Decisions, Decisions ...

I have a colleague who must be 15 years my junior, at least. When the dean first hired her part-time to work in the language lab, she had face piercings, jet black hair, and blue fingernails. But she was enthusiastic, fun, and very smart, so a senior faculty member took her aside and explained that if she wanted full-time employment, she needed to tone down the "Goth." Libby accepted the constructive criticism and began dressing the part of a professional; now she works on a "full-time temporary" contract, waiting for a tenure-track position to open.

Although I was never as counterculture as Libby, I keep finding out that the early-30s Sparky shared many of Libby's current interests. For example, Libby still collects comic books, as I did at her age, a hobby I have since abandoned. She enjoys alternative bands, as I did until my bands matured and started worrying as much about making lots of money as they did about good music. So I wasn't surprised to find this email in my inbox:

From: libby.daniels@_____cc.edu
To: sparky.lightbulb@_____cc.edu
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 5:34 PM
Subject: Highsmith rocks my world!

Hi, Sparky!

I stopped by Elizabeth's office this afternoon, and she revealed that you're a Highsmith addict! What luck! I've finished 7 of her books so far, and I'm waiting on Amazon to deliver #8 and #9. We have to get together to discuss our favorites!

Your fellow Highsmith junkie,
Libby

The problem is that I'm not a Patricia Highsmith fan; I'm a lesbian fiction fan. Many years ago, before the Internet and Amazon.com, I belonged to the Quality Paperback Book Club and subscribed to a collection called The Triangle Classics—pink triangle, mind you. There were eight works in the original offering, and QPB kept adding one or two more every six months or so. I felt duty bound to understand my "tribe" and bought them all. I ordered The Price of Salt, a novel Patricia Highsmith originally published under the pseudonym Clare Morgan, when it became available, but since I wasn't familiar with her works like Strangers on a Train or The Talented Mr. Ripley, the novel sat on a shelf for years before I ever picked it up to read. It is an amazingly good book, suspenseful without murder [Highsmith's typical hook] and revolutionary for the early 1950s, as the two women involved save their relationship from the many challenges that confront them. Instead of getting locked up in an insane asylum, committing suicide, or renouncing lesbianism to date men, they live their lives as a committed couple.

Somehow during my aimless wanderings at Amazon, I was recommended Highsmith, A Romance of the 1950s, an account of the short relationship Highsmith had with Marijane Meaker. The young Highsmith was a vibrant human being, full of promise and talent—not only for writing but also love and growth. I found myself admiring her self-assuredness and ability to take risks. The biography did an excellent job capturing the exuberant life of two young writers in love. That Meaker biography inspired my purchase of Beautiful Shadow, Andrew Wilson's full look at Highsmith's life, from birth to death. That one I couldn't finish. As Highsmith aged and life disappointed her, she became exactly the type of person anyone would fear to become: bitter, self-deluded, an emotional, chain-smoking wreck. [All of her life, though, she was a dedicated journal keeper and learning that factoid inspired me to begin blogging last November.] I quit reading at page 327 [A stolen tabletop card announcing the introduction of frappuccino "lights" at the Barnes & Noble cafe still marks the spot]. I did eventually try two of her crime novels, Strangers on a Train and The Blunderer, but they were both so creepy, I put them down. Maybe if the characters had been women I would have finished, but men behaving in the worst manner possible to imagine just confirmed for me that I prefer female protagonists.

So the decision: How should I respond to Libby's email? I am not out at work and, to be perfectly honest, don't want to be. All of my colleagues would say that I am a very private person, that they know very little about my personal life. I certainly don't want the one area they do discuss to be my sexuality. So I found myself severely editing my response to Libby:

From: sparky.lightbulb@_____cc.edu
To: libby.daniels@_____cc.edu
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 7:58 AM
Subject: Re: Highsmith rocks my world!

Libby—

I hate to disappoint, but Elizabeth misled you. Gay girl that I am, I enjoy lesbian fiction author biographies and so have read only The Price of Salt Beautiful Shadow. I started The Blunderer and Strangers on a Train but found them too creepy never finished them. Tell me which of her works is your favorite, and I'll try reading her one more time. If you are interested in some girl-on-girl action the biography, let me know, and I'll put The Price of Salt and a book chronicling her affair with Marijane Meaker it in your box.

