on that street. The whole scene broke aunt's heart. In fact what happened (according to another uncle) was that before hittting land (Category 4 Hurricane), Katrina had stirred up a 32-foot wall of water (that's a three-story building!), and when it hit land (category 3 Hurricane), the wall of water was still over 20 feet! Think of a two-story building, and think of the weight of all that water, knocking down everything in its path going about 120 miles per hour! Well, that's my Katrina story. Besides, it wasn't as if I was going to go around asking hundreds of relatives about how this hurricane messed up their lives...we were there to have fun, not relive horror stories.
Where There's a Will, There's a Way in the "Plain of Jars"
Hardly had I written my last post about birds eating up the garden when divine inspiration took a hold of me a few mornings later. For several years we have had this huge pile of jars in the back of the house. We had gotten them from the glass recycling bins as well as the recycling program administrators in a nearby town back in the early 90s, so that we could wash the jars and put honey in them. The ones I could use were used, but many of them had (or had gotten) filled with rain water and thus acquired nearly impossible-to-remove water marks and thus could be used for honey that would be sold. So there were close to 100 jars laying around back there collecting water marks, plant debris, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, small snakes and the like. And there were all of these tiny corn plants, okra seedlings, pinto bean sprouts, cucumber seedlings and the like coming up in our garden that had already been replanted twice! I could see all the jays and grossebeaks lining up for their morning meal, and I knew I had to do something! We had run out of thin plastic "cake tops" and small "planters" to use, only had two hamster cage tops to cover some of the more closely planted seedlings...and there were still twenty or so okra, several pinto bean, cucumber, squash, greens, and corn seedlings that absolutely had to be covered or they might not survive the morning. And that's when "it" hit me...jars. Translucent, protective and water-trapping glass jars, tens of 'em, right there in the back yard crying out to be used. So, without thinking about apologizing to the nation of Laos, home of the "Plain of Jars" (a name I remember from the Vietnam War), I created my own. first I covered the precious okra...the planted seeds were all we had. Then the corn. Then the baby squashes. Then the baby pinto beans that had not been eaten yet. Then the cucumbers on their third planting. After a few days--and wide praises for my husband--the tiny plants were doing great. Except that after a day or so the jars had to be taken off the pinto beans, which were being burning in the hot sun due to the glass (plastic ventillated containers where used over the beans). The day we left for the reunion all of the jars and other coverings were removed. Except for a few okra leaves, there was little heat damage. While we were away we prayed for rain and got some (not enough, however, to save a large load of radishes that we should have picked before we left!)...fotunately, most of the time it was cloudy, and when we got back the garden (but for the radishes) was pretty much the way we left it.
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