Not much has been going on in my world, or so it feels.. but so much has gone on around me, that I want to say something about here. Let’s see.. in my life, the biggest event relate to fun things like hardware death (in the server that runs this website.) First it was its power supply (the fan to be exact), which has been replaced, and now its the video card fan, doh. Nothing like waking up to the smell of hot electrics to make your morning. *sigh*
Katrina. Say the name and now you instantly visualize death and destruction. A week ago, you might have had no thought at all, (or perhaps, think of “Katrina and the Waves” the 80s band with the song “Walking on Sunshine”, oh, the irony.) I’m not sure what I was shocked more at, the level of damage that the storm did, and the stories and pictures of the suffering of all those people. Or the outpouring of support on a personal-level from people. For me, the latter hit me before the former.
Following the storm monday morning, the Ace and TJ show, which airs on a local radio station here in Charlotte, and has several affliate stations around the southeast, stayed on the air in an effort to start collecting donations and goods to send down to those who were affected along the gulf coast. They started with a single semi-truck trailer, to fill with water and supplies, by the end of the first day, one, became two, and by the end of Wednesday, 15 loaded semi-trucks along with $250,000+ were sent off on their journey to those in need.
It was the stories that made listening to it so meaningful to me, and the way people just came out in support. Starting their own unrelated efforts, groups of people all over the area started working to collect goods to send, and the stations parking lot filled with supplies and trucks.
The most memorable stories from the people calling in and e-mailing were..
An e-mail from a solider in Iraq, who heard about what was going on from his mother, who donated his entire months pay of $6,000.
A mother calling in, after her and her two year old daughter saw footage on TV of somebodys house flooded and with a tree through it, and her daughter asks her, Can we give them a new house?
Countless stories of children giving money, from things like the tooth-fairy or a planned trip to disneyworld.
I blog these stories here, even though i’m not particularly good conveying the impact (or in some cases, remembering in enough detail to get the words right, etc.) because I believe that the good does outway the bad, and despite all the awful stories of whats going on down there, we will move forward and rebuld.
Don’t lose sight of the people, for the politics. Its the people who need our help.
