September 23, 2005

Friends and Colleagues:

2:30 p.m., Friday, Hurricane Rita minus 1

Surreal is the word that keeps passing through my mind.

Yesterday at 5 p.m., rush hour in Houston.  No traffic on the highways south of the city.  The live, camera images from Houston Transtar (www.houstontranstar.org) reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode without the overwhelming urge to find a good book and lock myself away in a vault.

I checked a few minutes ago and the same empty scenes from Katy to Galveston showed up on my computer screen.  Thanks to modern technology, I can sit in relative safety here in Ruston and see, in real time, the water when it covers Harborside Drive in Galveston, the flooding along Highway 146 at the split with the Gulf Freeway, and the conditions up I-45 past my neck of the woods.

My family remains safely displaced here in Ruston, Louisiana, along with the six million souls of the Great Twenty-first Century Gulf Coast Diaspora.  And that’s a good thing.  I would prefer we be together, but God or the Fates did not deem it necessary at this time.  Another time with fewer anxieties and dangers, maybe.

I am writing this in real time, as opposed to sitting and contemplating pacing and the placement of words, so forgive me if I appear to be rambling, because I am.

I heard from my friend Oscar a few minutes ago.  He decided to stick it out in Houston.  I do not necessarily agree with his reasons, but he didn’t ask me.  But he will know when he reads this.  Assuming he can read it.  Assuming he has electricity or assuming floods did not force him to seek higher ground or alternate shelter.

Surreal.  He joined several other stubborn Houstonians last night to participate in some Tibetan sand ritual.  Best as I can determine, this was part of an event that honored the Dalai Lama's visit to Rice University.  The Menil Collection (www.menil.org/home.html) recruited two Tibetan monks to build a Buddhist mandala (http//outofbalance.org/days/2004/day041106a.html.) The monks worked on their dyed-sand mandala this past week.  They used Buddhist texts to determine the shapes and colors that were supposed to remind folks of life's transience.  And then, last night, the monks and the Houston stay-behinds, dismantled the sand and cast the grains into the wind as a blessing to Houston and the world.  Indeed.

My younger daughter’s boyfriend spoke with his parents today.  They’re in a motel north of Dallas.  They walked outside this morning and saw the head of a horse sticking out of one of the ground floor windows.  An evacuee moved his horse into the room and left his mule outside.  He’ll move the mule in with the horse when the weather turns bad.  Now you know why I love Texas.

The northbound traffic through Ruston is fairly bad. It took me 45 minutes to go about five miles this afternoon.  I’m supposed to meet some folks at the Huddle House in about an hour, but I don’t want to mess with the traffic.  If I had my druthers, I’d curl up in a corner and cry.

The long, slow line of vehicles told of Rita’s assiduous approach.  The license plates on the cars and trucks coming up the highway connecting the two ends of the state revealed the homes of the evacuees: Abbeville, Lafayette, Alexandria and other south Louisiana towns and cities.  Thousands of vehicles moving slowly and steadily through the middle of this north Louisiana town.  A Chamber of Commerce dream under normal conditions.  But these folks do not stop and shop.  They drive with determination, seeking shelter from an unpredictable storm.

Jack Colley, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, estimates Rita will affect 5.2 million Texans, destroy 6,000 homes, and add 16,000 Texans to the list of hurricane-related homeless.  My family could easily be among these mind-numbing numbers.

My wife’s brother and brother-in-law are preparing to come to our aid.  Brother Ben is a general contractor in Arkansas and brother-in-law Randy does flood and water restoration in the same city.  They have gathered generators, dehumidifiers, food, and other essentials and are ready to head to our homes.  Come to think of it, they seem pretty eager.  Maybe business is slow and they think they can price-gouge their victimized relatives.  Hmmm.  Let me think about this a little more.

That’s all I have for now.  The latest prediction consensus brings Rita ashore well east of our homes, but straight up the east side of Texas, with hurricane-force winds as far inland as Lufkin and tropical-storm winds to Shreveport.  Waiting on Rita is a slow and agonizing process.

I told Shade and Chad that we have three priorities right now.  First, Shade gets her stuff out of the guest bathroom.  Second, we consolidate our dirty clothes.  Third, we fill up our tank.  We have control over these things.  The rest will come regardless.

John David Powell

Dispatch # 1