Katrina Help

Click Here for the list of Agencies I have come up with.

Thanks
jt

In honor of 9/30/05

Serenity opens on Friday!!!

You scored as Shepherd Derrial Book. The Preacher. Out here, folks need a minister, if only to remind them that God hasn't forgotten them. It isn't about making them worship, it is teaching them to do right by themselves and other people. Why is that so hard for some to understand? Shepherd Derrial Book 88% Zoe Alleyne Washburne 81% Simon Tam 81% Capt. Mal Reynolds 75% The Operative 75% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 75% Kaylee Frye 75% River Tam 56% Inara Serra 50% Jayne Cobb 19% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Update

Here is the news from Baton Rouge as of 9/11

Yesterday, our entire team went to Plaquemine Civic Center. Our census is beginning to go down as we sent 20 people on a bus to Texas. It is so exciting to see these people pack up what little they have, clean up their areas, and line up for the bus. This shelter has been a safe haven for so many over the past couple of weeks, and as they move on, they face a life a uncertainty and new beginnings.

Our day was spent in ministry to this community. We played with the children, talked with the parents, and took care of medical needs. We have treated several wounds from the storm, but infectious disease has been kept at bay. We have been blessed with two wonderful doctors - Dr. Jack (from MN) and Doctor J (from NY). These two men came to help completely on their own, and will be staying at the center through the end of the week.

Today we will be going to Plaquemine for our last day. Our after school tutoring center opens this afternoon on the stage. Many volunteers have worked to clean, arrange, and stock the center with supplies for the children. Today, we are arranging volunteers to come in to tutor and read with these children. Some in our group will be going to other shelters much less fortunate that our run by churches. We have learned a lot about "bureaucracy" during this trip, and have seen firsthand, that not everyone has access to the same services. Continue to pray for all of these victims to get the help and support they need.

The Red Cross is now moving into the "transition phase" of caring for these people. Their lives are returning to whatever "normal" is going to be for them. Now that their immediate needs (food, housing, clothing, and medicine) have been met, it is time for them to transition into becoming self sufficient once again.

Most of the 9/7 group will be homeward bound for Northern Illinois this week. Donna, Sue, and Mary departed yesterday, as Donna hurt her leg. More groups are beginning to join our team, and we are now represented by volunteers from South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota and Virginia. We are not all working in the same areas, so we don't have as many updates about the other locations. We do know that a lot of tear down and rebuilding has been done, and that are workers have worked tirelessly to help this area. We have become our own "family" down here, and leaving will be difficult. Please pray for all of our team members for safe travel and emotional well being as we also begin to transition back to our "regular" lives.

A huge thank you for all of your donations, support, and prayers. A very special thank you to the Sunday School Classes of Trinity Lutheran Church for the wonderful home cooked (southern style of course) meal last night! Thanks Trinity! This church has taken on a monumental task of caring for the volunteers, as well as volunteering in the relief efforts themselves. Please keep them in your prayers as they continue to serve in the days to come. Lynn

Did I miss something?

I have hear/read the phrase "Claptrap" more times in the last 2 weeks than I ever have the previouse 28 years.

Did I miss the new Britney song or something? Why has this prase/word (which is it, by the way? Can something be both a word and a phrase?) become so used in the last 2 weeks?

Help me...i am a lost soul

The Satruday Update

Here is Lynn's update for 9/10

September 10, 2005

Today took our team to various shelters in the area. The Plaquemine group has now been on site since Thursday, and the residents are calling us by name. Our first baby "arrived" at the shelter this afternoon. She was born the 7th by C-Section. We have a crib set up next to a hospital style bed for mom. The rest of the family is sleeping next to her on a mattress. Just imagine what this family is going through bringing their new bundle home - to a homeless shelter with 411 people! Please pray that the mother and baby remain healthy until they can find permanent housing.

Our three year old who they thought had leukemia - has severe mono! Who would have thought you could be thankful for mono? Infectious diseases are being kept at bay. Treating boils, wound care, and dispensing meds was the order for today. Our medical clinic has now moved into an emergency care center now that the basic needs have been met.

Tomorrow, most of our team is coming with us. There is a tremendous need to play with these children. They have nothing to do on the weekend, and are beginning to go stir crazy. Our "non medical" team is going to play with the kids, scrub floors, and spray down beds and living areas.

Today a group of mental health workers arrived to help. The local school is having a difficult time with not only the influx of children, but behaviors as well. These children are given tons of candy, and are not getting enough sleep. They are in new schools that may be different than what they are used to. I hope to meet with the Supt. of Schools tomorrow, and together with the mental health workers we are going to start some parenting sessions, and an after school homework club. I hope to get into the schools on Monday to see what else we can do to help. Imagine that - me working with school children! (For those of you who do not know me, I am the Director of Curriculum for CCSD #46).

Our Fort Wayne Seminarians arrived safely tonight, after their bus accident in Memphis. Another group has arrived from Northern Illinois and will be joining us tomorrow. Volunteers are scheduled here through the 23rd and more calls are coming in. It is amazing to see everyone working together to help those less fortunate than themselves!

