Do You See a Need in Nashville for Flood Relief?

Do You Want to Help Your Neighbors Recover?

Do You Want to Make Nashville a Great Place to Live?

Items being collected:

• diapers
• baby formula
• heavy trash bags
• bottled water
• masks, work gloves
• peanut butter
• fruit cups, bananas, apples
• small toiletries (tooth paste, soap, deodorant)
• mold retardants (green friendly only)

If there are any late breaking news items, you can check out the page www.asitethatworks.com/flood/  (As of noon today, this is the same content in both places.)

Thank you for your assistance.

It is humbling to sit at home watching it rain for 2 solid days, thinking that the streets that look like the Ocoee on the TV are at least a mile or two away, and then walk a couple of sunny blocks from your house a day later and see signs you were wrong.

The following news is based on some items I compiled in an email for some out-of-town family and friends. I hope my out of town followers find it interesting.  It is not meant to be all inclusive of all of the entire situation.  It is just one perspective.

Those of served by Nashville water have been asked to conserve water because they have closed a treatment facility until further notice due to the fact that they cannot operate it under the flooding conditions. (I really need a shower after 2 days without one and I have to go out in public today, so I will have to get a quick one.)

Sunday I had been surfing a few of the TV stations to get a sense of what is actually happening. Here are some things of interest from that evening–with some updates along the way:

