kathyw
09-06-2005, 08:41 AM
Good article on Hurricane Katrina...thought I'd share this one with everyone. :)
Published Sunday in TheLedger.com, September 4, 2005
Katrina, Be Not Proud: We'll Be OK
Ted Hoffman
I keep having this -- image, this creepy vision, call it a mildly psychotic episode, about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I'm in the Superdome in New Orleans. It smells like a cannibal's garbage disposal. There are jagged holes in the roof as though a giant brain surgeon had tried to perform a lobotomy on Paris Hilton's hollow skull, before realizing it was redundant. Ragged refugees try to dodge the swarms of buzzing insurance salesmen.
I see this woman a row ahead of me, lying across a couple of seats. She's wrapped in a damp, torn blanket. Her children, who make Oliver Twist look like Jabba the Hutt, are huddled at her feet, dozing. And working their way down the aisle are these two . . . people, let's call them. A man (casting suggestion: Will Ferrell, at his most slobbish) and a woman (the late Margaret Hamilton, circa 1939), looking intently at the seats as they pass them. They stop when they reach the prone woman. I stop chewing on my left foot to listen.
" 'Scuse me, ma'am," the man says. " 'Scuse me, lady." She looks up. He makes an impatient clucking sound with his tongue. "Those are our seats. We're season ticket holders. You gotta move! Don' make me get an usher!"
And I lurch out of the daymare, hyperventilating and feeling frantically to make sure there's something filling my left shoe.
The cliche after a vast horror such as Katrina is to react in one of several basic ways:
(A) look to the skies and thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for keeping us safe in His merciful noodly appendage;
(B) have that short-lived but intense epiphany about the fragility of life that has you hugging your family and refusing to see your girlfriend for a couple of weeks;
(C) briefly reprioritize, changing your list of What's Really Truly Important from 1. the Bucs 2. the wife and 3. the remote, to the other way around;
(D) cry and donate money and goods.
There's also our national pastime, (E) loot 'til you drop, but let's move on.
In the aftermath of this national trauma, we're left with a profound question. Well, two, if you count whether the door of your panic room can hold off the scavengers when they come after your bottled water and Little Debbies. But this:
What is the role of sports following a disaster of this, or any, magnitude?
"It makes this game seem mighty insignificant when you think about what's going on down there," Florida State coach Bobby Bowden said Thursday. "A lot of people think football is life and death. Nope -- that's life and death."
Bowden is right. But he's also wrong. Here, let me explain, as I munch on another Little Debbie. Umm-m-m: cream-m-my filling.
Sports are insignificant, or they should be. It shouldn't take a Katrina to make us realize that. Whether the Bucs win or lose is not quite as vital as, say, feeding your children or not building your city on a flood plain. (Suggested slogan for waterlogged New Orleans: "The Big Queasy: Now Below See Level!")
But in times of distress, we need honest distractions. A good movie, a good laugh . . . a good football game. Or tennis match. Or baseball doubleheader. Sports, in their limited and humble way, can provide the same function as humor or faith in helping us cope and heal.
Sports give us something to root for; even a false idol has its good points. I hope athletes, both professional and amateur (you decide where college football players fit), will take this moment to remember that sports are always supposed to have been about fun. There's a joy in physical expression that gets lost in the weedy thicket of dollar signs and egos out there on the playing fields.
Like me and Gregor Samsa, Mother Nature sometimes has uneasy dreams. Her eyelids twitch in REM, and there's an earthquake in California, a tsunami in Southeast Asia. Her sleeping face clouds in tension, and a hurricane roars through the Caribbean.
All we can do is forge ahead -- and maybe give up our seats to those who really need them.
Ted Hoffman is a sports copy editor for The Ledger. He can be reached at ted.hoffman@theledger.com or 802-7553. Operators are standing by, eating Little Debbies.
Published Sunday in TheLedger.com, September 4, 2005
Katrina, Be Not Proud: We'll Be OK
Ted Hoffman
I keep having this -- image, this creepy vision, call it a mildly psychotic episode, about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I'm in the Superdome in New Orleans. It smells like a cannibal's garbage disposal. There are jagged holes in the roof as though a giant brain surgeon had tried to perform a lobotomy on Paris Hilton's hollow skull, before realizing it was redundant. Ragged refugees try to dodge the swarms of buzzing insurance salesmen.
I see this woman a row ahead of me, lying across a couple of seats. She's wrapped in a damp, torn blanket. Her children, who make Oliver Twist look like Jabba the Hutt, are huddled at her feet, dozing. And working their way down the aisle are these two . . . people, let's call them. A man (casting suggestion: Will Ferrell, at his most slobbish) and a woman (the late Margaret Hamilton, circa 1939), looking intently at the seats as they pass them. They stop when they reach the prone woman. I stop chewing on my left foot to listen.
" 'Scuse me, ma'am," the man says. " 'Scuse me, lady." She looks up. He makes an impatient clucking sound with his tongue. "Those are our seats. We're season ticket holders. You gotta move! Don' make me get an usher!"
And I lurch out of the daymare, hyperventilating and feeling frantically to make sure there's something filling my left shoe.
The cliche after a vast horror such as Katrina is to react in one of several basic ways:
(A) look to the skies and thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for keeping us safe in His merciful noodly appendage;
(B) have that short-lived but intense epiphany about the fragility of life that has you hugging your family and refusing to see your girlfriend for a couple of weeks;
(C) briefly reprioritize, changing your list of What's Really Truly Important from 1. the Bucs 2. the wife and 3. the remote, to the other way around;
(D) cry and donate money and goods.
There's also our national pastime, (E) loot 'til you drop, but let's move on.
In the aftermath of this national trauma, we're left with a profound question. Well, two, if you count whether the door of your panic room can hold off the scavengers when they come after your bottled water and Little Debbies. But this:
What is the role of sports following a disaster of this, or any, magnitude?
"It makes this game seem mighty insignificant when you think about what's going on down there," Florida State coach Bobby Bowden said Thursday. "A lot of people think football is life and death. Nope -- that's life and death."
Bowden is right. But he's also wrong. Here, let me explain, as I munch on another Little Debbie. Umm-m-m: cream-m-my filling.
Sports are insignificant, or they should be. It shouldn't take a Katrina to make us realize that. Whether the Bucs win or lose is not quite as vital as, say, feeding your children or not building your city on a flood plain. (Suggested slogan for waterlogged New Orleans: "The Big Queasy: Now Below See Level!")
But in times of distress, we need honest distractions. A good movie, a good laugh . . . a good football game. Or tennis match. Or baseball doubleheader. Sports, in their limited and humble way, can provide the same function as humor or faith in helping us cope and heal.
Sports give us something to root for; even a false idol has its good points. I hope athletes, both professional and amateur (you decide where college football players fit), will take this moment to remember that sports are always supposed to have been about fun. There's a joy in physical expression that gets lost in the weedy thicket of dollar signs and egos out there on the playing fields.
Like me and Gregor Samsa, Mother Nature sometimes has uneasy dreams. Her eyelids twitch in REM, and there's an earthquake in California, a tsunami in Southeast Asia. Her sleeping face clouds in tension, and a hurricane roars through the Caribbean.
All we can do is forge ahead -- and maybe give up our seats to those who really need them.
Ted Hoffman is a sports copy editor for The Ledger. He can be reached at ted.hoffman@theledger.com or 802-7553. Operators are standing by, eating Little Debbies.