Blown Off, if Not Away....

OK—I have a simple policy about hurricanes: I take them all seriously.

Yes, all of them, barring the ones that are clearly too far north of us to have any effect whatsoever. But any storm coming low across the Atlantic? I’m on it.

Maybe I get it from Rose, who in the pre-Internet days would give me big paper maps of the Atlantic and Caribbean, on which we would put coordinates as NOAA announced them every six hours. Then, for five days or so, we would watch the storm coming, and slowly go into storm mode.

Which meant that you bought two gallons of water every day before the storm. This you did because you were on foot, not car, and anyway, if you waited until the government announced the storm? There would be pandemonium in the street, small riots in the stores, huge lines at gas stations, and reports of muggings for bags of ice.

A category three or above? In the early days, we took every picture from the walls, and lifted every rug from the floor. And I should tell you, I live on the second floor, probably 100 feet above sea level, and the walls of the building are three feet thick full of brick and stone.

And so, two years ago, I called to John and Jeanne—my middle brother and his wife—with the news that Hurricane Irene was not making me happy.

“Not a problem,” he said. “It’s just a tropical storm.”

“John, it’s been a hurricane category 2 for three days now….”

This exchange will tell you everything. I’m am in the tropics, worrying and monitoring the storm. John?

On the golf course!

Look, everybody deserves a vacation. And so they were reluctant to move from the house they had rented—a wooden house five streets away from the beach.

“FIVE STREETS!” I am almost shouting at John. “HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT STORM SURGE?

“Well, we’ll go up to the second floor,,,,”

Is it because I’m the youngest? Because I swear—the more adamant I became that John had to leave, the more casual—no, admit it, here’s the word I want to say—cavalier John became. It ended with the promise that John would evacuate if the storm got too bad.

Well, it was a fight—but it ended with no serious hurt feelings. They both swore—they weren’t blowing me off, and the Fire Department had told them the morning of the storm to stay put.

I could have countered: of course the Fire Department is going to say that. But there were several reasons to have evacuated days before. First, you never really know where these storms are going to hit. Second, if you wait until the water is knee high in the streets, and those three mini Austins ahead of you can’t make it through….well? Oh, and the firemen prefer to do their rescues without too many vehicles on the road.

Of course you know what happened--Irene barely touched them, and they were able to call several days later and report that it barely rained. Irene, however, did major damage north of them.

I had been, it seemed, silly, alarmist, absurdly fatalistic. Was I OK—they asked? Was I having anxiety in other areas of my life? Perhaps I should call my therapist….

I learned—my brother blows me off. He had “been” through a hurricane up on Cape Cod—and that was a Category 2. So a Category 1 should have been no problem, right? And what was Marc worrying about, down in Puerto Rico?

A bit more than a year later, Hurricane Sandy blew through the Caribbean and it was obvious—this was going to be a bad storm. But I had learned—John is a big boy. He gets the Times delivered to his door. And if he’s not going to listen, why talk?

So I stayed silent, and then watched—as the rest of the nation did—as New Jersey and Staten island got smashed. When I flew in to the city in early November, they had just had a major snow storm on top of the super storm; I watched the local news of parka-covered rescue workers walking through the dark halls of city housing projects, trying to figure out who was who and what to do with them.

Up on the upper West Side, where John and Jeanne live, nothing again had happened. Sure, some tree branches had been lost. Was was hard to get—but that was the cab driver's problem—not mine or John and Jeanne’s.

“Who would have thought,” I heard Jeanne say to John in the kitchen, “that a storm could cause so much damage?”

Sitting in the living room, I silently raised my hand.

It’s now a year later—I watched the documentary below yesterday about Sandy, and thought about the devastation, and the many miracles among the tragedies there were. How could it be that in the fire that destroyed over 100 homes, not one life was lost?

Have we learned out lessons, the media are asking?

In one important way—no.

I generally like the National Hurricane Center—I can hear them breathing a sigh of relief up there in Miami—but there is one thing that they’ve got to do. We have got to give the public a better perception of how dangerous a storm is. Which means we have to kiss the Saffir-Simpson Scale goodbye.

Sandy, in fact, was not a hurricane when it hit the East coast; here’s what one writer said about it:

The National Hurricane Center was being infamously stubborn during the storm, refusing to issue hurricane warnings for New Jersey and New York City based on the technicality that Sandy would become extratropical (lose its tropical characteristics) before landfall. Sandy had all the effects of a hurricane, but because its structure wasn’t expected to fit the textbook definition of a tropical system by the time of landfall, no tropical storm or hurricane warnings were issued north of the North Carolina coast.

