September 13, 2005

"If we only kept the things we truly loved in our homes, we'd have so much space."

A life lesson, offered up by a man scavenging for things to take out by boat from his swamped house in New Orleans.

In another vein, there's this, from a photographer who has been riding along on the boat and who has worked in Iraq:
"There are more guns here than in Baghdad!"

5 comments:

Alice H said...

"There are more guns here than in Baghdad!" but our National Guard has been gutted by sending troops to Iraq, to the point where we have no soldiers to send to New Orleans. This makes perfect sense.

goesh said...

- just saw yesterday some commentary/footage about there being too many cops in NO. The role for the Guard is often that of security, so scratch that off as a reason for Bush-bashing. I suppose the Guard could have formed a bucket brigade to drain New Orleans, IF Bush hadn't sent them off to be volunteer victims in Iraq. The Guard has little expertise and equipment for pumping flood waters, so scratch that off too. I do suppose they could have used some of their trucks to evacuate people, assuming they all wanted to leave their homes, in light of the DEMOCRATS in charge down there not making use of school buses on hand to do the same.

Unknown said...

There are probably more guns in all of Mississippi than there are in all of Iraq.

Freeman Hunt said...

As to the guns: That whole thing about the gun confiscation ticked me off so much that I joined the NRA. This in spite of the fact that I've never owned a gun or been hunting in my life.

amba said...

That was a haunting, beautifully written story, by James Bennet, I believe, that really gave you the feeling of what submerged New Orleans is like. It ends:

Half a moon had risen in a darkening lilac sky, and Mr. Skipper worried whether he could beat the gathering dusk to Veterans Memorial Boulevard, more than a mile away.

Swerving around signposts and wires, he opened his throttle all the way, trusting that he knew where the cars and Dumpsters lurked. Astern, the wake lifted the heavy, purple water in slow waves that caught dimming images of the lightless houses and then crashed against them.


It was one of the first things I read on Wednesday on the plane back from Moscow, a ravening news junkie having just gotten my hands on a day-old New York Times after a week of total news deprivation.