Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

A couple of weeks ago, a For Sale sign went up next door to The Wisdom household. The house, like ours, was built in 2001 and is quite a nice place.

Unlike our house, it”s owned by a man who has a lot of money and who”s made it a showplace. It was already a big house for East Atlanta (2,800 SF), and last year the dude spent a ton of money building out the basement. I”m talking a plush media room / guest suite kind of basement, not a wood-paneling, ping-pong table kind of basement. Now sporting nearly 4,000 sqare feet of beautifully-built space, it”s easily the nicest house on the street.

Dude got married this year, however, and his new wife isn”t an East Atlanta kind of girl. So they”re looking for a house in Buckhead that will be “their house”, as dude told me. I don”t think he”s happy about it.

And, apparently, moving quickly was more important than getting all their money back out of the house. He priced it ridiculously low (probably $40,000 low) to get a quick sale.

This place is such a find, I spent a lot of time the day it went on the market trying to convince friends who might be looking that they had to buy it. For an afternoon, I even entertained the idea of buying it ourselves and moving next door. But with one of our homes already on the market, I figured it wasn”t a good time to buy a fourth house. And, besides, our house was designed and finished out to look more like an older, intown home than the others. The house next door feels pretty suburban, and that ain”t for us.

Last week I saw what appeared to be a home inspector over there, so I figured they got their quick contract. When I saw the wife over the weekend, I asked her if they had sold it.

“Yeah, we got lucky. The first people who looked at it bought it,” she told me.

I thought about telling her that when you list a house on the high end of the neighborhood price range in December when the market is fairly flat and the first jerk who walks in the door buys it - you probably priced it ridiculously low.

But I didn”t. I just silently cursed her for lowering the bar for our resale values. Of course, we”re not going anywhere, and their sale price should help me out when I appeal the ridiculous value the county has put on my assessment next month. So it may work out in our favor.

So it looks like FEMA”s post-Katrina hotel guests will get yet another month of taxpayer-paid lodging, with the mandatory move-out now pushed to Feb. 7.

That”ll be roughly five months in residence for those displaced by Katrina who haven”t managed to find their own place to live.

At this point, I”d like to remind everybody that the “E” in FEMA stands for “Emergency”, not “Entitlement”.

The “emergency” ended for residents of New Orleans and Mississippi when they found themselves high and dry with a roof over their heads. For many, that”s when a very big “problem” began, but we”re not talking about the Federal Problem Management Agency.

Get them out; get them safe. That should be the mission of FEMA when it comes to individuals. From there, whatever individual assistance is needed should come from “human services” agencies.

After everybody is safe, FEMA should concentrate 100% of its efforts on cleanup and rebuilding efforts in the disaster-affected areas.

There is still a very real “emergency” going on in New Orleans and across coastal Mississippi, and every minute FEMA officials spend counting people at the Motel 6 in Atlanta is a minute not spent on recovery in the disaster area.

Why isn”t Housing and Urban Development the federal agency handling the housing needs of displaced Katrina victims? FEMA should be concerned about housing only if it means restoring housing in the affected areas. It does an evacuee good to have a trailer in Jackson, La., but it does nothing for New Orleans.

Loyal Wisdom readers who also read the wife”s not-often-enough updated site may have seen her complete report of our trip, so I”ll spare you all a re-hash of the play-by-play. But some Wisdom is definitely due.

Our swing through Waveland was not planned, so we weren”t really prepared for what we saw. That may have been a good thing. There”s a railroad that runs through Waveland, and things south of there are generally considered to be “the beach”. As the wife said (my line, actually) north of the tracks, it looked like a hurricane hit. South of the tracks, it looked like a nuclear bomb went off.

We didn”t take pictures, partly out of respect, partly out of shock, but TCL”s uncle - who used to be a full-time Waveland resident - took a number of shots south of the tracks a few days after the storm and an amazing shot during the storm at the hotel where he and others rode it out.

