Hell Kat

I haven't blogged yet about Katrina - partly because I've been glued to the television, partly because I don't really know what I can add to the discussion. Am I aggrieved by what's happened? Lord, yes. I never dreamed I would see images of hungry, homeless people lined up on sidewalks waiting for (belated) aid to come, while dead bodies lie where they've fallen in the streets, right here in my own country. I'm by turns heartbroken, appalled, depressed and infuriated by our descent into what sometimes looks like a parody of Third World squalor.

But what can I say about these horrors that hasn't been said? Sure, I could excoriate the federal government for its feeble, much-too-little-much-too-late response ... but plenty of people have done that (here, here, and here), and with an eloquence that eludes me at the moment. I could call for FEMA director Michael Brown's head on a pike ... but my hard-charging senator, Barbara Mikulski, has already beaten me to the punch. And I suppose I could add my own observations about how Katrina ripped through the thin veneer of this nation's tolerance for people who are poor, black or both, thus exposing our innate racism and classism ... but there's not much room left on that particular bandwagon, populated as it is by everyone from Ted Kennedy to Kanye West.

Truth is, nothing I say here can ease the crushing losses suffered by the citizens of New Orleans, Gulfport, Biloxi, Slidell, and the now nonexistent Waveland, Miss.

So, like most everyone else, I make my donation to the Red Cross. I listen to the calls for assistance and for investigations into FEMA mismanagement as I box up clothes and household items to send to people who've lost - it defies imagining - everything. I thank whatever higher power may be lurking out there for the abundant good fortune in my life, and I stop kvetching about the comparatively minor annoyances. And I rededicate myself to campaigning and voting for candidates at every level who put justice and compassion ahead of profits.

It doesn't seem like much ... but right now, it's the best I've got.