Lofland bLOG

Recently I was sitting in a food court near the Space Needle in Seattle. There are two things that Seattle has a lot of. First is Starbucks’s coffee shops. I found one corner in Seattle where I could see three Starbuck’s coffee shops at once! Not three doors, but three different shops. Crazy. The other is Bank of American ATM’s. I guess it is like their headquarters or something? Anyway, there are a lot of them too. There is a very prominent one in the middle of this food court. As I sat there eating my pizza and watching the poor souls that had to make a living serving out junk food, I tried to put myself in their shoes. What would it be like to stand behind that counter all day?

I realized exactly what it would be like. Sitting behind that counter, all day, waiting for people to get little green pieces of paper out of that Bank of America box in the middle of the room, and come put them in my box. I realized that I would become extremely cynical and depressed over the futility of the whole situation. I mean, if I could just go get those green pieces of paper myself and put a bunch of them in my box, then I could go home.

I could see myself becoming a bank robber. I can just see myself trying to explain my “little boxes” to the police. “Honestly, sir, I was just trying to speed up the process.”

Of course, I do know enough about economics to know why that doesn’t work, but I also know enough to realize that, on a larger scale, that really is just how it does work. They little green pieces of paper just go around and around in big circles. People have been trying to cut out the middle man for years, but the problem is, everyone is the middle man. The only way to cut out the middle man, is for me to get myself out.

That really is key too. I have never really had a love for money, but I do love the things I can buy with it. Slowly, though, as I watch the world go around me, I am loosing that. I think it is part of what God is teaching me through this time of my life. I find daily now, that I care less and less about anything that money can buy, other than the needs of myself and my family.

Don’t get me wrong, I like living “well!” However, “well” used to mean buying all sorts of unnecessary toys. Now it means just being able to buy generally good quality of whatever it is we need, and most of the things that we “could use” without any worries about the budget. I’m still not sure how well I could deal with living like a missionary or something, but I certainly don’t need, or even want, to live like a king either.

I noticed recently that my web presence has hit the decade milestone! I feel that is pretty impressive, considering just how new the Internet was to most people in 1995.

Ten years ago when I set up my first web page, the idea was more that you set up a page with the places you liked to go, and then other people could see it too. The idea of a “where I go” home page is still around, and is the focus of the “content” provided by most ISP’s today in the form of things like “MyYahoo” and such. The personal “home page” however, has morphed from a “my places” site to a public billboard to just say what you want to anyone that happens to pass by. Part of the reason for this change is search engines. Back in 1995 they were not so prevalent and certainly not so powerful.

Surfing the web meant just that. It meant starting at a page, and then jumping from one page to the next via links. By posting lots of links on your site, you helped people find things that you have found useful. There used to be huge pages of links for this and that subject that people would post on their sites. These were extremely useful for a long time. Even when search engines showed up that could spider the entire Internet, they still had a bad habit of just spitting out useless pages based on the words you searched for. Now days very few people post lists of links anymore. Some sites like Yahoo and Ask Jeeves still have sections where they try to list sites by subject, however search engines like Google have become so good that you really can just find what you want through them. We really don’t “surf” anymore, instead we “google” the Internet. Google’s ability to give you useful pages based on ranking was revolutionary for the Internet. It is funny though, that, at least as far as I understand, a lot of that ranking is based on how many people link to a site. =) I wonder if Google will ever got so popular, that no one will post links anymore and thus Google will have no way to rank sites anymore? Anyway . . .

My original site remains much as it was ten years ago at http://www.lofland.net/Lofland/ The content has changed a bit, and all of the links pages are gone, because, well because no one “surfs” anymore, and why should I update links when Google has them all? At some point I realized my site had multiple agendas, so I slapped on the main page that you see at http://www.lofland.net and put the “home page” under it. Then I added a FIAT page, pictures page and a Resume. Since then this blog was added, first as just a text file, and then later as you see it here. A webcam page has come and gone. Remember when those were “so cool?” My bulletin board/guestbook has come and gone and come again. It is brand new again now, though the content is still there.

