The End of All Things
By Michael Totten | Related entries in Environment, Hurricane Katrina, In The News
“Farewell happy fields, where Joy forever dwells, hail horrors hail.� – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Song of Joy.�
To those who survived Hurricane Katrina and managed to return to the place where their houses once stood, the destruction of the Gulf Coast must feel like the end of all things. All things are calm, though, where I live in the Pacific Northwest. Like many, I’m sure, I’ve been overdosing on 24-hour disaster coverage on TV. When I force myself to turn away and look at my own surroundings, the abrupt discontinuity between devastation and tranquility comes like a shock.
My front window looks out onto a perfectly unblemished Victorian-era neighborhood. I’m trying hard to imagine what my street would look like if Katrina hit here instead of there. It’s getting easier all the time. My imagination increasingly tends toward the vivid and morbid the more I watch TV and peruse Yahoo’s online photo galleries of hell.
I feel flickers of survival guilt now. The weather here is better than it has been for months. The sun is out, which is normal for this time of the year. But temperatures are in the 70s instead of the 90s. I no longer have to take measures to cool down my house. My cats nap in the beams of sunlight slanting in through the windows. The birds are chirping. My neighbors are smiling and happy. The cafes and restaurants and bars down the street are all open. This place looks like a cartoon of perfection all of a sudden. Life is good here in Portland.
Aside from the headlines in corner newspaper boxes, there is no evidence that the worst natural cataclysm in American history has just been inflicted on another part of my country. It seems like we should see at least a ripple effect from that storm in our own skies – a gust of wind, a scrap of cloud, a splash of rain, something. Instead there is nothing. It looks and probably feels like the end of the world in Mississippi and Louisiana. But everything here is all sunshine and smiles. Somehow it feels wrong and obscene.
My wife and I watched two episodes of The Sopranos on DVD last night. We laughed at the witty dialogue and wondered how such an emotionally immature man as Tony Soprano could handle the burden of responsibility that leading the North Jersey mob clearly requires. Then I wondered to myself: how can we care about the problems of a made-up cable TV character at a time like this? People are drowning in a toxic urban lake, struggling for survival against dehydration, disease, poison, rats, fire ants, snakes, roving bandits with guns, and probably alligators. But what can we do? The end of the world is happening somewhere else at the moment.
It could have been Portland’s day to die. If my city were flattened and I knew people in other parts of the country were carrying on as usual it would disturb me. How can you go on with your lives while we’re dying here? I suppose, though, from all outward appearances I must look to my neighbors as though I’m blissfully unaware of what’s going on now on the Gulf Coast. I’m not walking around with tears in my eyes. Maybe everyone is as rattled as I am yet, like me, they’re trying to pretend like they aren’t.
The reason I say it could have been Portland’s day to die is because it really could have been Portland’s day to die. New Orleans is menaced by wind and water. Portland is threatened by earth and fire.
Mt. Tabor rises above residential neighborhoods near the geographic center of the city. That small mountain was forged in an eruption. Houses are built all the way up it, bang on top of the volcano. Spend a little time looking at underground maps of tectonic fault lines and you’ll feel like gigantic gun barrels are pointed up at the city from below, loaded and ready to fire as soon as the sinister order is given. Oregon is scheduled for something like a mind-boggling 9.0 earthquake between tomorrow and the next couple of hundred years. I probably won’t see it. But I might. I really might. My house was built in the late 1800s before we knew what awaited below.There’s no way it can withstand that kind of violence.
Edward Lorenz famously wanted to know if the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas. I don’t know the answer to that. I’m not qualified to argue one way or another. Today, though, I have my doubts. A cataclysmic hurricane smashed into the coast and tore everything to pieces as it hurtled into the land-locked center of the continent. Even that wasn’t enough to trigger the flap of a butterfly’s wings here where I live.
Yesterday I went for a walk. Some of my neighbors were out with their dogs. Young couples held hands. Friends gathered around outdoor coffeeshop tables, shot the breeze, and smoked cigarettes. Cats curled up on porches along rows of Victorian houses.
