Monday Morning Smile

TGIF!!!

Never Forget

Monday Morning Smile

The Ocean Disappeared

from a meteorologist:

Basically, Hurricane Irma is so strong and its pressure is so low, it’s sucking water from its surroundings into the core of the storm.

‘The wind on Long Island in the Bahamas is from the southeast to the northwest on Saturday. On the northwest side of the island, it would be blowing the water away from the shoreline.’

‘In the center of the storm, where there is extreme low pressure, water is drawn upward. Low pressure is basically a sucking mechanism — it sucks the air into it, and when it’s really low, it can change the shape of the surface of the ocean. As the storm draws water toward the center, it gets pulled away from the surroundings.’

Ever wonder what happened to......

DACA response

Here's the lengthy statement former President Barack Obama released on his Facebook page regarding the President's decision to end DACA:

"Immigration can be a controversial topic. We all want safe, secure borders and a dynamic economy, and people of goodwill can have legitimate disagreements about how to fix our immigration system so that everybody plays by the rules.
But that’s not what the action that the White House took today is about. This is about young people who grew up in America – kids who study in our schools, young adults who are starting careers, patriots who pledge allegiance to our flag. These Dreamers are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper. They were brought to this country by their parents, sometimes even as infants. They may not know a country besides ours. They may not even know a language besides English. They often have no idea they’re undocumented until they apply for a job, or college, or a driver’s license.
Over the years, politicians of both parties have worked together to write legislation that would have told these young people – our young people – that if your parents brought you here as a child, if you’ve been here a certain number of years, and if you’re willing to go to college or serve in our military, then you’ll get a chance to stay and earn your citizenship. And for years while I was President, I asked Congress to send me such a bill.

That bill never came. And because it made no sense to expel talented, driven, patriotic young people from the only country they know solely because of the actions of their parents, my administration acted to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people, so that they could continue to contribute to our communities and our country. We did so based on the well-established legal principle of prosecutorial discretion, deployed by Democratic and Republican presidents alike, because our immigration enforcement agencies have limited resources, and it makes sense to focus those resources on those who come illegally to this country to do us harm. Deportations of criminals went up. Some 800,000 young people stepped forward, met rigorous requirements, and went through background checks. And America grew stronger as a result.

But today, that shadow has been cast over some of our best and brightest young people once again. To target these young people is wrong – because they have done nothing wrong. It is self-defeating – because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love. And it is cruel. What if our kid’s science teacher, or our friendly neighbor turns out to be a Dreamer? Where are we supposed to send her? To a country she doesn’t know or remember, with a language she may not even speak?

Let’s be clear: the action taken today isn’t required legally. It’s a political decision, and a moral question. Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn’t threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us. They are that pitcher on our kid’s softball team, that first responder who helps out his community after a disaster, that cadet in ROTC who wants nothing more than to wear the uniform of the country that gave him a chance. Kicking them out won’t lower the unemployment rate, or lighten anyone’s taxes, or raise anybody’s wages.

It is precisely because this action is contrary to our spirit, and to common sense, that business leaders, faith leaders, economists, and Americans of all political stripes called on the administration not to do what it did today. And now that the White House has shifted its responsibility for these young people to Congress, it’s up to Members of Congress to protect these young people and our future. I’m heartened by those who’ve suggested that they should. And I join my voice with the majority of Americans who hope they step up and do it with a sense of moral urgency that matches the urgency these young people feel.
Ultimately, this is about basic decency. This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we’d want our own kids to be treated. It’s about who we are as a people – and who we want to be.

What makes us American is not a question of what we look like, or where our names come from, or the way we pray. What makes us American is our fidelity to a set of ideals – that all of us are created equal; that all of us deserve the chance to make of our lives what we will; that all of us share an obligation to stand up, speak out, and secure our most cherished values for the next generation. That’s how America has traveled this far. That’s how, if we keep at it, we will ultimately reach that more perfect union."

