I was told to talk about things and not keep them pent up inside. I always thought that was silly because I'm hard. But I got sick last night and now I feel pretty close to crap. Maybe things are getting to me. Maybe I'm not as hard as I think. Or maybe I haven't been eating enough spam. Ummm...spam.
So maybe I'll talk to the blog compose screen and maybe I won't send this out. God, even to this point I feel like I've written more "I's" than any journalist worth his salt should write in his entire professional career.
For a while I've been going under the power that the disaster part is over and people are on to rebuilding-either in South Mississippi or somewhere else. But today I went out to a little, forgotten town on the border of Louisiana called Pearlington. I went to see how they were holding up against Rita's winds. The article should be in the paper tomorrow. I talked to survivors and disaster relief people. I got some good quotes.
A photog and I rolled up to the Salvation Army distribution center. They are also sheltering about 40 people. Rita's rains made the Katrina-beaten ground soupy and everything was covered in a layer of grime. The Salvation Army people kept calling it a camp, which freaked me out for some reason.
A woman pushing a bike with a cart attached to it navigated the muddy road. The photog wanted a pic of her so I started chatting with her. She was really a lovely woman. The right lens of her glasses was scratched enough to almost obscure her eye. Her name was Carolyn.
It turns out that she, along with almost everyone in the community, had to swim out of her home as it was swallowed by rising water from the Pearl River and the surging sea water of the Gulf. She said there was noise above her for hours that was probably tornadoes spawning off of Katrina. She said they sounded like helicopters right over head.
"The wind was screaming," Carolyn said. "I never heard anything like it."
In those conditions, when land turns to water, everything living is only concerned with surviving. All offense is shut down. Everything just swims and tries to find something to hold onto to keep from being sucked out to sea.
"I had snakes and lizards crawling on me," she said.
When she went into the water and gave up her home, she brought her "10-pound puppy," which clung to her as she found a pine tree and clung to it. She held onto that tree for two or three hours, she wasn't sure which, and her puppy held onto her.
She smiled when she talked about hanging on and saving her dog- a small victory in a forest of so much defeat.
And she didn't stop smiling when she talked about living in a tent mauled by Rita's winds in front of the remnants of her house or about her other losses.
"I lost all 14 of my kitties," she said.

Or there was the dude named Jon-e from Rochester. I didn't ask him why his parents named him that or whether he was joking, because that's what his salvation army badge said. Seemed like a nice guy, too, what with the coming down here to help people piece together their lives.
He was the first person to refer to the place as a camp. I told him that his camp smelled like human waste.
"I've been through this neighborhood since I got down here," he said. "I'm used to the smell of rotten flesh and black mold."
He smiled. I smiled. I thanked him for taking the time to talk. He went back to directing supply trucks into the parking lot of the camp. With photog in tow, I went on my merry way.

Then we went to go see a woman down the street who was making $724 government disability a month. Her name was Dallas. She had four friendly mutts who really liked my crotch.
She was sitting there in a tent in front of her house, one of those brightly colored dome ones. Dallas was real nice, too. She was a construction foreman, -woman, -person before falling 13 feet off a scaffolding.
I lied. The tent wasn't actually in front of her house. Her house was first filled with water, then picked up off its foundation, then turned about 45 degrees counterclockwise, then moved about thirty feet to the front of what used to be her yard. The house, which was overrun with gnats inside, had been redone two weeks prior.
Dallas also lost her two cars, a small boat and its trailer, her shed with a weed whacker and a new chainsaw inside and two travel trailers. That was pretty much everything except her life and her four dogs.
She swam out of her house, too. She made it to an oak tree several yards up the road and climbed out of the water onto a branch fifteen feet off the ground. She was joined by her three neighbors and eight dogs.
"I got eighteen pigs and piglets, too," she said. "They all made it. I don't know how. I guess they climbed on a roof."
She apologized for not cleaning the house before having visitors. I apologized for not knocking off the rancid mud onto her rancid muddy floors. I let her go but told her I expected fresh cornbread the next time I came calling.

People are not on to rebuilding, many are still just trying to survive. When it rains they get wet. Old men sitting on the side of the road scrape cold gruel out of an MRE packet.
Civic leaders are saying that it is time to get used to a "new" normal. As soon as we talk about death and despair without vacant eyes and out of place smiles, then maybe it will be time to get on. Now we have to confront something that seems, feels, a lot like shell shock.

Thanks for listening blog compose screen.