The Aftermath: May 24, 2013

On May 20, 2013, a violently rotating cumulonimbus tuba, a half-mile wide, churned through my Oklahoma City suburb, destroying two elementary schools, a hospital, the post office, and over 1000 homes. Twenty-four people lost their lives so far, many children, in the F-5 tornado. This entire area of the city has been cordoned as people work to rescue, recover, restore.

How does a community recover? I have some political observations from ground zero regarding our society and human nature I’d like to share before we forget and shove this disaster, like all others, into the dustbin of history.

I can remember debating with liberal friends, as a libertarian, whether any good would happen without the federal government forcing it. Their argument was if we did not take taxes and redistribute wealth, people would starve, chaos and crime would reign, the elderly and sick would be denied medicine. You simply cannot trust people to care about others, left to their own devices.

I argued that, in the vacuum created by the absence of government, charities, church, business, and individuals with initiative would rush in. And that is exactly what has happened here in Moore, OK. Yeah, I want to gloat and shout “Behold!” However, to be completely fair, I have not heard or seen any federal government presence here. It may exist somewhere on paper, and I understand the POTUS is going to be swinging by for a photo op today. Good for him. I hope he sees what I see.

Minutes after the tornado passed, my cousin emerged from the cellar to find total destruction of his neighborhood, including the Plaza Towers Elementary School, one block away. Parents and neighbors ran toward the school to get to the children. My cousin, who has owned a small, successful, one-man plumbing company his entire adult life, used his functioning backhoe to clear a road into the school for the first-responders and their vehicles. No one asked him to do it or paid him to do it. Another neighbor with a 4-wheeling jeep, modified for “mudding,” transported injured children to medical facilities, many times, back and forth, working all night.

A woman in Mississippi, a Katrina survivor, drove a U-Haul of supplies to Oklahoma, arriving yesterday. In a television interview, she said she remembered the kindness of Oklahomans during her disaster and felt she had to reciprocate. Many semi-trucks from all over have arrived in the last few days. I know because I am still on the email list for a Boy Scout troop my boys belonged to, and every few hours a new notice pops up for a different service opportunity. The boys unloaded 27 pallets of water and medicine at a Catholic church, then helped distribute food at a Baptist church, then picked up debris along one street, some headed to the animal shelter to wash lost dogs…finally the Scoutmaster, overwhelmed with notices and logistics, told the boys to plug in wherever they wanted and to just have any adult sign off when they’re done.

Also, minutes after the tornado roped back into the sky, OKC residents lined up for miles in their cars at local television stations to drop off donations of water, diapers, and shoes. Many stayed to organize the mountains of donated goods. It reminded me of the Murrah Building bombing. The news reporters would announce a need (gloves), then 30 minutes later would report “okay, enough with the gloves, people, now the need is blankets.”

Examples of individual initiative are simply too numerous to mention here. However, I do want to note that Thunder basketball star Kevin Durant immediately donated 1 million dollars, and other celebrities have followed suit. Benefit concerts are planned for this weekend.

Every church in Moore, Oklahoma City, and surrounding towns, and many more across the country have sprung into action. The closest thing we have to a mega-church in Moore let a tent city spring up in their parking lot. (This church was also the Red Cross headquarters for the parents seeking their missing children in the elementary school.) An insurance company (Allstate) is feeding up to 20,000 a day from that parking lot.

Did I mention the other local businesses? Restaurants flung open their doors offering free meals to displaced, first-responders, and those simply without electricity. Chick-Fil-A (remember them? The so-called “Haters” of Gays) have donated tens of thousands of backpacks and teddy bears to the elementary school children of Moore (in addition to the free meals). A local funeral home will be doing all the funeral services free of charge. Other private citizens donated all the funeral plots needed. Jostens immediately announced they would set up tables early at the graduation ceremonies of the three Moore high schools to distribute free caps and gowns to graduating seniors who lost theirs. Tide’s semi-trailers rolled into the Wal-Mart parking lot where they set up washing machines and dryers for people to wash their clothes. I noticed planes pulling banners across the sky today, communicating phone numbers to file insurance claims. Yeah, evil business – you just can’t trust them to care about their communities. Ha. And frankly, if they were not financially healthy, they could do none of this, when it became necessary and smart to do so.

What about private charities? They’re everywhere. Newscasts are now running lists where “you, too, can volunteer.”

One interesting opportunity has risen – local government doesn’t have the right equipment to clear brush and debris in soggy ground conditions. Volunteers have been asked to drag brush from the fields to the streets where city government can handle it from there. I’m trying to remember another instance when “government” sought and utilized “volunteer” workers, who weren’t paid (you know, hired for life, given overly generous benefits and inflated salaries compared to the private sector, etc.)

I want to be fair in my assessment of the federal government. I asked my husband if he’d seen any sign of them yet. He said he saw two FEMA shirts in the background of a tv news shot (I wonder if they will run into town and claim credit for anything good that happened strictly by virtue of existing. We all know people like that, right? I exist, therefore good happens, and I deserve credit for all good that happens.). Then he launched into the old Katrina story about FEMA stopping business-donated water headed into New Orleans, simply because they didn’t request it. I don’t know if it’s true. My only point is I have not seen or heard of them DOING anything important yet.

