Recently in Local Media Category
Via ryan at Daily Kingfish (who is doing the best reporting in the state on Congressional races), I read that Jeffery has an interesting perspective in his assessment of the Steve Scalise-Jim Harlan contest for the LA-01 Congressional seat when he says:
Harlan is running as a "stealth Democrat." If you look at his campaign website, the layout reminds me of the sort of colors expecting parents pick out for a nursery when they don't know the sex of their soon-to-be-born child. Nowhere on the homepage does he state his party affiliation. His "Issues" section lays out his thoughts on Energy, Hurricane Protection, and Healthcare, in language befitting a "Blue Dog" Democrat or a Moderate Republican. His positions make sense to voters in a heavily-conservative district (LA-01 went 70% for GWB in 2004). Given that the Scalise-Reed was the first closed-primary election in Louisiana in two decades, Harlan is counting on this "party-neutral" approach to remove the inherent difficulties of a Democrat winning in the district that both David Duke and David Vitter call home. Under the old open-primary system, all but the newest Louisiana voters are used to general elections where the candidates are the top two vote-getters, and happen to be members of the same party. Harlan has run an excellent campaign exposing Scalise for the dirtbag he is, while promoting common-sense positions on the issues. By the time Republic voters get to the polls on November 4th, Harlan is betting they'll like him to the point where they'll ignore the "D" next to his name.
That's exactly why Scalise is on the low road back to Washington. To win this election, Scalise needs to hang that "D" around Harlan's neck loudly and often. Scalise's current TV ad doesn't show either him or Harlan. The stars of the spot are Barack Hussein Obama and the Rev. Jermiah Wright. A shadowy (dare I say, "terrorist-y") shot of Obama appears, then a clip of Rev. Wright, shouting his now-infamous "G-d DAMN America!"
Not only is Scalise aiming to alert voters that he's running against a Democrat, he's warning them that his opponent is affiliated with the Eebil Coloreds. Not only are they Eebil Coloreds, but, in Wright's case, he's an Eebil Reverend, one of those bible-thumping Protestant-types that make the ethnic-Irish and Italian Catholics of LA-01 nervous.
Jeffery thinks Scalise wants voters to choose based on emotion, and he's right. Scalise knows that an overwhelming majority of his district Doesn't Like Black People. There's no dog-whistling here; Scalise is using frequencies audible to everyone and doesn't care. Keep in mind, LA-01 now has a memorial to the late Sheriff Harry Lee, the man who ran for office on a platform of keeping "young black men in rinky-dink cars" out of Jefferson Parish. There's nothing desperate about running a racially-charged campaign in LA-01. It's been a ticket for success in the past, and that's when the up-ticket races were all-white.
It's powerful stuff. I've been listening to several friends expressing frustration when it comes to talking to their families about Barack Obama. They're scared, scared of terrorists, afraid of what's to become of their retirement savings, and yes, they're afraid of the Eebil Coloreds. It's encouraging that there are a decent number of voters in the 30-50 range who don't share the wide-eyed bigotry of their parents. Still, these folks lived for 20 years in a metro area where the congressional districts have been gerrymandered (by Democrats, mind you) to concentrate almost every minority voter in one district (LA-02), leaving the other district (LA-01) lily-white and Reagan Republican.
Can Jim Harlan beat back the slime that Scalise has vomited onto the airwaves? Yes, for several reasons:
1. Who's really seeing these ads? I saw the Harlan/Obama/Wright ad three times last night, once in the second half Olbermann's 8pm show, then Maddow's 9pm show, then in the first half of the re-run of KO at 10pm. Scalise's team must have bought time as part of Cox Cable's "cable-rep" buying program. The rates are cheap, but Cox determines when and which channels get the ads. I think it's safe to say that most of the folks watching Rachel's show aren't going to be swayed by anti-Obama propaganda.
2. Scalise is not well-liked outside Jefferson Parish. LA-01 is more than just East Jefferson and White New Orleans (Lakeview). The district also includes St. Tammany, as well as parts of Washington and Tangipahoa parishes. Several St. Tammany politicians mounted an aggressive (and at times ugly) primary campaign against Scalise in the spring. As much as these folks dislike Democrats, they don't think any more highly of politicians from Jefferson. Harlan has run a solid campaign and has broad appeal. He's attacked Scalise hard, particularly on the issue of hurricane protection.
