Saturday, September 03, 2005
Various reflections spun off the Katrina aftermath
More reflections spunn off Fractured Memories:
You know, that is an interesting point. For some people this feeling of being rooted in a place is so intense and they just hang on no matter how bad it is.
I think poverty sometimes makes it more intense maybe? It's what you know, it's the little ties you have, and you may find something even worse if you try to go somewhere else with no support or adequate means. So people root down and stay.
It's not so much on a rational level, but on an emotional level of security.
If you are so poor that evacuating a flood for a day is a problem, total relocation is no small move.
On another completely different note, I came across one more article, cant remember where, talking about how obesity, as a health problem, is growing among poor people in a way that had not happened before in human history. In the past, poor people's main problem with food was always the lack of it, going hungry, and not having excess of food. It was one of the things that you could clearly see in the photos of the left behind in NO, how many people were very fat.
And I still can't block out of my mind a photo of a dead elderly person just slumped over in their wheelchair. Just left there.
Probably not any more abandoned in death than they were before Katrina struck. This is why I get very angry at people who think they are these major do-gooders *just* because they make a ten dollar donation now.
.
Livewire:
Their major downfall was/is being below sea level - it magnified everything. The city and surrounding areas are ruined. How do you even go about rebuilding? Every time the Mississippi floods the media interviews people that insist they are rebuilding because their family lived there for generations. Personally, I don't get it but maybe it's because I don't have those sorts of ties anywhere. After something of that magnitude, I'd be gone. No dicussing it.
You know, that is an interesting point. For some people this feeling of being rooted in a place is so intense and they just hang on no matter how bad it is.
I think poverty sometimes makes it more intense maybe? It's what you know, it's the little ties you have, and you may find something even worse if you try to go somewhere else with no support or adequate means. So people root down and stay.
It's not so much on a rational level, but on an emotional level of security.
If you are so poor that evacuating a flood for a day is a problem, total relocation is no small move.
On another completely different note, I came across one more article, cant remember where, talking about how obesity, as a health problem, is growing among poor people in a way that had not happened before in human history. In the past, poor people's main problem with food was always the lack of it, going hungry, and not having excess of food. It was one of the things that you could clearly see in the photos of the left behind in NO, how many people were very fat.
And I still can't block out of my mind a photo of a dead elderly person just slumped over in their wheelchair. Just left there.
Probably not any more abandoned in death than they were before Katrina struck. This is why I get very angry at people who think they are these major do-gooders *just* because they make a ten dollar donation now.
.
