Hurricane Rita: Preparations are underway at txyankee‘s for the imminent landfall of Hurricane Rita, now a Category 4 in the Gulf of Mexico. The first Rita-related casualty in Houston occurred late last night as txyankee performed battery inventory and accidentally dropped a C cell on my big toe. Near miss, near miss! Even funnier was the response I received from the lads on asking how large a generator I could get for $150, “One just powerful enough to plug a blender into. You can make margaritas!” A great idea, now what about wireless internet access?
Alright, enough slapstick. Mandatory evacuations have been called for New Orleans and Galveston. Houstonians, meanwhile, begin to worry/panic and employ themselves in various stages of preparedness including frantic shopping, boarding up windows, and planning pathways of evacuation. Strangely enough, txyankee’s Stepfordian neighborhood is located right by a hurricane evacuation route.
Houston Hurricane Evacuation Route Map
A number of locals called or emailed me to ask if I’m evacuating again and what should they do. This is my advice, with which I may start a nationally-syndicated column known as Dear Hurricane Girl,:
- Watch the hurricane’s path, strike probabilities and intensity,
- listen to what your local officials say about protection and evacuation,
- buy necessary provisions as we are right now (like liquid propane gas for the grill and lots of water),
- shore/board up your house. Be warned that plywood is getting scarce in and around Houston right now.
In the end, if you fear the worst, take everything that is important, place it in your car and go as far from here as you possibly can, especially if you have friends who will take you in. Just remember to breathe and stay hopeful through the experience.
txyankee just called to let me know that local home stores are nothing short of pandemonium, and that there are no generators to be had. Now, we concentrate on stocking up on grillables and pet food.
Are You Ready? – FEMA’s list of preparedness strategies from checklists to shelter
—
Shell Contact During And After Rita: Shell offices in Houston are closed for the rest of the week. My boss just called to ask what my plans are for this hurricane. His next tasks are to get all of our new computers at Two Shell Plaza in downtown Houston moved to interior offices and to secure our Houston facilities. We didn’t know whether to laugh or … to laugh some more.
Should Shell employees want the status of our facilities and employees during and after the upcoming storm, they are asked to call the Facilities Status Line at (713) 241-2005 or the EP Employee Line at (281) 544-2436. Best of luck to all of you! Please stay safe – we’ve done it once, we can do it again.
—
Light, Then Heavy, And Light Again: All is surreal. While frustration gallops in and out of center stage – even the meager plans that started to take effect a few days ago are tentative again – the ethereality is staggering. I respect Bill Murray, but not enough for us Katrina evacuees in Houston to star in our own version of Groundhog Day. Other evacuee friends and I may ride out this hurricane in our respective new homes (be they friends’ places or hotel rooms) or get in our cars and drive some more … what of those in shelters who are forced to move again? The prospect of another hurricane has to be toughest on those evacuees in Houston at the mercy of public aid. If they don’t go to Arkansas, as per Red Cross orders, they are on their own.
Mom called to tell me she’s thinking about me and that she expects my strength to shine through at this time. The dichotomous Hindu-scientist in her opined, “Perhaps this is when you work off your paavam (spiritual debts) from previous lives.” That’s one way to think about it.
While on the topic, does it mean something that the very first song on my iPod is Like The Weather by 10,000 Maniacs? And that I was practically skipping down Carondelet St. to that song on the Friday before the evacuation of New Orleans? It’s all my fault.
—
A Take On Reconstruction From Grand Forks: Scientist friend, Jeffrey, lived in Grand Forks at the time of their disastrous flood and went through some of the same things as NO evacuees. He writes from gay Paris (full comment here):
We lived for a month in neighboring communities, not really knowing when we could return to even see our homes. Nobody could confirm what kind of damage occurred to their respective homes, so there was the very distinct feeling of floating in limbo, a prolonged period of shock. When we returned oy, what a mess. The first thing to remember in the aftermath is: buy gallons of bleach, tall rubber boots, and watch out for infection. My parents had 7 feet of raw sewage in their basement …
To me, the thing that made the renovation possible was really grass-roots community spirit. Everybody seemed to look at their neighbor, who was also wading through shit trying to pull together some semblance of normality in what was once home, and just ask if they wanted some help. You were exhausted and shocked at the situation, but you knew, so was everybody else. I don’t remember a large scale group-hug organized by the politicians, but neighbor [helped] neighbor, and that made the reconstruction possible. So watch your neighbors back, and give him or her a hand even when you might feel too tired to do so. The shared experience will pull you back up.
—
Emile Francis’s Sousaphone Recovered!: (Thanks for the tip, Endoking!) Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle reported back on the status of the stolen minivan and antique sousaphone that belong to Emile Francis, a New Orleans evacuee in Houston. Houston police recovered the stolen van; the thieves hadn’t done a thing to the horn, fondly named Czar Sasha. I’m thrilled for Mr. Francis; good things do happen!
Y’all c’mon up heah! We have space, beds, water and other consumables.
Since you are used to heat our ridiculous temperatures (88 today) shouldn’t phase you.
The offer is sincere and nonrevokable. Get out of that circus for a while!
now that sousaphone is some good news!
Hey! Your mom is lots of yucks–man I love her and I’ve still not met her. Remember the gita; devotion is one of the yogic paths to liberation, and it sure does seem like ma’s got it goin’ on Hindi-style. I’ve been deep in a point-by-point translation of the Heart Sutra from buddhism and I’m here to say, if you can’t free yourself from suffering, listen to your muddah. Shout out from the south side of Paris (rive gauche) to Maitri’s Mum! Signing OFF.
Jeffrey
wow…. I have never seen a hurricane go from Category 1-5 so quickly. Global warming IS happening.
