September 4, 2005

• I had been wondering what I was waiting for.

  I sat here groggily reading email, checking comments, looking to see if
  there were any new requests for readings at KaiOaty’s site, and
  thinking about showering and getting ready to go to town. 

  Time passed.  I played a little solitaire and reflected on how
  this is the first time in months, at least since April when our old
  computer went down, that I wasn’t particularly wanting to go to
  town.  It seems that sometimes I’m actually looking forward to
  driving down the valley, seeing Greyfox, attending a meeting, doing
  some shopping, or some combination of the above (seldom ever ALL of
  them, really).

  It’s a yucky, drippy day, both the weather and my nose.  Damn the
  allergies.  Mold has always been one of my worst, and after an
  unusually wet spring and summer we are having an extraordinarily moldy
  autumn.  And, yes, even if in more temperate areas of the Northern
  Hemisphere it is still summer, here the leaves are falling.  The
  fireweed blossoms topped out weeks ago and now the flossy seeds float
  in the air (on days when the raindrops aren’t beating them to the
  ground).  Summer is over, and many people acclimatized to warmer
  regions would say it feels like winter.

  I’ve been keeping the fire going and keeping indoor temps up in the
  sixties Fahrenheit, and mildly scolding myself for wasting
  firewood.  It’s only down to about 48 degrees outside.  In a
  few months we’ll be lucky to keep the indoor temps up that high, even
  with a plentiful supply of wood.  I haven’t yet found a new
  firewood supplier.  I’ll be surprised if Tim shows up with the two
  cords I’ve paid him for, much less the additional two cords he promised
  me for paying in advance. 

  And no, I tell myself, I’m not too trusting.  I understood at the
  time that I was taking a risk of not getting all the firewood I was
  promised.  Partially, it was a gamble, but mostly it was a
  charitable urge.  Even if I never see Tim again, it wasn’t a bad
  investment, because his prices were lower than anyone else’s to start
  with, and dealing with him was much more pleasant than with that
  blatant rip-off Mark, glib and sleazy Louie, or the sawed-off,
  narcissistic, self-styled “old bushrat” Cheechako George.

  If all else fails this winter, I’ll get the old chainsaw overhauled,
  teach Doug how to use it, and we will burn those two dead poplar trees
  that Charley cut down for us so they wouldn’t fall on the
  house.   Poplar doesn’t make as hot a fire as birch does, but
  it’s better than nothing and there’s no point letting it rot in the
  yard.  Hmmm… maybe we should at least get a start on that before
  snow flies.  Which is less pleasant?  …digging the logs up
  out of the snow and standing around up to your ass in white shit to cut
  wood, or getting soaked in the rain and having that soggy sawdust
  thrown up in your face?  I’ll have to ask Doug for his
  opinion.  If he’s got as much smarts as I think he does, he’ll
  tell me to start calling firewood dealers.

  Anyhow, this is the way my mind was meandering this morning.  It
  kept circling back around to the need to get a move on, but
  something… something in addition to plain old inertia, kept me
  sitting here.  Then a call came in from Greyfox, with an addition
  to the list of things I’m taking to town for him.  Already on the
  list were the camera to take pictures of the kittens, a dozen hard
  boiled eggs and the moose liver and onions I cooked and refrigerated
  last night, his accumulated mail, and a phillips screwdriver.  He
  added some flannel shirts — one or two “good” ones to wear at the
  stand, and some grubbies for around the cabin and dumpster diving.

  Now, it’s time for me to get in gear.

  UPDATE:

  Wow!  Good thing I’m forgetful.  I got all dressed, closed
  my closet, got the food and stuff bagged to go… then remembered that
  I’d forgotten Greyfox’s shirts.  Went back, and was browsing
  through his garment rack when I heard something hit my closet door,
  from the inside.  It was a bolt of pink and gold brocade that Nemo
  had knocked off the top shelf.  Who knows what havoc she’d have
  created in my closet if I’d gone to town and left her shut in there.

  ---

  The article below, on how the free market killed New Orleans, is from zmag:

  ZNet Commentary
  How the Free Market Killed New Orleans
  by Michael Parenti

  The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans
  and the death of thousands of its residents. Armed with advanced
  warning that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city
  and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free
  market.

  They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected to
  devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means, just as
  the free market dictates, just like people do when disaster hits
  free-market Third World countries.

  It is a beautiful thing this free market in which every individual
  pursues his or her own personal interests and thereby effects an
  optimal outcome for the entire society. This is the way the invisible
  hand works its wonders.

  There would be none of the collectivistic regimented evacuation as
  occurred in Cuba. When an especially powerful hurricane hit that island
  last year, the Castro government, abetted by neighborhood citizen
  committees and local Communist party cadres, evacuated 1.3 million
  people, more than 10 percent of the country’s population, with not a
  single life lost, a heartening feat that went largely unmentioned in
  the U.S. press.

