A view of one smaller shelters in San Antonio; called a "Special Needs" shelter because the occupants have more medical or other problems. Putting these folks in smaller shelters (such as this one ruyn by a local Baptist Church) allows them better attention so that hopefull these folks won't fall between the gaps of a social system stretched incredibly taut.

A few of my co-workers at the shelter I'm volunteering at this week (and most likely this month.) I've worked with nurses from Iowa, Alabama, Illinois, South Carolina, Florida, and even a few from Texas, imagine that!

The face of FEMA: the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In fairness as well as to counter the negative stuff you hear on TV; FEMA has never been designed as a "hands-on" relief agency, but as backup to the Agencies already in place (i.e., your local Red Cross, Catholic Chartities, Salvation Army, and local government.) The FEMA guys appear in their khaki army fatigue pants and navy blue polo shirts and ask what we need; and what we need appears the next day -- in massive quantities. You have to be very careful what you ask for. Yo ask for wheelchairs, you very well might end up with 50 of them. You complain about transportation problems and three brand-new 15-passenger Econoline vans are sitting in your parking lot the next day. You need water? You get three semi trucks full of it before sundown. We've learned to be specific and cautious in our requests.

Busy, Busy, Busy. . . . No Time to Talk Right Now.

I wish I could somehow convey with words the majesty, the grandeur, and the mind-numbing horror of a near-miss from Hurricane Katrina to my friends and family up north. The Refugees are pouring into San Antonio and the strain on the local economy is incredible -- and probably unimaginable.

I got the call we had refugees at work Sunday afternoon and headed in to work a partial shift to help out the weekend nurse. Ariane and I bought quite a few supplies at Wal-Mart (wet-naps, fleece blankets, band-aids, antibiotic ointment, and Tylenol -- and specific clothing for one of out patients -- shoes, pants, & underwear.) Friday I get off for Labor Day, and I'm heading over to Kelly AFB to volunteer some time.

I wish I could put this into words better. This was a dress rehearsal for something worse -- and God help us when THAT happens.

More later.

~~~JD~~~

Notebook of Weather Observations Whilst a Hurricane passes me by . . . .

Saturday 8/27 5:00pm: Looks like Katrina is going to be the largest, closest hurricane to South Texas since we moved here in 2002. Haven't seen any changes to the weather yet, though.


Sunday 8/28 7:00am: Weather's a little weird this morning. The land "Where the Sun spends the winter" (old San Antonio Tourist slogan) is overcast and grey; looking more like Winter than Mid-August. Showers are peppering us intermittently even though It hasn't rained steadily here since April (and rarely does in the Summer.) The clouds are odd as well: they're all high broken overcast cumulus clouds with a fair amount of sunshine peeking through.

Sunday 8/28 12:00pm: Counting Louisiana license plates on the way from church: 2 or 3 seen. (We rarely, if ever, see any Louisiana plates this far from the border.) Northwest Church of Christ had planned a water-party picnic to celebrate returning to school next week -- and got more water than they dreamed of. Well, the crops needed it pretty badly.

A lot less sunshine than this morning, too.

Sunday 8/28 7:00pm: The wind shifted this afternoon. Airplanes usually fly overhead on the landing pattern to San Antonio; now, they're taking off overhead as the wind has shifted to the Northeast. That doesn't happen too very often down here.

Magnificent Sunset; plenty of fat cumulus clouds to highlight and glimmer in the last vestiges of the setting sun.


Monday 8/28 7:00am: Wow -- just, Wow. Most incredible sunrise I may have ever seen in my life as high overcasrt and low, scudding, purple clouds frame the blood-red rising sun in the east. Almost didn't get a sunrise at all with all the cloud cover; but eventually it poked through and put on quite a show.

Wow, indeed.

Monday 8/28 12:00pm: It's only 85 degrees in the Alamo City; the forecast today was for 98 degrees. I seriously doubt it'll get there. It's actually quite cool and pleasant with the overcast. For once the air conditioner in the office I work in is cold in the extreme, instead of just being able to keep up.

Monday 8/28 4:30pm: First time I've ever driven home since we moved here that I didn't need tha A/C full-blast on and my sunglasses. Full scudding steel-grey sky in progress overhead; and the dust patterns on my windsheild say it's been drizzling on-and-off most of the day.

At a stoplight on the way home I see another weird weather thing I've never seen before. The clouds are coming out of the east and making a left turn above the city and heading south. I wondered if I was losing my mind until I realized; it's the cenmtral rotation of the clouds around the storm's eye.

Man, that's gotta be one kick-ass storm to influence the weather this directly over here. I'm a Midwestern boy who's seen lightning storms, blizzards, tornadoes, and green skies -- but this is truly awe-inspiring.

Counted 27 Louisiana license plates on the way home.

Wow.

