devarim

I'm too emotionally drained from all I've read and seen to really comment on the Katrina aftermath. Last night on the news here they had a guy standing next to a child (his son I presume) telling the reporter how he was holding his wife's hand through the waves and couldn't hold on any more, and she told him to let go and take care of the kids. And the reporter kept asking for his name and his wife's name so maybe they could try to help him find her and he just kept repeating, "No - she's gone. She's just GONE."

Bands of roving vigilantes have looted guns and ammunition and are "patroling" the devestated areas. I'm not entirely sure what their goal is, unless they are conducting requested mercy killings of people who have lost everything else or something. What is there left to steal? I did have one terrible thought: they could snatch up all the available food and water and demand high "prices" in exchange.

I heard reports last night of a prison where the inmates were holding a guard and his family hostage, but I haven't heard anything about that situation since then. A refugee in the Superdome apparently committed suicide by jumping from one of the upper levels of seats down onto the field. There have been reports of sexual assault among the refugees in the Superdome, and food and water (and particularly baby formula) is scarce. It's hot and humid and flooded and I'm guessing far from sanitary.

So much of New Orleans in underwater, and it's not like we - the people who built up the city, chose to live there, chose to fight the forces of nature - are without blame. A part of me (the flaky environmentalist part) wants to say we should just abandon lower Louisiana once we have all the people out...let the Mississippi take her new course and let nature restore herself. But, then again, I'm not one of the people who live(d) there, so who the hell am I to speak?