by Ana Maria

Yesterday, the Gulf Coast Business Council released  Two Years After Katrina, which reports on the status of our recovery down here.  The Biloxi Sun Herald, the only daily newspaper along the Mississippi Gulf Coast aptly titled its headlined article Keeping it positive.

As is often shown in our own lives, keeping an upbeat, appreciative, and grateful attitude for what has been done for us and for what we have always is always a good thing and generally generates more for which to be grateful and appreciative.  It's a mystical like quality that seems to magnetize our energy field to attract more of the same.  The opposite is also the case. Coming off as ungrateful for anything often engenders a negative response from those around us giving us more for which we are ungrateful. Funny how life works that way.

I find myself juggling a delicate balance knowing of these mysteries.

With Katrina's 2nd anniversary a week away and eyes glued to following Hurricane Dean's path, evidence of post-Katrina stress abounds. From short tempers and increased alcohol and drug usage to low expectations that life can ever return to even the worst of pre-Katrina days to people whispering about various friends and family members in good health but who all of a sudden die without warning. In hushed tones, they share with me their various conclusions on the cause of death.

*    Katrina took away their will to live.

•    The stress of post-Katrina survival got to them.
  
•    When the insurance companies failed to own up to their financial responsibilities to pay on wind policies, it killed `em--they checked out.

Mental illness is double the pre-storm levels, rising numbers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and there is a surge in adults who say they're thinking of suicide. . . .

The big surprise: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which typically goes away in a year for most disaster survivors, has increased: 21% have the symptoms vs. 16% in 2006. Common symptoms include the inability to stop thinking about the hurricane, nightmares and emotional numbness.
Katrina victims struggle mentally
USA Today
8.16.07

The nation's worst natural disaster is playing havoc with our coping mechanisms, and Bush's FEMA is playing havoc with how they interpret the rules that should afford some much needed funding for mental health services in the Katrina-ravaged area.

by Ana Maria

With Hurricane Dean tearing through the Caribbean, Gulf Coast residents watch the weather reports praying that whatever Mother Nature does, she does elsewhere. We're still a long way off from recovering from Hurricane Katrina, which demolished the area two years ago. Many of our families--mine, included--have put into place evacuation plans that we had never before felt a need to have BK, Before Katrina.

The Associated Press reported that Mississippi's Republican Governor Haley Barbour stated

"people should think about where they will go if an evacuation is ordered and how
they'll travel."

Originally published on August 17, 2007 at A.M. in the Morning!

Through stinging, burning eyes I listened as WLOX-TV 13 filmed a conversation  between a young single mother of two living in a FEMA trailer and John Eaves, Mississippi's Democratic Gubernatorial Nominee. Rare is the interview with FEMA residents.

With standing room only in the large parish hall on top of a massive bluff overlooking the Bay which feeds into the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf Coast Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS)   hosted the second town hall meeting with a delegation of plenty of congressional leadership from across the country. From as far west as California to the northeast of New Hampshire, Democratic Congressional representatives gave up time with their families and their constituents to revisit the Katrina-ravaged area. We were honored to have the high-ranking leadership of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)  and Democratic Majority Whip Jim Clyburn from South Carolina.

It's finally here!  We have the date on which the contractor will arrive and do the next set of renovations to my mom's home.

He'll sand and seal the wood that hasn't been touched in that way since my parents had the house built 45 years ago. Hang the doors to the bedrooms. Rework the closet doors. Create new doors for the utility room. Put up the crown molding on the ceiling and the floors. I think that about covers this next leg of returning to life BK--before Katrina.

When I arrived back in March, I was shocked at everything. From the total disappearance of so much of my home town here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast through the evaporation of nearly every home and business along the 40-50 miles of beach going east to Biloxi, which is as far as I've traveled that way. Then going west to see family in New Orleans was more of the same: destruction, devastation, disappearance, and evaporation.

Clearly, the PR campaign that the Bush Administration has going along with its counterpart in the Mississippi Governor's Mansion via Haley Barbour doesn't hold any water. Barbour is the former head of the national Republican Party and good friends with Bush. Naturally, they would support each other's BS, I mean PR, campaign.  

by Ana Maria

Two days ago, Mississippi voters in the Democratic Primary ousted Insurance Commissioner George Dale, whose cozy relationship with Big Insurance became his electoral albatross. Surely less than a year ago, Dale anticipated his re-election bid to retain the normalcy he had experienced over the last three decades of running for office.

The campaigns for newly-elected Democratic nominee Gary Anderson and his Republican opponent will recuperate from the primary, then redirect their efforts for the usual hustle and bustle of a general election, which will be held this November. Even inside the chaotic nature of every election campaign, there is a sense of normalcy to that chaos--at least for those of us who've been in a few.

Here inside the Katrina-ravaged region, we're still struggling to return to a sense of normalcy.  

In a gloriously magnificent upset electoral victory, Democratic candidate Gary Anderson defeated George Dale 51-49% to become Mississippi's first African American Democratic nominee for Insurance Commissioner. Anderson's pro-consumer position resonated throughout the state sending George Dale packing after 32 years in office.