Author Archives: floegel

Apocalypse Here

9/29/2005 – 10:23 am

Mid-day Wednesday I was relieving myself against the wall of someone’s house in St. Bernard’s Parish, Louisiana. I was not expressing my displeasure with the homeowner; I have no idea who the homeowner is. Nor is that kind of behavior typical for me. A month after Hurricane Katrina, there wasn’t a working toilet within 20 […]

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Who Pays? Who Profits?

9/20/2005 – 7:06 pm

I’m in Louisiana, in the flood zone. Katrina was here, in many ways is still here. Now Rita is in the gulf, gaining strength. I’m sending this early because I can’t predict where I’ll be Thursday and I doubt I’ll have time to write. While the tragedy of New Orleans has been well reported, there […]

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Unready for Anything

9/15/2005 – 11:42 am

I’ve been spending time in airports and on airplanes recently; I’ve accommodated myself to the security drills, sequestering all metal objects into my briefcase before I pass through security, getting my shoes off and on again quickly, practicing compliance when I’m selected for “additional screening.” Burlington is a non-hub airport, so most of the flights […]

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Freedom Crawls

9/11/2005 – 8:19 pm

I’m in Washington, DC, a city I have not visited since the fall of 2000. Things here are very different from the place I once knew. I remember riding my bicycle on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol; today barriers and fences and police preventing access are everywhere. The fourth anniversary of the September 11, […]

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Two Americas

9/8/2005 – 9:40 am

Events the scale of Katrina and its aftermath stretch the bounds of cognitive thinking so I’m turning to metaphysics to make sense of what’s happening. There are two Americas which exist in the same physical space, but which have only brief spatial and temporal overlaps. Katrina has opened a door and is letting one America […]

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Selfish Ignorance

9/1/2005 – 7:50 am

Now that Katrina has passed through and left misery behind her, should we search for a moral message? Were the burst levees a judgment on the sybarites of New Orleans? Was the devastation of the Gulf Coast a rebuke to seaside casinos? Maybe Katrina was divine retribution to some of the reddest states of the […]

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Something Must Have Happened

8/25/2005 – 8:19 am

In Vermont, you can bring your beer and soda cans and bottles back to the store and get a nickel for each. The deposit law doesn’t cover juice, wine or bottled water, only carbonated beverages. Seems odd, but there it is. Adrienne and I don’t drink many carbonated beverages, so when we have two or […]

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