All this, too, someday will be destroyed. You won’t feel the earth give way beneath our feet, as we will. But think of us, please, when it finally happens. It will be the end of our world as we know it.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2005 and is filed under Environment, Hurricane Katrina, In The News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 1st, 2005 at 1:21 pm
My husband this morning reminded me of another scene from the Sopranos, when (I think) Tony’s one-legged Russian girlfriend commented to the effect that Americans are always surprised when something bad happens, while the rest of the world is surprised when something good happens.
September 1st, 2005 at 3:01 pm
Thanks for the cheerful message Totten…
The “end as we know it” may come in the form of a human caused cataclysm. My prediction is there there will be a very hard transition from an oil-based economy to one that eventually replaces it. That transition will disrupt our lives in ways we can’t even begin to imagine. Just make sure your house has good locks and your gun is loaded.
http://www.peakoil.com/
http://www.theoildrum.com/
September 1st, 2005 at 3:37 pm
I completely relate to what you are saying. I am here in New Jersey and I can’t turn off CNN when I’m at home and I can’t stop visiting CNN.com at work. I have been fighting back tears all day. What is so wrong to me is that I feel like I’m going to get in trouble from my boss because I’m paying more attention to the biggest disaster that has ever happened to my country than my own job.
September 1st, 2005 at 4:27 pm
You said on your blog that “Cities aren’t supposed to be destroyed anymore.”
The earthquake in Bam, Iran, shows that natural disasters still happen, and can still destroy man made objects. Big time.
Please Michael, no survivor guilt (or is just because I’m too busy?). The WTC disaster, like genocide in Darfur, war in Congo, economic meltdown in Zimbabwe — these are MAN-MADE.
“Acts of God (/Nature)” are not to feel guilty about, nor much anger against an inability to stop them, in advance.
(written before looking at Austin Bay’s American Refugee Crisis )
Have you tried talking to any liberal friends about which charities are best, and how to measure their effectiveness?
September 1st, 2005 at 6:28 pm
I liked your article, especially the last graph:
“All this, too, someday will be destroyed. You won’t feel the earth give way beneath our feet, as we will. But think of us, please, when it finally happens. It will be the end of our world as we know it. ”
That is so true. We are really “but a mist” and then we are gone.
Will it be the volcano? Which one? Mt Tabor? Mt Hood? South Sister? Or a big earthquake? Or a firestorm of tinder dry forests?
Whatever takes us out, it will be peace and quiet in most places in the ‘rest of the world’, and they will also come back from their walk around the block, pop open a beer and ask their spouse, “So, honey, what’s for dinner?”
Enjoy the peace and quiet here, for we are all “but a mist”.
September 1st, 2005 at 8:44 pm
Michael, I’m not surprised that your response to this is to lapse into solipsistic and maudlin drivel. It sure must beat asking yourself whether you have spent the last three years acting as a propagandist for policies that have lead pretty directly to this result.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:06 pm
Nice to see you Mork, you never fail to prove a hack will always show up to tell you that you are fault for the trouble in your life. I thought only the VRWC believed that mother nature is punishment for all things propagandist in our society.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Rebecca, mother nature had nothing to do with the diversion of Federal money to maintain the levee system to the war in Iraq, the underfunding of the Army Corps of Engineers and the absence of the National Guard.
September 1st, 2005 at 10:38 pm
Mork: Just to point you to some interesting reading
RE: the levees from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/nationalspecial/01levee.html
No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.
Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was “along a section that was just upgraded.”
and re: the National Guard. From http://www.ngb.army.mil/news/story.asp?id=1738
Even though National Guard forces have been heavily engaged in the Global War on Terrorism, nearly 124,000 troops were available for duty in the 17 states along the storm’s projected path, the National Guard Bureau reported. That averages to 78 percent of those states’ total Guard strength. Another 6,000 were available in Texas, and a Guard spokesman pointed out that tens of thousands more could be drawn from the rest of the nation.
The problem isn’t that there aren’t enough its that they can’t get there because of the hurricane damage.
