Editorials by Bob

This past Spring, Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) made a comment that Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta should resign his post. Since then, the movement for his resignation, growing largely from his comments regarding Amtrak, has been slowly but steadily growing, with members of congress joining in from both sides of the aisle.

Count me in.

Normally I'm not one to say something negative about someone, especially by name (my tirade of earlier this week notwithstanding), but this is one of those few cases where, after some deliberation, I've decided that an exception (that is, a deliberate exception) must be made. The man is a public hazard, and unlike the danger of a certain motion picture director very few people are pointing out the problem publicly.

The National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) has spent most of this year trying to publicly correct misstatements Mineta has made in pushing the "Zero Subsidy" package he urged on President Bush at budget time early this year. They've had so many corrections to make just this year that they've added an entirely new section to their website, here.

If you've just clicked on the link, you've probably noticed that Mineta isn't the only one making erroneous, false, or outrageous statements. But if you scroll to the bottom, you'll see he made the earliest and most ridiculous.

One of the most interesting is this, given on March 31: "Californians give Amtrak over 27 million of their tax dollars each year to operate the San Joaquins service between Oakland and the Central Valley. And what do they get for their investment? Trains that are late more than 44 percent of the time." Either Mr. Mineta hadn't heard about the levee break and flooding washing out the track between Martinez and Stockton, or was somehow trying to blame it on Amtrak.

Another real winner, from a week earlier: "The problem is if the Empire Builder is going from Seattle to Chicago and it's going through lets say Montana, but there are only 53 people a day using that train service, can I really justify pouring that kind of subsidy into the Empire Builder for a segment of that service?" Why did he say 53 people a day, when Amtrak's own statistics (easily available to him, as Secretary of Transportation) put the number at 1,195? Where on Earth did he get the 53 a day -- was he looking only at people who board or disembark in Seattle and Chicago, or something?

Throughout the debacle of the whole Zero Subsidy proposal -- and NARP also has a page here about that -- Mineta has tried to portray Amtrak as a losing proposition, "running trains that nobody rides between cities that nobody wants to travel between," even in the very face of the reality that, over the past four years (since David Gunn took the helm), Amtrak has been posting record ridership. Far from the scores of empty trains he's trying to project, the trains tend to be full -- if you want to take the train somewhere, especially on an overnight trip, you'd better book early.

The biggest shocker of all came after he met with NARP representatives and listened to their corrections. They gave him many of the facts of the matter, including what really would happen to Amtrak if it wasn't given adequate funding to stay out of bankruptcy, and he went right out a week later and unfolded more lies.

What is this man's agenda? I admit I don't know much about his background prior to government service. Does he have some kind of shady connections to the oil, automotive, or airline industries? Does he have some sort of plan to profit personally from the collapse of the American transportation infrastructure after all those rail passengers are forced onto the highways and into the airways?

No, never mind what sort of connections President Bush or anyone else might or might not have. I'm talking about Mineta specifically here, and why he thinks destroying Amtrak through deliberate falsehood is the way to operate.

Please note that I'm not accusing here. I'm honestly asking. If I had any solid evidence, or even specific indications, of corruption other than the actual false statements themselves, you can bet I'd give them here. But I don't, and I'd really like to know what's going on here.

But let's assume for a moment that Mr. Mineta is being completely honest, and actually believes what he's been saying. It's not entirely impossible; in fact, I'd say it's the more likely probability. But if that's the case, then Norman Mineta actually believes (or at least believed when he said it) that Amtrak was responsible for the delays caused by the levee break, that there were only 53 passengers a day on the Empire builder and not 1,195, that Amtrak really could survive bankruptcy, and all the rest. It would mean that our Secretary of Transportation has a demonstrated inability to get his facts straight.

Secretary Mineta may indeed be that clueless. After all, he's not really in a good position to know anything about Amtrak. This is by his own actions. As Rep. Corrinne Brown (D-FL) recently pointed out, he never attends the Amtrak board meetings himself, even though he's a member; he always sends a representative. And if he never attends an Amtrak board meeting, how can he know anything about Amtrak?

Given a menu where one choice is corruption and the other is abject stupidity, I think I'd go to a different restaurant.

Either way, Mineta has no credibility. Either way, Mineta is openly contradicting information that he should easily have available, if only because most of it is easily available to the public. Either way, Mineta is an active danger to our nation's transportation infrastructure. Either way, Mineta's presence on the Cabinet can only hurt the President's already-shaky (or, in the eyes of many liberals, nigh-nonexistent) credibility.

Either way, it's time for Norman Mineta to leave. Say, could we get Tommy Thompson in there instead?

In 1962, movie director Stanley Kramer was known as "The Man With The Message." He had just finished Judgment at Nuremburg, and was also known for such heavy, message-laden dramas as Inherit the Wind and The Defiant Ones. His dramas were so serious, in fact, that people started saying that he couldn't make a comedy.

And so the gauntlet was thrown down. Kramer set out to make not just a comedy, but "the comedy to end all comedies." The result was a maniacal three-hour journey through southern California featuring nearly all of Hollywood's great comedic talent.

It's not for nothing that It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is recognized as one of the great classics of comedy. With such comic luminaries as Buddy Hackett, Sid Cesar, Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, and Terry-Thomas leading the cast -- to say nothing of liberally-sprinkled cameos from such folks as Buster Keaton, Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, and the Three Stooges -- slapstick and chaos are the name of the game.

The cast also features a few people not specializing in comedy, such as Spencer Tracy and Ethel Merman -- but their efforts are no less stellar.

Not a single performer in the entire film did a bad job. Everyone, even the knockoff cameos had their own moment to shine -- the Three Stooges didn't even have any dialogue or business, but they get enough of a laugh by just standing around in a sight gag that has to be seen in context to be understood. Even some of the minor players -- among them William Demarest, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk, and Jim Backus -- make plenty of hay with their parts.

The setup is simple. Eight people in four cars are passed by a desperate motorist on a winding mountain road in southern California. When the desperate motorist (played by Jimmy Durante) goes off the road and into a ravine, the drivers go to check on him. Realizing that he's dying, he tells the motorists about $350,000 he's buried in a Santa Rosita park under "the Big W." (To put that amount in perspective for today's money, just add another zero.) Then he kicks the bucket, and the fact that there just happens to be a bucket next to his foot for him to kick is like a starter's pistol for a wild chase for the money.

From Jonathan Winters trashing a brand-new gas station (the third-funniest fight scene I've ever seen in a movie, and the funniest without swords), to Sid Cesar and Edie Adams trying desperately to escape the steel-reinforced basement of a hardware store, to Phil Silvers fast-talking his way into and out of calamity, to Jim Backus as a drunken millionaire pilot with Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett on board, the race for Santa Rosita never lets up.

And what I mention here barely scratches the surface.

And then... well, one of the rules of farce in motion pictures is that you always reach the climax with a chase. So what do you do when the picture is a chase? The answer is simple -- end it with an even wilder chase! When the money is finally discovered but ends up in the hands of only one of the fourteen people at the dig site, the pursuit -- and its end -- are simply spectacular.

Of course, I did find it interesting that this movie set in southern California had so many people in it with New York accents (Berle, Cesar, and Hackett, of course; and notably also Arnold Stang and Bernie Kaplan as the owners of the aforementioned service station). But really, who cares? It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is hilarious from beginning to end.

