First Draft

Everyone Doesn't Suffer The Same

Lessons from the 1995 Chicago heat wave.

Fuller Park, on the South Side, saw the equivalent of 92 heat-related deaths per 100,000 residents, the highest rate in Chicago. In Woodlawn, the ratio was 73 heat-related deaths per 100,000 people. Of the top 10 community areas with heat-related deaths adjusted to a population of 100,000 people, 8 were overwhelmingly African-American, with 5 of those communities being 99 percent black.

At the same time, Latinos in Chicago fared much better than other racial groups, according to Klinenberg. They represented just 2 percent of the heat-related deaths that year, but 23 percent of the city's total population.

Klinenberg offers two primary reasons to explain this, and he compares adjacent communities on the Southwest Side--North Lawndale and South Lawndale, or Little Village, to make his case. North Lawndale and Little Village were in 1995 black and Latino areas, respectively, as they are today.

For all the challenges a working class, immigrant-heavy neighborhood like Little Village faced in 1995, it had not had to grapple with what Klinenberg calls the "particular constraints of ghettoization," as had black residents of Chicago. Those constraints left a frayed social fabric in poor black neighborhoods bearing the burden of "rapid and continuous abandonment of institutions and residents ... arson and violence." A "local social ecology" that could have protected seniors--that did protect seniors elsewhere--was destroyed.

Background on the media response back then, from Steve:

"The Tribune also says today that the city 'came under severe scrutiny' for its handling of the 1995 heat wave. Really? Not by the local media, according to Klinenberg's exhaustively researched book, published in 2002. It was Klinenberg, not the local press, who reported nauseating nuggets like this one from a 'key member' of the Department of Health:

"'When Daley denied the Chief Medical Examiner's reports, he defined everything that the city would do on this for the next six months. You have to understand, there were nine refrigerated trucks holding bodies in the parking lot of the morgue, a long line of police cars delivering more, and there is the mayor - mayor of the third-largest city in the United States - denying that people were dying, or later denying that the deaths had anything to do with the heat. Imagine what the mayor's position on the heat wave did for the morale of other city employees and city agencies, or how it limited their capacity to do their work. Once the mayor took the position that the death rates were overstated it became impossible for city employees to say anything else. We were forced to find all sorts of ways to reframe the issue or to talk around what was happening. We couldn't contest his position, and in this case that meant we couldn't be fully explicit about what we were finding.'

This is the kind of weather makes even people with adequate options to cool off go Gaius-Baltar, fighting-with-the invisible-aliens-in-your-head crazy, so add in chronic neglect of the parts of the city Michigan and Wisconsin don't visit, and you've got a recipe for disaster not just once but over and over again.

A.

Rubberneckers

I hate highway rubberneckers. You know, the people who slow down if there's an accident to gawk and see if there's anything to satisfy their prurient interest.

In my neck of the woods, there's a new variation on the rubbernecking theme: drivers are slowing down or even pulling over on the interstate to watch the Bonnet Carre Spillway divert water. It's one of the two spillways that are diverting river water to prevent populated areas from flooding. It's working thus far but it's led to problems with gawkers and rubberneckers. Here's a report from WWL-TV news in New Orleans:

 

 

Watching The River Flow

People in New Orleans are jittery right now. When it comes to levees, flooding, famine and pestilence, we've become a city full of folks who see the glass half-empty. That's an odd analogy in this context: let's say people expect the glass to overflow as the Biggy Muddy rises. I, however, am cautiously optimistic, which seems to be my watch word or catch phrase these days.

It didn't help when the Picayune published a semi-hysterical story about the worst case scenario presented by the Army Corps of Engineers to Gret Stet officialdom. The worst case scenario was invoked to justify opening the Morganza Spillway for the first time in 38 years. This will divert water into the bayous and will, alas, flood some folks in those areas to prevent flooding in heavy populated Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I feel terrible for those folks but there's something about rising water and/or hurricanes that makes one ruthless.

One reason that I'm cautiously optimistic is the comment below by John Barry who is not only the author of Rising Tide but a member of the levee board:

Barry said the levees in the metro area are about seven to eight times stronger than those further north.

