Mean Katrina
If you want, you can donate some money to the Houston Red Cross so that they can continue to help out Hurricane Katrina refugees.
Today my son’s class will welcome a girl from New Orleans. The teacher told them yesterday. They’re pretty excited about that. I have to give props to our local school district, HISD, for inviting refugees to put their kids in our schools long before the governor or anyone else thought to do it.
Katrina fall-out is all over the news here, of course. They’re supposed to be moving everyone from the NO Superdome to our no-longer-used Astrodome (the former Eighth Wonder of the World). Already, people have been turned away from the Astrodome because they didn’t go there from the Superdome, and the Superdome refugees have first dibs.
In one of the few happy stories, local Radio Saigon coordinated a big volunteer effort among Houston’s Vietnamese-speaking peeps, getting their listeners to provide shelter for 500 refugees.
The city keeps announcing that they’re providing the refugees with free passes to the zoo and the museums. Which is nice, I guess, but… I don’t know. Does anyone have time to visit them, or are they too busy trying to find food and stuff? I guess some of them have time, actually. My boyfriend, who is a sushi chef, says Louisianans have been visiting his restaurant since Friday night. He says they’re mostly mellow and resigned. I guess if you can afford sushi, you can probably afford to count your blessings for a while.
I feel sorry for the people living out of their cars, now that gas is so expensive. When Interstate 10 first got clogged with evacuees, my kids and I discussed what we would do if we had to leave home like that. I imagined that, of course, we would live in our car for a while, if necessary. But now people can’t even afford to do that.
I’ve heard people saying (sarcastically) “Thanks a lot, George Bush!” a lot lately. He didn’t cause the hurricane, of course (that we know of), but I understand the sentiment. If right-wing religious zealots can blame Katrina on abortion-rights supporters, then I guess the president might as well be eligible for blame, too. For the gas prices, I mean. Or, you know… whatever.
The weird thing is that I live here in Houston, where we have more than 25,000 refugees, and I haven’t even seen or met any of them yet. But I expect that will change soon.
Welcome to Houston, y’all. Hope you get comfortable as soon as you can.
