Some Facebook postings from the last week +....

9/19

My niece posted one of those 'copy and share' messages supporting gay people. I did not do that because I don't do that, but I did (of course) write my own response: "I won't because I just don't do that, but I know that gay, straight, bi, trans, whatever - they are people just like the rest of us underneath, and most are worth more than those who belittle them. Have family and friends I love dearly who are gay - it's something that makes up who they are, same as hair color and ability to do some things and not others. You are worth so much, you can be so much. You are loved. Tell those putting you down to piss off and get on with your life, it can be a marvelous one".

It occurs to me that the same conservatives (and no, it's not all of you, but it's most and it seems to be the party way of thinking) who seem to think that sexual assault (rape) is ok, it's just a 'guy' thing and probably the woman's fault anyway, or she's lying - also are firm that if she gets pregnant from the attack she can't have an abortion because "Gasp! Can't take a life!" #1: basically, he has already taken her life. #2: Is he going to carry the physical reminder of the worst thing that happened to a woman for 9 months and suffer the pain of childbirth? Hm, doesn't work that way. #3: Is he going to take away the mental anguish that will never leave this woman? Hmm, nope, that's not gonna happen, he'll go his merry way and more than likely do it again. #4: Is he going to take this child, clothe it, feed it, raise it? Well, we know the answer to that one, don't we? $5: Is he going to pay the financial burden this will put onto the woman? See #4. 
And even if she does not get pregnant, there is so much more that the woman must suffer, so much more pain she has for his few moments of pleasure. that he will never experience. 
But don't change your thinking, because it might reflect that women are people, too - Women's Lives Matter! Can't have that.
Just some morning thoughts. Feel free to discuss.

9/17

Today would have been my parents 80th (if my memory and math are right) anniversary. They had many good, hard-working and happy years together. Glad I was part of them; will forever miss them.

8/29

Streetcar sys "HI" to all his Camp Katrina buddies - he's so glad to have met all of you! And, ps, he still does this when he wants to be petted, because of course he never gets any attention..........

8/26

BLACKkKLANSMAN. wow. Just. Wow. Not often you hear cheering and applause in a movie. Be prepared to be outraged, amused, angered, touched, saddened, thoughtful. Then compare the movie, set in the 1960's, with the clips that are shown at the end and be outraged all over again. Won't give away what they are. Highly recommend.

World Trade Center Task Force

September 21 - 23 , 2001

            The NYPD officer's name was Chris, I don't remember his last name. I had just gotten back to the staging area at Battery Park from walking around gawking and gasping at what was visible from the police lines four or five blocks from the World Trade Center Plaza; he was with a group from the Tioga County squads who he had just taken into the 'hot zone' – right in to the building rubble. He was thanking them, and excitedly getting someone to take a picture of himself with them.  I stood near him; he kept saying 'Thank you, Thank you all so much for coming down here….",  and he turned and hugged me, clenched me while I kept hearing his muffled, choked "Thank you" I just hugged back, and when he finally pulled away, I started to say "But I didn't do anything" looked at his face and stopped.  We had done something. We had come there.

           Then we laughed and got into a group and had the pictures taken; he put his hand on my shoulder and I reached and squeezed it because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I hope he knew what I was saying.

           There were more 'thank you's’ than I've heard on all my previous visits to the city combined, it seemed.  Standing by our ambulances waiting to be deployed, next to the joggers path at Chelsea Pier and people jogging by waved and shouted "Thank you!"   (The EMS Command Post people said their van had been parked in the path originally and that the bikers and joggers complained it was in the way and they had to move it to the other side of the fence.  That's New York.) The people serving the free food near Battery Park said 'Thank you".  The FDNY people assigned to our staging area said "Thank you".  The bus drivers who took us to and from the mercy ship where we spent our off shift time said "Thank you".  The EMS Command people said "Thank you". The guards at the various areas we went to said "Thank you". And we didn't do anything, never had a patient, but we were there and that's what counted to them.

           There were 10 ambulances and over 50 crew people in our Task Force, from Columbia County and the Albany area. Another convoy from Tioga County passed us when we took a rest stop on the thruway, we met them at Chelsea Pier and were deployed with some of them to Battery Park, the 'South Staging Area.' 

            Our feelings (mine, anyway, and I'll guess many of the others) when we met for briefing before leaving were a combination of excitement and apprehension.  What were we going to get to do? What might we see? And could we handle what we did see and do?   We never had to find that out, as we never got to do much of anything.  Some of the rigs never left the Chelsea Pier, and their crews were antsy and disappointed.  Those of us who did get deployed commiserated.

            Driving down we joked and talked and laughed, but always with an undertone.  Then we got lost - well, not lost, we knew where we were but the signs we were supposed to follow weren't there, so we went to lower Manhattan by way of Queens.  When we did get into the city we drove across 34th Street; the Javitz Center looked like the Police Command Center, it was a bustle of activity with people everywhere even at 1 am, there were tents and canopies over stacks of donated relief supplies, and out in the open a huge barbeque cooker, tables, and more supplies.

            When we got to Chelsea Pier we hung around while the task force heads talked with EMS command, then we were split into crews and one crew went to the mercy ship (the WW II Red Cross Hospital Ship 'Comfort", docked in the Hudson River at the 54th St. piers, a tourist attraction pressed back into active service, signs said "No Tours") to sleep. Not that any of us did sleep much. We dozed in the ambulance until daylight morning, found a place to get coffee and tea and bagels (the newness of police officers was apparent by the fact that the groups who were on every corner weren't sure where we could go for that – "Maybe a couple of blocks up there", when all was to be had at the gas station across the street.  However, another NYPD officer, assigned to the staging area, spent time assuring us of his prowess to protect both ourselves and himself from anything or anyone that came along. I'm glad it didn't.)

            During the night I heard a radio transmission from the site that a "large amount of body parts" had been found, and a following discussion about picking them up to be transported.   That pretty much did away with sleep.

