once more to gastown

Once more, to Gastown: 'Birthplace of Vancouver' is being reborn again

Vancouver Sun

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Westcoast Homes

Gastown is undergoing another birthing experience, ''risk oblivious'' new-home buyers, daring property developers and Vancouver city hall among the midwives.

Gastown, as city hall documents say, is the "birthplace of Vancouver.'' The colonial government in Victoria conducted the first land sale there in 1870. The first conversion of the Victorian and Edwardian buildings there occurred a century later.

The current revitalization, accordingly, is the third birthing moment there in about 135 years. The renovation about five years ago of the Old Spaghetti Factory building, itself a refurbishment in the first rebirth, heralded the current round.

But the pursuit of a "Soho-like" neighbourhood hasn't been easy.

The city's poorest neighbourhood -- the downtown eastside -- is next door, a proximity that has scared off potential investors for years.

Gastown is a confined space. The passage of a cement truck, for example, is more time consuming and more costly here than elsewhere. Many of the old buildings have suffered substantial deterioration after years of neglect.

Still long-time property owners such as Reliance Holdings Ltd. and Nancy and Niels Bendtsen of Inform Interiors and newer investors like the Salient Group are committed to making the effort.

City hall is also committed to helping them make the effort, with a heritage-preservation which includes property-tax relief.

The incentives are also being offered to Chinatown and Hastings Street, with the hope that all three communities will reap economic benefits.

"I have faith all three areas will improve," councillor Jim Green says.

The mayoral candidate attributes the renewed interest in the three areas to the Woodward's revitalization and a new bylaw.

As anybody who has read a newspaper or watched the news recently know, he is the city's leading champion of the latest Woodward's plan, 700 new homes in a 40-storey tower, 500 of them market housing, 200 of them social housing.

"Woodwards is seen as the rebirth of that area of the city, and the animosity that used to exist between Gastown, Chinatown and Hastings in rapidly declining," says Green.

He adds another reason for the improved relationship is downtown eastside residents no longer fear being displaced, as so many were before Expo 86.

The main reason for that, says Green, is a bylaw he first proposed to protect SROs (single-resident-occupancy rooms) in 1984 was finally passed 20 years later.

"People in the area can now welcome new development without fear of being displaced," he says.

Green adds Gastown specifically has enjoyed a resurgence in tourism thanks to Storyeum -- an interactive museum about B.C's history. It was created in a former parkade.

"Gastown is fabulous. It's like the sleeper area of town," Nancy Bendtsen of Inform Interiors says.

"Gastown is going to become like Yorkville in the '60s or Soho in New York. The cool area of town."



Niels Bendtsen bought a historic building, at 134 Abbott, 40 years ago and renovated it to showcase his store and provide office space upstairs. The couple also owns a building across the street, at 50 Water Street, and plan to expand their furniture showroom.

Another heritage building to be among the first to undergo extensive renovations was the landmark Old Spaghetti Factory, at 55 Water Street, in 2000, by Reliance Holdings Ltd.

The company also built the modern glass atrium adjacent to the Old Spaghetti Factory, a former parking lot, that rents to the high-end clothing store Richard Kidd.

Reliance also has a new 10-storey building with 58 rental suites and two large retail spaces at 33 Water and another building with 130 units which could either be rental or live/work.

"Gastown is a good market for rental because a lot of young people are attracted to the area," Reliance representative Jan Stovell says. "We call them the 'risk oblivious.' They don't want to be in an area that is sanitized. It's the new edge neighbourhood the way Yaletown was 10 years ago and Kitsilano 25 years."

Stovell adds when Reliance began marketing the rental units at 55 Water Street "no one came in and said 'is this neighbourhood safe? Where can you buy groceries? Why are people panhandling or will I get ripped off?' They don't ask those kinds of question.

"People who come down here already know about the downtown eastside (nearby). They know what they are getting into," says Stovell.

He adds the area is attractive to many creative business operators like gallery owners and funky restaurants and shops.