God Bless them all!

If You Are Able

(NOTE: I am keeping this at the top of the page, scroll down for my normal updates.)

Donate to the Red Cross

Here are some other options:

ABC-USA Missions

Lutheran Church Charaties (From Cousin Rev. Andy)

ELCA Disaster Response

ECUSA Relief Fund

A comprehenisive list of other services is here at Daily Kos



Larry the ECC has specific pages let me know, and I will add it to this list.

News From The Front

I just got 2 emails from Rev. Andy, my cousins husband. My Cousin, Lynn is in Baton Rouge doing some relief work with Lutheran Charaties (photos and updates).

Here are 2 emails from here. One is from Thurs., Sept 8, and one is from this morning.

Thurday 9/8

Dear Andy,

Hi - Finally getting the last 6 people out into the field. Patience is the name of the game and change is the order of the day.

The hopitality is amazing - just had lunch with a displaced preK teacher whose husband is a synod worker - they have been evacuated since the Hurricane (to Houston) - their Lutheran School is closed and she was quite concerned about her students who she didn't know where her students were. She was allowed to come back to see her home today - but they have to be out by 6 pm. She was happy that they had not sustainged water damage. She had to clean out the rotting food from her refrigerator and people have been advised to bury their rotting food!

People are wandering the streets looking for food and clothing. We have a group on a work crew - a hospital group and a large group at the "Miracle Center" where the last of the evacuees are being brought. A local pastor runs the center. Next door to Trinity is a Baptist Church that the Red Cross is running a food distribution center. Thousands of meals are being served twice a day. I met the Baptist pastor helping with the distribution - and on top of all they are doing they are feeding our volunteers! Everyone is truly working together.

We have got things fairly well organized for our group for now. Changes are continuous based on the calls we receive to help. This church has been amazing! I visited the school at lunch time. They have received 63 new students this week. They have all received new uniforms, and look like they were fitting in well. The cutest little pre-schooler was having a major meltdown and when I asked if it was because of being displaced, I was told that she had been attending preschool the past three weeks here, and was having a difficult time adjusting to her new class size of 12 from a class of 22!

The guys unloaded the semi of medical supplies today at Covington-Slidell. Everywhere is in need of so many things.

Thanks for the prayers - please continue. I have never been so frightened as I was last night driving the last couple of hours into Baton Rouge. There is a mandatory curfew from 10 - 5, and no gas available after 10. We had 400 gallons of gas on the trailor, but stopping was risky because of our precious cargo. We had to stop and wait for a car that was running low, and we had to move three times so people did not realize what we had in our trailor. Finally made it in at 1:30 am and we were up and going at 5 today. We're on our way out to a hospital center now so will close for now. Hope to get a chance to update soon.

Love, Lynn

Friday Morning or Late Thursday night

Good Morning!

It's 11:00 and I'm about done for the night.

Our one medical team came back with incredible stories from the storm refugees. There is rampant pink eye, and various other diseases sprouting up. There is not enough medicine to meet the needs.

Part of our group is staying in a motor home in Covington. They are on a chain saw mission. They took our cook Ernesto along and are living in a motor home a parishioner donated. It sounds like that area was extremely hard hit. They are attempting to get other motor homes to make a camp for people to stay in. It is far from here so we won't see them until we get ready to leave. My driver, Scott is there so hopefully he'll decide to come back and pick me up.

I will be working at a shelter tomorrow from 7 - 7. The needs are tremendous and there is plenty of work to be done. At least we are doing what we came to do.

Went on a food run tonight. Stores were closed after 8. Finally, found an open WalMart. It was packed with people. Armed policeman at the door - and empty food isles!!! No milk or eggs. People had baskets full of food.
I assume these are people that have finally found housing and have had to start over. It took us over an hour to check out.

5:30 comes early. I'll call you tomorrow night. I love you. Lynn

Please pray for Lynn and everyone helping out.

Last Post for the Day

I just came across this diary at dailykos. It talks about a small miracle amdist the Hell in the Superdome. The story comes from the LA Times. Read the article for the Hell, but here is the miracle...i cried:

Suddenly, incongruously, the first notes of Bach's Sonata No. 1 in G minor," the Adagio, pierced the desperation.

Samuel Thompson, 34, is trying to make it as a professional violinist. He had grabbed his instrument — made in 1996 by a Boston woman — as he fled the youth hostel Sunday where he had been staying in New Orleans for the last two months.

"It's the most important thing I own," he said.

He had guarded it carefully and hadn't taken it out until Wednesday afternoon, when he was able to move from the Superdome into the New Orleans Arena, far safer accommodations. He rested the black case on a table next to a man with no legs in a wheelchair and a pile of trash and boxes, and gingerly popped open the two locks. He lifted the violin out of the red velvet encasement and held it to his neck.

Thompson closed his eyes and leaned into each stretch of the bow as he played mournfully. A woman eating crackers and sitting where a vendor typically sold pizza watched him intently. A National Guard soldier applauded quietly when the song ended, and Thompson nodded his head and began another piece, the Andante from Bach's Sonata in A minor.

