BARLEY SERVICES: no ordinary plumber

Hurricane Katrina landed ashore this morning in New Orleans.

I don’t usually follow hurricanes. I figure that the world is full of tragedy and there’s little I can do about most of it, including the hurricanes. But Katrina caught my attention early because New Orleans is a little closer to home.

I spent ten years headquartered in Mississippi, and New Orleans was close enough to be considered a neighbor. Part of those ten years was spent pastoring in northern Louisiana. A number of my sister churches were in south Louisiana and they introduced me to cajun culture; another point of contact with The Big Easy.

More recently, I spent a few days in New Orleans in 1996 attending the annual meeting of two organizations: the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. These are professional associations of religion teachers and scholars. In those days, they held their annual meetings jointly. I opined that this was so that the participants would have to endure it only once. I’m tellin’ ya, if engineers were this screwy, we’d still be living in grass huts.

I got to know the city a little better during that visit. I walked the old streets and, plumber that I am, I took note of the sewer system. Some of those manhole covers looked to me as though they were a hundred years old or older. I came upon some city workers who had dug a big hole exposing part of the system for repairs. This was like an artist being invited to tour the Louvre.

Very few people realize the critical role that plumbing plays in civilization. Without it, little would be possible. Instead, we’d be living in mud, walking in our own waste, and drinking polluted water–which was once the description of places like Paris or London.

New Orleans depends on pumps for drainage, since it sits below sea level. As I write these words, more rain is falling down there than the system can handle. It will flood, and the waste that was previously kept at bay by the plumbing system will be unleashed on the city.

That old system of pumps and levees will finally get the appreciation it deserves once this typhoon has blown over and the mess is getting cleaned up.

Rose at 6 and was on the job at 8. Not very early for me, but it was, after all, Saturday, and I had to get in a little biscuits, syrup, bacon, and bluegrass on the radio.

I took my camera under the house this morning, just to see what a photo would look like. Now I know.

Pictured here are my two sons. The older one (on the right) got married in July. The younger one was his best man.

This is the bride, of course. Not the best photo, but what do you expect from a plumber?

It was four years ago today that I opened Barley Services. Like all startups, I didn’t know what was in store. I didn’t know if the phones would ring. My wife was sure that I was going to run us into bankruptcy.

This fear of the unknown prevents many people from leaving the security of a job and striking out on their own.

My problem most of the time is that my phone rings too much! I often joke when the phone rings, “I wish these people would quit calling me.” I cannot remember when I’ve been caught up with nothing to do. The last time might have been four years ago.

I’ve noticed that successful businessmen like to share their stories and to give advice. Maybe we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished. In my case, I really don’t think that I’ve accomplished much of anything in starting and running this business. I just took the step, started, and did my job day by day.

I believe my strategy may be encapsulated thus: I make it easy to do business with me, and hard to choose someone other than me. I try to keep my friendliness and devotion to my customers’ welfare so high, they’d be nuts to go elsewhere.

It’s weird, I know, but I consider the customer more important than myself. I don’t take the attitude “How much money can I make?” My attitude, instead, is “How much can I help this person?”

The money takes care of itself. I don’t make much money, but I’m happier than most of the people who do.

Here are two coworkers and a customer from Friday’s heart surgery:

And here’s the satisfied customer:

They finally killed her this morning–or finished killing her, I should say. Ann Coulter described it poignantly (of course): “This week, an indisputably innocent woman will be killed by the government for one reason: Judge Greer of Pinellas County, Fla., ordered it.” Ann went on to say that Greer’s dismissal from his church was based on the “only one God per church” rule.

So there was victory this morning. But for whom? Terri lost. Her parents lost. Most of the malpractice lawsuit award is now gone, so husband Michael loses (besides the additional cost of having millions of people calling him a scumbag forever). Judge Greer looks worse than the liberal caricatures of Justice Taney, who wrote the Dred Scott decision; so Greer lost big time.

Did anybody win? Heh heh, there was one big winner, as always. The lawyers won! Not Terri’s lawyers: they’re on salary from their legal foundation. George Felos and his associates walked off with the lion’s share of the loot.

Husband Michael won over a million dollars in a malpractice lawsuit, testifying that he needed the money to take care of Terri. But, once he started the long effort to kill her, most of it got transferred to the lawyers.

The head lawyer was George Felos, pictured here. He’s a new age mystic. Through his psychic powers, handicapped people tell him that they want to die, so he uses the law to get them bumped off, as in the case of Schiavo. Don’t believe me? Read this.

Why does the despising of lawyers reach back to even ancient Egyptian texts 5,000 years old? You don’t find such feelings directed toward, say, policemen. Policemen oppose wrong and work for justice and even kill people sometimes–but there’s no history of hatred for them throughout millennia and across all geographical and cultural lines. But lawyers–ah, that’s a different story.

Well done, Felos. I know your boss is proud.

Okay, here’s a quick quiz to see how bright you are!

The following quotations are from today’s New York Times. Read them carefully and thoughtfully, then proceed to the Key Question that follows them.

Quotation #1

Mr. Felos, who spent more than an hour with the stricken woman on Monday afternoon, disputed that description. “Ms. Schiavo’s appearance, to me, was very calm, very relaxed, very peaceful,” he said. “I saw no evidence of any bodily discomfort whatsoever.”

Quotation #2

As her doctors have said and the courts have ruled, Mr. Felos said, Ms. Schiavo is too brain-damaged to be aware of the world around her.

Quotation #3

Mr. Felos said Monday that Ms. Schiavo had never been on a morphine drip. She has received two five-milligram suppository doses of morphine in the last 11 days, most recently two days ago, he said. Each dose was minimal, he said, and would have worn off in about four hours.

Quotation #4

Another doctor with long experience treating patients at the end of life, Douglas Nelson of Hickory, N.C., said that providing morphine to a patient in a persistent vegetative state was unnecessary because the patient would be unaware of pain or discomfort. But, Dr. Nelson said, “It’s not uncommon for the nurse to suggest, ‘Let’s just give her a suppository to be on the safe side.’ “

Now, here’s the Key Question to see how bright you are:

Key Question: Are these jackals lying? (Y) Yes (N) No (D) Duh, I think the Republicans are politicizing it and it’s a family matter.

Here’s a lawyer whose web site gives a lot of insight into the legal issues surrounding Terri’s trial and execution.

This is a picture of Terri before her heart attack, a photo which you’ve seen a hundred times before

And this is a photo of Terri after her heart attack, which left her brain without oxygen for fifteen minutes and reduced her to a Persistent Vegetative State.

Notice the unmistakable vegetable qualities. How can anyone think that the person in this photo is human? Or, if she is human, how can anyone think that such a girl as this wouldn’t want to die? See how miserable she looks? How grotesque? Obviously she wants to die now.

If the girl in that first photo could have seen this second photo, I’m sure she would have said “Michael, if I ever get into that condition, promise me you’ll let me lie unattended until I die of thirst.”

For the true state of the medical question (is she a vegetable?), see this article.

In his editorial today, Wesley Pruden (my favorite columnist) has done a magnificent job.

The governor might even risk impeachment, but what better issue on which to risk all than to risk it saving the life of a helpless and innocent woman, about whom [the others] care nothing at all. Life is a gift, and precious. This was once the abiding American belief, and it could be again.

I suspect that Jeb could become the most admired man of his generation if he’d move in and rescue Terri. But could the rescue be made permanent? That’s a legal question I haven’t heard discussed and can’t answer.

Sometimes injustice wins and the wicked triumph. They pay later, but that’s another topic. Meanwhile, putting the inconvenient to death has become American policy.