Katrina Deaths

Like a lot of people, I have been following the Katrina story over the past few months, and many things about this horrible disaster and the equally disastorous rescue and relief efforts have both saddened and sickened me. One major question on my mind has been: how many people have died in this hurricane? I realize the difficulties in assessing this, but even an approximate number would be good to know. why is the media not even speculating about this?

during 9/11 they ran body counts constantly, even when they weren't sure of how many people had perished. why doesn't the media do the same for the victims of hurricane katrina? i suppose one problem is that because of the homelessness and diaspora created by the hurricane its difficult to know where people are and to ask them about their relatives, friends etc. in essence, i'm sure there are some people who are considered missing who are actually alive, but their whereabouts are unknown. Considering this, there are still a number of people who haven't been located, who are probably still under debris, or who floated out to sea when the hurricane hit.

this weekend i googled "katrina death count" and found some interesting information. according to one blog (forgot the name of the author) there have been about 1400 confirmed deaths, and about 3,000 still unaccounted for. interestinly enough, i just googled again and there is a mainstream news story from msnbc that wasn't up the other day, that actually talked about the number of dead. according to msnbc, there are about 1300 confirmed deaths, and they wouldn't even speculate on the people unaccounted for.

hmmmm. i'm happy to get some numbers, but it will take a very long time before this is sorted out - if ever. other news that makes me sad and angry is that lots of people were recently kicked out of hotel rooms even though they had nowhere else to go. other people were trying to live in what was once their homes, sleeping on cots, using buckts for toilets etc. and then there's the extreme FEMA incompentency where thousands of trailers marked for the gulf coast have been languishing in a soggy field in arkansas waiting for the governmental go-ahead to send them to needy people in mississippi and louisiana. while they sit there most of them are rotting because of the watery conditions. nice, huh?

all governmental officials, particulalry george w. bush should be impeached for this debacle.

Fireworks in February

Here we are, about a month before the start of spring, and I am going crazy with the snowy, cloudy weather in the northeast. Even though this Winter has been mild, it still feels so damn long, like two Winters rolled into one. Enough already.

Hamilton College realizes that winter gets old around here, and to keep one's sanity for the duration requires constant vigilance and diversion. Every year the college has "Feb-Fest" - a month long celebration with various activities to break the Winter monotony, and celebrate the last full month of it. There have been beer and wine tastings, and yes, fireworks on campus.

Friday night we sat in our living room enjoying electricity again after a nasty wind storm knocked out power twice in one day. Suddenly, we heard loud booms and at first thought that it was trees crashing down in what was a day of record tree fallings in the area. But no. These booms were the booms of fireworks. We quickly shut out the lights and sat on our couch watching a tremendous fireworks display that seemed to go on for an hour. The black, boring February sky was dramatically filled with greens, yellows, blues and reds. It was spectacular. What is it about the combination of gunpowder and sky that make people ooh, and aah? It's the boom, and the motion of the colors. It gets me everytime. For about an hour on Friday night the Winter monotony was kept at bay, and I smiled and felt light-hearted forgetting the fact that we still have another month to go before the start of Spring.

jb