September 1

When I was kid, HBO did a special on Nostrodamus. The part I remember most was the ghoulish prediction of a draught so severe that "man would become...a man eater." It still freaks me out.

I keep thinking of that every time news comes in from the New Orleans Convenction Center.

The first time I went to New Orleans, Jackay was going for a neuroscience conference at the Convention Center. It was one of my first stops in the city. Now there are thousands of people there without any water. There are dead bodies, whose pictures are up on CNN. A pre-adolescent girl was allegedly raped. An NPR reporter who had just fled the convention center was on the phone with All Things Considered while the FEMA director, simultaneously on the radio on another line, denied that there was a problem there. He kept saying that those people should go to one of the distribution points, without mentioning that they'd been sent there in the first place because it was a designated distrubution place.

Everybody else I talk to finds it just too grim to bother with. Are they talking about it in New York?

It's so hard to fathom, being here where I have a clean dry bed and loads of food and access to my bank account, not to mention 24-hour radio, television, newspaper, and Internet access, but these people have had no information about their own city for four days. They haven't seen the footage. They haven't heard about the rescues, or the attempts to fix the levees, or the conditions at the Superdome. The just know nobody's come to help them. They're walking and swimming through waste water, expecting the people on the other side to have something. Imagine the shock of swimming past dead bodies, leaving your loved ones who can't swim behind, and then finding there's still no water, no food, no busses, no police. Just shooting and looting and mayhem. I'd be carjacking, too.

A lot of people are asking me what they can do. If they're asking you, too, here's what I've found out:

* They do not want people to donate clothes or food at this point. They have no place to distribute them and would tie up people and resources that could be used for getting people out.

* They do want money. The American Red Cross and

* A call has been made for blood donations.

* The message boards below also feature places for people to offer up their spare rooms for refugees.

* As evacuees arrive in Houston, they'll need information. Phone cards, cell phone batteries, laptop batteries will probably be useful in a couple of weeks. But for right now, unless you have a rescue helicopter, just send money and all the good karma you can.

* In the meantime. . . If people are looking for info on loved ones in the affected areas, here are some places to find lists of survivors and missing:
NOLA.com, which is posting text messages from people trapped in attics
Craig's List
Gulf Port News survivor database

* Every time something like this happens, I pledge to get trained in CPR and first aid. I did it in high school, but don't remember enough to be of any use. No excuses this time.

I'm off to Dallas tomorrow, where the presence of little children will prevent me from watching too much CNN. Unless something else happens, I'm going to stop posting about all this, and turn towards the light. Have a safe and easy labor day weekend. Go to a parade if you can.

EDITED TO ADD: Here's a really cool thing: somebody's organizing people to relay messages from survivors and evacuees to their loved ones. You take a text or phone message saying "I'm okay, please call Mom at 314-xxx..." and we, who have long distance and cell phone batteries, can keep trying until Mom gets word. If people are actually able to send messages, that's a fantastic idea.