Dixie redux

Last night, I checked my email right before bed, and much to my surprise, I had an email from Fran Parker, the author who wrote the book upon which the screenplay for To Live and Die in Dixie was based. She'd come across my blog in which I'd written about seeing the movie. That was such a surprise, but a good surprise! She told me that her book Deadly Triangle will be released in February by New Horizons Press. I'm going to pre-order it as soon as possible.

Hurricane Gustav has dominated the news this morning. Al Roker, the weather anchor for The Today Show is in New Orleans getting drenched with rain and blown about, and Ann Curry is in Houma, LA, being similarly blown about and drenched. It seems to me that people would take hurricane warnings more seriously if all the networks didn't send their most famous faces to cover the storm. They often look as though they are having a great time (Roker couldn't stop laughing), so it's no wonder that people will stay, rather than evacuate, and that they often hold elaborate hurricane parties.

So far, it's looking like the huge evacuation of New Orleans was unnecessary, but we haven't yet seen the storm surge. The point is that the levees must hold, and if they don't, then it was a great idea to evacuate. If nothing else, practice makes perfect. Better to be safe than sorry. Let's see--are there any other trite phrases I can throw in?

The biggest casualty of Gustav seems to be the GOP Convention. No great loss there. I don't plan to watch much of it anyway. The Republicans are acting as if they are making this huge sacrifice by toning down their convention, but in truth, what do they have to make "much ado" about? They want the voters to see the Democratic Convention as this giant wasteful decadent event (the "celebrity" angle), which of course means that Democrats would "tax and spend" like celebrities, in contrast to the stoic sober Republicans. Sadly, the facts seldom bother the die-hard conservative voters. If they paid any attention to facts, they wouldn't listen to Rush Limbaugh, they wouldn't support George Bush, and they wouldn't automatically reject more liberal ideas out of hand.

It's time to get back to work. Classes begin bright and early tomorrow morning. I have the syllabus done for English 150, but there are addenda associated with the Structured Learning program that I'll need to have ready for tomorrow.