Rising Tide -- 2005

The Dope pushed the eject button and lit out for a few days of sun and sand. Upon my return, I found another excellent guest submission from Cecelia O'Brien which is shared here.

Rising Tide of Humanity
Visiting Nashville this September 1 through 4, I witnessed southern reaction regarding the lack of response to Katrina. Southern residents’ frustration levels peaked while national attitudes formed. Politics aside, we are compelled to focus on humanity for those suffering physiologically, stagnating at the bottom rung on the hierarchy of needs wisely defined by Abraham Maslow.

Until you fight for days only to see river water flow fast into your home from a broken foundation, and then give in to mother nature only to return weeks later to see and smell and step into thick, oozing, putrid, muddy, muck mixed with death, disease, and trash, gaining the personal pleasure of scooping it up with shovels, buckets, or any tool available, you can not understand. Unless you find special photos and magazines saved in your bedroom reduced to rot and mold in your devastated home, you can never come near the sinking pit felt in your stomach along with the urge to retch. Once you see a family of snakes, bugs, rodents and other creatures unimagined have made a home in what was once yours; then you can feel true empathy for the people of the Mississippi gulf region.

My youth of the 1960s and 1970s was punctuated by annual river floods, either won or lost by our household. The big one in 1972 was a loss of not life, but a way of life, and shattered our simple view of daily events forever. My childlike view of living on the Moline Rock River shoreline seemed superior to a city kids’ existence until I dealt with Mother Nature’s disastrous might and gave in to her power force. Suddenly worlds away from essentials and lost material goods my family was efficiently helped by local, state and federal efforts. Sharp, solid memories are of rides on boats, men helping my family get to safety, and Uncle Sam quickly helping us rebuild our lives. All my grief pales in the face of the Mississippi Gulf region and today’s suffering. I know too well how soon the thick, rancid sludge will seal their possessions and loved ones’ lives permanently in haphazard tombs of newly formed wasteland mud graves burying their past lives forever.

Old Man River is not a patient man and his new soil aftermath will not remain pliable until the families return to dig out their meager treasures minor as they may seem to those living in higher standards. Much of the way of life south of the Mason Dixon line seems as foreign to Yankees as we Americans do to Europeans. Humanity will now as before rise above the tide to rebuild life once again as I’ve seen firsthand. The time taken for this process depends on action and reaction by one and all in our mighty, wealthy land at every level and can only start in the deepest personal part of our hearts once we feel compelled to share...