Friday was an especially happy day for Sticks. His 18th birthday, a near-perfect score on the driver’s test, and a special gift for graduation and his 18th birthday all wrapped into one.

Our birthday cake, with 18 candles. If I close my eyes and wish hard, I can pretend the other 31 don’t belong there. This is the best German Chocolate cake on the planet, bar none. My MIL makes it especially for our birthday.

It took less time to blow out the candles than to light them.

Sticks challenges me for the ownership of the cake. Whippersnapper.

Today his “fairy godmother”, aka his wonderful aunt, gave him the best gift of all.

I can’t think of a better transportation mode for drums than a box on wheels. A very, very, very nice box indeed.

Technorati Tags: Toyota, Scion xB, birthday, gift, 18

If you aren’t familiar with the legendary Spinal Tap, you don’t know that they tend to consume (or incinerate) drummers on a regular basis. I’m pleased to report (and Sticks will be pleased as well) that Gregg Bissonette survived the Live Earth performance quite nicely and was incredibly fun to watch. Boo-hiss to MSN for not allowing embedded video into our blogs, but I did find it on YouTube. (Just in case it gets pulled down, here’s the MSN Link). For maximum enjoyment, please go to 11 (note: stupid story linked there). (Backstory)

Also, don’t miss the Foo Fighters. They and Spinal Tap were the best of the UK sets (although I wanted to brush the hair out of Dave Grohl’s face about 60 times). Madonna did the usual bump and grind thing - she was okay, but a letdown after the Foo Fighters, for sure. John Mayer (NY) and Yusuf (Germany) — formerly Cat Stevens…a long-time fave of mine– round out a really nice online concert video experience.

Surprisingly, the MSN Video feed was very stable throughout the day. I thought they might encounter some glitches during peak traffic times but I had no problems with it at all.

Technorati Tags: LIveEarth, Spinal Tap, Foo Fighters, Yusuf, Gregg Bissonette, go to 11

Most of what I’ve written here recently has been entirely too self-centered. Before I started blogging one of my biggest objections to it was the prospect of becoming someone who was all into “she”…instead of the larger world and people in it.

Part of taking good pictures is learning how to use perspective to hit the target with your subject and composition. For me it’s been one of the hardest things to learn. As I’m sure you’ve all noticed, my favorite form of photography is macro photography, tight close shots of a subject — so tight that all other objects in the photo fade and blur into a nondescript background.

Macro photography has its strong points, but one of the weaknesses is the mindset of total focus into one small area while ignoring the larger picture. By necessity, perspective and focus becomes razor-sharp and directed into that one single subject, which is one of the reasons I tend to favor it — it’s the one time where I can really understand perspective.

Back to the blog now…that “macro focus” has been entirely too tight on me and mine. I was completely convicted of that when I read Cherie Berkley’s blog this morning. Cherie is a WebMD editor who is traveling in Africa as part of a joint UN/NABJ fellowship to report on AIDS in Africa — Tanzania, specifically.

…we passed broken sidewalks, run down buildings much in need of painting, barefoot kids, pools of dirty, standing water from lack of proper drainage (ie mosquito haven), and people cooking food on make-shift grills on the street. Then one of our U.N. escorts told us, ‘This is downtown Dar Es Salaam.’ Admittedly, I was in shock and awe that this was a major, downtown city. I’ve been to third-world countries before, such as Jamaica, but this — my heart sank.

The interesting thing about this is how many times her perspective changes. She begins with concerns about where she’s going to work out while she’s there and how best to report on HIV in Africa, and then her focus shifts again when she realizes that while HIV is a huge health threat, the larger and more immediate threat to the people of Tanzania is malaria. Her story of an elderly woman in a small river village really hit home. Hard.

She talked about how she had bed nets, but I saw those were old and tattered. She said she could not afford to buy more on her $11-a-month income. That is what she earns with two jobs; her full-time farming job, then her side job of making jewelry. A widow of 15-years, she is raising her kids and several grandkids on that amount…

$11 a month.

Cherie’s pictures give the perspective that mine lack. A wider, more global perspective. A perspective where people can only think about putting one foot in front of the other and doing the best they can in the face of poverty, ignorance (in some cases but not all) and apathy.

