This is the best I’ve read about the Katrina aftermath (though admittedly I’ve been quite busy this week and have only had a couple of minutes for reading anything), especially when you consider it’s coming from someone who happened to be in New Orleans to attend a paramedic convention. Teresa Nielsen Hayden adds some brilliant annotations and corroborations.

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For those people who could have evacuated but chose not to, I found something very illuminating today: evacuees were forced to either choose not to be evacuated, or to leave their animals behind to starve to death.

Personally, I want to live in a world where the people who are evacuated are the people who would not choose to leave an animal behind.

Scruffy is my only living link to my late husband; I simply cannot imagine ever leaving the little guy behind, nor can I imagine euthanizing him because it was more convenient for some bureaucrat.

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After a truly awful week last week, it seems that there are some rays of hope. First of all, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is finally starting to be addressed.

Second, it looks as though there may be some chances to Save Kepler’s. After filing for Chapter 7, it looks as though there may be some other possible investors.

I truly hope that there is some way out of this.

I emailed Clark Kepler after the store closed and received a reply the following day, thanking me for my kind words.

I hope I can soon buy more books there.

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Today, we decided to go get away from the stressors of the week and drive up to Marin to visit one of our favorite haunts, Sweden House in Tiburon. We sat out on the back deck and had lingonberry pancakes and other yummies.

I looked out over the water and saw a bird swimming. “A duck,” I said (despite the glare and despite the fact that my reading glasses don’t focus at that distance). When going to a restaurant, I wear my reading glasses for the simple reason that I get queasy if my food’s out of focus. Weird but true.

Rick looked at me. “No, that’s a seagull.” I squinted, then saw that it was.

Well, there’s always the Ruby concept of Duck Typing, which I explained. You see, it was acting like a duck….

After that, we went to the Marin French Cheese company and had a small picnic. As we were approaching the picnic area, I saw a group of birds sitting under one of the tree.

“Ducks,” I said.

My mother (the Canadian) said, “No, those are geese.” I looked more closely and saw that they were Rather Large and that I’d been deceived by the brown bodies and dark heads — the majority of geese I’ve seen have been white. I mumbled something about duck typing. Again.

Really, I do know what ducks look like. Honest.

We had some cheese and shared a bit of bread with the birds, including redwing blackbirds. They are so gorgeous in flight.

Some little bright turquose dragonflies darted about, though none were still enough for a photo.

Then, finally, we left for home.

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Occasionally, one gets pointers and tips about Ruby on Rails coding style in the oddest manner…

From IRC (irc.freenode.net, #rubyonrails)

steev: validates_penis_length
patpatnz: steev: actually, validates_length_of :penis
steev: o right…

Puns about constraint checking ensued.

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For those of you not into Flickr, you might have missed some of the great photos amateurs have taken. The ones that have most appealed to me are some of those taken by slight clutter, a Red Cross volunteer. My personal favorite happens to be this bit of serendipity.

May many others find the help they need.

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I really only have one word: wow.

I know some people weren’t able to evacuate because of health or poverty, but I have some thoughts about those who were too stubborn to evacuate.

If you’ve been a city person all your life — as I had been up until I moved to Vermont — you quite literally have no idea How Certain Things Work. And, especially, how bad things can get without infrastructure. I’ve never been stuck in flooding, but I have been snowed in for a week. It’s an analogy, though a flawed one. I had water up to my thighs, but at least it didn’t have bacteria multiplying in it.

Ugh.

I think the Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity are going to need extra help.

Updated to add: Shut up and give makes some great points.

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I was just getting down to my evening (yes, I know it’s after midnight, but hey) reading of blogs when I read over on whump.com that Kepler’s closed today for good.

I’m extremely sad, but I had noticed some of the signs. The other day, mom and I went to Kepler’s, where they were having a “buy three books, get one free” sale. I bought two books on software engineering (from their very lean computer section), mom bought an art book of funky Japanese schoolgirl clothes, and we got Rick the latest from Lois McMaster Bujold.

I started working at Kepler’s on 9/10/01, which means my second day there was 9/11. I can’t think of a more surreal day to work in a bookstore — people came in just wanting to Do Something, to share the fact that they were utterly and completely in shock. Ira Sandperl came and talked to people about peace, as Ira was wont to do. I don’t know if he’s still alive; he was quite old and frail last I saw him.

Clark Kepler is an extremely cool person. In the rush of Christmas season, he’d be in the store, helping everyone. When I had a long register line, he was right there helping with gift-wrapping. He’s another person I’d work for again in a heartbeat (in addition to Marie). I can’t imagine what a heartbreak this is for him and his staff.

Few people, even the locals, realize how influential Kepler’s was and how much change one small bookstore helped cultivate. Ira taught and influenced many people, Joan Baez among them, about peace. If you really looked hard, he and Roy Kepler were the foundation of a great deal of the anti-Vietnam protests that took place in the sixties.

Also, back when the Grateful Dead lived in Menlo Park (about two blocks from where I now reside), they rehearsed at Keplers, though Roy thought they were a bit too noisy. And, of course, even though he will always be thought of as an Oregon writer, Ken Kesey was living in Menlo Park — and frequenting places such as Kepler’s — when his landmark work, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was written, and for good reason: his experience at the local veteran’s hospital was pivotal to the development of the work.

One thing I can say about Kepler’s: it was the only place I’ve ever worked where everything, absolutely everything, I was interested in was useful. Everywhere else I’ve worked, no matter how cool, there were always things that weren’t “relevant” to the job.

May everyone involved land on their feet. I sure know that Clark has some of the best booksellers in the business.

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Today was my last day at Quova. I really think the company is doing some interesting and important work, it’s just that where I needed to be was going one direction, and what they needed was going another.

It all kind of crystallized when I went to BarCamp and realized I was missing a lot of that je ne sais quoi that caused me to move up to the bay area in 1999. It’s not that Quova’s not that kind of place for other people, though.

And so I left what a coworker jokingly called “the cube of infinite sorrow,” (it wasn’t personal, it was a 4-person cube) off for a new and uncharted land. I’ll miss the inflatable T-Rex mascot (named Fluffy).

I thought I’d mention a few things about Quova. What they do: network geography, specifically, where IP networks are located in the world. While that might seem simple, there’s an awful lot of interesting wrinkles.

Of all the CEOs I’ve ever worked for, none have I respected more than Marie Alexander. She’s got that insight into the tech industry, plus a southern charm that I admire.

And where else have you worked where the HR director baked brownies? Every week? And made oatmeal? Thank you Lynda for all those extra details that keeps the place humming.

Mood: Mostly townsville (which will mean something to those of you who’ve seen the defcon scale).

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Tonight, the kick-ass admins at TextDrive completed their server move, so deirdre.net is now in its new home in sunny San Diego.

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