Whether a storm is extratropical or not makes pretty little difference when the water is rising to the second floor. And if all you have done is consider the Saffir-Simpson scale, and chosen to stay home and ride it out because it’s “just” a Category 1, you’ll have missed some other very important factors.

Such as?

How big is the storm? How much water is associated with it? If it hits, will it be at high tide, as it was for Sandy? How fast is it moving? A category 1 hurricane stalled over the house for 36 hours is not fun….

I left New York and took the now-running subway, in which I saw what I had never seen: a fight broke out between a well-dressed Wall Street type and a young black dude. I was quickly broken up, and people went about their day.

I got back and thought about the storms that come, the storms that fizzle. My brother blows me off—but you know what? He’s otherwise a very good brother—a guy who is fiercely protective and loyal to the ones he loves. Oh, and very guarded in a very public way. If you want to hide, the best place is out in the open.

“Not a problem,” he says to me at any ridiculous request I manage to cook up. So he plays golf when he should be evacuating? No big deal.

He gets away with it!

Romney and FEMA

Well, there I was, last evening, enjoying my fleeting fifteen minutes of fame, when Mitt strode into the room.

OK—it just felt that way. Is it just I, or does anyone else hear the repressed petulance of a guy wishing for the 1950’s who knows in his heart they’ll never come again?

Mitt, as you can hear, wants to send the responsibility of cleaning up after disasters back to the states, and preferably the private sector.

My first question—what do the experts say? Is there anybody out there that thinks that’s a good idea? Are all disasters alike or can some be dealt with at the state level while others require a centralized / national organization? Would we really save money, or would we just be sticking the tab on the states?

Well, in an effort to be fair—that father of mine is still lingering around somewhere—I did a brief google on the topic. And guess what?

Still don’t have the answer!

There is a guy, however, who makes a case for privatization in the case of disaster response. And he adduces a little company I know something about.

Wal-Mart!

Right—Wal-Mart’s finest hour was in response to Hurricane Katrina.

Anybody remember FEMA’s response to hurricane Katrina?

Or that “heck of a job” that “Brownie” was doing?

Well, while Brownie was answering emails or shopping for shirts, Wal-Mart was giving away ice-cold water to people who needed it.

Good business strategy, really. Lady in the shop across the street did the same for me, after one of our hurricanes, and am I gonna buy cigars anywhere else?

Nope!

Right, and I’ve had a little experience with FEMA, too. Well, actually, I’ve not. But my students have, and the reports were hardly raves.

Also true, of course, that NOBODY is happy after a disaster. There’s something about not showering for two weeks, sweating bullets as the mosquitoes dive-buzz your ear at 2AM, and not having a hot meal for a fortnight that sours the mood.

But hey—wait a sec. Before we privatize our disaster response, there’s something we ought to consider.

Wal-Mart is perhaps the most centralized company in the world.

Want an example? When a freezer in the Bayamón store goes above a set temperature, an alarm is activated in Bentonville, Arkansas, and a technician there calls the store—as he or she will call ANY store, anywhere in the world. At this moment, Bentonville is monitoring freezers in China.

Bentonville, as well, is monitoring the weather. It’s got its own meteorologist—nice guy, we exchanged emails once—who said metaphorically to New Orleans what I said actually to my brother John.

“You’re fucked….” 

So since they have a very efficient (and very centralized) logistics system, it was no problem to put the trucks with that cold water in a nice high-and-dry spot.

OK—so we’re at the point of asking: which is better, the (probably centralized) private sector or the public sector? Does business do it better? Does the profit motive increase efficiency to the point that we save money AND get better results?

Well, Mitt, I grew up in the fifties and sixties in a little town that worked. Nobody except the Catholics paid for private schools, nobody had gated communities, you could drink the water. And government did all that, or regulated the industries that did. And everybody grumbled about their taxes, but assumed automatically that if you called an ambulance, one would come.

It was efficient, it was clean, and the press kept an eye on things, as did an educated populace.

Well, maybe those halcyon days weren’t quite as lustrous as remembered. But I got a question.

Why am I suspicious of rich guys who want to privatize everything? I bashed FEMA, a few paragraphs up.

Anybody remember Halliburton?

Hooching the Homeless

Well, well—today on the morning trot I was absolutely convinced I could combat global warming, solve once and for all the problem of the homeless, and provide visual delight to an island in need of it.

