Rain, Snow, Sleet, Hail - Don't Expect Service from the US Mail

We're battening down the hatches and hanging here for Hurricane Rita. Hopefully it will not turn east. You can watch the action in the area here:
http://webcam.icorp.net/
(provided we have power or the generator is working)

Apparently I'm not the only one who is noticing the abnormal amount of incompetence of the Feds in managing things. There's now a web site collecting stories:
http://femahorrorstories.blog-city.com/

However, I did get an e-mail from someone who was working the phone banks for FEMA and wasn't happy at my characterization of the organization.

Let me qualify this. I honestly feel for those who are "in the trenches". I've never personally met a FEMA rep who wasn't a really nice person who wanted to help others. Unfortunately, these aren't the people who make the decisions and create the multi-layered bureaucracy. There's an inherent, definitive, decline in the efficiency of any organization which is directly proportional to its size. If you don't believe me, go into any chain store and tell someone there you aren't happy about something. Watch their surprise... not because they're concerned about an unhappy client, but because they can't believe that you'd think they could give a damn.

If that agency is a government agency, double the inefficiency. One thing that bothers me is that government pay scales are tied to levels of formal education and not real-world experience. Someone fresh out of college kid who has a bachelors degree and works for the government will get paid more than someone who never graduated, but has 20 years of experience. In the government, the more you can keep yourself out of the real world and a regular career, the more money you can make.

So you FEMA people who may be helping out, you have my empathy. I know it's hard doing what you're doing. I know it's even harder because half the stuff you're telling hurricane victims is probably BS, but that's what you've been told to say.

Speaking of the government, I don't understand why the USPS continues to suspend mail service to many areas of the city that are now beginning to thrive. Remember that saying? "Rain, Snow, Sleet or Hail, nothing will stop the U.S. Mail?" In my area, we should have full mail service. There is no good reason. But we're lumped in with New Orleans proper in the 700xx zip code and we should have had mail service restored more than a week ago but we don't. A huge portion of the city is moved back in and rebuilding, but nobody can get any freakin' mail! One post office near by house seems to be open, and I dropped by the other day and it was like something out of M*A*S*H. You had a huge group of people in a big line asking if there was any mail for them. Seriously, it was like some sort of military mail call, where a carrier would yell out someone's name or address and people would shuffle around.

I can understand that some home delivery may be delayed, but I have a P.O. box at a very big, undamaged post office which has remained empty. I'm still waiting for this month's issue of Penthouse Forum dammit! (A big shout out to my good friend Xaviera Hollander, who has stayed in touch and been quite concerned about how things are going down here. I hope all is well in Amsterdam.)

On more positive notes, Cafe DuMonde opened up in Metairie, and having a beignet was just the medicine I needed to remind myself of some of the good things New Orleans has to offer. We decided to purchase a big quantity of beignets and drove them over to the national guard relief station and give them to the soldiers. I'm not sure these kids knew what a beignet was, but I think they definitely enjoyed them and we enjoyed doing something for them -- they've been doing a wonderful job of taking care of us. If you have a hankering for a beignet, you can make your own - our online shop for Cafe DuMonde is up and working at: http://shop.cafedumonde.com/

Which reminds me, I really want to do more for the guard troops who are in the area. They're working their butts off. If anyone has any ideas or things to donate you think they would appreciate, let me know and we'll figure out something to do. In the mean time, I'm going to keep bringing them beignets and other little local things I can get ahold of.

My friend Kim had an interesting theory on mother nature I thought I might share:

It occurred to me tonight, listening to CNN....Much of nature contains self-correcting systems. Natural forest fires clear out brush while sparing the larger trees, resulting in forests that are less susceptible to fires. Animals that reproduce too rapidly end up competing for limited resources, and eventually enough die from competition or starvation to reduce their numbers back to sustainable levels. You get the idea.

Now, our own over-indulgence in fossil fuels creates global warming. Global warning leads to melting ice caps and rising sea levels, and possibly more, or stronger, hurricanes. (There is some scientific disagreement about that, but bear with me. Rising sea levels alone would make even normally-occurring hurricanes more destructive by bringing storm surge closer to the coastal cities.)

So these hurricanes totally whack the offshore oil rigs and refineries in Texas and Louisiana, disrupting the supply of petroleum products and sending costs skyrocketing. Gas could go up to $4 or $5 a gallon, more if there are other problems down the line, like say more hurricanes next summer, or over the next decade, for which they are predicting more active hurricane seasons.

The high prices encourage conservation and make it much more desirable to investigate alternate energy sources. Maybe they actually make the most petroleum-guzzling country on the planet use less. And given enough time, perhaps that leads to the reduction of greenhouse gases and an end to global warming.

And the system corrects itself. The only drawback is all the extensive pain and suffering required to get things back on track, when we could have just decided to do it ourselves without being forced into it by scarcity and high prices. Unlike the multiplying rabbits or the tinderlike underbrush putting themselves at risk, we have the ability to plan ahead and change our actions when we see trouble coming...if we are smart enough to do it.