3. Scalise is a douchebag. He was the NRA's go-to guy in the state legislature for years. He's also in the back pocket of the Louisiana Restaurant Association, which, because of legalized video poker in the state, is essentially a lobbying arm of the liquor and casino gaming industries. In the fall of 2007, Scalise, then a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, ran for State Senate. He was unable to stand for re-election to the House because of term limits. In that election, he was heavily criticized by his main opponent, Polly Thomas (R-Metairie), who urged voters to reject Scalise because his true intent was to run for Congress should Piyush win the governor's mansion. Ironically, Thomas will win that Senate seat on 4-Nov, because everything she said about Scalise last year has come to pass. Scalise brought Dick Cheney down last month for a fundraiser. In post-K metro New Orleans, the only politician more poisonous than the foul-mouthed Dick would be the Drunken Frat-boy himself.
While LA-01 is far from being an Orange-to-Blue target, Harlan may pull an upset. He's pulled close in the polls, and Scalise's people are on the run. Obama may not have long coattails in this district, but the GOP incumbents may be just too toxic for the average voter to trust.
Much of Left Blogistan has entered a particularly useless late-election-cycle guffawing phase in which all the "right thinking smart people" point fingers at the "wild swinging" and "desperate scare tactics" of the Republican candidates. And sure, I'll allow that the rhetoric coming out of the GOP slate from the top of the ticket to the bottom is ugly. I'll agree that it appeals to the lowest-common-denominator fears and hatreds of the electorate. It relies on an assumption that voters are uninformed and that they will choose their leaders on a basis of emotion, and group identity.Leaving aside the notion that most of the NOLA contingent of Left Blogistan regularly engages in useless guffawing, Jeffery is right that this isn't a losing strategy. In fact, it's a strategy that makes perfect sense, given the demographic make-up of LA-01. I wrote extensively about LA-01 back in the spring here, here, and here, when Gilda Reed ran in the special election to fill Piyush Jindal's seat after PBJ resigned to become LA-Gov. Scalise rolled over Reed, a progressive. Mandeville businessman Jim Harlan decided to mount a regular-election challenge to Scalise, the man he's dubbed "the mistake on the lake."
But unlike most of the liberals out there, I refuse to pretend that this is a "losing" strategy simply because I'm in a rush to congratulate myself for not being susceptible to it.
Harlan is running as a "stealth Democrat." If you look at his campaign website, the layout reminds me of the sort of colors expecting parents pick out for a nursery when they don't know the sex of their soon-to-be-born child. Nowhere on the homepage does he state his party affiliation. His "Issues" section lays out his thoughts on Energy, Hurricane Protection, and Healthcare, in language befitting a "Blue Dog" Democrat or a Moderate Republican. His positions make sense to voters in a heavily-conservative district (LA-01 went 70% for GWB in 2004). Given that the Scalise-Reed was the first closed-primary election in Louisiana in two decades, Harlan is counting on this "party-neutral" approach to remove the inherent difficulties of a Democrat winning in the district that both David Duke and David Vitter call home. Under the old open-primary system, all but the newest Louisiana voters are used to general elections where the candidates are the top two vote-getters, and happen to be members of the same party. Harlan has run an excellent campaign exposing Scalise for the dirtbag he is, while promoting common-sense positions on the issues. By the time Republic voters get to the polls on November 4th, Harlan is betting they'll like him to the point where they'll ignore the "D" next to his name.
That's exactly why Scalise is on the low road back to Washington. To win this election, Scalise needs to hang that "D" around Harlan's neck loudly and often. Scalise's current TV ad doesn't show either him or Harlan. The stars of the spot are Barack Hussein Obama and the Rev. Jermiah Wright. A shadowy (dare I say, "terrorist-y") shot of Obama appears, then a clip of Rev. Wright, shouting his now-infamous "G-d DAMN America!"
Not only is Scalise aiming to alert voters that he's running against a Democrat, he's warning them that his opponent is affiliated with the Eebil Coloreds. Not only are they Eebil Coloreds, but, in Wright's case, he's an Eebil Reverend, one of those bible-thumping Protestant-types that make the ethnic-Irish and Italian Catholics of LA-01 nervous.
Jeffery thinks Scalise wants voters to choose based on emotion, and he's right. Scalise knows that an overwhelming majority of his district Doesn't Like Black People. There's no dog-whistling here; Scalise is using frequencies audible to everyone and doesn't care. Keep in mind, LA-01 now has a memorial to the late Sheriff Harry Lee, the man who ran for office on a platform of keeping "young black men in rinky-dink cars" out of Jefferson Parish. There's nothing desperate about running a racially-charged campaign in LA-01. It's been a ticket for success in the past, and that's when the up-ticket races were all-white.