Sparky

Florida Seasons

Bug and I were walking at the lake when an oak limb almost poked out my eye. Stepping back to avoid a twig through my cornea, I noticed that the branches of this particular tree were full of nearly mature acorns. Elementary school bulletin boards have seared acorns into my brain as the symbol for fall. Sure, my teachers also included borders made of red and orange leaves, but those had little meaning as here in Florida leaves just turn brown and fall off, sometimes not until spring. My calendar had noted the passing of the autumnal equinox last Thursday, but with weeks upon weeks of 90+ degree weather and a five-day forecast of nothing but the same, I hadn't registered a seasonal change.

People always complain that Florida doesn't have seasons. True, no chorus of maple and birch shout with color to indicate fall. No snow-spitting skies announce winter's arrival. Palms trees don't bud in ways anyone notices, and the thermometer sings 90 degrees as easily in December as it does in August. Still, a careful observer can catch the hand-off from one season to the next—it's just that Florida seasons don't paint the sentimental pictures that typically grace the front of Hallmark cards.

The honks of migrating geese might be the sound that a Northerner associates with fall. But for many years, I anticipated silent dishes asleep in the kitchen cabinets. Once the humidity began to drop in October, I could quiet my rumbling air conditioner, an old wall unit that shook the entire house when the compressor kicked on. Fall meant that the plates and bowls quit rattling their complaints from the shelves. Now that I have central air, I still wait for fall to announce its arrival by sound: pops and crunches beneath the car tires as I turn onto my oak-lined street and begin crushing the acorns that litter the road and my driveway. And I have visual cues as well. Instead of gaudy trees aflame with color, I enjoy a dose of television news with an emphasis on a map of Central Florida, no more wide angle shots that include the coast of Africa catapulting tropical waves in our direction, no more hurricanes pinwheeling in the Atlantic with projected paths through downtown Orlando.

Winter is even more subtle than fall. When I arrive home in the afternoon, I discover that the little lizards have disappeared from the front walk; hibernating, they no longer make their mad dash for cover through the now crunchy plants. I know that the temperature might actually drop into the forties when I can buy a Krispy Kreme donut and my teeth shatter the glaze into sugar shards as if I had bitten a pane of thin glass. For all other seasons of the year, Krispy Kreme donuts are slimy, slipping through my fingers with each bite, as the high humidity melts the glaze.

Spring arrives with equal parts death and birth. Florida oaks lose their leaves in the spring, a blizzard of brown that blankets the lawns, sidewalks, and streets. The dead leaves threaten to suffocate the grass that is preparing to shoot up five or more inches every week. I always spend spring break raking—sneezing and choking from the oak pollen that falls immediately after the leaves—instead of walking on the beach, the cliché. The citrus trees bloom, perfuming the still dry air, and all of the dead gray-green of winter brightens to a week or two of brilliant emerald punctuated with azeala pinks before summer heat dulls the green several shades.

Florida spring is the shortest lived of the seasons. For me, doughnuts once more whisper the arrival of summer. One morning I will catch the sugar on a Bavarian creme clinging to the pastry instead of dusting my fingers, chin, and shirt front as it has since November. Gooey powdered sugar heralds the return of the high humidity that accompanies summer. Message received, I know I will soon hear the buzzing of the first mosquito and wonder how many more D batteries I will need for the approaching hurricane season.

For me, seasons in other parts of the country are loud mouths, trumpeting their over-the-top arrival. Even though I can wear shorts during Christmas break, Florida has seasons too, with clear demarcations—just not the kind that have calendar photographs devoted to them.

1 Picture = 1,000 Words

'Nough said.

Students Who Make As

Two different types of students earn As at the end of the semester. One type knows how to follow directions; they experience the course like a Martha Stewart acolyte baking a dinner party dessert. They carefully collect readings and notes as if they were assembling ingredients, measure numbers of words, sources, and quotations with care, all the while obeying instructions from the syllabus and assignment sheets as though they were following a complicated recipe. They never consider making substitutions, never consider if they did X instead of the prescribed Y that their papers might "bake" more "deliciously."

