Finally my yard will be clear of tree stumps and debris, and the remains of what the storm did to my house will nearly be gone. I still have to get the gutters repaired. Trust me, I am not complaining. Not in the least. I talk to people every day that live in FEMA campers (yes, campers, those things are not fit to be called trailers) because their homes are gone, washed out, or under a gas station, and I try to find a way to make myself smaller so they don’t ask me if I lost everything.
In Gulfport and Long Beach (at least the small stretch of Long Beach that I drove on today) highway 90 is four-lanes. Some of the lights are up and working and I was excited. It was bizarrely normal-ish. Funny thing was, everyone stayed in the right lane when it divided into the four-lane highway. How easily we forget. Joel gave me this really good editorial from our newspaper yesterday about how New Orleans is throwing a shadow on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in the aftermath of Katrina. Most of us here are tired of it. And it isn't like New Orleans pulled in most, if not all, the tax revenue for the state of Louisiana. You know, like the The Coast of Mississippi did. The casinos made so much money for the state, not to mention the entire city of Pass Christian was wiped out, so they have no tax base, most of Long Beach's buisnesses and homes were wiped out so there goes their tax base...You thought Mississippi was poor before...well, that is another rant entirely. No, it wasn’t their fault, and yes, it sucks, you can ask 90% of the population here what it feels like and they can tell you. It was lack of response of the state and city leaders. It was also New Orleans acting under the false conception that those levees were going to hold. Now, I am not an engineer. I have a liberal arts degree to tell the truth, and I could have told everyone that those levees were going to fail. I knew those levees were going to go about, oh, probably fifteen years ago. Two things my parents taught me about hurricanes. 1. Don’t live south of the tracks. 2. If a hurricane goes up the Mississippi River (or damn close to it like Katrina did and at high tide, which Katrina also did) New Orleans will cease to exist. Not a category three or higher hurricane, just a hurricane in general would have probably done a good number on New Orleans. Now, I understood that when I was a ten-year-old kid learning about what my parents lived through during Camille. So how come no one else thought about it?
Here is the editorial if anyone is interested. That is my rant for the day.