Monthly Archives: September 2005

More on Katrina

(1) My older sister wrote the following on her blog:

I try what I am now calling my “Connecticut Theory” on a friend: “If this were Connecticut, not New Orleans, our president would have cut short his vacation on Saturday, not Tuesday; if this were Connecticut, our government would have sent troops and supplies and help before the hurricane, not five days after it; if this were Connecticut, everyone would have gotten out, not only those who could; if this were Connecticut, the rhetoric emanating from the White House would match the reality unfolding on the ground.” My friend just nods, both of us perhaps remembering Bush’s infamous line in Fahrenheit 911 to the wealthy white patrons at a fundraising dinner: “You are my base.”

(2) Rev. William Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, has expressed anger at the response to the people trapped in New Orleans. You can read his comments on the online magazine, uuworld.org. Most importantly, you’ll also find many links to ways you can help with relief efforts.

(3) Just heard from someone here in New Bedford who works for a non-profit agency that is helping the evacuees who have now been flown in to Otis Air Force Base, and is feeling some stress. It’s a huge effort just to care for the few evacuees who have come to Massachusetts.

(4) Here at First Unitarian, we’ve been getting some information about what’s needed at Otis Air Force Base. The following emergency supplies are needed at Otis as of Sept. 8, according to Rev. Bob Murphy:

NEW clothing, diapers and “baby wipes,” bottled water, and toilet (personal hygiene) items. Clothing for all age groups is needed. New underwear, especially, is requested… Supplies for Otis can be taken to the Falmouth Service Center, which is located at 611 Gifford Street in Falmouth. TELEPHONE: 548-2794… The Service Center is open on weekdays, during the day, to receive deliveries. When you bring supplies to the Service Center, let the volunteers know that “these things are for the people at Otis.” (The Service Center has collections for several community projects.)

(5) Bob Murphy also says that if you’re looking to volunteer at Otis, you should contact the American Red Cross — call their Hyannis office at 508-775-1540.

Please remember that if you volunteer at Otis, you will be going on a military base during wartime, so be sure you have proper ID, and be respectful of the already stressed military personnel at the base.

Odds and ends

The first week or two of September has been the busiest time of year in all the Unitarian Universalist congregations I have served, as we rev up again after summer slow-down. This week at First Unitarian has been no exception. Church phone ringing, meetings, people stopping in to say hi, lay leaders trying to get thigns done — the usual. On top of that, Carol and I still don’t have DSL service at home, and there’s something wacky with the DSL service here at church. Net result — I haven’t posted anything to this blog since Saturday.

But here are some odds and ends from notes I’ve accumulated over the past few days….

Sunday evening: Candleworks restaurant, two blocks from our apartment, had an outdoors band which was, um, pretty mediocre (to be charitable) and all too audible from our windows. Rather than suffer, um, listen, we took a walk down by the waterfront. Talked with a crew member from the cruise ship docked at the end of state pier — fascinating guy, loves to travel, hiked most of the Appalachian trail a couple of years ago, has gone all over North America, has found perfect job working for a cruise ship. He’ll take a couple of weeks off in the fall to go deer hunting in Michigan, where he comes from. Also spent a couple of hours talking to J. S., director of the port facilities. He regaled us with tales of what it’s like to run a port as a local official having to intereact with state and federal agencies. He grew up on the water in Revere, and rowed all over Boston Harbor in his youth — salt water runs in his veins.

Monday: Carol and I drove to Horseneck Beach in Westport, the big state beach for the Southcoast region. All the lifeguard chairs had already been removed from the beach and stacked behind the showers building. I wandered over to the snack stand, which was still open. “Hi, any hot dogs left?” I asked. “Well if you want hot food, we have fries and clam cakes,” he said. The clam cakes looked soggy. I had fries. I could see the staff emptying out the shelves and scrubbing everything down. The end of summer.

