Hurricane KATRINA Public Advisory
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000
WTNT32 KNHC 281737
TCPAT2
BULLETIN
HURRICANE KATRINA INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY NUMBER 23A
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
1 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

...POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC HURRICANE KATRINA MENACING THE NORTHERN
GULF COAST...

A HURRICANE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE NORTH CENTRAL GULF COAST
FROM MORGAN CITY LOUISIANA EASTWARD TO THE ALABAMA/FLORIDA
BORDER...INCLUDING THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS AND LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN.
A HURRICANE WARNING MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED
WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. PREPARATIONS TO
PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION.

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING AND A HURRICANE WATCH ARE IN EFFECT FROM
EAST OF THE ALABAMA/FLORIDA BORDER TO DESTIN FLORIDA...AND FROM
WEST OF MORGAN CITY TO INTRACOASTAL CITY LOUISIANA. A TROPICAL
STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED
WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. A HURRICANE WATCH
MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH
AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS.

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS ALSO IN EFFECT FROM DESTIN FLORIDA
EASTWARD TO INDIAN PASS FLORIDA...AND FROM INTRACOASTAL CITY
LOUISIANA WESTWARD TO CAMERON LOUISIANA.

FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...INCLUDING POSSIBLE
INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED
BY YOUR LOCAL WEATHER OFFICE.

AT 1 PM CDT...1800Z...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE KATRINA WAS LOCATED
NEAR LATITUDE 26.5 NORTH... LONGITUDE 88.6 WEST OR ABOUT 180 MILES
SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

KATRINA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 13 MPH...AND A TURN
TOWARD THE NORTH-NORTHWEST IS EXPECTED OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 175 MPH...WITH HIGHER GUSTS.
KATRINA IS A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON
THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN STRENGTH ARE LIKELY
DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 105 MILES FROM THE
CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP
TO 205 MILES.

THE ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 906 MB...26.75 INCHES.

COASTAL STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 18 TO 22 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE
LEVELS...LOCALLY AS HIGH AS 28 FEET ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS
BATTERING WAVES...CAN BE EXPECTED NEAR AND TO THE EAST OF WHERE THE
CENTER MAKES LANDFALL. SIGNIFICANT STORM SURGE FLOODING WILL OCCUR
ELSEWHERE ALONG THE CENTRAL AND NORTHEASTERN GULF OF MEXICO COAST.

RAINFALL TOTALS OF 5 TO 10 INCHES...WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF
15 INCHES...ARE POSSIBLE ALONG THE PATH OF KATRINA ACROSS THE GULF
COAST AND THE TENNESSEE VALLEY. RAINFALL TOTALS OF 4 TO 8 INCHES
ARE POSSIBLE ACROSS THE OHIO VALLEY INTO THE EASTERN GREAT LAKES
REGION TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY.

ISOLATED TORNADOES WILL BE POSSIBLE BEGINNING THIS EVENING OVER
SOUTHERN PORTIONS OF LOUISIANA...MISSISSIPPI...AND ALABAMA...AND
OVER THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE.

REPEATING THE 1 PM CDT POSITION...26.5 N... 88.6 W. MOVEMENT
TOWARD...NORTHWEST NEAR 13 MPH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...
175 MPH. MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE... 906 MB.

THE NEXT ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER AT
4 PM CDT.

