Katrina my Old Friend

Well the call I had been expecting came today: "We liked your volunteering after Hurricane Katrina, will you come deploy for Hurricane Wilma?" No surprises there. I've been at my regular job for a few days, and when I told my boss what the call was, his only reply was "MACH SCHNELL!" , which is his way of saying go ahead. What a great guy. No, greater than that even. Today he also helped to upgrade my clunky old laptop. My old computer was so old I nicknamed it "Atari".
Atari got the job done, but man was she old. Kind of like her owner, actually. Actually upgrade is too weak of a term, let's say replace clunky old Atari. The new platform is a sleek sexy import with turbo-handling. IBM think-pad. I'll probably nickname her Katrina or something stupid like that, cause she's got "ceramic, double-rotor two-wheel drive, computer-controlled anti-lock brakes, 12,000 rpms", and other jargon I can't bore you with right now.

After all, you may be wondering how did I answer said phone call above? Let me tell you, I had to think and pray and chat this up with the wise counsel. But not for long really, I had a gut feeling how to answer as soon as I heard the question. Maybe I should have on on-line poll:

How Did the Rebuilder Answer, Click Here to Vote Now ! Then if enough people vote the other way, I'd switch. Or not, that Wouldnt be prudent. Unh-Uh. Not at this juncture. If I ran this one-man show by polls and statistics I'd have no hair left by now.
But your theoretical poll choices would be:
- Rush over to Wilma;
- What Happened to Rita;
- Go Back to Katrina;
- Sign up for Fema;
- Go back to Bookstore;
Can I stall this out any longer? Do you care?

I did pick one of the above. Let's eliminate what I didnt choose, and why.

The easy outs are FEMA and staying at my regular bookstore:
- I know nothing of FEMA and I've been a public servant before, no thanks.
- I have leave from my bookstore job, so why sit still?
- I assume any Rita survivors are still being helped, so I choose closer destinations, sorry.
- I also assume Wilma survivors will get fresh assistance as CNN and FOX help focus attention on the latest
and greatest story. After all, a fresh disaster will generate viewership, not like those old issues.
So I'm left looking at what seems like unfinished business to me in the aftermath of Katrina.

I used to live on the Gulf Coast, so I'm going back there to offer more assistance. Some of those places resemble the third world. The SBC DR committee has shut down the Slidell site where we worked before. But I'm sure more needs to be done in the flooded areas. Biloxi took a large storm surge, see? People keep correcting me when I say tidal wave, but I'm sure the average Biloxi resident doesnt care right now. Almost all my attempts to contact people in Biloxi have failed so far, but I havent done the slogging through the phone book yet, which comes monday. Step three is just to drive the heck down there, and say HEY! But not yet.