            There are flags and signs everywhere.  Flags hang on poles, on buildings, on car antennas, on lapels (or people have red, white and blue ribbons), on the trucks working hard at the scene, painted on buildings and billboards, many joined by sentiments like "God Bless America, United We Stand". 

            The little park where we sat to eat our bagels and drink our coffee and tea had burnt candles tucked into the flowers. Along the fence beside the staging area were coolers of drinks and cartons of snacks and medical supplies and clothing. A plastic bucket held old flowers, beneath the shelf it was on an old paper had the headline BATTLE CRY, and a face mask was discarded on top of the paper. Posters from school children around the state and nation were taped to the fence, thanking the brave firemen, policemen and workers. 

            A constant parade of dump trucks of every size rumbles past, as do groups of motorcycle police with lights and sirens on, busses escorted by police cars front and back.  We stand around and talk to each other, other squads, policemen, EMS command workers; I take pictures, Bob rummages through the cartons for items we can use. Dan plugged in his travel razor and shaved.  We are assigned a task force number, ours is "73H3" – maybe we will get somewhere after all. Then, Yes! We are deployed to the South Staging Area.

            We follow two of the Tioga County ambulances down the West Side Highway; past lines of dropped refrigerator trailers and containers parked on either side of the road, just sitting there – and after a block or so it hits me what they are there for.  To store what the workers find in the rubble.  Sobering.

            More signs, spray painted on plywood: "Food – Supplies – Free". Everything is free to us.  Closer to 'Ground Zero'/'the Hot Zone', along side streets leading towards the Trade Center Plaza, piles and piles and piles of donated goods line the sidewalks, stacked against buildings that are not open yet. One store's signs "V.I.P. YACHT CLUB' were overlaid with duct tape "SUPPLIES".

            Streets are blocked off, with narrow access roads created by fencing and trucks and equipment. Plywood covers mounds of cable and hose we drive over.  We follow the twisting route, turn a corner and there slamming in front of us is the scene.  Jagged remains of the once tall and proud buildings now teeter over a mountain of rubble, cornerstoned by towering cranes and swarming with workers.   Flags are on all of the buildings still standing around the plaza.  These buildings show their own damage: broken windows, missing masonry, huge lengths of beams dangling in the air, and all are either white with dust or have black scorch marks.

            We stare, stunned, pointing out to each other more signs of the destruction.  Workers are walking everywhere, and Dan asked "Do you notice anything about their expressions?"  I look and realize and answer, "They have none". Each person's face is cast from the same mask: blank, void, completely expressionless.  Perhaps they regain one when they leave, when they are removed by distance from this site, perhaps they smile, even laugh. I think it must take them a while, and I do not think they will ever be removed from this in their emotions.

            Salvation Army tents, booths, trucks and workers are very much in evidence down here-aiding with supplies, food, a place to pray. Uptown, the Red Cross seems to be in charge of the victims' families and the people who have come to help.
           
            Windows on buildings all around the site are shattered, even many blocks away. Dust covers everything, later when I am walking around I pass workers hosing down buildings, to get the dust off and am warned by police nearby that it is asbestos-we were warned in the task force paperwork about the dangers of breathing in asbestos dust.

            Past Ground Zero a team stands on both sides of the street with a tank truck and hoses and rinses the lower part of the ambulance, to get hazardous dust off it we guess. A vacant lot has been turned into a vehicle graveyard and we all gasp when we see crushed, dust-covered, battered ambulances, pumpers and ladder trucks with cabs only a foot or two high and the ladders bent and crumpled stacked in it – these are the vehicles that were there when the buildings collapsed.  "Oh, my God…." becomes the phrase of choice. The next day Steve told me that when one ladder truck was found there were three firemen in the crushed cab.

            We park in the South Staging Area, listen to the instructions and advice of the NYFD person in charge of it.  There was a nice view of Staten and Ellis Islands, the Statue of Liberty, and the Coast Guard ship in the harbor.  To "Watch our backs", the staffer said.

            When we got to Battery Park, the people who lived in the apartments along the river between the park and the Trade Center were being let back to their homes, one person said it was to check them and gather more needed items; another said they were being let go back home, I never did find out.  The police were carefully checking identities; the press was obnoxiously covering the scene, with microphones, cameras and recorders in the people's faces. Just how DO you think they feel, folks? Few of the residents gave long interviews, and after a bit the police put up a barricade and made the press stay behind it.  News is news, but just how do you think they feel?

            Our crew took turns walking a few blocks from Battery Park to a 'soup kitchen' and then walking closer to the scene. The food area is set up in another small park, tables with sandwiches, pastry, fruit, drinks, hot food – all free to rescue workers.  It is fenced, and a National Guardsman looks at my ID tags and asks why I want to go in there. "Uh, for food?"  I take a sandwich, later one of the other EMT's says he had potato soup that was just delicious and when he asked he was told it was donated, huge tureens of it, by a restaurant from uptown. I put $5 into a jar marked 'donations', put the sandwich and a peach in my pockets and walk away drinking my orange juice.

            We were first told that cameras would not be allowed, but at the pre-trip briefing they said we can take pictures but to be discreet, and move away if we are told to. One officer did tell me to, and I did.  

            Two flatbeds rumble down from the site with big twisted, tortured and broken steel beams on the back. One is bent into a very tight 'u' shape; it was probably two to three feet wide and several inches thick.  Broadway is lined with roaring generator trucks.  The trucks all have flags, waving and/or painted on the cabs and trailers. 
           
            The statue of the bull that signifies Wall Street has flags tied to each horn.

            I've seen a Salvation Army semi (I didn't know they had them), a Feed The Children trailer is dropped under a roadway between the site and Battery Park, and I later see a truck from Texas parked on the West Side Highway with "Disaster Relief Supplies Going To NY" and "Texas Loves (the heart symbol) NY" on the trailer.

