Hurricane Katrina

I was pondering the still lingering effects of “That goddamn hurricane”. Everyone and i mean everyone was affected. There are a lot of people getting rich. We’ve all heard the stories, $140,000 or so to place a crappy little formaldehyde laden camping trailer in a lot so someone can live there for maybe 18 months or so. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure more than grateful for the help (i didn’t need one but friends and family did), but a hundred and forty thousand dollars? There were stories of debris haulers getting paid 6 or 7 dollars a cubic yard for their work, again grateful for the help. But from what I’ve heard the contracts were let out for 50 plus dollars per cubic yard, so much for trickle UP economics. (Where the hell is the outrage and investigations.) So some people can afford the good life, which makes a lot of boo boos go away for them.

However the vast majority of people i know still talk of getting out of this place. I’ve always said that if god were to place a full fledged rectum on the earth, the Superdome would be but a hemorrhoid on it, guess where he put it.  Things were bad enough in some parts of this place before the storm, but the food and festivals and lifestyles distracted us from that. I have at least 6 good friends who now live in other cities and are never coming back. One of my best friends lives in Nevada now, I miss our dinners at the Blue Tomato, one of our favorite restaurants. Another lives in Nashville now, though i think he feels almost at home, because he always wanted to pursue a country music career. There are others, and some long lost friends that i may hear about years from now I’m sure.

Which brings me to one of the points of this rant. Right after the storm and till even now i have noticed that the obituaries seem to have gotten longer. In that i mean there are more names than their used to be, more and fuller pages. More names, and seems like more younger people (maybe the age thing is skewed by my advancing years) than I’ve seen in the past. All this with even less, probably half or so, of the population (do the death rate math, I’d love to see a study done). I am sure that loosing everything you own or have cherished can take it’s toll on even the hardiest people. But i wonder how many of those deaths were from broken hearts or loneliness!?

That is part of the reason i wanted to do this blog. To keep it out there and let people talk about it. The media seems to have gotten weary, and to some extent so have the locals, of the same old stories. You can only tell it so many times. It is still going on painfully for a lot of people. But maybe someone out there will hear this and pass it on. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet, it’s a good possibility that she drowned or had a heart attack (We all know about our rich diets) [{( I know i use a lot of brackets but that's my thing OK!)}] and i missed her obit. Or maybe she just got the hell out of dodge! As long as she don’t sing there’s still hope.