Monday Morning Smile

Courtesy of Stephen Colbert - the alter egos of drumpfs cabinet: past and present

An Open Letter to Joel Osteen

BycpowellPublished on September 1, 2017 SHARE TWEET


Texas Mega-church Pastor Joel Osteen has come under a lot of fire this week for at first not opening the church as a shelter for his fellow Houston residents and then for how long it took him to do it after the internet put pressure on him to help his neighbors in the wake of the devastating Hurricane Harvey.

North Carolina progressive Pastor John Pavlovitz, one of our favorites, has penned an open letter to Osteen, and suggesting that his behavior surrounding Harvey is not surprising in light of the phony baloney “Christian” life Osteen has been living.

Here is the whole letter:

Dear Joel Osteen,

Over the past few days you’ve faced an unrelenting wave of Internet shaming, and you’ve experienced the wrath of millions of people who watched the week unfold and determined they were witnessing in you and your megachurch’s response to the hurricane—everything they believe is wrong about organized Christianity; its self-serving greed, its callousness, its tone-deafness in the face of a hurting multitude, its lack of something that looks like Jesus.

They questioned your initial silence and your closed doors.

They watched with disdain as local Mosques and furniture stores rushed to receive newly homeless victims while you waited.

They shook their heads at the conflicting stories of a flooded church and impassable roads.
They lamented you tweeting out that “God was still on his Throne,” while thousands of your neighbors were literally under water.

They saw your social media expressions of “thoughts and prayers” as hollow and disingenuous, knowing the stockpile of other resources at your disposal.

They witnessed with disgust what they deemed as your late and underwhelming act of kindness performed under duress.

They raged at your excuse that Houston didn’t ask you to receive victims—because (whether Christian or not) they realized that Jesus’ life was marked by an overflow of generosity and compassion and sacrifice that rarely required official invitation.

As a result of the pushback and condemnation you received, I imagine you feel like this has been a rough week. It hasn’t. You’ve had the week you probably should have had, all this considered. You’ve had the week that was coming long before rain ever started falling in Houston.

For quite a while, Pastor, many people have rightly concluded that the kind of opulence you sit nestled in no way resembles the homeless, itinerant street preacher Jesus who relied on the goodness of ordinary people to provide his daily needs. They rightly recognized that mansions are not places that servant leaders emulating this humble, foot-washing Jesus occupy. They correctly saw the massive chasm between the ever-grinning, your ship is coming in, name it and claim it prosperity promise that is your bread and butter—and the difficult, painful, sacrificial “you will have trouble” life that Jesus and those who followed him lived in the Gospels.

They also see the great disparity between your coddled, cozy, stock photo existence—and the sleep-deprived, paycheck to paycheck, perpetually behind struggle that is their daily life.

And yet despite their difficulties and their deficits and their lack (the kind you have been well insulated from for a long, long time), these same folks understand that when people around you are in peril—you respond. You don’t wait for an invitation, you don’t wait to be shamed by strangers, and you don’t make excuses.

That’s why many of these ordinary, exhausted, pressed to the edge people, lined up as human chains in filthy, rushing, waist-high water to pull people out of submerged vehicles. It’s why they came from hundreds of miles with boats and at their own expense and using vacation days, to pluck strangers from rooftops. It’s why they gave money and clothing and food and blood (and some of them like Officer Steve Perez)—their very lives acting in the way Jesus said was the tangible fruit of their faith.

Many of the people whose very dollars helped build the massive, tricked out arena you call home every week, showed you how decent people respond to need. I hope you were paying attention. I hope you’re different today than you were a week ago. I really hope something penetrated that seemingly disconnected exterior and found a home in your heart.

Because someday, Pastor, the waters in Houston will recede and homes will be rebuilt and normalcy will eventually return there. And to a large degree the attention and the pressure you’ve received this week will find other places to reside, and you will return to the work and the life you’ve had before, relatively unaffected.