~~~JD~~~

Katrina Bitch-Slaps Gulf Coast; Film at 11 . . .

The above picture is of a Hurricane Evacuation Route sign on I-45 heading north from Galveston Island, which I mentioned in a previous post. It's a weird thing to see one of these along the Interstate in good weather; and another thing entirely to watch them as you're evacuating your home and loved ones from a killer hurricane's path; like my neighbors in Louisiana are doing right now. We're feeling the effects right now here in San Antone. This morning the Airport started lauching airplanes in the opposite direction as usual (to the North rather than the south) as the winds shifted from Hurricane Katrina. The skies are intermittently overcast as feeder bands sweep north from the storm; we even got a bit of rain as well.

Got a little Captain in Ye? 

J.D. Long, Famed American Astrounaut, attempts to take his own picture in a mirror at the Manned Space Flight Center in Houston TX. (Rumors about his beard being caught in the helmet's visor appear to be false.) 

David Sheik-Hossen; world traveling French Astronaut, visits the Manned Space Flight Center in Houston TX. (Photo without space helmet not available.) 

Life Is What Happens To You On The Way To Do Other Things . . . .

The oddest thing happened to me the other day.

For the first thing, I've noticed that Interstate highways leading away from the Gulf Coast (I-37 from Corpus Christi TX; I-45 from Galveston TX; I-65 from Mobile AL) all have exta-wide right shoulders and little blue-and-white signs every 2 miles that read "Hurricane Evacuation Route." It's a bit weird watching the little signs leading away from the coast for 50 miles or so, but nice to knolw somebody had the foresight to think of such a contingency.

Makes sense, right? In case of impending hurricane, they use the shoulder too for added traffic capability.

The second thing? Well, last Sunday we decided to go to beautiful Corpus Christi Texas. Fabled land of Spring Break debaucheries, Sunshine, and the world's greatest coastal fishing, as well as the home of the U.S.S. Lexington -- the feared "Blue Ghost" aircraft carrier of WWII. Seems like a safe bet for a day trip, right?

Heh. Guess again.

Admission to the Lady Lex was about $21.95 per person -- substantially greater than we planned. After touring the old girl (which is in substantial need of repair, unfortunately) we drove though downtown Corpus looking for a beachside seafood joint, figuring it'd be chaper and fresher closer to the Gulf, right?

Again, Heh-heh-heh.

With apologies to any residents of the Belle of the Gulf, she's certainly seen better days. The downtown looked like a hurricane had been through there recently, although it's almost certainly been 10 years or better. Vacant lots; closed stores; and a general air of urban semi-blight prevailed. After miles of driving up and down Seaside Blvd looking for a place to eat, we eventually returned to our starting point to an old-fashoined Diner which had very good food -- but not the seafood we had our taste buds set on.

A nice day, slightly disappointing overall, but not terrible. Still, disappointing, and a bit creepy and sad.

So this past Friday (five days later, for those completists out there) I took a day off for another excursion. After a quick pit-stop at the ever-delightful Buc-ee's (see previous post) which has become my nephew David's favorite kitschy tourist trap, drove on to Houston TX and the Johnson Manned Space Center. There we saw the sights and (almost) took the tour of the Center before it started raining and abbreviated out tour.

