Those inclined to help the evacuees need not confine themselves to the area shelters. It looks like a good plenty of them are put up at the motels around the Atlanta perimeter. Word came to me that a lot were at a motel near my place of work, and the manager was asking for donations of supplies, to be delivered for storage to a nearby community center. So, I went down there and got their list, and set about whittling it down to what I could afford to buy. I then went shopping at Sams for a few items on the long list of necessities. There I spoke with a couple in the next checkout line, hauling three flatbed trucks piled high with bottled water, hot dogs, and buns. They were, of their own initiative, road-tripping down to Biloxi to deliver a meal to people they'd seen on TV. I wished them well, and then set off for home. Got home, weathered a domestic spat about having spent too much, and then went down 285 to the community center. It was in a projects, nowhere I'd care to be caught after dark. But it was bustling, with the common area lined with baby supplies, and people bringing things in. The head guy came out and unloaded my vehicle, wished me a blessed day, and hurried back inside. Phoned around to my own church, discovered that it is a drop-off depot for MUST ministries, which runs the Elizabeth Inn, and for Kennestone hospital. A lot of the patients who were evacuated from Gulf hospitals to Kennestone have been accompanied by relatives, who didn't have a change of dry clothes. So, I'll spend a couple of hours tomorrow at the church receiving drop-offs. I'll do the same a few days later, on my day off. Maybe I'll get to deliver stuff, too. That's always the spiritual payoff for me, seeing the good a donation does. I really wish I could hit the road with a work camp, like in the south Georgia floods of 1994. And later, once the government's gotten out of the way and the media attention has moved on, maybe I will. But this little bit will have to suffice for now. Went to Home Depot for some unrelated shopping. A very morose checkout girl asked if I wanted to give to the Red Cross. When I said I had given on the internet, she thanked me with a sad, faraway voice. I asked if she had folks there, and she said her grandfather was among those trapped at the NO convention center. I made the appropriate noises and left. Came home from shopping Sunday afternoon, and passed a couple of contractor's pickups driving in convoy. They had their trailers loaded with their bobcat, their generators, lots of gas cans, & etc. They had duct-taped hand-scrawled signs over the sides of the trucks and the back of the trailers: "disaster reliefs". I assume they were heading to the Gulf to aid in cleanup. I pulled up beside each one's right window, honked, and gave 'em the thumbs up. I hope the readers with a race fixation can loosen up and have a little basic human compassion for these people. "Even as you have done it to the least of these, so you have done it to Me," the verse says. So, who in this country could be "least"-er than a poor New Orleans ghetto dweller made homeless by a hurricane? It's a golden opportunity, for those who know what the real treasure in life is.
-- bruce The dignified don't even enter in the game.
-- The Jam