It's powerful stuff. I've been listening to several friends expressing frustration when it comes to talking to their families about Barack Obama. They're scared, scared of terrorists, afraid of what's to become of their retirement savings, and yes, they're afraid of the Eebil Coloreds. It's encouraging that there are a decent number of voters in the 30-50 range who don't share the wide-eyed bigotry of their parents. Still, these folks lived for 20 years in a metro area where the congressional districts have been gerrymandered (by Democrats, mind you) to concentrate almost every minority voter in one district (LA-02), leaving the other district (LA-01) lily-white and Reagan Republican.
Can Jim Harlan beat back the slime that Scalise has vomited onto the airwaves? Yes, for several reasons:
1. Who's really seeing these ads? I saw the Harlan/Obama/Wright ad three times last night, once in the second half Olbermann's 8pm show, then Maddow's 9pm show, then in the first half of the re-run of KO at 10pm. Scalise's team must have bought time as part of Cox Cable's "cable-rep" buying program. The rates are cheap, but Cox determines when and which channels get the ads. I think it's safe to say that most of the folks watching Rachel's show aren't going to be swayed by anti-Obama propaganda.
2. Scalise is not well-liked outside Jefferson Parish. LA-01 is more than just East Jefferson and White New Orleans (Lakeview). The district also includes St. Tammany, as well as parts of Washington and Tangipahoa parishes. Several St. Tammany politicians mounted an aggressive (and at times ugly) primary campaign against Scalise in the spring. As much as these folks dislike Democrats, they don't think any more highly of politicians from Jefferson. Harlan has run a solid campaign and has broad appeal. He's attacked Scalise hard, particularly on the issue of hurricane protection.
3. Scalise is a douchebag. He was the NRA's go-to guy in the state legislature for years. He's also in the back pocket of the Louisiana Restaurant Association, which, because of legalized video poker in the state, is essentially a lobbying arm of the liquor and casino gaming industries. In the fall of 2007, Scalise, then a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, ran for State Senate. He was unable to stand for re-election to the House because of term limits. In that election, he was heavily criticized by his main opponent, Polly Thomas (R-Metairie), who urged voters to reject Scalise because his true intent was to run for Congress should Piyush win the governor's mansion. Ironically, Thomas will win that Senate seat on 4-Nov, because everything she said about Scalise last year has come to pass. Scalise brought Dick Cheney down last month for a fundraiser. In post-K metro New Orleans, the only politician more poisonous than the foul-mouthed Dick would be the Drunken Frat-boy himself.
While LA-01 is far from being an Orange-to-Blue target, Harlan may pull an upset. He's pulled close in the polls, and Scalise's people are on the run. Obama may not have long coattails in this district, but the GOP incumbents may be just too toxic for the average voter to trust.
My friend Steve worked as a waiter out at the old Bounty restaurant at West End when we were at UNO together. He appreciated the work people in service jobs do, and always made sure we left a decent tip. That "tipping ethic" rubbed off on me. If I hear a good tune from a street musician, drop a buck in the guitar case. Take care of the wait staff, that kind of thing.
It's time to take care of the radio people. The Bean Gallery coffee shop on N. Carrollton plays WWOZ, and 'OZ is my spiritual lifeline back home when I'm working out of town. I like to listen to 'OZ in the car when making the Gentilly Run. And there are those times when something comes on that just makes my morning/afternoon/evening, like this morning, when Magnetic Ear's "Tastee Donut Disaster Zone Dance" came on as I drove through Mid City. That's when it's time to drop the proverbial dollar in the tip jar.
Well, in this case, the proverbial forty dollars, which is what WWOZ is asking for a membership. It was a no-brainer for me, and if you like nonprofit, community radio, help keep WWOZ on the air. If you're not from New Orleans, go to www.wwoz.org and listen to the stream for a while; you'll see why we love the station.
And pledge! If you're a twitter-head, do it when @stacey0821 is in the studio producing, Sunday from 6-8 and Tuesday from 7-10. Show Stacey and WWOZ some love!
