Dyson v.s. Rose in what seems this week like a ten chapter death match. In several of my classes before this one, I have had to read different books by different authors all discussing and dissecting the same subject. However, I have never read to authors whose writing styles are so vastly different, and their subject exactly the same. Both Rose and Dyson wish to educate the American people on the tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina and the ineffectiveness and neglect that was the U.S. and state government.
But, where Dyson rams facts and figures down our throat as he wags his finger in our faces, Rose speaks softly of the people that he saw days, weeks, and months after the disaster. He gives to us faces of the people whose lives were forever altered on August 29, 2005.
To say that one style is better than the other is to pass a judgement I have no right to pass. However, I do feel qualified to tell you all how I feel about these two uniquely different authors.
At first Dyson grabbed me and appalled me with his facts. I was engrossed by how he could break down a complex subject and lay blame indiscriminately at everyone's feet. Now, six chapters into the book the facts have gotten repetitive and the finger wagging insulting. From the very first word of every chapter I find myself on guard, ready to defend my beliefs or lack of helping during the debacle of 2005. I have started to wonder if all I do is defend and combat him is Dyson still being as effective as he was on the first page of the first chapter?
Rose however, never finger wags, cites many facts, or stands on his soap box yelling. Instead he brings you into his pieces by telling you stories. Humans are creatures who find delight in a good story. Whether or in oral or written form, we for centuries have listened fully engrossed by the tales of our forefathers. Rose is a master at playing on the readers love of a great story. Instead of telling me the statistic of people who trudged through chest deep water searching for relief, he tells me the story of one individual who lived through the hurricane and the tole it took on them and their family. I feel by the end of each of Rose's short stories, that I have at least met one of the victims of this disaster and follow-up incompetence. Still with only seeing a select few faces and their stories, has Rose shown me the whole picture of what Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans was?
I challenge you to read them both for yourself and decide!
Friday, September 30, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Read No Evil, Cause Mass Evil
After reading Chapter Five of Dyson all I can say is, "Are you f****** kidding me?" What did the U.S. Government need, a sky writer to spell out that New Orleans would crumble at the feet of almost any Hurricane?
I come from San Diego, California and while living there was well aware that at any time an earthquake could shake my home and state to its very foundation. Yet, we do things to make this inevitable disaster much less tragic. We build homes, bridges, and roads to earthquake resistant standards, we run drills from childhood that teach us what we are to do in the event of an earthquake and we have kits that hold vital supplies we will need after tragedy has struck. I know that there will be people who are ill prepared and could possible parish if California is rocked off the Richter scale. I also know that even some who prepared as they were told could and probably will die. The point is that we prepare and when we think we have prepared enough, the state tells us to prepare again.
Maybe it is the fact that we can't predict earth quakes, like we can hurricanes, that leads to a break down in saftey drills, and kits. But, we as the people of the United States can definitively say that a safety meltdown occurred when it came to Hurricane Katrina and Louisiana.
When I started this course, I thought that maybe the U.S. government was unaware of how unprepared the Gulf coast was when it came to Hurricane safety. After reading Dyson's chapter 5 I can say will some authority that hell no they had to know. After what seemed like a list of seventeen-hundred articles, even living under a rock is no longer an excuse. The White House, the Louisiana Government, George Bush, and FEMA, dropped the ball in a huge way. A ball that was wrapped in hundred of news articles shouting one day we are going to say I told you so.
I come from San Diego, California and while living there was well aware that at any time an earthquake could shake my home and state to its very foundation. Yet, we do things to make this inevitable disaster much less tragic. We build homes, bridges, and roads to earthquake resistant standards, we run drills from childhood that teach us what we are to do in the event of an earthquake and we have kits that hold vital supplies we will need after tragedy has struck. I know that there will be people who are ill prepared and could possible parish if California is rocked off the Richter scale. I also know that even some who prepared as they were told could and probably will die. The point is that we prepare and when we think we have prepared enough, the state tells us to prepare again.
Maybe it is the fact that we can't predict earth quakes, like we can hurricanes, that leads to a break down in saftey drills, and kits. But, we as the people of the United States can definitively say that a safety meltdown occurred when it came to Hurricane Katrina and Louisiana.
When I started this course, I thought that maybe the U.S. government was unaware of how unprepared the Gulf coast was when it came to Hurricane safety. After reading Dyson's chapter 5 I can say will some authority that hell no they had to know. After what seemed like a list of seventeen-hundred articles, even living under a rock is no longer an excuse. The White House, the Louisiana Government, George Bush, and FEMA, dropped the ball in a huge way. A ball that was wrapped in hundred of news articles shouting one day we are going to say I told you so.
Friday, September 16, 2011
We The People VS We The Government
This week the one word that stood out, especially on the Spike Lee movie, was WE. Every time that someone spoke they were lumping themselves into a WE. It was every desperate girls dream, WE was flowing like drinks at a club. But, here is were the WE party hit a snag, no one could decide what WE they were a part of. It was a monogamous man's nightmare. Which WE did you side with? Which We did you listen too? But, as you waded through all the different sections of WE, we came down to two majorities. We, the people, those affected by the hurricane as well as their American brothers and sisters, and We, the government, that would be you politicians out there. And, as I sit here and spill my guts to the internet I wonder what created this divide? How could WE as a country failed so badly that it became the hurricane civil war. The levies were weak, that is a fact. The government took an inexcusable number of days to respond to this crisis, that is a fact. Hell, the president continued to vacation while the people of Louisiana and the Gulf drowned, this is a fact. But, this divide should have never been created. And now six years later I feel the divide may be changing. The WE's may be shifting and taking on a new face. I fear the WE's are still two camps but two very different camps. The first WE is still those affected by the hurricane. But, I fear that you and I may no longer be in that WE. My fear is that we now sit in the second WE, the devil WE with the horns and pitch forks. It is no longer the government who forgot them and vacationed, who forgot them and ate, who forgot them and shopped. It is now us the American brothers who forgot them and in the process forgot to help. I assumed that after six years all had been returned to what is right. That the people who fled in the days before and after the vicious storm had returned. They had rebuilt and had begun to live again. But, after the Spike Lee movie I find that this is not the case. WE have forgotten to bring them home, WE have forgotten they are still morning a loss, WE have forgotten that they still need us. To put it simply WE have forgotten.