There's been an awful lot of heavy talk on my blog lately, so I figured now would be a good time to change that.

I'd like to talk for a bit on some of the daily courtesies we extend each other. They take place routinely, and sometimes we don't even think about them.

Blog Spam: So far I've gotten only one on this, my main blog; and one on Siskiyou Breeze, my train project. For me, this does not constitute a major problem. But I still find it highly annoying when someone leaves a comment like, "I like your blog," without making any remark indicating why, or indeed even that the blog was actually read at all.

For now I'm content to ignore it. If it becomes a problem here, I'll turn on the "word verification" feature. Or maybe I'll go to the blogs that those people are advertising and leave snarky comments questioning their credibility and integrity. The secon didea has the appeal that enough people doing it would cut down on the problem, but the drawback that it really makes me no better than them (in the "two wrongs don't make a right" sort of mold) so I'll probably just do the former.

Elevators: The principle I generally go by is "off before on" -- let people off the elevator before getting on. It'll be less crowded that way. So far I've only seen two people who didn't seem to like that idea, both while I was trying to get off. One stepped forward, saw that I was coming off, and barrelled right past me at such a speed that if he'd made contact I would have fallen over. The other, quite some years ago, didn't even look -- he just stepped forward and bumped right into me. (And this guy was dressed in a suit, as a professional. It makes me wonder how his career's gone since then.)

These two are the big exception to the rule, though; I've almost always found people on elevators to be very ready to help others -- holding doors, pushing your button for you, and so forth.

Grocery Checkout: I've noticed that, since divider bars have come into use, it's become standard courtesy to put one down at the back of your load, and for the person behind to say, "Thank you." On occasion someone's forgotten to do that, and I've put my own bar down in front; the person in front of me has almost always said, "I'm sorry."

I like this. It kind of represents us all taking care of each other. That makes it kind of neat, I think.

Pedestrian Crossings: Despite having arthritic knees and a bad hip, I like to walk long distances. (I've only gotten to the point relatively recently where I have to use a cane to go more than a block or so, and even then I can occasionally do without.) Every so often I come to an intersection and get ready to cross an open lane of traffic (that is, one that doesn't have a stop sign, whereas the one I'm walking parallel to does have one) and a single car approaches. I stop and wait. I see the car slow down, and I figure it's going to make a turn, and I can just cross right behind it. Then the car stops. I wait and wonder what on Earth this person is doing. Then the driver waves me across the street.

It's not that I don't appreciate the thought, but both the driver and I would have gotten to where we were going much more quickly if he'd just gone on ahead. If you're the only car on the road, or have only one following you, stopping to let me cross only delays and confuses me. (And by similar token, stopping to let me cross when traffic in the other lane is running constant is really pretty futile.)

Videos on VHS: Back in the 1980s, before the advent of DVD, the commonly-heard request went, "Be kind; rewind." Back then, nearly everyone did rewind the tapes before returning them for others to use. These days when I rent a VHS tape or check one out of the library it's almost never rewound. No, it won't kill me to rewind it myself, but please... be kind; rewind.

Postcript: I was very excited yesterday afternoon to note that Blog Explosion had named EbB their "Blog of the Day" for yesterday/today. I think I would have preferred to have either this post or this one at the top when it happened, but at least I could insert this paragraph with the links to draw your attention to them.

I'm not the first to ask that question.

People have been saying for a few years now, "Hey, it's the twenty-first century! I was promised a flying car! They said we'd have flying cars in the twenty-first century! Where are they?"

Well, the twenty-first century is a long time. They're coming; they're on the horizon now.

And we need look no further than Moller, and their upcoming vehicle, the Skycar volantor. With a top speed of 350 miles per hour and a cruise of 205 mph at sea level, the M400 (the four-passenger model) should be that wonderful revolutionary first step we've all been waiting for. The most recent estimate on its range is 750 miles. And while 20 miles per gallon of gasoline may not seem that great compared to whatever you're driving now, keep in mind that this is a flying vehicle -- a lot of the energy is used just to get the thing off the ground. I don't even know what kind of mileage it gets when taxiing.

The one-passenger model, labeled the M150, will do a bit better at a top speed of 375 mph, cruise of 335 mph, range of 675 miles, and mileage of 45 mpg. (The mileage and range are somewhat less with gasoline/alcohol mix, but I won't comment further on that than to point it out because I know next to nothing on the topic.)

And according to the Moller website, the whole thing will be automated. Yes, that's right -- though it will naturally be possible to operate the thing by hand, much of the piloting work will be handled by an onboard computer.

This isn't new news, of course. If you watch 60 Minutes, or live in the UK and receive Aerospace Testing International magazine, you're probably already aware of this just from their recent reports.

Moller's own website covers many of the transportation issues its work tries to address, as well as the safety issues with hundreds of flying vehicles in the skies and the extensive measures the company's taken to address them. I don't even have the heart to speculate on what the Skycar (and other craft like it) might mean for the future; Paul Moller's already done a pretty good job.

As one might expect, there are other efforts at flying cars as well: Volante, CarterCopter, Haynes Skyblazer, and various others have all come into development and made some level of news. But Moller is the only one to do it without those pesky wings. These vehicles all have to pull in or remove their wings in some way before rolling down the road; the Skycar skips that step, and is equally sky-ready and road-ready at all times.

Personally, I don't know that I'll ever own one of these, but I do hope I can take a ride in one some day. Plus, I can hardly wait for these to appear in a James Bond movie.

The post I'd originally scheduled for today -- a political aspect of the Amtrak issue -- has been postponed for two reasons.

First, I want to find out what the final outcome of this year's Amtrak budget and reform bill are going to be. As of this writing, the matter has not (that I know of) been voted on by the Senate. (If they haven't been voted on by this time next week, I may write about it at that time.)

Second, while surfing other blogs, I came across this post at the One Man Bandwidth blog. This entry discusses (more briefly and clearly than I could) a trade situation with the People's Republic of China, and a couple of solutions to the problem (one of which I agree with, and the other less so, though I won't bother going into which is which).

So I'll just forward you over to 1MBW, and wish you all a happy weekend.

If you are, or plan to be at any time in the future, a part of the law enforcement community anywhere in the world, you should consider this book mandatory reading. Even if you have no such plans I highly recommend this book; it can be invaluable for anyone who becomes a victim or a witness to a violent crime.

The short of it is this: Jeanne Boylan, with little to no formal training in law enforcement, psychology, or art, has become our nation's number-one forensic sketch artist. You don't need my say-so, or hers, to tell you how successful she is; her work, and the open endorsements by many leading cops and citizens, including John Walsh, speak enough.

Jeanne's book walks the reader through her start in the field, and her involvement in several major cases of the 1990s (Polly Klaas, the Unabomber, the Oklahoma City bombing, and others) as well as some lower-profile cases. It also brings forth some of the side-effects of her job, such as her facing of bureaucratic intertia (such as this example from the rail industry), how her passion for justice broke up her marriage (I can only wonder what her ex' side of the story is) and a failed attempt at turning her story into a TV series (and, interestingly, many of the points the executive in the book cites as "too unlikely to be believable" actually became part of The Profiler later on). And Jeanne explains much of what she's learned about how human memory works, something that could very easily help law enforcement officials be sure they get the right suspect, and get him quickly, often with less effort and more certainty than with "traditional" interview methods.

