Whenever a tragedy on the scale of what happened (and continues to develop) down in New Orleans occurs, there are liable to be alot of differing opinions on how best to deal with the situation.

That is just the way it goes, and quite honestly, we can put our brains to task during a ‘post mortem’. Right now, its not worth arguing about. Right now, they need food, water, military/police presence to maintain order, strong backs to assist with cleanup, and engineers of all sorts to get services back … well, in service. Pointing political fingers around and judging the responses of this agency or that isn’t going to help anyone right now. So give where you can, if you have the ability and means to go down there and lend your assistance, do so, and if that doesn’t work, please do everyone else a favor and STFU.

For what its worth, we put in our names to host a displaced student from Xavier college in our home. DU opened its doors to the affected colleges to let their medical sciences students continue to do their thing until the doors could once more be opened down south. Maybe its a token effort, and there are others doing a lot more, but hey, its still something.

I do feel like I have alot in my brain about the issues the country and we as humans face in times like these. I will try not to dwell on the things mentioned above that will deserve closer inspection once all this is behind us, and instead on some of the abstract concepts around this.

First, Mother Nature kicks ass. It takes natural disasters only a fraction of this size to make people realize that. Whether its volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides, tidal waves, forest fires or whatever … take your pick. I believe that we, as a species, need constant reminders that we do not in any way, shape or form control that element of life on this planet. To not have a healthy respect for its potential and power is, quite frankly, a lethal proposition. No, I’m not a tornado chaser, nor do I have some sort of death wish to participate in any of these sorts of events firsthand. But yes, they fascinate me. It is awe-inspiring, undeniably powerful and completely outside of our sphere of control. I get the “deer in the headlights” look in my eyes in the face of anything like this. Its almost outside of comprehension.

This brings me to my second point. I suppose, when you really cut to the chase, there is no place on this planet that is truly safe from any of this. I think I’ve picked a pretty low risk place to live, but guess what… there’s still the occasional tornado swirling closeby, a couple bad hail storms a year, and a blizzard once every 5-10 years that completely buries us for a day or five. Are those things as damaging to person and property as what they’re experiencing down in the south right now? No, not even close. That fact is decidedly not coincidental. I won’t live in Florida ever again. I wouldn’t live in California. By preference, I will stay away from coastlines. I won’t live in Kansas or the ‘tornado alley’. Was were I’ve settled a conscious choice with those factors in mind? You betcha.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Its not as if I’m not sympathetic to the plight of the affected people. These two facts have not a single thing to do with one another. I’ll speculate for a moment, though. If I were to have just come away from this disaster, or a similar one where all I had in the world was left in ruin … one of the very first questions in my mind would be whether i had made a sound choice in putting myself and my worldly possessions at that sort of risk. Maybe it really is just an odds game we all play.

Hmm … it occurs to me also that everyone has made a ‘choice’ of where to live. That isn’t a good assumption to make, so I’ll backtrack off that line of thinking for the moment and let that one percolate in my brain for a bit longer before ranting about it more. But I think can still safely add one thought to that mix without going overboard:

Folks, when you’re rebuilding your homes? Shoot for ABOVE sea level this time, huh? Man.

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