September 1st, 2005 at 11:06 pm
Mork: it appears you really do miss the whole idea of why this blog exists in the first place! Your “conclusions” are emotionally generated apriorisms.
Michael is taking the truly big picture here: we all will pass away. Additionally, in human behavior we often find people making decisions counter to warnings about safety. Examples are not only the people who build houses close to volcanoes, but also build huge cities ontop of known, cataclysmic fault lines (e.g., Tokyo.)
Once mortality is internalized rationality can return to decision making (usually, see postcript), based on real physical truths. Sound thinking is needed, especially when it comes to rebuilding New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast. Honest appraisal of emergency response mechanisms will need to be made, rather than trying to score some sort of ‘points’ via cheap banter.
Dan
PS: There are of course some people who, upon realizing their own mortality, will chose to commit suicide quickly (e.g. w/ gun) or, more likely, slowly (addictions, abuse, etc.)
September 2nd, 2005 at 1:40 am
Hey, Dan, you can argue with the politics, but I don’t think you can argue with my characterization of the quality of the writing!
September 2nd, 2005 at 2:56 am
Mork: “I don’t think you can argue with my characterization of the quality of the writing!”
I make my living as a writer, so you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that to insult me.
Don’t you ever get tired of yourself? Other people certainly do, of that I assure you. That’s why you are banned from leaving comments on my Web site.
Don’t expect to stick around here for very long.
September 2nd, 2005 at 3:33 am
I make my living as a writer, so you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that to insult me.
What’s that supposed to mean - if someone pays you to do it, you must be good at it? So, I should believe your bank balance and not my lying eyes?
Right.
That’s why you are banned from leaving comments on my Web site.
Well, the post for which you banned me from your site merely pointed out (in a pretty gentle and amusing way, I thought) that you had based a piece on a series of cliches that a number of like-minded “writers” had previously used to make the same banal point. I can see how you might have been embarrassed by having your lack of originality exposed, but I find it difficult to believe that my comment caused offence to anyone else.
You know, those who like honest dialogue never seem to have a problem with my comments. The only people I ever seem to rub the wrong way are narrow-minded ideologues and a few folks with high self-regard but particularly brittle egos.
September 2nd, 2005 at 4:06 am
Mork,
You were banned for a solid year of wretched behavior.
September 2nd, 2005 at 4:34 am
You were banned for a solid year of wretched behavior.
Got any examples of my “wretched behavior”?
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:10 am
Totten,
I make my living as a writer, so you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that to insult me.
My understanding from your prior posts is that it is not a lucrative living … Does that mean the insult comes in the form of diminished remuneration for your efforts? That is its own punishment I suppose.
Writing for the industry sponsored Tech Central Station one would think it would be more lucrative but then I guess the price for one’s soul has been cheapened these days.
Wow, that was an insult worthy of Chris Hitchens!
Perhaps you should ban me from your miserable blog as well?
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:36 am
“You were banned for a solid year of wretched behavior.
Got any examples of my “wretched behaviorâ€Â?? ”
It’s not going to work, Mork - the rest of us remember your childishness well enough. Michael isn’t the one who needs to corroborate anything he says.
Now for the rest of your drivel. No one’s policies or support of policies for any length of time led directly to this disaster, unless it was the bad decision to build a city 10 feet below sea level in an area known for devastating storms, or the bad decision to trust the federal government to maintain levees rather than to spend one’s own resources on one’s own survival, or the bad decision to refuse to issue a shoot-to-kill order as soon as looting started with discretion for life support items, or the bad decision to fail to reform a notoriously corrupt and ineffective police department that has melted away under the strain of maintaining order - those are the policies that led to the disaster in New Orleans. Note that other cities such as Biloxi or Gulfport have not experienced that same collapse of civilization espite similar levels of destruction.
It is not only childish to rely on Daddy always to come to the rescue in the form of the federal government, but in this case it just shows a total ignorance of which governments have which responsibilites. State governments across the nation all have the primary responsibility for natural disasters, and for this reason the governors complained about the deployment of their National Guard units to Iraq. As it happens, and you would know this if you were paying attention, the Guard in the three states most affected are at 70% strength in state, and since those states have very robust National Guard forces, those are sizable assets. Furthermore, all the other states are obligated to respond in these situations, again, not a federal response. So Iraq and support for action in Iraq have nothing at all to do with this situation, much led any direct effect, do they?
