Let's Get Physical

I've gone back to workouts with my personal trainer friend Rose twice a week after an experimental hiatus. The experiment was to see if I could maintain the same level of activity and effort by myself at the gym as I have with her at her gym. With carefully controlled factors such as food intake, degree of exertion, documentation and frequency, the results were very enlightening:

I am a blob with zero self-discipline and a fondness for chocolate.

Hah! So great to have that information! Now I can get back into my regular routine with her, armed with the knowledge that I really can't do it by myself. Great news. Really.

I've also learned that when you're too sore to sit down on the toilet without excruciating pain and imbalance, you're following the program perfectly.

It's not just me---several of my friends torment themselves with her as well. We commiserate about her frequent lies ("Just 10 more, you can do it. Now 10 more.") Hello? That's 20!

And her perky, creative counting techniques ("Excellent! That's four, five...") Wait! I was on eight! Eight, I tell you! For the love of GOD, eight!

We're powerless, mushy, mindless slaves to her, and happily pay for the honor. But actually, once I acknowledged that fact, it was easy to give myself completely to the cause.

And hey, maybe I'll just learn to pee standing up! If it's good enough for the guys, can it really be that difficult?

Sweet Child 'O Mine

Warning: Tirade, Dead Ahead.

I spent the weekend with 563 kids, and I'm tired.

It wasn't a mega slumber party (though my oldest would have loved that it was). I simply had the opportunity to stand back and watch them as they toiled and sweat and stretched their imagination to the farthest limits at my community group's annual coloring contest.

I was, as I always am, amazed at their uniqueness and ripe, distinctive personalities. Yet I was equally stunned by how similar a 4-year-old from one town, background or status is to another that comes from a very different world. Kids, thank God, are just kids.

And I couldn't help but think about Katrina's kids, 372,000 of them students, now displaced and doing their best to attempt normalcy in various states around the country. I closed my eyes and wished with all my might that they could sit right there and color with us, and I thought how deeply precious that kind of innocent pleasure truly is.

It's not just Katrina causing my pause, however. This story about a poor baby being stabbed in New York last week, and this one about children locked in cages has officially turned my melancholy into an animal fury.

Not to mention the recent data on children starving in Africa, which is exponentially more depressing.

I'm not a total idiot. I do understand survival of the fittest, and the concept that to a certain degree the weakest of a species will invariably suffer. But in our species, and in our society, aren't we better than that? Hasn't evolution given us the tools to change that course?

Maybe not, but short of locking them in the house and home schooling until they're 30 (not an option for me, especially where trigonometry factors in) I'm afraid I'm going to hope for a healthy dose of good luck. In fact, I'm counting on it.

Subdivisions

Living in the Midwest, I've learned there are few things that raise the ire of the community more than questioning the status quo.

Most of my neighbors are pretty forward-thinking--I mean, they DID allow the Starbucks to come in.

Eventually.

And the crunchy, independent Coffee Bean is still doing a healthy business after all. There's an IKEA in the works a few miles away, and dollar stores are pretty popular. So let's face it, enormous capital growth and progress is just burgeoning!

But when the public art display we worked on all summer goes to auction in a few days, I'm betting folks will once again want to go back to more familiar territory. The most popular pieces so far have been those with cute little butterflies and our town's name emblazened on it with pink and yellow curly cues.

Alternatively, my favorite piece is from a young artist who used chopped up bits of mirror and lots of black to create a graffiti-esque statement.

True, it wouldn't fit into my end-of-the cul-de-sac, largely beige decor, which is why everyone else seems to pass it by. Admittedly, I will too, when they go up for sale.

And that's the shame of it. While all of us are very busy choosing cabinet colors to emulate the neighbor's latest remodeling project, we're missing out on the intesense opportunity to try something unique, daring or personal. It's like a disease that spreads into your body the older you get and the more established you become. But it means we're all living vanilla instead of looking--at least--for the chocolate drizzle to top it off. And that's the best part, isn't it? The chocolate drizzle?

America The Beautiful

I can't put into words the feelings I have about Katrina and its aftermath just now. But this open letter from Louisiana residents to President Bush is as good a start as I've seen.

Dear Mr. President:
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable. There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again. When you do, we will be the first to applaud.