"The levees we have in the lower portion of the Mississippi are by far the strongest in the U.S.," he said.He said a key ingredient to their strength is the soil deposited from the river."When water runs over it, it actually compresses it, making it tighter," Barry said.

"And even if the levees get overtopped, you can run Niagara Falls over it and they won't break."

We're definitely not out of the woods but I think that we'll be okay: I sure hope so both my house and business are near the river. I do indeed feel badly for everyone who is knee deep or higher in river water right now. A special shout out to folks in Memphis and the Mississippi delta.

All I can do right now is watch the river flow:

 

Like People There Weren't Already Screwed

But the poor and middle-class of Mississippi and Arkansas are in for it:

About 10 miles north of Vicksburg, contractors lined one side of what is known as a backwater levee with big sheets of plastic to keep it from eroding if floodwaters flow over it as feared — something that has never happened to the levee since it was built in the 1970s.

In Vicksburg, which is at the southern tip of the rich alluvial soil in the central part of the state, the river was projected to peak Saturday just above the record set during the cataclysmic Great Flood of 1927. The town is home to thousands of soldier graves.

Jimmy Mitchell, 46, and his wife and two children have been living in a loaned camper for more than week at a civic arena in Tunica.

"There's no sewage hookup. You go in a barn to take a shower," said Mitchell, who is from the small community of Cutoff. "We have no time frame on how long we can stay."

As Mitchell and friends sat outside chatting in the breeze, children rode bikes nearby.

"Cutoff is a community where everybody lives from paycheck to paycheck. It's also a community where everybody sticks together," Mitchell said.

A) Here's a place to start for help. Tornado relief efforts are still going on, too. Suggest others in the comments.

B) Anybody down there, needs something, give a shout. I know where some of you live but not all of you, so represent, lurkers.

C) Hating on the South in the comments for voting Republican will get you banned, permanently. I'm in no mood.

A.

How to Help Alabama & the South

While I was at a journalism panel listening to people talk about the future of news for rich people (see Twitter for my irritability and rage at the usual direction these things take), the earth caved in yesterday:

Gov. Robert Bentley said there are 131 confirmed fatalities from yesterday's deadly tornado outbreak.

"We do expect that number to rise today. In fact, we're sure it will," Bentley said in a news conference this morning.

"We had a major catastrophic event here in Alabama with the outbreak of numerous tornadoes. We do have major destruction in the state especially in north Alabama," Bentley said.

Bentley has activated 2,000 National Guard troops to help with search and rescue efforts.

Here's one way to pitch in. Post others in the comments. And if you're down there, let us know you're safe, and if you need anything.

A.

Another Boom Gone Bust

Remember last year when nuclear power seemed to coming back into vogue in the US and A? I guess that boom has gone kaboom in the aftermath of the quake cracked nuclear plants in Japan. And guess what: the government buried its head in the sand. Anyone surprised? I thought not.

Btw, who do y'all think will be the first wingnut and/or bible thumper to say that the Japanese had it coming. They, of course, will use a less polite word. Me, I think it will be a British skinhead type. The BNP needs all the pub it can get these days even bad pub.

Well, since we're doing snow day goggie and kitteh and ferret stuff...

Sorry to get out of my box, but when I let Bailey and Brillo out for their morning constitutional yesterday, I had a feeling that one or both would have trouble with the strange white stuff all over the ground.

They usually trot over to the far end of the yard to do their business, but poor Bailey just wandered around in circles looking pitiful until he finally just squatted a bit and went in the snow on the porch.

I remarked - "Quitter."

 

'Sensitive Blacks'

The blizzard of '79, and how city services were distributed:

In his 1994 series, Stone noted another mistake that's become part of the Bilandic legend: "Bilandic assured the people of Chicago that the CTA was operating in spite of the blizzard. It wasn't. Trains had actually bypassed stations in the city's black neighborhoods, leaving thousands of people out in the cold." (When Bilandic died in 2002, the Chicago Defender's headline was "Bilandic dies at 78; legacy is snow, reforms.") In a February 24th letter to the Tribune, Barbara Flynn Currie charged the CTA with "blatant and institutional racism"; the next day, columnist Vernon Jarrett predicted that the CTA stop closures and slow clearance in black neighborhoods would have electoral consequences.