FORECASTER PASCH

John McCain sells out. Rove plan is working, McCain too dumb to see it?
McCain sounds like presidential hopeful
By C.J. Karamargin
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain sat down for an hour with the Star's editorial board.
U.S. Sen. John McCain knows why he wants to be president.
He isn't running for the job - officially. That won't happen, if it happens at all, until after next year's midterm elections.
McCain, who turns 69 on Monday, said "there's no point" in formally announcing his candidacy until after the 2006 congressional elections.
But the Arizona Republican didn't skip a beat Tuesday when asked why he would want to run for the White House in 2008.
"Because we live in a time of great challenges," McCain said in an interview with Arizona Daily Star editors and reporters.
Chief among them is the war on terror, a "transcendent issue" likely to last for years, he said. But there is "a broad variety of domestic challenges" as well.
Sounding much like a candidate ticking off the priorities of his platform, McCain said they include immigration, Social Security, global warming, rising health-care costs and the "obscene" spending practices of Washington.
"My ego is sufficient to say that I think I have the background and experience to take on these challenges," he said.
Asked about possible opposition to his candidacy from conservatives, McCain cited polls that show he and ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are "the two most popular" members of the Republican Party.
That, he indicated, is a crucial factor in deciding whether he'll seek the presidency.
"As long as I have strong approval and support from most of the Republican Party, then running is a viable option," he said.
A recent poll by the Gallup Organization found that McCain's favorable ratings have consistently hovered above 50 percent since 2002, two years after he ran for the Republican nomination for president against George W. Bush.
But while the four-term senator is thought of highly across party and ideological lines, Gallup found a potential weak spot among conservatives - a key constituency to prevailing in Republican primaries.
The problem McCain could face with conservatives became evident earlier this month when the Arizona Republican Assembly, a conservative Mesa-based group, voted to censure him for what it called "dereliction of his duties and responsibilities as a representative of the citizens of Arizona."
The group unanimously passed a resolution critical of, among other things, the guest-worker legislation he's sponsoring with the man they called "his Democrat soulmate, Senator Ted Kennedy."
McCain didn't comment on the resolution but vowed to continue speaking his mind.
As the Gallup Poll noted, McCain has a generally consistent conservative voting record but forged a national reputation after a series of notable breaks with fellow Republicans.
On Tuesday, though, he sided with the president on two issues that have made headlines recently: teaching intelligent design in schools and Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother who has come to personify the anti-war movement.
McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes "all points of view" should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.
The theory of intelligent design says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and that a higher power must have had a hand in guiding it.
At a breakfast meeting Tuesday with the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, McCain said Sheehan is probably being used by organizations opposed to the U.S. mission in Iraq. But, he added, she is "a symptom, not a cause" of growing public discontent with the war.

