community action

Editor's note:

I wrote this blog last week, but couldn't seem to get it online until today. I only get so many chances to go online, as we still have no service at home (but Bob saw a Bell South truck in our hood today!) and have much business to cover. So pardon my tardiness.

11.22

Went by my old office today for the first time. It got six feet of water and the mold, she was a-bloomin’. My desk was in the same spot, but the computer monitor had crashed face-first onto the floor. 2 of the 3 bamboo plants were alive, so I rescued them. Of course humans must be rescued, and animals get rescued by the animal-lovers, but who will rescue the plants? This was my second plant rescue—the first being a potbound variegated something or other (no botanist am I) lying naked on the sidewalk.

the office looked both better and worse than I’d imagined. My desk calendar had floated to the middle of the room—for some reason these small details are more disturbing than the big ones. some stuff seemed salvageable—office supplies on top shelves, CDs in my desk, my bobblehead statue with a photo of Bob’s cute little mug on the face. I scored some Christmas wrapping paper, white out, pens, and letter-sized envelopes with only a slight scent of mold. Perfect for my newest letter-writing campaign.

I may be stupid to believe that writing letters to Congress will make a difference, but I’ll take that risk. Saturday afternoon, I’d penned a letter arguing for federal financing of quality levees (that means standing up to a Cat 5), emailed it out to everyone on my email list urging them to do the same, and planned to email my letter directly out to as many senators and reps that my laptop battery would allow.

Of course community action is never so easy. Do you realize that those motherfuckers representing us (pardon my french—I hope my moniker isn’t too understated) don’t simply list their email addresses online? No, no—one has to fill out an “email form” for each of them, which requires that the emailer in question include their postal address. You know what that means—any emails with postal addresses outside of the congressman’s jurisdiction go straight into the ether. No, thanks. If I’m going to take the time on a Saturday afternoon to write a letter, someone on the other end is going to read it, hell or high water. (That expression has such special meaning, down here in the Big Swampy, these days…)

So I decided to go to each congressman’s website and copy their snail-mail addresses down so I could send letters the old-fashioned way. Before I could get to that irksome step, however, the Sunday’s paper did it for me. For the first time in my memory, the Times Picayune (the New Orleans daily paper—it’s no NY Times, it’s not even the Chicago Trib, but it’s better than just guessing at the news) had a front-page editorial. Perhaps the world really is coming to an end. Anyway, the editorial called New Orleans citizens to write for the same reason that I wanted to write—no one’s going to speak up for us except for us. And the feds aren’t just going to hand our corrupt state a pile of money, even though they should. The logic is simple. Devastation occurred because levees failed. Levees failed because the Army Corps of Engineers (feds, all) did the math wrong. Oops! Reports have been coming in that the posts were 7 feet short, some of the walls up to 16 feet short. Oops, oops. Now to give them credit, the Army Corps did ask the feds for more money to shore up the levees, but the feds turned them down. A wartime sacrifice, I guess. No money equals no levee repairs equals devastation which will cost super extra money.

So many have made comparisons to the 9-11 tragedy, that I shall make one more. Let’s pretend that instead of terrorists bombing the World Trade Center, that it collapsed because the government skimped on its structure and a strong wind blew down. You think New Yorkers would let the feds just skip out on the tab? No goddamn way.

Which brings me to my letter-writing campaign. Not only did the Times-Pic urge its readers to write, they also listed 18 addresses of the most powerful boys in the bullpen. Basically, they did my work for me. And I was low on envelopes and fancy, serious letter-writing paper, but now that I’ve raided my old office, I’m all set to give those boys not only a piece of my mind, but with a slightly-moldy scent.

So this is what I’m doing with my unemployment. And frankly, I’m growing to like it.