            When I got back to the staging area the policeman Chris was there, and we all gathered around to have our pictures taken with him – the designated photographer was handed at least a dozen cameras.  One of the Tioga County members who went into the 'hot zone' promises to send his photos, we exchange addresses and emails.

            Leaving, we head back to Chelsea Pier by way of the FDR Drive and crosstown on 23rd Street.  Along there, two cars pull to the curb and whip in front of our ambulance and a Gray Line tour bus to make a U-turn. Bob and the bus driver give each other a 'Waddaya gonna do" shrug. Parts of New York are back to normal.

            The noon to midnight crew takes over the rig. We get our bags and get on the shuttle bus – dozens of NYC busses are now in service only to transport workers and volunteers to and from their assignments.  We're going to 'the ship', for food and rest. The bus stops just past the Red Cross victim's families' center, with its wall of missing people photos.

            Credentials are checked at the entrance to the pier, and at the 'gangplank' a metal detector gate is set up, manned by six to eight soldiers who examine the contents of our bags, and have to swipe the detector all around me when I set off the buzzers-finally he decides it's something on my pant cuff or shoes, but none of us can figure out what. 

            It's a long walk up to the reception area, which has posters, letters and t-shirts with messages from children around the country commemorating the relief efforts and thanking those giving them.  We have credential checks again before we are assigned a berth.  Well, the guys were assigned, I had to wait while they made sure there was one and where it was – I told them it didn't matter, 'I sleep in a Freightliner'. I was shown to the galley and had lunch.   When I went back, they found a berth, and someone gave me blankets, towels and soap and led me there. The shower felt great, and I said 'oh, boy, now some sleep", but it didn't really come.

            Some of the Tioga County people came in and I talked with them a bit, and then decided to walk around outside.  I wrote down the number of the room I was in (a women's quarters, bunks three high, lockers between them, showers and lavatory at one end), and ended up being very glad I did, because when I went back I couldn't find the right stairs and corridor!   Those leaving the boat got a sticker that indicated we had already registered.

            The area is swarming with people from every group imaginable that is helping: Red Cross, National Guard, emergency services both volunteer and paid, FBI, FEMA, city, county and state police agencies; from across the state, the country and beyond-I see patches from counties statewide, from Siloam Springs (Arkansas), and inside I saw three EMT's from Mexico. All the vehicles have EMS insignia of some sort, most have red lights flashing.

             First I went up to the fence covered with photos. It is beyond heartbreaking, and I leave choked up. Pictures of parents with their children, the missing person's face circled, plaintive messages 'have you seen' and 'missing', descriptions, identifying marks. One lovely girl's picture is in the space where the stars would be, the rest of the page is the stripes of the flag.  

            Then I walked down to the Intrepid, but somehow I missed that there was a police line I wasn't supposed to cross, and when I got near that ship's area, there were sawhorses and a cruiser and two young policemen who asked "You come from the ship?"  "Um, yes."  "Okay", and they waved me through, "We thought so".

            I got a slushy to drink and sat in the little park next to the Intrepid and watched people jogging and roller blading and biking and watched the river and people boating and thought "these people are being normal – and 5,000 people are entombed in rubble only a few miles away from them!  You should be doing something!" And then I thought they are.  Returning to normalcy is the best thing they can do, it is the most help to the most people. Everything that can be done is being done.  

            I walk back up to the ship, the Comfort-a very apt name-and notice what I didn't before, the soldier on the deck, behind a bunker of sandbags, scanning with binoculars and next to his rifle; another patrols the walkway between the pier and the ship.

            A fire truck sirens past on the way to an alarm, people on the street wave and shout to the men and they wave back, but not all of them smile.

            I see this and I think that those who committed this horrendous atrocity must think they were going to bring America to its knees by their acts.  They did – as we knelt to pray for the victims and their loved ones, and to then pray for the strength and courage and help to do what next must be done. And then we stood up with thanks and with more patriotism and determination than ever and with the resolve that they would not win, that we would keep our life and our freedom and our country and our spirit.

           That spirit is on the faces here-the 'we are one, in this together' expression, the pride that we did what we could. The same expression I saw a week before at a collection point in Latham, when people were bringing things to be shipped to the city – 'we're doing what we can to help' – and that help, that giving across the country has left food and supplies on every corner. 

             I stand to watch the sunset, near the front of the Comfort, and look around.  Across the West Side Highway, there is a park and through the trees I can see children on swings.  I think, "Our knees, my ass – this is America – this is what we do" and I think that everyone who has returned to as normal as they now can be, everyone who is helping and has helped in some way is saying the same thing, their way, in their words and thoughts and actions.

           Back on the ship, I am examined again, even though I have the sticker saying I am registered.  Bob sees me in the registration area and pulls me to a side room where free massages are offered, I protest that I don't need one, other people need it more, but the masseuse says, "No, you need it too". Okay, and it felt great.

           There are t-shirts for sale that have the Statue of Liberty and a flag design, and say:

'Terrorists may crumble buildings,
but they can't touch my patriotism'
'In memory of those who paid for freedom with the ultimate price. 
September  11, 2001
God Bless America
Still the land of the free and the home of the brave'

Of course I buy one; they say that a school class in Colorado designed them.

            We go back to the galley and I eat again (delicious Cajun baked fish) and talk to other squad's members and go down to rest some more – but I got lost and had to have someone show me the right stairs, glad I wrote the numbers down!

           Then we got on the bus and shuttled back to Chelsea Pier to wait for the other crew to get back. A convoy of about ten busses goes past, with the police escorts, from the looks of the riders I guess that it is a crew going in to dig and look in the rubble. I wave to them.  The noon to midnight crews come back and we make sure everyone is accounted for and get into our rigs and come home, we're back at quarters about 3:30 am. I take the two Valatie members to their quarters, come back and pick up trash and left behind belongings in the rig to unwind a little, and finally go home and drop into bed about 5 am Sunday – and wake up at 7:30. More sleep is not going to come, so when tones go out for help at a standby at the hunter pace trials at Highland Farm I dress and go up there.

