Remembering.....

"A most powerful hurricane of unprecedented strength...rivaling the intensity of Hurricane Camille in 1969...human suffering incredible by human standards..."  were the words of a forecaster in the Slidell, Louisiana, National Weather Service office some twenty hours before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, five years ago this morning.

Those words were clear: this storm was unparalleled in modern history.  The emphatic statement was this forecaster's last attempt to accomplish what they try to do every hurricane season...warn those in harm's way.  The people of the Gulf Coast were a storm-hardened people, many having survived the storm of a lifetime, Hurricane Camille.  Camille was the reference point for all family, community, and state hurricane plans.  Her thirty-six year and twelve-day reign was about to give way to another August feminine storm, Katrina.  Much like Camille, Katrina started out innocently, and quickly exploded into a monster in the Gulf of Mexico.  There were differences, though.  Camille was tight and compact, causing her winds to be much higher - with an official high recorded at 190 miles per hour.  Anecdotal evidence points to substantially higher winds of 230 to 250 miles per hour, but we will never know.  Katrina was a much broader, slower moving storm, which allowed her time to gather the ocean up ahead of her path and push it onshore, as much as a half-mile inland and 30 feet deep in some areas.  Katrina's massive breadth inflicted a continuous band of damage along 100 or more miles of the Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama coastlines.  She maintained her strength on her northward march, downgrading to a tropical depression in north-central Tennessee.

Beneath those angry clouds were our friends, neighbors, and relatives.  Places we enjoyed visiting as children along the Mississippi Gulf Coast...all were simply obliterated.  "Hiroshima" one headline shouted.  Another simply said "Our Tsunami", referring to a recent disaster in the Indian Ocean that killed hundreds of thousands.  The printed word and the pictures could not tell the story.  Every mile of Mississippi coastline, and about a half-mile or more inland was utterly and totally decimated.

We were bunkered down, a half-mile from the shoreline, in what we felt like was the safest place we could be, and still remain close to those we were sent to help.  Scattered reports came of various fire stations and county emergency operations centers being flooded or damaged by winds, with staff forced to evacuate.  These weren't simply reports over the radio, they were information about people we had known and worked with for years.  Professional colleagues, and personal friends when we weren't working.  Yet there was nothing we could do.  Nothing, but wait.  It was as if we were deaf and blind.  We could sense what was going on around us, but without firm information, we were grasping for straws.

Occasionally the phones would work, relaying frantic calls from families who, with a Camille-survivor mentality, decided to ride the storm out.  They called from their attics, their last place of refuge from the relentless storm surge.  They pleaded with us to come get them, as they could feel their houses moving underneath them....then a dead silence when the line was broken.  Anger and anguish were our companions as we pressed the phones closer to our ears, hoping for the connection to be restored........

Our first venture into the post-Katrina world was a surreal experience; it was as if Salvador Dali had been let loose on the Coast, this time with real objects in hand instead of his brush.  Where were the people who had called, begging for life-saving?  Why were boats, shipping containers, barges, casinos now occupying the lanes of the roadway?  Tractor-trailers were wrapped around tree trunks, appearing as if they were a natural part of this unnatural landscape.  Household debris now washed into an interstate, miles away from any body of water; where had this come from?  Death's smell, and taste, hung thick as the late summer humidity, offending the senses.

As quickly as the winds settled, the people of the Coast pushed out of their homes to begin checking on their families and their neighbors.  There was no waiting for someone to come along.  A job had to be done, and done now.

Doctors, nurses, medics, firefighters, police officers, security guards, dispatchers, coroners, electrical workers, National Guardsmen, elected officials....we were all simply neighbors now.  Katrina was an equal-opportunity offender, sparing not the rich nor the poor, the sick nor the well.

We wrestled for the first day, maybe two, to grant some semblance of order to our new world.  Much like the story of Easter, on the third day saw a new hope, in the form of help.  You ask, "why so long?"  Consider, though, the entire southern half of Mississippi was devastated, and it took that time to literally cut and saw the way through to a clear lane of travel.  

We met many counterparts from forty-six states, neighbors in the national neighborhood who came to our aid.  While we've repaid our financial debt to those neighbors for their help, we will never be able to repay the debts of one-on-one support.  Bumper stickers quickly appeared, conveying the Hospitality State's message of gratitude: "Thanks, Y'all!"

Five years later, we still see the scars left by Katrina.  Families who lost loved ones will carry those scars as permanent reminders of nature's power.  Our coast was transformed overnight, but with the resolve to come back bigger and better than before.

Two days after Katrina, I had a brief chat with an elected official in Hancock County, a person who I also consider a friend.  We asked ourselves how long would it take for this area to fully recover?  Would ten years be enough?  Twenty?  Thirty?