Moog, who engineered a new rock sound, dies at 71
August 23, 2005
BY JIM DEROGATIS Pop Music Critic
During the last half century, a handful of visionary entrepreneurs have achieved a status as iconic as the pop musicians who used their instruments.
There are Leo Fender and Les Paul, whose electric guitars inspired the rock revolution, and there is Chicagoan William F. Ludwig, whose drums powered its rhythms. Then there is Robert A. Moog, whose synthesizers started the next wave of the music's evolution, taking its sounds into a new millennium.
Mr. Moog died at his home in Asheville, N.C., on Sunday as the result of an inoperable brain tumor detected in April. He was 71.
Born and raised in New York, Mr. Moog (which rhymes with "vogue") was, as a teenager in the early '50s, intrigued by the theremin, a simple electronic instrument played by waving your hands near two antennas, one controlling volume and the other pitch. At the time, it was mostly used to add creepy sound effects to science fiction films, but a decade later it provided the hook for the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations," as well as the otherworldly sounds in Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused."
Mr. Moog started building his own theremins and marketing them via the R.A. Moog Co. while still attending college. He eventually earned degrees in physics from Queens College and electrical engineering from Columbia University, as well as a Ph.D. in engineering physics from Cornell University.
THANKS TO MOOG
Many of the most innovative and groundbreaking efforts in rock history wouldn't have been possible without the instruments built by Robert Moog. The best way to remember the pioneering musical figure, then, is to listen to the craftsmen who have made creative use of Moog's instruments. Check out these albums: *Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" *Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" *Stevie Wonder's "Innervisions" *Brian Eno's "Another Green World" *The Who's "Who's Next" *Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral"
This hardly sounds like the resume of a rock legend, and indeed, Mr. Moog was later uncomfortable with his status as a cult hero, a position he achieved thanks to another instrument he introduced in 1964.
Mr. Moog wasn't the first or the only engineer working to perfect the modular synthesizer, a much more complex electronic instrument that could produce virtually limitless tones. But while working with composer Herb Deutsch, he was the first to grasp the practical applications, attaching an easily playable keyboard where previously there had been a morass of jacks and wires resembling a telephone switchboard.
Walter (later Wendy) Carlos used an unwieldy modular Moog to record the 1968 album "Switched-On Bach," a Top 10 hit that won three Grammys. But the synthesizer's popularity really exploded thanks to the keyboardist-friendly Minimoogs that began appearing on rock albums in 1970, including the Beatles' "Abbey Road" and numerous releases by progressive rock bands such as Yes, Genesis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
Keyboardists and Moog fans Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman first made the slide-ruler-toting engineer a reluctant celebrity in the early '70s, before Mr. Moog sold and lost control of the company bearing his name. But his fame grew even greater starting in the early '90s, when a new generation of musicians rediscovered the early Moog synths and began championing them over snazzier but much less exciting digital keyboards.
The charm of Moog's analog synths is that they consistently surprise their operators: A vast array of knobs, dials and switches yields unexpected, unusual and completely unique sounds. Old Moogs began to appear on countless new albums by techno artists who favored their fat, atmospheric drones, hip-hop artists who loved their massive, teeth-rattling bass tones and inventive indie-rockers such as Stereolab and Chicago's Tortoise. (John McEntire's Soma Studio in Wicker Park boasts an entire wall full of vintage Moog gear.)
A decade ago, Mr. Moog began making theremins again through a new company, Big Briar, but in 2002, he reacquired the right to sell instruments under his own name, and Moog Music began marketing a new version of the Minimoog called the Voyager, a futuristic moniker befitting its space-age sound (and its stellar price).
Mr. Moog's creations have since been celebrated in several books (including 2004's Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer by Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco) and films (notably the 2004 documentary "Moog," recently issued on DVD), and at musical events such as last year's "Moogfest," all of which were greeted with mild bemusement by the man himself.
"I'm an engineer," Mr. Moog said in 2000. "I see myself as a toolmaker, and the musicians are my customers. They use the tools."
Contributing: AP
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company

