Ah, Maybe Just a Little Bit

I dont consider myself a hard-case, in fact I try not to be, and although I am fairly in touch with my emotions theres not a lot that makes me want to bawl like a little kid. Call me jaded, maybe I am.
But some things definately do choke me up, bad.
I already talked about one thing that does already today - the un-asked for heroism of the men and women who climbed the stairs into hell at World Trade One and Two on September 11th, 2001. I'll never be ashamed to admit that I have cried thinking about them. I was in a Emergency Response to Terrorism class a year ago with several hardened medics, cops, former military and other "tough" people and on the anniversary of 9/11 (it was a Saturday class) we watched one of the HBO documentaries about the horrible events of that day. There wasnt a dry eye in the room, and there shouldnt have been.
The other things that choke me up are kids and dogs (or pretty much any animal).
Normally, I'm not really sure what to do with kids - and I love my dogs and other animals, dearly, and would kill anyone who hurt one of them as fast as I would kill someone who hurt a human family member. But other than that, I'm not one of these people who goes to pieces just at the very being of kids or animals. Nor am I one of these particularly nutty animal rights activists. I eat meat, I am partial owner of a cattle ranch, I hunt occasionally, and I have no problem with it (although I believe it is important to respect the life I am responsible for taking).
But there are times when I get torn up about kids and dogs, in times of great suffering, great sadness and displays great strength.
Somewhere in the region of U-Go-Crazia (Bosnia/Herzegovina, Serbia, Etc.) during a massive bombing attack a tiger at a public zoo got so scared he chewed off his own paws and had to be put down. We cage them, treat them as if they have literally no brain, and then we wonder or call them "stupid" when animals, alone and isolated as they are in our "care", do things like that. It makes me sad and angry to think about that poor tiger - such a majestic, powerful, animal reduced to that.
In more recent days, in the aftermathof hurricane Katrina, I have heard things that made me cry like a little girl.
I heard on TV about a Six year old boy in New Orleans who led a small group of children in a hand-holding chain, only one of them a sibling of his, to safety and to rescuers all by himself, because he was seperated from his parents. A child so young, shouldered with such responsibility - he must have been so frightened, so unsure about the entire world - and he did it anyway, he took that responsibility and he lead. A six year old child. I know adults who couldnt do that, who would fall apart under those pressures.
And then there is the picture I've attached to this post on the upper right. Thats from New Orleans, at a gas station. That dog had been there for days, standing vigil over the body of its master. People say animals dont have souls, and cannot reason, much less love - but if that is not love and devotion, I dont know what is. A dog is smart enough to be cutthroat and go to the first hand that will feed it, I've been around dogs all my life and will guarantee you that - but that one didnt, alone and hungry. Thats such a sweet face, and such a sad knowing look. And god only knows what will happen to him or her - I hope one of the rescue groups down there picked him/her up and has given it shelter, and love and maybe even a new home, new family.
Fuck the people who say animals are dumb, soulless, un-reasoning creatures - fuck them all to hell. I know better. I dont wish to think better, I know better.
That picture makes me cry - and I almost didnt post it because I didnt want to have to see it again. I closed the page I saw it on as soon as I saw it - and then reopened it and took a good long look and decided to post it. Its important.

~Cowboys dont cry,
Ah, mebbe just a little bit
Sometimes dirt get in your eye...~

The Fateful Day

All my life I've heard people of my parents generation ask one another where they were when Kennedy was killed. Now everyone in America, young and old, has another question to ask - Where were you on 9/11, when the towers fell?