The residents, he says, are in their 20s and 30s, and work in occupations like software technology, graphic designs, film and architecture.

And while years ago there was a push by merchants in Gastown to rid the area of panhandlers, says Stovell, that fight appears to have ended.

"We used to have an ultra polarized turf war but people have buried the hatchet and both groups go about their business," he says. "Now we have the well-off, who are not that ostentatious, with busy active careers who like living in the core, going out for dinner, immersing themselves in urban living, living in the heart of the inner city mixed in with the grit.

"In Gastown there's such a spectrum of society. You can see what people have achieved through effort - from the guy in the Bentley to the guy with his hand out asking for money."

While, Gastown has historically been an area for tourists to shop for B.C. souvenirs many of the retailers today are aiming to attract an upper end local market as well.

"There's been a concentrated effort among a core group of property owners to improve the buildings and to target a certain kind of retail," says Stovell.

Wanting to tap into the upper-end market are newer developers like Salient's Robert Fung, who at only 39 years of age is hoping to do on a smaller scale what Concord Pacific did years earlier for Yaletown.

Indeed, Fung, whose first project was in 2003 with the renovation of the Taylor Building in Gastown, worked for Concord for eight years.

The Taylor building, opposite the famed gas clock, was converted into 22 suites and quickly sold out for an average of $320 a square foot at the town - rates that typically were seen in more desirable downtown locations.

"Gastown in the past was the area where people would come in and find cheap buildings and do cheap jobs on them," says Fung. "We felt these buildings are fantastic projects in the context of improving the entire city."

Still, Fung says many of the larger developers in the city think he's crazy to be developing in an area they still view as high-risk.

"A lot of the large developers think I'm out of my mind. These buildings are extremely intensive, hard to work with in the existing forms so people have snubbed their noses at them. But that's why I like it. I'm up to a good challenge."

Still, Fung and his wife prefer to live in Kerrisdale themselves because they are the parents of three young children, ages three, two and a newborn.

"One of the problems (in Gastown) is the cost is so high it's difficult to build good quality family housing in the core," says Fung.

His target market group for his "boutique-size projects" are buyers who themselves are very unique and want a unique home.

"It's very individual. It has less to do with gender or age and more to do with mind-set. The marketers thought it would be the young urban male (moving to Gastown) but we have a lot of single women, some same-sex couples, guys, artists - it's across the board. All have a strong sense of individuality."

Fung's current residential project is the conversion of the side-by-side Grand and Terminus hotels. The goal is 46 new homes. Prices are not yet set.

"With the Terminus Building we've really tried to do a building with a great sense of style, highly identifiable and in some ways iconic for the area. A building that is a pleasure to live in," says Fung of the project, at 36 Water Street.

The Terminus Buildings will also have a small retail component, of about 5,000 square feet.

Another Salient project is the renovation of Gaolers Mews, where 40 per cent will be utilized as live/work spaces and the remaining 60 per cent will be retail/office space.

This landmark building once housed the city's oldest parking garage and a courthouse and jail. The stones for the Alhambra Building, where the Salient offices are located, in the mews was laid in 1886.

"The history of our city is important and the inventory of real heritage buildings is important. Salient is interested in this district and to effect a major change in the city," says Fung. The guy who has to organize crews and equipment to actually preserve the facades of the city's older buildings during construction behind them, contractor Roland Habler, thinks it makes more sense to demolish at least some of the structures he's preserving and build new. 'Sometimes we wonder about the sanity of doing the kinds of things they want with these heritage buildings. . . . . 'We're trying to hold up and retain facades over 100 years ago. Some of it is a total joke.' Preservation, because it is time-consuming, costs anywhere from 20 to 35 per cent more than building new, he says. 'We all agree having the heritage component is wonderful but why don't they do like in many European cities where they get craftsmen to mimic exactly what was done before?'

when all the songs were sung

UP FRONT | MUSIC

McCartney reflects on life, love and yesterday



Preparing to launch his US Tour in Miami this week, rock legend Paul McCartney talked candidly with The Herald about embracing his past while looking forward

BY EVELYN McDONNELL

The Miami Herald

Sunday, Sep. 11, 2005

Surrounded by potted palms and Indian tapestries in an AmericanAirlines Arena dressing room that has temporarily been converted into a mini Taj Mahal, Paul McCartney looks like the rock royalty he is. Tanned, fit, elegant and preternaturally youthful at 63, he's relaxed as he eats a salad and chocolate dessert -- even though he has just a week to finish rehearsing his band before their US Tour launches here Friday.

