Katrina & a pointless anecdote.

I still can't stomach what's going on, but I can't stay away from it, either. The press blocked from covering certain aspects of the event. Refugees treated like detainees. Barbara Bush laughing that the hurricane is "working out very well for [survivors in Houston]." Photos of drowned busyards with hundreds of buses that nobody thought to use for evacuation. The constant bullshit drooling out of Washington about what a good job they've done and how finger-pointing isn't productive (my ass it's not). It's even got me distracted from the Supreme Court nomination and hearings processes. Distracted from distraction by distraction, and none of it pleasant. Politics aside, this is one of the more terrifying things I've heard about the lasting impact of Katrina yet.

I can't even link you to everything I've been reading - it's too much, too depressing.

Instead, I will tell you that I dropped my sixty-odd-year-old parents off at the airport at some godawful hour of the morning this morning. They were hopping a plane to Chicago, to hang out for a few days before embarking on an eight-day, 400-mile bike tour of Illinois rivers. I watched their grey heads bob off toward the baggage claim, wheeling large bike boxes, with something like awe. I'm lucky if I can get myself to take a walk around my neighborhood. I can only hope to be that cool when I am a senior citizen. Four hundred miles. Go, Mom and Dad, go!