It's time to take care of the radio people. The Bean Gallery coffee shop on N. Carrollton plays WWOZ, and 'OZ is my spiritual lifeline back home when I'm working out of town. I like to listen to 'OZ in the car when making the Gentilly Run. And there are those times when something comes on that just makes my morning/afternoon/evening, like this morning, when Magnetic Ear's "Tastee Donut Disaster Zone Dance" came on as I drove through Mid City. That's when it's time to drop the proverbial dollar in the tip jar.
Well, in this case, the proverbial forty dollars, which is what WWOZ is asking for a membership. It was a no-brainer for me, and if you like nonprofit, community radio, help keep WWOZ on the air. If you're not from New Orleans, go to www.wwoz.org and listen to the stream for a while; you'll see why we love the station.
And pledge! If you're a twitter-head, do it when @stacey0821 is in the studio producing, Sunday from 6-8 and Tuesday from 7-10. Show Stacey and WWOZ some love!
I'm late to the party in terms of telling my tale from Sunday and Monday. That's because Cox Communications took over 100 hours to restore business internet service to my office. Now, I know that Cox pretty much sucks as a business continuity solution, that's why I have T-Mobile and a phone I can plug to the computer and use as an Internet connection. So, now that my blog server is back online, here goes the story:
My favorite Gustav story has to do with the time in 1977 when my friend and fraternity brother Gus Altobello wanted to buy a copy of Byte Magazine and the guy at the newsstand on Gentilly Road pointed the way back to the porno section to us. Oh, yeah, back to the storm.
I use the National Hurricane Center's predictions and tracks to make informed decisions with respect to tropical events. There are two things specifically I look at when evaluating a storm. First, where their 3-day and 5-day cones place the storm track, and second, what the storm's overall composition looks like via satellite photo. If the storm track passes in/near the city, it's a concern, and we move to step two. If the track doesn't, time to send positive energy to TX, FL, or Mexico, and get on with the day.
But if step one is problematic, then it's time to look at the satellite. The thing to look for is the structure of the eye wall around the center. A well-defined eye is Bad News. In 2005, I woke up at about 0400 on Sunday, 28-Aug, 2005, took one look at that bulls-eye that was K's eye, and started packing. With Gustav, the storm's overall development wasn't that great, until just before it hit Cuba, when it was ramping up to be a nasty Cat4. Then it hit the western edge of Cuba and entered the Gulf.
That entry into the Gulf is the critical time in terms of evac prep, because the Gulf of Mexico is warmer and the weather patterns are so very different as the storm approaches the North American land mass. In the case of Gustav, a western high pressure system pushed "dry air" into the Gulf. That air hindered Gustav's development and concentration, and the storm rapidly dropped from a Cat4 to Cat3. Things were looking better, but still, it was going to be a big storm and it was pointed right at us. Even if the flood threat from a storm isn't significant, the wind is likely to knock down power lines, trees, and blow all the crap from my neighbor's back yard into the side of my house. The power issue is a huge one for many. My mother-in-law, for example, is 82, and doesn't do well without air conditioning for extended periods of time. It's impossible to predict who will and will not have power after a storm on the day before landfall; when in doubt, get north.
Problem was, I didn't want to leave. I'm not concerned about living without electricity for a while, and the notion of me, Mrs. YatPundit, kiddo, my mother-in-law, and the cat all cooped up in the car for 10-18 hours on the highway was just not appealing to me. We decided on Saturday night that it would be best if Mrs. YatPundit took her mother out of town, and kiddo and cat would stay in the house with me. By morning, that plan had modified, she wanted kiddo with her. He's 14, a Star Scout, smart, and responsible. Best to have an extra set of hands and eyes on the road. That left me and the cat in the house. We get along fine, I leave her alone, she bites my ankle when she wants food. I booked them a room at the Courtyard near GaTech (they could go visit firstborn), but wife's nephew had a reservation at a Residence Inn in Birmingham that he wasn't going to use, so that would be their destination.
By mid-morning on Sunday, the eastern evac routes were looking ugly. I-10E up to Slidell was a parking lot all the way back to Elysian Fields Avenue, and I-59N wasn't any better. Randi The Traffic Babe on WDSU said that I-10W and I-55N were moving smoothly, so the plan became to go west to LaPlace, then north to Jackson, then east to Birmingham. They had little difficulty getting up to Jackson, and it was slow going from Jackson to B'ham, but they got there safely and in one piece.