It may seem odd to have a book cover so many different aspects of something, and some of the changes of approach, attitude, and atmosphere does come across as jarring or disjointed at times. This is, however, a memoir of several very different criminal cases, each with its own approach, its own population, and its own (for lack of a better term) "look and feel." The abrupt changes in writing may seem to detract from the text, but it really gives a better idea of what life is like for a notable investigator.

One interesting point is that, while Jeanne frequently cites real people by name, she never gives even fictional names to those in law enforcement who screw up a case, whether through incompetence or corruption. Good cops who make mistakes are portrayed as human, but at least three are shown as unworthy of the badge but are never mentioned by name. At first, when I read this, I thought this a bad choice, since the public -- especially potential future employers -- should know who these people are, but on later reflection I realized that she has the better idea. It's better to leave these people to obscurity, and let their current employers (who will know who they are from the descriptions of events) deal with the matter. Spreading public humiliation on top of it would be just wrong. (This is an example I try to follow with this blog).

As I write this, several used copies of the book are available for dirt-cheap prices (as low as $0.39) at Amazon. Or, since the book is technically out of print, you may have more luck through the Barnes & Noble link below. Either way, my recommendation is that you jump on it.


Portraits of Guilt: The Woman Who Profiles the Faces of America's Deadliest Criminals

Warning: this blog entry is not for the squeamish.

Recently there's been a lot in the news about a couple who apparently kept several children in cages. The story slipped under my radar... I guess when it comes to parents mistreating their children, I'm too focused on a woman named Greisy Valencia.

Greisy (shown in the photo at right, with thanks to the San Francisco Chronicle) is accused of having tortured her daughter over a period of seven to eight years, from the (girl's) age of four to eleven. This is hardly a simple, isolated case for Greisy; investigators call it the worst case of child abuse they've ever seen, and it's probably (in my own opinion) the ugliest case in United States history that didn't end with a corpse. At that, it nearly did go that far.

Over that period of time, some of the things she's accused of doing to her daughter include burning her face and hands with a hot curling iron, cigarettes, or an open flame over the stove; biting or scratching her severely; pulling her hair out; and other acts not publicly released. The scars (including some very clear bite marks) are clearly visible in the evidence photos shown below (courtesy of the America's Most Wanted website). They are so severe, in fact, that the doctors at Children's Hospital in Oakland were surprised that the girl was still alive.

This was discovered on December 11, 2002. When Greisy found out that the police had their children in protective custody, she borrowed $600 from a friend (who, I would presume, had no idea about the real situation) and fled. In the nearly three-year period since then, the story has been all over the media in Northern California, and has been featured at least three times on the America's Most Wanted and twice on their radio show.

Fortunately, the girl was taken into protective right away and moved into a foster home, where she's started to heal at least emotionally. Her physical scars will always be with her, but she has, at last report, started something resembling a normal life. The same story holds for her older brother, then 17, though his abuse was not nearly as severe and had already stopped two years earlier; her younger brother, then 9, was taken into protective custody but had not (from what I can tell in reading the stories) been harmed by their mother.

The closest that anyone's come to finding her is a report of her living in the city of Sonora, though authorities got there too late to capture her.

So why is this woman still free? Why is she not already behind bars, serving a life sentence for criminal torture? Could she be already giving the same treatment to another innocent child?

Let's all get the word out, shall we? If you're a blogger visiting this site, please post her picture and story to your page. If it's not appropriate to your site, at least post a brief link to this page or the AMW story. The AMW and San Francisco Chronicle websites have good stories on her for more information (as linked above), as do the Oakland Tribune and JC-TV.

If you live in California or Nevada (or, by now, just about anyplace else), please distribute the information to all of the fast food restaurants in your area. But don't just post it publicly; send the information directly to the manager. Greisy likes to hang out and work at fast food restaurants, so if she's working at one now and her manager finds out who she really is hopefully he'll do the right thing and notify the authorities.

Greisy also likes to use public bus systems for transportation, so it could also help to familiarize bus drivers with her story and appearance.

She stands 5'1" tall, weighs 130-155 pounds, has brown eyes and greying black hair, and would be about 51 years old now. She is a native of Columbia, but became a United States citizen in 1991.

If we all work on this, we can have her behind bars by the end of the year. I think that would make a wonderful Christmas present for many, many people. You can include me on that list -- though obviously I'd hardly be at the top.

(My apologies to the AMW and San Francisco Chronicle for use of their images. These are not taken from their site, but linked to their own locations. The images will be either copied to my own location or removed upon request from the owners in either case.)

If you live between Portland (OR) and Sacramento and would like to be able to take Amtrak to and from points west of where it now goes (such as Corvallis, Roseburg, and Medford), check out my new blog. I'll be using it to promote a rail route along that area.

Siskiyou Breeze

This is something I've known about for quite a while: the evacuated tube transport (ETT), as proposed by a Florida-based company called ET3.

It's not in place yet; the technology is still in development. In fact, as far as I can tell, there hasn't even been much press about it. (I did find a generaly discussion of it here, and a few other general articles, but nothing so specific as ET3's website.) But it could be in place in as little as ten years. Personally I think it'll be 25 or 30 years before it's at all widespread, mostly because of political resistance to change and advancement in much of government, and government is where the funding would have to come from for this.

Essentially, ETT (or Evac Tube, as I like to call it) would consist of a network of large tubes taking the place of our current railway system. These tubes would have monorails of the "maglev" (magnetic levitation) variety, using electromagnetism to literally levitate the vehicle away from the rail so the only friction involved in transportation is air friction. (This technology already exists.) Then the air is sucked out of the tube, eliminating even that friction.

Short-range transportation could then move at speeds of up to 350 miles per hour. Long-range transportation, going across and among the continents, could move at up to 4000 (yes, four thousand) miles per hour.

The most surprising thing is this graphic. I thought at first, given the discussion on the company's site of a proposed project in China and another in India, that this was a map of some islands in the China Sea or the Indian Ocean, but once my eyes adjusted I could see plainly that it's a North Pole projection of the world. The red lines are the major "trunk" lines, which would be carrying people and cargo at 4000 mph.

So I take this scenario to put it into perspective. My wife and I, along with our friend, decide to go take in a Broadway show, even though we're still living in Corvallis, Oregon. Suppose, for the sake of this illustration, that the show runs from 8:00 until 10:30, Eastern Time (that translates to 5:00-7:30 Pacific Time).

So we have some lunch at noon, then leave home at 1:00 pm, arriving at the Corvallis ETT station at 1:10 and getting on board at 1:20. The transport takes us to Eugene at 350mph, then meets with the main trunk network there and kicks up to 4000 mph going down the Pacific coast, along the Mexico border and Gulf states, and up to New York City, in just over an hour -- 5:30 local time (2:30 Pacific Time). That gives us two hours to get a little early dinner before curtain. After the show, we go hang out with the cast a bit (especially if one of the two people I know who are acting in New York happen to be in the cast), and get back to the nearest ETT station at around 11:00 Eastern Time. An hour's journey back to Corvallis gets us home by 9:00 Pacific Time, and we're all snug in our own beds at our usual bedtime... even though we just saw a show 3000 miles away.

