I was 11 when Camille came through, 47 for Katrina. My father's office in downtown survived, my office right off the beach is a slab and a pile of debris.
I have been here every day since the storm struck. It has been an amazing time, full of incredible lows and improbable highs. I put the personal side out there on my home blog reiBlog, and a little bit more on the political blog, HandsboroBlue.
I just want to let the DKos Community know that this and other sites help keep our spirits up, and give us the guts to try to cope with what is to come.
And what is that likely to look like?
We fought drilling offshore from our barrier islands to a draw. This is likely to be revived.
We resisted the feverish condominium development in Hancock County, and just pause to think how much greater the toll would have been from Lakeshore to Bay St. Louis if 30 story high condos had been packed a week ahead of Labor Day weekend.
We pushed sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to prevent casinos from being situated on increasingly scarce coastal wetlands. Now the casino barges are being dismantled from highways and plans to locate them on land are afoot.
We urged preservation of historic communities. A handful of those have survived, like one of my clients Turkey Creek Community Initiatives, who are all over the airwaves right now.
We warned of unrestrained urbanization and cumulative impacts problems and now the chickens have come home to roost, rotting in the noonday sun.
We pushed to preserve our signature feature, live oaks, and following Katrina our state highway contractors mowed down three miles of these centuries old sentinels. Not Camille, not even Katrina could do what our own pell-mell stupidity did in the space of a few days.
And all this pales in comparison to what we heard about New Orleans on the radios and a few of us saw on battery operated TVs in darkened, mosquito infested, tarpaulin covered, mud, sewage, and debris strewn, steaming houses.
More South MS elephants than I can count have experienced a satori about shrinking government and privatizing citizen's losses. More of them have begun to tune into the Insurance industry's plan to privatize ITS gains and socialize ITS losses on our taxpayer's backs. So, we'll pay twice, with our premiums and our taxes, for losses the insurance industry was supposed to cover. Even the most hardbitten elephants can feel this sting.
Can this be what cracks open more of the South to a progressive viewpoint?