Images from the Gulf Coast (credit: al.com). If you've served on the Caribbean Mercy during PR tours in the last four years, you may recognize some of these scenes.
Then again - you may not.

All photos credit al.com. See more

More Local News From The Gulf Coast

Another roundup for international Mercy Ships crew. These items are from multiple sources, primarily NBC and CBS, current as of 2 PM CDT Wednesday. Overall, five million people were without power Monday night, and an estimated forty thousand were in shelters. Thousands more are still in need of rescue.

In New Orleans:

• Two levees failed on Tuesday morning after the storm had already passed, allowing water to enter the city. The water level is finally stable, but 80% of the city is now underwater. The mayor says "hundreds, maybe thousands" may be dead.
• U.S. Army and Coast Guard helicopters are lifting stranded residents from rooftops. Thousands, including many small children, are collecting on highway overpasses and stranded on other high ground, with no drinking water, food, shelter, or medical care available yet anywhere.
  
• Looting began on Monday night, with police and military personnel in some areas outnumbered and struggling to keep order.
  
• Refugees in the Superdome, where as many as 25,000 are now housed, are surrounded by waist-deep water and will have to be evacuated to the Astrodome in Houston over the next several days.
  
• Inmates from at least one local prison were released as a last resort to keep them from drowning.
• The floodwaters are becoming more and more contaminated with massive amounts of sewage, toxic chemicals, and dead bodies (some new and some from the cemeteries). Disease outbreaks are feared over the next few weeks.
  
• The city is now being completely evacuated and is under martial law. Officials say it could be fourteen to sixteen weeks before anyone can return to rebuild.

In Gulfport and Biloxi:

• Buildings at the Gulfport port facility are gone, with only the water tower remaining. The Marine Life aquarium next door is totally destroyed.
  
• Up to a half-mile inland from the beach, almost everything - everything - has been totally destroyed.
  
• Floating casinos have either sunk into the water or been lifted up and thrown across Highway 90 to land on top of houses. One was seen to have flattened a Holiday Inn.
  
• The Highway 90 bridge to Ocean Springs is totally destroyed.
• Rescuers in boats are having to avoid floating bodies in order to rescue living residents still stranded. Houses with dead bodies are simply being spray-painted with a red X for eventual recovery.
  

In Mobile:

• A storm surge of 11 feet was recorded downtown. Most of the downtown was under several feet of water, which has been slowly receding today.
• A drydocked oil rig broke loose and smashed into the bridge at the peak of the storm. The bridge has been partially reopened for traffic, with the extent of the damage unclear.
  
• Isolated looting took place in Prichard.
• In Chickasaw, water still covered the road out to the Caribbean Mercy's dock this morning, with no power and therefore no pumps to remove the water for at least three more days. The caretaker crew has now driven from Georgia to the IOC to wait it out.
• According to the Caribbean Mercy's GPS position-signaling equipment, the ship is at least still in the same general area it should be, says caretaker crewmember Tom, but its condition remains unknown.

As Of 2 PM CDT

More for watching Mercy Shippers--

Nothing yet from Caribbean Mercy caretakers Tom, Kathy, and Maria Elena, who were fleeing to Georgia ahead of the storm. Anyone?

Two photos from Gulfport this morning (credit: al.com), where the Caribbean Mercy docked for PR in 2003 and 2004. Remember that Dairy Queen?

(credit: al.com)

In New Orleans, AP says the one-story homes south of Lake Ponchartrain are flooded to the rooflines, and two of Jackson Park's huge famous oak trees near the cathedral are down. But the city's worst fears seem to have been avoided - no major flooding is reported in the historic parts of the city, and most of the levees are apparently still holding. The Superdome is damaged and leaking with eight or nine thousand refugees now inside, but the hurricane-force winds have mostly passed the city.

No word, however, on how high the all-important storm surge was in Mobile, where the Caribbean Mercy is riding it out. Or on whether anyone's gotten around yet to getting that barge out of the middle of the park.

As Of 11:45 AM CDT

Another quick roundup for you Mercy Ships and Caribbean Mercy crew watching from around the world...

• WLOX-Gulfport has stopped reporting on the storm because they are now under a foot of water.

From WKRG-Mobile:

• Royal, Water, and Canal Streets are flooded, and the water is moving west up Government Street
  
• Shelters are open in Mobile, Daphne, Fairhope, and Chickasaw
• The Mobile River is now flowing completely around the Mobile convention center, over the railroad tracks
  
• There appears to be a barge grounded between the trees in Riverside Park (between the convention center and the cruise terminal).

