Still here.
We have been so blessed. I now have electricity! We cleaned out the fridge and cleaned up the front yard. Yesterday, I went to the grocery store to re-stock. This is going to sound crazy, but I was really reassured by all of the neat rows of food. It didn't look as though they were running out of anything at Brookshire's. I talked to one of the employees there, and he told me they'd had to throw away two 18-wheelers of spoiled food.
This whole disaster has got me thinking. In America, the upper and middle classes are not acquainted with the idea of shortage. We have taken it for granted that there was always plenty of everything we needed, wanted, as long as we could pay for it. So the idea that a store might be out of, say, eggs or ground beef or bottled water or whatever is totally foreign to us. It makes us extremely uncomfortable. That's where we are with the gas situation right now. We know that supplies are limited. People are panicking, lining up at pumps to top off, etc. It makes us all nervous. And because we are a culture based on the automobile, many of us live a good ways from where we work. Since we want to be able to continue our "normal" lives (and perhaps because we are such a work-obsessed culture), we want to continue to go to work, even though gas is scarce. (Waits in line for gas seem to average around five hours, if you can even find a station that's pumping.) It's just an odd situation, and much of it seems to play into our identity as Americans.
I've made contact with my friends and family from the Coast and New Orleans. Thank God, they are all still alive, though most of them lost everything. Now, they are trying to decide what to do next. My husband's brother-in-law is back on the Coast, trying to begin the clean-up and rebuilding process. Other friends are in Montgomery, Baton Rouge, and other cities, staying with friends and family.
I was reading back on my earlier post about staying on the Coast at the Beau Rivage. It's eerie to me, when I think of the fact that I was just there, and now the area is so changed. I have a guidebook on New Orleans. I took my little sister there last Christmas, and I was thinking we might go again this year. I had highlighted all the restaurants that I wanted to try. I think I''ll keep the book. There's no way of knowing what will happen in this world.
I was also thinking about the reputation of the South in this country. We may be the butt of alot of jokes about stupidity and backwardness, but the aftermath of this hurricane shows the proof of our value to the United States. The whole nation has been thrown into a fuel crisis because the Gulf is a producer of oil for America and New Orleans is a major port city, with pipelines running north. I've read several articles about the price of fresh produce, and how it's about to go up, because Southern farms have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. I still haven't heard the status of the Stennis Space Center yet. Let's hope it's still there.
Anyway, I guess the long and short of it is, when you're sitting around without power, or if you're stuck at home without gas to go anywhere, you have ample time to ruminate. Please forgive my ramblings.
This whole disaster has got me thinking. In America, the upper and middle classes are not acquainted with the idea of shortage. We have taken it for granted that there was always plenty of everything we needed, wanted, as long as we could pay for it. So the idea that a store might be out of, say, eggs or ground beef or bottled water or whatever is totally foreign to us. It makes us extremely uncomfortable. That's where we are with the gas situation right now. We know that supplies are limited. People are panicking, lining up at pumps to top off, etc. It makes us all nervous. And because we are a culture based on the automobile, many of us live a good ways from where we work. Since we want to be able to continue our "normal" lives (and perhaps because we are such a work-obsessed culture), we want to continue to go to work, even though gas is scarce. (Waits in line for gas seem to average around five hours, if you can even find a station that's pumping.) It's just an odd situation, and much of it seems to play into our identity as Americans.
I've made contact with my friends and family from the Coast and New Orleans. Thank God, they are all still alive, though most of them lost everything. Now, they are trying to decide what to do next. My husband's brother-in-law is back on the Coast, trying to begin the clean-up and rebuilding process. Other friends are in Montgomery, Baton Rouge, and other cities, staying with friends and family.
I was reading back on my earlier post about staying on the Coast at the Beau Rivage. It's eerie to me, when I think of the fact that I was just there, and now the area is so changed. I have a guidebook on New Orleans. I took my little sister there last Christmas, and I was thinking we might go again this year. I had highlighted all the restaurants that I wanted to try. I think I''ll keep the book. There's no way of knowing what will happen in this world.
I was also thinking about the reputation of the South in this country. We may be the butt of alot of jokes about stupidity and backwardness, but the aftermath of this hurricane shows the proof of our value to the United States. The whole nation has been thrown into a fuel crisis because the Gulf is a producer of oil for America and New Orleans is a major port city, with pipelines running north. I've read several articles about the price of fresh produce, and how it's about to go up, because Southern farms have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. I still haven't heard the status of the Stennis Space Center yet. Let's hope it's still there.
Anyway, I guess the long and short of it is, when you're sitting around without power, or if you're stuck at home without gas to go anywhere, you have ample time to ruminate. Please forgive my ramblings.
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