One Year Since Katrina
A year after Hurricane Katrina, I can see why they choose to give names to these powerful storms that batter the coastlines of America, and sweep through the islands of the Caribbean. Katrina now seems like someone that I know, or at least know of. She has been personified in so many ways since this time last August.
In some ways, Hurricane Katrina reminds me of the ex-girlfriend of a close friend or brother. You hear him talk about her and how bad she was. He tells you there's no way to describe how malicious or cruel she was, or how she wrought havoc on his life. Since you never met her personally, or dated anyone like her, all the sympathy in the world can't comfort the devastation you see on the brother's face. He has a look that wasn't there before…before her. And you wonder: what was he even doing there in the first place? Why didn't he just leave when he saw the signs? What part did he play in it? But because he's your homeboy, and you share a history with him, you know that there was something more at work here. You can only see that she blindsided him. Something bigger is at play here.
Katrina reminds me of a journalist (Bob Woodard to be exact). She exposed truths that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, or at least unexposed. She went to one of America's favorite city, one of my favorite cities. A city where many of us went to eat, drink, and be merry, turning a blind eye to an undercurrent of poverty, racism, and classism that existed outside the French Quarter and Jackson Square. Katrina and her "hard hitting style" ignored the lives she would change; exposing to the world America's Dark Truth. She forced the country to answer the question "how do you treat your poor, your destitute, those who can't do for themselves." Katrina didn't submit her question in advance, so the country was either ill prepared or unwilling to answer.
Katrina reminds me of that cousin in every family that no one wants to talk about. I'm thinking specifically of Cousin Faith in Soul Food. Remember her? Cousin Faith who had a bad history came to town and brought havoc and chaos to the Joseph Family. She hung around longer than anyone had expected her to, and the next thing you know, she had killed a marriage. The family was fighting, pointing fingers, laying blame in every direction. Once Cousin Faith left the scene, the Joseph's were left to put the pieces back together. Even without Mama Joseph's help, the family had to find a way to make it work.
How do you see Katrina? What has she meant to you? When I hear my new friends from New Orleans speak of the hurricane, I'm surprised when they refer to it as "she." I'm sure they have they're own personifications for her, as they knew her much more personal that I.
I see this is a time for reflection. On lives that were lost, on families who were separated and displaced, and on a government who failed its citizens at every level. We must not let the memories of Katrina and her little sister Rita fall too far off the public consciousness. Those who survived and those who perished, deserve better.
