Lemonade
There is no better smell than a ripe Meyer Lemon. It has taken a few years since Winter Storm Uri for my new trees to make some fruit. For my garden to heal. And for me to heal as well – from a different kind of storm. Some destructive forces in our lives can be […]
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 […]
Season of Storms
What’s on my mind: The number of social enterprises (nonprofits) in some sort of financial crisis due to massive funding shifts. And the extent to which we rely upon them in this region without reassessing their capacity. The mental health of their leaders as they try to manage unreasonable expectations… The season of storm threats […]
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 […]
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 […]
I Love Us. Still.
Waking to tragedy. Another day of epidemic of violence and destruction. This is our story. It’s not our only story, but as a species, we seem to have a lust for blood and destruction. Perpetual outbreaks. Another insane person weaponizing their personhood, tossing their soul on a pyre to take as many as possible with […]
Service and Survivors Guilt
I was recently in Buncombe County invited by those leaders and community members working hard on recovery from Helene. When your world has been turned upside down, this is an especially hard time of year. One woman in Swananoa talked about what it was like to have one of the few livable houses on her […]
Chaos / Collision
Today I’m working on a hard section of my Big Fat Writing Project. It’s a particular stage of long term “recovery.” When the needs of those impacted directly collide with the bureaucracies intended to “assist”. I’ve struggled with this chapter. Wrestling with this material is a good mirror of the experience itself. (Mirror: a reflection […]
Good Planning
A good plan should be like your favorite pair of jeans, neither too tight nor too loose. Too loose and you end up with your butt showing and that only works in the street not in the boardroom. Too tight and when the right partner/opportunity comes along you can’t dance/move. Or eat. A few holes […]
Starting Places
Five years ago, Judge Ed Emmett rang me up as I was juggling two phones trying to get information about which of our centers were flooded and which were dry. As then CEO of BakerRipley I was thinking past the immediate emergency of drastic flooding and stranded people, trying to inventory what assets we had […]