These A students thrive when directions are specific but have great anxiety when assignments are open ended. Verbally announcing a new assignment in the last 30 seconds of class sends these students swarming to the professor's office needing specifics: How many words? How many sources? Is a rough draft necessary? Giving them an assignment sheet with all requirements spelled out, on the other hand, means that they will disappear to do exactly what the sheet says. Although they deserve their As at the end of the semester, their work is as predictable and as bland as white cake. They earn their As but not my respect; I forget them days after the semester has concluded.

Then there are the mavericks, the second type of A earner. The mavericks never ask for clarification or permission; they substitute X for Y and turn in original and thoughtful work that gets attention. If they register for rule-driven professors who penalize unauthorized deviations from assignments, they consider the less-than-A grades badges of honor because they maintained their intellectual integrity. They got what they wanted out of the class. They typically are artists of one kind or the other—working on a novel, playing in a band, designing tattoos—even if they are pursuing degrees in biochemistry or civil engineering.

I love watching these two types of A students in class. Last Thursday, for example, my students were finishing a short piece of in-class work. Laurie, who sits dead center in the front row, held up two sheets of double spaced notebook paper, one in each hand, to ask, "Is this enough?" To be honest, it probably was as Laurie is a solid, clear—though uninspired—writer. Her response, I'll bet, completely answered the question I had posed. Her handwriting, however, is medium, and since she flashed the work to everyone sitting behind her, I had to say, "It doesn't look like it meets the word requirement to me." Laurie reread what she had written, determined where she could expand, and continued writing until the very end of class. Kenny, who sits in the back of the room and rests his head against the wall, brought up his paper with fifteen minutes to spare, collected his things, and left. I glanced at his work to find that he too had produced two double spaced pages in medium sized handwriting. Even though it didn't quite meet the word requirement, Kenny had thoroughly answered the question as well as drawing a well supported conclusion different from the one we had reached in class discussion. Both students will get As but for completely different reasons: Laurie because she did everything I asked and Kenny because he demonstrated that he wasn't a sheep and could think for himself.

I was a maverick as an undergrad. I learned that even the most hard-ass professors would let me ignore all of the assignment guidelines if I turned in original and thoughtful papers, especially if I synthesized information from two different classes. I once argued that Clarissa Dalloway had Taoist leanings in the glimpses a reader gets from her thoughts, combining my twentieth-century novel class with Far Eastern religions. The directions specifically said I was to find a variety of critical essays about the Virginia Woolf novel and integrate that research into my paper, not the works of Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu, long dead before Virginia Woolf was born. I sweated the days waiting for Dr. Connor to grade that essay, but despite his you-will-do-exactly-what-I-say-or-else speech in class, I got an A.

I also got great satisfaction breaking the rules and being penalized for my rebellion. I remember I was once assigned a paper on Frankenstein, the goal of which was to point out the ways the novel illustrated the Romantic movement's dissatisfaction with rational thought. The title of my essay was "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: A Celebration of Reason. In the paper, I argued that Shelley valued classicist ideals, not Romantic ones; I concluded the essay with this sentence: "Shelley does not show that reason has limitations; instead, she proves that human control over the passions too frequently slips." My poor insecure professor, so worried that one of her students might see more than the standard interpretation and thus challenge her authority, gave me a C-, a six-inch red C- in the middle of the cover page. She handed my essay to the person at her right to pass from student to student all the way around the big table to the seat where I waited to receive it. I guess the public humiliation was supposed to knock me into line. We had, needless to say, an antagonistic relationship for the rest of the semester. On the next paper, I stuck to the assigned topic but fixed it so that the first letter of each new line on page 1 spelled "Fuck you Dr. Greene" if read top to bottom.

Even though I prefer mavericks, I always give abundant and clear directions that, if followed, will earn "white-cake" work an A. No one I know can teach students how to have flashes of genius, insight, or creativity, so it seems unfair to punish them for not having innate abilities. Grades should indicate what students have learned, not whether they can later make an intuitive leap with the knowledge that will cure cancer or establish world peace [either of which would require maverick thinking]. If the students can answer correctly in an entire category of Jeopardy relevant to the course, they deserve As even if their papers don't contain a sparkling, fresh insight that the professor would really like to see.

