142. HE HAD A REASON TO GET BACK TO LAKE CHARLES

From the Archives

(August 2005) Just made the perfect August garden-fresh meal and leftovers for the week: grilled fresh corn on the cob, broccoli cooked on high in olive oil and lemon, green beans cooked with fresh garlic and onions and olive oil and balsamic vinegar with chives sprinkled on top, Swiss chard cooked in lemon and salt, and some happy red potatoes cooked with rosemary.

Have been watching the weather channel all evening hoping to hear a report that Hurricane Katrina turned back to sea and spared New Orleans but no good news so far.

I am here to tell you that surviving a hurricane is a damn sobering experience.

I can also assure you that the following is a place you never want to be: sitting in a huddle in your pitch black hallway with your pets pressed against you as your deck furniture crashes through your windows and your fence explodes into ribbons and your roof peels off in sheets and the rain seeps all the way through your thirteen-inch stucco walls and onto the floor around you.

My neighborhood had so many downed trees after our hurricane hit that no one could leave, so we pooled our food and grilled out meals in the tree-strewn streets together and sweated like pigs while we made our repairs and worshipped the generator owners who stored beer for us so we could have a cold one together after chopping up trees together all day.

What’s sobering to me is that the hurricane I survived was only a category 3, and Fran is a category 5 that's heading straight for Lake Pontchartrain.

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Meanwhile, an Alternet reader points out that the UK has announced guidelines for deporting “extremist religious leaders” who preach hatred and violence.

(This means they could deport Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps, right?)

And another alert AlterNet reader points out that Pat Robertson supported war criminal Charles Taylor and actually muttered on The 700 Club when Taylor was petitioning Congress to drop sanctions against Liberia, “How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down.'"

Apparently, money-loving Robertson loves those Liberian gold and diamond mines.

And, while we’re on the topic, did anyone else note that Dr. James Dobson of conservative Focus on the Family fame told fathers recently that they can prevent homosexuality by showering with their boys (to affirm their maleness) and teaching them to pound square wooden pegs into square holes?

(Yes, it’s all about our inability to hammer pegs into holes correctly, folks.)

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