digital detritus

I won’t ever pretend to be a writer, I may write things, but I am no writer.

My brother on the other hand, he is a writer. He wrote this: Death Rides a Centaur

“You’re lost.”
“What?”
“Did I stutter? You…are…lost.”
“No I’m not.”
“Then why have we just been standing here for 10 minutes?”
“I’m enjoying the view.”
“What view? We’re in the middle of a desert.”
“Sand has a certain aesthetic flare.”

Technorati Tags: family, brothers, humor, writing

Astrodome center,
originally uploaded by ioerror.

So, here’s my question right now.

How come all of these people have to stay in the Astrodome? Of the 200+ hotels in and around the City of Houston there weren’t a couple that could donate some rooms so folks could have at least a modicum of privacy?

Courtesy of Hotels.com there are at least 200 hotels in and around Houston. I’m not suggesting that they have folks in every hotel, that would be impossible to manage. But what if something like 10 hotels got together and each set aside 60 rooms. Here’s how I figured that:

• Two double beds in each room.
• Two people in each bed (that’s 4 per room).
• 2500 people in the Houston Astrodome
• That’s 625 rooms total.

I don’t actually know how many people there are in the Astrodome right now. But I think the math holds out. If there are families of more than four they could share one room with the addition of a fold-out bed. It’s far from perfect but it does mean that folks would at least have some space to call their own.

Before folks go off on the idea of a few hotels having to shell out for 60 rooms consider this. If all (or at least most) of the hotels in Houston, those not housing folks, were to volunteer up some money the over all cost to the actual housing hotels would be fairly low. And it’s not like their aren’t organizations in place to put something like this together. How about we start with any of the Chambers of Commerce in Houston.

This way, instead of treating folks like prisoners and cattle, they might actually be able to have some space and some time to gather their thoughts.

For more photos look here.

So this is a call out to the Hiltons and all of the folks at Best Western, Motel 6 and all of the rest to pony up a little money and help house all of the survivors from Hurricane Katrina.

Technorati Tags: hurricane, katrina, fiasco, bush, FEMA, flooding