It's been four decades since McCartney conquered the world with the biggest band of all time. Artistically speaking, the honorary knight could rest as comfortably as he is in this traveling lounge and just stroke his laurels. But he's not.

On Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which comes out Tuesday, the universe's most famous bassist teamed with a young, edgy producer who challenged him musically and pushed him emotionally. McCartney uses his 20th studio record since The Beatles disbanded to vent feelings he spent decades burying.

''When The Beatles broke up, there was a lot of rejection and stuff, for all of us,'' he says. 'I normally didn't deal with it. . . . But this time I thought `No, it's a good source of material.' So a couple of the songs I decided to write about that kind of thing. It was quite a release really.''

On a mournful tune called Riding to Vanity Fair, McCartney sings, "There was a time/ When every day was young/ The sun would always shine/ We sang along/ When all the songs were sung/ Believing every line.''

OPENING UP

In a sit-down with The Herald, Sir Paul (as Queen Elizabeth anointed him in '97) talked candidly about the past, old songs and new songs, Charles Dickens and love. That openness ''seems to have become a feature now of how I live,'' he said. "If I'm sad about something I won't want to just hold it in. I'll want to talk to someone about it, I'll want to show it, I'll want to get it out some way.''

For living legends like McCartney, albums have become secondary to tours. Concerts are where the big money's at (tickets for Friday's show cost as much as $250). But in the case of Chaos, McCartney postponed the tour in order to get the album right.

''I said I wanted to make a good album,'' he says. "I put myself on the line a little bit.''

At the suggestion of Beatles producer George Martin, McCartney hired acclaimed producer Nigel Godrich. Godrich helped make modern rock history with Radiohead's '97 masterpiece OK Computer. McCartney was also a fan of his work with singer-songwriter Beck and British band Travis.

''I liked the sound of those records,'' McCartney says. 'Some people said, `Oh, does it mean you're going to make an album like Radiohead, it's going to be a bit electronic?' I said no, Travis didn't, Beck didn't. . . . Nigel makes an album like you, whoever you are.''

One of the first things Godrich did was tell McCartney to get rid of his band. Paul plays most of the instruments, including drums, harmonium and flugelhorn, on Chaos himself. The producer also told McCartney which songs he thought were crap, including Vanity Fair. The singer fought for that track but says it is the "most reworked song I've ever done in my life.''

''It was quite a good exercise, after I got over the shock of someone telling me they didn't like it,'' McCartney says. "Which has happened to me plenty of times, but not recently.''

Over the years, the man who penned such somber Beatles classics as Yesterday and Hey Jude has been derided for wasting his talents on ''silly love songs,'' as McCartney himself has called them. Several of the strongest new tracks -- At the Mercy, Anyway -- are melancholy.

''I generally tend towards the optimistic,'' McCartney says. 'But sometimes when you're looking around for something to write about, you say, `I've just done a few optimistic songs. Now, is there anything else going on in my life, or has there ever been anything else other than optimism?' And you cast around and you think, yeah of course there has, there's been rejected friendships, there's been times when you're not getting on with people, things like that. I've had plenty of those in my life.''

THE GIFT OF MELODY

McCartney grew up in working-class Liverpool. His father was a musician; his mother died when he was a teen. He was 17 when he and John Lennon first played together. McCartney brought his schoolmate George Harrison to the group. By '64 The Beatles' genius for rock 'n' roll melodies was making global history. But the band splintered unamicably in '70. McCartney went on to a solid career as a solo artist and with his band Wings. In '98, Linda Eastman McCartney, his wife of almost 30 years, died of cancer. In 2002 he married 34-year-old landmine-victims activist and model Heather Mills.