This is Coleman Avenue, which is Waveland”s little commercial area near the beach, looking out toward the gulf:

Yes, there used to be buildings on both sides of the street here. The surge was so big it crumpled everything south of the tracks, pushing debris north and leaving only foundations and mangled trees behind.

Estimates put the surge at somewhere around 25 - 35 feet high, but I think that may be a low estimate. Take a look at this shot taken from the second floor of the hotel where a lot of Wavelanders rode out Katrina:

Obviously, this looks bad. But you might expect this kind of scene during a hurricane at the beach, right? But consider the location of this shot. Thanks to the magic of Google Earth, here”s a perspective on location:

The “Site of Photo” placemark in the upper left corner is where this picture was taken. This is 1.7 miles from the beach. The water there ultimately came into the second-floor rooms, which means nearly two miles inland there was at least 10 feet of gulf surge. Everything between the hotel and the beach was underwater; and that was the best-case scenario. Most everything south of the tracks is simply gone.

From what I understand, this is the case all the way across the Mississippi coast.

Mississippi got totally shit-hammered by a major, major hurricane. The level of destruction is really severe, but hurricanes are familiar forces. To one degree or another, we know this is what happens when a hurricane hits.

But things are different in New Orleans. In Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes, the catastrophe was very hurricane-like - a big surge just washed over those areas - but the levee breaks in New Orleans itself were as much an engineering / construction failure as a natural disaster. This becomes most clear in Lakeview, where the homes still stand, but the neighborhoods are destroyed.

Take a look at this shot I took last Friday on Louque Place in Lakeview. Except for the complete emptyness and the one home where the owner has started ripping out the mold-filled walls, things look fairly normal:

But in reality, this street got about five feet of water after the 17th Street levee break. And for now, it and the rest of Lakeview - and Mid-City and a lot of New Orleans north of the CBD - is dead.

When you look closer, you see the water lines:

The home of one of our friends” friends showed an amazing record of the flood. This house was searched three times after the flood and as the water receded. Note the three sets of search marks (the first is kind of hard to see on the second-story window):

Across New Orleans, there are thousands of homes that took on water and became a breeding ground for the most disgusting mold you can imagine. In some ways, coming home to nothing but a concrete slab in Waveland might be preferable to coming home to a mold-filled Lakeview house that had three feet of water inside.

If Katrina simply took your home away, you”re not faced with the endless series of questions and choices - is the home a total loss? do we tear it down or just gut it? do we rebuild or take the insurance settlement and try to sell the lot? would anybody want to buy the lot? how long would be it before we could get a contractor to work on our house? how much will lumber cost? if we rebuild, do we move back or try to sell it? if we move back, will our neighborhood be mostly abandoned houses, or will others come back? - that countless New Orleanians now face.

After we salvaged what we could - the grand sum of which fit inside our Santa Fe and the trunk of a Ford Focus - from our friends” house, they led us on the saddest tour of all time.

We drove through Lakeview, pausing at the homes of their friends; their children”s schools and other places that made this place their home. Nothing we saw was undamaged.

The tour was prompted by a specific task - to take pictures of the house of friends who are still holed up in Houston and hadn”t been able to learn much about their home”s fate. These folks have kids the ages of our friends” children, plus a new baby.

Somehow, I”m doing this family a favor by helping them see that the water line on their house is just below the roof line - about eight feet high.

The Times-Picayune (the New Orleans daily, not the near-worthless Spanish coin) is reporting today that tales of murder, rape and rampant violence at the Superdome and Convention Center were apparently just not true.

The National Guard sent a refrigerated tractor-trailer to the Dome expecting to retrieve 200 bodies. They found 6 (four died of natural causes, one overdosed and one committed suicide).

At the Convention Center, four bodies were found, not the stacks of corpses that were supposed to be in a freezer there. One of those people appeared to have been murdered.

And across the city, it appears the tales of violence were extremely bloated. The D.A. says the city can only confirm four murders in New Orleans since Katrina. That”s a typical week”s worth of killings there.

Yet the international media reported the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl at the Convention Center and the general “wave of rapes, murders, looting, shootings and carjackings” in the city following Katrina.