            It's a beautiful day; I stand in the sunshine and look up the hill and watch the horses canter over it, silhouetted against the blue sky and white clouds and it is a world and a lifetime away from 24 hours ago.    

What Should Bother Us All:

What Should Bother Us All:

"I REMAIN MUCH MORE BOTHERED BY WHAT HILLARY HAS DONE THAN BY WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID"

This was the message in a Facebook post one of my friends shared".

I've been trying ever so hard to stay out of the political discussion, but decided that I just can't.

Several of my friends are staunch Trump supporters.  That's ok - they are entitled to their opinion/decision/etc.  I don't take it upon myself to question their choice, they have their reasons that make sense to them.

Many others are strong for Hillary (or were for Bernie) and I don't question them either.  

Personally, I don't think there's a perfect choice this year, or maybe not even a good one, depending on your priorities.  I think it's a matter of picking who you feel will do the least damage, and that's a sad, sorry way to elect the leader of our country. 

Hillary has indeed done some things throughout her career that are questionable choices, whether or not they are in the end proven to be illegal (or to even have happened in some of the cases shouted about on social media).  I've never been a big fan, even though I'd be thrilled to have a woman in the White House, the same as I was thrilled to have a First Family of color.

BUT - what Donald Trump has said.  He has made it clear he opposes rights for women, minorities, and anyone else who doesn't agree with and cheer for him.  A headline today says he wants to remove press credentials for New York Times reporters, so they cannot cover his events.  Why?  Because they don't agree with him, because 'the press treats him unfairly' - because they report what he says and does that he later claims he didn't say (or mean the way it was said) or do (or mean the way it was done). 

It doesn't bother you that he made fun of a physically disabled reporter at one of his events?

It doesn't bother you that he has mocked and belittled females?

It doesn't bother you that he won't reveal his tax returns?

It doesn't bother you that he speaks out, in crude, bullying, mocking and belittling ways against anything and anyone that doesn't agree with his own thoughts and agenda?

It doesn't bother you that he's encouraged, if not downright incited violence against anything and anyone that doesn't agree with the same?

It doesn't bother you that his 'self-made' billions actually started with millions given him by his father, and grew on defaulted loans and questionable business dealings?

It doesn't bother you that there are criminal charges made against him: rape of a minor, defrauding students at the 'Trump University', to name just two (of 3,500 according to one story) that have made headlines.

It doesn't bother you that his reaction to anything and anyone who doesn't agree with and cheer for him is anger, mockery, and bluster - up to and including saying that if he doesn't win the election it is because it is rigged - not that, oh, gee, enough people saw through your schoolyard bully tactics to not want those in the White House?

It doesn't bother you that these very things are questionable if not downright dangerous qualities for the leader of our country, the man who can create peace and growth in all areas (financial, people's rights, culture, the future) or create havoc and worse in all those areas, to have?

It bothers me.

It bothers me that the qualities he does have: anger, revenge, bullying, bluster and, yes, BS, will only drag our country down.  And it really, really bothers me - it makes me very afraid for the future - is that this man and the way he has shown himself to be will either bring a full-scale war to our country or 'push the red button' that annihilates the world.

This should bother everyone.  

"You've Got to Be Carefully Taught"

This.

This picture says what we should embrace from the horrible events of the past week (Tuesday in Louisiana, Wednesday in Minnesota, Friday in Dallas, Texas) and of the past months and years.

Tears stream down faces as a black police officer embraces what appears to be a white woman, and two other women show shock and grief.  They are together in their emotions, not caring about skin color or uniforms or anything except their feelings about what has happened.  This togetherness is what is needed, this show of feelings, this kind of caring for each other. 

Embrace this.  Do not feed the fear and hatred that are the primary causes of the events we have lived through and sadly will probably encounter again and again until such time as reason prevails - if it ever does.  Let us try to teach reason, not hate and fear.

"You've got to be taught to be afraid,

Of people whose skin is a different shade

Of people whose eyes are oddly made…….

You've got to be taught to hate and fear

You've got to be taught from year to year…..

You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be carefully taught."   

Rodgers & Hammerstein, "South Pacific"

AREAS AROUND NEW ORLEANS ARE GHOST TOWNS, WITH SOME TRYING TO SALVAGE WHAT THEY CAN

AREAS AROUND NEW ORLEANS ARE GHOST TOWNS,

WITH SOME TRYING TO SALVAGE WHAT THEY CAN

CHALMETTE, LA—October 2, 2005 should have been a busy Sunday afternoon on the streets of Chalmette, St. Bernard’s Parish.  On a main highway there was some traffic, some vans and cars or trucks pulling small trailers.  People should have been going to the store, taking a ride, going to dinner, going to church.  On side streets, in the quiet, neat neighborhood with mostly one-story brick homes, cars parked by them, people should have been mowing their lawns, having a barbeque.  Instead it was almost a ghost town. 

            It looks like a quiet Sunday afternoon, until you look closer.  The cars aren’t parked in the driveways.  They are sitting sideways on lawns, upside down on top of one another, crushed under a shed, hanging from a fence, under a boat – and rarely near the house their owners lived in.  Trees and branches have fallen everywhere.  Blackened sections of lawns and burned branches show where wires fell and started fires.  Boats sit in highway medians, on lawns, on the shoulder of the road.  A bus is crossways in the island between lanes of a boulevard, another in the middle of a field with its front end smashed.  At a small fuel stop tractor-trailers are tossed like toys. 