For me and the cat, Sunday was watch-and-wait night. We were encouraged by, of all people, Bob Breck. Somebody didn't give Breck the memo that you're supposed to foment panic and validate SeeRay's mandatory evac order, because he kept saying he didn't think Gustav would be as bad as hizonner said the day before. I stayed up for a good bit, updating people who were on the road or out of town via Twitter. I knew that, if we lost power, this server would be history, so Twitter made more sense for periodic updates. (Amazingly, I never lost T-Mobile service, even when everything else knocked out on Monday.) Dinner was grilled tuna steak and green beans, and I crashed at some point Sunday night, waking up again around 0400 Monday.
The wind was starting to pick up Monday morning, and the weather projections were much more optimistic by then. Once everyone had driven or been bused out of town, all the weather people sounded more like Breck, the storm wasn't going to be the "mother of all storms." Sure, it was going to be serious, but your house was going to be there when you got back. Even the cat figured that out by this point. I didn't even have to re-do her litter box; she would just run out in the backyard, do her business, and scamper back in. When the winds started gusting to over 50mph, she camped in the dining room windowsill and rode the storm out from there.
In terms of dramatic events, Gustav wasn't much. Not even a lot of rain while the winds came through, in fact. The squall lines came in like you'd expect with a tropical system, but there wasn't enough rain to even temporarily flood the street. Mad Aaron Broussard's modifications to Jefferson Parish's drainage plan were never really tested. Since the thundershowers were minimal, the threat of tornadoes on Monday was also minimal. (Tornadoes scare the crap out of me, btw, will tell that story in another post soon.)
When I wasn't letting the cat in and out, I spent most of the early morning flipping channels between Channels 4-6-8 (local CBS-NBC-FOX affiliates), aggregating the opinions of the weather folks. Of the three, I leaned mostly towards WDSU (ch 6) when I wasn't flipping. I made a breakfast of eggs over easy and grits, to use up some of the eggs and butter in the fridge in case we lost power. By 0830 I was yawning, and by 0900 it was time for a nap. The stage was set, the winds weren't bad yet, it was time to rest.
I woke up around 1100 and it was hot in the house. We lost power at some point while I was napping. I noted the time on the phone so I could make a decision about moving food from fridge to ice chest. I dumped the ice maker's contents into the igloo the night before, then dumped again when I woke up, so I had a good, cold, location for stuff. Since the fridge is post-K and relatively new, I trusted in the seals for now. The wind had picked up a bit more by now, gusts up to 60+mph at points, but still not much rain. I pulled out my 25-year old Realistic AM/FM/Cassette portable from the closet, turned the dial to 87.7FM (WDSU-TV), and continued to listen to news, tweeting stuff back out to the rest of the world from the phone. My phone these days is an HTC Touch, a model T-Mobile calls their "Wing." Windows Mobile, touch-screen like the Treo, slide-up full keyboard below the screen. Still had 2-3 bars of signal in spite of the wind.
The most concerning thing I heard on the radio all day was when Travers Mackel was reporting from the Judge Seeber Bridge over the Inner Harbor Navigation (Industrial) Canal (IHNC). It was the breaches in the IHNC that inundated the Lower Ninth Ward during K. This time, the water was surging in and topping the seawall on the upper side, causing street flooding on Poland Avenue. Mackel really started to panic, and I even tweeted that someone needed to settle him down a bit. I'm sure WDSU didn't take my advice, but detected it on their own, because they started an interview with Sen. David Vitter (R-Huggies) to get Mackel off the air. When he came back, both he and the water had settled a bit. The IHNC seawall held; water was coming over, but no breach.
Sat on the couch, alternating between tweets and reading The Far Side of the World (Aubrey-Maturin novel by Patrick O'Brian). Made Blue Runner red beans and some rice for lunch--a hurricane tradition for me. Cat was still fine as the worst of the wind passed by the evening.
Power kicked back in around 1800CDT on Monday. We live very close to East Jefferson General Hospital, so we usually get back on the grid when they get the hospital re-established, and this time was no exception. Cable TV and broadband internet came back up immediately when power kicked back in. I could hear several explosions in the distance, the sound of the transformers on the light poles exploding in the neighborhood as power surged and spiked the lines. I resumed flipping channels as the storm continued to move inland over Cajun Country.
I bought a pack of chicken breasts on Saturday, anticipating kiddo being home with me. I grilled them up anyway, and made a sauce of white wine, onions, and garlic, serving it over pasta. I was down to box wine by this point (memo to self-make sure to buy more good wine before a tropical event), but it got me through. Continued twitter updates by listening to WDSU throughout the evening and late into the night.
