I just happened to come across this photo album during my web excursions, and I have mixed feelings regarding it. The pictures are real, amateur, almost voyeuristic into this person's family's life (I think it's a young-ish teen/adult guy), they weren't shown on the news or anything like that. It's just pure cataloguing of the destruction, but at the same time whoever posted these and captioned them seems to have a sense of levity about things--we can't turn back time or undo the damage, so we just make the best.
I honestly think Katrina has affected me more profoundly than the attacks on September 11th, 2001 did. Maybe it's because I volunteered at the refugee shelter (Jesus, refugees? In America? Seriously?), maybe it's because they're Southern like me, maybe it's because I long so badly to live by the sea but fear another Katrina. Maybe it's because Anderson Cooper cried, maybe it's because of the sluggish response from a man who, at the time, I thought was supposed to be capable of giving a damn about everything at once.
I think it was because I saw the faces of the people who had fled to Tupelo, I helped them when they hurt, and I befriended a girl in my physics class whose family fled from New Orleans. I'm utterly empathic, and I'll never forget the feelings I had when the residual rain bands from Katrina drenched us, but only half-heartedly, with no gusts or bluster. Where was its fury, and why were we spared? Why did people in the beautiful coastland lose everything?
"Why" is a pretty useless question, but I just felt the need to elaborate on my reasons for being more effected by a natural disaster than a human disaster. I've come to expect nothing but disasters from humans.
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