There are no street lights; there is no power.  All the businesses are closed.  Most have open doors and broken windows.  In the parking lot of a drug store a tent is set up where people are handing out water and supplies.  There are rows of ports-potties set up in strip mall parking lots.  There are piles of rubble: tree branches and furniture, grills and toys. A couple of dozen cars are lined three rows deep alongside the highway, dragged there to clear the road probably-all with dents, damage and dirt on them.  And more boats. 

And in front of some houses beautiful rose bushes bloom, bright red and pink and yellow that only accents the destruction they now sit in.

The National Guard has set up an emergency first-aid station at the school sports arena.  The American Red Cross office is closed, rubble thrown against the fence around the parking lot and a wheelchair sitting in front of it.  The animal shelter is in a field near that, two huge tents with cats in cages in one and dogs in cages in another, and an emaciated horse and a goat tied in the shade of a building out back.  People are walking through the cages, looking and hoping for their own pets. 

The water has gone down.  It was about 8 to 9 feet deep here, “Up to the rafters on the bottom of the attic”, according to one resident. Windows are broken, doors are open, belongings are strewn across the yards, lying in dried muck.

            The muck, a mixture of oil, mud, and no one dares think what else, is dried and cracked into chunks of a solid gray to black mass two to three inches thick and from a few inches to a few feet across.  It is everywhere, on lawns, streets, inside houses and cars.  

            Each house has spray painted on it an ‘X’, with a date and symbols indicating it has been searched.  Some say ‘animal inside’ and then a date the pet was rescued.  Some have sadder messages of the number of animals – or people - found who did not escape the floods.

Some have messages the owners have sprayed on “Looters Welcome”, “Goodbye”, “Thanks for the Memories”.  A few have ‘For Sale’ signs in front. 

Some people are salvaging what they can.  Some have piled what they can’t on the front lawn with a sign “Free”.  Inside the houses everything is in ruins.  Refrigerators lie on couches, small furniture is piled in the corner of a room.  In one house a crayoned sign over the doorway from the living room to the kitchen gaily says “Welcome Home!”  There is a display case, the glass broken but for a wonder upright, with a collection of lovely dolls inside it; more dolls line the mantle.  In the yard is a small pile of  ‘G.I. Joe’ dolls.  All covered with the muck.

At one house we stop and offer water to the family that is hauling boxes into their front yard – on top of the dried muck.  A tire and a baseball glove sit next to each other in the corner of the yard, where the water left them.  The Pohlman family has salvaged what they can – all things that were in the attic – an old radio dating to the 1930’s that had been his father’s aunt’s, a box with a collection of salt and pepper shakers, some Christmas ornaments.  They had just gotten new furniture.  They were planning a trip to Las Vegas, the honeymoon they didn’t have 25 years ago when they married.  She had new clothes, but made sure to take them when they evacuated-they were lucky, the family and their pets got out.   Their son had their new car, with only 1,200 miles on it – but his Mustang that had been in the carport was now on the neighbor’s lawn halfway down the block. 

He says “It’s not the first time we’ve lost everything – when the kids was young we had a fire in our trailer home – we almost lost the kids.  That’s what’s important, we got out and they got out and we got our pets.”  She says “I’d invite you in for coffee, but the house is a mess.”  He shows us the flagpole in the back yard, bent to the ground from the base - “I had Old Glory flyin’ on that every single day.”  He tells us about the neighborhood, blue collar hard working people.  He is a policeman.  “Those folks over there, he was a barber and she was a hair dresser.  I never paid for a hair cut the whole time we lived here, and they never had to cut their own grass – they was older”, he sadly remembers.  He shows us a gun case lying on the street, the gun gone, stolen.  “I don’t know where that came from”, he says, “but I don’t know how they think they can use it, it was all rusted”. 

“They say they’re gonna bulldoze it all down, because the land is contaminated”, he says, telling us that they are near the water, near the broken levee and near where the oil storage tank ruptured from the water pressure and mixed with the flooding lake water that inundated the neighborhood. 

When we leave he asks can we move his truck around front so he doesn’t have to get into it with his mucky boots.  They tell us to go to the church a few blocks away, and look at the statue of St. Anthony.  A stone at the base dedicates it to his parents – and the statue and stone are unharmed, but the watermark shows that the floods came up to St. Anthony’s neck.

            In another neighborhood, closer in to the city and more affluent, with older, more ornate, more ‘New Orleans looking’ homes, the water was not as high, only 3 to 4 feet.  A woman tells us “We got water in the basement, and if they’d let us back in we could have saved some things, but we were kept out so long everything got moldy”.  They are airing out and seeing what they can salvage.  They left their ‘Doberman diva’ and her 7 month old puppy with food and water when they left town on Sunday, thinking they would be back in a day or two.  After 16 days of trying to get permission to go back and get the dogs, the husband found someone with a boat, someone who could get around the National Guard checkpoints and went in.  The puppy was barely alive; it had pressure wounds and it took it 12 days to be able to stand up again-it has been in a vet clinic intensive care unit for 3 weeks.  They took the dogs to the animal triage center at the shelter set up in the nearby Winn Dixie parking lot, and from there to clinics in other cities.  “As soon as we can we’ll have our pets back” they smile and say.  Their cat was in the house for 26 days, “She wouldn’t let us come near her”, but it is doing well now.  

            The husband saw destruction everywhere, and on one corner, two bodies tied to a stop sign.  “They said the National Guard was doing that, so the bodies wouldn’t float away and could be recovered”, he says.

            They told us that some places in the Latin Quarter are open – and the famous New Orleans coffee and beignets are being served out of the back of a truck on Sunday mornings.    

            On Elysian Fields Boulevard the Theological Seminary has used fallen branches to block off driveways, and an armed guard stands behind one pile of them.  Many exits off the interstate highways are blocked by police cars.  The ‘Animal Rescue’ signs on our van get us through check points.  Other exits are barricaded off, but cars go around the fences.  People are trying to get home, trying to salvage what they can, to see if they can go home again.  There is a curfew in parts of the city. 

