I'm Back!

I’ve been neglecting my blogging and in a sense, neglecting you. I’ve been focusing on another project that I think I’ve wrestled into a steady rhythm, so…I’m back! I’m fighting (and losing!) a cold and this is helping me take my mind off the misery of the aforementioned ailment.

There’s been so much going on since my last posting, I don’t know where to start, what to address first. In an effort to keep it as simple as possible, I’m going to start with Anniversaries. This weekend marks the anniversaries of Hurricane Katrina (5th), Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (47th), and although it’s a different kind of anniversary, it’s Michael Jackson’s birthday (Aug. 29th)

Hurricane Katrina shed serious light on the neglect of the lower class. I’m talking 100k wattage. The sensationalism of poverty, getting the best story and footage of the worst storm in this country’s history still leaves a bad taste in our mouths. We know about the slow response of our former president. We know how he was partying up, totally oblivious to the seriousness of the flooding. We’ve seen and read about how long it took him and his aides to get to New Orleans, etc. I can go on, but why open an old wound that hasn’t quite healed.

I watched a news special highlighting the events of the flood. Men running around capturing people in the midst of their nightmare, recording children crying because they’ve been separated from their families, and zooming in on the elderly and disabled that have died on the street because of lack of medication and/or treatment. The host of the show sat in darkened studio for effect, pictures of these images flashed in the background, while he explained what he saw and what the cameraman felt as he was walking along the streets. I turned it because I couldn’t bear to watch the images again, and how that same question left the same ill-tasting bile in my throat. How could news crews get there to tape and interview, and helicopters could circle around to get footage of what was going on, but didn’t rescue these people?

I go to sleep with the hope that their off-camera actions went far above and beyond the asking. I prayed (and still pray as they continue to run the footage) that when they turn off the cameras, the microphones are disconnected; they did what they could to do something other than call back to the station to say they’ve got a great story. More on the others in separate postings…