VIRGINIA 001

It’s a funny old dog, this life we muddle through. Ike has devastated southeastern Texas, and it looks like there will be work there, but my Louisiana gig has ended, as it was specifically related to the evacuation and not long term cleanup. So rather than hang around the Gulf waiting for the phone to ring, I elected to slip back to Virginia, where, after a 12 hour drive I stopped in Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia, a town with a state line literally bisecting it. Enjoying a beer at the Stateline Bar, where I’m told you can straddle the border while sipping an adult beverage, my cell rang and I was asked if I wanted to go to New Mexico, a place to which some 12 hours earlier I had been 800 miles closer. But as it turns out I’m being “saved” for a larger challenge in Texas, and so for the moment I am back in the Old Dominion.

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Seeing pictures of Galveston Island, where I was living less than 3 weeks ago, is sobering even for a crusty cynic. The demolished Joe’s Crab Shack, a favorite CNN backdrop, was 50 ft. from my door. The hotel on stilts over the Gulf that provided background for many cable TV news shots was but a quarter mile away. I passed it on my early morning jogs and wondered about its fate in the event of a direct hit. It appears to have survived, although the roadway from Seawall Blvd. to its front door is gone. It’s virtually certain that my former accommodation is now flotsam bobbing in the Gulf.

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I had been on ice for so long I was beginning to feel like a fish. In the disaster response business, having able bodies (and in a pinch the not so able) close at hand and ready to roll is coin of the realm. And so when Gustav finally departed Louisiana and most of the residents were returned to their place of origin, I was told to “stand down but stand by” in anticipation of Ike, and thus until recently I remained parked in Baton Rouge. As I am not a first responder (I like to think of myself as a close second), I’m usually not deployed until the initial chaos abates. And so I sat ployed, awaiting marching orders.

At some point I will likely be heading to Texas, but everything depends on the companies I work with having contracts in the devastated areas. Many agreements are negotiated in advance, and “pre-positioned.” But for an intruder as rambunctious as Ike, there is always a scramble to put boots on the ground, and I am working to see that my steel toes are included.

In the meantime I watched My Cousin Vinnie for perhaps the 3rd time and continue my search for quality in film. I am currently watching Deep Impact, about to see the earth destroyed unless Robert Duvall can save us all. He ruined one of my favorite restaurants in The Plains, VA, so he owes me one. Postscript: Although the ending is a bit fuzzy, I gather that much of Europe, Africa, and the North American east coast were devastated, but California was spared. Hollywood lives!

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I prefer to patronize what are referred to as “budget” hotels (Ramada, Days Inn, Comfort Inn, etc), as I rarely use such establishments for other than slumber, and I find it unsettling to pay $150 and up to rent a mattress for 6-7 hours. The exception being long deployments where the addition of kitchen facilities (small fridge, microwave, stove, and a few utensils) is appreciated after a 13-14 hour shift, when the closest eatery is a smoky sports bar ass-to-tincup with good ole boys leaking testosterone.

It appears that the North American budget hotel industry has been taken over by former residents of the Indian subcontinent. I have been in a half dozen such establishments in the past 6 months, and all but one featured Asian management. This is solely an observation without prejudicial overtones, although I do note a tendency toward hyperactivity that makes the housekeeping staff edgy.

And perhaps I am subliminally biased, as a Mr. Patel recently ordered me from his establishment in Mississippi after I questioned his “special, preferred” $75 rate when I could book the same room on the Internet for $55, a 25+% reduction. I had never been banished from a public accommodation before, but when his agitation reached the level of threatening gestures and hi-octave shrieks, I decided that mediation would be inadvisable and negotiation fruitless. Wither the spirit of Gandhi?

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While driving north through Tennessee the radio treated me to John Lennon’s landmark song Imagine where I was asked, among other things to ”Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can…” What I wonder is whether John wrote those immortal words in The Dakota, his $3 million Manhattan apartment, or perhaps on his private jet sipping champagne with Yoko. It’s striking how the entertainment elite with their staggering wealth are so anxious to lecture those beneath on the evils of commercialism and sloth. Kind of like Al Gore traveling 3,000 miles in a private jet to give a 45 minute speech on the dangers of global warming and conspicuous consumption. I’ll compare my carbon footprint to yours anytime, Al.

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This is not a happy time for private enterprise. The global left is giddy over America’s financial woes, and such bedfellows as Iran’s Ahmadinejad, American Trade Unions, and much of Western Europe are jostling to be first in the queue to denounce the excesses and rejoice in the fall of the “fat cats.” What seems to escape these “nattering nabobs of negativity” (thank you Spiro Agnew) is that the bulk of union pension funds are invested in the stock market, Europe will surely suffer more deeply in the long run (although they accept pain more readily than North Americans), and the more off-shore entities and foreign governments acquire
U. S. assets (considered a horror by many), the more they have a vested interest in America’s recovery. When the fat cats hurt the lesser cats also feel the pain.

But for the time being the “America last” crowd, as Ronald Reagan dubbed them, both within and beyond our shores, are having quite a party. Smirks and self-satisfied sneers abound, and we will surely see increased regulation as a result. Some is warranted and appropriate, but it will certainly be too much, too late. As in Sarbanes-Oxley, the much heralded “business reform” legislation whose ultimate end is driving more and more global commerce to Europe, Dubai, Singapore, etc., and away from American shores.

Liberals always want more regulation, more government. Conservatives crave the minimum. The ideal is somewhere in the middle, and the trick is finding that balance. We almost always overcorrect. Something about escaped horses and barn doors belatedly secured.

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An interesting quote has emerged from the campaign coverage: ”Don’t vote for a president who promises to keep you from being stupid.” I think that might exclude one and all of the current field.

…the adventure continues…