McCartney says personal tragedies and world events inspired his new candor. 'Something like George passing, it makes you think, `God things are so impermanent: suddenly there's this little friend of mine, he used to get on the bus, and now he's passed away.' There's that whole lifetime of a friendship [that] physically has ended, not emotionally.''

McCartney says his increased emotional openness is also a result of maturity. And it reflects the zeitgeist.

''When you're about 18 and particularly you're a boy, you're not allowed to cry,'' McCartney says. 'All your friends go, `You're a big sissy,' so you really hold it. But after 9/11, things like that, you'd just be stupid if you didn't allow yourself to cry.''

Referring several times to psychology, McCartney sounds more like a therapy-obsessed Californian than a Brit.

'Most of the stuff I do you can analyze. . . . I'll write a song, like Yesterday, `Why she had to go,' and I look back on it and try to analyze it, and of course I realize it probably had to do with the death of my mother. I didn't realize it at the time. I thought I was just writing a sad song.''

And then on new songs like English Tea and Jenny Wren, McCartney relishes a thoroughly British appreciation of posh dialect and Dickens heroines. "That idea of this very Englishness, this parody thing, is something I've been doing for a long time. . . . I like reading Dickens. One of the reasons is because of the language, the way people talk to each other.''

McCartney may be baring his soul a little more than usual these days. But Chaos is not some emotional confessional; its revelations are cloaked in artistry. And it's not all minor-chord moods. Alongside the sad songs are Mills-inspired silly love songs, such as A Certain Softness and This Never Happened Before.

"I like love so I like love songs. I like romance. I like to listen to songs that talk about that and that contain those kinds of feelings. I'm a great Nat King Cole fan . . . I like to think of myself a bit in that tradition.''

At Shaq's shack onWednesday, McCartney and his band brushed off some golden oldies, including the early Beatles tune Please Please Me and the '70 McCartney-penned Badfinger hit Come and Get It. He says that on this tour, they will play maybe a half-dozen new songs and some ''new old ones, some stuff we've never done before.'' He understands that his fans come to relive the sunny days "when all the songs were sung.''

THE BACKYARD

The new CD's title combines lyrics from two songs. ''There is a long way/ Between chaos and creation,'' McCartney sings on Fine Line. On Promise to You Girl, he writes about ''looking through the backyard of my life.'' But although the cover features a 1962 photo of the singer, he downplays the notion he's recalling his past.

'The interesting thing is if you look at my songs when I was 24, like Yesterday: `I'm not half the man I used to be.' Well I was 24, half the man would make me 12,'' McCartney laughs. ' `The long and winding road that leads to your door': it sounds like someone who's about 80. 'Looking through the backyard of your life,' I could have written that lyric when I was 24. It just would have meant my days in Liverpool or my days in school. Now it's got more significance because it's a bigger backyard.''

emcdonnell@herald.com

not quite there yet

Futurists once promised an age of leisure but it looks like we'll be working into old age

Technology would give us endless free time, but mandatory retirement is rapidly being phased out

The Vancouver Sun

Monday, September 5, 2005

By Miro Cernetig

On this Labour Day weekend, it's worth pondering this spacey prediction from the Futurist, the respected journal with a penchant for Utopian visions of what's to come.

Very soon, it postulates, we will all have a chance to take family vacations to the moon. Visit the Mare Tranquillitatis! Use low gravity to fly like birds in lunar domes! And then rocket back to Earth on Monday morning. All this by 2020.

This would no doubt beat the family pilgrimage to Disneyland. But there's a question those Phds and fabulists at the Futurist still need to answer for the average salaryman: Just how do you go about getting that much time off work? Will they take credit cards? And, incidentally, whatever happened to that paperless office you were promising back here on Earth?

