How to find your bunny
A few months back we acquired a rabbit. It is a show rabbit not meant to be eaten, and is pretty cute. Our granddaughter likes it a lot. We let it run around our yard, and its white fur with brown spots makes it look a lot like a living soccer ball as it bounces around. Unfortunately, a bored bunny can be a bad bunny, and last week it found a spot where it could escape the fence. So the rabbit is gone and the 7 year-old is distraught. It took us a week to get to the stage of putting up signs on light poles. Granddaughter and I went around taping them to the poles. As we were walking along a neighbor who had seen one of the first signs drove up and asked if we were looking for a rabbit. He had seen it in the yard across the street from him, two doors down from us. He had stopped pruning his trees and come looking for us to tell us. We searched and found nothing.
About dusk, rabbit active time, we went looking again and there she was in the next door front yard. The three of us surrounded the bush and she was reclaimed. Hooray! A neighbor whose name I still don’t know went out of his way to reunite us with our rabbit. That is really special these days, and makes me long for the days growing up in Kansas when I knew everyone in a two-block radius from my house.
The rabbit is back in her hutch scarfing pellets and Timothy hay. The hole under the gate is blocked, and all’s right with the world, at least right here. It takes me back to simpler times before central air conditioning, when we knew the people around us. If it weren’t for the lost rabbit, and the lost kitten before, I would have no idea who lived in the nearby houses. Maybe that should change.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Sunday, September 11, 2005
far from perfect storm
A busy summer and forgotten password make for bigger than usual blank spots in a blog. This being September 11 thoughts automatically turn to the events of four years ago, but also turn unbidden to Hurricane Katrina and the events of the last couple of weeks. People don't make hurricanes, at least not directly, so we don't blame the storm for the trouble it causes. The 9-11-01 events were caused directly by people, so we do blame them and those who helped them for the trouble they caused. After that, the two events start to look more alike. In both events the news was all about the failure of the government at all levels to deal with an unprecedented catastrophe, and how that incompetence resulted in people dying. I certainly don't disagree. What I disagree with is the notion that any government should be prepared to deal with an unprecedented catastrophe.
When Joseph (the biblical one) interpreted Pharaoh's dream to say that 7 fat years would be followed by 7 lean years the government of Egypt took it seriously and heavily taxed the people so that enough grain would be available for 7 years of drought. The result was the government owning the whole country by the time the drought broke. This works well in a monarchy, but would not be well received in a democratic republic. If the government of New Orleans had taxed the people sufficiently to build defenses against a category 5 hurricane they would have been hooted and booted out of office. If the air transportation system had been designed to prevent the 9-11-01 attacks, no one would be flying and Amtrack would be flush.
It's all well and good to try assessing blame and rooting out failures after an unprecedented catastrophe, but we need to remember that it was unprecedented. No politician would have been able to sell the necessary cost of preventing it.
The response afterwards is a different story. There we can identify all sorts of failures that were the result of bad planning. Relying on cell phones for communication after a disaster that will surely wipe out the cell system is probably unwise. Banks in New Orleans are now trying to figure out how to contact customers who have no phone or forwarding address. The forms people fill out don't usually include an out-of-area contact since people don't expect their city to disappear. That will probably change. We learn from these things, and the next big hurricane to hit a major American city will probably see a better response.
We are always reacting to unprecedented events since, by definition, no one ever thought they would happen or couldn't muster the political will to prepare for them. The now discredited arms race with the Soviet Union was an example of building defenses against something that never came. People in the information age are a lot less willing to buy such a response if they don't believe the danger is imminent. Let's not demand a response from government or anyone if we aren't willing to pay the price of preparedness. I am probably a lot like you, I don't want to pay for a response that may never be needed. Just before criticizing the government's response, try to imagine having paid for the preparation necessary to respond better. Would you have been willing to pay?
Are you willing to pay to fortify all gulf coast and Atlantic seaboard cities against a category 5 hurricane? How about paying for preparing all California cities for an 8.3 earthquake like the one that destroyed San Francisco in 1906? Tornadoes are a terrible problem in the Midwest; shouldn’t we have hardened facilities able to resist them? Are you willing to pay for securing all transportation systems from a terrorist attack? Of course not. I, too, like to eat in addition to paying taxes.
It is time to learn what we can from these disasters, and to avoid using them as a platform for inappropriate attacks on those charged with preventing or responding to them when we did not provide the necessary resources. No government ever has the resources to respond promptly and unerringly to an unprecedented catastrophe. Let’s not pretend that they should.
When Joseph (the biblical one) interpreted Pharaoh's dream to say that 7 fat years would be followed by 7 lean years the government of Egypt took it seriously and heavily taxed the people so that enough grain would be available for 7 years of drought. The result was the government owning the whole country by the time the drought broke. This works well in a monarchy, but would not be well received in a democratic republic. If the government of New Orleans had taxed the people sufficiently to build defenses against a category 5 hurricane they would have been hooted and booted out of office. If the air transportation system had been designed to prevent the 9-11-01 attacks, no one would be flying and Amtrack would be flush.
It's all well and good to try assessing blame and rooting out failures after an unprecedented catastrophe, but we need to remember that it was unprecedented. No politician would have been able to sell the necessary cost of preventing it.
The response afterwards is a different story. There we can identify all sorts of failures that were the result of bad planning. Relying on cell phones for communication after a disaster that will surely wipe out the cell system is probably unwise. Banks in New Orleans are now trying to figure out how to contact customers who have no phone or forwarding address. The forms people fill out don't usually include an out-of-area contact since people don't expect their city to disappear. That will probably change. We learn from these things, and the next big hurricane to hit a major American city will probably see a better response.
We are always reacting to unprecedented events since, by definition, no one ever thought they would happen or couldn't muster the political will to prepare for them. The now discredited arms race with the Soviet Union was an example of building defenses against something that never came. People in the information age are a lot less willing to buy such a response if they don't believe the danger is imminent. Let's not demand a response from government or anyone if we aren't willing to pay the price of preparedness. I am probably a lot like you, I don't want to pay for a response that may never be needed. Just before criticizing the government's response, try to imagine having paid for the preparation necessary to respond better. Would you have been willing to pay?
Are you willing to pay to fortify all gulf coast and Atlantic seaboard cities against a category 5 hurricane? How about paying for preparing all California cities for an 8.3 earthquake like the one that destroyed San Francisco in 1906? Tornadoes are a terrible problem in the Midwest; shouldn’t we have hardened facilities able to resist them? Are you willing to pay for securing all transportation systems from a terrorist attack? Of course not. I, too, like to eat in addition to paying taxes.
It is time to learn what we can from these disasters, and to avoid using them as a platform for inappropriate attacks on those charged with preventing or responding to them when we did not provide the necessary resources. No government ever has the resources to respond promptly and unerringly to an unprecedented catastrophe. Let’s not pretend that they should.
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