So the image that”s been painted of New Orleans across the globe is of violence, murder and basic lawlessness. To be sure, New Orleans has always been a little more violent and a little less safe than your average American city, but the grossly exaggerated tales of violence in the city after Katrina won”t exactly endear the city to the tourists and residents it desperately needs to return.

To quote a friend”s first email after Katrina drowned his house: “Friends who are firemen, etc. say the human garbage that remains is looting every house and building and shooting at rescue personnel. Total garbage. Not going back to live there, regardless.”

Not what you would call a Chamber of Commerce Moment.

So the media is to blame, right? Sort of. But the real fault lies in the unimaginably irresponsible actions of Mayor Ray Nagin and police chief Eddie Compass, who spread these untrue tales of murder and mayhem across the national media - including an interview with Oprah where Compass said “some of the little babies (are) getting raped” and Nagin said of the Dome situation “they have people standing out there, have been in that frickin” Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.”"

Compass also apparently greatly exaggerated supposed encouters his cops had with armed gangs in the city. One story he related about cops following muzzle flashes at night to round up 30 armed thugs turned out to be completely untrue.

Why would the city”s leaders make up tales of violence? It was likely a tactic to hustle up the federal response. If New Orleans is an chaos, the troops might come quicker, I suppose.

But Nagin and Compass have likely done irreparable harm to the city”s image at exactly the time they need the support of the world the most. How eager will tourists be to return to a city where the mayor told of such violence? What motivation will residents who have uprooted themselves to Baton Rouge, Houston or elsewhere have to pull their kids out of school, quit their new jobs and move back to New Orleans if this is the image their own mayor has given them?

In the long term, this may be Nagin”s biggest failure of leadership. He”s set the image of New Orleans going forward. And this isn”t even to speak of this in terms of two black leaders helping promote the stereotype of blacks as murders, rapists and thugs.

The story: Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated

The wife and I spent a few hours yesterday helping out at a Katrina relief center here in Atlanta. I had a cushy job in the men”s clothing area until a special need arose - an evacuee staying up the road at a Holiday Inn (with 18 family members) had a flat tire.

I vounteered to get the guy”s tire fixed. When he opened his trunk to find a jack, I noticed a few MRE packs amidst the blankets and other random things stuffed inside. I asked him if he”d been eating that Army food, and he said yeah. When I asked him how they tasted, he offered me up some MREs to take home.

Now, the last thing I want to do is take food from a NOLA refugee, but he insisted they were done with them (I understand why, now). So he gave me two Menu No. 8s (beef patty) and one Menu No. 15 (beef enchilada) to try out.

Working from home today, I (and, ultimately, the dogs) had a perfect chance to try out an MRE.

So here we go: Menu No. 8 - Beef Patty

The first thing I noticed was the little soldier silhouette in the upper left corner. Obviously this guy didn”t get Gen. Honore”s order to lower his weapon.

What”s in the bag

Left column packets - Nacho Cheese Pretzels, Wheat Snack Bread, Wheat Snack Bread

Center column packets - Accessories Packet, Spoon, BBQ Sauce, Cheese Spread with Bacon, Beef Patty

Right column packets - Mexican Style Macaroni and Cheese, Flameless Ration Heater

The things in boxes (beef patty and mac/cheese) are meant to be heated, but there”s just one Flameless Ration Heater. Maybe there”s a trick to getting the one heater to heat the two boxes, but I couldn”t figure that out.

A quick overview of the contents revealed the one great thing about an MRE - the tiny Tabasco bottle that”s included:

“Cooking”

I decided to use the Flameless Ration Heater on the Beef Patty, since it”s the advertised entree. The heating process is pretty simple - put a little water in the FRH, wrap it around the pouch and stuff both back into the box. It cooks on an incline as the illustrated instructions indicate:

For my lunch, the role of “something” was played by a bottle of Maker”s Mark:

As my Beef Patty was simmering away in its hydrogen sauna (the MRE is careful to warn you not to cook too many of them in a small space, as it may suck all the oxygen away), I checked out the rest of the pack.