When the Tribune editorial page addressed the issue, its piece was titled "The CTA and sensitive blacks," though it at least made the reasonable point that the deliberate closure of CTA stops in largely black neighborhoods sent a different message than the incidentally terrible service throughout the city that the closures were meant to address.

A.

Digging Out

Yowza, we gots a lot of freaking snow.

I dug George out about two-thirds of the way, the final third needing to wait until somebody snowblows a space for me to put the snow I'm shoveling from around the car. We survived the night without losing power, though there were a few scary flickers and the wind seemed to be blowing right through the east window. The fake fireplace I make fun of all the time was no longer quite so hilarious.

Right now the whole city's like we just woke up from a monsterous bender: What the FUCK happened last night? Who are YOU? What is this duck doing here? The bad news is there are lots of people without power, people whose cars are stuck, and people who need help. The good news is that, as usual when something's effed up, people are doing extraordinary things.

The Chicago Fire Department used snowmobiles to reach people on side streets that were impassable for ambulances or fire trucks, according to Fire Cmsr. Robert Hoff.

People who needed to be taken to hospitals were put in baskets that the snowmobiles pulled to waiting ambulances on nearby main streets, Hoff said.

I want to drag everyone who says there's no real community in a big city over to my window and make them watch what's going on right now. Two large guys with shovels are going around in the alley asking people if they need help digging their cars out. They'd make a fortune today, and given the economy who would blame them, but when a woman tried to give them money they waved her off with big smiles.

My downstairs neighbor shoveled most of my steps so I shoveled upwards instead. The snowdrifts on the third floor deck were bigger than the ones on the second, which makes sense, but holy Jesus anyway THERE ARE SNOWDRIFTS ON THE THIRD FLOOR.

Friends have been texting me all day: Are you okay? Do you need help? I have no idea how any of us would get to each other, but they're all checking in regardless. The main street's plowed, and the alley -- well, they take forever to plow the alley on a good day, so we may be waiting a bit to get the car out.

Last night was scary, and around 1 a.m. I started wondering why we live here and not, say, in California, but this morning I look around and I realize I know exactly why. Hipsters are playing frisbee in the street because it's totally empty of cars, and I live on a pretty busy avenue. A cop drove by, and waved to them.

A.

I Pledge Allegiance to Traction Control and Anti-Lock Brakes

The snow tonight is like something out of a horror movie. It is not merely blowing sideways, it is actually blowing UP. Coming home from the shelter, as I inched George the Trusty Prius across the overpass over 290, it looked like a wall of snow coming out from the city, rushing in from the lake like a wave.

Posting may be light if we lose power, though I'm hoping that the Internets will still be mine tomorrow.

Stay warm and safe tonight, everybody. And if there's any way you can avoid being out in this, please, take the advice of somebody who will pretty much go out in anything, and DON'T. This is something I've not seen before.

A.

The Metrodome does a Superdome impression

We New Orleanians know from collapsing domes but very little about blizzards:

 

Gimme Shelter

Hurricane Earl continues to give me earworms. Fuck you, Earl. Hmm, I seem to be working awfully hard on that fuck quota thing lately...

When I think about shitty weather, I think of Gimme Shelter. You may not but I do. I also think of the remarkable documentary of that title about the Altamont clusterfuck, I mean festival.

Here's a Steel Wheels tour live version. It was a good tour: Dr. A and I saw the Stones at the Superdome and the huge industrial stage set made it seem intimate in a glitzy rock and roll kinda way. Know what I'm saying? If you don't the fuck quota may apply...

The Hellmouth

Good God.

In the northern part of Guatemala City, the downpour created a giant sinkhole that swallowed up a space larger than the area of a street intersection. Residents told CNN that a three-story building and a house fell into the hole.

A local newspaper reported that a private security guard was killed when the sinkhole opened up, but authorities had not confirmed the fatality. Residents said that a poor sewage drainage system underground was to blame for the sinkhole. A similar hole opened up nearby last year, they said.