I was asleep here at the ranch. My father called from in town and still talking to him my mom told me to turn on the TV. Nothing I had gleaned from listening to their snippets of conversation gave me the slightest idea, or the least bit of preparation for what I would see.
Smoke, and god damned lots of it, rising from Manhattan. Pieces of ash and debris blown out over the water, circling in the skies on rising currents of heat like alien birds. And just one tower.
I was full of disbelief, but I had no doubt. I've talked to people since that awful day four years ago who didnt think it was terrorism immediately, or even until some "authority" figure told them. The first words out of my mouth were "The god damned sand niggers finally did it".
I'm not a racist person, I dont judge people by skin color, creed, or faith, not individually, not as a group. But individuals I do judge by their actions, and Mohammed Atta and his 19 comrades were sand niggers. I'll stand by that declaration till the day I die.
Then of course, I had no idea who personally had done it, but the logical assessment was some of the same people who had tried to bring the World Trade towers down before.
That was a day un-rivaled in emotion - horror, shock, hate, love, all of it and back again. Aimless at first, just shocked into high vibration in all directions, and then focused, hard.
That day, we loved the firefighters who went up those flights of stairs. Those men with families and lives who did their job and walked up into that maelstrom of hateful fire, and never walked out again before the towers came down. They were the best of us that day, everything good and strong and un-askingly brave in the people of America, was in the FDNY, NYPD and Port Authority that day.
We loved New York and her people. We were horrified for them, and grieved with them.
And our hate was a pure elemental thing, and as the intel grew about who was responsible, it was focused like a cutting torch. Hate is never beautiful, but god damn it was something that day. There was purposefulness to it, direction and it demanded action. It was pure, burning white flame. Undiluted by politics, foriegn policy, political agenda, party line attitudes, or anything else. We were not trying to pander to the feelings of the sensitive in this world, the people who said we'd brought the attacks on ourselves. The American Muslim community was not an entity we thought about offending, they were either like every other American and filled with the same rage, shock, fear and love as the rest of us - or they didnt deserve to be American. We were righteous and our path was clear of such trifles and bullshit.
And now, four years later, all that has changed. It has become important to pander to the people who feel we deserved being attacked, and to constantly check ourselves lest we offend the Muslim community by saying some truth that is offensive to them. We are kissing ass to the weak and cowardly, and we have said "hate it bad - we cant use hate against our enemies". And now thats true, because any hate thats left is all the wrong kinds - we let that purest flame burn out before we could use it.
And now we're on a familial revenge fantasy quest in Iraq, hunting boogers and wasting time, resources and lives instead of taking the war to terrorism around the globe. Iraqs connection to terrorism was miniscule and flimsy compared to other nations, and the war there has as much relevance to the Global War on Terror as arresting a homeless guy in the alley outback of the bank has to catching the bank robber.
We've lost ourselves in all of this - We've allowed many of our freedoms to be sold down the river with the Patriot Acts, and we're allowing our government to play games and tell lies about it all without much question. And those who do question, those who dare to dissent, are called unpatriotic, un-American, seditious, etc. Hell, even those who didnt vote for the President in the last election are called that. We have lost ourselves, we have lost our true patriotism, we have lost our vision, and we have lost much of our freedom in this quagmire we've created out of the General War on Terror.
Instead of actually fighting terror, acting with that burning fury, and actually making a difference, we've screwed around and ended up here.
And its no better on the home-front - even 9/11 cannot be kept pure, it is a vehicle for political agenda's of all sorts, none of them in the least involving the terrorist attacks of that day. For example - http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006791
Now while I disagree with Ms. Burlingames stated political views, particularly on dissent and calling into question un-Constitutional things like the Patriot Act, the idea that the 9/11 memorial will be about everything touchy-feely-human-rightsy but 9/11 pisses me off to no end. Its a travesty.
We have forgotten - We have lost ourselves.

This Day

How soon have you forgotten?
Forgot how we wept,
As they came to their end and slept…
Have you ignored, like the stench so rotten?

You choose not to waive the flag,
Because that’s not right anymore,
We don’t remember what it was for,
You chain smoke and you bitch, between drags

You say Its just those right wing crazies,
Who are patriotic these days,
Just to mask their wars in so many ways,
To hide the dead children and burning daisies

You lie through your teeth,
But you swill at the trough,
And when asked to leave you scoff,
You lie, you see, so you can seethe

And you forgot how we bled,
This day past,
And all the rest, the blood not the last,
You forgot and your morality fled.

Go away from us in peace,
We’d ask not your counsels,
For what good are you scoundrels?
Damning yourselves to the fleece.

I remember and I mourn,
Not to make war,
Nor excuses for,
And I wear with pride the fools scorn.

Forgotten this day,
And ever the follow,
Forgotten gallow,
But not by all, not this day.

Going Up

Going up
Into a world of wonder
Smoke and clouds of doubt
Nothing else to be done
Thoughts forward and up
110 stories
and where’s the fire?

People running
Dying
and Hiding
and still they go up
Calm like warriors
Scared like little boys?
and still…

Falling

Slowly wheeling, down, down, falling,
More charred remains, more haunted calling
Lives in their own hands and falling
Lovers locked in final embrace leaping, into the cold high air,
Down, down, and through the licking flames glare
When did they die?
Or more importantly, Why?
What angry gods of wrath and destruction did it appease, this blood sacrifice?
Why must men, fall for mice?
Its all falling... falling... Its all falling now.
Someone knows but the rest of us... the rest of us are all left asking, How?
Ashes falling, and twirling, and dancing on the wind,
Bones and flesh and bodies, falling but who among them sinned?
Wipe at your dampening eyes, and bow your heads in shame and sorrow,
And look whats been done, what has been ruined for the children of the morrow.
Falling... falling... arms stretched out... falling...
Looking heavenward, and crying with silent lips... for reason within madness, and for one more slip of mortality...calling

Police in New Orleans Begin Confiscating Weapons

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/national/nationalspecial/08cnd-storm.html?oref=login
According to BugMeNot you can login to view the above with user: liarliar1234 and pass: password if you are smart enough to not already be registered).