Not much news from New Orleans right now, but at least one levee has been breached, and part of the roof of the Superdome (where 6000+ residents are huddled) has reportedly been blown off.

As Of 8 AM CDT

...More bits and pieces of interest to Mercy Ships and Caribbean Mercy crew....

• From WKRG-Mobile: the Bankhead Tunnel is closed. Tornadoes on the ground in Baldwin and other area counties. Mandatory evacuations in southern Mobile County and "strongly urged" for the northern part. Wind gusts of 113mph recorded in Pascagoula before 7:30 am CDT.
• From AP: The Port of Mobile was locked down at 2 am and all deep draft vessels have evacuated the port. The only vessels remaining are two dredges and three cargo ships (one of which, as with Hurricane Dennis, is the Caribbean Mercy).
  

• From FOX affiliates - The pumping system in New Orleans is now off. Water in the French Quarter at 7:46 am CDT is ankle deep and slowly rising. Sheets of plywood are flying through the air and smashing windows.

Katrina Update For Mercy Ships & Caribbean Mercy Crew

Just passing along the tidbits....

• From NHC: Official landfall at 6:10 am CDT around Grand Isle, LA, as a strong Category Four
• From AP: The storm shifted slightly east towards MS at the last moment, and electricity did not go out in New Orleans until around 5 am CDT
  
• From WeatherUnderground.com: A buoy 70 miles south of Dauphin Island, Alabama reported a 47 foot wave at 5 am CDT
  
• From FOX affiliates in Mobile & New Orleans: The storm surge does not appear to be flooding Alabama much yet, but in the next half hour (7:30--8:00 CDT) the storm's effects on New Orleans will intensify.
  
• From WLOX-Gulfport: Management at Marine Life (remember them? the scuzzy ghetto-Sea-World thing right near our dock?) moved three resident dolphins into the Gulfport Best Western hotel pool Sunday afternoon. Heh.

Um...

(credit: nhcc.noaa.gov)

scratch that. Headed for the LA-AL border, now a Category Five. As you've heard already, of course, if you're anywhere other than lost in the tundra.

So. The crew of the Caribbean Mercy is evacuating right now, closing up and driving to Georgia with the help of three hands from the IOC. The storm surge up the river from Dennis last time almost covered the dock. That was about three feet. The National Weather Service is calculating Katrina's potential storm surge at as much as twenty-five feet. For those who have not had the pleasure of messing around with hurricanes much before, these are vertical feet. As in, if your house is normally six vertical feet above sea level, even if it's half a mile from the beach, it's about to be nineteen feet under.

In my very limited understanding, this poses a real problem for a ship tied to a low dock - particularly if you're not going to be around to slack the mooring lines as the rising floodwaters stretch them drum-tight. None of the real nightmare scenarios are likely to come true, of course, but in theory, if everything went wrong at once, a ship could be rolled over or even physically lifted up on top of the dock. But the CBM has ridden out everything else this year with no problems.

However, for an entire city built ten feet below sea level only a few miles from the sea (like, say, New Orleans) - with the water kept out even in normal times only by an intricate system of piping and pumps - well, as my old geology profs have said for years, in technical terms, they're screwed. One would think the math would suggest certain alternate courses of action. But apparently it's never worried them before. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

So Okay, Maybe It Wasn't Just Me

(both images credit: nhc.noaa.gov, 26 Aug)

As we are now off the ship, this does disprove my earlier hypothesis that the Gulfstream was out to get me personally.

But this is - what - the fifth predicted direct strike in three months for the Mobile Bay area? Although maybe that's not too bad considering it's only August and we're already up to the K's. This may be small consolation, however, for the three (3) people who now constitute the entire crew of the Caribbean Mercy. According to today's news, Katrina could be a Category Four by the time it hits land. Again.

Well, at least that would shorten up the decisionmaking process about the ship's future. How much was that insurance, did you say?

And

we're painting the offices in Katie's church.

Lest you think i'm getting too comfy in this patio chair.

The World Tour Rolls On

I'm in heaven. Also known (at the present moment) as upstate New York; also also known, actually, as my in-laws' house. More generally speaking, you could call it anywhere i can sleep till eight and wake up to fresh-brewed coffee, broadband, and cable news. All for free! And beer in the fridge! (I mean, um, for after lunch.) But they are great people, and very kind. Staying with my parents was completely wonderful too, although we were busier there with all those annoying little things like grilling fresh corn on the cob and hiking 9000 feet up in the Rockies and eating BBQ and cream puffs at State Fair. It was rough.