Classes have been canceled this week throughout the nation.

In Honduras, where 14 people have died, President Porfirio Lobo declared a state of emergency Sunday.

Seriously, between the earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, oil spills, and the number of times I've watched Reign of Fire on cable this weekend, I'm starting to wonder if the Mayans aren't on to something.

A.

"Winter dead, that was buried near the pole beans"

degenerate, washed by weather cycles

degenerate, bleach the deadly night shades

degenerate, prepare to take the profit

oh degenerate, oh degenerate

We moved from New York back to Texas right after Thanksgiving. That first winter, in an old house that hadn't been lived in for years, was cold and dusty and full of bitter arguments and second guessing the whole crazy idea of coming back home after 10 years away.

Then spring happened. I remember crying a lot without warning, for no good reason. I cried when the trees started to leaf out. I stopped the car, backed up to the clump of mountain laurel I had just driven past and cried at the sweet grape-koolaid smell.  I teared up at the first sight of a scissortail flycatcher. I thought my heart was going to break open when the bluebonnets bloomed, and then I realized that it was. The awful, sad winter was over and dead, and in retrospect, some of what was "us" had died with it. New York was farther away than ever but the ache was bearable.  El Niño had arrived during the fall and brought a crazy wild riot of spring with it that made it hard to think, about the past, about anything. The leaves couldn't bust out quick enough, there didn't seem to be enough room on the roadsides for the wildflowers.

And now it's happened again. Another el Niño, and Spring 2010 has come on like a speedfreak, from one week to the next. On my way across campus to the office, I cross three bridges, one over the San Marcos River, rushing high and fast and clear, then through the park, cross at the light, and  two flat spans stretch low across ponds full of turtles and catfish, egrets stalking around the cypress knees after minnows. The resident corps of geese and ducks has expanded, bunches of tiny spotted puffballs march the banks in wobbly formations. It's ridiculous and manic and glorious and when I'm out in it, I can't even think straight. Which is fine. There's been way too much to think about this week, to try and make sense of, and I've failed every time I've tried. At my desk, I stare out the window and wait till I can go back out again — a big dumb animal, one of many, happy to be alive for no good reason.

La Danse de Mardi Gras (via Passion Fish)

Giant Sea Insect Surfaces to Warn Us All of Our Doom

Getitoffgetitoffgetitawayomgskeery!

A.

The Zombie Apocalypse

Last winter, when it was cold and dark and miserable, I started spending a lot of time in the post-apocalyptic genre. The Road, SM Stirling's Change series, re-watching Galactica, 28 Days Later, etc. This, combined with the collapse of the US economy, made me COMPLETELY FUCKING PARANOID. Like, go to the store and buy all the dry goods on the shelves paranoid.

Here's a handy guide for how it will all go down.

Via the Group News Blog.

A.

People. Today is MARMOT DAY.

MARMOT DAY:

Because there are no groundhogs in Alaska - yet three other species of marmots call the state home - it makes sense the ground squirrel become Alaska's version of Punxsutawney Phil, the Pennsylvania groundhog famed for his winter weather forecasts.

"I'm happy to put the spotlight Feb. 2 on our own Alaska marmots that can be seen throughout the state welcoming us to warmer days," Menard added.

Although the bill doesn't give marmots any weather forecasting duties, Menard hopes the state will create educational activities around the animal.

This year, Mat-Su Valley's KMBQ radio station will hold a special event, along with observances in the Mat-Su School District and the Alaska Zoo.

Locally, Menard will incorporate excerpts from the children's book "Gimme, Gimme Moocher Marmots," by 14-year Douglas resident Cindy Burchfield, in her presentation Tuesday to the Senate.

GIMME GIMME MOOCHER MARMOTS.

I don't even know what to do with that, it's so awesome.

A.

Rescue

Here's an amazing story captured by an ITN crew on assignment in Haiti and broadcast in the US and A by NBC:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Malaka Of The Week: Pat Robertson

There was a lot of egregious malakatude this week but in the end I had to pick the evil, senile and faux avuncular Pat Robertson. I hesitated to do so because my colleagues have done such a good job hitting the Bad Reverend upside the head here, here and here. Jude's comments on the first post, in particular, are *impossible* to top.

