Blackout Assessed

We've gotten probably the only reporting we're going to get on our blackout locally in a story by the North Coast Journal staff.  Fortunately (and surprisingly for the NCJ of recent years) it is well-reported, nicely structured and not badly written.

It sets up the narrative through Humboldt County's emergency management director Dorie Lanni, and adds to previous Lost Coast Outpost reporting (that up to the morning of the blackout Humboldt County wasn't included, that the county wasn't officially told until a few hours before the lights went out) her significant assertion that in two years of talking about planned power shutoffs, "at no time" did PG&E "ever suggest in any way that we might lose power to the entire county."

So most of the response was improvised, mostly though not wholly by necessity. The story shows that few businesses were prepared, especially for such a large-scale blackout. For example, with a blackout to a more limited area, food could be preserved by renting refrigerated trucks, but there were too many places and too few available trucks.

A significant bottleneck was exposed--that all the diesel fuel that powers emergency generators in the county ultimately came from one place, a Chevron facility, but it couldn't pump out the fuel it had on hand--because it had no electricity, and no backup (the excuse being that regulations prevented using diesel fuel to power backup generators.  Work out that irony.)

There were some heroes, including a Chevron gas station in Arcata, which stayed open even though it couldn't pump gas, and distributed gallons of free ice cream before it melted.  But two facilities really stand out, for slightly different reasons.

The first is Mad River Hospital, usually the forgotten stepchild of county hospitals in Arcata.  Their significant move was to assume from the day before the blackout that Humboldt would lose its power, and they went ahead with emergency planning.  With generators, they kept the power on and the hospital open, not only serving patients but community members who came by, with meals and other services.

Blue Lake Rancheria and microgrid

The other institution was the Blue Lake Rancheria and casino hotel, which has put together its own microgrid with solar power, large scale batteries augmented by diesel generators.  They had sufficient power for their hotel (which quickly filled, including room for the most vulnerable patients as assessed by the county), and could also supply to the community the two resources (besides electricity) most needed: gasoline and ice.  In all three of these cases (and others), the generosity and sense of community stands out.

The story ends with Lanni's warning that while a one-day blackout caused stresses, each additional day would multiply effects exponentially.  I suspect the likely loss of cell phone signal alone would cause a major mental health crisis.  But as usual the most significant failures would hurt the most vulnerable, as in fact they did in other parts of the state where power was out longer.

The Blue Lake Rancheria example also dramatizes the general failure to follow up on idealistic rhetoric with the hard work of infrastructure changes, especially here in Arcata.  Twenty years ago, Arcata had a majority Green Party city council, and signed on to a commitment to fight global heating.  Fifteen or so years ago I attended a seminar on solar power that attracted local movers and shakers, including the then president of Humboldt State University.

But the ongoing blitzkrieg of new housing construction in Arcata--most of it here in the Sunset neighborhoods--not only ignores known infrastructure and safety problems, but solar power is conspicuously absent.  Not even a white roof.  It's been largely talk, and even the talk has disappeared as local government has become more entangled with business in recent years.  It's all about real estate and construction money.  Arcata doesn't even pretend to be a leader anymore, and its future is just that much dimmer.

Who Really Said It? (If Anyone)

This story, repeated most recently in a New York Times profile of recently deceased writer Harold Bloom, famous for (among other things) his productivity, appeared earlier in a book by Jay Parini:

"The story circulates in academe that a graduate student once telephoned Bloom at home in New Haven.  His wife answered, "I'm sorry, he's writing a book."  "That's all right," the student replied.  "I'll wait."

This story, in which the caller is Alfred Hitchcock to prolific novelist Georges Simenon, is told in a recent profile of Simenon by Ian Tompson:

Simenon demanded silence as he set out to write one Maigret adventure a week. When Alfred Hitchcock telephoned one day, he was told: ‘Sorry, he’s just started a novel.’ ‘That’s all right, I’ll wait,’ came the reply.

Poetry Monday: Mother of Exiles

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazurus
poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty
1883

Columbus Days

monument to Italian immigrants in New Orleans, from the New York Times story referenced below.

Brent Staples has an interesting story in the New York Times Magazine that asserts there was a reason for the first Columbus Day beyond the assumed homage to the Italian mariner working for Spain.  It emerged from a violent history of prejudice against Italians in America.

My mother was born in Italy, so I have been aware of prejudice against Italians in America, including against Italian-Americans.  I experienced some low level prejudice in my own childhood, and that was at the height of the Italian-American ascendancy (Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, and Italian language songs on top forty radio, etc.)  I've also been aware that for generations in America, Italians were not considered white--they were black.  Even in my time, members of certain ethnic groups and upper classes considered us "not quite white."

(The comments to Staples' story testify to many more overt and even violent acts of anti-Italian bigotry, including some more recent than the 1950s.)

But I did not know the extent of either the prejudice or of the identifying of Italians as black, until I read the Staples piece.  In the 19th century it seems, it was not only blacks who were lynched in the South, but Italians as well. This happened particularly in New Orleans, where there was a large Italian community. Moreover, such lynchings were approved of in the North, by among others, the New York Times.

But there was one difference in their ability to respond.  African Americans were cut off from their countries of origin from which they had been forcibly removed, which in any case were often colonies of European powers that condoned slavery.  But Italian Americans, usually more recent immigrants, had a European country that had an army and European allies.

When news spread of particularly blatant lynchings of Italians in New Orleans, the government of Italy protested, to the point of breaking off diplomatic relations and threatening war against the United States.

President Benjamin Harrison wound up paying reparations, but he also tried a p.r. tactic to associate Italian immigrants with American origins by declaring the first Columbus Day in 1892.

It was supposed to be a one-time thing, but Italian Americans embraced the idea, and made Columbus their signature hero.  Columbus Day parades became larger, and the legend of Columbus became inflated well beyond the historical facts.

Native American activist Michael Haney appearing on Oprah in
a 1992 show on racism in America. Also on that show was
activist and poet Suzan Harjo, who received the Presidential
Medal of Freedom from President Obama in 2014.

Fast forward a century, to 1992.  What was supposed to be the 500th anniversary of Columbus "discovering America" as we all learned in school in the 50s, and the centennial of the first Columbus Day, instead evoked a new awareness of the reality of 1492--the presence of millions of Indigenous people in hundreds of thriving cultures almost everywhere in this hemisphere--and their eradication by European diseases and genocide.

This awareness was led by Native American activists and writers, and began a revolution in attitudes.  Knowledge is still weak and there are cases of prominent racism surviving,  notably in the names of major sports teams, but that revolution is ongoing.

So Columbus Day in a fairly odd way has been instrumental in exposing and even reducing prejudice against two groups: Italians and Native peoples.   There's much more to all these stories, but this part of them is rife with the oddities and ironies, as well as the pain, of the American experience.