Gods, dreams, & balls of twine.

[angledge]

Because of spoilage & mold caused by the extended power loss, most of the refrigerators of New Orleans have made their way out to the curb for disposal. Several of them have become impromptu pieces of art or political statements. NOLA Craigslist had some information about a Fridgehenge being built, but I never did see it, if it actually happened. Anyway, branniejan took a photo of this fridge last Sunday after we had gone to Croissant D'Or for breakfast.



If you don't get the "joke", click here for the backstory. It's incredibly irritating to see how the highest levels of the Federal government responded to the initial phases of this disaster.

Speaking of incredibly irritating, FEMA has decided to shorten our working hours from 12 hours a day, six days a week to 11 hours a day, six days a week. Why? We have a lot of work to do. Are they trying to save money? On this disaster? Cutting office hours isn't going to make even the slightest dent in the eventual bottom line for Hurricane Katrina. The major effect it does have is making this assignment less profitable for me & my co-workers. While it isn't all about the money, I did take this assignment with the understanding that I would be working madcrazy overtime & collecting a commensurate paycheck. I'm not in New Orleans for fun, after all. I'm here to make good money doing good work.

Even thinking this thought makes me feel like a mercenary, but hey – if I'm going to be away from home & friends for three months, I think it's fair to want to be well-compensated for my time. Every hour I'm not at work is usually an hour I'm wishing I was back in San Francisco. Or in Philadelphia. Or back in Scotland. Basically, anywhere but here.

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I think I've realized what makes good writers, poets, and/or songwriters different from the rest of usme. Sometimes I will have a flash of creative genius, but it's always at a moment – waking up from a dream, in the shower, while driving – when I can't record the insight. I'm left floundering with a pen & paper on the nightstand, thinking, "It was a hotel, & a metaphor for inner beauty versus outer beauty & FUCK I'VE FORGOTTEN THE WHOLE FUCKING THING ARGGH!!" The act of reaching for a writing implement causes the whole thought-structure to evaporate into the ether. I think the creative people amongst us are clever trappers, able to entice the ideas to hang around in their heads long enough to capture them in media. Either that or their dreams are made out of a more substantive stuff than mine are.

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Here's a metaphor for you: imagine a gigantic ball of twine. Now, release a litter of demonic kittens on the ball, allowing them to snarl the twine until you have a Gordian tangle. This ball of knots is an excellent metaphor for the problems facing the city of New Orleans. Every time I try to imagine a solution for one of the city's many problems, I realize that each individual problem is connected to every other problem the city is facing.

Taking just one example, let's consider the problem of getting the power back on. Do you know that Entergy, the utility company for this region, has only restored power to approximately 24% of its service area? Entergy recently asked the Federal government for $450 million to help them get the rest of the city re-powered. They said that, even with that much aid, it will still take up to a year to get the whole city back on the grid.

Why? Well, we aren't talking about just repairing downed electrical wires. When the levees breached, they flooded switchyards, transformer stations, & all kinds of utility infrastructure installments that are far more costly to repair than transmission wires. Not only that, but some of those facilities were antiquated, & are now environmental clean-up sites, full of damaged PCB-containing equipment & other delights. It's expensive & time-consuming to fix ONE facility like that, not to mention an entire city full of them.

Who's going to pay for all these repairs? Entergy is essentially bankrupt – most of their customers have evacuated & aren't using electricity right now (& probably can't pay for it even if they are using it). The City of New Orleans & the State of Louisiana are destitute – their tax bases have been completely destroyed & they have no hope of even paying for emergency work, much less repairs. Awesome tangle, Economy Kitten! Let's hope the Federal government has enough cash to jump-start this whole process!

Even if Entergy can get the money to pay for repairs, who is available to do the work? There is an incredible shortage of workers in this entire region. Why? Because most of the city is still uninhabitable. Why is it uninhabitable? Because there's no power (crap, that's circular!). Additionally, families are being stymied in their efforts to return because the public schools are still not open – the parents can't come back until the kids have somewhere to go to school. And the schools aren't reopening because they don't have power, they don't have enough teachers, & there aren't enough contractors available to repair all the school buildings. Good work snarling these problems together, Utility Kitten!

But it goes further than that. Utilities have to have insurance coverage for their facilities. Now, if you were an insurance company, would you feel like issuing Entergy a multi-million (-billion?) dollar policy on facilities that were flooded not once, but twice? I imagine the insurance companies want assurances from the US Corps of Engineers that the levee system around New Orleans is sound & will protect the city against future flooding (pattiquest, chime in any time). Well, if those are the kind of assurances you want, too bad! The Corps & other groups are studying why the levees failed, & their studies seem to reveal basic flaws in the designs & materials used to construct ALL of the levees around the city. I imagine that the insurance companies are hesitant to insure any buildings that are protected by the current levees until they have some quantification of the risk of future failure. Nice job, Insurance Kitten! That knot is a real killer!

Some days I'm glad to be a FEMA foot soldier. I can concentrate on getting the paperwork done for my applicants, documenting their tiny fractions of the problem. Looking up at the whole problem makes me a bit nauseous.

Comments

[songquake.livejournal.com]

wow... that ball of twine thing... i read the nyt article yesterday (or maybe it was earlier in the week?) about how businesses in NOLA desperately need workers in order to get back up. it's strange to me, since job markets elsewhere are (still) so crappy. but it totally makes sense that you can't have workers where there's no infrastructure (using the term broadly to include schools and homes as well as roads and power) to support them.

my seminary is putting up a couple of families of evacuees. i have one living directly across the hall from me. they're very sweet, smart folks willing and able to work (well, except for the 91 year old uncle). they're sure as hell not going back, since their home is gone and they had family up here anyway.

it's a sad situation.

[krick.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess the utility companies should have been squirreling away some of their money in case something like this happened instead of paying it out in excessive dividends to their stockholders. Then they wouldn't be bankrupt.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

You know, if you only had a proper understanding of the "New Economics", as defined for us by the guys at Enron, you would see why this so-called position of yours is antiquated beyond all hope.

"Squirrel away money in case something happens...." sheesh.

Nice Metaphor

[jacesan.livejournal.com]

Most electronic equipment doesn't work so well after submersion. Can you blame the insurance companies for their policies? Even if they manage to "shore up" the existing levees, what's to prevent a similar occurance next hurricane season? The levees aren't made to withstand the more powerful hurricanes. They need more than reinforcement, they need a serious upgrade. The storms are probably not going to be getting weaker.

Would you trust anything the US Corps of Engineers has to say about their efforts? The bickering between them and others is part of the problem that led to this mess in the first place.

Your help is valuable, and you shouldn't feel like a mercenary at all. The place is effed up beyond the scope of most people's comprehension. I'm not sure how to even start untangling the ball of string, but you're admired for giving it your best shot.

[marasca.livejournal.com]

Excellent metaphor. It's hard to see all of those tangles from far away, sometimes. It just looks like a pile of yarn.

Also, I love your squirrel icon.

[funkyplaid.livejournal.com]

It's good to hear what you've been thinking about in some detail. I hear your frustration regarding the post and I trust that the moment it becomes too much for you to handle – or that it becomes not worth your sanity/time continuum, you'll come home.

Daily, I shake my head in admiration for your desire to help – there's no way it's a mercurial tendency alone.

I think the creative people amongst us are clever trappers, able to entice the ideas to hang around in their heads long enough to capture them in media.

This is nicely-crafted. There, you've done it.