Good Taste in Books

Friday night I saw The Aristocrats with friends from work. We went to the 7 p.m. show. The documentary was only 86 minutes long, so I was home by 9:10. Apparently the basenjis thought I had spent too many hours away and to signify their displeasure destroyed my brand new $65 collection of plays by Euripides. I found the middle portion of the book on the couch; the first 60 pages and the last 60 pages were shredded all over the living room and back hallway. You would have thought I had soaked the tome in chicken soup based on the attention they gave it.

My dogs have never pulled a book off of the shelves before, although they do love paper, a typical basenji trait. They steal napkins from the dining room table if I am in the kitchen, magazines from the couch if I get up to answer the phone, and toilet paper from the bathroom any chance they get. Napkins and magazines are shredded immediately on the spot; I'll find a pile of paper similar to the feathers left in the yard after a hawk gets a pigeon. Toilet paper streamers get dragged through the house in celebratory fashion.

So I picked up pieces of the Alcestis, Medea and Bacchae and tossed them in the trash can. I told the two of them that I was disappointed, but since I hadn't caught them in the act, couldn't confirm the instigator, there was no point in yelling or swatting them with what remained of the book. As punishment, they didn't get a dog cookie after their evening walk, a treat they anticipate.

On Saturday morning I noticed that Yo-Yo had pushed Bug out of his bowl and was eating his breakfast unmolested. Usually Bug will not tolerate such effrontery. I didn't think much of it because Bug had eaten the piece of waffle I had saved for him and insisted, as he always does, on licking out my coffee mug. Later, however, I understood why he had reliquished his breakfast so readily. There was no room in his stomach! When we took our afternoon walk, he started to eat grass at the edges of my neighbors' lawns, and then when we reached the lake, he puked up two to three cups worth of cardboard and cloth cover. I realized then that I hadn't found any hardback while cleaning up the night before.

At dinner, Bug was still not eating with his usual gusto, allowing Yo-Yo to push him out of his bowl a second time. I guessed his stomach was still upset from the huge vomit at the lake. Not so! Later that night, he stumbled off the couch and disgorged another huge pile of slimy cardboard and black cloth, and then an hour later, out spilled the last few pieces. Apparently, Bug had eaten the entire hard cover, front, back, and spine. His digestive system just couldn't break down the material.

Unfortunately, I still don't know which one of them to blame. In my head, I can see Yo-Yo pulling the book from the shelf to start the fun. Poor old Bug paid in digestive distress whether he instigated the shred-fest or not.

Since the basenjis might have been upset that their photos here have since been archived, I give them both their proper due:

Innocent Yo-Yo enjoying the sun

All of the vomit evidence, Ma, indicates that I did not eat your book.

Bug shares a quiet moment with Pequod, over for a visit.

My stomach hurts!

No Way I'm Gonna Stomp Them

My office here at school is full of ants. In the past, Daniel, the government professor to my right, took care of this recurring problem by spraying the ones on his side of the wall. Fooosh! Fooosh! I would hear from his open door as he used Raid to massacre the intruders. Since the long trail of ants walked through the poison next door, I didn't have to breathe carcinogenic chemicals in the confines of my small office or acquire the bad karma from killing useful insects. But Daniel left the hallway last semester when he scored a "charter" office in a newer building. [Because my school is 30-something years old, we had, until recently, faculty who had taught here since Day 1. Several years ago, they were rewarded with roomier, well lit offices in a new building. The last charter faculty member retired two years ago, and now senior faculty battle for these special spaces, Daniel having won the most recent bout.]

A new hire—so young that people on campus must frequently mistake him as a student—got Daniel's office. Either he doesn't have ants [perhaps I've left an open bag of chips in a drawer and alone have the problem?], or he is tolerating them as I am. Ants don't bother me. In fact, I like all insects except the huge palmetto bugs we Floridians call cockroaches, common pests in neighborhoods full of old trees [like mine], pests that my Terminex guy can keep under control but not completely eradicate. [Cockroaches are the most impolite bugs I know; they crawl across the ceiling at night and drop into my lap uninvited while I am watching TV.] But ants I adore. I have always identified as the hardworking ant in the Aesop fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper."

But I am starting to find one [or two, or sometimes several] every time I lift a stack of handouts or scoot a book over. Right now, two ants are confident that they will discover a way into the Altoids tin on the computer table. I haven't seen any of the critters crawling on me yet, but I imagine that they are. I keep brushing phantom ants I feel at my throat [Oh, wait, that's just my shirt collar], or in my hair [Oh, wait, that's just air blowing from the cooling vent], or in my shirt [No, wait, that's just a hair loosened when I thought I had ants crawling on my scalp].

