Kat

I've been reading and reading and reading about Katrina, spending most of my day horrified by the terrible living conditions of those stranded in the Gulf region. Most of those people I see on TV and in the papers are poor and black; and, given the class/race makeup of the sufferers, it doesn't surprise me that the administration didn't send out an immediate and overwhelming response to attack the problem before it turned into mass anger, violence, and anarchy. On a side note, I can almost understand the "thugs" taking over the city (despite the fact that it's pissing me off to hear that this minority is slowing/halting rescue and relief efforts). If I didn't have food or water for 2-3 days and I had no idea when help would come, I'd probably pick up a gun too. Hunger and thirst can drive a person mad. Mad I say.

I read a book a while back entitled Blindness by Jose Saramago. Althought it was about an epidemic of blindness as opposed to a natural catastrophe, the situations he describes sound an awful lot like what's occurring in the Gulf states. And I thought something like that would never happen in the U.S. of fucking-richest-country-in-the-world A.