• Sunday evening they evacuated Opryland Hotel as a “precautionary measure;” I thought they said they had 1500 guests at the moment. I also thought the spokesperson said most of the other hotels in Nashville were full. Water is in the parking lot and possibly in the Opry Mills mall (former Opryland) (The TV reported many of them McGavock High School) They said they were evacuating because of a power outage. I later heard that they have some concerns about a nearby levee. They ended up with 6-10 ft of water in the hotel. They had to do water rescues at the nearby Wyndham Resort. Briley Parkway near the hotel was flooded over as well as the subdivisions in the area.
• At dark on Sunday, the interstate(I-40) is covered by the Harpeth river (impassable) in at least two places. I watched video of them bringing a police helicopter in to rescue a pregnant woman stranded between these two points on Channel 5. The Channel 4 Website has a video of some of this stuff labeled “Flooding in Belleuve” (there spelling mistake). (This is not apparent on the TDOT smartway maps—they are listing everything as flooded—which is not technically accurate.) (I think this water has now gone down.)
• Sunday evening they were evacuating a subdivision near this area in Bellevue by boat; They expected to be doing this all night, but they stopped a couple of hours later presumably all people who wanted out have been evacuated. We have a church member who has an elderly family member in that part of the county that they cannot locate or contact.
• (My mother-in-law actually lives a block or two from an area just upstream in an area called river plantation. Her home is OK, but just a couple of blocks away, water was up to the tops of carports and one of her two exit points by road was flooded.)
• Kingston Springs was/is cut off on at least two sides (West of Nashville on the Harpeth River.)
• There are no businesses open in the tourist district below 4th next to the river Sunday night–in the confusion of things; I am not sure if this turned out to be accurate. Some first ground floors ended up flooding and many downtown basements flooded from water coming in from underground.
• The city has had to close parts of downtown to pedestrians at various times. (On Sunday evening the Corp of Engineers was insisting that they would be able to control the river stage and keep it from actually flooding.)
• Sunday night they reported that they were evacuating a low lying business district called Metro Center—where I levee was leaking. Monday morning a radio station in the area (WPLN) was off the air, but another business I know about–the owner was there. Monday night they were trying to figure out what to do with the food stored at the Second Harvest Food Bank in this area.
• A major quarry west of town near the Cumberland river has filled with flood waters from the Cumberland. (It was impressive to see on the TV—though it may not sound like it.)
• Many people have been told they could not/should not buy flood insurance because they are not in the 100 year flood plain—yet they are flooding.
• Franklin (or Williamson County) has a mandatory curfew from 6:00 pm Sunday until sometime Monday.
• The river going through Centerville (The Buffalo or the Duck) is cresting at least 5-10 ft higher than the previous record, set in the early part of the 1900’s.
• The commuter train depot (with the train present) is flooded. The adjoining lot holding MTA buses is also flooded.
• On Sunday the Red Cross spokes person was saying that they would not turn anyone away. Moments later the TV station was saying that at one of the shelters, there is absolutely no room for any more cars in the parking lot (and essentially saying they are turning folks away.)
• The garage under the Publix where Allison works has flooded, which shut off their electrical supply Sunday and another time or two. They have been operating on backup generator and evidently the freezers/refrigerators have not been working when they do that. They have lost a lot of food that they cannot sell. She has heard that they were taking a lot of extra food out of the Krogers just down the street. Saturday when the flooding began, they had to give customers a chance to get their cars out of the garage.–Yesterday they found an elderly man and woman–one behind the Publix and one behind the Krogers just up the street from the flooding that happened on Richland Creek. At one point it appears that Publix was the only Grocery in the immediate vicinity that was open. People were buying a lot of snack food and beer on Saturday and Sunday.
• The Natchez Trace Parkway is/was closed for part of the distance.
• One farm had to evacuate 100 horses (Between Nashville and Franklin)
• Saturday they had a house or a trailer float into I-24 in Antioch. In one of the videos, for a short while you could see cars literally bobbing in the interstate. There were possibly over 100 cars stranded. They had these removed by 6:00 pm Sunday.
• They have set new records for height of the pool for Old Hickory Lake (Just above downtown and Opry Hotel.)
• The GooGoo Dolls concert at the Ryman has been postponed at least one night.
• They reported 600 water rescues so far by Sunday Evening; I thought I heard 1,000 yesterday.
• Vanderbilt Childeren’s Hospital has been have trouble with flooding in its basement—which has caused then to cancel all elective surgeries. (I think they had to move some of their patients.)– (As of Sunday evening)
• They did a bunch impressive rescues on Richland Creek much earlier Sunday near Charlotte, fairly near our house.
• Some roads with damaged bridges could be closed for weeks (Including some important commuter routes).
• Our church canceled services Sunday morning (It is near an area called Richland Creek that had dramatic flooding early this morning.)
• The mayor has been asking people to not travel any more than they have to since Saturday–they would still prefer us to stay at home–but we want to get back to normal. The state offices are officially closed today. (They were open Monday).
• In Mount Pleasant (Southwest of Columbia) , a water main had broken that they cannot find. They are asking people to boil water. They now have a similar situation in Erin (Houston County between Waverly and Clarksville/Dover)
• I have seen several pictures of twisted rail roads. In Franklin a rail road bridge is supposedly damaged.
• All of this and the news crews have hardly gotten out of Davidson County.
• As another interesting logistic note—The city of Nashville provides everyone a huge trash can and a huge recycling bin so that they use special trucks with automatic arms to dump trash. Many of these have floated away. It took several months to unroll the project when they first did—many of these will need to be replaced.
• They just had a interesting report on Channel 4. George McIntyre was a head coach at Vanderbilt for at least 8 years. He lives in a part of River Plantation (in Bellevue) that was flooding. He has MS. His son lives in Green Hills, which is normally a 15-20 minute drive. His son took 2 hours to drive to his Dad’s home from Green Hills. Once he got to River Plantation he had to swim to get to his parents house. Since his Dad could not walk he no idea how to get him out. He said a prayer and a photographer for The Tennessean came by. They then floated Coach George McIntyre out on an air mattress. (This is evidently what he sleeps on.)
• The bridge that connects downtown Centerville (Hickman County) to the rest of the world went under water Sunday Evening; so I am told the town is cut-off.
• They tell us that the Cumberland River has now crested in Nashville. However, they sandbagged the remaining water treatment plant last night. We are still at half capacity. We won’t be back to full capacity until the additional treatment plant in Donelson is out of the flood and they can assess it. Since this flooded before the old Opryland complex flooded and since both are near Donelson–I imagine it will be a few days.

Tuesday evening I was listening to NPR’s Fresh Air program about whether the IPad and/or the Kindle might save publishers.  The show is available here http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=04-27-2010 if you would like to hear it for yourself.

One of the big concerns of the publishing industry is that they cannot ignore the huge efficiency gains of publishing electronically to devices like Kindles and IPads.  However, many books are sold via knowledgeable store clerks at bricks and mortar stores.  These clerks do a lot of reading and generally have an idea of what books they think people will buy.  They are major purchasing influencers.

Nevertheless, the competition to be efficient has gotten so stiff that truly local, independent books stores are hard to find.  Publishers are in a significant quandary.  Their sales model depends on bricks and mortar, and their profits will likely depend on electronic delivery.

I think the only way out is to use Social Media.  I cannot say exactly what form it will take since Social Media is still evolving.  However, if sales is about getting people to talk, and you cannot afford a store, what other option is there?  So my advice to publishers is to start experimenting with social media.  (BTW, if any publishers stumble this far, A Site that Works, can build custom social networks for you to try.)  Create sites where people can share their book experiences, what they liked and what they did not, what other books they also read (with more links, some buy buttons etc.)