I keep hoping that the cleaning crew will notice the line marching beside the baseboard. They keep insecticide on their carts and can do the "dirty work" late at night when I won't have to witness the murder. I so do not want to kill the girls on my own when I am working to develop the good rapport I need to get close enough to take insect pictures for the Flickr stream.

The Semester's First Essay

Today my students began their diagnostic essays. It is our sixth day of class, considerably later in the semester than I used to make this assignment.

My first dean believed that the college's entrance test was ineffective. For placement in English classes, students answer fifty multiple-choice questions that test their ability to recognize and solve grammatical and mechanical errors. Because we serve a large international community, many students have had formal grammar instruction in ESOL classes, which makes them whizzes at picking out right answers on standardized exams, even when they have no idea what the sentences on the exam mean. For example, they can recognize that no word has verb characteristics, so the sentence must be a fragment, thus not the correct choice. Despite their placement scores, these students don't have enough English vocabulary or idiomatic fluency to handle college-level courses. We also have students who have completed K12 with absolutely no grammar instruction but who can write reasonably well. Because they don't know how to analyze a grammar item, they tend to score into remedial classes which they sometimes don't need. Since the community colleges offer both preparatory and college-level options, someone who writes well can move up to freshman composition if he has been mistakenly placed in a remedial class, just as someone who can't string together words with much competence can move down to "preparatory" English.

My first boss believed that proper placement was the department's responsibility. Our freshman composition course requires that every student pass a department-graded final exam. This means two instructors [not a student's own] decide if the two-hour essay demonstrates college-level writing skill. If both instructors fail the paper, then the student receives an F for the course, no matter her average going into the exam. We typically fail ten percent of the exams, so if we read 2,000 blue books at the end of this semester, 200 students—enough to fill eight classrooms to capacity—will have to repeat the course. Without certain basic skills already in place at the beginning of freshman composition, students are doomed to fail.

So in the "old" days, we all required students to write their diagnostic essays on the first day of class. Many students panicked having to produce 500 words without warning. No one ever had a dictionary; some folks didn't even have a pen. I often read essays in pencil on paper with fuzzies [and I loathe fuzzies]. I would rush to evaluate as many as 125 papers on Monday and Tuesday so that during the second class meeting on Wednesday or Thursday, I could send students who needed a different class to my dean's office. I never had time to gauge the student's "college readiness," which meant that if I moved someone up, I might later learn that she had dropped the more advanced class because she didn't have the study skills to handle the work. If I moved someone down, that person would scowl at me every time we passed in the hallway.

My first dean retired, and we hired a replacement who didn't engender the same degree of respect. Senior burnouts decided that they could significantly reduce their work load by bullying the new dean into moving substantial numbers of students out of their classes. If they manipulated her skillfully enough, they could have as few as 15 students per section while their non-tenured and part-time colleagues had classes overloaded to 30 [25 is the cap per class]. As five courses is the minimum teaching load, the burnouts taught [and evaluated writing from] 75 students instead of 125.

When I realized that the department "culture" had changed, I quit frantically trying to get everyone placed correctly. Only on occasion did I move someone up or down, for I believed I was unfairly burdening a colleague with more work, especially if the instructor who got the student didn't have one to send in "trade" to my class. I began having students write their diagnostic essays during the second class meeting. This way, they knew to expect the paper and brought the right materials. If a freshman composition essay indicated little writing ability, I would advise the student that he ought to consider a class better tailored to his skill level. If the student balked, I let him stay. He had the test scores that put him in the class! If I noticed that an essay from a remedial student was exceptional, I would consider what I had observed over the last two days. Did this student have a college-level attitude in addition to writing ability? If she had been polite and attentive, if she had asked intelligent questions [Oh, yes, there are stupid ones], I would ask her if she wanted to move to a college-credit course. I would also explain, though, that the remedial class would still be worth her while since she would get formal grammar training in it. Her test scores indicated that she could use exactly that!

