Dear World,
Here in Nebraska, after the flood, we're down. But we're not out.
In fact, we're #NebraskaStrong. And we shall, as W.H. Auden wrote, "stagger onward rejoicing."
Consider this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth one hell of a stagger. Rejoicing. With the music.
We go on.
We go onward.
Rejoicing.
It's the Big Show, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
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| Truth in politics? |
THE NORMAL human response -- or what one would hope is the normal human response -- to the question "Who's going to help me?" is "I am.""We go to a place like New Orleans, and everybody’s looking around saying, ‘Who’s going to help me? Who’s going to help me?’” King said, recounting what he said officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, had told him about the relief effort, in which he said he had participated. Yet, he was also one of 11 members of Congress to oppose a bill providing federal aid to Katrina victims in 2005.
In his home state, he said, residents looked after one another without government handouts. Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has declared a disaster in more than half of Iowa’s 99 counties because of severe flooding and is seeking a federal declaration that would free up funds from Washington.
“We go to a place like Iowa, and we go see, knock on the door at, say, I make up a name, John’s place, and say, ‘John, you got water in your basement, we can write you a check, we can help you,'" King said. “And John will say, ‘Well, wait a minute, let me get my boots. It’s Joe that needs help. Let’s go down to his place and help him.’”
We should have seen the end coming a half century ago.
It was as plain as a patchwork plague, courtesy of your haberdasher from hell. Which in this case was the 1969 Sears Wish Book.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Holy Hash Pipe, Batman!
One thing never changes, however -- copy editors are always required but never in adequate supply. I'm reasonably certain that the headline above the Red Menace display at left should have read "Family Nightmare."
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| Click on map for full size |
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| West Dodge Road at 228th Street (courtesy Douglas County) |
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| Nebraska State Patrol |
I think this photo taken by the Nebraska State Patrol near Columbus pretty much sums up the suffering of my state these past few days.
It is not yet done. The Missouri River continues to rise to historic levels just south of Omaha. Fremont, Neb., is a virtual island. You could make the 30-minute trip there from Omaha this afternoon -- finally -- in just under 3 hours, if you knew which back roads were dry and had a police escort.
That's how a convoy of food and fuel made it in tonight. Before that, people and relief supplies were being ferried in from Omaha by volunteer pilots.
From north-central Nebraska to the Missouri River bottom land in the far southeast, people have lost everything and small towns have been all but scoured from the fertile plains. Across the region, at least two are dead and several more missing.
Its well fields swallowed by the Platte River, the city of Lincoln has mandated restrictions on water usage. We haven't even started talking about how bad the damage to agriculture is.
YET, IT'S just been the past day or so that the national media has acknowledged that something might be catastrophically wrong in "flyover country." It's not the first time we've been ignored by the "coastal elites," many of whom seem to think cattle roam the streets of Omaha and Conestoga wagons still rumble down the Oregon Trail.
We're all rubes to them. Yet they wonder why so many in these forgotten lands might vote for such a monster as Donald Trump.
Well, I wouldn't -- and didn't -- vote for the political equivalent of the Ebola virus. Many folks I know wouldn't, and didn't. Of course, it's perfectly clear to these same learned and oh-so-sophisticated folks why people in far-off lands might blow themselves up on crowded far-away streets.
Perhaps "Fuck you," is a message most clearly read from a great distance.
As for me and 3 Chords & the Truth, we call bullshit. It had to be done, though I usually am loath to go all Howard Beale on you and take time away from tasty tunes.
You’ve seen the news — our president going to the wall for his border wall. Our president threatening his political opponent with violence by what he sees as his military and law enforcement . . . and his motorcycle gang. The massacre of Muslims at prayer on the other side of the world.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendant, heirs according to the promise.”
You get the drift. Both kinds.
SO EAT, drink and be merry, children, for Wednesday we fast.
When last I checked in on the blog machine, I was telling you we were in for some weather in Omaha, by God, Nebraska . . . and that I was planning to listen to the Big Show and make a pot of gumbo.
There was.
And I did.
Then, on Sunday, we -- Mrs. Favog and I -- shoveled. And shoveled. And shoveled.
As the state's new tourism slogan says -- Nebraska. Honestly, it's not for everyone. I don't know whether it specifically references blizzards and the, um . . . balmy 10 degrees it is right now.
PERSONALLY, I don't know why folks from all over these United States aren't flocking to Omaha just for the experience of eating a fine bowl of my creole gumbo while staring out the window at an arctic snowscape. As opposed to the de rigueur alligators, fire ants and drunks puking into Bourbon Street gutters down south in my native land.
But I suppose that's just me. Right now, the gators, fire ants and drunks named Ralph are all about 50 degrees warmer.
Honestly, I suppose Nebraska really isn't for everyone.
What would be the smart thing to do if weather's comin' where you are, too, would be to follow our lead at the Big Show and put on a pot of gumbo for yourself, too, and make sure you're well stocked with something to drink, as it were. The music . . . that we have covered for you.
THE IMPORTANT thing to remember is (insert word salad here).
The police commissioner using his police powers to determine what records could and couldn't be sold in stores or played on jukeboxes was in Memphis. James O. Eastland -- the U.S. senator who went out of his way to make sure reporters knew he had referred to an NAACP official with a vile racial slur -- represented Mississippi, right next door to Tennessee.
That's right. This week, the Big Show hits the road.
In a studio in Omaha,
We assembled a defeated old fart
From somewhere in the South . . .
To bring you this message
From the last working brain cells
All over the world . . .
It's the real thing. Beer.