Let's face it, when it comes to predicting how we earn our daily bread, futurologists have been mightily disappointing, often ridiculous.

Not only is there no sign of the paperless office (judging by the pulp and paper industry's soaring sales our fetish continues unabated) but we're also still waiting for that even headier promise -- near endless leisure time. Baby boomers and GenXers have long heard that fantasy technological liberation, best captured by that 21st-century cartoon family, The Jetsons. (Theme song: "They're the Jetsons! . . . Machines do the working, machines do run, if they need anything they push a button and it's done." )

Well, we're not quite there yet.

"How could the futurologists be so wrong?" wondered Charles McGrath in a recent issue of the The New York Times Magazine. "George Jeston, we should recall -- the person many of us cartoon-watchers assumed we would someday become -- worked a three-hour day, standard in the interplanetary era. Back in 1970, Alvin Toffler predicted that by 2000 we would have so much free time that we wouldn't know how to spend it."

Here's a dose of our real-time reality.

Most of us are so chained to work we don't even dare take the time off we've earned. Canadian workers, on average allowed 21 days off vacation a year, leave about three days apiece "on the table," finds the latest "international vacation survey" from Expedia, the Internet travel service. That works out to about 43 million unused vacation days, worth about $6.1 billion to employers. This, incidentally, puts Canadians in a dead heat per capita with our Calvinistic neighbours, the Americans, who leave behind the same three vacation days per work each year, though they only get an average of 12 days vacation.

There is undeniably something North American about this propensity for vacation-wasting. Europeans don't let time slip away so easily. The average French worker, the world's vacation champ with 39 days off annually, leaves only one day unused. Germans also make sure they leave behind only a single day on the vacation calendar. While British workers, who get 23 days off, leave behind the least of anyone -- only four hours of vacation time goes unused by the average Brit.

Why are we on this continent so obsessed with work these days? A big part of it may be fear. Labour laws here make it easier for North American companies to shed workers than it is in Europe. Globalization, and the prospect of those who work for $20 a week, not an hour, are the new dread of the middle class. And in this age of downsizing, when it is increasingly difficult to glide from one well-paying job to another, people worry that if they leave their cubicle empty too long the boss might realize they're dispensable.

"Many employees say it is pressure or fear that keeps them from using all their vacation, or their workload," concluded John Rossheim, reporting on the findings of another poll commissioned by the job-finding agency Monster.com. "Some 11 per cent of respondents to the Monster polls said pressure from the boss prevented them from using their full vacations; nine per cent said they feared being laid off."

What's more, losing a job is more worrisome a prospect than ever for the average Canadian worker.

It's simply getting harder to make ends meet and losing a steady paycheque, or having wages cut, could be a financial disaster.

The Vanier Institute of the Family, which has been studying pressures on ordinary Canadian families for 40 years, finds that Canadians savings rates have plummeted to record lows. And most are sinking further into the red every year. The average household debt now exceeds $66,000. Two out of every three families, according to the latest survey, spend between $1,100 to $2,300 more a year than they earn.

"Ten years ago, people had savings, as much as $2,500 a year per family," says Alan Mirabelli, the institute's executive director. "Now it's close to zero or in many families it is below zero. An upward movement in interest card or mortgage rates, or an unforeseen emergency, and there's no buffer.

"So you bet the stress level is high."

You don't have to be a futurologist to figure out what this rising debt load translates into for most: yes, working even more and longer. If the downward trend in savings continues, economists predict people will be forced to delay or even give up altogether on the possibility of early retirement.

Signs that working into old age is becoming an accepted future are now unmistakable. Mandatory retirement, once a fact of working life, is rapidly being phased out in North America.

True, this is partially because many want to work past 65. But it's also due to looming labour shortages that are suddenly making older workers more attractive.

And governments have their own reason for wanting people to work longer. Without an older work force, projections suggest there just may not be enough taxpayers out there to pay for aging baby boomers benefits. Many in the United States expect that sometime in the next decade Social Security benefits won't be available to anyone under 70.