The problem with having students write the second class meeting was that the papers were dreadful. Many students leave high school with the most bizarre notions about what characterizes good writing. They are used to producing "safe" and flavorless work that puts a reader immediately to sleep. If I give as a diagnostic topic "an invention that has changed modern life," I'll get boring essays on how "one" benefits from the computer, automobile, or cell phone. The papers will make such obvious points—"One can type a paper for English classes," "One can travel faster than a pioneer with a horse-drawn wagon," "One can call one's parents if one's car breaks down"—that I just want to scream.

I put up with those dumb first essays until this semester. I have decided just to keep all the students I have. My newest dean believes that our department should not have to pick up the slack from other areas of the college. Our job is to educate the folks sitting in the room; the student services personnel are supposed to put them in the right classes. So my students and I spent the first five class meetings discussing what good writing does—essentially interest and/or entertain the reader—and what exactly I expected from good student writers. "An invention that has changed modern life" should inspire essays on deodorant, Viagra, crystal meth, hair weaves, or the "Satanet" [one of the best papers I ever read explained how the Internet had turned the student's uncle into a porn junkie, ruining his marriage, job, and church standing]. They began their diagnostic essays today; on Wednesday, I'll pass back all of the rough work I collected so that they can finish them. This way, they get almost two full hours, the same amount of time they'll receive for the final exam in December. Because I won't be rushing the evaluation to see if anyone needs a different class, I can squash with comments any of those high school bad habits they haven't excised completely. I'm hoping this new approach will make the experience of the first essay pleasant for all of us.

White Peacocks

This past Sunday I decided that depite the flood of horrifying images still coming from New Orleans, the world was not ending. I felt confident enough to consume a few ounces of gasoline driving to Leu Gardens to take pictures for the Flickr stream. Even though I took over 100 shots on Sunday, I felt happy enough with only one of them, meaning that I would not realize my goal of posting a new photo every day.

On Monday, Labor Day, I decided that I was using Leu Gardens as a crutch. Who couldn't take great close ups in a carefully tended botanical garden at the height of the Florida growing season? Well, apparantly I couldn't. Still, I decided I needed to practice my new "art" some place more challenging, some place where potentially beautiful shots weren't so easy to find. So I headed to the Greenwood Urban Wetland.


The wetland always reminds me of a hand juicer. A mountain of land sits in the middle of a deep trough that catches storm runoff. Sidewalks along the edge and bridges to the middle make it a great place to walk, picnic, or practice tai chi. Instead of treating the runoff with chemicals, the city allows cypress trees and aquatic plants to break down poisons washed off the busy roads nearby. A pump carries the water to the highest point in the park so that it can flow down over man-made waterfalls, oxygenating the liquid and filling the air with soothing splashes. The grass is maintained five-feet from the water's edge; wildflowers pepper the area that mowers can't molest. Unlike the carefully tended and labeled varieties at Leu Gardens, these flowers are splotchy, raggedy, insect-eaten things, lovely in their own way.

Sunday was windy, so many of the photos I took were blurry. I prefer portrait mode which requires a still subject and camera steadiness; unfortunately, because I have "hand shake"—a condition the manual warns about—and my subjects kept swaying in the wind, there were challenges.


Even so, I had a delightful time. I had hoped to find dragonflies in the aquatic plants [In my head, I could see the great photos I would take of them], but except for one willing subject, the dragonflies just buzzed around the open fields, refusing to land or even hover in one place long enough for me to get a shot.


The wetland was, however, overrun with white peacock butterflies flitting among the wild flowers. These little guys were so intent on feeding that they held still long enough for me to focus. In the past, I would have only noticed that they were white, but in my attempts to capture them with the camera, I have realized the beautiful stained-glass quality to their wings. With pale eyes in ghostly faces, they look creepy and sinister, two adjectives I don't normally associate with butterflies. If you had to cast a butterfly as Dracula in a movie, you would definitely want a white peacock.

Bwha-ha-ha-ha ...

I've come to suck your nectar!

Peacockula strikes again!

The really interesting thing about this trip was that the urban wetland butterflies were just as ragged as the wildflowers. Some of them had so much of one wing missing that I couldn't understand how they still flew. At Leu Gardens, I always find nearly perfect specimens on well tended plants; at the wetland, however, the white peacocks lead a much harder life than their "uptown" cousins do.