Tuesday dawned grey and nasty. I was up around 0400 again. Pop-tarts for breakfast this time, though. Gustav packed a 1-2 punch, the first being the wind, and now the second was hitting us--rain. We got all the rain on Tuesday, squall line after squall line of thunderstorms. My tweets seemed like nothing but passing on tornado warnings. The current generation of weather radar enabled the weather guys to identify localized storm cells that were likely to spawn tornadoes. One tornado materialized and touched down in Westwego, across the river from us, taking down 15 buildings but no injuries. That storm cell passed over the house about half an hour after the tornado spawned, making the most anxious time of the storm for me. Street flooding started to get serious by now, because the wind from the day before was blocking/clogging many of the catch basins. Water came up over the curb, but didn't reach the sidewalk; Mad Aaron's pumps were working.
Now that I had power, I was able to hook the T-Mobile phone to the laptop and use the computer for Twitter. I switched my ebranley.com domain to Google Apps to get one of my domains back active; so far so good, I think I'll keep it there for now. The only frustrating thing about not having broadband at this point was that I couldn't watch streaming video from RNC08. I wanted to see Palin's speech, and then The Daily Show's mockery of it.
Once the worst of the thunderstorms passed, things were settled down. I stayed in touch with family up in Birmingham, and we decided it was OK for them to come back on Wednesday morning. The return journey was as slow as the outbound for them, but they made it back by the late afternoon. I roasted a pork loin for them for dinner, with a sicuhan-teriyaki sauce and fried rice. That wiped out all the meat purchases I made on Saturday.
Thursday's weather was much improved. Kiddo and I ventured out to the grocery, which had re-opened the previous afternoon. We re-stocked on a few things, but the only meat delivery they got was beef. I bought a rump roast that I cooked that night, and some ribeye steaks last night. Kiddo doesn't go back to school until Monday, so he was frustrated because of the lack of cable TV, in spite of being in possession of a Nintendo DS, Wii with RockBand, an Xbox, and a zillion DVDs. Wife went into her office to check on things, and it was OK there. Lakeway Center by Causeway had power and their internet connection was up fine. I continued to work using the T-Mobile phone.
Cox finally restored internet/cable service to us by Friday afternoon, some 105 hours after they went out. Yay for quality business continuity.
We (metro NOLA) had been spared once again. The most serious event of the week was the threat to the IHNC seawall, and that held. Of the three outfall canals in the city, only the London Ave. canal in Gentilly had its new floodgates at the lake closed. Flooding was not an issue for Orleans and East Jefferson, even though storm surge was a huge threat in Plaquemines and Lower Jefferson. The power situation is still not good, with Entergy giving outrageous projections about restoration. Fortunately, we're OK at the house.
Now comes Ike, but I'm not going to stress over that storm until Tuesday or so.
My favorite Gustav story has to do with the time in 1977 when my friend and fraternity brother Gus Altobello wanted to buy a copy of Byte Magazine and the guy at the newsstand on Gentilly Road pointed the way back to the porno section to us. Oh, yeah, back to the storm.
I use the National Hurricane Center's predictions and tracks to make informed decisions with respect to tropical events. There are two things specifically I look at when evaluating a storm. First, where their 3-day and 5-day cones place the storm track, and second, what the storm's overall composition looks like via satellite photo. If the storm track passes in/near the city, it's a concern, and we move to step two. If the track doesn't, time to send positive energy to TX, FL, or Mexico, and get on with the day.
But if step one is problematic, then it's time to look at the satellite. The thing to look for is the structure of the eye wall around the center. A well-defined eye is Bad News. In 2005, I woke up at about 0400 on Sunday, 28-Aug, 2005, took one look at that bulls-eye that was K's eye, and started packing. With Gustav, the storm's overall development wasn't that great, until just before it hit Cuba, when it was ramping up to be a nasty Cat4. Then it hit the western edge of Cuba and entered the Gulf.
That entry into the Gulf is the critical time in terms of evac prep, because the Gulf of Mexico is warmer and the weather patterns are so very different as the storm approaches the North American land mass. In the case of Gustav, a western high pressure system pushed "dry air" into the Gulf. That air hindered Gustav's development and concentration, and the storm rapidly dropped from a Cat4 to Cat3. Things were looking better, but still, it was going to be a big storm and it was pointed right at us. Even if the flood threat from a storm isn't significant, the wind is likely to knock down power lines, trees, and blow all the crap from my neighbor's back yard into the side of my house. The power issue is a huge one for many. My mother-in-law, for example, is 82, and doesn't do well without air conditioning for extended periods of time. It's impossible to predict who will and will not have power after a storm on the day before landfall; when in doubt, get north.