Hey, pretty good for a morning’s walk, right?

Well, I was informed over the dinner table that no, it’s not such a great idea.

Readers of this blog will know of my interest, actually my passion, for tree houses. It’s like Mom and apple pie—who could be indifferent, much less averse, to a tree house?

Readers may not know that Puerto Rico has a lot of bamboo, which Mr. Fernández avers was brought in to keep the roads from eroding in the earlier part of the last century. And like the iguanas, that bamboo has done well. About the only thing that can stop it is the road itself.

Readers of the blook—and by the way, sales are terrible, buy it please—will know that I am not a fan of contemporary Puerto Rican architecture. Right, when the population was exploding in the 50’s, nobody had any time for aesthetics (except, of course, for hair…). And yes, there are exceptions. But face it: the average Puerto Rican house is a cement box with windows punched into it. Hot, airless, and dark.

“But what about the hurricanes,” cried the students, when I suggested—very delicately—that there might be other materials than concrete to use in construction.

“When was the last hurricane?” I’d ask.

…’bout a decade ago.

And when was the last time you sat outside, enjoyed the night breezes, shared a chat with your friends?

They go to the Hilton for that….

It was no use.

Why not work with nature, not against it? Why not build a series of bohíos—little Puerto Rican huts—and link them in with thatched-roofed pathways and make it all very simple and rustic and then, when the hurricane comes, put all the stuff that’s truly important (electronics does come to mind) in a concrete room, where you’ve stockpiled the salchichas and the beer. Then, when you come out, well, you just rebuild! And look, you always get stuff wrong the first try or two, so on the third or fourth rendition, you’ll have the morning bohío perfectly sited to catch the breezes, and the evening bohío perfectly placed to see the stars.

Well, one person in the room liked the idea….

“Crime,” they chorused.

Bougainvillea, I cried. Nobody can get through the stuff—nature’s barbed wire!

“What, and have the baby run into it and poke her eye out!!?”

It’s deeply ingrained, this phobia of nature. And it may be —hold onto your seat here—a class thing as well. Mr. Fernández suspects that the majority of Puerto Ricans are a little too close to their jíbaro (peasant) past. Abuela may have grown up with the chickens roosting under the stilted-wooden house. We have concrete!

Well, it turns out I’m not alone. Some guy in the western part of the island felt the same way, and guess what!

He’s a gringo!

And quite an interesting guy. Where did he get the idea of the hooch? Well, he never says, and to a not-very-engineerical (lump it, computer!) person, I’m a little unclear as to the mechanics of it all. Better to let him explain it:

The hooch is an evolutionary, revolutionary building system that turns architectural conventions on its head. It stands on a single point, and maintains its balance by a web of cables to the surrounding trees. The foundation is minimal. In fact, the hooch holds the record for the smallest foundation of any land based building. The advantage? Minimal disruption of the site, and environment; quick and economical construction (no foundation); and easy dismantling, in the event that the hooch is moved. The hooch is an ideal structure for a place of respite in an environmentally sensitive area. I built a 10' by 10' version for a friend along a riverbank. The site did not lose one fern, a species abundant in the understory of the forest.

The treehouse requires no special engineering, or architectural design to fit in a particular tree. It stands among the trees, and relies on them for support. It is intimately entwined with the trees, and yet does no damage or requires any alteration of the site. The design has been worked out for quick and accurate pre-fabrication of the components- away from the site. Quickly assembled and situated at the site, the hooch is raised up by a pulley system and secured -perfectly level.
An architectural gem, the triangular shape maintains rigidity, yet is free to move about its foundation, flexing as a unit.

The redundant cable system is self correcting—any stress or distortion is quickly relieved back to the original position.
As a place of respite, the hooch served its purpose well—whether in the backyard, or along a mountain stream. It is safe, secure, and above it all.
After a warm reception of every hooch I've built, I now offer plans, kits, and complete construction services for everyone. I have plans and specs for a 6' by 6 , 8' by 8', and 10' by 10' version (floor area). Our 6' by 6' backyard hooch served well in our backyard of a rental house. Last year, we moved to our new mortgaged house. The hooch proved itself as a ephemeral architectural gem. It was dismantled, and moved in a few days. It now has its place among a grove of douglas fir trees, with a killer view of Mt. Ashland. Check out these other sites for even more perspective on the hooch. 

Right, maybe a picture would help….

What a tremendously cool idea! Wow—what a stunner! My palms are sweating, so eager am I to get my hands on that ladder and start climbing.