So our long-planned World Professional Mooch Tour, i mean, the World Family And Friends Visiting Tour, is progressing in considerable style. Just being off the ship is still kind of new. There's still something really kind of fun about sleeping in a room larger than most people's smallest bathroom. And having a bathroom larger than a broom closet, one that doesn't periodically roll and pitch itself about fifteen degrees either side of level - that's quite exciting, too. Really, it all feels a bit naughty. But i've decided that i never want to get to a point in life where staying in an average suburban spare bedroom no longer feels like a luxury experience. I'm happy for most people i know in the way that they live, especially when they take me in, but i just can't stand the thought of living that way myself for its own sake. Neither do i want to live in poverty for its own sake. But simplicity, as an end, and frugality in certain areas as a means to others? Gimme. If a night in a Motel 6 doesn't feel like a spendy exercise in novel near-decadence to me, i have not been living the way i want to live.

In any case, i am thoroughly enjoying myself this week. I mow their lawn periodically to salve the uneasiness of my productivity-schooled conscience. It almost works. I drink my coffee, and laugh at the national news anchor who just uttered the phrase "anals of history," and am happy. If only that were all it ever took.

Visible Sidebars

Another great band name, i must say.

oh. sorry. The List, i have discovered, was the cause of the disappearing sidebar, which - according to your responses - no one had ever seen, because you have all already received the Mark of the Beast. (You know, that little blue e on your desktop? No?) [sigh] Anyway, until the remainder of the world abandons IE for Firefox or Opera or something else less silly, The List will need some work. But happily, the Tiny Photo Shows are now back where they should be, and all four people reading this can finally breathe a sigh of relief.


Ingrates.

Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 12

(Grand Teton NP, WY. 9 Aug)

Straight From The Source

Ah, Midwestern life.

Did i say that already?

From this morning's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

At the Stoughton Country Club, the roof was sucked off the building. Lenny Peaslee, head chef, crouched behind the bar in the basement, where about 40 people waited out the storm.

"We saw stuff flying and basically buried our heads," said Peaslee, who was cooking steaks when somebody shouted to get in the basement. He said some guys grabbed their beers as they raced down the stairs.

"They thought it might be their last one," he said. "They wanted to have one in hand."

Tornadoes Coming Through

Ah, Midwestern life.

Not that the weather is stupendously fascinating or anything, but hey, there's nothing else going on. The tornadoes were about eighty miles west of here two hours ago, and coming this way, so there have been pieces of wet debris falling from the sky onto our neighborhood all night. The biggest one i saw was a strip of cardboard or something about a foot and a half long, just floating down out of nowhere, with the sky on three sides still blue. We are accustomed to strange things around here - my native state being the land of the inflatable cheese hat - but this does have a certain novelty to it. According to local radio, there have been tree limbs and roof chunks dropping on the next town south. But the real prize found so far, they say, is someone's official mortgage contract, complete with a Madison address. Their house is probably spread across six counties, but at least they'll have the paper.

All in all, not nearly as exciting as our hurricanes in Mobile last month. But you take what you can get.

p.s.

okay, all right, didn't quite mean Antichrist. I have it on excellent authority (hearsay from a friend of a friend of a columnist's friend) that the real reason the Justice Department decided to go after Gates et al. with such odd grounds and sudden timing was in retaliation for ol' Bill's refusal to give away all the programmers' secret backdoors to the NSA. Take that, Janet Reno.


Heh.


uh, you guys in the black helicopters hear that all right?

Not Happy

Okay, are you reading this with Internet Explorer? Help me out here.

I use Firefox and rarely touch IE - generally only to make sure this site is publishing right, according to Microsoft's own peculiar view of the world. But i just checked it with IE today and discovered that the entire sidebar is missing. Not that it's any great loss, really, but sometimes you just like to believe that things at least in one small area of your life will be as you thought they would. Makes up for the rest, you know. (Analyze that.)

So: Do you see anything to the right of this text on your screen, or do you only see this column and then black space? Seriously, if you could drop me an email telling me if you can see the sidebar on this page or not - Tiny Photos, other bits of assorted junk, etc. - i'd appreciate it. (If you're reading this, i'm sure you know my address.) Then i can start figuring out if this my fault or the Antichrist's.