Additionally, I fully expect our elected officials to do everything they can to RECLAIM our tax money in this situation. I don’t think this compromises my libertarian beliefs because people forget – it was our damn money to begin with, before federal government stole it and put bureaucrats, politicians, and wheeler-dealers in charge of whether we get it back or not.

What does government really do? Make policy. Many are demanding that all public schools be outfitted with underground tornado shelters. They are unaware that the school board in Moore announced Tuesday a local bond proposal to do this very thing. We don’t need the federal government telling us what to do and punishing us if we don’t do exactly what they decree. We understand tornadoes and shelters better than it EVER could. Can you imagine how long it would take to get done if the feds were involved?

I do believe there are needs, there will always be needs, and an evolved society should meet them. I just wholeheartedly disagree that federal government is the correct mechanism to do this. In fact, they have been a disastrous choice in the past to try to fix any problem. So prove me wrong.

In closing, many ask why we dumb Okies would want to live here. Look around me. Despite the federal government’s best efforts to destroy individual initiative, business, church, and private charity throughout the last 50 years, I’m surrounded by a community of heroes from those very segments of society. Why the hell would I want to live elsewhere?

It Really Is Great

I almost did not go see The Great Gatsby this opening weekend due to critic Rex Reed’s scathing review. But, in the Hollywood sea of crap – raunchy comedies (that I find painfully unfunny), big-action flicks (painfully boring), superhero rehashes (painfully stale), why not check this out for myself? And I’m so glad I did, because I found it perfect in its faithful execution of Fitzgerald’s brilliant novel for the non-reading masses.

I held my breath as the gorgeous words of the novel itself, literally, were enmeshed into background shots, liquefying in the rain, or flurrying about as snowflakes. The two, book and movie, merged in my mind, and the images projected on the screen before my eyes were exactly like the ones in my imagination when I reread the novel last year.

I honestly marveled at the scene introducing Daisy, the flighty, vapid, ethereal creature at the center of the story. In the novel, she lounges on a couch in a lavish circular room with ridiculously long billowing curtains…as if she is floating among clouds, an unreachable goddess…and the symbolism as Gatsby’s unattainable love interest is crystal clear. This movie pulled off THAT scene and many, many more. Remarkable. Amazing. Eye candy!

I remember reading the scene of the party in the love-nest apartment of Myrtle (the mistress of Daisy’s husband), which is the second time in narrator Nick Carraway’s life that he’s been drunk, and thinking: I don’t believe I’ve ever read a more accurate rendering of the feeling of drunkenness with its jumbled snapshots of debauched behavior processed in a stilted way by the brain , asinine and nonsensical conversations, the fixation with a weird object in the room, the utter social disconnect of one’s self as he watches himself “within and without” the drunken drama.

Fitzgerald wrote: “People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away.”

(By the way, this is pretty important because Gatsby has become wealthy as a bootlegger, transferring this sad, empty experience to everyone else. Everyone’s missing human connections and distorting reality…not just Jay Gatsby.)

The movie superbly interpreted this party scene for film, right down to the abrupt, one-sentence, shock ending, which it conveyed visually as a slow-motion slide into a frozen frame. Nailed it!

And, the parties… The book gave details such as the number of crates of oranges and lemons delivered to Gatsby’s house each week to be used carelessly as garnishes in the drinks. Gatsby’s parties ARE extravaganzas, and the movie captured every crazy, glorious, mind-boggling detail in 3-D.

My favorite literary symbol in the novel was the glowing green beacon on Daisy’s dock across the bay, which Gatsby stared at each night, as he wished he could capture and possess the radiant dream of a life with her. Even this detail is enthusiastically featured.

Can you imagine my disappointment to find that The Great Gatsby has only received a 48% approval rating on a prominent compilation movie review site? Half of the critics who have seen this movie hate it??! I read negative descriptions like: “rowdy, cluttered adaptation,” “colors as bright as those in a detergent commercial,” “garish glitz,” “a 1920s soap opera,” “style over substance”…have these people read the book? Did they know Gatsby threw big parties? Did they know why and how vital to the story they are? These parties are the shining realization of the American Dream, the symbol of success, waste, carelessness, empty connections. They are supposed to be rowdy and chaotic (one of the greatest moments in literary history occurs amidst that chaos when “we” chat with Gatsby through the narrator-character for 15 minutes and do not realize who he is!). The parties themselves are obviously “style over substance” as the host has not one true friend in attendance. I’m scratching my head here, people!

“Fails to connect,” “I couldn’t care less about these rich folks throwing the bash”…hmmmm. Oh-kay. Sad that people regarded as film experts did not understand the MAGNITUDE of Gatsby’s delusion regarding Daisy, represented by the MAGNITUDE of his gestures. The parties were for her…part of the plan to get her. Are we that frickin’ stoopid? Should the preview include a request that you bring your brain to the movie theater with you, that some higher-order thinking just might be required? The haters are as shallow as the throngs of people who show up every night for Gatsby’s parties.

When F. Scott Fitzgerald died, he believed himself and his novel a failure. Over time, the novel became required reading in high schools across America, eventually emerging as a top contender for the greatest American novel ever written. Maybe time, too, will judge less harshly Baz Luhrmann’s beautiful masterpiece.


First impressions of Daisy...


Nick Carraway having a blast at Myrtle's...