What to say about New Orleans... the latest news paints a picture more like war torn Beirut instead of a city that was a pleasant tourist haven just a week ago. I find it all to be profoundly unsettling -- both like 9/11 and unlike it. I feel the same sense of mortality... as if certain absolutes can no longer be taken for granted. Yet this is not death and destruction caused by a largely unknown enemy; this is the world gone mad with Americans turning on Americans like hungry dogs. We have refugees in America... for the first time in decades.
*sigh* Best to stick with the purely personal.
Mrs. Geek and I have made a donation to the Red Cross 2005 Hurricane Relief Fund, which Company O. will generously match. Mrs. Geek teaches at a Catholic school, and there is another school with the same name in New Orleans. The students at her school will be raising money for their "sister" school.
Mrs. Geek and I also got some good news the other night. We know a couple who actually left for New Orleans to visit family last week. We didn't know how they fared at all through Katrina until Tuesday night. They joined the mass exodus out of the city on Saturday night and drove to stay with relatives in Dallas. Everyone is alive and healthy, but the family homestead is deemed lost because it just a few blocks from a ruptured levee.
Not all the news has been good, however. One of my Dad's college roomates lives in Gulfport, Mississippi with his family. At least, we hope it is "lives", not "lived". From what I've read, the governor of Mississippi says that Gulfport exists as nothing more than a spot on a map right now. Dad says that his friend lives in a house up on a hill, well up and away from I-90. Hopefully, it's still there -- we just don't know. My Dad says his friend moved away from Gulfport for a while to Jackson, Mississippi to get away from the hurricanes... but moved back to be closer to his grandchildren.
When will this madness end?
said drgeek
on 2005-09-01 at 5:32 p.m.
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The Wayback Machine - To Infinity And Beyond
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