The Nursing Home Revisited

Picked up Aunt Margaret again last night for the traditional weekly family dinner at my parents' place. I showed up at the nursing home around five, which meant that - just as i'd feared - the defensive line of wheelchairs was fully entrenched. This time, however, i discovered a secret weapon: Just send Aunt Margaret through first. Silly me, with all my ponderings about politeness. This time, i was just taking stock of my options when she, a clear veteran of the hallway wars, didn't hesitate for a second. Taking aim from her own wheelchair at the nearest offending canes and footrests, she stuck her foot out like a battering ram and judiciously gave them each in turn a hefty nudge out of the way.

Just like they always say in Chechnya, Colombia, the Sudan. It never hurts to travel with a local escort.

Obligatory Road Trip Recounting

The Tetons. Man. I forgot how big the mountains are.

I also forgot much fun it was (really) to travel with my family. According to my aunt Karen - who has to mentally prepare herself for weeks before venturing to take a weekend trip with us - we move as a pack. Although i think maybe a hungry wolfpack is more the image she had in mind. Mom navigates, Dad snaps the sunset photos, the rest of us tote the bags, and we all know better than to mess with these arrangements. It all works out remarkably, and has for as long as i can remember. Even the addition this time of nephew Timothy (walking but still not talking, able to make his will sufficiently clear by other means) and R's one-on-the-way (currently referred to as Second Timothy) worked out pretty well. Traveling with a pregnant R, suspiciously enough, in general just means more Dairy Queen stops for everyone. She was mad she missed the black bear and the second moose, which were higher up the trails than we let her hike. But she did see the first and third and fourth moose; also the coyote, the mule deer, the elk herd, and the nursing baby buffalo. Plus the fighting buffalo, on which occasion the herd had us momentarily surrounded on all four sides. She missed the fighting marmots, though. There was a lot of fighting out there, come to think of it. Apparently, tensions are running high in the animal kingdom at present. Anyway, it was a fine trip. If you're bored, see the Tiny Photos link on the right. They don't do the mountains much justice, but then, i've never seen anything that could.

Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 11

(Mitchell, SD. 12 Aug)

I Hate Nursing Homes

(Caution: Post Contains High Levels Of Self-Indulgent Ramblings And May Be Hazardous To Your Attention Span.)

Oh, do i. But why?

Definitely because of the smell. I hate hospitals for that reason, too, if not for others, but there's more to this than that.

It might also be because of the filing-cabinet mentality with which we sometimes stick our aging relatives there when they begin to disrupt our lifestyle. Well, certainly it's that. But not everyone's there for that reason. For many residents, the nursing home is the best possible place to be, the only place they can get the medical help they need when the loving care of their family is no longer enough. My great-aunt Margaret (who has not lost one bit of her sharp ninety-seven-year-old sense of humor) enjoys referring to herself as an "inmate" to irk the nurses, but she wanted to move there, preferring it to other alternatives.

The nurses. There's another part of it. The vast majority of the aides are skilled professionals doing a difficult job for low pay with excellence and consideration. I know this. But you always seem to notice a few bad apples who treat all their patients like equally wayward five-year-olds, when in fact most residents i've met have been fully and sharply aware. Just because you're bedridden, or disabled, or incontinent, doesn't mean you've lost your sense of human dignity.

But is there a little of that condescension in most of us? Contempt can be born of fear...of knowing we're going to end up just like that. Helpless. And eventually, dead. Going gently into that good night, to me, seems less egregious a proposition than the nasty twilight that most always comes first. No way will you catch me going gently into that. If i get old, i'll put a cookplate on the bathroom counter and live on the toilet before i let someone else change my diapers. I guess the loss of awareness can be a nice thing about dementia, if you can see any humor in it. Which you really have to, because in the end, what can any of us do about it all but laugh?

But beyond all that, i think my severe aversion to nursing homes in fact comes down to a simple matter of culture. I like old people - i generally get along with them quite well, in fact - and i have enormous respect for the wisdom they've piled up over a lifetime a lot longer than mine. But once they almost inevitably lose their mobility, there's a whole brave new world of etiquette that comes into play. At dinnertime in Aunt Margaret's nursing home, her fellow residents line up in their wheelchairs from the dining room doors all the way down the hall, like they're vying for position behind an Indy pace car, like someone said the kitchen might run out of red jello tonight. And they guard their spots with ferocious cunning. There is no road rage on earth like the righteous wrath of an old lady in a wheelchair who thinks you're trying to cut in on her in the dinner line. The other problem is that as long as they're queued up they don't really bother too much about where exactly they park themselves; here and there near the TV seems to be fine. This means that as often as not the progress of other traffic through the hallway, able-bodied or not, is completely obstructed.