That is a rhetorical question, Mork. I am not interested in your answer.
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:51 am
It is not only childish to rely on Daddy always to come to the rescue in the form of the federal government, but in this case it just shows a total ignorance of which governments have which responsibilites.
This is pure drivel…. What then is the National Guard for? What then is FEMA established for? What then, do we pay taxes for? I know that I pay more of my tax dollars to the federal government than I do to my own state government. That is a simple fact. So, if in time of need, I can’t count on the government to solve problems that federal agencies were established to fix …. I am going to bitch about it. Jim, if you like to pay for services not rendered, then go right ahead and ignore the problems that are manifest in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Don’t cite numbers of troop strength and then ignore the fact that those same troops were not deployed quickly enough.
A quote:
“On Wednesday,” said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., “reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!”
Maybe it is not wise to depend on the federal government for help, but it certainly isn’t immature to expect it to do so.
September 2nd, 2005 at 12:53 pm
“This is pure drivel…. What then is the National Guard for?”
Talk about drivel. I say National Guard, and you talk about the federal government. Go back to high civics class, and pay attention this time.
“Don’t cite numbers of troop strength and then ignore the fact that those same troops were not deployed quickly enough.”
Hnh? Who deploys these troops? Clue for you - not the same people who deployed them to Iraq. Your comment is incoherent. The troop strength on hand in the states goes to the assertion that support for the Iraq war had some connection to the New Orleans disaster. the only possible connection between the two situations was National Guard strenghts available to response to the situation, and even that was a very generous interpretation of the comment. So troops strength is a function of federal action and (non)deployment is a function of state inaction.
“On Wednesday,� said an editorial in The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss., “reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High School shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw Air Force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics. Playing basketball and performing calisthenics!�
More childishness. I suppose they aren’t supposed to eat or sleep or take a leak either. Calisthenics is basic health care. Have you ever been in charge of troops?
On the other hand, I think I agree with what you are trying to say here, even if your formulation makes you sound like a customer instead of a citizen:
“I am going to bitch about it. Jim, if you like to pay for services not rendered, then go right ahead and ignore the problems that are manifest in the wake of hurricane Katrina. ”
First off, you are not a customer of government and government is not some shop clerk you can order about and throw tizzies at. But that is not your point really. You do understand that a point may come where nature is just stronger than man, and all our preparations will fail. But that isn’t what we are talking about. This is not to that level. Katrina was expected, just not well anticipated. NG troops could have been mobilized the day before landfall, maybe 50 miles inland. Supplies could have been stockpiled in similar safe places. On and on and on.
But just figure out who to blame. Federal is federal and state is state. And Iraq is federal.
As for your comment about paying more in taxes to the federal goevrnment than to your state, that is quite interesting. For one thing, it means you don’t live in any of the populous coastal states. Probably you live inland, in one of the states that typically receive more in federal money than they pay. So cry me a river.
As for FEMA, it’s quite a turnabout from all the fear-mongering about how they were some sinister shadow government poised to take over and supersede the Constitution isn’t it?
September 2nd, 2005 at 2:07 pm
By the way, Mork is banned from commenting on this site. He’s adding nothing to the conversation, and he’s consistently provided himself to be a troll.
September 10th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
[...] Recently, Michael Totten wrote an essay is wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation called The End Of All Things. In it, he detailed how Portland could just as easily be destroyed by the unsympathetic hand of Mother Nature. The reason I say it could have been Portland’s day to die is because it really could have been Portland’s day to die. New Orleans is menaced by wind and water. Portland is threatened by earth and fire. [...]
February 5th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Your quote is apt; I love the music of Nick Cave; however, Nick is here himself quoting a work of literature, even more appropriate to bespeak of such devestation and suffering. He is quoting Book 1 of John Milton’s Paradis Lost; Lucifer, saying farewell to Heaven, forever.