Tuesday: The news from the Gulf Coast continues to be depressing. Might be some refugees coming to Otis Air Force Base near here, and one member of our congregation is working for a non-profit agency that will probably provide services to them. I am following the “blame game” that’s going on in the press — Bush is to blame, the Louisiana state governor is to blame, the Army Corps of Engineers is to blame, local governemtn is to blame. I’d love it if someone in authority just said, “Things aren’t going well, I’m sorry” — but we no longer say “I’m sorry” in our culture, do we? Bush is taking heat for his “weak leadership” — too early to second-guess anyone right now. As a minister what I’ve noticed is that Bush, an avowed Christian, has insulated himself from the poor and destitute. This, too, has become a national trait — those of us who are comfortable don’t want to get too close to the poor, the hungry, the destitute. It’s easy to write a check for disaster relief in a place a thousand miles away, but much harder to have to deal with hunger in someone standing next to us. Maybe that’s why some Americans are so angry at Bush for avoiding the poor and destitute — his actions are merely a reflection of our actions. No one likes to see an ugly reflection of themselves.

Wednesday: Had an appointment over at the Standard-Times, the daily newspaper here in New Bedford. Fun to walk through a real newsroom, although it looks nothing like the photos we have of the newsrooms my grandfather worked in. One picture shows him with the green eyeshade, sitting at a big wood desk covered with papers, sleeve garters, a couple of guys witting near him smoking cigars. The Standard-Times newsroom — big modern open space, fluorescent lights, windows looking out over the downtown, cubicles, computers on every desk. I was talking with Linda Rodrigues of the Standard-Times, and we discovered we are both interested in the new news media. Newspapers are moving more and more to Web sites, blogs, and so on. But I’ll bet the move away from newsprint will not change the basic newsroom — the computers are already there on everyone’s desk.

P.S.: Latest news this morning is that no one will be relocated to Otis Air Force Base.

Update — September 10, 2005: Evacuees have been relocated to Otis.

More on Katrina

My younger sister, Abby, writes:

Hi Dan,

As you suggested, I sent a donation to the American Red Cross for hurricane disaster relief. But I saw something on the Today Show this morning that got me thinking — a man on a rooftop in New Orleans with his three (rather injured) dogs. It got me thinking about how we need to remember the pets, wildlife, and farm animals who were also affected by the hurricane, and whose needs will, by grim necessity, take a back seat to those of the humans who are suffering.
“Anyway, is there any chance that you could mention on your blog that donations can be made to the Humane Society of the United States Disaster Relief Fund, www.hsus.org? I know you reach a lot of caring, concerned people via your blog. Which I do read regularly, by the way….

Great idea — and anything for a regular reader, Abby!

Worse than we thought

The news from New Orleans and other areas hit hard by Hurricane Katrina just keeps getting worse. Now it looks like it will be months before New Orleans will be habitable again. All along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana through Mississippi and into Alabama was hit hard, with storm surges in excess of 20 feet in some places, and of course flooding from rain and rivers overflowing. Thousands of people may be dead, once we get the final death toll. This may turn out to be the biggest natural disaster in the United States since the legenary 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

The emergency response by governmental agencies appears to be unable to keep up with the magnitude of the disaster. (And before you blame those crazy people for staying in the face of evacuation orders, my sister’s blog makes a good point — many of them had no means to get out.) Worse yet, it looks like many areas that were hardest hit were woefully underinsured. All this means that voluntary contributions are going to be critical. Give what you can now. One way to give is through the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s Gulf Coast Relief Fund. They have pledged to keep administrative costs below 5%, and they have people on the ground in the affected areas with local knowledge of wht needs to be done.

Nor is this problem going to go away any time soon. Maybe we should all start a move to give donations to rebuilding the Gulf Coast in lieu of half our Christmas presents this year. Or something.

One last suggestion: before you send your donation to the aid agency of your choice, see if your employer will match it. Carol’s employer will match her donations, so we will send in our donations in her name.

