Fascinating & thought provoking.
Good question. I don't know what should be done when a city is destroyed to that extent, but I visited N.O. a year before the disaster and found it such a unique place that I hope they do rebuild. It does seem wasteful though to throw money at rebuilding if efforts to restructure the dikes around it aren't similarly restructured.
Reading this post reminded me of when we used to drive up and down the West Coast when we lived in CA and went to BC to visit family. We always passed through Talent, Oregon, and often stopped at a rest stop that has a plaque dedicated to a family that was massacred by Indians - ALL EXCEPT FOR ONE 11 YO BOY. That sentence haunted me every time I saw it: what happened to that boy? what kind of life did he live afterwards? It really held my imagination.
Wow...there's a lot to think about here. I've wondered that myself, when do we continue to fight, when do we give in? There don't seem to be any clear answers...
I live in Port Lavaca, just around the bay from what was Indianola, I often wonder what this area would be like if Indianola had continued to develop. It is quite likely Houston would still be a rather small town and this area would be the premiere port in Texas.
Your comment that "we're not Holland" is well said. Indeed.
You may be aware of it already, but there's a fantastic book on the 1900 hurricane in Galveston called "Isaac's Storm." It's by Erik Larsen and it's totally engrossing.
I spoke with a financial planner today who said we'll be far too much in debt to the Middle East and Japan by the year 2040 that there won't be any more money for infrastructure. We'll be too busy paying off our interest. They'll have a hard enough time rebuilding New Orleans and Indianola...fuggedaboutit. As a 150-year-old man, though, I can tell you right now there wasn't anything to do there on Saturday night anyway.
Thanks for the history lesson, RM! I never knew.
Thanks, K. I seem to remember reading excerpts from that book when it came out. I should track it down.
For the kids, there's Summer of the Storm by Austin children's writer (and friend of the fam) Julie Lake.
Sheila, jeez, that is haunting.
Robin, just think, you could be across the bay from a metropolis.
Eric, does Stephanie know your real age?
I'd gotten behind on my blog reading and so was just hurriedly skimming them today to catch up. This one grabbed me because I grew up in Indianola, Iowa. The grade-schoolers are taught that the town was founded in 1849, and is so named because a resident had heard of a town with that name in Texas and pretty much said, "It's as good a name as any." After reading this post, I thought about the building where I attended elementary school (once a k-12 I believe, and has since been torn down) with the number "1886" permantly carved into the concrete above the door, indicating the year the building was erected. Now I wonder at the thoughts and feelings of those townfolks of the 1800's, with such a disastrous namesake.
This post was thought-provoking indeed. My own history has been re-written a bit, and I'm both saddened and shocked that I've never heard this story before today.
Commenting by HaloScan