Problem was, I didn't want to leave. I'm not concerned about living without electricity for a while, and the notion of me, Mrs. YatPundit, kiddo, my mother-in-law, and the cat all cooped up in the car for 10-18 hours on the highway was just not appealing to me. We decided on Saturday night that it would be best if Mrs. YatPundit took her mother out of town, and kiddo and cat would stay in the house with me. By morning, that plan had modified, she wanted kiddo with her. He's 14, a Star Scout, smart, and responsible. Best to have an extra set of hands and eyes on the road. That left me and the cat in the house. We get along fine, I leave her alone, she bites my ankle when she wants food. I booked them a room at the Courtyard near GaTech (they could go visit firstborn), but wife's nephew had a reservation at a Residence Inn in Birmingham that he wasn't going to use, so that would be their destination.
By mid-morning on Sunday, the eastern evac routes were looking ugly. I-10E up to Slidell was a parking lot all the way back to Elysian Fields Avenue, and I-59N wasn't any better. Randi The Traffic Babe on WDSU said that I-10W and I-55N were moving smoothly, so the plan became to go west to LaPlace, then north to Jackson, then east to Birmingham. They had little difficulty getting up to Jackson, and it was slow going from Jackson to B'ham, but they got there safely and in one piece.
For me and the cat, Sunday was watch-and-wait night. We were encouraged by, of all people, Bob Breck. Somebody didn't give Breck the memo that you're supposed to foment panic and validate SeeRay's mandatory evac order, because he kept saying he didn't think Gustav would be as bad as hizonner said the day before. I stayed up for a good bit, updating people who were on the road or out of town via Twitter. I knew that, if we lost power, this server would be history, so Twitter made more sense for periodic updates. (Amazingly, I never lost T-Mobile service, even when everything else knocked out on Monday.) Dinner was grilled tuna steak and green beans, and I crashed at some point Sunday night, waking up again around 0400 Monday.
The wind was starting to pick up Monday morning, and the weather projections were much more optimistic by then. Once everyone had driven or been bused out of town, all the weather people sounded more like Breck, the storm wasn't going to be the "mother of all storms." Sure, it was going to be serious, but your house was going to be there when you got back. Even the cat figured that out by this point. I didn't even have to re-do her litter box; she would just run out in the backyard, do her business, and scamper back in. When the winds started gusting to over 50mph, she camped in the dining room windowsill and rode the storm out from there.
In terms of dramatic events, Gustav wasn't much. Not even a lot of rain while the winds came through, in fact. The squall lines came in like you'd expect with a tropical system, but there wasn't enough rain to even temporarily flood the street. Mad Aaron Broussard's modifications to Jefferson Parish's drainage plan were never really tested. Since the thundershowers were minimal, the threat of tornadoes on Monday was also minimal. (Tornadoes scare the crap out of me, btw, will tell that story in another post soon.)
When I wasn't letting the cat in and out, I spent most of the early morning flipping channels between Channels 4-6-8 (local CBS-NBC-FOX affiliates), aggregating the opinions of the weather folks. Of the three, I leaned mostly towards WDSU (ch 6) when I wasn't flipping. I made a breakfast of eggs over easy and grits, to use up some of the eggs and butter in the fridge in case we lost power. By 0830 I was yawning, and by 0900 it was time for a nap. The stage was set, the winds weren't bad yet, it was time to rest.
I woke up around 1100 and it was hot in the house. We lost power at some point while I was napping. I noted the time on the phone so I could make a decision about moving food from fridge to ice chest. I dumped the ice maker's contents into the igloo the night before, then dumped again when I woke up, so I had a good, cold, location for stuff. Since the fridge is post-K and relatively new, I trusted in the seals for now. The wind had picked up a bit more by now, gusts up to 60+mph at points, but still not much rain. I pulled out my 25-year old Realistic AM/FM/Cassette portable from the closet, turned the dial to 87.7FM (WDSU-TV), and continued to listen to news, tweeting stuff back out to the rest of the world from the phone. My phone these days is an HTC Touch, a model T-Mobile calls their "Wing." Windows Mobile, touch-screen like the Treo, slide-up full keyboard below the screen. Still had 2-3 bars of signal in spite of the wind.
