we'd like you to speak, from your seat

yesterday, there was an event at my new school re: hurricane katrina. an email was sent out to all displaced students, inviting us to speak about our experience during the hurricane. i jumped at the chance - the microphone never intimidated me, and i have things to say about my life during and since katrina hit new orleans. the damage sustained is no act of nature. the gov't knew this would happen and blatantly refusal to strengthen the levee system, which ensured flooding. said flooding has left me a "refugee" in my own country. and so i landed in california, happy to speak at this forum.

turns out i was the only student who said i'd talk. the others didn't want to, and that's fine - not everyone likes to do public speaking, and for some folks i think they'd rather not be in the spotlight but in the audience. the organizers emailed me before the event and said "oh, well, if you don't want to speak, that's fine too."

i said that i did want to speak.

when i got to the forum with my lady and roommate, fellow "refugees," the organizers told me i could just speak from my seat. hmmm. i said i was fine with standing in front of the room, just like the other speaker would. she is a doctor (MD) who went to LA sept 5 - sept 12 to help. the organizers were all very excited that she was going to share her experiences in the gulf coast. her name was on the agenda. mine was not. i was "Tulane Students." not my name.

the doctor told "her" story. she talked about how she visited different people living in hotels and talked to them about their medical needs. she told a story about a woman who used to work full time and now has to depend on gov't assistance. i wonder if she meant to imply that was should have more compassion for this lady than for the poor folks who were on gov't assistance before the disaster. then she said "now is the time for analysis."

then i got up to speak. and i told my story, about the kitty i evacuated with and her UTI (she peed on me the entire way north), about arriving at my parent's house with little red suitcase and nothing more (my mom calls me paddington bear), about the tears i shed every single day, still. and i said it's not time for us to sit back and talk about this. we still need to act. there are still people living in shelters, sleeping on cots, with no idea as to when they can return home.

my lady told me i'm a hard act to follow. i don't know about that.

the kicker? during the Q/A session, who did the audience post their questions to? not to the displaced students. nope. put two fancy letters after your name and you suddenly know everything about anything.

the nicest thing? a man came up to me, shook my hand, and genuinely said "i'm sorry for your loss."

lady said, afterward, "i feel like we're at a funeral."

we kind of are.

joining the masses

ooohhhhh kaaayyyy, i want to write stuff. i like to write. but i suck. damn, i don't even use capital letters - too formal. i have ideas that i want to get out of me and since i type faster than i write, i figured i'd blog and it can be my own personal journal. but you get to read it! what a treat. (we'll see about that.)

here i go...

hmmm.

blank. damn! to hit writer's block so early in my writing career! it's tragic.