Some other pieces of information that I thought were interesting: Evidently, the Kindle and IPad are built around the notion that the author/publishing house have to agree to publish the book through the device and make specific contracts.  If I understand this plan correctly, it is a departure for Apple from the very successful model for ITunes. In another odd twist, Google is thinking of entering the market with a device that will not be tied to specific contract.  (Seems like that is what Apple did with ITunes and the IPod.)

Many people with websites ask someone else to take care of the issue of domain registration. If this is you, be careful who you trust this information too. You are giving them a lot of power. A person with access to this information can ultimate control of your website. They can

• Prevent you from moving your domain name to a new website host (a small problem if want to move because of poor hosting services.)
• Take your site down by telling the world that your files are on a different or non-existent computer

They can do this because each domain registration includes vital information that tells the internet where the actual files that make your website are located. Without this information, nothing on the internet works.

There are still good reasons to let someone else handle your domain registration. Domain names come up for renewal every so often. If you neglect to renew the domain, someone else can register it and take it away from you. Other deviants so that they can charge you $100 or more to get it back. If you often overlook such 5 minute details, you should have someone keep track of your domain names for you.

You just need to be able trust the person you have maintaining your domain name.

Hellotxt and Facebook are very nicely integrated. If you have Facebook and other social networking applications such as twitter, Flikr, Plaxo, etc, you can integrate Facebook and Hellotxt and make virtually all of your status updates from Facebook. To set this up.

If you have not already done so, create a Hellotxt.com account. They have a usual account creation process that starts at http://hellotxt.com. Once you have created your Hellotxt acoucnt you can integrate with a variety social networks.

Getting Facebook setup on Hellotxt.

There are two ways to get to the page that allows you to set-up Facebook.
1) From your homepage after you have logged in to hellotxt there is a link on the right hand side labeled “Facebook App.” (See the screen shot on the right.) (click on the words Facebook App)
2) You can also click on the settings for your facebook account and arrive at the screen on the right. (Click on the blue “facebook” icon.

Authorizing the Application.

Both routes take to the following screen, which begins a multi-stage process in which they double check (at least) that you really want to do this. (You should click allow in the following screen example–it is your only choice.)

(click on the image below to see a larger version.)

From here you will need to choose whether to use an existing Hellotxt account to create a new one. (This version of the instructions assumes you already have a Hellotxt account.

After entering your login information and clicking login (on the left side of the screen) you should see the following screen. You should probably click the Enable button below (I did anyway) to avoid being constantly asked for login information.

They want to make sure that you really want to authorize the contact, so they ask again.

Now you have to give hellotxt permission to access your facebook account. (Seems a bit redundant to me, but …)

Yeah, they like the double confirmation system. Click allow publishing.

At this point you should be finished. You can find the application in your facebook “Applications” area. (see the small icon on the very bottom left of your screen.) You may be required to provide an “user key.” If so, you can get it from the hellotxt setting screen. (I had to redo the process to create this blog entry to make sure I included all the reasonable steps and it did not ask me for this on the redo.)

It is not how many of your checks have rubberized and are getting returned for insufficient funds.

It is the number that tells you how many people came to your site and looked at only one page–Meaning they probably did not find anything terribly useful or interesting there (or they saw your number on the homepage and made an immediate call).  A good bounce rate is probably less than 30 percent on a homepage.

If you install Google Analytics on your site you will have this information.  (We install Analytics on all of the site that we do.)  Some of the other tools probably also create these statistics.

Generally speaking, people have to get comfortable with you, before they pick up the phone and call you or buy a product.  Therefore, you want people to explore your site and get to know you. Once you start watching your bounce rate, you can adjust your content and improve your relationship building through the website.

That is actually a trick question.

Content without Visibility Does not Create Many Leads

That is, if no one finds you, then no one can respond to the great calls to action that you have created.  However, good content improves your rankings in the search engines, so that people can find you easier.

Visibility without Content is Costly

Many of the things that you can do to drive traffic to your website costs you time or money.  It costs a lot of money to optimize a page for search engines.  Link campaigns to improve your search engine rankings are also costly.  Pay per click campaigns usually start at around $400/month.  (Google AdWords is an example of a Pay Per Click campaign.  These are advertisements that get displayed whenever someone does a search.)

Every time someone comes to your site because of a program you paid for to get them their has a cost.  Every person that leaves your site without taking the action you want drives the cost of converting that traffic into sales up.

