Slow motion

[kitanzi]

I think half of the horror of Katrina's aftermath is that it's all in slow motion. Evacuations are slowed, even stopped, by people shooting at the rescuers. Looters have gone far beyond getting food and clothing and necessities of life (where the hell are they going to store a television set right now anyhow??) and are compounding the misery and horror tenfold. Resources are moving, but seemingly too little and too late for a lot of the people trapped in the nightmare, and from here how much better can I say I could have done it? What the hell can I do, besides give spare cash? It's a feeling of helplessness, even worse than 9/11. Imagine if the people trapped in the fires jumped from the buildings, and fell for four days, and we watched them fall, heard them screaming, and still couldn't do anything to save them...

No, I didn't sleep very well last night, why do you ask?

Anyhow, I'd like to recommend a filk Harold Feld wrote recently: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.music.filk/browse_frm/thread/149c9f1639209d1e/151132658d37ff51?hl=en#151132658d37ff51

Now I need to get ready for work, where I will sit on my hands and wait for someone to eventually find something for me to do (curse of being too efficient, apparently), read news on the net and feel utterly useless.

EDIT: For those who asked, we came through just fine. We got a fair amount of rain and some fairly brisk winds, but it never got scary in our part of GA. Tornado sirens went off once, briefly, but nothing seems to have come of that. Thank you for being concerned, though!

Comments

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear you are ok! I did wonder but assumed that your part of GA was ok from what I saw.

Yeah, I think maybe you hit on it for me too because although I hadn't posted it, for some reason this is hitting me way worse than 9/11 did. Not sure why. Perhaps because it is so much easier to imagine Ed and I and the boys trying to survive something like that. God. Goddess. Ugh.

I keep wishing I could do more. We're so broke all the time but I did donate to both the Red Cross and the UUA fund. And today when Costco said "Do you want to donate to the Red Cross Katrina fund?" I couldn't say no. I keep thinking of us huddled in the living hell of the superdome, or worse... and trying to sing to the boys and make them laugh and assure them everything will be alright. Once it crossed my mind that I'd be glad they were still comfort nursing at night because it means my milk isn't completely gone and it might prevent them from total dehydration. Brrr...

At least some aid is coming finally. Sigh... HUGS!!!!!!

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

Yeah... maybe it's the ongoing news coverage, maybe it's the length of time, but it's all too easy to imagine yourself there. I've dreamed of it, sure, and I've donated to relief drives several times now. I wish there was something more tangible I could do, but I don't see a way to go down and volunteer without losing my job, and though we do have a couch and could theoretically offer it, have you ever seen how small this apartment is? (And you have to go through our bedroom to get to the only bathroom... I'm ok with that at night with friends, but I really would be uncomfortable with strangers in that.) I did see someone on freecycle yesterday asking for clothes for someone who's sheltering with them, and fortunately it's all the sizes I've grown (back!) out of, so I offered those. It's something, at least.