Thompson's family in Charleston, S.C., has no idea where he is and whether he is alive. Thompson figures he is safe for now and will get in touch when he can. In the meantime he will play, and once in a while someone at the sports complex will manage a smile.

"These people have nothing," he said. "I have a violin. And I should play for them. They should have something."

A sense of beauty in the midst of Hell.

Good News

I just heard the G-Rod said that any child refugee can enroll in Illinois schools. They are considered homeless, and therefor do not need to meet residency requirements.

I have heard this going on in other states as well.

Psalm 40

The last couple of days during lunch I have made my way over to the chapel in Northwestern Hospital to pray. Today, I was angry, fustrated and in no mood.

Instead of starting right off and praying, I picked up the Bible that was in front of me and opened it up. I opened to Psalm 40:

1 I waited patiently for the LORD;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the desolate pit,*
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the LORD.

It is a Psalm of hope and promise. But what struck me and what I prayed on was verse 1.

Waiting patiently for the LORD. It is hard, but I pray for patience. I pray that the people of the Gulf have patience.

I keep praying on this.

Unreal

This quote (found on page 3) made my stomach almost wretch. This is from Homeland Security Cheif Michael Chertoff:

"The critical thing was to get people out of there before the disaster," he said on NBC's "Today" program. "Some people chose not to obey that order. That was a mistake on their part."

Mr. Chertoff, have you seen the photos of the people who stayed? No? Well, most of them are the poor, the elderly, the unemployed, the homeless, those who have no way to get out of town, those who have not the money to catch a bus out of town. How about instead of blaming them for their state of afairs, you look in the mirror. There were 36+ hour of warning for this storm. There could have been convoys prepared for those who could not get out on their own. They could have been plans in place to move people from the Superdome in case something like this happened.

Urf...sorry to keep posting this stuff, but if I do not get it off my chest I will be ill.

Honest Questions

Here is a link to a diary which is a snip of editorals from across the country.

Things are bad. Real bad.

Happier News

Chris Jones in today's Chicago Tribune has a great article about the beauty of Chicago theater.

Here is my favorite quote:

t's easy to think other cities must have something like this wonder. They don't. Most of them cannot hold the community together. And they don't have our tradition - of edgy comedy, of actors who look like actual people, of grit on the stage, of the sweat of self-revelation on the performer's brow. They don't have the Chicago actor's stubborn willingness to go on with the show for 10 people in the house. They don't have our capacity and love of probing the dark underbelly of the art and of life. They don't have the sheer fun of being able to pick from scores and scores of live shows to see each and every Saturday night. We think the Chicago theater scene is a wonder. Unique. And the very life-beat of Chicago itself.

Sorry, One More Thing

Bush said this morning, "Nobody anticpated the levees breaking."

Sorry Georgie, either you are uniformed or are lying.

Here is a link for you with a wonderful list of article, essays, and many other pieces, saying that BECAUSE YOU TRANSFERED MONEY TO IRAQ instead of keeping it HERE, they could not do necessary repairs...ass.

Before you think I am making politcs out of this...this goes beyond politcs into human decency.

Here is another great post with links about how uninformed or full of crap our leader is.

I was going to post a Rant

But then I came across this editorial in the New York Times:

September 1, 2005
Waiting for a Leader

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon as why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.


Ok, I am back.

I have a couple of ideas that could win the good will of the people back.

1.) Assure those who are the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak (you know, the ones who could not afford to evacuate the cities) that they will be taken care of. That they will be loved.

2.) Bring home the national guard troops to help in the recsue/recovery efforts. Around 2/3 of the national guard of MS, LA, and AL are in Iraq providing woefully inadequate numbers for such a massive effort.

3.) Call for sacrifice amongst the American People. They want to help. They need to know how.

4.) Talk to the American people like they are adults, not chlidren. You are very condecening in your speeches. We are not as stupid as you think. While you are at it, work on not having that stupid smirk on your face that you get everytime Iraq is discussed.

5.) Give the American people updates on what is going on. Do not rely on the media. It is your job to lead the people. Do it.

6.) As rebuilding begins in The Gulf Coast, DO NOT contract out the jobs of rebuilding infrastructre to your buddies. Follow in the footsteps of FDR, create the GCRP (Gulf Coast Rebuild Project). Let the people who are now jobless work. Give jobs to them. Have the people take pride in their efforts. This can be co-oridninate through the Army Corps of Engineers.

7.) GET RID OF THE TAX CUTS. Right now the only people who need the relief are those directly affected by Katrina. The rest of us can Sacrifice the tax cuts (see number 3), and since they will not truly affect most of us we can handle it. Call on your buddies to pay more.

8.) Ignore the car lobby, and enforce CAFE standards. Make sure that our automobiels meet strict emissions and fuel comsumption standards.

9.) Regulate the utility companies this and the upcoming winters. Make sure that they charge honestly for heating fuel. There is no way people of even median income can afford the upconming $700 heating bills this winter.

10.) Act like you are in charge! Yesterday's speech did not do that. Yesterday, you pawned out every job. At least look like you give a damn!