For anyone asking the blame-the-victim question about Katrina’s victims–“They had warning, why didn’t they leave?” I recommend John Scalzi’s wrenching blog post, Being Poor.
"There is nothing so impossible in nature, but mountebanks will undertake; nothing so incredible, but they will affirm."
For anyone asking the blame-the-victim question about Katrina’s victims–“They had warning, why didn’t they leave?” I recommend John Scalzi’s wrenching blog post, Being Poor.
I’ve stayed at my house with a tornado a couple miles down the road from me. I twas one of the worst we’d ever had. When your used to the warnings, sometimes you don’t take them seriously.
Thank you.
I hate when people ask this question but so many do. I live in Mobile, which was affected by the hurricane but not nearly as badly as Louisiana and Mississippi but we lost our roof off of our house. I stayed at my mother-in-law’s house during the storm. We all wanted to leave Mobile but none of us had the money to do it. So, here’s one for being poor. Poor is when you want to leave town when a hurricane is about to hit but you don’t have anywhere to go, no money for a hotel, which there aren’t any hotels becuase everyone else has left too, when your car won’t make it more than a couple hundred miles and when you have no gas to get anywhere. When you have no food, no money, no gas and no decent transportation, how are you going to leave? Where are you going to go? All the shelters were already filled. I want the world to knwo this so no one will ask this ignorant question again.
Thank you, Kelly. The real-life personal voice you added is very valuable. Thanks for looking at my blog!
Thank you for your comments on “Being Poor.” Growing up poor in south Mississippi where basic pay is 5.15 an hour and a gallon of gas is 2.50, you can imagine the day to day struggles of people ‘just trying to get by’ let alone get ahead in the world today. In school I wore the pants that were too short, the shoes falling apart, AND had the free lunch at school. The one piece of advice I can give to people, especially parents, is to remember that your child is going through this too. No matter how little we had growing up, my daddy always made sure to take time for his two little girls. To always say I love you with a smile and I’m sorry with tears in his eyes. I’m 25 yrs old now with a wonderful husband and a daughter of my own, and the things I remember and cherrish the most about my childhood, was even though we didn’t have a lot to eat, we had more than enough love to go around =0)