LSU

i was sitting in the coffee shop this morning listening to the guy next to me have an imaginary conversation because he is off his meds. we are living in a giant mental ward and everyday the inmate population grows while charity hospital sits empty. i talked to people after the storm, doctors who went into charity and with the help of the germans pumped the water out of the basement and had three floors clean and operational, only to have the head of lsu kick them out upon threat of trespassing. he says charity is not safe and yet other buildings in that area have managed to open back up, such as the hutchinson clinic right across the street. besides, safe in new olreans these days is a relative term. is charity safer than a fema trailer that out gases its occupants? is charity safer than a mold encrusted house? is charity safer than wandering the streets at night, scared and confused because you cannot get the medicine necessary to help you? we have a health care crisis right now but lsu wants you to wait for their new proposed 16 block plus v.a/teaching hospital complex. why? charity is waiting. it is already constructed. oh sure, it needs a good scrubbing and some cosmetic work but at least it is a place for the ill to go. and the area that they propose to build in sits within designated historic districts. the second oldest mcdonough high school is there, built around 1879.
i just read in the paper today that they are saying that there is not much historic significance to the area and that is just bullshit. the environmental report isn't even in yet, which covers potential national register sites. why do we want to tear down more buildings in this city? didn't katrina do enough? part of what makes this city so magical is its historic buildings.
i think this city needs to start making a fuss about this. we need health care now! we need hospital beds now! we need a treatment plan for our mentally ill now! tell them that some future date does not cut it and demand they open charity back up! katrina changed everything. we can no longer afford to sit back and let things happen to us. they will change this city for the worse if we let them. every new orleanian must be an activist now!

Wetlands

check out this video about louisiana's vanishing coastline!

the roof

my roof is sprouting. SPROUTING! it is not going from the ground up. there are no vines insidiously working their way up to wreak havoc. it is sprouting. how does this happen? how does a roof just sprout? i now have my own ecosystem on the roof. i don't have a ladder. i need a ladder so that i can climb onto my roof and weed! who has to climb onto their roof to weed for god's sake. is it not enough that my back yard is over run with weeds? the katrina flood waters catapulted it to ruin and despite my best efforts at waging war, nature is winning. she always will. so, i'm scared to climb onto my roof to weed...i mean i can't even park my car. this could be dangerous. i could fall off. oh, i know what you are thinking...spoke is a cat, right? spoke has nine lives. spoke likes all of his paws in working order and besides, i'm afraid of running through those nine lives.

yep

one traffic light gets fixed and another one goes down. i almost got sucked up by a sink hole. the ambulance and fire truck are out front of my house but i don't know why. i hope it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that i just ran my truck into the light pole. oops! i'm not sure how that happened really. i was attempting to park and the next thing i know the pole jumped out and hit me. this happened in front of god and everybody, so now the whole block is wondering what the hell is wrong with me. i'm wondering that myself.

new orleans

if you have to ask why new orleans should be saved, then you just don't get it! and if you don't get it, stop reading this, go turn on american idol(the show that got more people to vote for their contestants than turned out to vote for the president), and keep sleepwalking through the rest of your life. you think it is fool hardy to build a city in a flood plain? perhaps, go tell that to new york city because most of it is either at or below sea level. you think new york doesn't have to worry about hurricanes? think again. they have been hit in the past and they will be hit again by a storm in the future. it is a waiting game just like the one new orleans plays every storm season when we hunker down in white knuckled fear during the dangerous days of summer. clue in! this was no natural disaster. this wasn't an act of god. it was stupidity, plain and simple. the government installed faulty levees. they broke it and they should fix it. if i wreck your car, you would expect me to pay for it, right? right! either we are an american city or we are not and sometimes it is hard to tell around here. five fucking days! it took five fucking days for the so called richest nation on earth to save its own citizens from the watery hell that it created in the first damn place. hell, maybe shrub couldn't find new orleans on a map. we all know he had no idea where afghanistan was prior to our invading it. hey, miss teen carolina, get that boy a map.
i hear people talking about katrina fatigue, like the rest of the country would like to move on...yeh, so would we. you know that we are not even suffering fom post traumatic stress disorder here because in order for that to happen, the stress has to actually end. here it just goes on and on and on. people still don't have any money to get back into their homes because the road home is a joke, only we aren't laughing. so these poor people sit in tiny white boxes that out gas chemicals and poison them in their sleep, provided the damn thing doesn't just catch on fire and burn them to death, which has happened. we have a health care crisis that is third world in its scope, even as we lead the nation in depression and our murder/suicide rates climb. you think you are sick of katrina, well i got news for you, so are we.
say america, i have a proposition for you. next august 29th, pull the cord to the power grid and plunge the nation into darkness for five days in memory of what happened to this, my city. shut off the water to every structure from the east to the west coast. no televisions. no radios. no x-boxes. nothing but the blackness that stalks its way in like a monster from a horror movie. don't drink any water and don't eat any food for five days. periodically, open up your fridge and sniff the rotting contents of the interior, even more foul than the smell of your own body five days without a shower. then sit down calm with yourself and imagine if it were for real. your on your roof. the water is lapping at the shingles and it is a black water, full of oil and god knows what. imagine not knowing if friends and family are alive. imagine the heat and the sun drilling its way into your brain as each day ticks by with no water. imagine the dead all around you. the stench. the helplessness and hopelessness. imagine what the man; who jumped from the i-10 to his death below, was thinking as his feet left the pavement. imagine what it is like to be forgotten. then maybe just maybe, you will know what it means to be from new orleans.

Spoke the cat would like to apologize to all my furry friends for not mentioning that you should not leave your pets in cars anymore than your children.

Spoke the cat says, rock or something! Just past the two year commemoration of Katrina and I was feeling a bit nostalgic for MREs.