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Thursday, December 10, 2009 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM

Sunset at the dam, Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM, December 10, 2009
Sunset at the dam, Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM, December 10, 2009

This was a nice quiet day, much of it spent working at straightening out the mess over at Clippings and Collectanea. I made some headway but there sure is a lot to do to get those pages in order. What a mess!

Night camp

Site 42 - Brantley Lake State Park, 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

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