Author: colter

Greetings from Sunny Santa Monica

I’m typing from my cousin David’s Mac G4 laptop at his apartment. I have a lot of email backed up, so my apologies if anyone still hasn’t heard from me. So far the trip has been stellar. Erika and her friend Amy took me to Sacramento, which was a surprising delight. I have walked across San Francisco (from the Ferry Building to Golden Gate Park) and I should have a great many pictures to post when I get back. I have eaten some spectacular meals with amazing wines, and I’ve already bought far too many records and CDs. Yesterday I drove Highway 1 and 101 to Los Angeles; it was such a beautiful trip, I’ll defer my thousand words to each of the dozens of pictures I’ve taken. Today David and I did the guitar shops on Sunset and took in the scenery at Venice Beach. In a few hours, we’ll head to the Baked Potato. Tomorrow I’m off to the OC to see my friend Tracy. I’ll be driving my enormous rental Buick. Avis was out of compacts, so I got a free upgrade to a land yacht. It has XM Satellite Radio, which was new to me, so I can’t complain. On the trip yesterday I mostly switched between MusicLab and the Loft. Good stuff. That’s all for now. Maybe I’ll update before Sunday, but probably not.

Californy Here I Come

I leave tomorrow for my California vacation. I’m flying Delta, so pray for me. Erika is picking me up at the airport and she’s going to show me around town and the winery she works at in Santa Rosa. Wednesday I’ll rent a car and drive to LA to stay with my rockstar cousin David. I’ll try to send updates during the trip.

Also, Arkansas Times reviewed my new next-door neighbors. Passing grade. They probably didn’t have the refried beans. I’m kidding, the food is good, and the article explains the strange feeling I had about them. They’re originally from the somewhat dilapidated area of east North Little Rock; someone at the Times described the food as ‘truck stop Mexican,” which is perfect. It will make an interesting addition to the standard Hillcrest fare.

Katrina Timeline

Salon has an illuminating timeline on Katrina that, to my mind, somewhat exonerates FEMA and the federal response to the disaster. It points out that Hurricane Katrina didn’t destroy New Orleans, Lake Pontchartrain did. After the storm had passed, there was a widespread feeling that the town had survived and emergency efforts were largely successful. Standard procedures were followed, and if New Orleans had been any other town, everyone would have breathed a sigh of relief and moved on (especially when compared with the devastation in Biloxi and Gulfport). But New Orleans is a city in a bowl, and its levees’ lack of structural integrity has been ignored and swept under the bureaucratic rug for decades.

Much as I enjoy seeing Bush under duress, I have a hard time faulting him for the New Orleans disaster. Sure he demoted FEMA out of his cabinet and put a useless crony in the captain’s chair, and sure he was slow to move on realizing how massive a catastrophe New Orleans truly was, but the flooding was caused by institutionalized denial on a mass scale from local, regional and federal bureaucracies over many years.

Here’s how I see it breaking down:

  • Failure 1 was a failure to prepare New Orleans for an inevitable flood, and that falls on local and state officials, and the federal officials who cut the funding for levee improvement.
  • Failure 2 was poor evacuation planning and execution by the mayor and governor, which again is only considered poor because nobody thought about the levees bursting.
  • Failure 3 was the inability of FEMA to predict that local and regional first-responders would be incapacitated by the peculiarities of the New Orleans infrastructure, namely, broken levees.
  • Failure 4 (the worst, really) was FEMA’s and the governor’s inability to figure out how to get supplies and buses for 100,000 people stranded at the Superdome. Brown’s statement of “We learned about it factually today that that’s what existed” after two days of coverage is pretty inexcusable, as is the miscalculation of turning away the thousands of private citizens who rushed to Louisiana to help.

Am I wrong?

Thoughts on Photography

I’ve been getting some nice compliments on my photography lately, and I have to admit I feel like something of a fraud when someone refers to me as a “photographer.” A photographer, in my mind, is someone who knows how to control light and understands how a camera works. I am not one of those people. I’ve been pondering the schism between the many digital camera photographers who have no idea what they’re doing versus the actual photographers who do. I discovered that the dichotomy resembles that of punk musicians versus “real” musicians. Punk and indie rockers freely and proudly admit that they don’t know the first thing about basic music theory, yet they still create compelling music. Like them, I’m just getting the idea across, and not paying any attention to technique. Heck, I only know what a few of the buttons on my camera do.

As someone who has always approached music from an insider standpoint, I’ve always been a little leery of people who take pride in their ignorance. Now, in the realm of photography, I’m one of them (well, I take no pride, but I’m still ignorant). I guess I’m just too lazy or too busy to sit down and really learn. I wonder if this is becoming something of an epidemic in the world of art as technology makes everything so much easier. I remember an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where there was this tool that sculpted automatically from whatever was in the artist’s mind. No technique required, only the content of the idea. I guess art doesn’t necessarily require technique and training, but with my digital camera I can’t help feeling like I’m cheating.