With transportation visionaries in the right place, this scenario could take place in my lifetime.

Cool, huh?

Here's a perfect example of why I like to wait before I react to something, and why I advise the same for others. There's a message at the bottom for those of you who are writing angry words about President Bush over his handling of Katrina, but you should read the following text first.

Here's the editorial I was originally had written for today:

---

Okay, now that the waters are finally receding, people are being allowed back into New Orleans, and some rebuilding is under way, it's time to take a good look at what went wrong. And I'm glad I took some time before doing it, too, because my initial writing of this article had some pretty radical things to say, and with a cooler head I could rewrite them to a more sensible level.

I've seen a lot on the Web -- mostly written or said by less-than-cool heads -- pointing the finger at President Bush, but not a lot talking about the one person who's really responsible for the suffering in New Orleans.

Does anyone wonder why things are so terrible in New Orleans when cities and rural areas in Mississippi, Alabama, and elsewhere in the region are recovering relatively quickly? You have to think about what's different between those areas and the city of New Orleans.

New Orleans has two things those other areas don't have. First, the city has a large percentage of its land below sea level. Where flood waters in nearly any other city on Earth will eventually drain away, in New Orleans it'll just sit there because it has noplace to drain away to. You can blame the city's founders for that -- but there's not much to be done about it now, except maybe evacuate New Orleans permanently.

The other thing is Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco.

The main problem was that Governor Blanco actively and deliberately prevented aid from coming in to New Orleans. That's right -- she actually tried to keep such organizations the Red Cross and Salvation Army from coming in and helping those stranded in the city, and even gave orders for the National Guard to enforce her will.

What is her problem here? Doesn't she realize that she's dealing with the lives of human beings here? Sure, she's given orders that all residents must leave the city, supposedly for their own health and safety. And I really do believe that she believes that she's doing the best thing, with just that logic. But apparently she's forgetting that there are people whose lives just don't make that practical.

The most severe cases are the disabled and infirm, who cannot easily move on their own. There are also people who do not have anyplace else to go; if you remove them from their homes, they become homeless. Some are a little less severe, such as those who are staying behind to help friends and relatives in the first two groups, or to care for beloved pets. And there are hundreds of individual stories that simply cannot be easily lumped into a category.

But rather than recognizing that the people of New Orleans are individuals, Governor Blanco seems to want to lump them all into a big box and ship them out.

Yes, there were people who stayed in New Orleans just out of cussed stubbornness, or the arrogance of "this thing can't hurt me" or "nobody tells me what to do." Such people got what they had coming. However, what I've seen puts these individuals very much into the minority.

I'll be honest here -- if I'd been a New Orleans resident right at the height of the flood, my friends would have had a hard time getting me to not trudge on up to Baton Rouge and assassinate her. It would have been wrong, I'd deserve any punishment the courts handed down, and I do not endorse or condone such a thing -- make no mistake about that -- but that would certainly be my personal inclination, just to get her out of office so someone else with a little more good sense would take over. (This is another part of why I didn't want to post this too early; now it's too late to make a difference.)

More realistically, maybe she should have taken a trip down there when the disaster was at its height and seen what it's like to live like the people down there were doing. I don't mean to take along an entourage with all the needs of life, or going now that the waters are receded and it's safe to move around. I mean to actually go at the height of the disaster and meet some of the disabled, infirm, indigent, and other people to whom she was actively denying food, water, medical help, and other necessities, and to live like that for a few days. (This actually was my second thought -- once I dismissed the idea of assassination, I thought about kidnaping her and forcing her into those conditions.)

It's only a pity that President Bush didn't nationalize the Louisiana National Guard (and it wouldn't have been the first time this was done), taking it from her grasp and giving the order to let the relief workers in rather than keep them out.

The people of Louisiana should try to get Governor Blanco out of office as quickly as possible. I can't determine whether the state has a recall system (from what I can tell it does not), but given the number of people who have died because of her actions an impeachment proceeding for manslaughter and similar crimes might not be out of line.

If all else fails, maybe the people of New Orleans, now that they have left the city, should simply not come back. Despite its status as a major Gulf port city, secondary transportation hub, cultural locus, and artistic center -- and please mind that I'm recognizing all those things, and saying in spite of it all -- it could well also be The City That Should Never Have Been.

Well, maybe that nickname's a bit harsh, and the tactic probably is also, but you get the idea. The nice thing about living in America is that if you don't like how things are done in one area, you can go someplace else.

Unless, of course, you're infirm or poor. But I'm sure Governor Blanco will have someplace for you to go.

---

Now I've given Kathleen Blanco a good press drubbing. Then, yesterday, I read this story on America Today where she steps forward and takes full responsibility, without reservation or excuse for everything that went wrong at the state level.

This means I absolutely retract everything above about the intent, intelligence, and character of Governor Blanco. It takes considerable courage to step up to the plate and say she handled it wrong. And it takes similar courage for a Democratic governor to declare, in a true spirit of "screw partisanship, let's get the job done," that President Bush is "a friend and partner" in the recovery effort.

Now, for those of you who have been writing angry words about President Bush, I think you should know that the above is what you sound like to those of us who are more level-headed. Don't I come across as really stupid in the above? OK, maybe it's not that bad, but still, how many minds could I change with it? (No doubt many extremist liberals will point to it as proof of how violent and hateful conservatives are -- as if they're really any better. In fact, my very first text actually did suggest that she should be assassinated -- a very, very wrong sentiment. So waiting and cooling off before you speak really does have its good points over just spouting off the first thing that comes into your head.)

Katrina was a bad and poorly handled situation, but I think when all the analysis is done we'll find that it was poorly handled by everyone involved -- citizenry, government (at every level and on both sides of the aisle), press, and whoever else you want to name. Only the relief organizations such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army seemed immune from stupidity, and I've just demonstrated that even I myself was not.

In any event, to everyone in New Orleans and across the affected area, I send my best wishes (one of those wishes being that I could send more than just wishes).

This coming Monday, September 19, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

The event is the brainchild of Mark "Cap'n Slappy" Summers and John "Ol' Chumbucket" Baur, co-authors of Well Blow Me Down! (see the link at the immediate right).

I had the privilege of meeting both of the Pirate Guys (as they like to be called collectively) in last spring's production of Hamlet at Albany Civic Theatre. Mark directed the show, creating what I consider the most visually interesting production of the play that I'm aware of (and essentially fathering a really wonderful little community of lunatics in the process), and John played the Player King (the same role as that played by Charlton Heston in the Kenneth Branagh version, though John played with much most gusto) to my mentally-deficient Player Flutist. (I also had the role of Osric, played with greater subtlety in the aforementioned movie by Robin Williams, though that's not germane to this discussion.) Both men showed themselves throughout to be really great guys.

(Okay, yes, this is yet another link for books written by acquaintances I met during Hamlet, like last week's review of Tabitha: An Improper English Romance. I would have let this article wait a few weeks, for that reason and others, if not for The Big Day coming up. But don't worry, as there can only be so many of those; in fact, I'm pretty sure the Pirate Guys, MaCherie, and I are the only published authors in that gang.)

Mark even managed to sneak a little "in-joke" to Talk Like A Pirate Day into the production. It's a little complicated to explain here, but let it suffice to say that it was subtle, and never failed to get a laugh even if the audience had never heard of Talk Like A Pirate Day.

