Back on my Soap Box....

You know, as we sit here and get ready for a predicted major hurricane, and I don't mean me personally, I mean, we, the Gulf Coast, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, I am sitting here watching the news, local and national and OMG..... another major hurricane could be headed for NEW ORLEANS!! OH NO!
Please people!!
Alabama and Mississippi were just as damaged, if not more from hurricane Katrina. We still have people living in fema trailers and hotel rooms.
Does anyone that doesn't live here know that the first newspaper after Katrina showed New Orleans standing tall. In fact that was the headlines, "New Orleans Still Standing" it wasn't the hurricane, it was the levys, and I am soooo sorry people that we don't have levys so that everyone will worry about us, here on the 'rest' of the Gulf Coast.
My SIL called his Mother, in New Hampshire, the day after Katrina, to let her know we were all o.k., the woman had NO CLUE her son had just went through one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast in a half a century.
All she saw on the news was New Orleans. Don't get me wrong, I love New Orleans, what those people went through was horrific in some cases and I pray they don't have to deal with this all over again, but come on, there are other states, cities, houses, families and businesses besides New Orleans down here.
I know you didn't see Mississippi, Alabama and Florida all over the news, asking who was going to fix it all for us, you didn't see us because we were too busy, up to our elbows, tearing out sheet rock from flooded homes, helping family and friends throw out a lifetime of memories to the streets for the garbage company to come get, then nailing new sheet rock back up, putting new floors down, or in the worst cases, cleaning off concrete foundations, so the rebuilding, from the foundation up, could begin. We were too busy getting our lives back together to be on the news.
We didn't want to know who was going to fix it, we wanted to know how long we would have to work to get it finished, so we could move to our neighbors and help them begin.
New Orleans has some great people there, but did you see them on the news? No, I didn't, maybe I missed it, the ones breaking their backs to get back to a 'normal' lifestyle. I know they were there, somewhere, quietly rebuilding their lives.
I do feel awful for the ones who lost their lives when those levys broke and New Orleans went under water, but did no one know that New Orleans is a 'bowl' below sea level. She was bound to flood one way or another after the storm surge we all got from Katrina.
I just had to say, it was bad for all of us on the Gulf Coast, and, just in case anyone was worried, we are ALL preparing for a major Hurricane!