            On the way out of the city we see a military convoy heading in, to take over the nighttime guard.  An old man drives a pickup truck slowly north on the interstate, the bed and a small trailer behind filled with a few pieces of furniture, and things in large trash bags.  We drive back to Camp Katrina, thinking about home.   

                                                

THE ANIMAL’S PLIGHT AFFECTED EVERYONE AT CAMP KATRINA

TYLERTOWN, MS—“This guy was a big executive, the head of Morgan-Stanley, and he was sitting with the dog in the middle of the field”, Elizabeth recalls.  “We were running around tearing everything down because (Hurricane) Rita was coming in and they were predicting tornados here.”  The pretty Corgi came to the shelter pregnant, a stray picked up in the ruins of New Orleans.  She was trying to deliver the puppies and could not.  Elizabeth went on, “They had to give her a C-section, and her puppies were all dead, and we were trying to get the dogs moved out and put the ones left in the house and get everything into the trailers before the hurricane hit us and in the middle of it all this big executive with Morgan-Stanley was sitting in the field with Corgi-Mom on his lap and the tears were just streaming down his face.  An executive with Morgan –Stanley, crying and crying over what happened to that dog.”

She should not have been surprised.  Everyone cried over the animals and their stories, executives to housewives to farmers and everyone in between.

Corgi-Mom’s story had a happy ending.  She spent time in the ICU, in a cage in what had been a bedroom of the house on Obed Magee Road.  People walked her and checked her condition and fussed over her and exclaimed over her sweet nature.  And, in the end, she pranced up the steps of a swanky tour bus and was put into a cage secured to a bus seat and was on her way to the Hampton’s in Long Island, New York, with about 2 dozen other animals the Animal Rescue League took to foster out.  She’ll make someone a loving, loyal pet.

The people picking animals to go on that fancy bus kept asking ‘what’s the story about this dog’, and we kept saying ‘every dog has a story.’  Some of them we knew but most we didn’t.

Imagine the stories.  Imagine you are a pet, and one day your people put you in the basement or in a closet or pantry or carrier or tie you in the back yard and say “It’s just until the hurricane passes, we’ll be back tomorrow.”  And they don’t come back.  You bark, cry, whimper, meow.  And they don’t come back.  You eat the food and drink the water they left.  And they don’t come back.  Some of you see water coming in your house and find a way to climb above it, or manage to swim until it goes down.  Some of you get out.  Some of you are the now famous ‘rooftop dogs’, shown worldwide on the news.  Some of you don’t make it out.  But you all now have one thing in common – you were left alone in a city that may never recover, and your owners may never find you.  And you each have a story.

A month after the storm the rescue teams are still finding animals, miraculously still alive, in the water ruined homes of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes.  These are gaunt, emaciated, and almost unanimously so glad to see people they cannot stop licking and jumping and wagging their tails.  The teams are still catching strays running the streets, in packs or alone, fatter from eating the dog food that is being put out on almost every corner but still frightened, confused, and looking for their people. 

            Mark, from Long Island, spent days in the city trying to get as many animals as he could; he slept in his van in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie market that had been turned into a temporary shelter and animal drop-off point.  He found many animals, including a shy young dog that he took home to foster.  One day he saw a Uhaul with dogs inside it.  He was about to break a window to get the dogs out, because it was so hot, when a woman came outside and said that she and her daughter were checking on the dogs every ½ hour at least.  They were trying to get to Arizona, and he was crying when he said that he gave them $40 to help them out.

One night Lorraine came out of the house in tears.  She had gotten a call from some one who said a group of dogs was being held at a school somewhere in the city, and that the police went in and shot them.  Everyone at the camp was horrified.  More checking revealed that it had happened, because the dogs were beyond any hope of saving, too starved, too sick.  Everyone mourned, even though everyone knew it was for the best.  

            At the Winn-Dixie, a young man came up to one of the rescue teams and asked if they had seen a white pit bull.  They have seen hundreds of pit bulls, many of them white.  “It was in the house with my grandfather and he – he – he didn’t make it.  I want to find my dog, he’s the only thing I have left.”  The rescue team gives him phone numbers to call and goes on to look for more animals.

            One little dog had been found in a house, where it had been for a month, with its owners.  They were dead.  Another sweet tempered female dog was found in a room with her mate and their litter.  She was the only survivor.

The ‘Fisherman’, one of two men who had originally been hired because they had boats and could get in to the city areas and look for animals brought dogs one night.  He said some Federal Marshalls had stopped him and said they knew where there was a dog in a house.  He told the story: “Ah followed them a long ways in (…to the city) to this house and we went in and looked but we didn’t find no dog.  I asked them was they sure and they said ‘Yes’, they’d heard it.  Well, then, Ah told them, Ah’m not leavin’ until Ah find it.  And do you know, that dog had climbed up, you know in the kitchen where they’s cabinets up above and all, well, the kitchen was a mess of course with the refrigerator laid over and all, but that dog had climbed up on top of the stove and was up in a cabinet – Ah jest seen it’s paw a’stickin’ out and Ah got ‘er”.  The dog had been in the house for 31 days.  It was emaciated, but had energy enough to wag all over when taken from its cage at Camp Katrina.  The young Lab mix was named Lucky Lady. 

            A mother and daughter live next door to each other, and have 19 cats, most of which were in cages in the daughter’s house when the floods started.  She was next door, having tea with her mother when a nephew pounded on the door to tell them the water was rising.  Together they managed to get upstairs with her father, who has dementia and had a door locked and had to be persuaded to open it.  As soon as she could, she went next door to see how the cats had fared.  They were swimming in their cages, but they were all right. 

            The police and National Guard at check points going in to the city wave the vehicles with ‘Animal Rescue’ signs on through, and many applaud and cheer them.  They tell the rescuers where they have seen or heard animals.   In one instance, a policeman says “I know where there are two dogs – I’ll show you on once condition – that these dogs NEVER go back to that owner!” 

