Well, of course I want to mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I should add that a close friend died suddenly a few days ago, so best-laid plans to continue this blog on that actual anniversary date needed to go awry. However, today is two years plus two days since that cataclysmic event, so I think it's still fitting.

This blog was originally used for my students in my Summer 2007 online courses, but now I have transitioned away from using this for school, so I no longer need to censor my bias. I found something I wrote on September 5, 2005, that I would like to reproduce here.

A Nation in Shock

In times of crisis people come together. They think not of their differences, but of their similarities. They think not of their localities, but of their nationality, not in the sense of being separate, but in the sense of being part of one nation. That is when Americans need their federal government most, and that is why Americans from the Gulf Coast to Alaska felt so let down by the response to Hurricane Katrina. That is why the bureaucratic bungling was so particularly insulting. Over time we have gradually allowed our government to become too far removed from its people, and this is the result.

We must look at this as _our_ response to Hurricane Katrina. After all, our federal government represents _all_ of us. Has it represented us well? We were already the laughingstock of the international community. With this we've corked the bottle, in contrast to the broken levees of New Orleans.

This is a multi-state tragedy. This is when and why public service should trump privatization. There has perhaps never been a better example of that.

A crisis response is not the same as a business-as-usual response. That is one of the basic tenets of crisis intervention.

In a curious evocation of Nero and Marie Antoinette, Bush twiddled rather than fiddled while New Orleans flooded rather than burned; meanwhile his mother made comments that were virtually to the effect of "Let them eat dirt."

Perhaps we should be evacuating people to the mall in Washington, DC. I envision Bushvilles springing up as Hoovervilles did during the Great Depression when that President's big business leanings led to insensitivity toward the suffering of millions of those just as friggin' American as he was -- sound familiar?

Cherty and Brownie and his oh-golly-gosh, "this is hard" incredulity.

Nothing the terrorists can do to us is worse than we can do to ourselves.

We are all from New Orleans.


jdm

I've been seeing more and more articles about New Orleans lately. The two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina will be August 29th, with the floods happening then and in the days afterwards in 2005. Here are several I thought were interesting.
"New Orleans Recovery Is Slowed by Closed Hospitals"
"Poll: More people wouldn’t leave for a hurricane"
"No indictment in Katrina hospital deaths"

jdm

Well, I got the pictures from the disposable camera after all, but as you can see they just didn't come out very well; I was taking these pictures into the sun through a dirty window of an old bus on which we were traveling as we went through various areas of St. Bernard Parish on the day I did my work for Habitat. I'm putting up a couple of these anyway -- I just can't describe the devastation any other way.

I will add some more about the time I spent in New Orleans once I can put together some additional thoughts. I'd like to try and summarize my experience there.

jdm

-- finally home in Champaign. I got some bad news tonight: the guy at CVS can't seem to get my pictures out of the disposable camera. I hope those photos aren't lost for good. . . . (However, I guess that "bad news" pales in comparison to real bad news, if you know what I mean.)

Meanwhile, suddenly I seem to see a lot more about Katrina back in the news these days (no doubt because of the upcoming 2-year anniversary since the disaster). Here are two items from today.
"House Panel Probes Toxic FEMA Trailers"
"Katrina volunteers feel unwanted"

(I did not feel unwanted or unwelcomed, by the way -- to the contrary!)

jdm

Now I'm in Mt. Vernon, IL -- "almost" home (well, still about 4 or 5 more hours). Finally this was a good weather day, and I got here with still a little daylight left after traveling through the rest of Mississippi and then back through Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri. Wish me luck for the rest of the drive!

jdm

Well, today (Tuesday, July 17th) it was good-bye to New Orleans and Louisiana; I knew it was time to leave because it started raining again, and I didn't want to miss driving through another storm (yes, that's sarcasm). I just don't understand how this area can take any more rain. Anyway, I'm now in Madison, Mississippi, for the night.

I leave still inspired by the spirit of the people of New Orleans and the surrounding areas affected by Katrina. Others were saying it makes them sad to see all the devastation, but I had a different reaction: anger. There is so much more to be done. So much more help is needed.

jdm

Mostly I spent Monday (July 16th) putting together furniture at a domestic violence women's shelter in Chalmette, Louisiana, for Habitat for Humanity. Chalmette is in St. Bernard Parish, and later in the afternoon a woman who works for the parish took us on a bus ride to see some of the most devastated areas. It's just unbelievable -- 2 years on and it really still looks like a disaster area -- still a boat on a roof in one location. I had only a disposable camera with me, so those pictures will have to wait.

Some places have never even been gutted yet, and folks here are truly refugees. Their resilience, however, is incredible to behold . . . so there's an entrepreneurial spirit here, and I saw much evidence of volunteers and religious organizations, but no government presence at all.

'Nuff said.

jdm

I did my Habitat day today -- more shortly.

jdm