As I left home this morning, I saw a gray blanket of clouds stretching north and south and as far east as I could see. To the west they extended to within a few hundred yards of the mountains. Based on what I could see of the mountains, I guess the clouds were at 8000 feet. And the sun was shining brightly above the clouds so the upper parts ofthe mountains were in bright sunshine. As I drove down the Front Range, I kept seeing the bright rim of light between the clouds and their shadow on the mountains.
Pity I didn’t have my camera handy to snap pictures out the car window while driving at 75 MPH. I should have called Elaine and told her to check it out.
When I got down into the Springs, the cloud cover was breaking up and the crepuscular rays were shining through.
Not quite like the other day where the clouds were laying at 7000 feet and I left in the bright sunlight and drove down into the cloud cover.
Next I will put all the links into an html page and link to it on the side bar. As I go through the different galleries, I see that I may want to distribute the pictures better so I don’t have 70 pictures in one section and only one section in the gallery.
American Red Cross
The Red Cross notes that they are not in New Orleans after Katrina at the request of the state Homeland Security Department.
And there are other reports that people are not being allowed to leave New Orleans on foot. No resources going in and no people going out. That sounds compassionate and conservative.
I was listening to an interview on NPR the other day with the author of a book on the Mississippi 1927 flood (or maybe it was this one). On one of the bluffs outside a Mississipppi town, everyone, black and white, gathered high and dry to await rescue. When it came time to evacuate, the whites were taken and the blacks were left. Evidently, the plantation owners were afraid if the sharecroppers were evacuated they would never come back and they would lose their labor force.
One line jumped out at me here: Under the circumstances, Mr. Becker said, the government response “has been nothing short of heroic.” I think they need to find a new definition of ‘heroic’. Mr. Becker is with the Red Cross.
It looks like there was enough incompetence all around in this fiasco. The local and state officials need to take the brunt of the blame since it was their city under siege. They shouldn’t be counting on the Feds to do all, or any, of the immediate relief work. If they can’t even take care of their own citizens then they shouldn’t be in office.
The Feds should help support the aftermath, the clean-up, not the immediate crisis. But, it is New Orleans, The Big Easy.
