Kate McKinnon

Storming, in fact. The trees are bending over in the wind, the rain is sheeting down sideways, there is water everywhere. The roof sounds like an army is on it, there are huge bolts of lightning and crashes of thunder, almost together. As I stand in this storm, my mind reaches across 2000 miles to connect with that one with the ocean behind it that is headed toward my family.

The TV just went out; the lights are flickering.

These nice shots are Tucson monsoon pictures lifted from the web, as I still have no camera cable. Guess I’ll go buy a new one Tuesday if it doesn’t turn up. That will flush it out for sure.

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I was just reading a piece about the consequences of the abortion policy of Sarah Palin- no terminations, not even the morning-after pill for rape or incest victims. These women would be forced to carry pregnancies resulting from these violations to term. Can you imagine? The author managed to convey the heart of the issue in her title alone:

“Rapists have a right to choose the mothers of their children.”

And I’ve got a New Orleans bridgecam, if you want to watch the weather deteriorate.

My mother-and father-in-law have a habit of riding out hurricanes in New Orleans. They did not evacuate for Katrina, and they are not leaving for this one either, despite the entreaties from the family and the city. When you are in your 80s, an evacuation can be as hard as a storm. They are strong and reasonably healthy, have a generator, enough food and water, and their house has stood for 100 years.

However, New Orleans is under mandatory evacuation- in fact, this time, almost everyone is out. Jindal had 700 buses available, there are pet evac centers, they opened the highways for contraflow, whatever the local government could do has been done, as they know what to expect from the Bush administration’s FEMA. Thanks, however, to the priorities of the federal government, three years after Katrina the NOLA levee system and the pumps are still not properly retooled, and the engineers are not optimistic that they will hold up to the storm surge.

Not only that, but the city is full of flimsy and unanchored FEMA trailers, which aren’t going to stay put in high winds. The outer bands of the hurricane are hitting now; it’s getting windy. Landfall is projected for tomorrow morning.

A white tiger, who lives at the Audubon Zoo, in New Orleans. We visited him in December. Hopefully the critters at the zoo and the Aquarium will be all right…

My thoughts and heart go out to everyone in the path, and I hope that the levees surprise everyone by holding. I wish I could protect my people.

Speaking of New Orleans, and hurricanes, here is John McCain, with another of his hilarious jokes. Here he is laughing about the Katrina disaster management of Brown and Co. I’m sorry, but this man is just… not a good person. Whatever he deserves, it is not the Presidency.

I have a bold prediction to make:  Sarah Palin will take her name out of VP consideration and the Republican Convention will be cancelled out of “respect for the hurricane victims.” Then Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty will replace her, and the Republican base will be so grateful that the nightmare is over that they will practically pee their pants. And then McCain will have magically, Karl Rovically, solidified his wavery base.  Not that I think that was the plan. It’s just that I think that is the only possible thing to do when your candidate screws up this badly, and makes a mavericky pick that has disaster written all over it.

McCain floated the idea of cancelling the convention today, saying, with the utmost sincerity, “You know it just wouldn’t be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster.”

Our quail seem mostly grown now. If I ever find my CABLE I’ll show you pix of the baby cardinals bumbling around our yard. So cute!

I thank those of you who stick around with me through election seasons. I take it all so seriously only because so much is at stake. I don’t know any way to better support our troops, for example, than to get them out of Iraq. I don’t know any better way to help the least of us than to promote early childhood education and guaranteed medical care for our nation’s poor. I don’t know any better way to honor our planet, and be good shepherds, than to protect what nature we have left, and give all of our children clean water and air. All of these issues are about real people, real problems, and the will and money to address them start with our government.

So elections really matter, especially this one. Stick with me, I could use the company as we go through the next eight weeks of playoffs, World Series, and possibly the most important election in my lifetime, or that of my children. I promise to keep it at least half art, and then after the election is over, I’ll simply be encouraging you to get involved in helping America move forward. Either that, or I’ll be preparing to leave the country with my family. One or the other…

I’d like to know you’re on the ride with me. Send me an email (kate at katemckinnon dot com) and let me know that you are here. I can see how many people come to my web site but I don’t know who you are. Will you do me a favor, get in touch and say hello, let me know where you are and how it is with you. I may not be able to answer them all, but I’ll read every one.

I speak up because I can, and I feel like it’s my civic duty to be informed. Many people don’t have the freedom to speak or the time to stay current. I like to think I’m serving as some sort of clearinghouse for information.

I’m biased, sure, but I’m up front about it. I like it when the good guys win.

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Charlie Black spoke reassuringly for the McCain campaign about his pick for second in command and her lack of any foreign policy experience:

“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long.”

She’ll totally be ready to lead a superpower nation then. Will he tell her about Czechoslovakia, and the Iraq/Pakistan border, and explain to her the difference between Sunni and Shia? Assuming he has that all straight now?