If you really love the Pirate Guys, you can also buy their new book, Pirattitude, at either the Amazon link to the right or the Overstock link below.

In the interest of full honesty, I haven't yet been able to actually read either of these books. I did have arrangements to get a copy of Well Blow Me Down and have it read by today, but it was lost before I could lay hands on it and there wasn't time to make new arrangements. I do feel that I can recommend both books, though, based on excerpts, other reviews, and what I was able to glean on the Pirate Guys' character during my time on the show.

And lest anyone (particularly parents) worry that this might promote actual piracy... don't. It really is just good fun. I can find the potential evil in just about anything (read back a few entries if you don't believe me), but it really takes a shallow view of this event to not see the real meaning: just plain silly fun, suitable for the entire family. After all, a book forwarded by Dave Barry can't take things too seriously.

Oh, and I might as well throw this in, just for good measure:


If you collect your own pirate name, and are a Blogger member, post it in the Comments section here!

(Note: the bulk of this article was written before yesterday's post.)

I am not a thing. I am a human being. I have thoughts, dreams, desires, opinions, and feelings, and I have as much a right to pursue them as anyone else. I have a desire to be loved and appreciated as a human being, and a right to pursue that love by giving others the same value.

Go back and read that first paragraph. Apply the first-person pronoun to yourself. Say it out loud (unless of course there's someone else nearby and it would embarrass you).

Affirm it, believe it, and don't ever forget it.

To often these days people -- of every culture and society, not just ours -- tend to treat each other as mere things. We might say we regard each other as people, but it seems like there's always a particular group, whether it's everyone else or just those who don't think like us in a certain way, whom we regard as inferior, or as less important than ourselves.

Our "free-sex" subculture is one of the easiest targets for pointing this out, where one's value is judged (at least in large part) by one's appearance, or the size and functionality of one's sexual organs. Yes, there are plenty of people in this group who really do care about how you're doing as a person, but once the clothes come off humans tend to become not much more than masturbation toys. Sometimes our partners are the toys, sometimes it's ourselves -- and those outside the subculture are often no less guilty of the crime, sometimes lumping the whole lot into a single group of sex-starved monsters with no real humanity.

But it happens in our supposedly conservative "core" families too. Husbands and wives, even in a pure-marriage sexual union, can think of what they do as "just sex," reducing their partners to playthings. And our children can become mere objects for our pleasure too -- not just sexual pleasure for incestuous molestation, but just the power trip of "you do what you're told, because I told you." I'm not talking about, "You need to pick up your room," or, "Turn that stereo down or you'll hurt your ears"; I'm talking about, "Your entertainment dream is just a pipe dream, you need to go into the business sector," or (the stupidest I've ever heard) "You go to church or I'll beat the living crap out of you."

I've actually read of at least one parent, and read the first-hand writings of another, claiming that children are, morally and legally, the property of the parent.

Politics is another area where we tend to (for lack of a better word) dehumanify each other and ourselves. Whether on the political left or right, Democrat or Republican (or Libertarian or Green or Reform or Independent or whatever else), there's a sad tendency to stand in judgement of those who disagree, engage in childish name-calling, and generally claim to hold the higher moral ground even while the very act puts us on lower moral ground.

Political tantrums are nothing new. In America, it goes back to our founding days, when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson fought bitterly over exactly how powerful the Federal government should be. And we didn't invent it, either, as the proceedings in the English Parliament will demonstrate -- and I personally would put the assassination of Julius Caeser into this category. The entire "class struggle" between "the haves and the have-nots" is built on the same premise that people of a particular type are less important than people of another, whether it's the "haves" looking down on the "have nots" or the "have nots" looking with hostility and resentment on the "haves."

And politics goes to the external as well as internal view. Europeans (whites) are best known for it because the European countries once tried to partition out the world amongst themselves, seeing all other races and cultures as "barbaric," but those other races and cultures have hardly been immune -- look at how the Mongols and Chinese have treated each other over the centuries, or the Japanese over the Koreans, or the Mayans over their various neighbors, just for starters.

The religious front is also infamous for it. The Catholic Church did it during the Crusades and the Inquisition. The atheists in charge of China and Vietnam do it today, to anyone of religious faith. Al Qaeda does it to non-Muslims, especially Christians and Jews.

The political and religious depersonalizers have a simple premise: those who don't believe as they do are heathens, infidels, heretics, and sub-human threats to those of us who are intelligent to know better.

So let's get this straight here. You are not a thing. You are a human being. You have thoughts, dreams, desires, opinions, and feelings, and you have as much a right to pursue them as anyone else. You have a desire to be loved and appreciated as a human being, and a right to pursue that love by giving others the same value.

I happen to be an American, a center-leaning conservative, a Christian, a heterosexual a middle-class white male, a survivor (such as it is) of psychological child abuse, a sufferer of mental illness (with multiple anxiety disorders, OCD and PTSD among them), a married man, an unemployed person, a genius (in the sense of having an IQ of 140), and an aspiring novelist, playwright, composer, and actor.

And not one of those things, nor any specific detail within any of them, should ever eliminate the statements in the first paragraph. And whatever there is about you that's different from me, no part of it changes any of it either. You still have the unalienable right to be treated as a person first and foremost, to be valued simply by right of being human, and of having your hopes and dreams and aspirations valued just because they're yours.

Definitely, I forget these things from time to time. That's only natural; making mistakes is just part of being human. There's a very public example of this right on this blog, barely over a week old. It's not the first time in my life I've screwed up on this, and it probably won't be the last. But I believe in these principles with all my heart.

So do me a favor. Go up to that first paragraph, and replace "I" with "you," and say it aloud, pretending to be saying it directly to me.

Now do yourself a favor. In your imagination, pick the one person you think is the least human -- it might be President Bush, or Michael Moore, or Osama bin Laden, or Pat Robertson, or any of dozens of other well-known people. It could be an abusive parent or ex-spouse. It could be that bully who always gave you a hard time at school, or that obnoxious supervisor at work. Anyone. And imagine yourself saying the transformed paragraph to that person, and meaning it.

And see if it doesn't change your perspective -- or, at the least, make your day seem a little brighter.

I just need to vent a little today. It's not the normal function of this blog, but I need it right now.

I got an email from GoogleAds saying my account had been terminated, apparently because I'd been clicking on the ads myself.

This is upsetting for two reasons. First, I'd managed to earn about $20 in the past month since I'd joined the program, which (according to the email) will be returned to the advertisers. Second, in so clicking I'd actually found at least three companies I'd decided I wanted to do business with as soon as I got a little in-pocket money, plus three or four definitely worth considering.

I bookmarked one of the former, but the rest will have to forget it.

It's probably my own fault, because I didn't read the policies closely enough and thought I could buy stuff from people who advertised on my on blog.

This isn't the first time, though. I've been looking for work for over a year now, and though I keep turning in applications I have yet to get an interview. While the loss of my last job wasn't my fault (it was a specific other person's whose identity I don't know), it took me ten years a lots of help to get it.

