Prepare to Obey
The cruelty isn’t the point. Terror is the point. So you learn to bow down. So you shut off your brain, stop trying to process the shouts and threats and just capitulate. So you prepare yourself in advance to obey unquestioningly any shouted order. No matter how confusing. You must fall to your knees in […]
Fall Finally
This morning fall is real. All my senses say so. Strangely, fall has a sound / not sound at my home in Houston. When the air conditioning shuts off for a long enough period that the background noises of birds and the roar of 69 and 288 are fully audible at 6:00AM. It’s a strange […]
Terms and Conditions
Today’s challenging question: what’s the right disaster recovery coordinating structure in an arena that stretches across multiple counties and jurisdictions? I think as disasters grow in their destructive impact, it becomes increasingly hard to create any sort of balance between local input and/versus state and federal level involvement. The first stage is so necessarily […]
Beginnings and Endings
Today I will begin a new chapter – and I’m looking forward to it. It has been rewarding to serve as the City of Houston’s Chief Recovery and Resilience Officer. And to work on important projects aimed at making Houston safer for everyone. The task of enhancing the resilience of this region is not […]
Disaster Belonging
Perhaps what drives me the most crazy in the current culture is the erosion of any overarching alignment, any sense of common good. We need more call to shared purpose. The absence of a sense of purpose leads to paying a kind of exquisite attention to one’s own SELF. Fostering the ludicrous notion that one’s […]
Sacred Ground
Before you speak, ask yourself – will this in any way ease pain or lighten the load carried by those closest to this tragedy. We all have the obligation to treat heartbroken people and their excruciating losses and grief as sacred ground. Do not set a single critical, judgmental, opportunistic foot upon it. Note that […]
Reality is on the Ground
Not in the headlines It doesn’t take long to learn to wall oneself off from criticism and snark. In my case about nine months. I try to hang on to the belief that people, even reporters, ask genuine questions and want to understand. I continue to behave that way but now I know better. There’s […]
Houston launches new initiative to equip city facilities with generators
Mayor John Whitmire on Tuesday officially rolled out Houston’s plan to install generators at critical city facilities before the end of his first term as the city braces itself for another above-normal hurricane season. Whitmire delivered the news alongside U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner at Houston’s West Gray Multi-Service Center. The plan, called the Power […]
Working
There are days when the world is just too much to think about and I put my head down and just do the work in front of me. It’s a family trait to carry ourselves through the world as if we can outwork every problem. Our confidence comes from having done just that on so […]
With New Microgrid Funding, Texas Seeks to Avoid the Devastation of Storms Like Winter Storm Uri
With $1.8 billion in new state funding, Texas has opened up opportunities for microgrid providers that can serve small critical facilities. In Early 2021, Winter Storm Uri knocked out power to two out of three Texans and shut off water to nearly half. The Texas Department of Public Health linked 210 deaths to the deep freeze. Now […]