Catching Up -- Trying To, Anyway

Plus el V's flying off on the 6th to Barranquilla, Colombia for their annual jazz festival. It's a great gig, and he's staying a couple of extra days to poke some more into Cartegena.
The meetings we were to have this week have been postponed due to Irene, as well as the first rehearsal for Las Vidas Perfectas. They're postponed even more so because the Barranquilla trip.

The jazz festival means lucky el V will miss the 9/11 mess. Not only the relentless sanctimonious drumbeat of terrorism rhetoric, but the horrors of having both Obama and dubya in the city on the same day. Anytime a POTUS is here it ties up eveything else. Dub, loathing NYC, spared us most of the time, but O is here a lot, playing footsies with Wall Street. Which, as you know Barbara, isn't that far from where we live, and certainly the ground routes there and back are part of our territory. These are the same routes the observers who will be hording themselves down to Ground Zero for the hypocritical performances will take, coming and going.  9/11 is going to be a local gridlock disaster.

9/11 imprisons me in my apartment again ....

Now for some perspective on our impending local gridlock 'disaster' --

Upstate and Vermont are having an awful time, and in New Jersey too, flooding is still on-going. As we have learned over and over again because so many people we know and to whom we are close have suffered hurricane and earthquake disasters, and many of them have suffered enormously -- the worst of these disasters is after the storm is over.  At some point people begin suffering too from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I suffered nothing personally. Yet, last night I dreamed all night about being in a hurricane. All of the dreams featured my new! improved! sooperdooper flashlight that we never needed. A lot of the dreams were set in Cuba. Hurricanes have become a personal terror because we have so many near and dear who live where hurricanes are constant dangers, including the Caribbean and I’ve heard so many of their horrible experiences now, for years. Not to mention the earthquake in Haiti that affected so many people we know personally, not to mention everyone else in that island victimized by capital and history.

This is the Post Climate Change New World Order, as proclaimed by bush1, as implemented by bush2, as explained by Yours Truly:

Federal government has no place in disasters, whether warning and providing preparation assistance before the disaster happens, rescue and assistance during the disaster, and after, for rescue, assistance, clean-up and financial aid. This is the function of private insurance.Also, taxes must be raised on the 40% of the population that is poor, lower and mid middle-class because these groups are not paying their fair share.

Except for paying for everything most of us are of no consequence to our government, that exists to defend and expand the rights and conquests of the corporations around the globe, which is the only function of a government.

The big September national observance of labor day, in honor of people working is replaced by 9/11, Terrorism Day.

Irene -- The End

We’ll be heading back downtown to clean up the mess I left the apartment in a little later today. Despite what was said all day yesterday, most of the subway system was operational by rush hour this morning. Gotta be sure the Stock Exchange is up and running, you betcha!

Beautiful day here. Garbage trucks everywhere collecting the tree debris. We Unruly Women of the Jumel Terrace Hurricane Irene Posse were cleaning up after breakfast (of Virginia peaches, Alabama strawberry and blackberry jams, biscuits, Maryland bacon, New York eggs, bagels, lox, and cream cheese) this morning and all going, “We have electricity! We have running hot and cold water! We have garbage trucks picking up!” It would have been a very different morning if none of those were in effect. We wouldn’t have been dancing so much to old time New Orleans blues while cleaning off the stove top, scrubbing the porcelain sink, gathering the dish towels etc. to dump into the washer.

On the other hand, by chance, the three of us women, our Hostess, her sister-in-law and I, plus Niece, all have experience of heating water without electricity, washing things in tubs by hand.  BTW, that Niece?  She's craaackerjack!  The world is going to hear from her.  We're within walking distance of her dorm, so we'll hear from her in other ways as well.

So, for us and our hosts, this turned in a mini-vacation, in which we got to spend quality time together, which we’ve all been too busy all spring and summer to do – we weren’t even able to get together for a meal

Dayem, sometimes we’re lucky.

*Hurricane Irene* El V Video - Song Written Today

Go here for the YouTube premiere a half hour after el V wrote "Hurricane Irene."

Ensconced

Left home about 7:30 AM and taxied uptown.  Air already sodden, the sky an unpleasant ashen color, with haze, mist, fog.

We've finished helping do the physical prep for the house and so on.  So now we're chilling and thinking about making dinner when the time comes.  We're hungry!  We've had a couple of periods of rain already.

However it rolls, however bad, however easy (but I'm sure it isn't going to be easy), I'm glad we're up here and not at home.  What makes it really OK is that we were able to help and will be able to continue helping our friends, and they also help their neighbors.  Not only are our friends really brilliant, intelligent and creative, they've got a community consciousness, as well as that Southern hospitality gene.  All over again I'm aware of why we love them so much.

I hope everyone is safe, but I know not everyone is.  Three people have been killed by Irene already.  She's so huge and moving so slowly.