Too much today to fit in one entry. My illness is gone and things went well. I fulfilled the tasks needed for the information system by 3:00 and went off to do other volunteering. After sitting in the volunteer waiting area for a while, I ended up working for Aramark for the fourth time, but as a result scored a map of the big move that I’d been trying to find all day.

See, starting tomorrow, they are clearing out the Astrodome. The plan is to consolidate everyone from the two big buildings we’re currently using into a third smaller building. Look at the google map. The Astrodome (center) and Reliant Center (huge top building, able to fit about three Domes) are mostly full of people, with some breathing room. All those people will be racked like sardines (cots touching in long rows) into the building labelled “Astroarena”– specifically, just under the two dark gills on the building (one has a corner just to the left of ‘A’ in ‘Astroarena’).

I’m dreading it, and I find it difficult to imagine what economics could be used to justify such treatment of the evacuees. The computer center crew went out for dinner and drinks tonight, and we had a fantastic conversation which suggested an answer. The 3000 evacuees who will be left by Friday are truly the most underprivileged of our society, and are being treated it. Whether by habit or chance circumstance, they have been mostly unable to help themselves get a better life out what happened, and so they are being funneled back into lives just like the ones they left. These are the forgotten, as they were forgotten back in New Orleans, and mostly doomed to remain that way. They will be forcibly shipped out on buses to inner cities only marginally different from the ones they’ve lived in their whole lives.

We hear that hundreds of people are leaving every day, but I’ve never seen them leave. And the stories I have to share are of heroic dedication to helping single evacuees– volunteers spending hours with one person to get them out. Until today, the only sign I saw of the shrinking population was smaller crowds outside. But this afternoon I walked through gaping holes in the Astrodome cot fields, which would have been inconceivable a few days ago.

The number of volunteers has dropped too, so groups I helped with before have been asking me to come back, but I’ve been busy.

I’ve been working on a big information system, built by siderea and maintained by myself and E., a native Houstonian who lives in Carlisle, MA. We spent the weekend inputting all the information we could find, including fliers we picked up at information desks, updates from the Red Cross, and reports from individual (the only reliable source). Across the Astrodome complex, there are five different main information desks, and dozens of helping agencies, all of which get questions from evacuees, sporadic information updates from distinct sources, are constantly making internal changes, and nothing stays in the same place for more than a few days. Everything changes so fast, a bunch of people here are burnt out on information overload, and the Red Cross does everything by paper so it’s totally unequipped to deal. Fortunately, there are over 400 computers here, and two-thirds are laptops, so the problem does have a technological solution. For the past two days, I’ve been spreading the information system around to the various groups (all of which have been very happy to see it). Now I just need to see if I can get any of them to help maintain it.

There’s a disease going around we call “Astrodome flu”. It lasts 48 hours, with symptoms like food poisoning, and volunteers are being sent home. Plenty of people have other things too (like those who share my sore throat, which is clearing up), and many of the rest of sleep-dep’d. But it’s getting better.

We’re now down to around 4500 people– we’ve halved our population in two days.

A lot of people are sick, and plenty stay in bed all day. It’s easy to lose track of time in the Astrodome– the buildings are so huge and the air so conditioned that time seems to stay still (an endless dusk).

And people are getting tired of half-frozen bologna and cheese sandwiches(which are always available, and sometimes the only non-snack option), and Aramark food in general. Yesterday they had sweet-and-sour chicken, and the New Orleaners didn’t know what to do with it. They tried to add tabasco sauce to make it edible, but many just threw it away.

I’ve picked up a bit of a scratchy throat too– which isn’t a surprise, since I don’t pay the hyper-attention to hygiene that this situation deserves, unless I’m serving food. Which I did today, just to keep things real.

Before the information goes out of date, a San Franciscan who went home today maintained an extensive Astrodome blog: http://badgerbag.typepad.com/. Lots of good stuff.

Short entry today– late night setting up a central information repository for all the information centers– see recent posts from siderea, our CMS manager.

Basic identification is done by wristbands: orange for volunteers, pink for Astrodome residents, blue for Reliant Center residents, plus less common colors. This means that if you lose your wristband, you become a non-person. I spent most of yesterday trying to set up a system for evacuees to get replacement wristbands without re-registering, if you can get a Red Cross escort to the Astrodome, and today the system is widely known and officially endorsed. Fascinating.

Security seems to be getting worse. My first night, I walked all the way into one of the main buildings (the Reliant Center) without a hassle. Today they almost wouldn’t let me in, even with my volunteer wristband. There are guards at each entrance, and the number of army people seems to have increased geometrically over the past couple days. About 20 people showed up today to get in, and they were all going to be turned away. One had open lesions on his legs from walking in the water, and it took an hour to get him in. Three of us, including one Red Cross volunteer woman tried to get the group accept in and were told that under no circumstances was anyone being admitted. Later, though, a white male red cross volunteer came, said, “I’m taking these with me.” to the guard, and marched them over to registration.

Inside buildings, my little volunteer wristband is getting me fewer places too. Yesterday a Red Cross person asked me to set something up for him, and when I showed up today to do it at a time when he didn’t happen to be around, I was looked at like a criminal and sent back to the intro volunteering room.

As requested, here are some details about that state of things here at the most expensive relief effort in history. Tell me if it’s useful and interesting. Should I put sustained effort into blogging about the situation down here? I’m aware of one other blog, http://texasctcs.blogspot.com/, which is updated quite frequently.

Let me start with some demographics: I’d guess 95% of the evacuees are colored, about 75% of the volunteers are white, and 95% of the volunteers are from the greater-Houston area. Of the political discussions I’ve been privy to, three or four were among the volunteers and all those were inspired by disgruntlement with Bush; two were with non-volunteer Houstonians, one a Bush disgruntlement and the other disgruntlement at the evacuees and their “feelings of entitlement”.