It’s then that I hope you’ll remember this week. It’s then I hope you’ll recall the parable Jesus tells of the Good Samaritan, who though a despised pariah in the place he found myself, responded to a stranger’s need with immediacy and vigor while the religious people walked right by. This Samaritan showed mercy, not because he was guilted into it or because he was asked—but simply because he knew that we are one another’s keepers; that we each have resources we are entrusted with, and the way we share or hoard those resources reflect our hearts.

I hope you’ll remember Jesus on the hillside feeding the multitude, not because they petitioned him and not because it was in his job description—but because they were hungry and he wasn’t okay with that.

I don’t know you. I don’t believe you’re a bad person. You’re quite likely a good, loving, and decent man—but good, loving, and decent people lose the plot, they get distracted, they get it wrong, they need to recover their why.

You had a difficult week, but you are safe and dry, and despite the criticism and pushback, blessed with more abundance than most people will ever know. That’s good news for you. I don’t hold any of that against you.

The even better news, Pastor Osteen, is that you are alive. You are still here and you have a chance now to show people that Christianity is far more than their greatest fears about it, much better than the worst they’ve seen of Christians, and more beautiful than the ugliness they’ve experienced in the Church.

You have the chance to leverage your resources and your platform and your influence to show a watching world something that truly resembles Jesus.

Don’t wait for an invitation.

Jesus already gave you one.

That is a mic-drop moment if there ever was one. Well done, Pastor. Well done indeed.

How to help the flooded

Found this on facebook and am putting it here for future reference (hope I never have to use it)

Matt Williams
Yesterday at 1:28am ·
HOW TO HELP THE FLOODED

I'm not much for writing long posts. Making an exception in hopes it helps the flooded.

TRAUMA IS TRICKY

A flooded home is a traumatic event. Like any trauma, it is tricky to know how to help someone experiencing such a terrible event.

Jen and I flooded on Memorial Day 2015 (see photo) and again on Tax Day 2016. The second flood came just days after completing the restoration and decoration of our house from the first flood. If cruelty was a color, we saw red for a long time.

Flood victims often experience what I liken to shell-shock meets heart break meets chaos. Toss in moments of exhaustion, terror, and rage and you've got a pretty fair description of what's in store.

When people wrestle with trauma like this, one of the last things they will ask for is help. But it's what they need most.

BE THE TORTOISE

The good news is that if you want to help someone who has flooded, the best way is to show up.

Helping the flooded comes with an understanding that this is a marathon, not a sprint. They'll need you more in the weeks after, when most have moved on and the adrenaline has worn off. So pace your help and pace yourself. Be the tortoise.

If you know someone who flooded, get out your calendar and pick a day or two a week for the next ten weeks or more and write down "show up."

One day drop off something and say hi. Another day work for an hour or two. And another day have them over for dinner on a weekend. If you can only do one thing, one time, then do it. No act of showing up is too small. Dropping off a hot cup of coffee will be remembered for years to come.

As a rule, don't just ask if they need anything, ask if they need anything else. Say "I'm coming by with trash bags and lunch, need anything else?" This signals that you've already committed to coming by. They're likely to tell you what else they need.

GESTURE UP

Jennifer Castillo De Williams and I will never forget when someone we hardly knew drove up to the side of our yard. It was so full of flooded belongings that the driver didn't get out. She rolled down her window and handed over a giant bag of Chick-fil-a. She smiled, offered her sympathies and drove off. We were exhausted, caked in mud, and heart broken and in that moment, Chick-fil-a never tasted so good.

We promised we would remember how simple gestures like this meant so much to us at the time. They offered beautiful brief moments of normalcy in between many long abnormal ones.

Help of this kind is fairly easy. Try to work it into your weekday or weekend routines. Plan ways to make thoughtful gestures for anyone you know who has flooded.

LIFE ON MARS

When you flood, you might as well be on Mars. Everything that was easy and familiar is now complex and foreign. You can't find files, documents, cards, keys, devices...you name it. Simple tasks get sucked into massive black holes of work. It's maddening.