A few years back I had a music site at MP3.com, with lots of listenable tracks and several CDs. I suck so badly at marketing that it couldn't even sustain itself. I still have copies of most of the audio CDs, and one CD with all of the old MP3 tracks on it. What's especially sad about that is that, in my Business minor at college (which I didn't want in the first place but was forced into), the one business course I really did well at was Marketing.

Do I, maybe, have a birthmark on my forehead that reads, "HATE ME" or "REJECT ME"? Or is there something in my nature that makes me just screw everything up as soon as I touch it?

Well, at least there's still the LinkSys affiliations (the companies down the left, with the identical-sized mini-banners) and the Amazon links. I don't expect I'll be able to screw those up too badly. (If you want to give me a bit of encouragement, maybe you could link through to them from here and buy stuff from them that you're already inclined to get, especially from Wal-Mart and Amazon, who have "pick up at the store" options. But only if you want to. Oy, there goes my screwed-up marketing skills again....)

I hope.

And I still have a few job applications out, and a few I'm going to turn in this week. Maybe I'll get an interview there.

Maybe.

And I'm trying to send out my plays to theaters who accept direct submissions from playwrights. Perhaps one of them will like what they see enough to want to produce it.

Perhaps.

Or maybe not, perhaps not, or whatever.

I really had hoped to use some of the money from those ads to go see the Albany Civic Theatre production of Rope, the play on which my favorite Alfred Hitchcock film was based. But now it looks like that isn't going to happen.

(For those of you reading this via BlogExplosions' Battle of the Blogs: I don't mind being on the losing side as much as I am. I put 11 credits up per battle, and I get at least 15 views out of it, which is 4 more than I get on regular surfing, not to mention that people are actually reading what I write and might even click on the ads. So I figure even if I lose the battle I'm still ahead.)

In yet another astonishing twist, we have this story (and those linked from it), recently brought to my attention by (you guessed it) another blogger.

This medical procedure, currently in trials with mice, enables a mammalian organism (that includes humans, in case you didn't know) to regenerate literally any part of the body, except the brain. Severed limbs and digits grow back, a damaged heart heals back, and even nerves regenerate -- apparently including the spinal cord. The scientists on the project think it may even prolong life, though it's too early in the project to tell.

I'm not sure how quick the regeneration is. The page for Dr. Ellen Heber-Katz, the scientist in charge of the project, states only that the wounds "heal very quickly" -- an interview in the Sunday Times quotes her as saying, "We have experimented with amputating or damaging several different organs, such as the heart, toes, tail and ears, and just watched them regrow." Neither is specific, however; it could be a matter of a few minutes or a few days.

Either way, it's impressive, and the potential is mind-boggling. Imagine if we could start making this part of a natural post-natal treatment: just inject our babies with this gene therapy, and childhood injuries would be a thing of the past (well, not the injuries themselves, but at least the usual results). Or perhaps, once applied to a person, the characteristic automatically passes on to the children.

Of course, there's this pair of statements from the Times article: "Humans can regenerate their liver provided at least a quarter remains intact, as well as their blood and outer skin, but no other organs regrow. This is probably because, although most mammalian cells start off with the potential to develop into any cell type, they soon become very specialised. This allows mammals to develop more complex brains and bodies but deprives them of the power of regeneration." So it's quite possible that, if given at the time of birth or passed on to one's children, it could cause mental retardation.

I could also see where the treatment might make the patient more susceptible to certain illnesses, such as cancer or immunodeficiency disorders.

But let's set those concerns aside for a moment -- assume that I'm wrong (and I probably am), or that they can be bypassed somehow (perhaps by waiting until later in life before applying). Imagine what life could be like 50 years from now.

I don't get the impression that the treatment could cause regeneration in pre-existing injuries; if I have an accident tomorrow and lose my leg, the application here wouldn't help me, at least in the far future. If I were to lose the leg and the treatment given the same day, though, the leg might grow back.

Then again, what could be the social implication of that? Greater public risk-taking? Will we take on a public mentality of, "It's okay if I lose an arm, it'll just grown back anyway"? How many of us will also forget that we could also lose a head -- and that the brain won't regenerate?

If lost parts grow back overnight, will movie and TV stunt performers become more daring than ever? Will we start seeing horror movies becoming grotesquely real because the actors really are being hacked to pieces, on the basis that their body parts will regenerate? What could this do to productions of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and similar shows?

Now, don't get me wrong -- I don't think this is a bad idea. Quite the contrary; I think it could save a lot of lives, and help keep a lot of lives from being seriously marred.

This would be the perfect sort of thing to give to our police, firefighters, military personnel, and others who are on the front lines in keeping our homes and lives safe at great personal risk. If this turns out to be a high-risk treatment, or something only select people can get, I'd give them the first opportunity (as an individual choice).

This is yet another development for our personal lives whose consequences, I think, we should start thinking about now. If we wait until the time comes, we may have a lot of damage done to our society before we have it sorted out.

With all due respect and concern for those in New Orleans and its environs (and please, everyone, keep up whatever contributions you can make to helping them), I'd like to turn my attention for this Friday post to New York City.

This weekend marks the fourth anniversary of the now-infamous 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (and, lest we forget, the heroically foiled attack that went down in rural Pennsylvania).

I could take this opportunity to talk about such things as social responsibility, the Patriot Act, civil rights, the war on terror, or a variety of similar things, and I actually considered doing so. But then it occurred to me that any such discussion at this particular time would only cheapen the great loss and horror we're supposed to be remembering. (If you have a blog and want to talk about such things this weekend, go right ahead; I won't belittle it. I just won't do it, myself.)

Instead, I'll talk about just one man. His name was Angel Luis Juarbe, Jr. He was a New York City firefighter (and just in my saying that you probably know how this ends, but stick with me here).

I never met him face to face. I doubt he'd ever heard my name, and if he had he probably forgot it within minutes.

I only knew about him because he was a contestant on a reality-competition show aired on Fox, called Murder in Small Town X. This Tuesday-night summer series was actually a hybrid of reality and fiction: ten contestants were put into a small town with a group of actors, and those actors played out parts of suspects, victims, witnesses, and others in a large-scale murder mystery.

As in any other reality-competition show, there was a method for eliminating the contestants one at a time. At the end of every "round" (each week in our time, every three days in theirs) the group would select a member, other than that round's "Lifeguard," to go out and collect a special clue from the killer. Then the Lifeguard would select another one of the group to go as well. The killer would present two locations, which would be given at random between the two contestants going out. One of the two would return with the clue, and the other wouldn't return at all.

This was called "The Killer's Game."

Angel won the competition. He survived until the end, and between the last two contestants was the one to go to the correct location out of two possibilities (there's a tale of irony behind that as well, which I may go into in the Comments section if someone asks).

There's a story about the final scene that really shows the kind of stuff Angel was made of. The producers had a nice scene all worked out where a character was in danger from the killer, and the police chief would lead the character up the stairs where the killer would be shot and killed. Angel refused to go upstairs, insisting instead on rescuing the endangered character (it probably didn't hurt his decision that she was an attractive woman, and that the character was a basket case full of anxieties not much unlike Yours Truly). The producers really had to think fast and wing a good staging, though what developed was far better than what they'd had planned, and Angel came out looking like the real hero that, in the end, he truly was.

He went home, the winner of $250,000 and a brand new Subaru SUV.

