Since we flew out to Atlanta, each night I come back to my hotel room, after spending the day going from session to session having fun, and I log in to the computer and I check the news and I am blown away by what is going on down there in the Gulf. And then I turn the computer off and I sit in our room in silence and I retreat to my knitting because it is the only thing I have to do that keeps me focused and calm, and as the news worsens with every day, I need that calm more and more.
We hear mostly about New Orleans because they likely have the worst of it, due to the horrible lack of planning for proper evacuation and care of the refugees. But there are far too many other places where people have lost their homes, their towns, their family members to the floods, and it is just too big, too much.
They are holding a blood drive here at DragonCon, and we are going to try to schedule appointments (although I think it may not yet have been 8 weeks since my last donation). Many of the celebrities are donating their proceeds from the Walk of Fame (autograph signing) to charities, including those that are focused on the victims of Katrina. Everywhere there are people talking to each other about the latest news, the latest footage, the latest pictures of the devestation. We are all here, because we planned to be here, but our hearts, oh our hearts are all there.
You know where to donate – I don’t need to remind anyone who reads this to do so. You’ve seen it all a million places already. Usually we donate to the Red Cross, but this time we are also donating money to the humane organizations who are working on rescuing all those abandoned pets and trying to reunite them with their families, or at least get them out of danger and keep them safe. We have six cats here and I cannot imagine ever being forced to leave them behind, and it breaks my heart to know that so many people had no choice. There are too many lives being irrevocably ripped apart – human and animal – and I do not know how they will ever be okay again.