Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The Beauty of Blogs

I am very appreciative of you who read my blog. It’s really wonderful that you take the time to read my weekly messages and occasionally let me know you like what I have to say. So, in case I have not said it before, Thank you!

I have tried to make my entries meaningful and thought-provoking in some way, with a little whimsy tossed in. However, I am trying to beef up my readership, so I was looking at events and people that make the biggest headlines. What do they have that people want to read?

A quick look at the “top news” revealed devastating storms, changes in international leadership and the Kardashian’s Christmas card. WHAT? Seriously? The Kardashian’s? What is it about those kooky (my description) family that makes them so irresistible to otherwise normal people? Now that I am a seasoned blogger (1 year and two months!), I was curious as to the type of blog that Ms. K, et al, would produce, so after a half a dozen (irritating) clicks, I finally managed to find it. “It” was, disappointingly yet expected, some flashy photos of herself, the fam and a few other links to all things K. Really? Is that all there is?

Blogging is really a wonderful thing. It allows the famous to the unknown, the knowledgeable to the goofball, the profound to the radical to say something to anyone with an internet connection. That does lead to a conundrum (I have been dying to use that word in a sentence all month!) of easily obtaining free advice and information, but potentially not truthful, valid or safe to employ. There is no Accuracy gauge on any site, but those of us who blog to help others – however oblique and convoluted the message often is! – really do try our best to give you, as our momentary audience, something that is worthy of your time and your consideration.

Which brings me to this. Seasoned journalists are being sorely disappearing as more news media are down-sizing and putting news journalists in unemployment lines. I can’t imagine an LA Times without Steve Lopez or Bill Plaschke! It’s tragic because these are people with their eyes on the world for many years, often discovering crime and injustices where no one had looked before. Look at Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s opening of Watergate, or, for those in Southern California, the City of Bell salary scandal, brought to our attention by a team of twelve journalists from the LA Times. It was their tenacity and bravery that brought these issues to the public’s attention.

Blogs, while no replacement for that caliber of journalistic investigation, can help people. Blogs can prod, enlighten and entertain. Thankfully, some of those vivid analytical journalistic minds have turned to blogs and continue to speak to us electronically. And, for small-time bloggers like myself, I try very hard to bring things that are newsworthy and important, especially in the area of emergency preparedness.

So, read on, dear reader. I will continue to blog as long as there is something worth telling you, and hopefully help you, too. And it is OK, if you wander over to Ms K’s blog. We all need an escape once in a while. Even into that world of make-believe.

Blog On! Oh, and don’t forget to check all your batteries this week. I bet they are on sale...

Monday, December 19, 2011

Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore – Thank Goodness!

Don’t get me wrong. I love Kansas. In fact, my mother was born in Coffeyville and I still have many family members who live there. If you have not been there, you really should go there some summer. It holds the largest piece of untouched prairie grassland in the country*. Standing in those grassy fields will let you feel nature in which native people thrived and early travelers encountered as they drove their wagons westward.

This morning Kansas was visited by a snow storm that is currently dumping several inches of havoc, especially in the southwest part of the state. Depths of over a foot are expected in many places, with gusty winds whipping those unique ice particles across highways and reducing visibility to practically zero. In short, no one is going anywhere any time soon.

I have now lived in California for over 20 years and even though I grew up in Michigan (complete with “snow days,” digging my car out of the driveway with a tractor, driving through blizzards, and shoveling snow for hours...), now I can barely survive a short walk to my car when the temperature dips below 50! So, truthfully, my chances of survival there are slim to none, with or without Toto. How do those hardy Kansans make it through something as severe as this? Well, one thing I can tell you is that they are definitely prepared for harsh weather. Whether it is a tornado blowing houses on witches, or snow drifting 6-foot high walls across highways, they know what to do. Been there, done that.

It is one of the things that we as emergency managers struggle against all the time. It is easy to get people to get prepared for something that they encounter regularly. In Kansas, for example, it is common for houses to have storm cellars for seeking shelter from tornadoes. In lieu of that, people know to seek shelter in low, inner floors, often in bathtubs where people have saved themselves. You can also bet that cars also carry a shovel, some chains and possibly a bag of salt in the trunk during the winter. Their survival depends on being prepared for these things and they know it.

Which gets me to my point (FINALLY, Sue...)... Getting people to prepare for things they have never or rarely seen or experienced is very difficult. A recent poll of students on campus found that most were not worried about nor prepared for earthquakes. Few were old enough to remember the Northridge earthquake that was the last quake to give the region a good shake. Even though they have seen images of Haiti, Chile, New Zealand and Japan in recent years, those are things that happen elsewhere. Not here. No experience with that, so it doesn’t exist.

