It took a couple weeks to get the mighty engine of democracy up and humming. But it is back now, and fully up to speed. There is so much happening, now that everyone is on the job, generating words on paper and over the air.

It was a poignant day of deep beauty. As beautiful, I thought to myself as 9/11; which  started with such startling beauty that everything that happened later only made the horror more surreal.

Maybe that is why I feel an autumnal unease when the sun is so brilliant and the sky so azure and the wind caresses my face with just a hint of sadness. I finished a morning meeting at an Agency in Bethesda , and put the top down on the car. I put on my big sunglasses and the light flooded the car, making the shadows stark. People walked the sidewalks in delicious languor, walking dogs and children, the city completely alive.

I worked my way along L’Enfant’s mad street-grid plan back downtown, past the embassies and into stately Georgetown . Then across the Rock Creek and the still-leafy park, through the Dupont Circle glitz, brushing the northern portion of the downtown, and finally penetrating the edge of revitalization, where the reconstruction and battle with the homeless continues.

Two of them, a man and a woman, stood adamant in the middle of Rhode Island Avenue , staring down the shiny cars.

At 11th Street I turned south, and motored past the construction cranes and eventually past the new frontier and into the underground garage at the Bus Depot building on New York Avenue .

My older son should be back from Pakistan today. I have heard of no disaster, and he is probably somewhere over the Atlantic as I write, on an American carrier. That means he is back on US soil since the moment he left Heathrow, even if he is in the air over the water. Life is good, if he returns safely.

When I got to my desk I turned on the radio. The President is in the disaster area again, his motorcade rolling through the devastation. As he witnesses the wreckage, he has dispatched Karen Hughes to lecture and listen to Saudi women in Jidda .

They appear to be operating on a different band of the spectrum than Karen. For her part, shewas apparently surprised that many of them like their culture, and do not want to be Americans. Later, the e-mail queue answered, I was dozing by the office computer. I was jolted into consciousness by the ringing of a computer -generated bell. I blinked at my monitor.

I have installed a voice messaging system on my computer as a novelty. It is called “Skype,” and permits computer-to-computer voice communications.

It is more than a novelty. When my regular phone is tied up on conference calls I can put it on “mute,” and make other calls to people on my network and joke about how the meeting is going. But it is a quirky thing, and I am new to it. I clicked on the little telephone icon blinking on the screen. A voice said “hello,” with an accent. It was a fellow from Germany , who had summoned my name from some unknown data base.

He wanted to know where I was and what I was doing, as though he was an old-time HAM radio operator on a new sort of short-wave spectrum. It seemed as though he was collecting new friends around the world, since the voice-over-internet calls are free.

I told him I was in Washington , at the Bus Depot, and then decided I needed no new anonymous friends. Maybe he was from Germany , or maybe he was not. There are evil people in the world, and I needed no more of them in mine. I clicked on the icon to block his address from ever contacting me again. Another step in the relentless march of technology.

Awake again, I listened to C-Span radio murmured in the background. Mike Brown, the former FEMA head, had been summoned by the Republicans to answer the tough questions. The Democrats refused to play in this little passion play, hoping to hold their own inquisition elsewhere.

I came away with a certain grudging sympathy for the man. Sure he was a political hack, but he had a wounded dignity that only another bureaucrat could really appreciate. He was defiant, and his ego was clearly hurt. He probably would have muddled through the crisis, if only it had not been so intense. The storm was bigger than he was.

There is plenty of blame to go around, but the Committee seemed to want to pin the rose on him, personally. I began to draft a memo on the meeting that morning, while simultaneously editing a PowerPoint presentation on a daring corporate scheme to fix the communications problem for First Responders.

There were so many things that were deficient. A good chunk of the Louisiana Guard was deployed to Iraq , and there is no question that their absence was missed. But the local cops failed, and the mayor vacillated, and the Governor waffled, and the phones and the radios did not work, and against the fury of the storm, even the would-be rescuers had to swim for their lives and be saved.

It was a big storm, and the city is below sea level. Unless we fortify them like Holland , it will happen again.

But the inability to communicate was at the root of the initial chaos.

The collapse of communications made everything a challenge. Land lines, cell phones and many satellite phones were out of service. Cops and Guard alike had only their tactical land-mobile radios, and the frequencies were clobbered with overuse. The only reliable means of communication was the dispatch of runner, as though New Orleans was the sodden battlefield of the Somme .

In the end, the PowerPoint briefing took precedence over the memo, and then an engagement with a senior official across the river trumped them both. I dispatched the presentation via the internal network, saved the memo to work on the next day, and headed for the elevator.

When my little red car flew out of the underground garage the light had softened, but was more inviting than ever. There was a caress of wind across my brow that even the idiocy of the city workers could not dispel. They had blocked two lanes of outbound traffic at the beginning of the rush hour, having failed to complete an asphalt repair.

A FedEx truck was double parked on the other side of the road making an important delivery. Traffic was stymied, the beaters competing with the shiny new European sedans, their dented fenders granting them a freedom of movement denied to the more expensive vehicles. The delivery must have been important; a draft committee report, perhaps, or a subpoena.

I wondered how this town, with all its important panels of inquisitors, would deal with a wholesale evacuation. I think they would just blame the Mayor.

I made it to the sidewalk café in Shirlington just a minute or so after the Judge. We ordered cool refreshing beverages, and watched the pedestrians go by. The temperature was perfect, and the dying of the light was easy on the eyes.

I think we discussed the regressive nature of an increase in the fuel tax. It would hurt the poor, again, and the rich would simply adopt new technology and leave them behind. I’m not sure, but I think we solved the problem to our mutual satisfaction.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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