Through The Storm

I've been through it y'all. Anybody who doesn't have a healthy respect for nature and God's power has never lived through a hurricane. I'm willing to bet there are very few atheists living in southeast Louisiana right about now. Most probably turned in their "Atheist" membership cards right after the wind stopped blowing!

Even more interesting to me as a writer is the power of the word- I include spoken words. Without exception none of the major national media entities even reported on the devastation Hurricane Gustav caused. Ninety percent of Louisiana was in the dark. The power grids were torn up by the wind. Thousands of trees fell on homes. Thank God we didn't have a high number of casualties like we did with Hurricane Katrina. But you should have seen the long lines to get food, ice and MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). Since so few gas stations had power the few that opened had long, long lines. The heat and humidity made tempers run just as hot as the Louisiana temperature. Stores were empty. Have you ever seen a Walmart Superstore with no food? Scary sight. We had house fires, lightening strikes, flooding and tornadoes. My minister commented after all that, plus a week of suffering with no lights in the heat and the dark that a whole lot of us understood a little how Job must have felt. Sadly more than a few people lost everything when their homes were destroyed.

And for most of the country all they saw was New Orleans and that the levees didn't fail. Oh well, everything turned out fairly well, right? Anderson Cooper, et al packed up and left. Sarah Palin became the big story.

This reminded me really why I decided as a kid to be a writer. I wanted to tell the stories that maybe nobody else might tell. What happened to a lot of people in Louisiana is an untold story for the rest of the country. To me that's just wrong. I want to be part of at least striking a blow toward telling the greatest stories never told (before).