A phenomenon I encounter so often, as certainly do so many other folks that write and paint and draw and "do" to exorcise those cathartic demons, I find myself humbled to my hands and knees by my betters. Those true writers, wordsmiths and artists that can speak my sentiments far better than my feeble talents will allow.

Reprinted without permission from one of the greatest columnists in the United States, a man that knows and feels more for my homeland than perhaps I am capable, Chris Rose:

Tuesday, 6:30 p.m.

By Chris Rose

I got out.

I'm mystified by the notion that so many people didn't even try, but
that's another story for another time.

We left Saturday, my wife, kids and me. We went first to Picayune,
Miss., thinking that a Category 3 storm would flood New Orleans and knock
out power, but that we'd be dry and relatively comfortable in the piney
woods while the city dried out.

Sunday morning, of course, Katrina was massive red blob on our TV
screens, now a Category 5, so we packed up and left again.

We left my in-laws behind in Picayune. They wouldn't come with us.
Self-sufficient country folk; sometimes you can't tell 'em nothing.

We don't know what happened to them. My wife's dad and her brother and
their families: No word. Only hope.

Like so many people around the country wondering what happened to those
still unaccounted for; we just don't know. That's the hardest part.



If you take the images you've seen on TV and picked up off the radio
and internet, and you try to apply what you know to the people and places
you don't know about, well, the mind starts racing, assumptions are
made and well, it consumes you.

The kids ask you questions. You don't have answers. Sometimes they look
at me and though they don't say it, I can see they're wondering: Daddy,
where are you?

My 6-year-old daughter, she's onto this thing. What is she thinking?

We spent Sunday night in a no-tell motel in a forgotten part of
downtown Vicksburg; a neighborhood teetering between a familiar
antiquated charm and hopeless decay. Truth is, it called to mind my
beloved New Orleans.

Most of the folks in the hotel seem to live there permanently and it
had a hard-luck feel to it. It was the kind of place where your legs
start itching in the bed and you think the worst and you donÂ’t want your
kids to touch the carpet or the tub and we huddled together and I read
them to sleep.

Monday morning, my wife's aunt told us they had a generator in Baton
Rouge. As Katrina marched north and east, we bailed on our sullen little
hotel and drove down along he western ridge of the storm, mostly alone
on the road.

Gas was no problem. We had catfish and pulled pork in a barbeque joint
in Natchez and the folks there - everyone we have met along our
three-day journey has said the same thing: Good luck, folks. We love your
city. Take care of it for us.

Oh, my city. We have spent hours and hours listening to the radio.
Image upon image piling up in your head.



What about school? What about everyone's jobs? Did all our friends get
out? Are there still trees on the streetcar line? What will our economy
be like with no visitors? How many are dead? Do I have a roof? Have the
looters found me yet? When can we go home?

Like I said, it consumes you as you sit helplessly miles from home,
unable to help anyone, unable to do anything.

If I could, what I'd do first is hurt the looters. I'd hurt them bad.

But you have to forget all that. You have to focus on what is at hand,
what you can reach and when you have three little kids lost at sea,
they are what's at hand and what you can reach.

I brought them to a playground in Baton Rouge Tuesday afternoon. They'd
been bottled up for days.

Finally unleashed, they ran, they climbed, they fell down, they fought,
they cried, they made me laugh, they drove me crazy; they did the
things that makes them kids.

It grounds you. You take a breath. You count to ten. Maybe - under the
circumstances - you go to twenty or thirty this time.

And tonight, we'll just read them to sleep again.

We have several books with us because - and this is rich - we brought
on our evacuation all the clothes and things we planned to bring on a
long-weekend trip that we were going to take over Labor Day weekend.

To the beach. To Fort Morgan, right at the mouth of Mobile Bay.

Man.

Instead of that, I put on my sun tan lotion and went out in the yard of
the house where we're staying in Baton Rouge and I raked a massive pile
of leaves and limbs from the yard and swept the driveway.

Doing yard work and hitting the jungle gym on the Day After. Pretending
life goes on. Just trying to stay busy. Just trying not to think. Just
trying not to fail, really.

Gotta keep moving.

See WWL for more photographs.

Katrina: You Bitch

I’m sitting in front of the computer/television/radio/interocitor like the rest of America, waiting for the latest news. I know all this information, to which I’m hopelessly addicted with no chance of recovery, is the very thing that’s causing my feet to stomp and my scalp to itch in nervousness. Despite it all, however, I find myself in awe of humanity in its calmness and its kindness.

With enough warning, most people simply packed up the things they couldn’t replace with mere money and headed north, bound for hotels or the homes of family and friends. They too are glued to all available forms of media, waiting as if the perky weather girl on channel 10 will say, “As you can see here, the home belonging to Mrs. and Mrs. Sonnier in the Irish Channel is just fine.” If anyone panicked, we didn’t hear about it.

Of course there will be idiots, there always are. We’ll have our Falwell-style idiots claiming divine retribution against “The Big Easy” for letting women bare their breasts, men to consume beverages of an intoxicating nature, and for allowing Vinay to roam the streets unencumbered. You’ll also get your standard jihad-screaming loonies claiming a different kind of divine retribution for allowing women to drive cars and smoke cigarettes, listen to rock music and touch chicken feet on some holy Tuesday afternoon, or something stupid like that. The worst of all, because they'll get thrown onto the pile of bad science of global warming, global cooling, and other undecided stuff that gets far too much credibility with far too little evidence, will be the moonbats that see this disaster as evidence of the failure of the President's environmental policy, as if five years of GWB in the white house has caused the Earth to start breaking shit in retribution for so many people voting Republican. Oh, and we can’t forget the assholes: the looters, the crooks and the profiteers. News reports are already hitting the wires of people breaking into Winn-Dixies and department stores around the city.

Did you know the three top-selling items when people are preparing for a hurricane?
1. bottled water
2. beer
3. strawberry pop-tarts



Despite the idiots and assholes, most people, the ones you won’t read about, will simply leave and hope for the best. They are, like me, reading “hurricane blogs” and watching the television at the same time, though in Portland (as I’m sure is the case with the rest of the country) the news coverage is hyperbolic compared the stuff I can read on the local news wires. “New Orleans under 28 feet of water? Find out at 10 o’clock, only on FOX.”

It seems people are more likely to panic at a soccer riot than a genuine disaster, natural or otherwise. When the shit hits the fan, humanity, by and large, puts aside their differences and starts picking up the pieces. After September 11, 2001, while Palestinians danced feverishly in the streets in celebration, Americans lined up to donate blood and write checks to the Red Cross. When the tsunami hit southeast Asia, the United Nations bickered about who was going to pay for it, while U.S. Army helicopters flew in food and water and private American charities, whose contributions to the cause outweighed the donations of every other country on Earth, began preparations to rebuild the devastated villages.

Humanity is amazing in that it can so easily become a force for purposeful and positive change in times of crisis, especially Americans.

Chin up, y’all. Our hopes and manifestations are with you, and I’m just glad to know that my own family and friends are safe. If you have the time and the scrap to spare, donate a few dollars to help those affected by the disaster. Look here for a list of charities and aid organizations already mobilized alongside our National Guard to provide shelter, food, and water to those in need.