The biggest take away

I'm in the process of having my Katrina chairs reupholsetered. You might think that over a year after Katrina that it would be a new point, a great cleansing time, or a way to feel good about movving on.

I am not sure that we do move on. We don't have a choice, so we pick ourselves up and get back to living. At the same time, we know there is a void, that our very innocence about our safety has been struck to the quick. When yours and the neighborhoods of nearly a million other people have been permantely altered, it's not pleasant and you don't feel resilient. You don't feel lucky, you do feel the pit where your emotions used to be.

You wonder why people care deeply about those in Iraq while your life has been completely devastated. You wonder why you are so insignificant while one square mile in NYC still makes an entire country weep. Meanwhile, multiple zipcodes in southern Louisisana, yes, Louisiana is in the United States, are as devasted as either scenario.

It seems to be, although we continue to play the 5 stages of grief like someone might play the flute, that we need to go back, to linger, on the stage of anger. We haven't been angry long enough to get results. We felt guilty to ask for help. We felt appreiciative that someone donated their 1980s clothes to us, was there a tax deduction? To a government, you pick a branch, that so successfully failed us. We don't have the energy perhaps, we are too drained, we have too much pride, but in the end, we deserve better treatment, you pick from where. I want my own license plate, similiar to POWs, vets, or EMTs. I wnt people to buy special katrina plates so that we are recognized for the horror that we have gone through. We now deserve a pass for a very long time and since no one has done it so far, we need to channel our anger into our just desserts.

If you can build a monument to a killing field in New Youk or sink trillions into the greatest debachle in our history, Louisisana deserves that multiplied by ten. Step to to the United States. It's about time.