Saturday, January 3, 2009 - Charlie's Transmission, Carlsbad NM
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Waiting for Charlie, Carlsbad NM, January 3, 2009
North Canal Street is the main drag through Carlsbad and traffic is constant and close and a bit noisy when the young whipper snappers show off their new glass packs.
What goes around comes around. I seem to remember a day not so long ago when I was one of those young whipper snappers with new glass packs and oh what fun it was running up and down Main Street showing them off. Somehow they seem louder now and a bit annoying.... why is that?
Night camp
Parking lot - Charlie's Transmission, Carlsbad NM
Disaster and the Failure of Authority
Disasters are almost by definition about the failure of authority, in part because the powers that be are supposed to protect us from them, in part also because the thousand dispersed needs of a disaster overwhelm even the best governments, and because the government version of governing often arrives at the point of a gun. But the authorities don't usually fail so spectacularly. Failure at this level requires sustained effort. The deepening of the divide between the haves and have nots, the stripping away of social services, the defunding of the infrastructure, mean that this disaster—not of weather but of policy—has been more or less what was intended to happen, if not so starkly in plain sight.
The Uses of Disaster Rebecca Solnit, Harpers.org, September 9, 2005