Then there are the things of sentimental value: the drawings from the kids; the shoes they wore on their first step; the wedding album. Those treasures, they're all gone.

Yes, it's just stuff, but make no mistake, sifting through the filthy wreckage that was once your life's memories is brutal. You will have some good, long cries as you toss them out en masse. But you will get through it and you'll be tougher for it, maybe even enlightened.

FLOOD CLUB

Those who survive the salvos of Houston's floods enter a club that knows something about loss and have an appreciation for what matters most. For me, it brought a little less whining.

Be aware there is something unsettling that lingers for some club members. I suppose it's a kind of mild PTSD that seeps in between the evacuations and ridiculous toil. When I hear the rain now, it's no longer my soothing friend. It's kind of a sinister thing that taunts me when I look outside to see what's coming up to the door.

It comes down to this: every thoughtful thing you can do to help someone recover from a flood is probably one less thing they'll have to manage alongside their overwhelming grief.

So try to give the flooded a few moments of peace in what feels like a strange unprovoked war.

SHOWTIME

Here are some practical ways to "show up" by bringing or doing stuff. Feel free to add to these lists in comments, it's endless.

Stuff you can bring

-Cases of bottled water
-Floor fans
-Old newspapers for packing
-Cases of paper towels
-Cases of toilet paper
-Cases of sanitizing wipes
-Battery powered camping lanterns
-Power strips
-Work gloves
-Pop up tables to place and stage stuff
-Step ladders
-Drop cloths
-Hammers, blade utility knives
-Sharpees of different sizes and colors
-Good first aid kit (many cuts and scraps during clean up)
-Rolls of duct tape and packing tape
-Hand sanitizer
-Plastic bins/containers of different sizes with lids
-Cardboard boxes (small, medium, and large)
-Bags (contractor, trash, gallon zip locks)
-House cleaning solvents
-Bug repellent (mosquitoes are vicious inside a hot, muggy, muddy flooded house)
-Fast Food (buy several kinds of fast foods and just leave it. Someone will eat it and be thankful)
-Boxes filled with easy to eat snacks (chips, bars, nuts, and fun stuff)
-Paper plates, plastic utensils, cups, napkins
-Prepared Foods are nice, but more complicated
-Gift cards for food (this is for a dinner after a long day, they can get take out at their hotel or temporary place instead of having to cook)
-Gift cards to Marshalls, Target, Walmart, Lowes (they can get clothes, supplies, and other needs)
-Clean old or cheap t-shirts that can be worn as throw aways during clean up
-Clean bedding sheets, blankets, pillows

Stuff you can do

-Laundry (We loved this. People would come by and put a bunch of dirty clothes in a bag, wash, and return them folded to us).
-Cut sheet rock, pull out flooring, and clean out house if you're involved with initial 24 hours
-Position and maintain fans throughout house
-help sort what's destroyed from what's still good (our rule: if flood water touched it, it's destroyed)
-Haul what's destroyed into piles in the yard for pick up by city
-Pack and label belongings that might still be good
-Stage "still good" boxes and load in a POD onsite; or on a rental truck for storage

I remember the first day after we flooded. The father of my son's girlfriend asked me what to do. I was still looking at all the loss so I struggled to give him any useful direction. He quickly realized the situation and said, "I'm going to separate good stuff from bad stuff." I nodded and he and some other guys went to work. Hours later we had piles in the yard and the house was beginning to clean out. I have many examples of people who came from no where to help us in many ways, then left without ever knowing their names to thank.

After a flood, there's so much to do, just guess and you'll probably be doing something really helpful.

Last, there's "stuff you can share" that takes more time and commitment but means a lot

-Share your car or truck for rides, pick ups/drop-offs
-Share your garage to store their stuff that survived
-Share your home for temporary living, food, showers or laundry (obvious, but important)

No one who has flooded wants to live with someone else or use their stuff. Understand how much it sucks to be so helpless, it's dehumanizing. The best thing you can do is quietly insist and get to it.