Read! Think!
August 20, 2005
A Catholic Professor on Evolution and Theology: To Understand One, It Helps to Understand the Other
By PETER STEINFELS
John F. Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian who, in a long series of learned, eloquent books and essays, has explored the religious significance of the contemporary understanding of evolution.
On July 7, Professor Haught was dismayed to find in The New York Times an Op-Ed article by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna flatly declaring this understanding to be false, followed two days later by a front-page article suggesting that the cardinal's stance might signal that the apparent peace treaty between Catholicism and evolutionary theory was about to be renounced.
Professor Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown University, was by no means alone. Sir Martin Rees, a leading British astrophysicist, expressed hope that the Pontifical Academy of Science, to which he belongs, would dissociate itself from Cardinal Schönborn's sentiments. The Aug. 6 issue of The Tablet, an international Catholic weekly published in London, carried an article by the Rev. George Coyne, a Jesuit priest and director of the Vatican Observatory, rebutting the cardinal's view. Numerous scientists and nonscientists, Catholics and non-Catholics, raised similar protests.
"Does Schönborn's essay mean that the church has changed its position on evolution?" Professor Haught asks in the current issue of Commonweal. "In a word, no." Nonetheless, he says, "it is a setback in the dialogue of religion and science."
"Today most Catholic theologians and philosophers agree that it is not the job of science to make any reference to God, purpose, or intelligent design," Professor Haught insists. "If some scientists go on to maintain that evolution is therefore conclusive evidence of a godless, purposeless universe, this is a leap into ideology, not a scientifically verifiable truth."
Cardinal Schönborn "has every reason to defend Catholicism against materialist philosophy, since these are indeed incompatible," Professor Haught continues. But when the cardinal "fails to distinguish neo-Darwinian biology from the materialist spin that many scientists and philosophers place on evolutionary discoveries," he "does no service to the nuances of Catholic thought."
And to claim, Professor Haught adds, that science itself can demonstrate divine design is only to fall into a mirror version of "the same conceptual mix-up."
Professor Haught is far from suggesting, however, that biology is biology, theology is theology and never the twain shall meet. Although he believes that evolutionary theory cannot make ultimate claims about God or cosmic purpose without slipping into a metaphysics beyond its competence, he also believes that it raises a host of questions that theology must address.
"Evolutionary science has changed our understanding of the world dramatically," he wrote in "God After Darwin" (Westview, 2000), "and so any sense we may have of a God who creates and cares for this world must take into account what Darwin and his followers have told us about it."
The role of chance events combined with the ruthless pruning by natural selection over vast, almost unimaginable expanses of time gives a picture of "life's long journey," he has written, as "a wide trail of loss and pain" that cannot be easily reconciled with any traditional notion of a divine providential intelligence. In Professor Haught's view, arguments for intelligent design, even apart from their scientific weaknesses, do no theological justice to this tragic dimension of evolution.
The fact that Tennyson's lines contrasting God's love with "Nature, red in tooth and claw" predated Darwin's theory is a reminder that natural selection, in one sense, only poses the perennial theological problem of suffering, just as do yesterday's innocent victims of war, famine or drunken drivers. But evolution amplifies that problem on the scale of eons.
Professor Haught maintains that theology should engage this daunting challenge rather than try to escape it. More than that, as a Christian theologian, he argues that evolutionary theory is actually a gift to theology, prodding it to enlarge its understanding of God and returning it, in many ways, to the faith and implicit metaphysics of the Bible.
For him, this conversation between religion and evolutionary theory is a two-way street. A theological perspective, he believes, clarifies the directionality one finds in evolution's story of "life's long journey," from simple to complex, from the inanimate to living and finally self-conscious creatures.
Theology can enlarge evolution's story to make better sense of "the emergence of the most obvious experience any of us has, namely, the sense of our own selves as experiencing subjects." Much evolutionary theory, for legitimate methodological reasons or less legitimate metaphysical commitments, either ignores human subjectivity, a looming fact of nature, or explains it away as a kind of "pure fluke" in an essentially mindless universe.
Professor Haught's case rests on what he calls a "metaphysics of the future," rethinking God and nature in terms of futurity and promise. He leans heavily on thinkers like Alfred North Whitehead and Michael Polanyi and on Jewish Kabbalahistic and Christian thought about divine restraint or "kenosis," self-emptying. Obviously, his approach will not convince everyone or answer every question, but readers, at least those not committed to the modern, literal reading of Genesis, will find him as direct in embracing traditional Christian tenets as in accepting the science of evolution.
His "God After Darwin" was followed by "Deeper than Darwin" (Westview, 2003). "My latest synthesis," he said last month, can be found in the 2004 Boyle Lecture, which is online at www.stmarylebow.co.uk/news/boyle2004.htm.
Of course, Cardinal Schönborn's Op-Ed article has been superseded in public attention by the remarks of President Bush about discussing intelligent design in classes on evolution. Those interested in politics may pay more attention to the president's intervention, while those interested in theology may pay more attention to the cardinal's. But those interested in really exploring the implications of evolutionary theory for religious belief and of religious belief for evolutionary theory might read Professor Haught.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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Here is a brief on Wednesday 10 August Nightline.

The GOP is playing with fire. The novelty of McCarthyism, another "Boob" fad as HL Menckin called such foolishness, took congress away from the GOP in 1954 for 40 years! Intelligent Design is a baldface example of hucksterism at it's worst and in about two years enough ordinary folk will be fedup and the GOP once again will pay a price for it.

I respect ABC but admit I felt this was a really creepy program and it might come back to haunt Ted Kopel and Co. Time magazine covers ID this week as well.