            One day volunteers are sent to a woman’s home in a nearby town.  She has been taking in animals and has too many to care for by herself.  They bring back about 20 cats one day and 11 dogs the next.  One of these, a mini-Doberman, is shaking with fear.  A volunteer cradles it in her arms, sits in the shade and talks to it, telling it stories and ‘”you’re gonna be all right, honest you are” for an hour, until it stops.

            A kitten is brought in one night.  A stray about 6 months old, it was found on Desire Street.  How did something that small survive?  It is skin and bone, but meowing loudly, and when taken from the carrier, it wraps paws around the volunteer’s neck and licks her chin.  It feels safe again.  It has ringworm and diarrhea, as do many of the animals.  Curable, and it has already snuggled its way into a volunteer’s heart and will go home with her, and be named Streetcar.

Volunteers driving through a neighborhood looking for dogs see a couple trying to salvage furniture from their house.  They left their ‘Doberman diva’ and her 7 month old puppy with food and water when they left town on Sunday, thinking they would be back in a day or two.  After 16 days of trying to get permission to go back and get the dogs, the husband found someone with a boat, someone who could get around the National Guard checkpoints and went in.  The puppy was barely alive and it took it 12 days to be able to stand up again-it has been in a vet clinic intensive care unit for 3 weeks.  “As soon as we can we’ll have our pets back” they smile and say.  Their cat was in the house for 26 days, “She wouldn’t let us come near her”, but is doing well now.  

A man and his son stop their car, all they have left, at the gate to the camp.  “We got out, with our five Chihuahuas, but now we’re staying with someone and we need food for them, do you have any?  And do you maybe have a carrier or something?  The one is pregnant and she needs some place to have her puppies.”  The little boy describes their two cats, that they could not catch to bring with them, and the volunteer promises to look for them.  “We went back in, but we lost everything, and we didn’t see the cats,” the father says.  They leave with a carrier, and bags and cans of food and are told to come back when they need more.

            The rescuers tell of finding a dog that has been in a cage on a roof for 34 days – and is alive.  How?  No one knows.  Some, in yards and on the streets, are not alive.  Rescuers sigh and sometimes cry, but go past these looking for ones they can save. 

            Besides the dogs, they find cats, rabbits, hamsters and gerbils and birds and fish and chickens and one day bring back a goose.  That is promptly named AFLAC and put into a pen with a wading pool full of water.  The smaller animals are in cages in the house and the chickens in a wire pen out back – the rooster tells everyone when to start a new day at Camp Katrina.

A month after the storms many of the dogs found are Pit Bulls and Rottwiellers, large dogs able to survive.  Both are usually friendly with people; many of the males show scars of fights and the females have other evidence of either fights or of being over bred – one-dog ‘puppy mills’.  Security patrols are necessary at night to keep locals from stealing these to use as fighting or bait dogs. There are also cute smaller dogs, like two Lahso Apso’s that came in.  Unfortunately, one alleged volunteer took them when she left – without bothering to get permission from shelter officials.  Fortunately, the majority of the volunteers were there to actually help, and not for their own personal gain.  The shelter is still deciding whether to pursue recovering those dogs and charge the person.  They have enough to do without that unnecessary problem.

            The rescue teams go out again – the National Guard has told them where a group of dogs is huddled on a high piece of ground in the still flooded 9^th Ward.  They will try to get to those dogs today, “They can’t have much time left”.

            At the camp, others feed and walk and pet the rescued animals.  And load them into vans and a camper and a trailer and suv’s and a bus to be taken all over the country, to no-kill shelters that will find foster homes.  Their pictures will be on www.petfinder.com.  They hope that at least some will find their owners.  Some of the cats and dogs are being held until the owners themselves find a home and can come for a happy reunion.  Everyone – animals, owners and volunteers alike - wants more of those.  And there will be.  Everyone is sure of it.

VOLUNTEERS BUILD A SHELTER FOR HSLA

TYLERTOWN, MS—The Humane Society of Louisiana had only recently purchased the property of several acres with a small brick house on Obed Magee Road here, because it was expanding and had to leave the city of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit.  When the floods that devastated the city subsided and people could get in to the stricken areas to rescue animals, they started pouring in to this new space that was not ready for anything, much less anything of this magnitude.

People from all over the country came to help save the animals.  They also helped this Humane Society of Louisiana facility recover from Hurricane Katrina.  In a little over a month hundreds of dogs and cats, fish and parakeets, a goose, chickens, turtles, hamsters, gerbils, and rabbits were brought here.  There is a story of these animals and what horrors they went through before they came to Camp Katrina.  But there is just as much a story of the phenomenal people who made a Camp Katrina for them to come to.  

Those people came from Virginia and Michigan and Pennsylvania, from Kentucky and New York and Hawaii, from Canada and California and Washington and Florida and Colorado and too many more states to list.  In the nine days I was at ‘Camp Katrina’, these volunteers who never met each other before created an animal facility out of a chaotic but functioning space that was reeling, as was all of the area, from being struck by two major hurricanes within two weeks of each other.

They flew, they drove; they stayed two days, two weeks, two months.  They got a name tag (very officially hand printed on colored duct tape) and said “what can I do?” and they looked around and saw something that was needed and they said “I can do that” and they did it.  Some came and went home and came back to do more, because they had to help as much as they could.

The first ones there put up dog runs and tents and were starting to take in animals when Rita threatened and they had to put thousands of pounds of food and cages and leashes and dishes into trailers and cram the animals into the tiny 5 room brick house and hope for the best - and they were spared.  And they started to put the shelter up again.

