| Feb. 22nd, 2009 @ 08:07 am The Eventual Blogger |
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I really should change my name to the eventual blogger to accurately reflect my inconsistency. It's been three and a half years.Nothing is new or really even better when it comes to this post-Katrina mayhem. Every day I am bombarded with people, mostly senior citizens, who are in desperate need...they don't have heat or water or are falling through the floors of their still damaged homes. They are hungry, tired, depressed, unable to afford their medicine. They are alone but not really because I hear the same story every day. They are getting evicted, they are dying, they are going to live in a tent because they can't keep their MEMA cottage while their house is being built, they die waiting for money to fix their house, they die waiting for a volunteer to repair the kitchen floor. Volunteers are now in town...it is our season for volunteers, snow birds, but there is NO money for the supplies so nothing gets done.
These people make $650 a month from social security. It's not enough when they have to pay all their bills and buy food. RENT by itself runs around $800. They can't afford to find a place to stay. The waiting list at HUD is beyond ridiculous. It's been closed so long I can't remember the last time it was open.
sigh. We keep working like maniacs to find a solution when everyone ran out of money a year ago.
What blows my mind is that there is this huge stigma attached to people who haven't recovered yet. A prevalent get-over-it mentality prevades our society...it is only a reflection of the attention defecit disorder media system that tell us we are an old story...a boring story so just GET OVER IT. People would much rather read about who Britney Spears is screwing than my 76 year old client who lost their FEMA camper in Gustave, couldn't get another one from FEMA and had to move into the shell of their house with no power so no way to have heat, cook food, etc in the middle of winter.
Although I really am the hypocrite because I am sick of all these stories too. All this unwielding chaos, visual and mental. Here in Mississippi we still don't have time to ponder what has happened to us, it is overwhelming in quite an unbearable way. I often wonder just how long it will take for it to finally hit...the realization, the understanding of what has happened. I guess I might know when it finally STOPS happening because dear readers, Katrina is still happening down here. |
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