My heart goes out to all hurricane survivors. Here are some pictures. Houston rose to the task in Katrina, got hit by Rita, and hit again.
http://www.tpicks.com/pictures%20people%20have%20sent%20me.html And there was that Internet hurricane that never got into the press, the one against the surviving businesses who faced organized assaults, DOS, and every filthy tactic that hate-based crowd in Illinois could throw at us. Look at these pictures and understand one thing, those of you who do not live in Texas have no idea what it is like not only to face this kind of hurricane but then to face the second wave of attacks that came at the survivors and everyone who tried to raise money to help them and to keep the food pantries stocked for them. I will NEVER FORGET that Illinois crowd that attacked every single business that was scrambling to raise the funds necessary to start over. People were showing up in my town in the hotel rooms and first thing was to get hold of family members and hold online sales to pay for recovery. Every one who could help was on board. We had no clue of the depth of hatred we were about to face online. I saw the silence that greeted a recent orchid business needing help. You all can thank Leo Schordje and the culture of his Illinois hate-based group for that. He named my business here because he thought he had helped kill it off during the Katrina aftermath. There was an organized assault on every business who had an address registered in the Hurricane region. Record numbers of us lost tens of thousands of dollars when that Illinois-based hate group organized a campaign of malicious complaints and internet libel, attacking people who maintained their addresses in the weeks following the hurricanes while they contacted their customers and made arrangements to recover. We didn't just face off with those petty thugs masquerading as "scambusters" and promoting the kind of fake credentials Schordje wants to use in the orchid world. FEMA came into our churches and told us we did not have the right to open our homes and we told FEMA to get out. Then this year, during Gustav, while the Northern media sent reporters in to harass (not interview) those who chose to stay, there was that horrific little vignette in which a young man was being asked to compare Katrina with Gustav, and this is what he said, while standing in front of a very sturdy if unglamourous big gov't housing project building: "My folks were able to stay in there (pointed at it) and so everyone who had a relative in the projects did ok, but this time the projects are not here because this is one of the last ones" and nothing is being built to replace them as the peop0le have been evicted, hundreds of families, and this is outside of the hurricane-displaced. Instead of rebuilding, the US government has been tearing down the remaining sturdy structures, and now every time there is a hurricane, it gets worse. The media prepares the ground by attacking the people who choose to stay, and they hound the survivors from shelter to shelter. I watched one chicago-area reporter verbally abuse some Cajuns who were holding a traditional hurricane party, as if they were being stupid to wait out Gustav together. They were in the same building in which they all survived Katrina, came out dry, rested, and ready to rebuild!!!! And everyonje knows, now, that if you leave, no matter how well your property may have survived, the governement won't let you back in, and you may end up like some folks did here: they ran out of gas with children in the car while they were turned away from one full shelter after another. In Austin the media is even characterizing it as a big problem that a senior citizen tennis match had to wait for the hurricane evacuees to be removed from their athletic building. Those affluent individuals who can rely on other affluent individuals by virtue of family/friend contacts may do ok, but the wave of organized hate causes even them to hesitate to team up and hold good old-fashioned barnraising-style benefits. They need to start reading memoirs written by Jews from the 1930's, because the German Jews were affluent, middle-class, secular people, and within ten years they were herded into death camps, because the tactics of the Nazi media were so efficient. The same tactics characterizes the US media as our gov't slowly commits genocide by natural disaster. 2. Houston Tex (Bill Bergstrom) 3. Re: Orchids Digest, Vol 10, Issue 275, How are our Texans? ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 4. Pteroglossaspis pottsii - a fairly new orchid to science. (Prem Subrahmanyam) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 2 Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:19:49 -1000 From: "Bill Bergstrom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [OGD] Houston Tex To: "Orchid" <orchids@orchidguide.com> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" My best friend in the world is Dave Hunt in Houston..He will phone as soon as they are able..so...the phone wires and electricity are still down as of the 20th..and that is the longest we have gone in twenty years without talking Bill Bergstrom ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:01:34 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [OGD] Orchids Digest, Vol 10, Issue 275, How are our Texans? To: orchids@orchidguide.com Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Message: 6 >Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:30:00 +0000 >From: K Barrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: [OGD] How are our Texans? >To: <orchids@orchidguide.com> >Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" > > >I hope Anita Aldritch, Nina Rach and our other Texas friends are surviving the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. > >K Barrett >N Calif, USA > > > I don't know about the Texans, and though they surely got the worst of it, but we had a hurricane here in Ohio too (75mph winds were clocked) - though you'd never kow it from the news which has completely ignored it. Ike was the only hurricane to make it this far. Normally the worst we get from them is a thunderstorm. Over a half-million out of power, trees down, roofs torn off, flooding in some areas. Not what we were expecting. I am now in a public library (I'm glad I have always supported them!!) which has had power restored in another part of Columbus, using their wireless connection as I am still without power , phone, internet, etc at home. All the food is spoiled and gone, a few groceries have re-opened, and I have finally gotten my toppled huge beloved pear tree cleared from the street, my car, and the sidewalk so I can at least come and go, though the yard is full of tree. My American persimmon clone I have been babying had the top beoken off as did our japanese maple. But we didn't get the worst of it. And it does bring home an appreciation of the much more dire conditions those on the coast face. Though conditions in my new GH are not optimal now (no air movement or temp control - the generator I bought last year as part of the project froze up on the first try -so much for being prepared!) the good part is thanks to my nervousness about the glazing coming loose from the frame, I hjad put in extra supports to which I screwed it down, and though I heard it wobbling and woo-woo-whooshing in the wind, it stayed in place! Tennis Maynard P.S. - The above was sent Thursday afternoon and for some odd reason, bounced back. It is now Saturday just before midnight and the power has only just now been restored - 16 hours shy of a week. Now to clean out a refrigerator filled with mold, etc. Ugh! But the cool growing orchids which had begun to suffer as the temps rose the last couple days and the sun came out again, are looking forward to the refreshing breeze from the evap cooler! End of Orchids Digest, Vol 10, Issue 278 **************************************** _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) orchids@orchidguide.com http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