So what's the good news for workers on this holiday weekend invented to celebrate their labour? It may be this one prediction from Vancouver's Laurier Institute: It's going to get a lot easier in the future to find work.

"... the number of younger workers entering the workforce will be smaller than the number of baby boomers who will eventually retire," predicts the institute.

"Because the workforce in 2010 will contain relatively fewer younger people, there will be less competition for jobs."

It may not be as leisurely an existence as The Jetsons once promised. Then again, perhaps we shouldn't complain -- we probably can't afford that much free time.

Using a "cost of leisure calculator," created by the insurance firm Allstate, you can now go on the Internet to predict the future cost of green fees for a 35-year-old who wants to stop working at 55 and just play golf: $354,000 US.

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UN list predicts a bleak future

News24

08/09/2005 12:28 - (SA)

Johannesburg - The United Nations development programme's (UNDP) human development index (HDI) for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) makes for grim reading.

A Zambian, statistically, has less chance today of reaching 30 years of age than an English worker of 1840 - when the forbidding circumstances of the early Industrial Revolution consigned many a Briton to an early grave.

The HDI measures achievement in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income.

It is part of a larger, annual, global human development report, released in New York on Wednesday.

Reduced life expectancy

Report co-writer and statistician Claes Johannson said World War 1 and the 1918 influenza pandemic stripped 16 years off the life expectancy of the average Frenchman.

The Aids pandemic in Botswana has taken 31 years from the Batswana - reducing the time they can expect to live from 65 years to a mere 34.

He said large parts of the world have made significant progress in human development since 1975 - sometimes quite rapidly.

But sub-Saharan Africa remained an exception.

Today 18 countries have a lower HDI reading than in the 1990s. Twelve are in Africa. By contrast, the number for the 1980s was only six.

Commenting on the impact of these realities on the UN's millennium development goals (MDGs), Johannson said 115 countries were off-track on one or more of the goals, that aim to eradicate extreme poverty by 2015, by "more than a generation".

In some instances, set objectives might be reached by 2115, a hundred years later than planned.

Slow progress

He said the basic thrust of this year's report was that the MDGs will not be reached using a "business as usual" approach.

UNDP resident representative in South Africa, scholastica Sylvan Kimaryo, said the MDGs, which will be discussed next week at a special UN summit, amounted to a promissory note to the world's poor.

"The report identifies inequality as one of the key reasons why progress towards the MDGs is too slow. Without tackling inequality, many middle-and low income countries will find it difficult if not impossible to reach MDG targets on income poverty, child mortality and others."

Looking at trade, aid and security, Kimaryo said while much aid was wasted in the past, the right policy environment did in fact create conditions for more rapid human development - as seen in Mozambique, Ghana and Tanzania.

As the cases of India and China demonstrated, trade has massive potential to lift people out of poverty.

But then farm subsidies, tariffs and other mechanisms to stop developing countries from moving up the value chain had to be addressed. For example, 90% of the world's cocoa came from developing nations, but only 30% of the chocolate, as the rich protected their industries.

-30-

done for the people

Bush to seek $40B for next Katrina phase

Wednesday September 7, 2005 12:16 AM

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush intends to seek as much as $40 billion to cover the next phase of relief and recovery from Hurricane Katrina, congressional officials said Tuesday as leading lawmakers and the White House pledged to investigate an initial federal response widely condemned as woefully inadequate.

One week after the hurricane inflicted devastation of biblical proportions on the Gulf Coast, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the total tab for the federal government may top $150 billion. At the same time, senators in both parties said they suspect price gouging by oil companies in the storm's aftermath.

Relief and recovery needs will be the "number one priority for the foreseeable future,'' pledged House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas as Congress convened after a five-week vacation.

Republicans and Democrats alike heaped criticism on the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the government's front-line responder agency for national disasters. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi told Bush to his face at the White House that he should fire the agency's director, Michael Brown. "The president thanked me for my suggestion,'' the California Democrat said afterward.

