Lower 9th Ward

I haven't written in a couple of days...I thought I'd be writing a lot but once I started the blog and sat down to write, my head started spinning. ::Grin:: But I'll just write random topics till my head empties out. More soon. I just got back from visiting the Lower 9th Ward again...this photo is from very near the breached canal. See more pictures here The pics speaks for themselves, but I've written a few comments. This is what it looks like for the entire street, block after block after block.... (click on the pic for a larger one)

Click here for a video (Quicktime) This is just a short movie, no sound, that shows a typical street in the Lower 9th Ward. The point I'm trying to show is what you don't see when you see individual pictures. No matter where you turn, it's all destroyed. I'll be posting a longer more detailed video soon.

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

I'm posting my thoughts mostly about the areas I'm familiar with, New Orleans and the immediately surrounding areas, because those are the areas I've seen and where I lived. But we should never forget that the entire Gulf Coast was ravaged by the hurricane and flooding. The media often makes it seem like New Orleans was all that was affected but in many cases, the devastation was even worse.

One Year ago today

One year ago today, more than 216,000 people were killed in 12 countries in one of the worst natural disasters we can remember...the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. I remember when that happened I sat numb watching the news, trying to comprehend what had happened...what it must be like, and what the survivors felt seeing their world destroyed. When, three months ago I was able to see first-hand what it looked like in New Orleans, all those memories from last year came back. But in the midst of the desolation that had been part of New Orleans, the Indian Ocean wasn't a remote event anymore. I'd felt guilty that I'd been able to carry on my life a year ago and, for the most part, put the disaster in the Indian Ocean out of my mind. But the day I pulled my car off the road on Claiborne Avenue and finally cried...it was not just for New Orleans, but for those 216,000 people that lost their lives...and the millions more who lost their world, one year ago today.

Why am I starting this blog?

It's now 4 months since Katrina hit New Orleans and I've been living with my wonderful Mom in Baker, Louisiana. I'm one of the lucky ones...since I was a renter and didn't have a lot of important possessions, my losses are not worth mentioning when compared to so many other people's. But for these months I've compared what I've seen first hand in this area with what the media portrays, and I want to try to give people who aren't close to this area a better idea of what has really happened here. I know that unless you see this area in person, there's no way to really grasp what has happened here. That's expected. But I hope that if you're interested in reading this blog and seeing the photos that I'll be posting over the next days and weeks, maybe you'll get a sense of how this has impacted our lives here.

I hear so many people saying "things are getting back to normal."

Nothing could be farther from the truth. It will never be the same. What I hope to do here is give you a sense of what's really happened, and perhaps help make some sense out of all of this.

It's up to each of us individually to find the joy in the sadness and the lessons that can be learned from the losses. Many people have been hurt very badly, and their suffering is sad for us all. But I hope that eventually we can all move forward and live better lives because of what we learn here.

I'm an optimist, and I believe in the human spirit. There are some people who don't believe that...some people who many never find the good in this. All I can say is that I hope it's not true for those of you who wish to read this. And I hope that all of us can help each other through this and any other difficult times.

My subsequent posts will be varied in topic, and probably not particularly chronological. I will start this blog with the ability of readers to add comments. I reserve the right to remove any posts that don't help me achieve what I'm trying to do here...which is to present a realistic, intelligent viewpoint of what's happened here.

It's Christmas Day, and I send my love and blessings to everyone out there.