So, this is what drives me. I don’t really want to be the Chicken Little with all that shouting about falling skies, but I do care about others. I really want them to be prepared, just like those Kansans. I want us to be prepared so that when something does happen, we can simply pull something out of the trunk. Dig ourselves out and go on because there is no place like home. Right, Toto?

*To “experience” a walk across the prairie, I highly recommend reading “PrairieErth” by William Least Heat-Moon. Long, but worth the journey.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Anticipation of the Big Slugger

Anyone who is not a big baseball fan, and especially not an Angels fan, may not be too excited about this, but Albert Pujols is leaving St. Louis for the Big A. This is seriously great news for the Angels, but especially for fans, even moderate ones like myself. I am not one of those fans that dresses and possesses everything Angels, like jerseys, jackets, hats and (“Give it up for...”) the Rally Monkey, but I love the sound and rhythm of the game and enjoy sitting in the stadium with a few thousand similarly-minded people.

I have sat near “those fans,” however, and there is something unmistakably exciting about being in that sphere of semi-craziness. One woman, who I would have guessed to be the least likely to fall into this category OUTSIDE of the stadium, was clearly a one-person cheer squad INSIDE the stadium. She had on an Angels sleeveless t-shirt, but with designer jeans, high heels and fashionably coiffed hair. Even in her 60’s, she was obviously pretty fit, petite and surprising for her size, a huge set of pipes. Even at our elevated location (READ: Cheap seats), her interaction with the players and conversations about their actions on the field were not diminished in the slightest. In fact, I swore that one of the out-fielders on the far side of the field turned his head our way after one of her spicy admonishments.

She was not content, though, to just interact with her Angels. No, in fact, she interacted with everyone around her and expected you to join in. When a home run was hit, she slid up and down the aisles to high five half the people in Section 536. I thought she’s hit her pinnacle when late in the game and it had started get cool, she put on her premiere Angels jacket, with her beloved Bourjos’ name on the back. But no, with the Angels needed it most, she whipped out her Rally Monkey in the top of the 9th, and before you could say, “Give me a banana,” the Angels drove home two runs to take the lead and win the game.

You can be sure there were at least two rounds of high fives for that one.

It is really exciting to be in these situations where someone is so excited and so “into” something that they infect you with that enthusiasm. I wasn’t ready to dish out $150 for a personalized Angels jacket and whatever it was for a Rally Monkey (however obviously powerful that animal is...), but I think it was fun to be there and share the bit of craziness during a really fun game of baseball.

I really hope that someone near you can give you that electric rush of their unchecked spirit. I hope she can enthuse you with desire of doing something fun and even worthwhile. Like starting your emergency preparedness kit. I’m just saying.

Go Angels!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

One Square At A Time

It is often difficult to see how you, as one person, can make any difference at all. We’ve all heard that “one person” importance phrase in some form or another, but rarely can one truly visualize what that looks like.

Well, my friends (known and unknown to me), I can now say that I have not only seen it, I was a part of it. This past weekend, I joined a group of remarkable women who were crocheting 3-inch squares (8-centimeter squares, for those metrically advanced). Hundreds of them, in varying hues and patterns. Individually, of course, it looked like the tail end of a summer camp craft project, with seemingly no focal point.

Then I saw it. Laid out on a table, I saw them, coloring the gray table, taking shape, rising above its individual pieces. I saw the sky and clouds, I saw the great orange balloon, symbol of Orange County and the Great Park, like the one hanging resolutely outside. Slowly, beautifully, those tiny squares were becoming much more than the sum of its parts.

To put this into perspective, this is the work of an uncommon genius. Thinking WAY outside the box, my lovely friend does this craft for herself, for others but, more, for the community, places far outside herself. Her work has covered cars, animals (just frames, not real ones, of course...), floors and walls. This particular work of art (approximately 8-foot by 20-foot) will soon be a “cozy” to be wrapped around one of the stately 30-foot date palms just outside her studio.

As a whole you can easily see the image as it was intended, all colors in the right place to create the cozy's big picture. Unusual, certainly... I mean covering a full size palm tree in yarn!? But there it was, a single piece of stunning art.

So this is how it works. Any project, no matter how difficult or daunting or just so unpleasant, you just can’t start, really can get done. You start with one little thing, then keep going, piece by piece, until suddenly you are there. Like your emergency kit – You put it together, item by item, then before you know it, you are prepared!

You can get yourself prepared for disasters, or anything really. You just need to start with one little three inch square. It can be done. I’ve seen it.

View the artwork of Amy Caterina at: http://freerangeamy.com.