Sculpin

I almost missed this: Kate Bush’s newest album, Aerial, is said to be due out November 7. Hooray! Reuters says that the first single will be out on September 27 at a number of download sites.

Especially for Jake, via Seattle Parks and Rec:

Ravenna-Eckstein’s First Annual Amateur Rock, Paper Scissors Tournament

(fun for the whole family)
Saturday, November 5th
Pre-Registration: $3 per person
$5 per person day of 1 - 4 p.m.
(ages 5 and up)

Definition (from the world RPS society)
RPS is a decision making game of wits, speed, dexterity and strategy between players who are unable to reach a decision using other means. The result of a game is considered a binding agreement between the players. RPS is a game played by honorable people and therefore every effort should be made to commit to the outcome. The game is played by substituting the elements of: Rock, Paper and Scissors with standard hand signals.
For registration information please contact Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center at 206-684-7534

Peet’s is matching Red Cross donations up to $25,000. They’re not quite there yet.

A Washington State fund to help Katrina victims has been set up at Washington Mutual. WaMu will match donations up to a total of $100,000, according to the governor’s office. (The WaMu website has yet to catch up with this, as far as I can tell.)

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

– W. H. Auden

Josh and I went to REI today, during their Labor Day sale, to pick up various supplies for our jump bags. There are still things to gather up, but we’ve made an excellent start on the bags. As have many other people; the water purification section in particular was jammed.

I think emergency kits ought to be distributed at food banks, along with instructions and information in various languages. I wonder who could make that happen, or if it has already been proposed.

There was one New Orleans resident I’ve heard about — though I couldn’t tell you where — who realized after about four days of dehydration that he and his crew could get water from hot water heaters. Four days. None of them had known.

I’ve been wondering, too, about neighborhood preparedness. It would be great if everybody in the neighborhood knew some first aid and had basic supplies. Hell, it would be great if everybody knew everybody’s name. We need more block parties. Preferably with more of our neighbor Paul’s astounding baklava.

Updated to add: In Seattle, SDART is the ” all-hazard personal and neighborhood preparedness program.” It organizes neighborhoods to respond to disasters. They have (had?) a disaster preparedness fair every October that they call “Disaster Saturday”.

It’s reasonable to speculate that, should the Big One hit Seattle in the foreseeable future, we’ll be on our own for quite some time as far as the federal government is concerned. And our local and state government may well be entirely overwhelmed.

It makes you think more carefully about emergency preparedness. Josh and I plan to put together some jump bags this weekend. (Link via Making Light.)