Katrina: wanting to know vs. not wanting to know

From the sounds of it, those that entertain that luxury are the implausibly luck ones.

At first, I was expecting just typical hurricane coverage (y'know, the usual footage of supposedly intrepid reporters wearing drenched windbreakers commenting on how the wind has blown down road signs, etc.), but of course this is much, much more than your workaday storm. I'm both horrified and fascinated by the stories that are emerging from it. It's so hard to fathom.

This is not a recommended plan.

after having already stayed up all night the previous evening due to insomnia, i read newssites from that morning until about 1am. I slept for 4 hours, then got up and did it again for another 12+. Being unemployed at the time and at my parents house did not help things.

they wrote essays about this. something about a feeling of guilt mixed with helplessness & impotence making you feel compelled to find out all you can, since you can't do really anything to help.

Then again, New Orleans is a city that I used to try to get down to at least once or twice a year. It is personal for me.

stories about pets. i seriously think it'd be what pushed me over the edge.

i really wish i hadn't run out of celexa last month...

Oh absolutely. I just saw some woman's little dog on TV that she managed to rescue and it just seemed incredibly tasteless to even mention while there are still babies stranded out there somewhere.

Would it be ghoulish, Alex and Jody, to suggest a FAP, just so we can get out of the house, or would we only work ourselves further into a lather?

there's that trivia night coming up at magnetic field next week.

but yeah, as a society, we tend to get distracted. in two years time, there will be still be problems about this...

it just seemed incredibly tasteless

it's not that the trivialness, tho i can see where folks would get annoyed with it. it's the emotional connection. i can't deal with a missing dog. seriously. i can't fucking deal with it.

like the family was part of the Japanese-American Internment, THAT got to her.

exactly. it's hard enough to read/see about the total human misery still going on right as i type this and NBC news is going on in the next room, but hearing shit cops taking away somebody's dog, THAT would be the final slice putting me into such a violent rage.

Anyway. Surreal. When I got home, I went and checked that I had batteries in my earthquake backpack on my closet shelf & put some fresh water in. Just in case, you know, Mt Rainier decides to erupt tonight or something. :-P

That's the meat of it right there, though, right? These people have every right to feel like they've been abandoned --- because for all intents and purposes, they have been.

Bush passing the buck by calling the relief effort "unacceptable" is in itself unacceptable.

OTM, but that's really not his style.

We drove through McDonald's last night, and I felt like I wasn't fully appreciating the fact the roads were try, businesses were open, no bodies were in the ditches, and no one was trying to pull me out of my mini-van.

Meanwhile, as I write this, there's another family who remains trapped in their sweltering attic, preparing for Night #4 of total darkness.

The "stepping in" part is inappropriate though. That's what he's trying to do now by riding in with the national guard and trying to make it look like he came to save the day after other people screwed up. He shouldn't have had to step in because he should have been involved all along!

OTM.

Partly it's because I'm incensed and outraged at the mess that's been made, partly because I have friends who stay near there, partly for the schadenfreude of watching Bush fumble and mostly because it's utterly compelling. I can't imagine not wanting to know about it.

that's part of it, to be honest. a feeling that we are watching history.

the bad part about choosing not to know is that every time you go back to learn more after having ignored it for however long, it's so much worse.

(from the American Psychological Association)

For those struggling to cope from afar

Even if you were not in the actual disaster, you may experience a
sense of vulnerability from witnessing the results of the disaster.

This can be especially acute if a relative or friend was affected by the disaster, particularly if you have been unable to get news on their welfare.

- Take a news break. Watching endless replays of footage from the
disaster can make your stress even greater. Although you'll want to
keep informed - especially if you have loved ones affected by the
disaster - take a break from watching the news.

- Be kind to yourself. Some feelings when witnessing a disaster may
be difficult for you to accept. You may feel relief that the disaster
did not touch you, or you may feel guilt that you were left untouched
when so many were affected. Both feelings are common.

- Keep things in perspective. Although a disaster often is horrifying, you should focus as well on the things that are good in your life.

- Find a productive way to help if you can. Many organizations are set up to provide financial or other aid to victims of natural disasters. Contributing can be a way to gain some “control” over the event.

- Control what you can. There are routines in your life that you can continue and sometimes you need to do those and take a break from even thinking about the disaster.

- Look for opportunities for self-discovery and recognize your strengths. People often learn something about themselves and may find that they have grown in some respect as a result of persevering hrough hardship. Many people who have experienced tragedy and adversity have reported better relationships, greater sense of personal strength even while feeling vulnerable, increased sense of self-worth, deeper spirituality, and heightened appreciation for life.

that's the troubling thing though -- there's too much history being made lately and none of it's the good kind. and yet it's all deja vu, innit. what we've been watching over the past decade or so is is lawlessness all across the spectrum, sociopathic behavior gone unchecked, a total lack of guile. i would be numb to it if so many lives weren't being shat upon in the process.

yeah, that's the bitch of it.