The finale of the show aired as a two-parter on Tuesday, September 4, 2001. That Friday, September 7, Angel went to the Fox studio offices in New York to get his check and his car. He immediately gave the car to his father, and used the money to create college trust funds for his nieces and nephews. Then he went back to work.

We all know (or darn well should know) what happened the next Tuesday. Angel, working from his home station in Chelsea, was with his crew in the Marriott to get people out. He was trying to rescue two of his comrades who were trapped on an upper floor, when Tower Two collapsed. Most of the group survived, but he, the two trapped firefighters, and his lieutenant were all killed.

It's ironic that the show had originally scheduled the final episode to be aired on September 11, but decided at the last minute to air it in a two-hour special with the penultimate installment. It's ironic that the winner of the game should die just days after collecting his winnings. It's most ironic of all that he should be the only member of the MiSTX group to die in the attack, when he was also the only contestant to never play "The Killer's Game."

The whole event prompted me to write a song in his memory. I'd post the lyrics here if I'd written any; it's just an instrumental piece called "America's Angel," illustrating in musical form his Latino background, his laid-back personality, his warm heart, and just his character in general.

Was Angel in any way more significant, more important, or better than any other New York firefighter? Of course not. Everything I've seen on those men and women has only supported my assumption that all of them, or at least an overwelming majority, are pretty much like that. And not just in New York, either; in every city and every town there are people whose character and training is to run directly into a dangerous situation, so others can get out.

That day, it could truly be said that America spells "hero": F-D-N-Y.

"The rain pattered gently on the nursery windows as the sun shyly revealed itself from clouds of grey."

The job of the first sentence in a novel is to grab the reader's attention, and to set the tone of what is to follow. This, the first sentence of this first novel by MaCherie Doerfler, tackles that job with great aplomb.

Normally Tabitha is not the type book I'd be interested in. Its subtitle, "An Improper English Romance," is appropriate to the story but (through no fault of MaCherie's, but rather that of certain other publishers) conjures up images of things I'd rather not think about.

I was fortunate enough, however, to meet MaCherie when we both had bit parts in a local community theatre production of Hamlet, wherein I played Osric and she was a part of the crowd scenes. I have a possibly bad habit of looking up my costars' names on the Web whenever I'm in a play, and when her name came up so did this book. And so it was fun noting that, while we have this much in common, our experiences in getting published were very different.

I can say that MaCherie is unduly dritical of this, her first effort. While I, and several other cast members, were praising her success at just getting published -- through the self-publication house iUniverse, admittedly, but more than most of us had done -- she expressed embarrassment over the work having been done originally when she was in Eighth Grade (she was 15 when it was finally published, and 16 when we were in the show together), and the book being full of grammatical errors.

Those errors are there, I must agree, but there are a very few -- not nearly as much as one would expect from a juvenile author. There are also some occasional awkward, anachronistic, or (for a story set in Regency England) Americanized turns of phrase here and there. If this kind of thing would ruin your reading experience, then you'll want to take a pass on this book -- though you'll be missing out on quite a story. For me, these and anything else negative that I can find about the book can exist only as an admission or concession, and not as a true criticism.

I've been something of a voracious reader lately, with no TV access (the reasons for this are not germane to the review). While waiting for my copy of Tabitha to arrive, I'd sat down to try reading Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, Alexandre Dumas' Castle Eppstein, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, and The Collected Short Stories of Mark Twain. With each of these four classic works I felt bogged down for one reason or another, as though I was swimming upstream. When I opened Tabitha, I was immediately captivated by MaCherie's sense of character, sense of humor, and most of all what I can only call her sense of heart, and was swept along into the world of Tabitha Edwards and 1817 England.

While reading the first of the book's forty-one chapters, I had an odd sensation, almost as though I was looking over the shoulder of a young Mozart or Shakespeare as they were putting down their first experiments in their chosen crafts. As the book progressed, this feeling diminished somewhat, but never went away entirely. By the end of Chapter Five I was entirely engrossed in the proceedings. By the end of Chapter Eight any hope for escape had been utterly obliterated, even if the desire had been there. By Chapter Fifteen I felt like I'd been a part of the world all along, as though MaCherie had taken bits of my own heart and soul and lovingly pasted them here and there throughout the tale. And for the last ten chapters I didn't even want to stop reading, even returning to the necessities of real life.

And through it all, the story was by turn the stuff to make me laugh, cry, think, relax, or sit at the edge of my seat (that last being no small feat, since my preferred reading posture is reclining). Near the end, I often was doing two or three of those things at the same time.

As true as it may be that MaCherie has some to learn about the craft a story, she definitely has the art in ways that most of us will only wish we had. If this is an example of how she introduces herself then in a few years I can have scant doubt that in a few years we'll be looking at her as one of the great names in literature.


If you're unsure whether you want to plunk down the money for the book, you can always check out the page at iUniverse (see the link via the image at the left) and preview the first few pages online.

On a final note, I'd also like to give a personal "thumbs-up" to MaCherie's father, whom MaCherie describes in her dedication as "my biggest fan even though he's never read the book," and who (according to an archived newspaper article I found) financed the publication of Tabitha. This is the kind of parental support for a dream that I can only wish I could ever have, in place of the parental ridicule I actually got instead. Mr. Doerfler, my hat's off to you; I have little doubt that MaCherie has not disappointed your belief in her.

I had planned, at some time in the future, to take a look at our nation's general "Culture of Childishness." Once again, events change around my schedule.

The tenor of that editorial was to be that we are growing increasingly childish, selfish, short-tempered, and short-sighted. And, of course, I was going to include myself in that assessment, since I've never been immune from it.

My previous entry on this blog is, as it happens, a case in point.

Don't think I don't stand behind the general conclusion. I do hold that those who use human suffering, whether from Katrina or something else, to further their own personal or political agendas are the lowest form of social parasite. It's just that, as several other bloggers have demonstrated by their example, there are better ways of going about expressing it.

I'm not going to make any excuses for it, either -- especially since excuse-making is just another manifestation of childishness. I can say, by way of explanation, that the past week has been a very emotionally trying one for me in several respects. This blog is not a personal diary, so I won't bore you with the details (and whining is yet another manifestation of childishness, and the one I'm most prone to). In any event, it was wrong of me to vent my personal frustrations, of which most of you had little or no part, on you.

Aside from those of you who were offendedby my tone and tactlnessness, the worst part of this, from my point of view, is that my previous post violated two of the basic rules I'd set down for this blog. One was that I wouldn't make any of my criticisms personal, but only criticize specific ideas and practices. The other was that I would not post anything in haste, but only write my opinions and reviews after due deliberation.

I gave you a hastily-written, hot-headed, personalized attack, and this degraded the reader, the messenger, and -- perhaps most significantly -- the message.

You all deserve better, and I sincerely apologize.

Again, I'm posting something a day earlier than I normally would, but this is something that needs to be said now.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I've been noticing a very distressing -- even nauseating -- trend in the media. I've seen it in other blogs, and seen reports of it happening in radio, television, and other media.

Some people apprently believe that the proper thing to do in the face of all this misery and suffering is to promote their political agenda.

It's all over the political map. The most frequent case is to use Katrina to criticize or embarrass President Bush, but I've also seen criticisms leveled at Congress in general, individual members of Congress, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, Pat Robertson, Michael Moore, white people in general, and I don't even want to know who else.