Since we had some extra time on our hands, we decided to toodle the 27 miles down I-45 to Galveston Island and see what was out there as well. A trip unplanned; almost as an afterthought, but that road less traveled has made all the difference. We found Houston's Chinatown that we'd been looking for (for almost 3 years!) We also found a plethora of Seaside souvenir shops, bars, and cheap excellent seafood joints like we'd been searching for the previous weekend, and ate until we were stuffed. The place we found had the BEST deep-fried soft-shelled crabs I've eaten since i was stationed in Augusta Georgia 21 years ago -- just magnificent. Out waiter was a teenaged Russian emigre attending U.T.-Houston, and was both surprised and thrilled I spoke a bit of conversational Russkiy.

Imagine that.

Galveston's pretty enough and reasonably-enough-priced that we talked about maybe moving there. Oh yeah, that'd break my heart; having to live on the ocean and eat fresh seafood every day.

God Provides, indeed.

~~~JD~~~

A Brief Note Before I Run Off . . . .

Been awfully busy lately, so I haven't had much time to update lately. We've got our nephew David visiting from Paris (the one in France) so we're almost constantly on the go somewhere on the weekends -- which is when I usually post, y'know.

Plus to make matters worse, my USB ports on our brand-new laptop are on the fritz; which means I can't synch up my camera to post any new pictures. We've figured out a fix; but it will take me an hour or two of uninterrupted time to do it -- which I haven't had lately.

So we're all alive an well. Work is going very well for both of us; and we completed our move last weekend. Pictures when they become available. Gimme a week or two.

~~JD~~

Hurricanes & Moral Quandries . . . still don't help me do the Laundry!

It's a Saturday, which means here at Casa Largo we clean the house: vacuum everything, steam clean the "accidents" the cats have had recently; empty every garbage can in the joint, and do the laundry. Since we're in the process of moving to a new apartment the end of this month, that means everything, and I mean EVERYTHING gets washed. Linens, towels, blankets, comforters -- everything.

And, of course, we're expecting Hurricane Emily to storm through here later this week with some much-needed rain -- so we're trying to get a leg up on the situation by doing everything as early as possible. So, we're pretty busy.

That means a lotta laundry to be done!

As I'm doing the cleaning, the laundry, the vacuuming, and the garbage, I'm catching little bits on Fox News and the Internet. Three things really caught my eye that just make me shake my head in wonder. Maybe I grew up too morally bound to understand this "alternative lifestyles" thing -- buy I'm sorry; I just don't get this:

1) Natalee Holloway -- Sending an 18-year-old girl off to Aruba with "chaperones" who go to bed at 8pm and don't supervise these teenagers drinking underage and wandering off with locals into the hills for sex? Whose Idiot Idea of a good-time graduation gift was that? When I was driving limousines for a while I saw several parents try to rent "fully-stocked" limos for graduation -- including booze and pot for their high-school Seniors!

This reminds me of those "I've-gotta-be-friends-with-my-kids" kind of parents. I feel awfully bad for the Holloway/Twitty family, but what did they expect here? A Disney movie ending?


2) Shasta Groene -- Her mother has a half-dozen kids -- most of which by different fathers, by-the-by -- and invites total strangers into her house for drug parties? And when the family comes up dead and the two youngest kids missing -- whose fault was that? Shasta Groene and her brother pay the price . . . . but how did we get to this place? Didn't anyone from the Idaho Department of Families and children suspect anything? Didn't some member of her family suspect she might be in a potentially unhealthy or dangerous situation?


3) I stumbled across a blog here on Blogspot (and you'll forgive me; but I can't remember how I found it -- must've been the "Next Blog" button) called "Discreet London". This fellow has the chutpah to describe the affairs he has with other women in gloriously excruciating detail. But when his wife wants a divorce because she's having her own affair, he's at a loss for words. He makes this discovery, of all places, at a massage parlor:

The masseuse made eye contact with me; I could tell she was confused too. As soon as she clamped eyes on me, I felt ashamed of myself, ashamed of being here, and ashamed of not being able to get it up. Then, I did something I haven’t done in ages; I burst out in floods of tears.

Once the sobbing started, I just couldn’t stop. I was wailing like a baby, which only served to confuse the young lady even more. I’m sure whatever experience she had as a prossie didn’t prepare her for this sort of thing. I guess punters don’t break down crying very often.

It was very awkward, I could sense her unease. I sat up on the table and saw her looking at me, her expression bordered upon the horrified. I think looking me in the eyes was more than she could bear and she finally wrapped her arms around me and held me against her with my head resting on her shoulder.

I was back in my car before I knew it, heading back towards my home. But I wasn’t ready to go back home yet, so I decided to just drive around. I drove aimlessly, without purpose or destination for a little while before realising I had no place else I could go. Finally, I gave up and just went back to my house.

Maybe I just needed some human contact, perhaps the orgasm I didn’t have wasn’t really what I required. Maybe I just needed a good cry in the arms of someone sympathetic. Well, “the cry� wasn’t that satisfying and “the arms� were less than sympathetic, but at least it was something. It’s more than I'm going to get elsewhere, that's for sure.

Really.

Y'know, what did he expect? He's getting exactly what he was going to give his wife -- shattered marriage, shattered dreams, broken home -- and he's crying about it?

Lie with dogs -- wake up with fleas. You are judged by the company you keep, indeed. Don't get me wrong on any count here -- I feel really bad for the poor participants of the above-described tragedies. But I really feel somebody ought to be shaking the living crap out of these folks, telling them to wake up and smell the coffee, already!!!

The self-delusion of rationalization is a Sad, sad, and dangerous thing.

