The sort of thing I’d write if I were nicer

Hi. I'm Bill. I do most of my blogging at http://smalltownveteran.typepad.com/ and some at http://www.veteranssupportourtroops.org/blog/, but I've been promising Rosemary for a while now that I'd start posting some here as well. Problem is, I also promised her to "keep it clean" and that's something I'm not really good at, so most of what I write isn't really suitable for this blog. Maybe she'll let me slide a little longer if I steal a post from my daughter's blog that I think you'll enjoy.

Some background: When I was married to my first wife her youngest niece, Andrea, was one of my favorite people in the world – She still is; I just don't see much of her anymore. When Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, Andrea and her husband had sense enough to leave town with what they could fit in one car and head for my daughter's place in Ft Worth. Anyway, this is from my daughter's blog at http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=willowfae. She's nicer than I am, and I'm proud of her.

I refuse to play the blame game. So if you are looking for a leftist rant against the government's lack of preparedness and slow response or a rightist (?) condemnation of the looters or the idiots who didn't (couldn't) evacuate New Orleans in time, you are in the wrong place. All you will find here are tears for those who have died and for those who will continue to die in the cesspool that used to be such a beautiful city. You will find compassion for the evacuees who do not have a job, a home, a school, or anyplace to go back to. I had 2 of them (plus a cat) camped out in my spare bedroom for a week until they left for his parents' house in Los Angeles. And I know that they are not worried about who is to blame or who is handling things poorly in the government, or who is handling the trauma and grief badly and acting like idiots, but rather with how THEY can help (amazing, after losing everything they own). They're hoping someone found the case of bottled water in their house. It's on one of the few streets not flooded and they hope someone who needs it will run across it. They hope that someone hot wired her car from Tulane University parking garage and used it to get out of town. They hope that the rescue personnel will commandeer their house and put it to good use as living quarters. They hope that they will one day get to go back and look for her wedding dress and Christmas ornaments that were on the top shelf of the closet and just might not have been damaged in the storm. They cry for their friend's cats that were left behind. And those are the things I choose to focus on. The heartbreak and the hope that I can help in some small way. So take your political grandstanding elsewhere.