Uh, I was briefly listening to that crazy fuck Michael Savage (partly out of curiosity, partly because in the small town where I am this is the only talk radio I can get, until the NPR affiliate has a program on at midnight) and some dude called in from Houston saying people there are sketched out about the new folks coming into town and stores have sold out of weapons and ammo. holy shit, I hope he's exaggerating.

This was some amazing TV. Kudos to Shep Smith and Geraldo for not letting O'Reilly and Hannity spin their GOP "resolve" apologia bullshit. I'm fairly shocked.

The mother of a guy I work with had the children of some friends show up on her doorstep the other night, tired, unshowered and starving. She's putting the family of five up in her apartment and today he asked us to donate children's clothing and toys to help her.

The first thing he needs to do is fire his FEMA guy. Not allow to, you know, resign in six months to spend more time with his family or whatever. He needs to straight-up fire him, and hire someone into that position who knows wtf they're doing. It's literally a matter of national security. Not that that would solve all the problems, and it would also have a scapegoating effect, letting a lot of other people off the hook, but at least it would be a signal that he took this shit seriously.

Not that I actually expect it to happen.

Anyway, they have some great management down there- evacuations at the Superdome are halted.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Katrina-Superdome-HK1.html

BoingBoing.net had a thing yesterday about how FEMA (usually) offers temp distaster relief jobs.

http://admin.vladeksheybal.com/Mem-Apple101.jpg

He's all about the BIM.

While nobody else could fly around there to provide relief!

It's funny that Chertoff mentions Blanco so much (trying to pin blame on the Democrats, maybe?) considering that she's so conservative that Nagin supported the Republican candidate she was up against in the last gubernatorial election!

True enough Hurting. I'm also finding it rather incredulous that he continues to say that nobody foresaw the two catastrophes happening at the same time - if New Orleans was vulnerable to hurricanes, surely it's fairly obvious that a hurricane could also break the levees?

after i leave here, i'm biking up the local record store to buy the Kanye album.

Also, according to that TV over there, Wisconsin is beating Bowling Green by 7 points in the 3rd.

a very bad speaker too, but that's by the by

prick

El Doofus made the area a federal disaster area on sunday. Guess who got control of the relief effort then, overriding state/local efforts.

“Rather than taking responsibility for FEMA’s mishaps and moving expeditiously to correct the
problems, Under Secretary Brown has further undermined his agency’s reputation by stymied
investigations and inquiries into fraud allegations," Wexler added. "FEMA’s massive misallocation of recovery aid is a gross waste of taxpayer monies, which must be immediately addressed by the Bush Administration,” Wexler said. —Donald H. Harrison

I'll "never forget!" what's going on in my mind right now. Just like I can get still get myself all worked up about the 2000 Election without much work. The hurricane was one thing; I've witnessed so many of those every summer. But seeing an entire city descend into the madness and destruction of the last week, and watching how MY government has handled it has really affected me. It's affected me in ways that other national tragedies haven't before.

Then again, New Orleans is a city that I used to try to get down to at least once or twice a year. It is personal for me.

-- Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, September 2, 2005 7:25 PM (Friday, September 2, 2005 7:25 PM) Bookmark Link

I'm still mad about Katrina. I'm mad at how the government - local, state, and (where the buck should stop) federal - handled it. I'm mad that poor people were left to die. I'm mad that Sean Penn got in there before the Coast Guard. I'm mad about how two years later, there are empty trailers still sitting at the Hope, Arkansas airport. I'm mad that the levees aren't being rebuilt to stop a storm like this one again. And not to sound like a complete xenophobe, but I'm mad that this shit happened here. You just shouldn't have drowned Americans floating in the streets of a major American city.

40% of N.O.'s population still hasn't come back

and don't forget about the hundreds of other little towns in the path of the hurricane that have literally vanished - and don't forget that there has been virtually no assistance for those people whose jobs, homes and lives have been shattered - the incompetent govt reaction rolls on

See, and I'm mad at myself for not ever thinking about Mississippi. I wonder if Trent Lott ever got his front porch rebuilt.

Those insurance companies that still haven't paid out because they're hem-hawing about whether damage was incurred from wind or water. They make me mad too.

it's all so fucked, beyond even the physical infrastructure - decades' worth of legal documents, property deeds, medical records.. just gone