Assortment

The cover story of this week’s Arkansas Times is a piece by Mara Leveritt about her efforts to write a book detailing the vulnerability of New Orleans to natural disaster. Mara saw it coming, and she had spent much of the last year gathering information and attempting to convince her editor that the story merited development and publication. Numerous sources all saw the impending doom, and they all seemed to breathe unanimous sighs of frustrated resignation at the lack of prevention for the inevitable. Mara’s editor even said that the only way the book would sell is if the disaster actually happened. I wonder how that editor feels now. I can’t imagine what a nightmare these last few weeks have been for Mara (the author of the blogging article that featured me some months ago), who saw it all and predicted much of the details of what we’re seeing on TV. A true 21st Century Cassandra.

Speaking of tragedy, this is the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It’s also Chris‘s birthday. He had a party last night at his mom’s house. In the five minutes following my arrival I sustained about 5 rather nasty mosquito bites on my feet. I stayed indoors for awhile until Chris offered to let me borrow some jeans and shoes (I was wearing shorts and sandals as usual) and a can of Off. A friend suggested that mosquitoes like sweet blood and I reflected on the fact that my intake of cookies and M&M’s is probably greater than most people’s.

Saturday was a pleasant day; I ran my errands and picked up some strings at Millsap Music, some CDs at Arkansas Record/CD Exchange (promo copy of Ok Go‘s new album for $2.50!), and went to the River Market for lunch. I figured I’d just bump into somebody and figure out the rest of my day from there. Sure enough I found the Kennedys and Jamie and Charles. I was about to introduce them when they greeted each other as old classmates at UCA Honors College. Funny. So we had lunch and Jamie and Charles and I decided to run down to Bryant to visit New Day Junktiques, the coolest junk shop in the world.

I should also mention that Pancho’s Villa is now open, next door to my house on Tyler. The cuisine is predominantly Mexican, but also with American South standards like catfish and burgers. It’s the only Mexican restaurant I think I’ve seen that appears to employ no Mexicans. Instead it is operated by, and its clientele mostly consisting of, senior citizens. I can only conclude one of two things here: these are the regulars from their previous location, or I have a lot more old folks in my neighborhood than I had initially estimated. There’s a down-home funky feel to it; more like a rural roadside diner than a mid-town city eatery. It reminds me of Big Daddy G’s in Harrison [1]. It’s small, with lots of plants and figurines, there’s a color-impaired TV in the corner which seems to always be playing Wheel of Fortune [2], and smoking is allowed, so that gives you some idea of the atmosphere. So far the eats have been splendid, with the exception that the first time I went, Katherine had the refried beans, and they tasted oddly of Robitussin. As of right now I’m eating Kathy‘s leftover cheeseburger from last night, and it remains delicious.

Today I don’t know what I’m going to do.

1.) I realize that description helps very few people, but cut me some slack, I’m struggling here. You should be able to intuit some vague impressions of the establishment based purely on the name.

2.) I’ve only been there twice now, but each time countless vowels were purchased and puzzles solved, all to the familiar clicking sound of the Wheel, and the smooth delivery of Mr. Pat Sajak.

3 Down, 1 To Go

Well the latest issue of Nightflying features a small shout-out to me from radio diva Carole Kramer in her column. She was talking about the recent Eric Johnson show and she recounted the Duracell story and credited me as the source. Legend has it that Eric Johnson can hear the difference between Duracell and Energizer batteries when they’re in his footpedals. Even more amazing is the story that Eric once requested that only all-original screws be in place on a vintage Fender amp that he bought from Johnny Adams at Atomic Guitars years ago. Johnny had to cannibalize some vintage screws from another amp of the same era. Eric is one tone-obsessed freak; and it certainly shows in his playing.

Anyway, I’ve now been referenced in Nightflying, Arkansas Times, and Localist, so I have only the Little Rock Free Press to conquer before I can consider myself the king of all freebie Arkansas media.

Somewhat sad to note (but who knows what the future will bring), Localist as a print publication has ceased to be. Word from head honcho TJ Deeter is that it will move into becoming an entirely web-based magazine. Sounds exciting; I just hope that it will come together soon to replace their current, and very lame, website.

NYT Says It All

The New York Times just about sums it up today:

The debate began after officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration’s senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated.

D’oh! So relief efforts are supposed to start local and work their way up to federal. But what if the local authorities are just as paddle-free up the proverbial Shit Creek as the rest of the populace?

Now the question for the feds becomes, how forgivable was that oversight?