I got to thinking that I am one of the “haves” in a “have-not” world. All my petty moans and groans don’t stack up. I know, I know…we all get that at some point or another. But Cherie’s blog makes me think there must be some small thing that we can do as bloggers to make a difference. Got suggestions? Direction? I’m going to be looking for ways to extend Cherie’s message from a “read-about” to a “to-do” item.

I hope you’ll all read her blog. Her photos are beautiful, and her entries tell an interesting story, but the biggest benefit is seeing something like the health crises in Africa from a new perspective.

Technorati Tags: africa, tanzania, malaria, HIV, AIDS, world poverty

…in Tallmansville, WV.

I’m so sad tonight for them. I know that I was rejoicing 2 hours ago when they thought 12 were alive and 1 died, and I am equally sorrowful to know the opposite is true. They are quite angry and I can’t say that I blame them…to hear church bells of joy and in 2 hours to hear them toll for the dead is more than anyone should have to bear.

Technorati Tags: westvirginia, miners, cnn, news

This is an amazing post describing two friends, New Orleans, the emotional and physical depth of the devastation. I read this blog and others to remind myself of the depth of devastation they are still experiencing….

Ernie The Attorney: New Orleans - it’s hard to understand the devastation

Technorati Tags: katrina, disaster, new orleans

I realized it’s been too long between posts. I have an excuse — one of my jobs has involved about twice as many hours as usual as a result of Hurricane Katrina. For the past week I’ve thought of about a zillion things I want to say about Katrina, our national outpouring of support on a grass-roots level, the national disgrace that was the initial federal response to the suffering in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama (which is almost not mentioned at all in the news these days)…but by the time I wrap up the day’s work and home stuff, there’s nothing left in my brain.

So here are random thoughts that have been rolling around for a few days, with little to connect them beyond the beast that was Katrina:

The Eye of the Storm is a must-read blog. It’s one reporter’s first-hand account of the storm and continuing aftermath.

I loved Shelly’s characterization of Katrina as the “bitch”. No lie, and a bitch on wheels and water at that.

The Traveling Guys are heading south to give whatever help and support they can to the survivors there. Despite their plan to begin their round-the-world good-deed-doing in Central America, they’ve changed it all to do what they can in the Gulf States. Over and over again over these past days I’m so impressed with the response by people — people with very little, people with a lot, who are giving and doing everything they can to help people down there. I’ve seen so much good in people and such a deep-down human response to this that it’s really taken the edge off of my usual cynical self.

With that said, the FEMA response has been a disgrace, and even more disgraceful was the effort to throw it back on the governor of Louisiana. My own experience with FEMA was less than gratifying back in the Northridge quake days, and it’s only gotten worse since then. All of the excuses about National Guard being in the control of the governor, the nonsense excuse that the governor didn’t specifically mention evacuation assistance in her letter of August 28th is just that — nonsense. An attempt by petty bureaucrats to justify the needless death and suffering of so many. I honestly never thought I’d see anything like I saw last week in this country. My uncle served as a diplomat in third-world countries for 25 years. He took many pictures. None of them prepared me for the carnage in New Orleans, but the indifference of the FEMA officials just hits too damn deep in my gut to be quiet about it.

FEMA was created and exists to assist states when the magnitude of the disaster goes beyond the scope of what an individual state can handle. The Louisiana governor asked for help one full day before Katrina hit and as usual, was ignored. In fact ,the official FEMA statements sound as though no one ever saw the letter she sent off promising that a Category 5 hurricane would decimate New Orleans and much of Louisiana.

I admit to the thought that racism and indifference to poverty had something to do with the slow Washington wake-up. I wonder — would the response have been different if Beverly Hills had been wiped out, Century City turned into a putrid parking lot for every bacteria on the planet and the LA Coliseum opened to refugees?.

Barbara Bush’s comments highlight the fundamental problem. I don’t believe that her comments were in any way intended to be mean-spirited or thoughtless. But they were. She basically said that being dispossessed and relocated was better than the life “they” had, because “they” had nothing.

The unspoken thought hanging inside of her words was that “they” must have been responsible for their “have-nothing” fate, and so are lucky to have this opportunity to start fresh. Thoughtless remarks. Hurtful remarks, perhaps unintentional, but honest and expressive of this attitude that those who are poor somehow earned their way to poverty. Pragmatic but certainly not compassionate.