I’ve gone through several hosting providers. Starting with my ISP (FutureNet) in 1995, then my employer, then a buddy of mine, then back and forth between him, my home over DSL, and a lousy provider, and back to my friend’s server before just this month moving to DreamHost.

So anyway, this is just my rambling post to brag about ten years on the ‘net. It isn’t really a big deal to anyone but me, but it is fun to think about.

I’ve just uploaded new family pictures to my website. It has been well over a year, so it is about time.

Lofland Family Pictures Link

I live in Kansas now, but from age two to fifteen I lived in Slidell, Louisiana. Slidell is a small community just north across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.

I am sure that the house I spent most of those years in no longer exists. Here is a picture my wife found of the neighborhood that house is in:

The neighborhood, Eden Isles, is situated very close to the lake. That was part of the point. Every house had access to the water. We often had a boat at the dock in our back yard.

We always knew that we could be wiped out by any hurricane. When they came, we brought in the patio furniture (so it wouldn’t be thrown through our glass doors by the wind) and headed north. It was just how life was. It wasn’t scary, or a big deal, it was kind of an adventure for a kid. I always knew that if we came back to a pile of sticks, insurance would replace all of our stuff and build a new house for us.

What everyone who grows up in the area knows, is that evacuation in the face of a hurricane is a very personal thing. Many people who have spent decades there get hardened to them and don’t evacuate. They are always interviewing them on television, “I’d rather die in my house than run from a storm.” I’m sure their sentiments are different on the way up to a helicopter in a basket. Seriously though, in the past there was an evacuation in Louisiana where the evacuees were trapped on the highway by rising waters and then killed by poisonous snakes while they stood on top of their cars. Due to that incident evacuations were never again made mandatory in Louisiana. Instead, the Police drive down the street telling everyone to leave from their bullhorns. In true Louisiana style though, everyone listens to this, and makes their own decision. Some flee, some stay, and those who stay often suffer the consequences of thumbing their nose at nature.

Hurricanes aren’t like earthquakes or tornadoes. They used to be, but with modern technology, we know they are coming for days. We really can run from them. What is really sad is that while it is true that many of those who did not evacuate suffer the fate they brought on themselves, most of the ones we see on the news now didn’t stay by choice. Especially in New Orleans. Large cities always have large segments of poor. In a large city cars are not a necessity and can even be a liability, having to find parking at home and at work for it, and keeping it safe. While a poor person in a small community may be able to have an old junk car, in a big city it is a luxury that just isn’t possible. Most of the people left in New Orleans are very poor people who had no personal transportation. It is a great shame that we made no formal effort to evacuate them.

New Orleans is a death trap in such storms, and everyone knows it. There has always been the fear that some day a hurricane would come right into Lake Pontchartrain and displace the entire lake into New Orleans, leaving the city under fifteen feet of water. Actually, New Orleans got off easy this time. The levee broke after the storm surge was mostly over. The Lake wasn’t actually pushed into the city, but rather the levees just broke. It could have been worse.

Unfortunately, the contempt that comes with familiarity is part of the nature of hurricanes. They always come. Some people run, and some stay. The damage is rarely catastrophic in certain areas, and so we get used to them. Yes, they tell us on the news that this one is “really big” and that “it may be the big one,” but after surviving so many, everyone gets laid back. Even government officials charged with evacuating poor people from a death trap.

In the future, New Orleans should probably be abandoned. It is a really bad spot for anyone to live, certainly for a big city. At the least it should just be bulldozed and the entire bit of land raised about 20 feet. None of that will happen though. They will rebuild. The levees will be made stronger, and people will return. I don’t blame them. I would go back too. It is a wonderful place. I believe it is one of the few remaining havens in our country of truly unique culture.

Personally, it is kind of numbing to see it all in what used to be my back yard. In a way I wish I was there. I know if I ever go back, it won’t be the same. So many around me will look back to Katrina and I’ll just remember the news photos. However, I lived all of my childhood years under the shadow of Camille, and it happened before I was born. It was always “Camille this,” and “Camille that.” I could point out places where things ued to be that Camille destroyed and show your boats that were still where Camille left them, several miles inland. So maybe I’m just destined to live in the shadow of tragedy that missed me.