Should we let the rustics decide our fate?

Despite Criticism, 'Intelligent Design' Finds Powerful Backers
Seattle Group Works to Create National Debate Where Scientists Say None Exists
Aug. 10, 2005 - At its office in Downtown Seattle, the Discovery Institute is pursuing a revolutionary mission: to convince ordinary Americans, opinion leaders and schools to consider an alternative to evolution that its advocates call "intelligent design."
The think tank is promoting an idea that all of the nation's top biologists say has no scientific basis. But the Institute insists there's a raging debate among scientists on both sides of the evolutionary divide.
"When we find information embedded in DNA, in living cells, we think that we are looking at strong evidence for a prior intelligent source," says the Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer. "The theory of intelligent design is that the appearance of intelligence is evidence of real design."
An Old Debate?
Though it seems like a new debate about evolution, Ronald Numbers, chair of the Department of the History of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, describes it as more of a sophisticated attempt by the Discovery Institute to reignite an argument settled during the 19th century.
"What they're really after is to bring the supernatural back into science itself," said Numbers, "So that the authority of science in the classroom stands behind this claim that evidence of an intelligent designer has been discovered through scientific means."
The idea of intelligent design itself evolved largely through a skillful marketing campaign that has promoted the concept of a controversy many scientists insist does not exist. In "Nightline's" own survey of the country's top 10 biology departments, the verdict was unanimous -- of the nine department chairmen who responded, all insisted no scientific evidence supports the concept of intelligent design.
'Teach the Controversy'
But in opinion articles, books, and high-gloss video productions alike, the Discovery Institute has suggested that scientists are, in fact, engaged in a raging debate.
"They've really in many ways won the public relations battle with a brilliant slogan," says Lawrence Krauss, director of the Center for Education and Research in Astrophysics at Case Western University. "It implies there is a controversy when in fact in science, there's no controversy.
The intelligent design strategy itself dates back to a Supreme Court decision in 1987 that banned the teaching of creationism in public schools because it violated the separation of church and state. In the aftermath of that ruling, a Discovery Institute report proposed a goal of defeating "scientific materialism" and replacing it with the "understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."
Political Boost and Growing Momentum
Last week, President Bush spoke out last week in support of schools combining traditional evolution lessons with discussions of intelligent design. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes," Bush said.
And four years ago, the intelligent design movement got a major political boost when Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., pushed for language in federal law asking public schools to teach criticism of evolution.
Though that language never made it into the law, the Discovery Institute used the momentum to actively encourage school districts to turn a critical eye on evolution. In 2002, it helped persuade Ohio to change its curriculum so teachers could present criticism of evolution in science classes and in May of this year, Discovery officials helped convince the Kansas state school board to do the same thing.
Now, some school boards are pushing beyond the Discovery strategy. Earlier this year, the school board in Dover, Pa., was sued for violating the separation of church and state after mandating a textbook teaching intelligent design.
Today, the Kansas Board of Education tentatively approved new standards for science education, which would encourage teachers to discuss different views on evolution. A final vote on the new standards is expected in the fall.
Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures

Here is a good whiff of evidence that Paul Johnson was correct in "Modern Times" that thugs in the 20th century encased their crimes in a cover of politics or religion. Islam is a marvelous faith and deserves so much better than these losers! Some way the world must seperate psychopaths from civilization without creating a greater tragedy.

Read it and think about it! What would you do?

The Sunday Times - Britain
August 07, 2005
Inside the sect that loves terror
By the Insight team

AN undercover investigation has caught leaders
of a radical Islamic group inciting young
British Muslims to become terrorists and
praising the Tube bombers as “the fantastic
four”.
A Sunday Times reporter spent two months as a
recruit inside the Saviour Sect to reveal for
the first time how the extremist group promotes
hatred of “non-believers” and encourages its
followers to commit acts of violence including
suicide bombings.