Really, people, is it really so important to level criticisms at these people that you can't spend that same energy in doing something actually helpful?

If the whole purpose of your blog, or radio program, or whatever you're producing is to watch and criticize the actions of a partocilar person or group, then you may be excused for this. You have a pre-established context to excuse it. (Not completely -- I've come across a couple of blogs that started to do this, bit have concentrated on the relief efforts instead -- but enough that you don't have to consider my words aimed at you if you don't want to.)

And if you actually have made some contributions -- money to whatever charity, or bottled water (the most desperately needed commodity), or labor, or anything else -- then you've mitigated your offense but you've still offended.

It should be obvious, but as I'm find of saying, that which seems obviously true is rarely both. So I'll point it out and say it clearly.

This is not the time for recriminations and finger-pointing. It's the time to send help to people who are hurting. When things are getting back to normal, and houses are being rebuilt, and businesses have reopened, and the roads and rails are being traveled again, and the whole recovery process is well under way, then go ahead and point fingers and criticize anybody you want as much as you want. At that point you can even post personal attacks against my own lame efforts for all I care.

Right now is the time to do what we can to relieve the suffering, not to create more.

At least, that's what I'd originally hoped to make this week's Monday post about. It seemed appropriate, given that the Labor Day Telethon is airing through most of the day (it being Labor Day and all that). A number of things have intruded on that plan, though -- Hurricane Katrina, private events in my own life, and other stuff all conspiring, as it were, to make that not happen.

So I'll just post a couple of brief links here. I've posted them before in the past couple of days, but they bear repeating.

One, obviously, is to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. With just a little bit of work -- or even none at all, if you're watching the telethon -- you should be able to find out what they're doing. And, as I asked before, even in the wake of Katrina please see if you can't spare five or ten dollars to help out here.

The other is to the list of Katrina-related charities at Truth Laid Bear. Pick whatever charities (one or more) you like and do what you can. Give money, blood, labor, blog space, or whatever you can. If you can't give any of that, even just words of comfort, prayers, and other emotional and moral support can make a lot of difference.

The Hurricane Relief link at Amazon is another place I posted previously. It's handy because (as far as I can tell, at least) you can tack your Red Cross contribution onto your bill as you buy other stuff from Amazon. If you don't want to do it that way, that's perfectly fine; just so everyone gives at least a little bit to help out, each according to his or her own ability.

Both of these are situations that cause a lot of pain and suffering -- one long-term and nigh-inescapable, the other temporary (notwithstanding fatalities) yet deeply profound. In both cases, if we pull together in a cooperative effort, we can bring our brothers and sisters out of their suffering, and together be stronger for it.

(I'm posting this usual Monday post on Sunday, because I may not be around tomorrow to post it and I think it's important.)

That's all for now. Thank you.

In addition to the previously-posted list of charities (from yesterday), I'd like to encourage people to give to the American Red Cross via the Hurricane Relief page at Amazon.com. That organization has done so very much for our lives just as human beings on planet Earth, and has well earned the trust we give them. Please, let's all do what we can.

Sally Goodrich is a truly wonderful woman. I've never met her, but if you click on the story I'm sure you'll agree with me.

For those unable (for whatever reason) to see the story, it's summed up wonderfully in the caption of the lead photo: "Bennington, Vt., resident Sally Goodrich speaks in Kabul, Afghanistan, in April. Goodrich and her husband, North Adams attorney Donald Goodrich, have helped to raise about $180,000 to build a girls' school in Afghanistan in honor of their son Peter, who was killed in the World Trade Center attacks."

Now, this coming September 11 -- the fourth anniversary of the attacks that caused her son's death -- she's going to be in Afghanistan for the groundbreaking of said school. In short, the anniversary of one of history's most blatant acts of destruction and evil will be observed by the beginning of something constructive and good -- and the good will surely, as it always does, outlast the evil in the end.

I personally can't think of anything that anyone could do in higher honor if I'd been in Peter's place.

Too often over the past several years -- before 9/11, and since -- we've seen one or another parent of a dead offspring rise up in their pain and force the whole world to share it. Currently the most notorious lost hers in the war in Iraq (I won't name her here, but I'm sure you know who she is), but I've seen it too in parents whose offspring have been murdered, killed by carelessness, or died by a disease that (at least in their view, and I'm not in any position to dispute any particular case) there should have been a cure for. The urge to name someone responsible and take public vengeance is, apparently, widespread.

I'm not saying that these things should be excused. Not only am I not there, I'm not even in that neighborhood. Murder is wrong under any circumstance. War is one of the ugliest things mankind has ever inflicted upon itself. Corporate carlessness and drunk driving are not far behind. And we should all do what we can to stave off illness.

Now, I have no children of my own, and never have. While that carries with it a certain pain of its own (I'm 44 years old), I won't even try to compare it to the pain of having a child and seeing the end of that child's life. However, the Goodriches are demonstrating that there is a way to do something positive with it.

On the other hand, speaking from the point of view of someone who could have died on more than one occasion in my recent past, I would be very embarrassed to see my parents behaving like the latter group, and most deeply honored to see what Sally Goodrich is going.

I'll modify the last part of that. I am proud of the Goodriches. They are illustrating, for all the world to see, the very best aspects of the character of Americans. They are, in their dead son's name, reaching out beyond just the community in which they live and turning their pain into a blessing for others. This makes me proud to live in the same country, bear the same nationality, and fly the same flag that they do.

I only wish I had a little money to contribute to this cause. Since I don't, I'll give you this news, and let you do with it what you will.

The link at the top is merely the story where I first came across her (I probably would have seen her on the TV news if I currently had TV access). Here are a few more links:

ABC News (Person of the Week!)
Fox News
San Diego Union-Tribune
Paige Elementary School (Schenectady, NY)
iBerkshires.com


Postscript: On a different but related note, I'm also going to mention something more current to all of our lives. You should all be aware that the Muscular Dystrophy Association's Labor Day Telethon is this weekend. I can speak from direct experience that the organization does good in the people's lives; my best friend, Karen McGuire, has myotonic muscular dystrophy, and while they've been restricted in what they can do for her personally (MMD is a rarer form, so more money goes elsewhere) what they've been able to do they've done with great speed, skill, and caring. Please go and give a bit to this fine organization, even if all you can afford is five or ten dollars.

Never mind my previous promise to collect links to charities helping out. Another blog, Truth Laid Bear, has already done so. Please head over there.

This is outside my usual schedule and practice... but screw the usual schedule and practice. This is important.

I was reminded of it when I got an email from my sister-in-law. That side of the family has relatives in the Mobile, Alabama area. I've now learned that my wife's aunt (her late father's sister) and her husband have lost their home. There has been other damage in the family, but that's the only devastating part. And so the family here in Oregon is trying to arrange a "care package" to send down once the delivery services are fully restored.

On the whole, the family escaped the worst. There was terrible loss of life as well as property in Katrina's wake. And while I'm not currently in a position to do anything about it financially, I can express my sympathy for those who lost possessions, my condolences to those who lost loved ones, and my prayers for both.

I admit that I'm a bit slow in coming on this, and I apologize without excuse to any who have taken offense at this.

I will also try to find some links to put up over the weekend for people to donate to the Red Cross and other relief efforts.