Let's give them something to talk about

Sorry--cheesy title for a serious entry.

I figure if I'm doing the delurking day thing tomorrow (see below) then I'd best get some topics out there for commenting. BTW, I get an alert like many of you for each comment added anywhere on my blog, so you can go comment on something from last January and I'll still count it.

First, I'm barely able to tear myself away from the coverage of the disaster on the various news outlets--it's hard to even comprehend the level of this. Rampant snipers, corpses floating by, people dying in their homes with no one to rescue them, hospitals moving everyone to the upper floors to protect them from looters and chaos, and finally the military showing up several days late.

Oh, and on one station a commentator pointing out that 40% or more of the national guard members who'd be around for this sort of thing are instead in Iraq, and then asking what would happen if now there was a major terrorist incident or an earthquake in southern california. He followed that with bringing up the renewed push for a return of the draft...

Had a few good chats with Kate since she got back online. She's still at her mom's in B.R. and they've got another family of N.O. refugees staying there at the moment. School back in Mandeville is apparently scheduled to restart in early October. Lots of uncertainty--her dad's place of employment was located right near where the levee broke so it doesn't exist as a building anymore. They're also looking at having to move homes now, due to hurricane damage as well.

Here in my household we've begun once more discussing the need for better emergency supplies on hand--I wonder how many of you have such? K. can correct me but I seem to recall years ago when I boarded in the basement suite of an LDS family that they were supposed to keep two months supply of goods on hand--whether that was a local practice or a church teaching I don't know.

Back almost a decade ago when we had the freakish snowstorm that paralyzed this city--bodies were left in houses where people died for several days because no help could get through, etc.--we realized how much having a good relationship with neighbors can help. Our little cul-de-sac of 11 houses all pulled together to clear the street and look after the elderly residents--trudging on foot to the one grocery store we knew was open.

We also discovered that when the electricity and cable were on, television was useless--locally they just ran regular programming and didn't seem to acknowledge the problem. Meanwhile, one local radio station essentially ran the town for a week. It was that station who alerted people that an elderly person's roof needed shovelling off or it was in danger of collapse--a bunch of roofs did in fact collapse--or that a dialysis patient desperately needed a snowmobile ride to the hospital.

That's another tragic part of the crisis in the hurricane's aftermath--the poor who have survived but who need dialysis or insulin and can't get it in the chaos that exists right now.

Question for Ella--if a disaster on a large scale happened where you work and live, would you be the one sitting there with a shotgun protecting the inventory, or would you walk away and leave the door unlocked as you go?

Then there's the debate about our role as teachers if the big earthquake comes here while school is in session--how many of us must stay and how long? What about our own families and finding our kids?

Lots to think about right now.

If you wish to donate, there are lots of pages and locations but I'll just pass along a link page on the CNN site:
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/katrina/help.center/

I start counting at midnight tonight.