But even if predictable coming from this well seasoned douchebag, claiming that Haiti was hit by a record setting earthquake was because of a pact with the devil hits 100 on the malakatude scale. Why would a deal with Satan be necessary for SLAVES to gain their freedom, Pat? Your version of God is pro-slavery? I know you should be placed on an ice flow and put out to sea in your underwear but I figured you thought slavery wasn't a good thing, Pat. Toussaint L'Overture was a freedom fighter claiming the rights that he mistakenly thought were granted by the French Revolution.

The good news is that the Bad Reverend hasn't got long to live so these periodic eruptions of imbecility from him will cease.  I'm sure there are many others who'll fill the gap and pronounce natural disasters as punishment for sins, deals with the devil or Southern Decadence. Pat Robertson will leave the scene fairly soon but his sort of malakatude is eternal.

I'll let Jon Stewart have the last word on Pat and his colleagues in malakatude:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Haiti Earthquake Reactions
www.thedailyshow.com
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Dedicated To The People Of Port au Prince

I grew up in earthquake country (the Bay Area) and live in the hurricane zone so the disaster in Haiti punches my empathy buttons. Unlike those folks, I've been lucky. The worst thing that ever happened to me earthquake wise was a stack of books landing on my bed in my parents house when I was a surly teenager. (Getting hit in the head with a copy of Catch-22 did nothing to improve my disposition.) I was among the lucky in New Orleans too but was exiled from my home and city for weeks. I've made a modest donation and I hope that our readers will click on some of the links posted by Athenae yesterday or use the Google to find other ways to help.

Seeing the film of the collapsed buildings in Port au Prince, of course, reminded me of the post-Katrina devastation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. As First Draft readers know, most of the damage in New Orleans was from the Federal Flood but places in Mississippi such as Waveland and Bay St. Louis were leveled by the storm. And whenever I think of that disaster and the flooded streets of Gentilly, the Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview and Mid-City in New Orleans, I get Bruce Springsteen's My City Of Ruins in my head. It was written for his post 9/11 masterpiece The Rising but as with the best of Bruce's work, it's universal. It's Sam Cooke meets The Band meets the E Street Band.

I'd like to dedicate My City Of Ruins to the people of the epicenter of the earthquake, Port au Prince. Come on, rise up:

The Dark Side Of El Nino

I'm not talking about some chap from Barcelona or Sevilla, I'm talking about the El Nino weather pattern we're experiencing this year. (I don't know how to add a tilde to the N at TypePad so we'll just have to muddle through.) We New Orleanians *loved* El Nino last summer: it kept those pesky hurricanes away and spared us from having to listen to Ray Nagin tell us to get the hell out of Dodge like some hipster chicken little. Run, man, run...

El Nino in the winter, however, is a different kettle of fish altogether. It is one mean sumbitch and has given us a very wet December indeed. In fact, it became the wettest December on record last Saturday when parts of the area had between 6 to 10 inches of rain and much of it came in a 4 hours span.

Since it's kind of low and flat around here, there was widespread street flooding Saturday night. Dr. A and I were stranded high and dry in deep shit suburbia for 4 frakking hours before the water receded enough for us to leave without flooding our car. We were in Jefferson Parish, so I kept hoping that Steven Seagal: Law Man and his rather long in the tooth "boys" would arrive to help but they didn't.  Bastards. Btw, If you haven't seen the new A & E series of that name and you like MST3K, Cinematic Titanic and/or Rifftrax, you gotta see it. It's unintentionally hilarious and gets me riffing like Crow T Robot. Thanks, Mr. Seagal, you clueless zen practitioner, you.

It's raining cats and dogs again tonight (I've never understood that expression but use it anyway; arf, meow) and more flooding is forecast for lower lying areas in what Sinatra would have surely called the wee small hours of the morning. Mercifully, Dr A and I live on high ground near the Big Muddy so we'll be high and dry but others won't be so lucky. My friend and fellow NOLA blogger Editor B's wife's car stalled and flooded on Airline Highway, which some folks have tried to rename Airline Drive to erase the Jimmy Swaggart hooker motel stigma. It didn't work.

