This morning my husband couldn’t find his car keys and my daughter forgot to put on her socks, almost missing the bus. Also, we discovered that nobody had any cash when my husband asked for some. (My fault, I’d forgotten to go to the ATM yesterday).
It was a normal Thursday morning for us. And I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that.
Our electricity is working just fine and so is our air conditioning. We have phone service and hot and cold running water and the A-1 Sanitation truck rolled by around 10 am to pick up our trash. We have clean clothes, three working vehicles and plenty of food stored in a working refrigerator. We have access to internet and satellite television.
Like everyone else in this country, I’m thinking about the people hit by Hurricane Katrina. In New Orleans and Gulf Coast Mississippi, everything’s gone, even law and order. The Big Easy is underwater and dead bodies are floating by the New Orleans Convention Center. One of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen is now a big stinking mess.
Most of the residents of New Orleans managed to leave town. But with no access to cars, the poorest residents were forced to ride out the storm, either in their own homes or in the makeshift shelter of the Super Dome. Now they’re stuck, with no food and no water, waiting to be evacuated to the Astro Dome in Houston.
The state of Texas has offered to take the Louisiana refugees in, providing shelter for the long term and making room for their children in the Houston schools.
Disasters bring out the best and worst in all of us.
Perhaps the most haunting image for me is some footage I saw on CNN. An woman in New Orleans was walking through the shelter with her four small children holding hands in a line behind her. They all looked scared and confused, but they were together and you knew they were going to stay together.
These are the times we need to all hold hands and stick together. That's the only way we'll get through it.
Posted by judy5cents
at 1:46 PM EDT