Mr. Fernández was less impressed.

“I’m not sleeping in any bamboo grove—rats!”

I dispute that, and point out that we can sprinkle some warfarin here and there.

Well, he also wasn’t too excited about my brilliant idea to home the homeless.

Build ‘em hooches!

Maybe it was excess oxygenation of the brain brought on the morning trot, but it seemed logical at the time. We have the bamboo, we have the homeless, why not get ‘em to build their own hooches? Or get the Evangelicals (whose numbers roughly equal the iguanas…) to build them. If you’re homeless, and the rope ladder is down, then you climb up it, pull up the ladder, and bingo! You’re safe! No more sleeping in doorways!

“Fire,” said Mr. Fernández.

“Extinguisher,” I completed.

“What if they trashed it,” he complained.

“Build another!”

“People using ‘em for drugs or rapes,” he said.

“Anyway,” he added, ”I read somewhere that most homeless don’t like shelters. They don’t like rules. You can’t show up drunk or high….”

Well, I understand that. We were on our second bottle of wine—who are we to talk? 

“It’s a good idea,” he said, “just needs more work….” 

I think it’s brilliant, of course…..

Rain Walk

Well, the question of the moment is whether whoever controls the weather is also reading my blog.

Good reason to think so. I wrote about cold and wet yesterday, and what do we have?

Right.

So what to do? It certainly wasn’t torrential, nor was it a drizzle. Just a fairly respectable rain. So—do the trot and get wet or stay inside and funk….

Well, I decided to challenge the depression mindset—a fancy way of saying that I’ve been saying “I can’t do that because (insert excuse here)” 90, 000 times a day for the last forty years. What do I hate about rain?

Water on my face. Damp clothes are no problem—on sunny days, they’ll be drenched with sweat in seconds, anyway. And I don’t mind wet feet, as long as it’s not cold wet feet.

So that led logically to the question—umbrella? Poncho? Hat. And we have two—an Australian sheep farmer’s affair and a genuine Panama hat made in Ecuador. In fact, it may be genuine—I remember reading some place that Panama hats are from Ecuador. You have to live in these parts to see the logic of it.

Well, I ask Mr. Fernández—which one to use. He’s yawning in front of the bathroom mirror, where he has stood for the last five minutes looking at his face. The Australian hat, he says. Seems you can’t get Panama / Ecuador hats wet.

It doesn’t rain in Ecuador?

Whatever. Now the question—which side is front? I’m still doing my mindfulness, so I study the hat. There’s a sort of jaunty prow at one end and a rounded bun at the other. I go off to ask Mr. Fernández.

Hah! I was right—it’s the prow (well, that at least is logical) and is there an umbrella.

“I hate umbrellas,” I tell him.

“No, for me.”

“I’ll leave it out.”

“Don’t forget,” he says.

“You know, there are some phrases that assist in the development of a relationship. Others do not. Let’s practice some of the former. Repeat after me.‘Darling, you’re wonderful’”

“Just don’t forget,” he says.

Well, I go off in a swivet and storm out the door and stride down the street and it hits.

OK—do I go back and put out the umbrella or do I let him find it himself.

Well, decide on that and reflect that it’s really very pleasant. Easy on the eyes, is a rainy day, and the colors are different, too. Partly, of course, because my sunglasses are red-tinted, which makes the reds redder and the blues bluer. (Can’t explain about the blues…). And the water on the rocks makes the rocks rockier.

Also fun to hear the little squish sounds when you go through puddles.

Nice, too, not to be hot. And, best, to be all alone—just the sea, the rocks and I, as well, of course, as the 40 foot walls the Spaniards put up to fortify the city. Everyone else has decided to forego exercise on this really lovely morning, since getting wet = monga = 5 days in bed = probable pneumonia = possible death.

Guys—ever hear of London? According to your logic, it should be a ghost town…

So that gives me time to think about what I really want to do—since I no longer have the distraction of seeing incredibly sculpted guys moving horribly-too-fast away from me. I begin to see why Bertrand Russell (or whoever it was) disliked sex so much—it really does limit time for serious thinking.

This blog, I think—it’s now over 100 posts, which is really quite respectacle (duh, computer—use your imagination! What happens when respectable meets a miracle?) I mean, I started it in February, and I have been doing other things—losing my mind, writing a book, ignoring the house, addressing the cats. And everybody gets weekends off. So it’s a body of work. 

