An open letter to Patrick Fitzgerald

 

Dear Patrick,

I realize you’re very, very busy. I also realize you probably like having your picture taken as much as most people would like having a root canal sans Novocain. At the same time, those of us with a raging crush on you would appreciate it if you’d go outside or have a press conference or something so we could get some new photos.  We haven’t seen any for over a month now, and it’s — well, I need something new to put on the blog. I’m sure you’ll understand.

We like the blue tie, by the way.

Thank you.

Fondly,

-S 

xoxo

It’s Friday. I’m working.

 

The end of the first draft of my book is finally, finally in the distance. Of course, now that I write that, I’m struck with — well — misgivings. (“Oh, no, I’ll forget stuff,” etcetera.) It’s a good thing that the second draft consists of printing the thing out and actually reading it.

Someone we know asked me last week if I write on the weekends. I used to write seven days a week. The last couple of months or so, I backed off to five. I need to get out of the chair once in awhile and see everyone, or weird things happen. The schedule right now is to complete the revisions on the book, mail it to the agent, and start planning for NaNoWriMo in November. www.nanowrimo.org

In the meantime, the last few days have been fairly serious in the Little Pink Clubhouse. I’m thinking it’s time for some fun. Of course, I’m open to suggestions.

-S

Just one more for New Orleans

Today’s Fiore is blistering, and it should be.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2007/08/29/fioredoctor.DTL

-S

They Are Not Coming: A Katrina Diary

I read this two years ago, and it still resonates. You won’t forget it, either. All blessings to luckydog.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/2/104640/1838

-S

New Orleans: Two years gone, and that bitch Katrina is still there

 

Jazz funeral in New Orleans

Photo credit: http://www.hurricane-katrina.org/

Two years and a few days ago, we sat watching the Weather Channel in a hotel room in Portland, OR with a friend of ours. We were all at a cat show. I was announcing (yes, it’s one of my weirder hobbies,) she was judging, and we were all more than a bit afraid that she wasn’t going to be able to get home. Beth and her partner live in Tennessee. Beth left the show hall and caught a plane. She made it just in time. Three days before Katrina made landfall, the announcers at the Weather Channel were using the words “Biblical in scope” and “evacuate now”. I understand the White House was also watching the coverage. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone could misunderstand the seriousness of the situation and the need for massive and immediate evacuations. Then again, we’ve lived through this over and over in the past seven years, haven’t we?

Two years ago tomorrow, the Dauphin and I were watching CNN and hoping for better news. Maybe the hurricane would completely miss the Gulf Coast. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. We listened to Jeanne Meserve cry as she reported what she was seeing. She and a CNN cameraperson were riding through NOLA in a boat. I still remember our stunned silence, and I finally choked up along with her when I saw Canal Street completely underwater.

If you’ve never been to New Orleans, the only way to describe it is to say that you’d either love it or hate it. There is no in-between. It’s a place for the sacred and the profane, the very rich and the unbelievably poor, intense beauty and heartbreaking squalor. There is delicious food everywhere, and even better music to go with it. I haven’t been back in a long time, but I was there long enough to lose my heart. The Dauphin stayed on the Gulf Coast for a month a few years back while he was working on a software project in Gulfport, Mississippi. He took rolls and rolls and rolls of photos of New Orleans, which I can’t bear to dig out. I know I’m going to see things that aren’t there anymore.

In the meantime, it’s been two years, and hundreds of thousands of people who used to live in NOLA are either dislocated or dead. The living just want to go home, but home will never be the same. “Home” is not even there anymore. Their choices are formaldehyde-filled FEMA trailers or mold-filled residences. I’m not going to rehash everything we’ve read over the past two years about the Gulf Coast. Let’s face it — much more talented journalists and bloggers have tried (and keep trying) to convey the misery that remains in NOLA. One thing’s for sure, though. There’s nobody that can convey the fury and the crushing sense of loss any survivor, any friend or family of a survivor, feels when they consider the utter mismanagement and negligence, the outright incompetence of the Bush administration’s “response” to Katrina.

Here are a few links to get you started on the second anniversary of the worst natural disaster to happen in the United States.

Spike Lee’s magnum opus, “When The Levees Broke” http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whentheleveesbroke/ There is an opportunity to buy the DVD, to find organizations currently working to clean up and rebuild the Gulf Coast and fund their efforts, to read about Mr. Lee’s masterpiece.

One of the bigger challenges of keeping people in NOLA is helping them get back on their feet, and their businesses up and running again. Here’s a link that will get you started: http://www.gumbopages.com/shopnola.html Spend a few dollars. It will help.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the favorite NOLA business of The Little Pink Clubhouse, Saints for Sinners. www.saintsforsinners.com. You don’t have to be a Catholic to need a little extra help, and Saints for Sinners handpaints saints’ medals into one-of-a-kind works of art. If you have no idea which saint you’d like, they’ll help you out! (I have St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, and a Miraculous Medal.)

I have to believe that my beautiful, mysterious New Orleans will emerge into the sunshine again. Until then, if each of us does something to help, we’ll ease the burden for those who’ve stayed on.

Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss her each night and day
I know I’m not wrong because the feeling’s
Getting stronger the longer I stay away

Miss the moss-covered vines, tall sugar pines
Where mockingbirds used to sing
I’d love to see that old lazy Mississippi
Running in the spring

Moonlight on the bayous
Creole tunes fill the air
I dream about magnolias in June
And I’m wishin I was there

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that’s where you left your heart
And there’s one thing more, I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans

-S

Rep. Dave Reichert is more important than you are, isn’t he?

 

George W. Bush and his little buddy, Rep. Dave Reichert

I sat at a complete stop on 405 for forty minutes yesterday afternoon because I dared to have a schedule. You see, George W. Bush had to come to town to raise some money for the aforementioned Mr. Reichert, and the only time he seems to ever show up here is rush hour.

We have the third worst traffic in the United States on a normal day. Imagine the fun of shutting down not only Sea-Tac Airport during the arrival and the departure (and I might mention that Mr. Bush is the only occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to fly into Sea-Tac in the past fifteen years; most go to Boeing Field to avoid this kind of thing,) but shutting down one of the major freeways in Washington state for rush hour yesterday. Oh, yeah: He also made sure to appear at a hotel that was across the street from Bellevue Square, which probably significantly affected their business as well. All this for a supposed four-hour visit. The resulting traffic jam snared an untold number of motorists simply trying to get home from work, pick up the kids, do whatever it is they were trying to do on a Monday afternoon and early evening.

If this wasn’t enough, there was a Mariners game last night in Seattle, too, occurring in the same time frame as The Visit.

The upshot of all this? When you think of Dave Reichert, imagine the kind of selfishness it requires to make sure hundreds of thousands of people will have their lives disrupted because of you and your campaign’s actions. Be sure and vote accordingly in November.

-S

I have decided that I am a jinx on the Seattle Mariners

America’s Team suffered an embarrassing loss this evening at the hands of the Angels. We were there to witness it — well, after we spent forty minutes sitting in stopped traffic on 405 due to George W. Bush’s insistence on showing up here.

I’ll have more on this later.

I’ve decided that my presence in the ballpark makes them lose. Therefore, I’m banning myself from visiting Safeco for the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I have to go to bed before I do a faceplant in the laptop keyboard.

-S

Senator Dick Durbin, you rawk the free world

 http://www.southernillinoisan.com/articles/2007/08/27/ap-state-il/d8r9fuh80.txt

The Illinois Democrat praised U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald for being a career prosecutor who has proven time and again that he looks at the law and not politics.

First you walk barefoot in a flooded community over last weekend because your constituents needed your help, now you’re putting Patrick Fitzgerald’s name forward as an Attorney General nominee?

May we move into your state? Please? Please? I promise I’ll work on your reelection campaign!

Love,

-S 

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to choose the next Attorney General of the United States of America! or, Are James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald arm-wrestling for this in some undisclosed location right now?

Of course, we’re all over this one.

Just think – taking on the Herculean (and thankless) task of cleaning up the Justice Department, cleaning up the mess in the AG’s office, and dealing with George W. Bush’s  Dick Cheney’s out of control executive privilege issues! That’s right. YOU can be Attorney General of the United States! (Oh, boy. What a prize, huh?) Then again, you get a neato security detail, your own staff, and I’ll bet it’s a real attention-getter at cocktail parties:

“Hey, what do you do?”

“Oh, I enforce law and order on a national scale. What do you do?”

“Awww, I work for a think tank.”

Where was I? Oh, yeah. I have a few nominees in mind, none of which have a snowball’s chance in hell of actually being sworn into the office during this administration. They’re too fond of telling the truth. Since it’s Monday and none of them are hard on the eyes, I’ll print them for the “drooling over smart and handsome middle-aged guys” contingent of TLPC readers everywhere.

He’s still my first choice. He’ll never, ever do it, but I enjoy the thought of the sheer terror that would strike the hearts of those still left at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at his being sworn in. Again.

Like I don’t watch enough press conferences NOW. I need to get SOME sleep, you know! Plus, after the above buddy talked him into that whole Special Counsel thing, he probably would like to do something else, like keep up the campaign to finally clean up Chicago.

My girlfriend Leinie’s two boyfriends — Sheldon Whitehouse and Russ Feingold. I know her fiance will learn to share!

Last but not least, the star of every committee he’s on, Mr. Hodes. Lie to him at your peril.

Back to the book.

-S

Western Washington does not welcome George W. Bush to Bellevue this afternoon

There’s evidently a little fundraiser in Bellevue for Rep. Reichert this afternoon. We’ll be trying to get OUT of Bellevue with several of our friends to attend the Mariners game, and I’d like to thank Mr. Bush for rendering traffic all over the area from probably 1 PM till after the game starts a Hell that has no end. Why don’t you stay in Washington, DC, anyway?* http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=bushvisit26e&date=20070826&query=Bush+fundraiser 

In the meantime, Darcy Burner (candidate for Congress,) is giving a virtual Town Meeting about the war in Iraq down the street from the Bush appearance at 3:00 Pacific time. If you’d like to ask questions of a distinguished panel, please go here: http://www.darcyburner.com/ .

-S

*Oh, silly me: He’s on vacation again, isn’t he? Why doesn’t he just stay THERE? Let’s face it, anywhere as far from me and everyone I love as possible would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?