Watching

We waited and then we watched. Watched as the giant amoeba-like storm slowly undulated its devastating way across the coasts of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. Captive as always to its whim, we could be thankful that at the last moment Katrina decided to slip and slide a little to the right and the left to spare New Orleans, that beautiful bathtub city, almost certain complete ruin. Still, it was terrible enough, worse yet in the Biloxi area and around Mobile, Alabama. Mississippi’s Governor said the hurricane had delivered his state a "grievous blow." Indeed it did, and the up-close information, the real human losses are not yet available.

One side note: years ago when I was very young, probably twenty-five, and a completely inexperienced, hard-charging, career-building, self-involved and oblivious television newsman there was a sudden pier fire on the waterfront in Seattle where I was living and working. In those days the cameras were huge, and we were captives to the heavy cumbersome cables that chained us to them. I would have hand carried all the equipment myself and run the entire way to have the chance to cover the story. For two hours I reported from the scene, live the entire time. It was almost unheard of, virtually unprecedented to do that back then. Pushing past firemen, crouching down on the smoky pilings, gesturing to the flames as they danced at my feet, I ad-libbed, I interviewed, I assessed the possibilities. Not for one moment did I have a slightest idea what I was talking about and never once did I consider that I was in real danger, that the old, encrusted wood holding up the planks beneath my feet might be ready to go. I was too excited, too filled up by the opportunity the fire offered. When I returned to the station the head guy, the toughest bird I ever worked for, was waiting. “Hey,” he said. “You could be a pretty good professional one day.” For maybe the next ten years I lived on the perfume of those words.

Forty years later I was reminded of that as the frenzied Katrina reporters ricocheted around parking lots, clung to makeshift anchors on wind whipped waterfronts, excitedly pointed to windows popping and debris flying as they huddled in small rain choked pockets outside hotels. Long after the cleanup, after the people have returned and rebuilt, those reporters will believe they did something important and lasting today. That in those perilous moments, as they disregarded their own personal safety, as their names were called out and heard in safe and dry homes across the county, they will believe that what they did was lasting and important. It will be difficult for them when they come to realize it was not.

Waiting

We have all the technology. That we do not lack. The tracking devices, the computer generated coordinates, the oddly and cruelly compelling color photographs swirling in evil hypnotic pinwheels on our screens, the live video cameras, the TV reporters windblown, strained, somber. We have seen the residents sad, largely resigned, the automobiles packing the roads out, the lines and lines and lines of those left behind, unable to leave, patiently waiting for admission and for some degree of communal solace inside the Superdome. If we do not live there we can be grateful for where we are, be prayerful for those in the path. And we can acknowledge we are in awe at the evil majesty of this oncoming crushing natural onslaught.

We get the second-by-second updates, hear the most expert information. We can marvel over the sophistication of the vast arsenal of machinery that is able to measure shifts in wind speeds within a tenth of a mile, explain the meaning of the most minute changes, report the arrival time, project the inevitability of the outcome. But despite all the machinery and the ever-growing avalanche of information the truth is clear. We can know everything, but can do nothing. Except offer up our frail human hope that Katrina might make an unexpected, charitable, blessed turn. It is not in our hands. We are crippled before her. We are waiting.

I Think That I Shall Never See...

.. an ego smaller than a tree.

Katie Couric is quoted as saying she "will decide," soon whether to leave NBC and the Today Show to take over at CBS Evening News. Yeah. Murrow, Cronkite, Rather and now Couric completing the connection. The big 4 in relevant, qualified, believable newscasters.

And if Couric doesn't come maybe the bosses at CBS can get Clay Aiken and Paula Abdul to co-anchor and they can sing the headlines for us.

The Other Cheek

Pat Robertson. Is he talking to God here or taking a crap?

Pat has been around a long time. Runs the 700 Club on cable TV, site of many miracles it is claimed, not the least of which is that, whenever he is on, a slot simultaneously appears in the side of the TV sets of all the true believers so they can slide their cash or checks for direct deposit to Robertson's account.

In the earlier days, as I recall, he mostly used to sit on a couch with some white woman and a Negro side kick and they would ask God to save the sinners, heal the sick, and send old Pat money. Harmless enough I thought, and in the great tradition. At least he put on a little show for the dough. In their desperate moments if people who needed an abscess removed or their blindness cured wanted to reach into their pockets and send what little they had to the short guy on TV, instead of suffering through the terrible (often worse) chore of submitting for heath insurance, that was OK by me. Pay for the pray.

If the believer's health problems were not benign, most of Pat's public prayers were. Lots of Jesus stuff, and holding hands on the set, eyes closed in the style. Laughable but only dangerous to the bank accounts of a relative few. Plus, for a moment it gave them a little hope. I am not sure what God's split was, and of course all the folks at home died, but Pat seemed to surely be doing fine. And that was what was IMPORTANT.

However, along the way, Pat seems to have forgotten the difference between being a middleman for God and actually being God Himself. A couple of years ago he took a momentary break from closing his eyes to asking that someone drop a nuclear bomb on the State Department. I am not certain why that would have been his target of choice, except that contributions from the boys and girls there had probably fallen off. Then a little while back Pat declared that feminists encourage women to kill their children, practice withcraft, destroy the capitalist system and become lesbians. If only they would also be willing to drop bombs on the State Department perhaps Pat would have been more forgiving.

Now, just a day or so ago, Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The healer in Pat sees this activity as a way to stop Venezuela from being "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."

It's too bad Robertson has veered away, been diverted from his true mission---the one God handed off to him when He gave him the TV license. So many cancer victims, and amputees, and people with brain tumors will have to bide their time now, waiting, checks or cash in hand, for Robertson's return from saving the world at large. And what they don't have is time.

Maybe there is a way to get him back sooner. Safer. So let’s find a white woman and a Negro man, let's all join hands then, and pray. "Oh God, oh Jesus holy father, bring Pat back to us. I got a pile of ten spots here if you do."

Touch your warm TV screen, and can I have an 'amen.'