If I EVER get to build a house, it will be built around the kitchen.
When you invite guests over, where do you go? When you have a party, where does everyone congregate?
And after the kitchen..then where? It’s debatable, but I’d say a bathroom should be nearby with no questions asked. Next a comfortable place to sit down, hang out, watch TV, etc. THEN..this should be your “great room”. Which owes its existence to “The Kitchen”.
Mark & Katie Zweig’s Kitchen, Fayetteville, AR
I was in New Orleans Last week. Before the Saints won the Super Bowl.
Thought I might get away from the weather here for a little while, but it was still pretty damn cold there. I thought I’d see how the city was faring 4 1/2 years after Katrina, especially in the shadow of the tragedy in Haiti.
Given the amount of time since the Katrina disaster, and given this has long been considered the Greatest Country on The Planet..(at least by most who live here)..New Orleans is still hurting. Big Time. Just my opinion.
The people who choose to remain there, (and the majority who have no other choice), are living with the WORST roads in the U.S..
Billboards at the outskirts of town outline how much the state has spent trying to rebuild the highways vs. the amount contributed by the U.S. government. Though I was bumping over potholes on I-10 at 50 mph, I could count the digits, and Louisiana was pretty much alone in the effort.
The roads are just the first indication of the current situation there. Pulling off that I-10 bridge we all saw on TV for a few days after the event, it became clear how little progress has been made there. Block after block has abandoned homes; lots overgrown with vegetation & mold..many still bearing that infamous X which indicated whether it had been searched for bodies.
There ARE many signs of progress- Several new apartment buildings in various stage of construction, many blocks with crews at work rebuilding & restoring homes.. but so many years later, it still seems SO inadequate, considering what could have & should have been done following this disaster. (I once saw a great U2 video about this when there were still music videos on Video Hits One & Music Television…) Subject for yet another rant..
The outpouring of aid for Haiti, now in the rapidly fading forefront of the national consciousness, is a demonstration of all the best traits of what it means to be a human. (Primarily directed by the media…those damn liberals..) It’s incredible to see the power & the results of such a concerted human effort in response to a such a massive human tragedy, aided by all the currently available technology.
Please help me remember…did this happen for the citizens of our own country after Hurricane Katrina? 
I don’t remember watching anything like the broadcast on TV a few weeks ago…dozens of actors & musicians performing simultaneously without payment or credits on multiple national & international television networks. Banners across the bottom of the TV listing ways to donate via text, e-mail or web sites. Five dollars multiplied by 300 million adds up.
In 2004, when over 250,000 people were wiped out in an instant in the Indonesian tsunami, was there an equivalent outpouring of aid? I seem to remember that it was the “story de ‘jour” for about a week on the networks, and after that it was a mere footnote; a cruel reality of limited time & space available in the daily media flow.
Is this like a massive version of one of those “giving back” charity events…AKA “guilt alleviation parties”?
We, as a country, knew we blew it with Katrina, but there was no leadership or moral compass to guide the country at that time. We got a mere flyover of the area by our countries’ leader, looking out the window of Air Force One, later to be bolstered by a photo op featuring “You’re doing a helluva job, Brownie”.
(Though I have to say, I didn’t see Obama having ANY role in this current humanitarian response).
It seems much of this phenomenon was a result of the widespread dissemination of information, and the resulting ease which allowed global access to easy, instant small donations, fueled by national guilt over Hurricane Katrina & the recent taste in millions of American mouths of what it may feel like to live in a real depression.
Just some thoughts, sure to stir some spirited debate.
This post is also sure to draw a lot of spammers looking for popular keywords…scumbags.
This is an entry which I originally posted in May of ‘09, but I removed for family reasons.
With a slight modification, I’m re-posting it now.
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May 3, 2009
They buried Jenny’s Uncle Boots today.
We drove to the eastern edge of Arkansas, where the Mississippi River intersects with Crowley’s Ridge; an anomalous tree-covered 140 mile strip of hills rising from the sprawling, flat expanse of the surrounding river delta.
It’s been raining for 5 days, non-stop. White knuckled hours of enduring rolling rainstorms behind 18 wheelers on the Interstate to arrive in West Helena, Arkansas for the services where William Casteel (Uncle Boots) was born & raised.
Boots was like a father to my wife Jenny. She said so when she stood as one of only two to recount memories of Boots’ life at his funeral service in Bartlesville, OK two days ago. She’s an only child, and Boots’ children, Connie & Donnie were like siblings.
A family friend officiated the service for Boots, and he orated all he knew about the man. Brother Jason called upon those in attendance to fill in the gaps, as he made the service real with his own near-brush with death from that same cancerous demon which claimed Boots’ life.
However, the Methodist preacher on that rainy hill south of La Grange didn’t have that same first-hand knowledge of the man he was there to eulogize this moist Sunday afternoon. Reading from the notes he’d compiled, he told us about the things he’d gleaned from his reading; the high points of Boots’ noteworthy accomplishments serving his country & being a good father to Connie & Donnie.
As the rain poured from the blue awning sheltering those gathered there to send this dear man from this life to the next, the sweating suit-clad young funeral home director placed the weather in perspective- “Thank God it’s 64º in May instead of 105º in July, given the humidity would be the the same 80-90%”.
The cemetery is beautiful. A place where you’d love to be left for a day (or eternity) alone with your thoughts & the peaceful company of those fortunate enough to have taken this as their eternal resting place. A place sheltered by ancient 100’ pines, oaks & hickories; a place where no Wal-Mart Supercenter will ever arrive, with the accompanying freeway and Taco-Bells. No market for such things out here.
Here, the resident Blue-Heel hound greets each & every visitor to this cemetery next door to her farm where Palomino ponies wander in the pastures. She makes sure the grave decorations are worthy to be left there, or if they should be be carried off for further inspection. She makes sure no one minds her fastidiousness by submissively lying on her back for a belly scratch as each arriving visitor exits their vehicle.
I don’t envy they task these ministers have accepted. How do you do justice to everything this human represented? How do you acknowledge all he achieved and honor just how much he was treasured by his family and all who knew him?
Me..I feel I barely knew the man, and only now am I learning everything I should have known about him from the moment I first knew him.
The world of William Casteel and his life experience in the late 30’s and early 1940’s was so far removed from mine, that I can’t possibly fathom what he experienced.
I can ALMOST relate to his life up to the point he left home for the military. But that’s where I lose him.
I possibly experienced a very mild version of what he was thrust into during boot camp. But that’s it. In the early 1940’s, it was a different world, and reams have been written about that time.
But how could an 18 year old young man from one of the poorest, flattest, most isolated areas of this country adapt to suddenly living on a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean..constantly buffeted by bombs & bullets, & witnessing the deaths of your companions? Faced with the very real prospect of nuclear annihilation.
How did he not collapse? Not just from the “culture shock” of regimented military life in the middle of a featureless, hostile ocean, but how did he not collapse after swimming through the blood-red seas filled with the torsos & limbs of his ship-mates who were blown to bits & he was the only one to survive?
And how did he return to this idyllic 1940’s-50’s American environment afterward & create a long, happy, productive life? And how did he not have demons in his closet which manifested themselves in his children & in the darkest secrets of his closest friends? Why didn’t he become misanthropic social outcast?
He truly represented the American Dream in all its promise.
Perhaps he saw the true value of human life & all the possibility of human existence. Perhaps he was truly a compassionate, complete example of what it can mean to be a human in this life.
With no excuses.
William Casteel…Uncle Boots…I salute you.