The Mac & Cheese

The good news about this stuff is that it”s fully-cooked and has “real” cheese in it. I imagine it could be heated in hot water if an FRH wasn”t available. I tasted it cold right out of the pouch. It”s pretty much on par with public-school cafeteria mac & cheese. The dogs liked it.

Wheat Snack Bread

These look like Soviet Pop-Tarts and taste even worse than you might imagine. They”re as dense as cardboard and have all the flavor of low-carb pancakes. I have to be on a 4-hour flight this afternoon, so I didn”t risk eating much of this. The dogs were puzzled but eventually ate it.

Nacho Cheese Pretzels

These are the same thing as Combos snacks. Definitely the belle of the MRE ball. I”d trade two Mac & Cheeses for one of these packets. The dogs did not get any of these.

Iced Tea Drink Mix

This is your basic instant tea. I put the little Crystal Light tube in the shot, however, to make a point. The big MRE tea packet is for use with six ounces (standard military canteen cup) of water, which ain”t a lot of tea if you ask me. The tiny Crystal Light tube turns 16.9 ounces of water into yummy lemonade (they also have a tea version). Perhaps the military needs to re-think their tea strategy.

Cheese Spread with Bacon

Not bad. It”s basically like Easy Cheese. It didn”t make the Wheat Snack Bread any more edible, but it was damned yummy on the Combos.

Beef Patty

How Alpo got the contract to make MRE Beef Patties, I don”t know. Upon opening after 10 minutes of “cooking”, the pouch put forth a horrible aroma that sent the Little Black Dog (who was raised on wet dog food and apparently still remembers the smell) into a frenzy. I dared only a small bite of the Beef Patty, which tasted about as the smell would suggest. The dogs, needless to say, loved it.

I tasted the BBQ Sauce, which wasn”t bad (a little on the tomatoey side), and had one of the Chicklets included as an after-MRE treat.

And thus ended My Lunch with MRE. The take-away? Go for the Combos, and spread “em thick with Cheese Spread with Bacon. The rest of the meal makes me feel better about all the dogs stuck in New Orleans. I think they”re probably eating pretty well.

And, by the way, please don”t eat the Flameless Ration Heater.

I cannot let the story of Hurricane Katrina pass without noting the impact of our bullshit “homeland security” hysteria on the situation.

When the evacuation of New Orleans was announced, the city established the Superdome as a shelter “of last resort”. Anybody who couldn”t get themselves out of town - namely the poor and some tourists - was welcome to ride things out there.

By noon today, CNN was showing a long line of people waiting to get into the Superdome. As of 9 p.m. tonight, the lines are still there.

Estimates put the total Superdome crowd at about 20,000 - 30,000. So why is it taking so long to get everybody inside?

“Homeland Security”. Each and every person coming into the Superdome is being searched by the National Guard. No “sharp objects” are allowed. I saw a shot of a Guardsman patting down a young black woman to make sure she wasn”t holding any banned objects. Meanwhile, the crowd swelled outside in the growing rainstorm.

For at least ten hours today, the scene outside the Dome looked like this:

The thousands of people - mostly poor and black - seeking refuge from a storm threatening to destroy their lives were subjected to the kind of pointless demonstration of “security measures” that will do more to harm America than any terrorist could.

Meanwhile, the hundreds of National Guard troops who spent the day searching the harmless citizens could have been put to good use helping the elderly get to shelters; guarding against potential post-evacuation/pre-storm looting or just getting some rest before what will surely be a sucky next few days for them.

But no. We have to make sure no weapons get into the Superdome.

As for the storm itself; take care down there, people. It don”t look good.

Update: Fox News had some Guardsmen on live around 10:30 (still lines to get in) showing some of the “contraband” they”d collected. It included a wrench, scissors and nail clippers. The reporter asked why they don”t allow nail clippers (”They have pointed ends”), but didn”t ask the question “Isn”t that a bit excessive?”. Ah - reportage.