And félicitations à Emile pour la récouverte de sa sousaphone!
is recouverte a word?
I also just thought: how can you not be a dichotomous hindu-scientist with the whole purusa/prakrti hanging over your head? I mean, really can one really deal with the whole sankyha gig and not be a scientist? And if Ma’s not into the whole sankhya thing…oops. But it’s still impossible (unlikely) to be both a hindu and a scientist and not have some deep feelings about the a duality of nature and then a subsequent desire to reach a transcendent unity beyond that nature. It’s just like, logical in the most hindi way I can think of. Geek over and out of the stream of consciousness.
Jeffrey
Andrea Рrecouverte is a word, but it means covered. I believe the word you search for is retrouv̩, as in retrieved.
***
Jeffrey – I’ve been waiting for the day that you and I have philosophical discussions on my blog and it is here. Celebrate good times, mon ami!
That said, it’s Hindu, not Hindi. Also, if my mom hears you talk of this sankhya stuff, she’s going to shake her head and say, “Tsk, tsk. Poor boy’s got so much to learn.” For mom is an advaitin, no duality for her or me, for that matter. I’ll get back to this in a moment, but first:
1) Yes, mom believes in both forms of yoga as paths to mukti (moksha), bhakti (devotion) and jnana (knowledge), but understands that devotion is useless without knowing first. Once you know the truth, a loyalty towards it is more meaningful. Hence, her study of Vedanta and sharing it with me. However, the main point of disagreement between mom and me happens to be bhakti. I prefer to live my knowledge of the truth than ritualize it; for instance, my love of rocks, animals and nature are prayers to me. Abstract, but it works. Mom prefers to know and then concretize/ritualize. She’s not wrong, but my argument is that by ritualizing, she promotes it to those who don’t know first. Does that make any sense?
2) Suffering is maya, but in my case, it’s more straightforward than that. I don’t have to listen to my muddah to know that lots more people than me suffer and in a very realistic, non-illusionary way. It’s depressing, but as Marty Feldman (as Igor in Young Frankenstein, one of the best movies ever made) wisely said, “Could be worse, could be raining.” *thunder* *lightning* *showers* Instead, I listen to my inner comedian (which, in a not-so-oblique way, is a form of zazen, huh?)
Back to dualism and Hindu-scientist: You don’t have to be a dualist in order to be a Hindu and a scientist as long as you understand that dharma is the conflating factor. In this life, it is our dharma to seek out the visceral truth and see it as a manifestation of the unified, undivided whole. Advaita does not exclude objectivity; additionally, when one gets to very small-scale (your area) and very large-scale, does one see a disconnect between Purusha and Prakriti? No. I’ll have to send you my paper on Iswara – the one that researched the unity of creative, material and energetic cause.
Being a Hindu and a scientist displays the difference between nirvana and moksha. Both are liberation, but one is nothingness while the other is everythingness. There is a subtle difference – living this life doesn’t lead to shunyata, i.e. nothing.
We have to look away from the classical, linear and western Christian underpinnings of science to see that all does not lead to nihilism. This is why I like being a student of Vedanta and a scientist – there’s so much more to look forward to!
Wisconsin (or Barcelona) must be sounding pretty good right about now!
How about it?
You’ll want to get a snack for this one……..OK? OK.
I’m just figuring out french and you begrudge me hindu vs hindi? Oy. And I refute in desperation that she is most likely a hindi speaker? I know about advaitism, and the whole modern philosophy system in vedanta; but last night I could only remember samkhya and the division, when for the life of me I really was just trying to remember the name Sanskara for kicks. The samkhya call was still a dig, as you should know from your own link that the name advaita defines itself as “not two”. And “both” forms of yoga?? Tsk, tsk yourself and go back and read: “karma-karma-karmakarma karma (yoga) chameleon…”, and raja yoga, there are more than two in the gita!
In my opinion, all yogas are devotions: devotion to mind, to action, to wisdom, and to god (raja, karma, jnana, bhakti). Without devotion, there is no union, no yoking, no yoga. And they’re all leading to the focal point of release into the fullness of everything. The buddhist just says they lead into the fullness of emptiness (mu), by the way. You mother has her own personal path of devotion and you have yours, sure. But you know that ‘jnana’ is wisdom as well as cognitive acquisitions. And those devoted to god expect that in time, with true devotion wisdom will peek in there, and one will “know” as you say.
And you know that maya is different than suffering too, so don’t trivialize that one on me. Maya is the veil and has a lot more meaning than suffering.
I believe, as I’ve stated above, that I know you don’t need to be a dualist to be a Hindu-scientist. However, a scientist would likely have spent time studying a portion of his or her backdrop of being Hindu, and very quickly would see that even Advaitism is entrenched in a long history of dualism, and its own transcendance to non-dualism. And the fact that a system of belief is defined as ‘not that’ engenders its own metadualism. It just means your more familar with the splitters, even though you yourself are a lumper. Lumper. And then you should just laugh because some caucasian from NoDak is spouting off to you about the details of Vedanta!
As for your statement about being a Hindu and a scientist explaining the difference between moksha vs nirvana…WTF? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunyata
Ah, I don’t think this word it means what you think it means. It means mu.
Ah, vedanta _is_ one of the most classical, linear underpinnings of science. Most westerners just don’t know it. How about ‘zero’? And blaming the christians in a non-sequiteur is a little weird and ignores a lot of the history you’re proud of.
Finally, from your link:
“Advaita Vedanta has influenced modern scientists. Erwin Schrödinger claimed to have been inspired by Vedanta in his discovery of quantum theory.”
Wishing you the best, hope you enjoyed your snack!
Jeffrey