Katrina

Maybe 'cause I've been there twice, and fondly remember the 10-or-so-man street percussion band at the less-active end of Bourbon Street, I can't stop reading the news and looking at the pictures and feeling absurdly sad. The pictures I remember from Andrew were just scenes of massive devestation...houses destroyed, downed power lines, and it seems like, with enough manpower, the cleanup would be fairly straightforward, albeit long.

But now everything in New Orleans is underwater, and the water doesn't really have anywhere to go. Schools closed until December? No electricity for a month? What do you do if you have no house to go to anymore? Does Bank of America insist you have to keep up your credit card payments even though everything you purchased with that card is completely destroyed? Does Ford tell you to make car payments even though your car is floating down Canal Street?

What's weird is that nobody here seems to even care. Doug was watching game shows today; meanwhile, dead bodies are floating down the street of one of the country's most storied cities. "Good thing it wasn't us!" is a common cry. Nonsense, I say. This is the largest disaster on record in American history; thousands of people (if not hundreds of thousands) now have to completely remake their lives.

It just doesn't seem fair.