But here's the important bit from the above article anyway:

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 8 - Waters were receding across this flood-beaten city today as police officers began confiscating weapons, including legally registered firearms, from civilians in preparation for a mass forced evacuation of the residents still living here.

No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.

But that order apparently does not apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property. The guards, employees of private security companies like Blackwater, openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles. Mr. Compass said that he was aware of the private guards, but that the police had no plans to make them give up their weapons.

Now, I understand that they are concerned with the possibility of violence when they begin forcibly evacuating the people who remain from the city. Its a valid concern, and when I first heard they were going to start doing that I said to everyone in the room watching TV with me "That’s when the shooting starts again".
But taking peoples legally owned firearms is not the solution.
Why? Because firearms are not the problem. They never are. People who do stupid or dangerous things are the problem, and firearms make it no easier for them to do those things. And wonder of wonders, criminals who want to use firearms will not obey any ban or comply with any confiscation program, because they are criminals and the law already has no meaning for them. It solves nothing.
What confiscating the legally owned guns from the citizens of NOLA will do is make them easier prey for the criminals, who didn’t turn in their guns and probably cant be found to be asked for them anyway. I'll go out on a limb here and assume that a lot of the people who were moving around in groups of armed looters have gone "underground" to abandoned buildings (of which there will be some amazingly fine pickings right now, from court-houses to out-houses) and are moving from place to place, avoiding detection, with their "posse" and piles of stolen big screens and PS2's.
NOLA for criminals right now is possibly the largest Temporary Autonomous Zone in the United States right now, definitely the largest in any urban setting (I can think of plenty of areas here in the Southwest U.S. where it could still be the wild west, but no one is exploiting the space and absence of control in any massive, or illegal, way as in NOLA). The TAZ, disconnected from the establishment and not really under the strict control of the government at any level, is an ideal place for criminal enterprise of all sorts. Oddly enough it may also be one of the last places in this world where a human being can be truly free.
However, survival in a TAZ as a non-criminal is dependent on the ability to bite back. Disarming people prevents them from being able to do that - no mans home is his castle when he has no way to defend it.
Now I realize that the disarmament is a precursor to forced evacuation, so it’s not like they are leaving these people there, but how long of a time period will there be between disarmament and evacuation? If its anything more than overnight, the citizenry will be at the mercy of those who still have guns. Namely the criminals, but lets not forget the behavior of the New Orleans P.D. in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, many of them took as much advantage of the TAZ as they could, looting right along side everyone else. Not every New Orleans cop did that, of course, but many of them did and there is now no good way to tell who did their job, and who disgraced the uniform. If there are still N.O.P.D. officers working down there, they are not to be trusted, I'm sorry. Cops are human too - those who do their job get my greatest respect, and some of them my friendship - but there are those few who have no honor, and damaged morals and ethics, and will do harm for their own gain or pleasure. I'm sure some of those bad seeds have gotten down there as volunteers, of all types (Medics, National Guard, Police, etc.) and all it takes is one.
Disarmament solves nothing and makes the people weaker.

I think the actual solution is to just leave people alone. Make a stronger evacuation effort, bordering on forced but with a strong backing of educating people about the dangers of staying (namely disease in the water, and thus on everything the water touched), and then those who still want to stay, let them. It is a problem that will correct itself in short order; they'll get sick and be all too willing to leave then. Or they'll die. Hate to be that way, but its nature at work - It shouldn’t be the government’s job to keep people alive beyond a reasonable expectation, and expecting the government to take care of you when you refuse to take care of yourself and leave a place like NOLA is far beyond reasonable.
But, if things were done that way, they wouldn’t have to worry about officers being shot at by people resisting removal. They wont have to waste manpower on the unwilling but demanding, or the insane and dangerous.
But of course... everyone is special, and entitled (so sayeth the government) so they deserve to be evacuated to safety whether they like it or not. The government knows what’s good for you, and being disarmed and left at the mercy of fate while you wait to be dragged kicking and screaming from your home is what’s good for you.

Rain on my Parade

Just got off the phone with the health office about getting my Hep. vac's and other shots for going to the gulf coast. No dice.
Seems they dont want to give the shots to people who dont know for sure if they are deploying.
Also seems that the other agencies selecting people for deployment are looking at the un-vaccinated as their last choice picks too.
Much cursing and spitting.

Cest la Vie. Sun will come up tomorrow all the same.

Time to start shopping around, see if one of the smaller local health offices has what I need on their shelves and are a little more willing to give it out.