Right, since absolutely NOBODY is buying my blook, what about a blear? Will that be the ticket to success? Yeah, gather all the posts thematically—which is to say stick all the Franny posts together, all the music posts together, you-get-the-idea. Put them all together into a blook-that-is-a-blear! A year’s worth of a blog!

Then it hits—just of course as I was getting excited about the idea.

The images that I have freely ripped off the Internet.

Ms. Taí is not gonna let me get away with sticking them in a blear—not without checking permissions. Remember the Blue-crowned motmot?

OK—back to Puerto Rico by Público. 

But what I really want to do, I think, is build a tree house in a bamboo grove. Using, of course, the bamboo to build the tree house. Think of the sound of the bamboo rustling gently, lulling you to sleep! Wow! And could you construct it so that the house itself swayed gently? Tremendous idea.

The Japanese would know, I reflect, and probably have done it. Not much they haven’t. So they’ll have written about it.

Though most likely in Japanese.

Well, it was a wonderful walk, and a delightful surprise, as most new things are. Get home, and discover that I may have three more days just like this. The eye of Hurricane Sandy is in the Bahamas.

The tail is in Puerto Rico.

You guys hear me up there?

Hey—guess what!  Someone HAS done it, and no—not the Japanese.  Check this out—google “bamboo tree house Rincón”….)

Stormy Weather

Well, well, we’re in full storm silliness.

A tropical storm, expected to become a category 1 hurricane, is going to pass 58 miles to the south of Ponce, the second largest city on the island, at 2 AM tomorrow. 

First question. Where did this number—58 miles—come from? How does anyone know? How can anyone predict?

Second question. What to do? Well, in the past I went crazy. Or rather, I joined the craziness. Even as I write, there is a run on gas stations. People are lining up—or rather their cars are. Fights are erupting. The social networks are going crazy. The Aguadilla Shell station has run out of gas!

Walmart, of course, will have activated its emergency plan. The buyers will be frantically calling suppliers, who are supposed to have sufficient supplies of crucial items.

Salchichas!

That’s little chicken sausages to you. Yup, they’re utterly necessary in an emergency. People consume ‘em like crazy. And yes, people fight for them in the stores.

It’s not pretty. Two little old ladies whom you’ve seen and chatted with over the past year? Those sweet dears who call you m’ijo and wear little pins of pope Benedict?

They’re attacking each other with their canes!

No, I’m not exaggerating.

Well, those chicken sausages are important. But guess what really gets the crowd boiling?

Ice!

After Hurricane Georges, there were numerous reports of armed robbery. No, not for money. For ice….

The governor, stung badly by the defeat of his referenda, is milking the situation. As I write, the sun is shining brightly, a gentle wind is blowing, the banana kwit (called the reinita, or little queen) is flirting with the cat. It hops on the branches of the dead bougainvillea just out of reach of Loquito, and skips away when he lunges.

In short, all is normal.

The government, however, has completely shut down.

Ah, one thinks, how can they tell?

(A nod to Dorothy Parker on Coolidge!)

We are urged to take all possible precautions to safeguard life and property. The refugios are being set up.

Well, the little old ladies are fighting over those salchichas, but the guys?

They’re going for the beer!   

And me?

Well, I took my morning trot as always, and decided no. I’m not doing this storm. Rather, I’ve done it. I’ve weathered more in the last two years than I had for decades of my life previously.

And in March of this year, I weathered the hardest storm—harder than Franny, harder than Walmart. 

I took on myself.

Touch and go, there. For a week, I battled all the fear, all the insecurity, and the accumulated self-defeat and doubt. Was I any good? Could I write? Was I worth it?

“Bach when I need clarity, Beethoven when I need courage,” wrote Susan, or some such words. So each morning I walked to the beach listening to the Goldberg Variations. And then, after a week of turmoil, I walked by the walls of the old city to the mouth of the harbor, and confronted the open sea. 

And heard the music you’ll hear below.

And said, finally, goodbye to Franny.

Who’s gone, and who isn’t.

I was crying, I was shaking, I was wracked with gratitude for a woman who had given me life. And I was amazed that she had placed her own life in my hands, and entrusted me with her death.

She had all the nobility of all her dogs and cats for whom she had done them same.

“You can go now,” I said. “I’m OK now.”

And I was.

I came home, turned on the computer, wrote a post. Cleaned the house, did some wash, played some Sudoku.

Six o’clock, slam of the gate, steps on the hall. Raf!

“How was your day,” he asked.

“Great!”

And it was….