Musings: Notes From My Daybook

If you pay the media any attention at all, it seems that the only thing that is happening in the wake of Katrina is finding someone to blame for the loss of life and the ensuing misery of thousands of people. But since media has its own motivations for what it reports, I think we should be wary.

Besides, personal experience is saying otherwise. In communities throughout the nation people are responding. As the minister of a church 400 hundred miles a way via email and phone the networking is happening. People are finding housing, receiving aid, and beginning to bring some order in the chaos of their lives. Just yesterday evening, Ike and I were returning from Alabama after attending a funeral. We stopped at the Georgia line at the rest stop on I-20. The place had been turned into a way station for evacuees. Housing opportunities, clothing, food, toiletries, medical help, networking were all there. The gathering of volunteers from two counties had staff this outpost 24/7 for over the past week.

Over 20,000 people have received aid in the past few days in central Georgia. And Georgia is just one piece of a larger puzzle. Our church is welcoming families to our campus. This morning a family who was able to go back into their home in New Orleans is setting up housekeeping in one of our cottages.

At every turn Americans of every shape and stripe have unfailingly responded with love and care and support. I recognize that we have only an inkling of the realities of the disaster that struck the gulfcoast when Katrina unleashed its havoc. But this business of fault finding is beginning to smell a lot like the muck in the homes and streets of lower New Orleans.