A Wonderful Turn of Events

What a wonderful turn of events. To think that one week ago the disaster that was Katrina seemed insurmountable. The President was on the ropes and his corner men were spinning and working hard to staunch the flow of political vitals. A large number of people were in misery and lost to the world. The experimental program of benign neglect was not working and once the word was given to make thing rights it started to become so. Thank you, Captain Kirk.

Today Michael Brown ends his unqualified position at the head of FEMA. There need be no apology or statement about following up on other interests. "Yeah, git out here Brownie. Go get another keg."

The best news is that the waters are receding from the streets of NOLA. People are still straggling out of attics and upper stories of buildings. They have the look and smell of death and despair. I have been in touch with an under utilized first responder who has been in NOLA with his rescue dog since Wednesday a week ago. He is well qualified and trained in vertical insertion with the dog. He has spent most of his time waiting and being hustled around for photo ops with the brass and poobahs. He is not happy. There is still misery to be salved but the will and the way have not yet reached 100%.

Of course there is a downside to all the attention that NOLA is getting. There are many areas of southern Alabama and Mississippi that are under reported and under served by way of high profile rescue efforts. I am sure that the prezdent sent someone out to help Ol' Trent clean up his lot (OOpps! NPI) so they can get started on that porch. So while Ol' Trent is being served there are still crackers, small holders and tenants at the ends of sand roads living under cobbled together sheds watching the choppers go over heading for the coast and they can hear the relief trucks going by them on the main highways heading south for the bays and beaches. Some have been lucky enough to get their trailer level again and some have pieced together living quarters in farm buildings and some have been lucky enough to get a little clean water and a bag of grits from the relief. And then of course many have been able to get to Wal-Mart and start over.

What a shame to have a perfectly good country devolve into a statistic that that is at the bottom of every index except executive pay and credit card debt. This disaster and recovery shores up the observation one of my mentors made. She said, "We don't have a problem of lack of stuff in this country; we have a distribution problem." I believe we have seen in this event and in other disastrous events in the near past that stuff and money is never the problem. The problem is the will and way to get it spread out to those who need it.

My good friend from Michigan would say to me when he would catch me in a dither, “What the hell, . . ., you waiting for the house to fall on you.”