The Last on Katrina.

I’ve been trying to keep abreast of the situation in New Orleans (not to give any less attention to the other areas that were terribly affected, but New Orleans has been the focus of a lot of media attention and therefore is more accessible to me).

The video below is an interview with the mayor of New Orleans himself – giving both in-depth information about the state of things in that area as well as video of people banding together to help out. Click below for that:

http://www.wwltv.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=www.wwltv.com/082905mayor.wmv

Watching the few moments of video showing boats rescuing the stranded, people caring for the elderly, and hearing about the amount of support that is going to be coming to such a devastated place really warms my heart.

It is always first and foremost for the media (and various other people) to focus only on the devastating elements of such an event – and perhaps that makes sense. Seeing the monumental amounts of destruction makes good news and gives people a healthy serving of empathy – and we gladly accept this and then turn our focus to whatever is flashed before us next. I know I have been part of this buffet-style, event-spectator lifestyle: and it makes me feel horrible.

People were dying last night while I was surfing the internet. Thousands of people are homeless tonight and I’m typing a story for my blog. It will be weeks, even months, before things look even reasonably different in the affected areas – and I feel good because I gave a bit of money to charity. What is seemingly important to me at a certain moment gets rightfully categorized when placed next to the Big Picture.

It is times like these when we can really shake loose the grasp that selfishness and disinterest have on us. I’m not here to speak big about things like I did when Asia was hit with the tsunami – partly because my words are only opinion and will be treated as such.

I’m here to (hopefully) spark people to do something. Thank God some people already get this – but maybe more will, too. I’m not telling people to ditch their lives and head to these areas to lend support, or to take up a second mortgage and donate everything to charity – nor am I calling the people whose choice is inaction morally reprehensible. All I’m trying to do (like I did with the Asian tsunami) is raise awareness and initiative.

Take a moment to watch that video and then see what you can do to help. We all share this country and I wholeheartedly believe we all share the responsibility of bearing each other’s burdens the best we humanly can.

Thank God for heroes.