We’ve been having some late afternoon/early evening rains here that pick up the light of the sunset, and turn everything sepia gold. This is a photo from the Firefly Forest blog, of a table in their Tucson yard during a sunset storm.

A beautifully thought out discussion of how people look at the issues of society can be found here. It gives great insight into the different mindsets that we come to things like elections, or moral debates with, and it’s very engaging, easy to read. Here is the intro:

There is a funny scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in which Indy and his father are tied to chairs inside a very large stone fireplace, while the rest of the room is on fire.  Struggling to free themselves, they accidentally trip a secret lever which causes the fireplace, with the two of them in it, to rotate into an adjacent chamber filled with bad guys standing at tables, drawing up plans.  Not good.  But the trick fireplace continues without a pause until it has completed a 360 degree rotation, returning the hapless pair to the burning chamber.  Old man Jones dead-pans, “Our situation has not improved.”

Where is my dang camera cable? I have SO MANY new photos!

Do you read Jeff Masters’ weather blog? I have been lately, because I’m worried about Gustav, and I like the extended blog-style analysis of the weather patterns. The paths shown by the various models are starting to converge, now that the storm has a well defined eye. It’s currently listed as a serious Cat 3 hurricane, borderline Cat 4.

Bill’s parents, who I adore, live just on the edge of the Katrina waterline, in New Orleans. Just across St. Charles Avenue, the signs on the doors painted by rescuers are still there.  Hopefully everyone who is choosing to stay in the possible path of the storm is above the waterline and has a generator, enough food and water for a week. Be safe.

Hurricane Gustav, 8am EDT Saturday, August 30th.

I like Jeff’s blog- he’s got the cred and he used to fly into hurricanes for NOAA. You can’t argue with that.

I’ve got great new stuff to post and apparently I’ve rolled my camera cable up and stored it in the cat or something. I’m looking everywhere!

Hey, look at how many people 84,000 is! That’s a lot of people.

New classes!

Mexico: A glorious week of team teaching with Gail Crosman Moore at the Hacienda Del Sol art retreat resort, in sunny Puerto Vallarta. January 3-9, 2009, $1500.

Click here for details!

Tucson:  A series of mixed media design workshops, focusing on pulling together handmade and found objects into cohesive designs. These three day sessions are limited to four students.

Dates: October 15-17,  November 5-7,  and December 3-5, 2008. These are Weds-Friday dates; please consider staying the weekend if you are lodging with me.

Click here for details.

The Daily Show welcomes the RNC delegates to St. Paul, and the Larry Craig memorial restroom.

So… John McCain picked a creationist for his VP. A woman, Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, former beauty pageant runner-up, moose hunter, pro-life activist, who doesn’t believe that our children should have access to science classes that teach geology, planetary science or evolution (or god forbid sex ed,) and wants to restrict or eliminate all of our access to birth control and the morning after pill. Naturally she is also committed to reversing Roe v. Wade. She is completely inexperienced in national and global politics.

This is a pick on par with Admiral Stockdale (Lord love him- remember when he didn’t have his hearing aid on in the VP debate?) or Dan Quayle. I hardly know what to say.

My good friend O’Neal Compton, though, knew exactly what to say. From his great blog The Whole American Hog:

“John looked at the field and said, ” I might as well pick a religous, anti-choice wingnut  from a state with three electoral votes, with two years experience and an ongoing internal ethics investigation of her behavior in office. What have I got to lose?”

that even Pat Buchanan is reportedly going on about the beauty and power of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. OK, here is video proof of this rift in the continuum:

It’s priceless to see the pointy Rachel Maddow just sitting there stunned, wondering if aliens ate Buchanan’s brain. She’s like “what the hell!” And then Keith O, at the end. Watch the whole thing, it’s only two minutes long. Ha! This is great.

So did you see the speech? I was moved. This is the photo from the front page of the BBC site.

I watched it with my two young sons, as a kind of moment in time. I’ll post the video as soon as it’s available. Mile High Stadium, as I still like to call it (I’m not down with corporate-named fields) was packed.

I didn’t watch the prayer at the end, I actually like to keep my Church beans and my State cornbread pretty separate on the plate.  But the speeches… they were beautiful. 

I think that Beau Biden was the one that really hit closest to home for me. I can’t even fathom the loss that Joe Biden suffered when he lost his wife and baby daughter to a drunk driver, and his two small boys were badly injured. Joe was househunting in DC when the family was in the accident; they had gone to pick out a Christmas tree, I think Beau said. Joe was sworn into his senate seat, a young man of 29, at his sons’ hospital bedsides. And he really never left them again- he didn’t move to DC, instead he lived modestly in Delaware, took the train home every night.  Joe knows the name of every conductor on that line.

And now, Beau Biden, one of our best, and the attorney general of the state of Delaware, is being deployed to Iraq. 

This election can’t come soon enough.