I think the truth is that there is no "full recovery" to be had.  To recover means to rebuild and re-become what we once were.  Certainly the area is rebuilding, but they're doing it with a new boldness and a new vision.  It will take another generation to determine whether we recovered.  It is up to us to get it right, for that next generation to enjoy.  For to them, Katrina will only be a lesson, a story passed down, just as Camille's story was passed down to us.  Will we repeat history?

I am Mississippi....

Thought this little video was just too good, and had to share it. Enjoy

Something to contemplate....

Watch this. Watch it again. I apologize that it's a tad bit long, and it requires subtitles, but you need to see and know these things. I'll leave you to form your own opinion.

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"Meet The Colonels" was tonight.....time to start football season!

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Time for me to get ready to start with a new class of future EMT's....

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(for Friday, 8/13/10)....Back to school time.....

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For 8/14..... Dinner out with Therapist and The Flock...

Love Dare - Weeks 20 & 21

Sorry, I'm running a little late getting Weeks 20 & 21 published, but this will be the shortest one so far.

Basically, you need to get a copy of The Love Dare.  You need to walk through it in the 40 days, or on a weekly basis like I've been doing.

I can't explain Weeks 20 & 21 here.  They're all about your own personal experience with God.  You and Him.

What I can explain is this:  You can't LOVE without Him.  He IS love, and without Him, you do not know true love.

Get the book.  Read it.  Live it.

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Summertime suppertime....

Project 365/223, a double-shot

A couple of shots of a hazy Delta sunrise, while on an early morning drive for work.

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I ranted about this yesterday in another online forum...the inability of licensed, driving parents to read a properly posted NO PARKING sign in front of my house.  During school hours, the street is deemed a one-way street.  So that traffic may continue to flow properly, one side of the road is posted as "no parking".  I guess people think that "only being a minute" only applies to them, individually.  But when you multiply that over the 10-20 cars parked in the street...

If you lived on this street and needed the fire department, or an ambulance, they could not get to you!

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"If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth." ~ Harry S. Truman

Sixty-five years ago today the United States unleashed history's second nuclear attack, against the city of Nagasaki, Japan.  The bomb, dubbed "Fat Man" detonated about 1800 feet above the city, with an energy equal to that of 21,000 tons of TNT, killing an estimated 39,000 people immediately, and injuring another 25,000 in the 7000 degree, 625 mile-per-hour winds that resulted.

The picture above was taken at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.  It is a replica of Fat Man.  Below is a close-up of the plaque shown on the bomb replica.

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I found this gorgeous leather desk pad this weekend at a scratch & dent sale just across the river in Arkansas, and got it for a song.  It's got a few nicks and scrapes, and you can see some of the decorative trimmings are missing here and there, but that gives it character in my opinion.  It looks great on my old typewriter desk that's been in the family since the mid 1900's, when my great-grandfather owned Lee Motor Company in North Carrollton.  He died the year before I was born, but I ran across some of his old ties and fountain pens several years ago, and based their classic forms, I think he would have liked this desk pad too.

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Crossing the new Mississippi River bridge at Greenville. Beautiful piece of engineering!

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Our first day under 100 in about a week!

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Meant to use this one earlier, but then something else captured my eye, and I forgot this picture was in the files.  My poor hedges had gotten woolly.

Since we're on the subject of trimming.....

I got my hair cut today, and decided to get a picture of the barber pole for my P-365 picture today.  But behold, my barber has no pole!  The posts on the corner of his storefront are painted in the familiar white-red-blue stripes of the profession, but there's no traditional barber pole. 

Google to the rescue!

So, since I "borrowed" today's picture instead of taking it myself, I figured I could provide a bit of information on the history of the barber pole and its colors:

The origin of the red and white barber pole is associated with the service of bloodletting and was historically a representation of bloody bandages wrapped around a pole. During medieval times, barbers performed surgery on customers, as well as tooth extractions. The original pole had a brass basin at the top (representing the vessel in which leeches were kept) and bottom (representing the basin that received the blood). The pole itself represents the staff that the patient gripped during the procedure to encourage blood flow.

The red and white stripes symbolize the bandages used during the procedure: red for the blood-stained and white for the clean bandages. Originally, these bandages were hung on the pole to dry after washing. As the bandages blew in the wind, they would twist together to form the spiral pattern similar to the stripes in the modern-day barber pole. The barber pole became emblematic of the barber/surgeon's profession. Later, the cloths were replaced by a painted wooden pole of red and white stripes.

The red, white and blue format in the United States may be an homage to the colors of the flag.

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No comment....

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At one point this afternoon my truck said it was 106 degrees outside, and these things were sitting over on the passenger seat taunting me.

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The ride waiting for the patient...