~~~JD~~~

NURSING: Noble Profession of Comfort and Care . . . ?

. . . . or just a Royal Pain in the Ass?

I'm a Nurse. More specifically, I'm a male Nurse, which many see as a contradiction in terms. Very specifically, mostly by other (female) Nurses.

An example, if I may. I always tell people I've been a Nurse for 25 years, because I consider it to be true. I re-enlisted in my second tour in the Army to become what they call a 91C10 (or "Ninety-One Charlie") to get better promotion opportunities. I attended a ten-week Combat Medic Course from June to August 1980, followed by the ten-week "Ninety-One Charlie" course from August to October; which was swiftly followed by six months of on-the-job training at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri from November 1980 to March 1981. So after 11 months of medical training I was officially awarded the title of 91C10 in March, 1981.

And promptly had it taken away in April.

You might ask why -- I know I sure as heck did. I had re-enlisted for a specific job -- only to have it rescinded a month later? What's up with that?

The explanation were complicated. It seems that several (if not, indeed, MANY) of the graduates of the 91C10 course were challenging the LPN (or LVN, depending on your state) boards of their home states and being granted licenses in their home states after graduating as 91C10s. At that time in the early 1980's LPN Nurses were a two year degree, and someone somewhere didn't like the idea that eleven-month wonders could become Practical Vocational Nurses.

I've frequently found that when an explanation is that complicated, somebody's hiding a nasty truth. The theory I've heard from more than one Army nurse is that it was not the quality of the nurses that civilian nurses found unpalatable; and the quality of these nurses was never in question. (Army-trained nurses consistently score in the top 10% of their licensure boards.)

It was the fact that the military was filling the nursing pool with male nurses. They were Gender Offenders; highly competent, capable nurses that were almost exclusively male in a traditionally female profession.

I laughed the first time I heard this, and you might, too. In the intervening years I've seen far too many nurses make rude, sexist comments to dismiss it easily.

Another story might illuminate more completely. I was interviewing for a nursing job in Valparaiso IN one time, and had a ten o'clock appointment with the Director of nursing to interview. I arrived to my interview in a shirt, tie, and dress slacks.

As I was waiting for my interview, the UPS girl came in to pick up a package. The receptionist called into the Director's office to tell her UPS was here to pick up, and her 10:00 am appointment was there as well. (The UPS girl was dressed in the traditional brown Dickies uniform of UPS workers, I might add.)

The Director of Nursing came out with a brown-wrapped parcel, which she put into my hands, saying "that needs to be there tomorrow, okay?" She then took the UPS girl into her office -- and as soon as the doors closed, the laughter began.

The laughter died fairly quickly, though. The Director of Nursing interviewed the UPS girl for almost five solid minutes before realizing her "mistake." When she finally did come out and get me for my interview, she spent almost a half-hour convincing me I wouldn't like working there -- that I was more of a "Home Health Nurse", and would be happier there.