Rain in the High Desert

Rain out here is a complete elemental thing, it is made up of all that is. If you want to see the circle, the yin and the yang, chaos and order, you need to see it rain here.
The sky begins to grey and fold, rolling under and rising like an ocean at storm turned upside down, and then it begins to fall...

The earth comes clean and then begins to get up and move away, going walkabout

And as the wind fans the storm and drives it, pushing the torrent through, in its wake the sky begins to burn


Then when the fires burn down, their last flickering hopes for life dying with the setting of the sun the heavens are reduced to ash

And when all has come to pass, the rains return as the sky splits and spills itself and all is renewed once again


The rain out here, in the hot, dry mountain country, is a spiritual thing. Each rain dances and rolls with power and energy, but some carry an awesome burden of it, a pleasure the borders on terror, as all life borders on the veil called death. It will make your heart beat faster, your breath will steal away but each will taste sweeter, and your back will straighten to accept the weight of it all, as each drop of rain teases and runs down your skin, dancing with the lightning raised hairs.

Those Who Will Do

There is a phrase that pretains to less-than-ideal equipment I have been using a lot lately as I go through my gear and prepare to be called to go down to the Gulf Coast, "(blank) will do, if I will do" - blank being the piece of kit being discussed at the time.
I really like the mindset behind this phrase - it puts the importance on personal knowledge and ability, skill, instead of on tools and technology. A tool or a technology is only as good as the person behind it - even the best tool will fail miserably in the wrong hands, but even the worst can be put to some use if the person behind it knows what they are doing, it will do, if they will do.
As I watch events unfolding in New Orleans and surrounding areas, and talk to friends and associates about it, I am continually impressed that this can be applied directly into classifying people.
Ohh, I know, bad: profiling! I'm singling people out and singling people out is bad (unless its in the name of "celebrating diversity" of course. Somewhere we forgot that the goal was unity... ).
But it is true, you can pretty easily divide people into "Those Who Will Do" and "Those Who Wont Do".
The latter, those who wont do, I think have been illustrated quite well in recent days by the ne'er-do-wells in New Orleans causing all the trouble. These types of people, those who feel entitled no matter how lazy they are, will never stand up and do for themselves when they have been taught for so long that it will just be handed to them. This isnt the first time I've spoken of this either, I saw the problems with these kinds of people some time ago, but what I saw was a "kinder, gentler" if you will sort of problem. I wanted to believe they would simply suffer, not try to drag others down with them into their suffering. It was naeive. I am far less tolerant of these types of people now than I was back then.
Those who will do however are a fantastic group of people. The capable, resourceful, adaptive and thoughtful people who are willing to work to get ahead, to survive and to help others in a time of need. I am proud of these people, because people like this are my friends, they are the people I choose to stand with.
As I've prepared to try and do my part down South, I've had several people I hardly know step up and offer me things of significant financial value, because they too wanted to do their part and couldnt go down themselves because of circumstance.
I also have friends who are down there, providing aid, law enforcement, and whatever else is neccessary.
Those who will do are attracted to these jobs, fire-fighter, police, emergency medicine, etc. but it is more than just a job - it is a calling, and one doesnt have to be a professional whatever to be one of those who will do. Bus drivers, systems administrators, school teachers, manual laborers, anyone from any walk of life who is capable and resourceful and can and will do for themselves, and for others.
My heart swells with pride for these individuals - The people who helped others escape NOLA, the fire-fighters who went up the stairs into the malebolge of the World Trade Towers and never came down again, the people every day and stand up to do brave, heroic things, silently and without asking or wanting to be recognized, the people who are simply capable and take care of themselves and their people without questioning "shouldnt I just be given this?". These are thepeople who will lead us to survival and rebuilding in the aftermath of events like Katrina.
In the future, with terrorism, the sudden rise in disease (tropical diseases like West Nile are in the United States now. Malaria and other nastiness, like Dinge Fever, is sure to follow. NOLA is going to be a fucking breeding ground for tropical nastiness if any of it gets brought in on trade ships), and simple overcrowding combined with a rather twisted and savage economy and weak infrastructure, things like the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans are going to become more common.
The "entitled" wont be the ones who pull us back up, and re-take the reigns of civalization.
It isnt too late, people can still change... but we will run out of time eventually, and we're all going to have to pay the tab that those who wont do have run up in the last few years.

Naw'lins & Gulf Coast Insanity

For some further thoughts on NOLA here's some interesting reading in the same vein as my earlier post about the curse of "entitlement":
How Many People Did Dependance Kill?
Trudeaupiate
Diagnosing New Orleans: a Canadian Perspective (This one also contains the previous links, but its quite interesting as a stand alone piece too).