Devastation

First off, sorry about the extra trouble you will have to go through to comment, but I had posted this earlier and got one of those long goofy spam comments, and I don't want any of that right now (or ever, to tell you the truth!). I think the mention of the hurricane was what attracted the spammer, though the comment did pour it on thick about what a wonderful blog I had! Boy was I liking that, until I realized it was a spam comment! Anyway, for the time being, I have enabled the word verification feature.

Aerial video footage from the Mississippi coast line. This was shot and is narrated by local newscasters. Sometimes their perspective is a little better than all the big shot news guys who are outsiders arriving on the scene, and have no sense of the history of an area. (I have watched only the first video. Just now, checking the link, I see they have two more videos.)

Hurricane Audrey was one of the more infamous hurricanes that hit in our area. People lost their entire families in one night. Nola Mae Ross has written a book of stories from hurricane Audrey. You can follow the link to read some of the stories. The thing is, those memories have remained vivid and heart-wrenching for people who lived through that night. I have known people who have had family members who went through Audrey and those family members would not talk about it at all. Audrey hit in 1957, nearly fifty years ago. Katrina will weigh heavily on the pysche of New Orleans and the Gulf coast for years.

The lady I work for lived on the Gulf coast while growing up. She and her family evacuated many times. Today she said that every time they left, her father told the family to think that they might come back, and there would be nothing there, if there was anything they wanted, they needed to get it then and bring it with them when they evacuated.

A link to a map of the levee system in New Orleans.

We have refugees in our civic center. Rumors have been flying about cars being broken into last night, fights breaking out, stealing stuff from the civic center, people mobbing WalMart, and on and on. Apparently none of it is true. At least that is what the officials are telling us. Last night a woman and her daughter went to help out and she sent the daughter home because of suggestive comments the young men were making.

Needs are high, and there is no easy fix for this situation. Many of the people who did not leave could not afford to leave. But also, when you have lived a long time under the threat of hurricanes, and the drama of the weathermen following those hurricanes, you tend to get complacent. It is a common mindset -- it won't happen to me, or it won't happen here. It happened, and it is way worse than anybody could have imagined.

Sorry if I have rambled on and sound incoherent. I have been watching too much of the news, and it is all too close to home. But I was able to enjoy a beautiful sunset tonight, with no fear of the impending darkness the setting sun would bring. May God bring light again to the city of New Orleans, and to the Gulf coast.

On a much lighter note, the one price I have had to pay is that my neighbor who is from New Orleans, and is sometimes a bit of a nosy horse's patooey, has a houseful of his relatives staying with him. Now when we go outside to leave the house, instead of just him being out on the porch staring and watching to see what everybody is doing, there are four or five more just like him, watching to see what is going on.