Where am I going with this? To hell in a bucket probably. Actually, I have a long (by internet standards) tradition on my blog of posting rain songs so I thought that I'd import it to First Draft. Hmm, I wonder if I have to go through customs? I'd rather have Athenae search my bags than Jude, he'd probably steal stuff...

Our first rainy day tune comes from the Fab Four:

Since it's a melancholy night here in Debrisville here's a bit of Peter Gabriel:

Finally, since this is kinda, sorta a Midwestern based blog, the Jayhawks live:

Standing It

Oh please, baby, please, baby! Bring it ON! 

SCATTERED SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS ARE EXPECTED ACROSS SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS AND THE HILL COUNTRY THROUGH THIS EVENING. SOME OF THESE STORMS COULD BECOME VERY STRONG...WITH WIND GUSTS NEAR 50 MPH...SMALL HAIL...AND ISOLATED HEAVY RAINFALL.

Unless you hear otherwise, assume I will be out on my deck tonight dancing, making offerings, and otherwise petitioning the spirits in order to boost the odds that we actually get some of this promised precipitation. 

Because this last week, we been hot, ya'll.  Central Texas might as well have been the surface of the sun. 107° — that was the actual temp, not the heat index, on Thursday. The NWS issued a warning that I don't remember having seen before, a Lack of Precipitation Alert, which basically said, "Don't even think about it raining, because it ain't gonna happen. Possibly not ever." 

Had I known, six weeks ago, that we were going to get this kind of heat so early, I probably wouldn't have decided to stop using my air conditioner for the summer. But I did, and I've stuck with it, even last week. 

Most of you have likely just joined the ranks of everyone else I've shared this with and you now think that I've lost my motherf*cking mind, but I haven't. Quite the opposite, even. I feel that cutting down on my energy consumption during peak usage season makes all kinds of sense. Obviously this isn't for everybody, some folks really do NEED air conditioning.  I had heat exhaustion once, years ago in New York (ironically far less hot than Texas and I was younger and in better shape). Trust me, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. 

There's just so many instances, though, when we believe without question that we absolutely have to have some thing(s) to survive. It's been my experience that when I feel that way, I'm usually wrong about it. Sure I might have gotten habituated to something, more comfortable with something than without, but more often than not, those things aren't really essential.  In contrast, I often find I am going without things that I should have in order to thrive, not just survive. Embarrassing as it is to admit, since I'm almost older than dirt, I still struggle with some of the more basic self care issues that many adults of my acquaintance seem to have mastered. Though, one of the upsides to having my life disrupted by my breakup a few years back was that I couldn't keep doing a lot of the stupid shit I was doing before because no one was going to fix it but me. 

Which brings me back to the AC withdrawal. A few months ago, I quit my second job because even though the extra money was nice, the lack of down time was driving me more than a little nuts. Glad I did it but it left me with a bit of a hole in the budget and I had to figure out how I was going to get around that. My two biggest bills each month, especially in the summer, are electricity and water. That's not true for many folks, I know, but it's due in part because I live in a somewhat remote location and also because my utility companies are soulless, thieving heaps of shit. 

So that's when I turned the thermostat off and opened the windows. Luckily I've got ceiling fans in every room, the house is well-insulated, and there's a nice cross breeze.  I'm not saying the worst hot days are a walk in the park but it's been way less disruptive and uncomfortable than I thought and I'm saving buckets of cash. The lack of refrigerated air is costing me far less peace of mind than the lack of cash flow would have, and I love the feel of connection I get from being able to hear the sounds of life outside: locusts droning away the afternoon, hummingbirds zooming around the feeder, coyotes off in the distance at night, the call and response of owls right before the sun comes up. 

But don't think I won't be enjoying that rain and cool breeze tonight.  

  

Ann Miller's tour de force routine from Kiss Me Kate. In 1957, for an appearance with Bob Hope in Morocco, Miller performed this number for 5,000 troops ... in 120° heat.

Guys?

Now the lizards are pissed off.

A.