Politics aside, I am a die-hard jazz fan. The odd time signatures and dissonant harmonics raise a deep response somewhere in my soul, as if they are calling out to me, to dance, to sing, to pray, to lift my head and get on with things. To see the city that I so closely associate with that music under siege and in so much pain is heartbreaking. And Mississippi! My father’s family came from Mississippi (at least, the paternal half). They lived not far from the Louisiana/MS border but farther north than the worst-hit areas. They brought Mississippi to California in subtle but lovely ways — a little southern romanticism, love for the well-spoken and written word, and a passion for simple things. My visits to Mississippi and Louisiana as a kid are some of my strongest memories and were my first introduction to the pure joy of drinking Coke with abandon — a habit that continues today.

New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama and their citizens are in a quiet and mournful place today, but when it’s time to improvise and pick up the tempo, I know they will be right there in 19/7 time. And I will come and celebrate with them.

I am a Californian. I have lived through earthquakes, brush fires, storms and the resulting flooding that comes with them.

I have an earthquake kit, fully stocked. Every year I faithfully restock it and make sure everything is there — medications, water, food for the dog, kids, T and me. I have been trained from childhood not to expect help to come after a major earthquake for 5-7 days.

The comfort in having the kit is the knowledge that even if help is not on the way, I can take care of the basics until it does come. We may not be comfortable and it will be scary, but we will survive.

What devastates me about this Katrina disaster and particularly the aftermath in New Orleans is that if I were there and had prepared accordingly, there would be nothing that I could do or change or make better and no guarantee that I would even survive until help came.

In California, we all drive. If we don’t, we know someone who does. We could pile everyone in the car and run from the hurricane with our supplies and our dog and our friends and know that we’d be okay. How do you do it when you don’t drive, don’t have friends who drive, don’t have anyone to go to outside of the city and no prospect for shelter, you prepare but your preparations are washed away in the storm surge or the backwash of a broken levee? How do you do it if you have no money for the gas to get out of town?

For all of our preparedness here, we are arrogant Californians. Despite the promise that the “Big One” will arrive and leave us without homes, freeways, cell phones, cash and other amenities, we prepare halfheartedly as if we are making a sacrifice to the earthquake god in order to prove the doomsday-callers wrong year after year after year. We don’t really believe (despite the Northridge earthquake, which was a baby compared to what San Andreas could drop on us…) that it will be as bad as they say, that we could be living in a state without…anything. Can it be far-fetched to think that those who did not evacuate New Orleans also hoped that the doomsday-callers were exaggerating?

I am afraid for the people who still remain. Afraid that if they survive this at all, they will wish they hadn’t, because they have no jobs, no money, no home and no resources. I am afraid that a year from now they will be stricken with illness as a result of their continued exposure to contaminated water, infected mosquitos, rotting bodies, unrelenting heat and humidity.

There will be some who will rise above the obstacles and be not just survivors, but victors. There will be others whose lives will be so unalterably changed that they will not move past it. Those are the ones who concern me — the dispossessed, the poor, the ones without families, those on society’s fringe who had nothing before and surely have nothing now. What made them decide to stay? Perhaps the relative safety of choosing the known over the unknown, or perhaps they were shaking their fist at the doomsday-callers.

I so hope for rapid relief for them, for an entire collection of three small states in our Union of fifty who now know unimaginable devastation, pain and suffering.

If something good comes from this, let it be that we learn ways to be prepared, to trust the authorities who tell us to get the hell out and help us get out, to better care for those who don’t have the resources or wherewithal to be prepared themselves, ways to survive and be victors in the face of overwhelming natural forces.

Give, give, give. Give all you can. Give clean underwear and money and time and blood. Blog today, September 1st, for the charity of your choice. You can list your blog here. My favorite links are on the side and you can find a list of resources on WebMD’s pages covering the hurricane’s aftermath. Help those people, because they have no one else to lean on but compassionate fellow citizens.

instapundit, flood aid, hurricane katrina
International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day

Update: This is really happening 9/2, not 9/1 as I originally wrote

CNN.com - Peter Jennings passed away yesterday of lung cancer. Of all the “mainstream broadcasters”, he was my favorite. I’ll never forget 911 — in all of the emotion and hysteria he maintained his composure on the air, though I guess it took it’s toll on him off the air. My condolences to his family and friends.