There is a lot to unpack here. For those who made it this far down the post, I hope you found it helpful.

There were so many people who opened their hearts, homes, and hard working hands to us that I still get overwhelmed by their generosity. People are a lot of things, but what we witnessed in our hours, days, weeks, and months of need was on the pure side of love. Know that it's out there and it's there for you.

For our friends who flooded from Harvey, no need to leave a light on, we'll bring you a new one.

August 29th 12 years later

Warning, the following is a stream of conciousness, written while I watch TV coverage from Texas and remember Katrina's anniversary.  

Twelve years to the day, we find ourselves in a tropical storm mode, watching the Houston Texas area drowning in the rainfall from Harvey (a hurricane name that will probably be retired, like Katrina).

Watching the images of rescue from the floodwaters is having a strong negative affect on those that lived through Katrina.  PTSD is raising its ugly head in Katrina land.

Many things have changed since 2005: social media assures that we receive up-to-the-minute information and images via Facebook and Twitter; there are community portals, neighborhood web sites, and local discussion lists; cell phones are more prevalent than in 2005, text messaging helps people communicate   and find one another; there are many more  cell phone towers too.  Katrina taught us what to have ready in case of a storm: nearly everyone I know in this area has a fairly new generator, needed for long periods of electricity loss.

We have learned NOT to wait for the government to come to our rescue.
 
The Cajun Navy was born in after Katrina to help flood victims quickly and without red tape.

Cajun Navy headed to Texas
 
We will always have the memory of fear, sadness, anger, revulsion, etc.  These feelings come automatically whenever we read/see/hear about disasters.  Especially hurricanes.

Watching Harvey coverage unfold is hard, it brings back memories to August of 2005.  Not only in Southeast Louisiana, but also on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which took a direct hit from the storm.

Biloxi Mississippi after Katrina

The city of New Orleans, 80% which was submerged due to levee failures,   is STILL being screwed over by the very people whose job it is to be sure the pumping stations are working.

NOLA after Katrina. I still think of this picture whenever I hear helicopters

Much of the city flooded on August 5th of this year due to the fact that 14 out of 24 pumping stations were not working during a strong rainstorm.   Here's hoping that most of those pumps work hard this week with Harvey coming to visit.

Of course some things never change:  the haters are still out there in droves, asking the same idiotic questions, putting people down for being poor, black, ethnic.  People are gouging the hell out of victims.  Hopefully, karma will be visiting these "people" soon.

If you've read this far and are curious about what it was like on August 29, 2005, go to this link for the now defunct Times-Picayune's coverage of the storm.  Just reading a bit of it put that lump in my throat.  So much suffering and no one could help.

The only "live" coverage we had for about a month after the storm was WWL radio,  whose on air personalities became like family members to us. 

Curious about what it was like in the early aftermath?   local reporter Chris Rose penned a  number of newspaper articles  during the months after the storm that many Katrina veterans could identify with.  The collection eventually came together in the book "One Dead In Attic".

So 12 years on a lot has changed: new buildings, new homes, new stores, new restaurants.  New Orleans' streets still suck, the crime rate is still as bad as before Katrina, but the city is buzzing in many good ways.   The Mississippi Gulf Coast is a great entertainment destination, and all new construction from Waveland to Ocean Springs is a must see (I still need to see some of it).  Slidell, where I live is still a boring Northshore town, but I like it like that, just small enough.  Every once in a while we run into people at the store or a festival and the conversation usually finds it way to "the storm".  Everyone has stories of ruin and survival.  There is a special kinship that has been borne between veterans of "the storm".

So I say "thanks, Katrina" in a different tone than I did 10 years ago.  Thanks for all the good that has happened since we walked outside on that August afternoon  and saw a whole new, scary world.  I think after all we  experienced,  we find ourselves smarter and we possess the empathy necessary to get through life.