Friday, September 9, 2011
The Elephant in the Bush
A book and class on Hurricane Katrina wouldn't be complete without at least a mention of the Elephant in Bush as it became known in my house. Like I said in my earlier post, that time of my life comes in waves and flashes and the moment Kanye West shocked us all with his declaration, is a moment that will be forever frozen and repeated in my family for generations to come.
The really funny thing, at least to me, is that my family and I never watch telethons. I think once as a child, we watched the Jerry Louis telethon but that about sums up my telethon watching experience. My parents are of the belief that if they are going to give money then it will be to someone standing in front of them, someone whose hand my father can shake and whose eyes my mother can see. A lot of people I know feel this way, that is why my church always takes up a donation for the red cross after every natural disaster. "No matter what you can trust the red cross," my mother has always said.
So, for us to all be in the living room watching this telethon, was some cosmic coincidence. The second it happened my father looked over at my mother and said, "Did I just hear him right?" My then nine year old sister, now fifteen, proceeded to inform my father that he did in fact hear the man on the TV say that the President of the United States hated an entire race of Americans. My father and mother just shook their heads and went back to listening to the next celebrity read off the teleprompter.
However, the next day my mother, the assistant manager of electronics at our local WalMart, was informed that all of Kanye West cd's needed to be removed from the store shelves. My mother, father, and I were shocked, one comment and there goes record sales. What happened to freedom of speech I wondered.
Dyson in chapter 2 tells us that Kanye wasn't critiquing the actual George Bush as a person, but instead he was speaking of the President's administration. Now at twenty-three, I can understand what Dyson and maybe even Kanye meant, but at seventeen sitting in my parents living room I thought he meant the actual George Bush that I had seen give a speech days earlier. Yeah my family may ignore telethons but they love presidential speeches. I think it's hard to critique anything that has a figure head without implicating that the figure head, as a person in his private life must feel that way as well. Maybe if Kanye had said the administration hated African Americans then he wouldn't have been removed from the shelves of one of the biggest box stores in America.I guess how I feel after reading this chapter is that Kanye had the right to state his opinion whichever way he felt made it the most clear. However, he needed to understand that not everyone was going to understand what he meant and that he was going to lose record sales.
The really funny thing, at least to me, is that my family and I never watch telethons. I think once as a child, we watched the Jerry Louis telethon but that about sums up my telethon watching experience. My parents are of the belief that if they are going to give money then it will be to someone standing in front of them, someone whose hand my father can shake and whose eyes my mother can see. A lot of people I know feel this way, that is why my church always takes up a donation for the red cross after every natural disaster. "No matter what you can trust the red cross," my mother has always said.
So, for us to all be in the living room watching this telethon, was some cosmic coincidence. The second it happened my father looked over at my mother and said, "Did I just hear him right?" My then nine year old sister, now fifteen, proceeded to inform my father that he did in fact hear the man on the TV say that the President of the United States hated an entire race of Americans. My father and mother just shook their heads and went back to listening to the next celebrity read off the teleprompter.
However, the next day my mother, the assistant manager of electronics at our local WalMart, was informed that all of Kanye West cd's needed to be removed from the store shelves. My mother, father, and I were shocked, one comment and there goes record sales. What happened to freedom of speech I wondered.
Dyson in chapter 2 tells us that Kanye wasn't critiquing the actual George Bush as a person, but instead he was speaking of the President's administration. Now at twenty-three, I can understand what Dyson and maybe even Kanye meant, but at seventeen sitting in my parents living room I thought he meant the actual George Bush that I had seen give a speech days earlier. Yeah my family may ignore telethons but they love presidential speeches. I think it's hard to critique anything that has a figure head without implicating that the figure head, as a person in his private life must feel that way as well. Maybe if Kanye had said the administration hated African Americans then he wouldn't have been removed from the shelves of one of the biggest box stores in America.I guess how I feel after reading this chapter is that Kanye had the right to state his opinion whichever way he felt made it the most clear. However, he needed to understand that not everyone was going to understand what he meant and that he was going to lose record sales.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Memories are a Funny Thing
On August 29, 2005, I was seventeen years old. The week before I had stepped into my high school to begin the last year of my mandatory educational experience. That, was six years ago this August, and to tell you the truth, that time of my life comes in waves of flashes and frozen moments. I remember that my classmates and me were constantly discussing where we were headed after this last year, and I remember voting for Homecoming Queen and watching a child hood friend of mine being crowned. I also remember Hurricane Katrina and the talk that she had devastated the Gulf coast to the point that some wondered if they would return.I also remember vividly my father's, the youth pastor, eyes glued to every news channel in the nation and talking in hushed tones to my mother and his friends about the people lost and churches with out homes. I even remember my mother crying as she boxed up all of the canned goods in our house to send to the red cross to help the victims. However, I don't remember the images or the news casts. I don't remember the people chest deep in water as they flashed across my homes TV and the TV's of my friends. Maybe I was too wrapped in essays, ACT scores, and the big game, but still as hard as I try I can't remember. That is part of the reason I took this class, to see if I can discovered the things I so desperately missed as a teenager who was more worried about herself than the people who need help.
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