On encountering such a situation, the last time i was there, i reached the intersection and came to a complete stop to consider my options. Do i try to just squeeze through? No, not quite enough room; also, this seems a bad idea, knowing the value many people of such antiquity place (as is entirely fitting) on politeness. And i am way outnumbered, and they have canes. Do i ask them to move? This also is a little iffy, as i am not sure some of them are actually conscious. There's just no reasonable analogy at all to everyday life. Is it like a grocery store where, as long as you smile and excuse yourself, you can edge an inattentive patron's cart a bit to the side and continue on your way? This also seems a little rude when the cart contains a person, who, it may be said, (1) is approximately three-quarters of a century older than me and (2) may still be in some possession of other, non-movement-related faculties. Although this latter possibility was rather more doubtful, in my assessment of the scene. But now what?

In the end, i settled on a combined approach. I smiled vaguely at the room in general, looking for a little understanding eye contact from anyone - anyone? - and cautiously advanced. The aides ignored me as totally as the residents. I was getting no help. Not a single wheelchair budged, not a single eye blinked, and by this time i was almost upon their first line of defense. Time to seize the moment. I angled my approach to select a target i judged least likely to be aware, offended, or otherwise capable of inflicting bodily harm on me. With what i hoped was a cheerfully deferential murmur, something like "sorrymindifijustsqueezebyhere," i rolled her chair a careful eight inches over - slid breathlessly through the gap - smiled brightly in the direction of the nearest neighbor - and success! I was through. Several steps down the hall i threw a wild glance over my shoulder to check for pursuit, but my victory was free and clear. I was Sherman east of Atlanta. The hallway was mine, and fairly won.

But what's the moral? Be nice to old people cuz you'll probably be one yourself someday? True, but not especially compelling. To me, the same old emphasis of sanctity over quality has more backbone. Yet i also appreciate the elderly for their sheer accumulated life experience, among many other things, and i think they deserve my highest respect, even when they're glaring at me and calling me Carl. So i say, hate the nursing home, but love the residents. Just don't get in their way.

Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 10

(Wall, SD. 5 Aug)

Not LaToya After All?

I was more than a little frightened for a moment this afternoon in the middle of South Dakota.
Separated at birth? You decide:

(this photo credit: CourtTV.com)

(Mitchell, SD. 12 Aug)

Not trying to be mean or anything, here, but he's just so creepy. There is no way he should ever be left alone with anyone's kids anymore.

Although, fair enough, i guess Michael's a little weird too.

Vacation At Last: Or, Even Unemployed Deckhands Deserve A Little Time Off

Back on August 15!

Will Landscape For Food

Not sure where the time has gone since we left the ship, but maybe something strange happened in the, um, hollers. We did stay with Katie's friend Kara, in Lexington, too, which seemed to be a normal place, but you never know.

In the meantime, we have been landscaping our way across the suburbs of southern Wisconsin. By my count, in three days we have trimmed seventeen bushes, pruned well over a hundred limbs off eight different trees--requiring the use of three separate power trimmers, two chainsaws, and at certain key points, three people using all their weight to hold the ladder--and planted three medium-size maples. Oh, and eight shrubs. Never forget your shrubs.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that we've really been looking forward to this family trip out to the Rockies. First stop was last night, here in northwest Iowa, home of sister R, her husband J, and nephew Timothy, 15 months. Rarely a shortage of entertainment around here. A sample, from their latest email--

Possibly bad news: Timothy seems to be having a twofold identity crisis, i.e.:

1. He refers to the dog as "Nana" (thank goodness none of the grandmas claimed that name!!); we have no idea where he got that from, but he's been doing it for about a week now. This is the same child who refuses to call us Mama and Dada or anything resembling that.

2. I asked him yesterday, "Are you my little monkey?" and he replied "ooo ooo ooo eee". No joke. This has been repeated several times since, with the same result, slightly varied (sometimes it's "eee eee ee oooh". Perhaps we should cut back on the animal noise books....

(photo credit: R & J)

Lest anyone still think Iowans perpetually bored, as i once foolishly did, R & J's plans for a romantic anniversary evening last week were unexpectedly expanded to feature not only a Lutheran and a Catholic showing up to argue theology on their couch, but additionally, a barefoot town resident in severe abdominal pain staggering around their lawn and collapsing on the patio. They said it was when the one-armed man rang the doorbell that they finally just gave up and called it a night.

Really, it makes me feel better about living on land for a while.

Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 9

(Onalaska, WI. 03 Aug)

What A Hottie

It's okay. She's my wife.