The news from down there is so bad that when we saw gas prices of $3.49 today, it just didn’t seem that important. At least we’re alive.

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Mr. Crankypants is back, and all nice and rested after a long summer vacation. But all the bad news has made him mean and cranky again. There can be nothing good about an entire city getting devastated by a hurricane. Lots of bad news about rising gas prices, too, but Mr. Crankypants has managed to find a silver lining in that cloud. What could be good about rising gas prices? Nothing, you say? Think again….

As Mr. Crankypants gets into his twelve-year-old Toyota Corolla (32 mpg around town, 36 on the highway), he sees someone drive by in a huge, brand-spanking-new Hummer (8 mpg on a good day). Mr. Crankypants just spent $26.37 filling up the Toyota’s gas tank, which caused serious feelings of crankiness. Ah, but watching that brand-spanking-new Hummer drive by, that made everything better. Mr. Crankypants imagines a conversation with the driver of the Hummer….

Hey, look at that brand-spanking-new Hummer! Wow, bet it’s loaded, huh? A/C, power-everything, that looks like a sunroof. Hey, when ja buy that? Three months ago? You mean when gas prices were below two dollars a gallon? Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha! Hee hee. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Too bad, sucker.

There now. Mr. Crankypants feels much better.

Good and evil

As I was writing this week’s sermon, I found myself thinking yet again about the strange, strange story of the Garden of Eden. I came across a passage in Elaine Pagels’s book, The Origin of Satan, where she tells about an anonymous early Christian author who wrote a book called “Testimony of Truth.” This anonymous author also tried to make sense out of the Garden of Eden story, and wound up by saying the character of God must really be the evil one in the story — after all, God lies to Adam and Eve (by telling them they would die if they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil), and is vindictive and mean-spirited. No, said this anonymous author, the real hero of the story is the Serpent, who (believe it or not) is actually Christ!

I don’t buy the bit about the serpent. But let’s face it, God behaves in a less than exemplary fashion in this story. I like to retell the Garden of Eden as an existentialist parable with Eve as the protagonist: Eve has to make a decision in an absurd universe — she makes the best choice she can, a choice that turns out to have unforeseen consequences — and her choice shapes the rest of her life. No original sin, just an existential choice in the face of absurdity.

In this story and elsewhere, I feel the Bible matches both Camus and Sartre as a source for good existentialist philosophy. Take Ecclesiastes — how existentialist can you get? And if you’ve gone beyond existentialism to postmodernism, the confusing figure of Jesus is just whimsical enough, and just engaged enough, to suit.

That’s the lovely thing about being a heterdoxical heretic who doesn’t give a tinker’s dam for creeds and dogma — when that’s your attitude, you can read the Bible as a source of spiritual inspiration suitable for this very moment. And as Elaine Pagels points out, people have been doing this right along.

Group process

My older sister teaches writing at Indiana University East in Richmond, Indiana. She let me sit in on a couple of her classes a few years ago, and she is one of the best teachers at the college level I have ever seen. She sent this comment along in response to a < a href="http://www.danielharper.org/blog/?p=288">previous post:

You’re right about the “old group process techniques.” They’ve become hackneyed, reductive, and unfortunately, often, required. I am all for nurturing the voices of my students, but too often “small group work” or “student centered learning/teaching” means nothing more than busy work or chaotic jabbering. Even my students will say: how can we critique each other’s work in small groups when we don’t yet know how to critique our own? Good question, kids. My teaching combines lectures, guided discussion, mentoring, apprenticeship, and judiciously teaching the students how to teach one another. Maybe the only postmodern thing I do is to teach to different sensibilities, or, I suppose, intelligences. We draw, eat, talk, write, take walks, watch films, talk, write some more, take self-created impromptu field trips, sing, argue, write, write, write. I suppose the fact that I won the big teaching award last summer validates this intuitive approach. Who knows.