New Orleans - New Atlantis

Needless to say I've been watching a lot of CNN over these last few days.

I like most Americans am shocked, and concerned with the events which have unfolded along the gulf coast in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

I felt I had so many stories to tell, so many words to share, all to be posted upon my blog. My plan was to find some personal outlet, some minor way to create.

I continue to take photographs, continue to look for the small insignificant minutia of local life here in Springfield, Illinois.

I never pretend that anything I say will be significant in any historic way, and I post more to please myself than any other reason.

I remain dedicated to posting.

Yet, these last several days my heart doesn't seem in it. I turned my television on CNN, and have left it on non-stop.

What has happened to New Orleans, and the surrounding gulf coast is historic. I find myself wishing I were one of the super rich in this nation, so that I could muster a small army to rush down and help these poor folk who have lost so much, and who are now struggling under their most trying of conditions.

Instead I'll donate some modest contribution to a trustworthy charitable organization, and leave it up to others to do what I wish I could.

So many images, so many loops of video presented on CNN, over, and over again. Various issues being broached. The logistics, the history, the politics, the personal trauma, the looting, the sniper attacks, the failure to prepare, the failure to flee, the price of gasoline, etc.

It seems exhausting just trying to wrap my brain around all the various permutations of every story which I have watched over the last six hours.

Is this how I spent my night, and the night before, and the night before?

And then with that mental anguish agitated upon my brain, I realize that those images are presentations of real live human beings, who have no comfortable easy chair upon which to rest, no cool air conditioned living room in which to relax, no fresh clean running water, or safe food to snack upon.

Instead they suffer, while I grow exhausted at witnessing their suffering.

I want all the talk to end, the national guard to reach into the new Atlantis, and make it rise once again from the depths of the gulf.