Topic: Events
This was the first headline I read this morning: New Orleans Left to the Dead and Dying.
Then I read this story on Crooked Timber (via Barista, who has generally had excellent posts on the hurricane): Red Cross not Allowed into New Orleans. The rationale being, apparently, that feeding people will somehow interfere with evacuating them from the city? I don't understand. I keep reading about decisions being made in the course of the disaster and I try to believe that there were good reasons for them, or at least that people were in shock and overwhelmed and not able to think things through fully. I want to believe that people are doing their best under the circumstances, and I'm certain that many are. But decisions like refusing to allow the Red Cross to offer aid to the survivors are stretching my belief to the breaking point.
Am I reaching too far in saying that this all seems much of a piece with Dennis Hastert's sentiments that rebuilding the city isn't desirable (ripped to shreds in The Nation, here)? I feel as if I'm being told to say goodbye to New Orleans; that it won't be back. The thought makes me incredibly sad. I loved what little I saw of the city when I visited it last year. Well, I didn't really love Bourbon Street, but I adored the rest of the French Quarter and the Garden District. I had every intention of returning to get to know the city better. I'm still holding on to the hope that I will have that chance, but it's dimming.
Hiatus: I'm going to have to take a break from the internet for a while. I've got a lot to do over the next two weeks and I'm trying not to burn out before the mid-semester break. I'll be back once my schedule isn't quite so ridiculous.
Okay, seriously this time: Right, that break didn't last long. I'll be giving it another go right after I:
- recommend this article from Slate, which draws parallels between Katrina and the deadly Chicago heat wave of 1995. It points out a critical problem that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere so far: survivors in New Orleans had to rely on radio broadcasts to get emergency information, but only one local station had its own reporters on the air, which meant that the information available was much more limited than it could have been.
- point out this editorial by Anne Rice, Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans (NYT), because whatever your opinion of her a novelist might be, she has always written about New Orleans with great respect and affection.
- note that the reporting I've been waiting for on hurricane survivors outside New Orleans is starting to come in through the mainstream news outlets (AP on Yahoo).
- attempt to process my reaction to the news of Chief Justice Rehnquist's death, which went: sympathy, drawn-out expletive, sense of impending doom. But sympathy most strongly, because it's so hard to be with someone you love as they go through a prolonged battle with cancer, and I hope that Mr. Rehnquist's family and friends find the support they need to get through the coming days.