Friday September 02, 2005
Friday September 02, 2005 When I was 8, I lived in Mississippi for one year, right next door to Gulfport, just a few blocks from the beach. My memories of Long Beach are memories of childhood - walks on the beach, playing on trampolines, weebles that wobble but don't fall down, hurricane drills in the hallway of a school named after a famous confederate soldier. My little brother fell in a creek at the end of the street, and when he stood up he was covered with crayfish, and with wide eyes of surprise, between tears - all he could say was "crayfish!!" I wonder if my old home is still standing and what happened to the people that live there now.
Even before that, my parents lived for a year in the Big Easy. They were newlyweds, and my sister was born there, just weeks before Hurricane Betsy hit. As an adult, when I travelled to New Orleans for the first time (for a USENIX conference back in the 1990s), my mother gave me a list of places I had to go to - including breakfast at Brennans and Preservation Hall Jazz. And I fell in love with a restaurant called Nola (by Emeril Lagasse, before he was a famous TV chef) and kept going back to Nola every day with more and more (and more) people joining for each meal. What an amazing, beautiful city.
So, I've found myself at a loss for words in my blog this week.
One of my first summer jobs in college brought me to the Lockheed Space Sciences Research Lab in Palo Alto. There, I worked closely with a man who had survived a concentration camp in WWII. One of the things he told me - that I've never forgotten - was that you never really know a person's true character until they've been faced with hardship. Then you know.
Here's to all the strong, courageous people on the Gulf Coast who are quietly toiling away to get through this disaster and to help others get through it.
(2005-09-02 12:43:14.0) Permalink Comments [1]