The reporter witnessed one of the sect’s leading
figures, Sheikh Omar Brooks, telling a young
audience, including children, that it was the
duty of Muslims to be terrorists and boasting,
just days before the July 7 attacks, that he
wanted to die as a suicide bomber.
After the attacks that claimed 52 lives, another
key figure, Zachariah, justified them by saying
that the victims were not “innocent” people
because they did not abide by strict Islamic
laws. In the immediate aftermath the sect’s
leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said: “For the past
48 hours I’m very happy.” Two weeks later he
referred to the bombers as the “fantastic four”.

The evidence compiled by The Sunday Times in
hours of transcripts and tapes will lend weight
to moves, announced last week by Tony Blair, to
proscribe such organisations for providing a
breeding ground for would-be terrorists. The
attorney-general’s office said last night it
would investigate the recent comments by a
number of Islamic radicals with a view to
prosecution.
The Saviour Sect was established 10 months ago
when its predecessor group Al-Muhajiroun was
disbanded after coming under close scrutiny by
the authorities. Its members meet in secret in
halls, followers’ homes and parks. They are so
opposed to the British state that they see it as
their duty to make no economic contribution to
the nation. One member warned our undercover
reporter against getting a job because it would
be contributing to the kuffar (non-Muslim)
system.
Instead, the young follower, Nasser, who
receives £44 job seekers’ allowance a week, said
it was permissible to “live off benefits”, just
as the prophet Mohammed had lived off the state
while attacking it at the same time. Even paying
car insurance was seen as supporting the system.
“All the (Saviour Sect) brothers drive without
insurance,” he said.
The reporter became a member of the sect three
weeks before the July 7 bombings. From the start
he was taught that it was his duty to destroy
the kuffar. Moderate Muslims who did not believe
in the overthrow of the British government and
its replacement by an Islamic state were held in
equal disdain.
Within days of joining, he witnessed seven
Saviour Sect members beating up a member of the
moderate Young Muslim Organisation in an East
End street because they believed he had insulted
their version of Islam.
Last week Omar Brooks stirred controversy with
televised comments, but they were carefully
chosen to avoid appearing to incite violence. On
Saturday, July 2 he had been more forthright.
Speaking to a group of teenagers and families,
he declared it was imperative for Muslims to
“instil terror into the hearts of the kuffar”
and added: “I am a terrorist. As a Muslim of
course I am a terrorist.”
The 30-year-old, who claims to have had military
training in Pakistan, said he did not want to go
to Allah while sleeping in his bed “like an old
woman”. Instead: “I want to be blown into pieces
with my hands in one place and my feet in
another.”
In public interviews Bakri condemned the killing
of all innocent civilians. Later when he
addressed his own followers he explained that he
had in fact been referring only to Muslims as
only they were innocent: “Yes I condemn killing
any innocent people, but not any kuffar.”
Yesterday Bakri said he had no connections to a
group in east London but said that he did attend
prayers and preach to up to 15 people. He denied
using the words “fantastic four”.

The Darkness
I worked as a security guard just two days at a SF run shelter on Polk street this last week.
My fellow officers consisted of an ignorant angry older woman and a incoherent Latino male lost in his forties. The lobby desk clerks were in general the worst stereotype of bureaucrats. They treated the junkies and alkies with viciousness and spoke with casual cruelty.
It was despicable and I quit after two shifts.
The building was clean and the sleeping areas well attended.
The problem was a institutional culture that was calloused, unreasonably inflammatory and in need of revolution.
Public service is never easy and seeing folks in distress is always depressing.
The Security staff was worse than ineffectual they were oblivious to everything as a defense mechanism. It was awful, terrible and I was more than relieved when I rejected the site and got away for good.
I think we all need a few days in a local shelter to be reminded what we have. I am so lucky. I have a good studio, plenty of food and toys to play with. I have good friends and am a happy person.
I saw the foyer to urban hell this last week.
I do respect those who strive to do what is fair and reasonable. I do not pretend some magic solution. Drug and alcohol addiction are serious issues and at least SF is trying to deal with them.