Daily intake of Katrina news

"If your heart hasn't been touched by this whole thing, you need a new heart." -- Sean Casey, Cincinnati Reds


a Celebrities to the rescue
a FEMA leaders lack disaster experience
a AP poll: most say abandon flooded areas
a Survivor Story: 6-Year-Old Leads Five Toddlers, Baby To Safety
a FEMA director faces his own storm of controversy

Also: MSNBC's Katrina Blog

'Stuff Happens'

More interesting and fascinating reads today from the fallout and wrath of Katrina...

aFrom the Washington Post: The 'Stuff Happens' Presidency
aFrom MSNBC: New Orleans residents ‘back to the Flintstones’
aFrom the Orlando Sentinel's Kathleen Parker, who, after reading some her archived columns too, just might be one of my new favorite columnists: Shock, awe

Loyalty in journalism

In the last couple days, some fascinating stories have started appearing about the plight and perseverance of The New Orleans Times-Picayune staff …

… And as a fellow journalist, I can’t help but read each of these stories and think I’d be doing the same thing. Granted none of my experiences have come close to the hell and pride the Picayune staff must’ve felt this last week, but their stories stir up my memories of going for a day without eating to cover the big breaking story, or getting just five hours of sleep during a five-day span of putting together a Homecoming edition of our college newspaper (Yes, just one hour of sleep each day that week, and by the time it was over my eyes had been open for so long it actually hurt to close them. To this day, in some strange way, it remains perhaps one of the most amazing personal feats of my lifetime accomplishments.)

During college, I also have fond memories of gutting all of our half-finished newspaper and starting the week’s edition from scratch amid the breaking news of the 9/11 attacks -- and the amazing teamwork that came out of it -- and I can only imagine what it must’ve been like to cover the Utica tornado had I not left my post at the News Tribune a couple months earlier …

Yes, the loyalty a journalist has for his publication can be an amazing thing …

Enjoy …
aFrom the Los Angeles Times
aFrom The New York Times (if you can't get in try the same story at the Wilmington, N.C., Star)
aFrom The International Herald Tribune

Deep impact

It appears some relief is arriving tonight for the people in New Orleans (for more go here). But it will be a long time before the frustration and fallout of this disaster subsides …

And we can give all the money we have to the relief effort. Though it’s perhaps more sad how skeptical I remain of where the money’s going and who’s getting it. Those feelings turned for the worse today when I heard a news report that one city prepared pallets and pallets of water to send for the victims, but FEMA told them it didn’t want the water -- only cash. And during my lunch today, a kid knocked on my door, shoving a donation card in my face. Before I had time to think about it, he was asking for my name. And then when I tried to stop him, he abruptly said, ‘OK, I need the card back’ and shuffled away ….

Getting the latest hurricane news was the first thing I thought of today when I woke up and kissed my wife off to work. Updates on the relief effort were the only things occupying my mind as I came home for lunch today. And again, I was rushing home from work to make sure I could catch the updates on the network news …

I guess it sort of hit me today the impact this disaster has had, much more than I would have realized when I wasn’t so interested, say, on Monday or Tuesday, as was most other parts of our nation and world. But I watched Harry Connick Jr. talking to Katie Couric this morning, reeling from the poor relief effort and practically yelling about how easy it was for him to walk up to the thousands of suffering people at the New Orleans Convention Center. Why is the relief not getting there, he cried … I watched the president offer seemingly hollow excuses and charges to reporters in a morning press conference. … Then at lunch I saw the video of a CNN reporter meeting up with an Asian mother and daughter who were stranded in a hotel room. They had raided all of the other hotel rooms of food and drinks, set up a security wall against intruders and hung a white towel from their window to attract rescuers. After seeing and hearing all of this, the reporter gathered her crew members, loaded the two women in their van and drove them out of the city and harm’s way to reunite with loved ones outside the devastated areas. The reporter -- in the way that us journalists are always trying to do, but never seem to get the credit for doing -- helped a couple fellow citizens, because nobody else would.