Snobby uptown white peacock at Leu Gardens

What a Week

Authorities are estimating that thousands of people on the Gulf coast have died this week; some of the numbers I have heard will make Katrina the worst storm ever to hit the United States, surpassing the unnamed 1900 hurricane that killed 8,000 people in Galveston. All week I have tried to make sense of what was and is still happening.

Thursday of this past week, I was convinced civilization was coming to an end. I had watched three days of national news coverage depicting the abandoned people of New Orleans dehydrating, starving, dying, committing suicide in the hot sun. Reporters were speculating that the devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi would soon cause shortages of food and electricity in the Southeast. Here in town, hundreds of miles from the epicenter, every gas pump was dry as folks hoarded fuel. Looking back, I realize everyone believed we were one gas tank away from the same conditions the citizens of New Orleans were facing. In my saner moments, when I wasn't overwhelmed at the sight of so much human misery, I started to notice that television news was showing the same pictures day after day, that the footage of "looters" on Tuesday was the exact same footage on Thursday. When I got home Friday, I decided to change my source of information and read online newspapers from Mississippi and Louisiana. From them, I got a completely different perspective.

I know the entire region affected by Katrina. My father currently lives in Dallas, and since I prefer driving to flying, I have taken I-10 west through Pensacola, Mobile, Biloxi, and Gulfport—all those cities we have heard so much about this week. I know Gulfport especially well as one trip I spent an entire week there walking the beach and eating pancakes twice a day at IHOP. From Gulfport, I always drive Highway 49 north to Jackson [described as a "war zone" on Wednesday in the national news], passing through the lovely Hattiesburg and the De Soto National Forest. From Jackson, I catch I-20 into Dallas, further traversing Mississippi and Louisiana. My father used to live in Houston, to the south of New Orleans, and I have visited the French Quarter with him [a cheaper alternative than sending me to Paris when I was studying French in college].

I also have hurricane experience. In two months' time last summer, I survived three storms. Right before Frances blew through, when we couldn't believe our bad luck getting hit twice [a third time was utterly inconceivable], my colleagues were swapping in email this animated gif [only half in jest]:


Because I know the region well, because I am a hurricane survivor, I couldn't believe everything that I was seeing in the national news. So I first read the major newspaper out of Jackson, The Clarion Ledger. Rick Cleveland, one of its reporters, drove south to Hattiesburg, his hometown, and wrote an article titled "Katrina Creates a Hattiesburg I Never Knew." In it, he describes the devastation he found:

Far too many [pines] have fallen on houses, across roads, onto cars, over fences and everywhere else you might imagine. Indeed, with nearly every turn, I see another tree that has crashed through another rooftop. Many times, I must dismount [my bike] and walk around downed trees.

This Hattiesburg might be new to him, but I recognized it as the day after Charlie here in Central Florida. When a major hurricane comes through, significant wind damage will result. As I read further about life in central Mississippi, I discovered that each day thousands of residents were having their power restored, crews were clearing trees from roads, folks were wondering why the garbage collectors hadn't taken away all of their storm debris stacked at the curb. Once people start worrying about brown spots on their manicured grass, you know things are going to be okay. Louisiana newspapers likewise reported how things were getting better. On Friday, for example, the Louisiana SPCA had begun rescuing animals left in flooded homes.

Yes, Katrina is responsible for some deaths. When she made landfall in South Florida—at the time only a category one hurricane—four people died right away. Two of them were struck by falling trees because they chose to stand outside during the storm. The other two hit a tree when they lost control while driving as Katrina roared ashore. I could argue that human stupidity killed these four men, but I'll let Katrina take the rap. We can justifiably blame her for everyone along the Gulf coast who drowned in the 30-foot storm surge. She is responsible for the fallen trees, crushed cars, battered houses, and collapse of the power grid. But this storm was a regular hurricane: destructive but survivable. What will happen, though, [and here I get angry] is that authorities will end up blaming Katrina for all of the death, misery, and destruction in New Orleans when those poor people died—and survivors lost their entire lives—because federal, state, and local governments failed their citizens. The city needed either 1) adequate protection from a category five hurricane, 2) an evacuation plan that could get everyone out, or 3) immediate federal response. Any of the three would have done the job.

The big lesson is that our government is inept, so we need to take more responsibility and prepare better for all types of disasters. How many bottles of water can any of us say we have on hand right now?