The configuration of the Astrodome changes daily. Agencies are moved around, sections of the buildings are repurposed, and outside agencies change their levels of presence. But people are leaving daily (we’re down to less than 9000), so I guess they have to be. Rumor has it that they want everyone out by the 18th (which, if it happens, gives me two days to explore Houston!).

Responsibility is given very quickly. At three days, I’m no longer a newbie. I expect to achieve veteran status within the next couple of days. Communication is dreadful. There are multiple organizations handling the same services, without any contact between them. Everyone has a different idea of what’s needed.

But by and large, the necessities work fine. The evacuees are usually happy (children playing, adults smiling) or angry, but I don’t see crying or great extended frustration. Food is very plentiful, and mostly clean. Packaged food is almost always available (I missed lunch and dinner, but I still was able to collect a full meal at 9 pm), and good ol’ Aramark caters the rest. In particular, canned and bottled water and other drinks are always nearby and easy to get.

The evacuees are grateful to us, but unhappy with their lack of freedom, control, and knowledge.

So anyway, come on down– it’s a blast! Volunteer opportunities are endless and diverse, and the Youth Hostel here has plenty of space at $14.95 a night!

On Friday I realized that I could free up the time to volunteer for a couple of weeks. And that was the whole idea behind my giving up teaching for independent coding, so I decided that it was a moral imperative to do so. For once, there’s a real need, and I can help. So I got out of all my responsibilities, and I have two weeks to groove at the big party at the Astrodome.

I’ve been busy getting ready, but it all went well. Work responsibilities are satisfied, play responsibilities are in a reasonably happy state, and if I stay in touch, they’ll all remain that way.

I started this entry on the plane down. I’m very excited. I want to blog for real while I’m here, but don’t know if I’ll have time. I wasn’t even able to find a place to stay the first night.

So I came straight to the dome and did a night shift. I was told that I would never be able to get in, but it wasn’t difficult and I got the nice little Volunteer band without going through any official registration process. I slept on a cot in the clothing sorting room and was jolted awake by the announcement system starting back up, less than four hours later, but I’m still pretty charged. I just need to call the Youth Hostel so I can get one good night’s sleep and a shower.

The system dynamics here are understandably horrible, but better than they are reported to have been a week ago. A call goes out for lots-and-lots of volunteers, and 30 minutes later they have next to nothing to do. A few hours ago, the building I was serving food in had run out while the Astrodome-proper was closing full feeding stations for lack of demand. For approximately two minutes, we were told “Don’t feed anyone but evacuees– we don’t have the food!”, before they realized that we a good deal more food than we needed.

I’m in one of the main computer labs now, in the Astrodome. Very excited. I’ll say more later.

I recently started helping out with the Harvard Square Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Now two weeks in, I am completely intoxicated with the subculture. Lines from the movie, and call-backs, and songs, keep running through my head. I dwell on what happened last Saturday or what will happen next Saturday. I want to analyze every aspect of the culture, and figure out how it all fits together. I realize that it’s just a form of limerence, but it’s a distracting blast right now.

Anthropological Observations

I went to the bookstore yesterday to get gifts for my family, and accidentally bought two books for my self: Understanding Comics and Guide to Getting it On!.

And now I am inspired to begin a new project: A Comic Book Guide to Social Interaction. Other manners books for men, alas, are written for SPs; I want to write a book for geeks that develops a general framework for understanding people and social situations. And the sequential art form is exactly the right tool.

Why should I write it, when I know so little about the subject? Partly to have a project to occupy myself and experiment with during social situations– a reason for existence in the social world. I’ve *read* so much about people in theory (and communication, love, and sex), and I’ve recently developed a craving to dive into the real thing as deep as it goes.

Of course, this will have to sit behind-the-back-burner, because I already have a list of projects for the season (which are progressing beautifully– more on that later), but that’s okay. Besides, I still need to figure out my general theory of social interaction, and learn how to draw.

I’m going to form a club for people who want to make a career of kindness. I lost sight of that goal, but two recent discussions brought it back.

Friday night, I watched Holy Smoke, directed by Jane Campion. I was suspicious of it from the beginning– the synopsis made it sound like a romantic comedy (it’s neither), and it has disappointing reviews. The movie is about the forced cult-deprogramming of an Australian girl who went to India. The perceived hero of the movie switches about 6 times, leaving the viewer wondering what the director is smoking. I feared for the worst, until almost the end, when I realized, “Holy smoke, they did it!”: in one scene, when the characters are raw-est, the movie precipitates out of this confusion something at the core of the intersection of erotic desire, spiritual desire, manipulation, and the human condition. I think the reviewers largely miss it.

At the height of the manipulation, one main character writes “BE KIND” on the forehead of the other. At the end of the movie, those words become the codename for the synthesis that might be found hidden behind spiritual infatuation and cynical disillusionment.

The friend I watched “Holy Smoke” with was pre-med student until a few days ago. She wanted to be a doctor (a psychiatrist) because she wants to help people. She put hundreds of hours into studying for the MCAT, struggled through classes populated with money-minded cut-throats, and she’s finally ready to apply to medical school. She went to a seminar on writing personal statements for med school applications, during which some of the worst of her classmates claimed to be doing it all for the same utopic reasons she had. When she got to writing in her personal statement why she wanted to be a doctor, she realized that she had nothing to say. I told her that I didn’t think there was a profession out there to do what we want.

All of which is to say that its so easy to get caught up in the tactics of beneficence, when every tactic (or religion or profession) is its own end. The kindness club would be a meeting place for the people behind the tactics, for support in remembering our deepest intention, and to cooperate to fulfill each others’ best laid plans.