They each came with a skill that could be used.  They tended sick and injured animals and shoveled stone into the soggy areas where the new dogs are washed. They built dog runs, they covered them with tarps and dusted the ground to kill fire ants.  They sorted tons of donated animal food and medicine and leashes and cleaning supplies and blankets and people snacks and made order out of the jumbled piles of these so that things could be found when needed.   They created an operating room and office out of a room filled with supplies and chairs and a table and some animals, and they turned a bedroom into an ICU, and the kitchen and hallways into cat rooms (and the hamsters and gerbils – “Oh, you can’t use the microwave, the gerbil chewed through the cord”).  Someone went out and bought a small refrigerator for people food, because the one in the house was filled with animal medicines.

JR and Pat had come with their wives, Kathy and Lorraine.  Kathy was a veterinary technician and went directly to the ICU.  Lorraine had management experience and oversaw the whole camp operation while she was there.  JR and Pat could do home repairs and they patched the roof, rewired the house, built a wall across the carport entrance, built shelves, upgraded the plumbing, put up fencing for dog pens, patched pens, put up the perimeter fence, and found jumper cables when a car wouldn’t start – joking the whole time they worked. 

Rick had been an MP.  He was in charge of security.  Elizabeth had been rescuing dogs in Hawaii, and she was in charge of the dogs.  Veronica manages a shelter in Michigan and she took over when Lorraine had to leave.  Laurie and Kathleen and Mayree and Sherri and Libby and Lee and Leila and many more had volunteered at shelters or lived on farms and they fed and watered and walked and brushed and talked to the dogs.  Beth spent two days sitting and lying on the ground in the run with a dog that was so traumatized she would not eat, or come out of her house.  By noon of the second day the dog came out to eat, and sniffed Beth’s hand and received a pat without cowering and hiding – a victory!  Neva and Diane are moms – Neva took over the mountains of laundry – sheets and towels and blankets used in the animal’s cages - that were piled up, and they both (with a lot of help) sorted and organized the supplies. 

Everyone got up early to be feeding animals by 7 a.m., and worked until after midnight most nights.  Teams of rescuers went out day after day, walking ruined streets and listening for barking or meowing from animals left behind over a month ago when their owners evacuated ‘just for a couple of days’.  They looked for strays which have been running the streets, and they got excited when they were alerted to a new area where many dogs are still to be found.  They left the camp early in the morning and came back late at night with animals found in the destroyed houses and neighborhoods of the once proud and beautiful city of New Orleans, or taken from temporary shelters set up in outlying city districts.  The van loads of animals came in anywhere from about 10 p.m. to the wee hours of the morning, and the people were waiting to check the dogs in, give them water and a decontaminating bath and pet and feed and talk to them before they settled these traumatized animals in for the night and let themselves fall into a sleeping bag.  Their best night was one on which 88 dogs were brought in.

Every day they fed dogs and walked dogs and cleaned dog runs.  They cleaned cat cages and fed and watered them.  They filled a plastic wading pool for the goose and rigged wire cages for chickens.  They watered dogs and washed dog dishes.  They got up during the night to walk a two-hour security shift because local people were cutting the fences to steal dogs to use for dog fights, and still got up and worked to help these animals all day long.   They unloaded vans and trucks of donations that came in every day-more food and medicine and dishes and sheets and blankets and ‘people snacks’.  They worked with the vets to check the animals’ health and give shots and make sure all the treatments were recorded to go with the dogs to their foster homes – or back to their owners.  They cleaned and sorted and built and did it some more and they congratulated each other on jobs finished – and went to find new ones to start.

They walked around with groups who came to take animals all over the country to be fostered out, animals going to Iowa and New York, Kentucky, New Jersey, Tennessee and Illinois, riding in carriers with food and water, stacked in vans and one bunch in a fancy tour bus, their cages filling the seats usually taken by people going to a casino or dinner theater.  They shed happy – and sad- tears when animals left, because they were going to get homes once more, and because they would miss them – but more would come in that night.

They worked in 90 plus degree heat and 100% plus humidity and kept reminding each other to drink lots of water so they did not get sick themselves.  They grabbed snacks from the tent filled with ‘people food’ donations, and ate Chinese food and grilled cheese sandwiches brought in by the Humane Society director.  One night they got a real treat - a ‘red beans and rice’ dinner for everyone, served up the country road at a place that doubled as the local laundromat, snack bar and game room  – and they ate in shifts so that some one was always with the animals.  They sat late at night and talked about their own animals at home – and ones they might give a foster home to, hoping for the original owner’s sake that they can be reunited but underneath that hoping a bit that this survivor can stay with them, because they have become attached, even thought they said when they came that they would not.

They laughed about the cows that wandered through one area of tents every morning, and about showering up the road in stalls the Red Cross hastily put together – on the lawn of the area Baptist church!  They laughed at animal antics.  They laughed about all the food brought in being vegetarian, because Jeff is one.  They laughed at silly things that happened during the day. They laughed a lot.

They cried, too -  over what the animals had been through, and they cried when one left for a home – and they cried when they left themselves, because they had been part of a team – and they said “See you next hurricane!” – and they left part of their hearts and their generosity at Camp Katrina – for the animals.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, the Humane Society Director and the shelter’s manager lost their homes.  Jeff was living in his mini-van and Johnna was sleeping on a couch in the living room of the house, the room that tripled as the shelter office, veterinary storage area and animal operating room.  Their personal losses were never mentioned while they helped the animals and constantly thanked the volunteers for what they were doing.  

When I left after spending nine days at Camp Katrina I was astounded at the order that had been brought to the chaos there was when I arrived.  The veterinarians actually had a place to work.  The supplies were sorted and under cover – you could find a leash or a towel or a trash bag or a snack.  The carport was closed in to make more room for recovering animals.  There was talk of closing in the porch so the cats could live there and the kitchen could actually be used by people – Wow!  There were more runs and a security fence around all the dog pens.  The roof was fixed and there was a real light in the bathroom of the house.  There was much more to do, but there were new people coming in.  They’ll do it.  They’ll do it for the animals.

I cried when I left.