(In other words, you're not good enough to work for a regular employer. Go work with nurses who have to worry from day-to-day about if they'll have work tomorrow.) And lest you think this is simply my own paranoid ravings, the demographic that the Nursing profession is losing fastest is males with under three years of nursing experience. Has been for the last 15 years, too.

The one thing about the "Center" where I recently worked? You don't have to be a female nurse to be sexist about men you work with.

Some days I just despair; but most of the time I laugh my butt off at the idiots I used to work for. I must be feling melancholy this week, otherwise I don't know why I'm sharing this.

Heh.

"Buc-ees, Oh Buc-ees, He's our little Beaver Friend!!!!"

Sometimes, in fact MOST times, south Texas is the most beautiful place in the civilized world. Green verdant plains abut desert highlands with a lush variety of wildlife and climactic settings. The warm, gentle breezes feel like silk caressing your skin in the heat of a luscious red sunset evening. The juxtaposed meeting points of differing cultures from American South to Mexican Norte to 18th century German to traditional Central American Catholic makes for a fascinating jumble to tastes, artistic styles, architectures, and holidays I�d never dreamed of before venturing south of the greater Chicagoland Area.

And then there's the times it's just plain Weird with a capital "W" -- but the best kind of Weird, as in "unusual, significant, different, and outstanding from the crowd." Case in Point: Buc-ees Travel Stop, Souvenir Store, and Eatery. Texas Eats and Texas Treats; Fabulous Bathrooms, and a brand-name Beaver that just won't quit.

Buc-ees (a definite hyphen in that spelling) is to the casual eye just another tourist trap waystop on Interstate 10, 52 miles east of the I-410/I-10 east interchange on the east side of San Antonio. But if the multiple billboards advertising the oncoming exits don't catch your eye (one coming from Houston loudly proclaims "IT'S A BEAVER!!!") most likely nothing will. As you exit the Interstate the differences between Buc-ees and their cross-interstate competition become abundantly clear.

First, the place is immaculately clean. I think they must scrub the oil spots off the concrete at night just to make the place look cleaner. There is not one single scrap of paper; not one straw wrapper; not one piece of errant cellophane to be found. I wouldn't feel bad eating off the floors of this place; it's that clean.

Second, everything here is first class merchandise and facilities. I've eaten in four-star restaurants where the bathrooms were not this immaculately kept and appointed. You almost expect there to be a valet in the corner with mints and colognes. (And I suspect that there would be, but this being rural Texas, the surrounding townsfolk might consider this too "fruity" and rise up to burn the danged place to the ground.)

Third, the souvenirs they sell are not junk. They're actually quite nice and respectable stuff that you'd be proud to show off as your travel trophies. Much of it is made by local artisans, like the five-foot wind chimes that sound just beautiful; or the wooden plaques proclaiming through burnt-on lettering such modern profundities as "I'm a Raggedy Ann in a Barbie-doll world" or "MISSING: Husband, bass boat, and hound dog -- Reward for the dog." There's also the stained- and cut-glass treasures, such as the (above) cut-glass fireplace screen, or the (below) stained-glass portrait of the Head Beaver himself. Oddly, though the Stained-glass Buc-ee is priced easily $100.00 above anything else in the window, the saleslady told me "we price it higher to prevent selling our logo, but we still sell two or three every year."

Finally, this place is better organized and more positive in outlook than Wal-Mart on their best day. The salespeople are friendly and don't hover. The offer advice and samples without prompting, and are happy to help in any way. The management is quick to correct any slips, but without browbeating their staff. These folks actually are happy to work there.

There's a few downbeats though -- as in any tourist trap everything is priced a bit upscale, but not terribly so. The lines are a bit long, but there's almost always 5 or 6 registers open. And the vast selection of beer in the cooler just seems wrong to my eyes, having been brought up in the North where Open-container laws are the norm.

If you get the chance when driving I-10 between San Antone and Houston, you need to make a rest stop here. It's well worth the look-see; the "Wall Drug" of South Texas.