Example 1:  You spend $100 to get 10 visitors and 9 of them “bounce” and you get one sales call.  Then you have spent $100 per sales call from your website.

Example 2: You spend $100 to get 10 visitors and only 5 of them bounce and 5 of them call you.  Then you you have spent only $20 per sales call.

What Do We Recommend?

We suggest you work on your content first, then on your visibility.  It is the more cost effective solution.  Good content will get ranked well in Google and Yahoo eventually.  So it does a better job of accomplishing both objectives if you are short on money.

Our Next Post will have some suggestions to improve your content.

This year was again a different experience.  I decided to go back because I really enjoy the spiritual part of this journey.  It is really good for us mainline protestants to grapple with the question “Where Did You See God Today.”  Consequently, I decided to devote most of my time to helping the mission center build a better website.  You can see the results of this work at “www.wheredidyouseegodtoday.com.”  We did not spend a lot of time on the design.  The main focus was to create a structure that would allow participants could share their stories and create a better idea of what happens, than we could creating fixed promotional pages.  Of course the mission center wanted to make sure that they could easily ensure that posts were appropriate to the subject at hand and that they did not contain profanity. You know, all those things you open yourself up to when you let the public make comments.

Nevertheless, I got to see some of the city.

The first year we went to the lower 9th, I saw the bright red roof of an older pizza hut.  I thought, surely they must be open.  It looks clean.  When we drove by, I was sad to see that one of my favorite chains, was indeed minus location.  This year that same Pizza Hut sits there, unused, and apparently uncared for.  A few blocks away I could see termite damage from the street in selected buildings.

Pocked throughout the neighborhoods stretching alongside the interstate from near Slidell to the West Bank bridge are homes that that look like they could fall over at any time.  They can probably stand there for 30 years, but they are still uncared for.  Even on the West Bank, where the levees did not break from Katrina, there are building sitting blackened eyes instead of windows.

In comparison, the at least one Vietnamese Community was well on its way to being re-established during our first visit, 3 years ago.  They had a specific rebuilding plan and moved back in stages.  Each stage brought back only the people that were necessary for the task of that stage.  Each stage laid a foundation on which the following stages could build.  (1. Clean out enough of a place for a small group to live.  2. make that space more habitable, so that a few more can come back.  3) When a few more comeback, they can start re-building in the cleaned spaces while the original crew moves on to clean another space.

Where is the leadership for the Community of New Orleans to make this sort of re-birth possible?  Obviously, the French Quarter is back.  Harrah’s Casino is back.  The piles of debris have been cleaned.  The street signs are back in the Lower 9th.  The government says the levees are repaired.  How much more of the city could be fully functional, if the city had been proactive enough to layout specific rebuilding plans starting with the main arteries and then branching out to the communities?  The process would be much like the way an electric company gets power pack after on after inclimate weather.

Maybe, then, instead of feeling like we are rebuilding homes for the elderly so that they can come home to die in dignity, we could sense more completely that a community was truly being reborn. Maybe the job would be much closer to done.

The faith of many of the people rebuilding in New Orleans is much greater than my faith.  When you are in its precense, it is heartening to see what these individuals have accomplished with God’s help.  Just don’t step back and look at what could have been or look to hard at what still needs to be done.  You just have to do it.

Allison (my wife) and I have made three trips to New Orleans.  Each time for New Years to help rebuild the city.  In all honesty, it is like recycling.  The small part we do really does not matter until you add it up with the “insignficant” efforts of the other thousands of volunteers.

The first year was shocking.  During our tour of the city, we would see armed Humvees patrolling the streets.  It was one thing to hear about the searches on TV, it was another to see piles of rubble and each house visible marked.  The devastation and the horrible bureaucratic nightmares affected rich and poor equally.

The second year was surprising in its own way.  The Lower 9th Ward was mostly a field, where there should have been rows of houses.  Brad Pitt had not yet arrived.  You could see recovery happening and traffic jams coming back but the people that were rebuilding their own homes were often pouring in their life savings just to rebuild.  It seemed that if New Orleans flooded again they would truly lose it all.  Nevertheless, the property speculators were moving in.  It was heart breaking to see the banners hanging in a gymnasium, touting the the former private school’s statewide athletic success and to know that less than 50 people of the church sponsoring the school had returned.  They were selling the property because 50 people could not possibly service the same debt as a the pre-Katrina congregtion of at least 1000.

More about this year in the next post.