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September 18, 2008 Newsletter
Y-Ike-s!
It is still raining again after one day--Saturday, September 13--of sunshine... I am fine but my disposition is not the best, what with my son "the Sea Aggie" now, for the duration, being just "the Aggie" as Ike's destruction of much of Galveston sent him and the 1400 or so other Sea Aggies to continue their 2008 Fall semesters up to College Station. As a matter of fact, the main campus of Texas A & M Galveston is relatively undamaged at the first assessment, compared to, say, the likely condition of Galveston Community College a few blocks north of the Seawall Blvd. which got ravaged. Sorry for the whining--after all, he still has a chance to finish out this semester at a top school in Texas instead of, well, not being able to finish out this semester, ala students at Tulane and Loyala in New Orleans in the fall of 2005. But he's a junior. Juniors, having already taken the "basic" courses the previous two years, generally begin their specialized educative courses in the junior year... in fact he was taking two classes that most interest him and will help determine his career out of college. Both courses are "marine lab" type courses requiring the student to do field work, probably in the waterways by the island there. Will he get the same quality education at some inland school where agriculture means cattle and horses, not fish, marine mammals/reptiles and crusteaceans? I guess there is the bright side--now he won't have to travel a couple of hundred miles to Aggie games...problem is, the Aggies do not seem to be having a good year so far--losing to Arkansas State? Are they the "new" Baylor? Again, sorry about the whining...
My disposition is not helped by my husband's absense, either--he is not working at his usual local EMS job, but with national disaster relief, first with Gustav and now with Ike. And the news that good friends of ours who live in Seabrook (near Houston) probably lost everything as their house was very close to Galveston Bay. And Galveston itself: Gaidos, the best seafood restaurant on the planet located across from the Gulf Seawall, is likely gone. The 1900 Hurricane monument has been damaged, as has the Seawall. A small cemetary we accidentally stumbled upon one night after viewing it from the balcony of our hotel, housing graves of members of the black community circa early 1900s, some dated from 1912 to 1921, which was being restored...again, right across from the Gulf, so its fate can only be imagined. Galveston State Park and its ecological-safe areas for turtles, alligators, birds, fish and the like...who knows? The tent-RV areas I am sure are in very bad shape. The turtles my son was studying and tagging as part of an internship...what is their fate? And what is the fate of Oleander Homes, the public housing development near 21st Street one had to pass by in order to get to the bridge that brought one to the TAMUG campus? Is it rubble? The Strand, Galveston's historic area with its surrounding colonial and Victorian-styled homes, and its boutiques and gift shops, and the nearby marina area and Galveston Party Boats, which took one on all-day or two- and- three-day Gulf fishing trips for snapper, dorado, tuna, and the like...well, last I heard the boat marina warehouse caught fire and the Fire Dept. couldn't get to it. And then there is Bolivar Island where my son did more marine research...nearly all the buildings on it are destroyed--but the ferry that goes there works just fine!
And then there is Houston. I lived there, a stone's throw from the Texas Medical Center area downtown by the corner of Fannin and Breaswood, and another stone's throw from the Astrodome, in the summer and fall of 1975. In fact it was the first time every I had lived away from New York State and the first time I lived in a place in which air conditioning was a must. To read about Houston (let alone Galveston, which is humid 90% of the year--but at least they get a sea breeze) having no power for weeks and maybe months meaning no air conditioning for weeks and months--winters in Houston are cooler for sure but when I lived there I used AC well into November, at which time one switches to central heating--I can see many folks getting very riled up about that situation! We really do have a possible civil unrest scenario. That could have been avoided had the mayor of Houston ordered a general evacuation. They didn't because of what happened with Rita in 2005 (more folks died during the evacuation than in the hurricane).
They will compare Ike to Katrina. But while Katrina mainly affected New Orleans, it seems--folks, few realize just how truly devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast was--New Orleans had a population under a million, most of whom evacuated. Houston's population is four million or more, and when you take into account the surrounding towns like Texas City, Baytown, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Seabrooke, Kemah, as well as towns within Houston like Pasedina and Belle Aire, we are talking nearly 6 million people--and the severely damaged Galveston's 60,000 as well--we may not be talking on the same level as hundreds of thousands of poor blacks and others being stranded in NOLA the way they were, but believe it or not Galveston is one of the poorer towns in Texas and many of the homes further in the middle-southside of the city were nearly ramshackle. The mold on the outside of these mostly wooden structures was obvious. I speak of the part of Galveston you wouldn't see from the pretty and sparkling Seawall Blvd. and the nice and expensive stores, and Wal-Marts and such. Fifty years ago this unsightly area would have been called the "colored section." And if the Strand area with its expensive homes was under three feet of water, the poorer areas I am sure suffered much worse.
I am not going to talk about FEMA's response; one because I am sick of writing about things political when the economy is much more newsworthy; two, because how the local, state, and Federal government gets the power back on to 6 to 10 million homes, businesses, hospitals and the like, and how they clean up these cities, and how people react when they see their homes (many with huge mortgages) completely destroyed, and how they deal with the situation psychologically--post traumatic stress disorder for many I am sure--and how they heal spiritually, is far more important than "lipstick on a pig" and even the threat of Dominionism; and three, how this disaster affects oil/energy production and refining--this is precisely the part of the country that most Americans are dependent on for oil refining--, and how this disaster affects the seafood industry (lots of shrimp comes from this area), and how the Gulf Coast's ecology is brought back, and, as with Katrina, how folks who love living on the Gulf deal with the fact that this (as well as Rita) is the third or fourth whammy they've had in four years are just more important than even the whoremongering "kiss butt" fest that is "Decision 2008." If nothing else, readers, please pray for these people!
I will leave the reader with some links to articles and especially videos on this event. And thanks to DirecTV's putting on the air KHOU's round-the-clock coverage of Ike from Friday (Sept. 12) to Sunday (Sept. 14). Read about Ike here (a personal story), here, here, about "no fly" orders for the media from FEMA, here, about political buck-passing, here, about hot and bothered Houstonians, here, about rescuers, and here, about Ike's lessons. And MSN has a really good cavalcade of video pictures taken on Friday and Saturday, as well as older pix of what Ike did to Cuba and Haiti here (Galveston damage), here, here, and here.
I may post again in the next day or two with some very interesting and worthy videos. When it comes to the economy I am almost completely ignorant on theoretics and the numbers are gettting so big as to boggle my mind as to where we are headed financially as a nation. So, instead of sounding like an ignoranmous, I will let these and other videos speak for themselves.
Don't forget, if you have a comment on this or other posts, e-mail me with your comment, and put the name of the article in the subject line.
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