One Year Ago...

A year ago, my sister Nicole and her husband, Nate, were visiting us from Seattle. It was a very nice visit. This may sound kind of weird, but it was the first time she was ever in our home. Nicole is actually my half-sister from a father I have never met-Even though she's just eight years younger than me, I didn't even know she existed until two years ago, when, after a very long search, I found that side of the family using the internet. It was a very emotional time, and very exciting that she came to Texas to visit.

Also during that time was the landfall of hurricane Katrina. I have several friends who live in the affected area, and at least two of them were displaced by the storm. They were lucky enough to get out alive with their families, but the devestation was enormous.

Here's a disaster tip: If you are leaving your home during an evacuation, you may want to throw out any spoilable food in the refrigerator. Turns out that, if you end up staying away from your home for an extended period of time and/or the power is off in your area for days, your refrigerator turns into an incurable bacteria infestation and mold farm. Most of the residents were instructed to duct-tape their refrigerator shut, disconnect it, and roll it out to the street in front of their house.

September 1st of every year is the beginning of dove hunting season, and is something I usually look forward to each year--last year was no exception. But as I was preparing for my trip, I read an Email from one of the hurricane-displaced coworkers to a group of colleagues, including me, which had a pretty desperate tone to it. I could read that he was out on the ledge and begging to be talked back inside. I have to admit, it was pretty awkward for me--he works in my company and I know him relatively well, but we have a relationship with a little bit of an edge to it. I know quite little of his personal situation, and it may be even fair to say that we have been rivals in the past.

I took about an hour to think about it, and then at about 2:00 AM wrote back to him exactly what I would do in his situation. Not warm and fuzzy things like "Don't Panic" (Yo,wassup Douglas Adams!), but extremely direct things like "Call Mr. X and tell him that you will be needing help. Suggest that he assign you to xxx and pay you a salary of xxx as a temporary measure."

I wrote up about five very precise recommendations, and apologized for my directness, which he had really not given me permission for. I even offered for them to stay at our home if that would be helpful, although I'm not sure that would even be feasible.

I sent the Email.

A year later, I'm not sure of the impact of my Email that night. You know, this story isn't about me, but I'm glad I did something. I've been desperate before and felt like nobody really wanted to hear it. I wonder what it would be like to sit homeless and hungry on the street and watch people go into a restaurant.

The colleage did thank me, though. He actually did get a position as I recommended, but I'm not sure if it was a direct result of my midnight musings, or if it was just an obvious move that other people thought of, too.



I'll probably never forget the despair that I read in that note. I wonder if I would do more if I were rich...

One kind of funny moment is when we were on the hunting trip in south Texas, which is synonymous with "the middle of nowhere", and Nate and I pulled up to an intersection under the highway. A group of redneck-looking people were holding plastic buckets out, presumably for us to drop money into. One of the buckets had a red-crayon-scrawled sign which read "Katerina Victims Fund". Perhaps it wasn't an official donation station...

I remember several periods in time which coincide with world events:

-When Reagan was shot (I was in 5th grade)
-When the Space Shuttle exploded (actually both times, but I was thinking of 1986)
-The Oklahoma City Bombing
-When Princess Diana died
-The San Francisco Earthquake in 1989
-The World Trade Center attack on 9/11
-The Tsunami of 2004

I know exactly where I was when I heard about these things, and can tell you what I thought, whom I was with, etc. The most dramatic feelings I have were about 9/11, and I thought maybe I would write about it this year...but maybe not.

When I was in college, I was working on a research paper and got distracted by a paper done regarding the JFK assasination. Since I'm from Dallas, and have been to the site of the shooting, I was naturally interested. This was perhaps the first televised global tragedy, and affected people very deeply in a unique way. The researchers polled people about their emotional response to the tragedy, and we can all probably relate to it--anger, sleeplessness, crying, agitation, fear, etc.

My editor kind of shot this idea down as corny, but I thought about inviting people to send a short few sentences of what they remember about 9/11 and when they saw what was going on. I am certain we all have a story we could tell...Who knows, maybe another year...