Katrina Memories

here's a link to what was going thru our minds in the first few weeks following the storm .

and here's my website documenting Katrina's wrath

Hopefully I caught all of the dead links.

Excellent Katrina Interactive

We were without electricity for a few weeks, so I missed quite a bit of what went on via the television and internet. I just found this fantastic interactive site from USA Today that has TONS of Katrina information from NOLA and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The power of Katrina's Winds

This is a picture of a billboard in Slidell, bent by the storm's winds.

Katrina Evacuation

Bayoucreole details her family's exodus from Katrina here. We stayed for the storm so I have no idea what it's like spending hours stuck in traffic. I can't imagine.

Our Katrina memories are on a website I can't access here from work, so I'll get to it when I get home and post it here.

Migrant Shorebirds arrive in the Gulf

It's here, what we've been fearing. Birds are starting their annual migration through the Gulf Coast and coming into contact with the oiled shorelines.

from a "birding blog" (linked above), an excerpt:
Today on Grand Isle Beach, where it is open to swimming, fishing and crabbing, the beach was strewn with new tarballs, and not one person was cleaning any of it. These tarballs warm in the sun and soak into the sand, or become gooey and can directly oil bird's plumage, especially Sanderlings and Plovers that forage along the beach front.

The scale of this disaster is so huge, that many people seem to be ok with the amount of oil that is being left on the beaches now, and will likely never be cleaned. The fact of the matter is, if the amount of oil just on Grand Isle right now were to wash in on a New England Beach, or in San Francisco it would be a major environmental disaster. The apathy towards this catastrophe is very dis-heartening, and is directly affecting our nation's avi-fauna, and there seems to be no outcry for better handling.

The USFWS seems to be content with all of the oil on the shores, even on the Chandeleur Islands, and Raccoon Island. I can bring a shovel to any beach now and find lots of oil under the sand from Waveland, MS to Terrebonne Bay, Louisiana. On the east end of Grand Isle alone, a thick mat 50 meters by 10 meters wide, and 6 inches thick blankets the shoreline. That is 18,500 gallons worth of weathered oil on the shores, which goes uncleaned even today. The amount of fresh oil represented by that number is likely double the figure! Now extrapolate that along the entire southeastern Louisiana Coast where oil of this type is everywhere. Is that OK?

Those that don't "get it"

from nolanotes blog an entry about memories of deciding to return home to New Orleans after Katrina. She writes about an encounter in Thanksgiving of 2005 with a person who shares the feelings a seemingly large number of people in this country have:


That Thanksgiving, we traveled to Taos, NM. We were still bruised from Katrina but brave enough to venture out. A clerk in a store inquired where we were from. “New Orleans?” he snarled with a sneer, “I don’t know why they are bothering to rebuild. It’s not worth my tax dollars.”


I don't think I'll ever be able to understand how so many still hold so much malice towards their own countrymen.

But read the total post here. Her answer to that shallow minded clerk is worth the read.

Katrina Memory

From "gris-grits" blog, memories of walking thru Bay St. Louis, Ms. 4 months post-K

gris-grits: Katrina Memory #4

Real Americans, Please Stand Up

One of my favorite "talk show" people from the 70's thru the 80's - Dick Cavett - opines on the silly "mosque" to do going on.

Here is the link to the whole piece and here
is a piece of it, hoping you read it all


These are not proud moments in my heritage. But now, I’m genuinely ashamed of us. How sad this whole mosque business is. It doesn’t take much, it seems, to lift the lid and let our home-grown racism and bigotry overflow. We have collectively taken a pratfall on a moral whoopee cushion.


I'm a person of few words and I am at awe at the UNNECESSARY too wordy replies to this post. I feel like yelling: tell it in 30 words or less!!!! But that's just me.

Scuzzbucket of the Week

This scuzzbucket comes for a "I know tragedies of all kind and yours aren't as bad as mine" from California. (read his letter at the link)

NOLA blogger Michael Homan penned a heart-felt editorial which made it to the Sacramento Bee about the man-made disaster in New Orleans after Katrina.

But "James" still carries the anger within his heart as do a number of people about what they percieve as "New Orleans wants a handout" with this quote:


I have a question for you. Why is it that 5 years after Katrina people in New Orleans are still unable to cope with the aftermath of Katrina? After billions of dollars have been poured into New Orleans, why are we still hearing from the people of Louisiana, "We need more money?"

Why can't you let go of your anger, James? If you've been thru all that you have you would understand.

I will stop my post here because I'm about to launch into a line of obcenities I don't want to release.

Have a great day, Mr. Scuzzbucket James.

Katrina: Before-AFter and Now

 Here’s a link to a gallery from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi that shows pictures of homes before and after Katrina and what the properties look like five years after the storm

http://www.sunherald.com/2010/08/21/2420601/202-st-charles-bay-st-louis.html

 

 

Dan Baum on NOLA

From a Washington Post article by Dan Baum

"The longer I spent there, the clearer it became that what makes New Orleanians so different from other Americans is that they are experts at the lost art of living in the moment. They're less deadline-driven and less money-obsessed than the rest of us. Their identities are more rooted in their neighborhoods, second line clubs, and Mardi Gras krewes and Indian tribes than in their personal achievements. They don't squeeze friends and family into busy lives; they build their lives around them. Sharing a beer on the porch is not something a New Orleanian must schedule two weeks in advance."

amen to dat!!