The most concerning thing I heard on the radio all day was when Travers Mackel was reporting from the Judge Seeber Bridge over the Inner Harbor Navigation (Industrial) Canal (IHNC). It was the breaches in the IHNC that inundated the Lower Ninth Ward during K. This time, the water was surging in and topping the seawall on the upper side, causing street flooding on Poland Avenue. Mackel really started to panic, and I even tweeted that someone needed to settle him down a bit. I'm sure WDSU didn't take my advice, but detected it on their own, because they started an interview with Sen. David Vitter (R-Huggies) to get Mackel off the air. When he came back, both he and the water had settled a bit. The IHNC seawall held; water was coming over, but no breach.
Sat on the couch, alternating between tweets and reading The Far Side of the World (Aubrey-Maturin novel by Patrick O'Brian). Made Blue Runner red beans and some rice for lunch--a hurricane tradition for me. Cat was still fine as the worst of the wind passed by the evening.
Power kicked back in around 1800CDT on Monday. We live very close to East Jefferson General Hospital, so we usually get back on the grid when they get the hospital re-established, and this time was no exception. Cable TV and broadband internet came back up immediately when power kicked back in. I could hear several explosions in the distance, the sound of the transformers on the light poles exploding in the neighborhood as power surged and spiked the lines. I resumed flipping channels as the storm continued to move inland over Cajun Country.
I bought a pack of chicken breasts on Saturday, anticipating kiddo being home with me. I grilled them up anyway, and made a sauce of white wine, onions, and garlic, serving it over pasta. I was down to box wine by this point (memo to self-make sure to buy more good wine before a tropical event), but it got me through. Continued twitter updates by listening to WDSU throughout the evening and late into the night.
Tuesday dawned grey and nasty. I was up around 0400 again. Pop-tarts for breakfast this time, though. Gustav packed a 1-2 punch, the first being the wind, and now the second was hitting us--rain. We got all the rain on Tuesday, squall line after squall line of thunderstorms. My tweets seemed like nothing but passing on tornado warnings. The current generation of weather radar enabled the weather guys to identify localized storm cells that were likely to spawn tornadoes. One tornado materialized and touched down in Westwego, across the river from us, taking down 15 buildings but no injuries. That storm cell passed over the house about half an hour after the tornado spawned, making the most anxious time of the storm for me. Street flooding started to get serious by now, because the wind from the day before was blocking/clogging many of the catch basins. Water came up over the curb, but didn't reach the sidewalk; Mad Aaron's pumps were working.
Now that I had power, I was able to hook the T-Mobile phone to the laptop and use the computer for Twitter. I switched my ebranley.com domain to Google Apps to get one of my domains back active; so far so good, I think I'll keep it there for now. The only frustrating thing about not having broadband at this point was that I couldn't watch streaming video from RNC08. I wanted to see Palin's speech, and then The Daily Show's mockery of it.
Once the worst of the thunderstorms passed, things were settled down. I stayed in touch with family up in Birmingham, and we decided it was OK for them to come back on Wednesday morning. The return journey was as slow as the outbound for them, but they made it back by the late afternoon. I roasted a pork loin for them for dinner, with a sicuhan-teriyaki sauce and fried rice. That wiped out all the meat purchases I made on Saturday.
Thursday's weather was much improved. Kiddo and I ventured out to the grocery, which had re-opened the previous afternoon. We re-stocked on a few things, but the only meat delivery they got was beef. I bought a rump roast that I cooked that night, and some ribeye steaks last night. Kiddo doesn't go back to school until Monday, so he was frustrated because of the lack of cable TV, in spite of being in possession of a Nintendo DS, Wii with RockBand, an Xbox, and a zillion DVDs. Wife went into her office to check on things, and it was OK there. Lakeway Center by Causeway had power and their internet connection was up fine. I continued to work using the T-Mobile phone.
Cox finally restored internet/cable service to us by Friday afternoon, some 105 hours after they went out. Yay for quality business continuity.
We (metro NOLA) had been spared once again. The most serious event of the week was the threat to the IHNC seawall, and that held. Of the three outfall canals in the city, only the London Ave. canal in Gentilly had its new floodgates at the lake closed. Flooding was not an issue for Orleans and East Jefferson, even though storm surge was a huge threat in Plaquemines and Lower Jefferson. The power situation is still not good, with Entergy giving outrageous projections about restoration. Fortunately, we're OK at the house.
Now comes Ike, but I'm not going to stress over that storm until Tuesday or so.
Stumble It!