  On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, it was already
  clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American lives had been lost
  in New Orleans. Many people had “refused” to evacuate, media reporters
  explained, because they were just plain “stubborn.”

  It was not until Day Three that the relatively affluent telecasters
  began to realize that tens of thousands of people had failed to flee
  because they had nowhere to go and no means of getting there. With
  hardly any cash at hand or no motor vehicle to call their own, they had
  to sit tight and hope for the best. In the end, the free market did not
  work so well for them.

  Many of these people were low-income African Americans, along with
  fewer numbers of poor whites. It should be remembered that most of them
  had jobs before Katrina’s lethal visit. That’s what most poor people do
  in this country: they work, usually quite hard at dismally paying jobs,
  sometimes more than one job at a time. They are poor not because
  they’re lazy but because they have a hard time surviving on poverty
  wages while burdened by high prices, high rents, and regressive taxes.

  The free market played a role in other ways. Bush’s agenda is to cut
  government services to the bone and make people rely on the private
  sector for the things they might need. So he sliced $71.2 million from
  the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent
  reduction. Plans to fortify New Orleans levees and upgrade the system
  of pumping out water had to be shelved.

  Bush took to the airways and said that no one could have foreseen this
  disaster. Just another lie tumbling from his lips. All sorts of people
  had been predicting disaster for New Orleans, pointing to the need to
  strengthen the levees and the pumps, and fortify the coastlands.

  In their campaign to starve out the public sector, the Bushite
  reactionaries also allowed developers to drain vast areas of wetlands.
  Again, that old invisible hand of the free market would take care of
  things. The developers, pursuing their own private profit, would devise
  outcomes that would benefit us all.

  But wetlands served as a natural absorbent and barrier between New
  Orleans and the storms riding in from across the sea. And for some
  years now, the wetlands have been disappearing at a frightening pace on
  the Gulf? coast. All this was of no concern to the reactionaries in the
  White House.

  As for the rescue operation, the free-marketeers like to say that
  relief to the more unfortunate among us should be left to private
  charity. It was a favorite preachment of President Ronald Reagan that
  “private charity can do the job.” And for the first few days that
  indeed seemed to be the policy with the disaster caused by Hurricane
  Katrina.

  The federal government was nowhere in sight but the Red Cross went into
  action. Its message: “Don’t send food or blankets; send money.”
  Meanwhile Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network—taking
  a moment off from God’s work of pushing John Roberts nomination to the
  Supreme Court—called for donations and announced “Operation Blessing”
  which consisted of a highly-publicized but totally inadequate shipment
  of canned goods and bibles.

  By Day Three even the myopic media began to realize the immense failure
  of the rescue operation. People were dying because relief had not
  arrived. The authorities seemed more concerned with the looting than
  with rescuing people. It was property before people, just like the free
  marketeers always want.

  But questions arose that the free market did not seem capable of
  answering: Who was in charge of the rescue operation? Why so few
  helicopters and just a scattering of Coast Guard rescuers? Why did it
  take helicopters five hours to get six people out of one hospital? When
  would the rescue operation gather some steam? Where were the feds? The
  state troopers? The National Guard? Where were the buses and trucks?
  the shelters and portable toilets? The medical supplies and water?

  Where was Homeland Security? What has Homeland Security done with the
  $33.8 billions allocated to it in fiscal 2005? Even ABC-TV evening news
  (September 1, 2005) quoted local officials as saying that “the federal
  government’s response has been a national disgrace.”

  In a moment of delicious (and perhaps mischievous) irony, offers of
  foreign aid were tendered by France, Germany and several other nations.
  Russia offered to send two plane loads of food and other materials for
  the victims. Predictably, all these proposals were quickly refused by
  the White House. America the Beautiful and Powerful, America the
  Supreme Rescuer and World Leader, America the Purveyor of Global
  Prosperity could not accept foreign aid from others. That would be a
  most deflating and insulting role reversal. Were the French looking for
  another punch in the nose?

  Besides, to have accepted foreign aid would have been to admit the
  truth—that the Bushite reactionaries had neither the desire nor the
  decency to provide for ordinary citizens, not even those in the most
  extreme straits. Next thing you know, people would start thinking that
  George W. Bush was really nothing more than a fulltime agent of
  Corporate America.

  ——-Michael Parenti’s recent books include Superpatriotism (City
  Lights) and The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), both
  available in paperback. His forthcoming The Culture Struggle (Seven
  Stories Press) will be published in the fall. For more information
  visit: michaelparenti.org.

  • 2:29 pm
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