Reminder

I'm going off on a non-Viv tangent again, but that's bound to happen from time to time. We just saw a bit on the news that estimates that the current population of New Orleans is 43% of what it was before the storm. In our neck of the woods we're at 37%. We're nowhere near back to normal here and still have a long, long way to go.

Here's our neighborhood just a touch over a year ago:


In this picture, our house would be one block closer on the bottom right hand side of the photo, if it extended that far.

Now, here's a map of the entire New Orleans area, this map covers about 150 or so square miles- our house is marked and we had minimal water by comparison to most of the metro area. The red line shows approximately where the water stood when this image, and the one above, were shot on September 2, 2005.



Why do I bring this up now?

We still don't have stoplights on our street. Mail delivery to our house just resumed a month ago. We still don't have a grocery store within 25 minutes of our house (and keep in mind, we live in what use to be a major American city). It took 4 months to get power back, 7 months for gas, and 10 months for phone.

As of September 29, '06, 379 billion (yes, billion) dollars have been spent on Iraq- and we can't get a damn streetlight working here.

We have a national election in a little less than a month. It's time to change the way things work in, and for, this country. Send the rats back down the hole and let's hope it's not too late.