New Orleans

I only visited New Orleans once, and while events surrounding my visit weren't the best, I really enjoyed the city itself. I liked the general character of the city and of course, the great food. I am horrified by what has happened to the people down there. I am horrified and embarrassed that it took our President until Friday to get down there and for substantial relief efforts to begin. I can only go by what I see on TV here in New Jersey, so I don't know exactly what has and hasn't been happening. I think today was the first day where I saw a massive convoy of military trucks carrying supplies through the still drenched streets.

I lived through the terrorist bombings, I was in NYC when the towers were attacked, I could see the Towers on fire from my office and I watched one Tower collapse from New Jersey after being lucky enough to catch, what I was told at the time, was the last NJ TRANSIT train out of NYC to NJ. I was frightened, but I could at least go home. These people in New Orleans don't even have that. I see the scenes on the news and I hate to sound corny, but it looks like a scene out of Escape from New York, that old SF movie with Kurt Russell. That is the only thing I can think of to visually compare this to. My heart goes out to all those affected by this horrible natural disaster and I wish our country would move as fast to help one of its own great cities as it has to help cities in other nations.

On one hand, it boggles my mind that it will take up to a couple of months to restore power, on the other, when I saw how many National Guardsmen from Lousiana and Mississippi are deployed outside of the country, I am not too surprised.

I don't know exactly what to believe about what is going on in New Orleans, as it seems every news station has an agenda of their own. I only know that a catastrophe beyond human control has occurred and I find it tough to wrap my mind around the fact that things cannot be fixed as quickly as they should.

So, to prevent myself from further ramblings, I'll stop and say that a donation to the Red Cross may be the only thing we can do right now, on an individual level.