… the emotions poured out of me and my eyes welled up today as I told my co-workers and wife these stories … emotions I didn’t realize were so real inside me.

…I’m blessed and lucky tonight that I again could enjoy this final Friday night of summer in my home. And when we finally got our DVD player to quit malfunctioning we watched “Freaky Friday” and “Laws of Attraction”

…“Freaky Friday” was, in a word, cute. It’s no “Face Off,” but Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis weren’t bad. In fact, despite a few cheesy moments, Lohan’s acting was convincing and her comedic potential showed through. Now, if she could only turn off her snobby appearance, shut her yapper in real life and go back to being as cute and likable as she was in “The Parent Trap.”

… “Laws of Attraction” …Yeah. First of all, this was not the movie we initially picked for tonight. With a free blockbuster movie rental earlier this week I had picked out a newer release, only to be informed at the counter that the coupon was only good for an older release. It might have been better to forfeit the coupon … While the plot is somewhat fresh -- two divorce lawyers who find love in each other -- it’s never developed enough to bring in the audience. The movie had ended before it began …

Kind of like the rescue effort in New Orleans?

Our world tonight

This is no 9/11. This might be worse …

Within hours of the 9/11 attack, our country was banding together and the president was leading us in our resolve. Not so tonight ...

Rescuers are being shot at by the people they're attempting to help. People are literally dying on the streets. …and worse yet, no one seems to have -- or at least be talking publicly about it -- a serious, legitimate plan to help.

It appears more out of hand now and most of the people with any ability to do do anything about it appear baffled and unwilling…

It will take years to recover from this ...

I can’t remember being this glued to the wire services and the television news since my college days of covering the 9/11 terrorist attack. And I was much more involved then, as the editor of my college paper. Now I’m just a measly features reporter in an upper Midwest state where we have no idea the devastation a hurricane can ravage …

And I feel helpless. I'm perhaps more misunderstood because I’m unlike the majority of the victims submerged in this tragedy. I'm well educated. I'm by no means 'well-off' but I have a good job and I’m blessed with a home -- not the nicest, best home on the block -- but a home I can call my own, full of a lifetime’s worth of sports memorabilia, music albums and photos galore ...

Hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans and Mississippi can’t say that right now. Even after dozens of images and talking heads scrawling across the TV screen today, the most humbling statement came from the mayor of San Antonio as he announced officials would be opening that city and the AlamoDome for evacuees as well, saying “Think about this for a minute -- All those people that had jobs -- they don’t have them anymore. They’ve lost all of their possessions. They’ve lost their homes.”

Yet I find my self worrying about how we'll get through this ...

I filled my car’s gas tank yesterday morning. Five years ago it cost me about $10 to fill up the tank in my little Toyota Camry. Yesteday, with my little Dodge Neon it cost me more than $21 to fill up half its tank. By then gas was at $2.99 a gallon. By the time Kates drove home from school in the afternoon, it was up to $3.19.

… and then I wonder has the state of our country ever been worse?

How would I know -- I’ve only been living in it for the last 26 years. Yet I can’t help wonder. Now under the same president who stood so tall during the last American crisis, we’re trying to fight a war in Iraq that we started for no apparent reason and there’s no end in sight. The economic gap between the classes only seems to get larger. We’re practically rationing food to pay for our gas. And now Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath are tearing up the Gulf Coast and having an impact on this country that may take years to realize …

All this confronting me tonight as I type on my personal computer, in my own home, watching my flat screen TV, and prepare to sleep in my own bed, all while I'm comforted by the fact I will go to work tomorrow and come home with a paycheck.

What a crazy, selfish world we live in ….

Today's stories & coverage:
--Chaos erupts amid New Orleans’ desperation
--Aerial views
--NBC photojournalist describes horrific situation in New Orleans
--As it informs, TV also irks
--'And now we are in hell'