Stung by earlier criticism, Bush invited congressional leaders to the White House for an afternoon meeting, then dispatched several Cabinet officials to the Capitol to brief rank-and-file members. "Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people,'' Bush told reporters.

House and Senate committee chairmen announced investigations, while House Speaker Dennis Hastert suggested a bipartisan House-Senate probe. "We're ready to get going,'' he said.

Whatever their plans, lawmakers took largely symbolic actions on their first day in the Capitol since the storm - the Senate expressing condolences to victims of the storm and the House observing a moment of silence.

Bush did not specify at the meeting with congressional leaders how much he would request for additional relief. A $10.5 billion down-payment approved last week is "being used at an increasingly rapid pace. We're readying a second installment now and a precise number is currently being determined,'' said Scott Milburn, an Office of Management and Budget spokesman.

The congressional officials who said the total could be as high as $40 billion from Congress did so on condition of anonymity because it was not clear when the formal announcement would be made. Reid said he expected a request in the range of $40 billion to $50 billion.

The unprecedented scope of the destruction swiftly shot relief and recovery items to the top of Congress' autumn to-do list.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. put off planned votes on elimination of the inheritance tax, a GOP priority, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the need to address hurricane-related difficulties would further postpone action Bush's long-delayed call for overhauling Social Security.

At the same time, Frist, like Bush, made clear Republicans want John Roberts confirmed as the nation's 17th chief justice in time to take his seat before the Oct. 3 opening of the Supreme Court's term. Hearings on Roberts' nomination open next Monday.

Individual lawmakers outlined numerous suggestions to ease the burden caused by the storm and ensuing New Orleans-area flood that left an unknown number of people dead, uncounted thousands of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed and drove hundreds of thousands of Americans from their homes. Many are poor and normally receive welfare. Others are sick and are now cut off from their health care and prescription medication. Still others are school-age and will suddenly find themselves enrolled in classrooms not built to accommodate them.

Grassley, R-Iowa, said he favors loan relief for farmers whose grain harvest may not reach market on schedule because of difficulties at the New Orleans port. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, called for help with Medicaid costs in states that take in storm victims. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said he favors tax relief for airlines hardhit by a spike in fuel costs.

In the House, DeLay said the GOP leadership hoped to have legislation on the floor this week dealing with Pell grants, reducing red tape for the newly unemployed and making it easier for FEMA to transfer money to private organizations.

The storm disrupted oil drilling and distribution along the Gulf Coast, and the Senate Energy Committee convened a hearing into the rising cost of gasoline. Republicans and Democrats said they suspect price gouging in the aftermath of the storm, but said the government lacks the ability to adequately investigate or prevent such abuses.

"There are growing concerns that oil companies are making too much in profits at the expense of consumers,'' said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the committee.

Rep. Jim McCrery, R-La., criticized FEMA for not assisting non-Red Cross shelters housing thousands of evacuees in his northwest Louisiana district. ``There's no excuse not to have people available for these kinds of needs for these poor people who have been displaced from their homes,'' he said in a telephone interview from Shreveport.

Pelosi's criticism was far sharper.

"The people of the Gulf region were struck by two disasters. First was the hurricane and then the failure of the federal government in time of great need,'' she said... "The buck stops at the president's desk. The president said he's going to lead the investigation into what went wrong. He needs to look only in the mirror.''

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who lost a home in the storm, said he hoped investigations would not interfere with recovery. "Please, please, my colleagues, let's don't try to fix blame right now. There'll be a time for that. Let's fix the problems that we've got to deal with now.''

-30-

LOS ANGELES: Pop star Michael Jackson has written a song for the victims of Hurricane Katrina that he hopes to record with other top artists and release as a charity single, his spokeswoman said today.

Vacation is Over... an Open Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush

by Michael Moore

Friday, September 2nd, 2005 Dear Mr. Bush: Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag. Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with? Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her! I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike? And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ! On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that. There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland. No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this! You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit. Yours, Michael Moore MMFlint@aol.com www.MichaelMoore.com P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st. ###