Personal reactions to Katrina

Terrible sense of waste, something I hate.

Waste of life, waste of resources, waste of energy, just waste and because so much of it could have been avoided with careful planning and common sense action, the waste becomes more upsetting.

Maybe it's the news sources I've been looking at, but what's struck me -- what's on my mind at this moment, anyway -- is the dearth of faces, personal stories. 9/11 was quickly personalized by photos of the "Missing" posters everywhere, and it seemed like the personal stories surfaced fast. So far, the only personal stories I know of are a boy who was forcibly removed from his dog (Snowball?) and was inconsolable, and one Craigslist listing I happened to come across while job searching, from a mother looking for her young daughter. Brought the whole thing into focus for me, that one listing.

I'm sure there are more if I go looking, but as someone who has done a fair amount of reading of Katrina coverage, this is what has struck me.

What comes to my mind is the aftermath of hurricane Donna in the fifties. All we got in Miami was high winds and lots of rain. And loss of electricity. No air condition in Miami in the summertime, and not a block of ice to be had. We thought we were really suffering.

Tragedy spread across the spectrum
Hope spread across the spectrum





The hope for a better tomorrow.

I picture myself wading and wading badly through water and getting to near one of the big places, superdome or convention center, and walking in the doorway, or being helped to lurch.

I see myself as some insoucient white guy in an early photo I saw, going into the superdome, and as one of the bods out back not picked up while near death in the back of the convention center. I picture myself as my niece, in fantasy but not by so much, a seventeen year old black girl, now almost eighteen, if she were at her mother's when it all happened and she hied off, probably with a friend's family to the dome. Would have tried to get a hip hop group together...

I can only think of her as leader.
She wasn't there and neither was I.
I am still waiting to hear about the whys of the delays, which are inexplicable to me. I don't care which party folk are at fault. The red cross was shut out?

Anyway, I am one of "those people".

I also remember the woman at the front of some hotel in some cafe, saying how she didn't want to die in her particular lewd teeshirt, via an early report.

The politicians, from the mayor of Norlins thru governors right up to U.S. Senators, seem unencumbered by empathetic feelings towards the victims and have returned to business as usual. This would seem to call for large amounts of finger pointing, blame deflection, and gobbs of FEMA flagellation. Can partisan politics be far behind?

JM

I've edited my response to JM to just let us talk and say.

Ok, I wanted to post my own reactions now. Here they are.

1) OMG! Horror, fear, and sadness.
2) Disguist. How could this happen? How can others turn their backs now? Why are people saying that these people deserved it?
3) Anger. At the situation. At celebrities putting on a show. Anger as a reaction to the anger of others, and as a reaction to hate.
4) Disguist again.