Friday, September 02, 2005

If You're Local ...

... to Katrina's fringes or know someone who does live in Houston or up in the Mississippi evac zone, we received a suggestion from one of our reades here who's in a shelter -- check and see if any of your LOCAL shelters needs physical help. Red Cross et al are doing a wonderful job coordinating the monies, but the physical locales are often not even remotely equipped to handle the bump in business. For example, he wrote and told me that they needed help in watching all the kids while the adults went out and hunted up housing, medicine, etc. Nicely enough, the local college fraternities/sororities are stepping up to staff at his location.

Pitching essay coming tonight, so value for your dollar in transit.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

A real enlightening blog. Don't stop now. I'm sure you'd be interested in How to buy & sell jeep part on interest free credit; pay whenever you want.

Unknown said...

AHHH! BEGONE!

Anonymous said...

Oh christ.. its SPAM! How ironic that years before we had e-mail, Monty Python was teaching us to hate it. Hey Mr. Rogers - wandered to your post via someone at Livejournal and wanted to know if Canadian donations to the Red Cross counted on your matching - I did $150.00 Cdn.. so that's about $1.23 US.. :) Hey.. every cent counts right?

you can go to my LJ page to verify if need be. I just hope the jeep part spamoid doesn't get me..

Cheers

Iwasawa - part time kung fu monkey.

Anonymous said...

Bring me Wil Wheaton and Xeni Jardin and I will exercise the spam demons.

The power of the FSM compels you!

On a disaster related note... If you want a really good inside scoop on what is really happening in NOLA then go to http://mgno.com/ An ex military man (either marines or spec forces) turned IT company employee is blogging from ground zero as he and a small group of employees try to keep their company's data center operational so they can continue to provide services to their clients. It's an amazing read and tells the truth that the big media isn't telling. There is also a live cam feed at http://wss-vip.adv.xc.advection.net/event/adv/evt20050902/new_orlean/0250?ext=.asf.

John...grat script/book opportunity here. ;)

Anonymous said...

That above post was me.

Dave said...

It's interesting that you're giving the horror and devastation of Katrina so much coverage. While December's tsunami got just a couple of posts, with a death toll possibly two orders of magnitude worse, in a much poorer country, with far less immediate help available and huge problems in distributing any help.

I suppose lives are effectively worth more when they're closer to you, both physically and culturally, which shouldn't be surprising. Don't get me wrong, it's admirable what you're doing for an entire city which has been completely shafted by fate, and it's not like you did nothing for tsunami victims. The difference between the situations just bears thinking about, is all.

Unknown said...

"So much coverage?" Two posts? I believe that's roughly the same number I gave the tsunami. No wait -- check that. That's the exact number I gave the tsunami. The post referencing the Oil Drum was more about geopolitics than katrina.

Given that, yes, you may see a few more posts on the Katrina after a while. First, I just wasn't fundraising back in the day -- didn't think I could accomplish much with my tiny readership (I'd been blogging for maybe a month). Also, if I may, while the horror of the tsunami was unspeakably biblical in scope, the tragedy in New Orleas which is unfolding is doing so specifically in a context of devastating irony. The US SHOULD be a nation with far more resources and a better distribution for help. But help reached the tsunami victims in excellent time -- food drops were accomplished in Aceh in less than 48 hours, while in the US, with intact highways, food didn't start going in for five days.

What we have here -- well, Avedon Carol had the best quote, paraphrasing Arthur Clarke's famous aphorism: "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

Also, I personally find it difficult to write about capricious fate -- one might argue futile. In the face of the tsunami I could only reallly repeat "Oh God, oh sweet God" over and over again, which has little or no value other than, well, grief-surfing. I will not write for the sake of writing -- I write to contribute to a discussion, not fucking keen and rend my clothes. That seems ... indulgent.

I appreciate your observation on the natural tendency to dwell on near/rather than far tragedies and value loss of "our" life over the lives of "others." It is a deplorable habit. It just doesn't happen to be one of my many, many sins.

Dave said...

Well, to be fair, Katrina is mentioned in six or seven posts, but yeah, only two directly on the subject.

And I've got to apologise for generalising across all US bloggers and then nailing you. I had a feeling I'd get cogent argument from you rather than an angry flaming, so thanks for that. I suppose it's just not real useful to compare tragedies, in terms of numbers or conditions or whatever. It seems like incompetence definitely aggravated New Orleans, while the 'shoot-to-kill' policy of thirsty, hungry displaced people could definitely be interpreted as malice.

I suppose from here (Australia) it's just really, really hard to see how the Katrina aftermath has turned out quite so badly. Whereas the tsunami response seemed almost unbelievably good, though there remain a lot of people in pain.

Anonymous said...

a really smart kofi annan would have offered UNHCR help in the first two days.

that would have smarted.