August 31: Still rising.

I know I get obsessed about big news events, and about big weather events, and...my god. When I finally left work last night I went to the Esquire, because I wanted to see some CNN or weather channel or something, and I knew they'd either have it on or be willing to turn one of the TVs. They had it one several. It's just astonishing. It just keeps going on and on. I left after an hour and a half, went to bed at midnight, and woke up at 4:00 a.m. all tensed up and obsessing. I kept imaging people sitting on their roofs, surrounded by water, with nothing to drink. Pregnant women. Diabetics with no insulin. By 6:00 I just gave up, got up, and went to work.


Morning Edition finally came on. Rescuers pushing aside bodies...stampede in Baghdad...and now we go to Ed Kieser at the Ag Expo! How's the weather over there, Ed? I turned on the TV while I was getting ready for work; the only station with news was the WB. How often can you say that? When they threw to their reporter in Mississippi, they greeted her with a cheery "Good morning, Jennifer!" She's standing in a foot of water in front of a disintigrating house; she hasn't had a shower in a couple of days; it's still dark; and she replies "Good morning!"

At work, I mention the hurricane tragedies to some of my coworkers. The uniform response: "Oh, I haven't really been following it. Is it really that bad?"

It makes me oddly angry that people don't seem troubled enough, even while I'm all too aware that obsessing over it does no good to anybody.

It's probably partly my own defensiveness as a Midwesterner. I think this would be received vastly differently if it were happening to the East or West coast. During the terrorist attacks--which I do not, in any way, mean to dismiss as a tragedy, or put up in some sort of hellish competition of horrors--during the terror attacks, at least there was still food and water in the area. There was electricity and phone service within walking distance. But the world sort of stopped; those images weren't followed by Letterman's Top Ten list. I know it's a different situation--it was completely unpredictable, and nobody knew what was coming next, and it was a planned attack. I'm just saying that if this had happened in DC, I don't think we'd be kicking it from "possibly thousands dead" to "now for some great barbecue recipes for your labor day cookout".

I keep thinking of all the things that are gone, that wouldn't have been removed from town for a hurricane. The books in the libraries. Art in museums. Every safe deposit box in every bank in town. What about the zoo animals? They'd have rounded them up for a hurricane, but they surely don't move them to other towns? I'm going to believe that they do.