My Snow Day has been very bittersweet. Unfortunately it seems like the snow plowers that I see on TV clearly forgot about us because it took them forever to clean up this part of Queens. I woke up very early this morning because I knew that I had to go to church, because if it were school or work I know I would still go. So my brother and I were shoveling the yard and then we tried to get the cars out. Sounds easy enough right? WRONG I never realized how hard it is to drive in snow... especially snow that is so high already. No one never explained to me the concept of 4 wheel drive but I understood the importance today. No matter how hard i pressed the gas the car was just skidding. Very annoying and very frustrated but eventually we got the cars out. My brother and I did a donut with the car...probably not the smartest idea but it was still fun :)
When we finally got back home the sanitation workers passed through our street but the downside is that when they clean they just push it to the side to clear a path. So it was hard to get into the street and then all our hard work from this morning was blocked by the Snowplows so we couldn't get back into our spot or our driveway. So instead of getting angry we just made the best of it... had snowball fights with the people on my block and I played in the snow with my little cousins. It made me feel like a kid all over again. I love snow =D But now that that's finished... it's time to get back to reality and finish studying for my finals that I have tomorrow...how exciting...
Hurricane Katrina may have very well been one of the worst disasters to ever hit America. As stated in Jenni Bergal’s The Storm “New Orleans wasn’t devastated by an act of God. It was devastated by the inaction of man.” Unfortunately we are a reactive people and it takes the event of something really terrible for us to actually do something. What we should be is more proactive, so that we can be equipped in case of an emergency. After the levees gave way, 80% of the city was flooded. Thousands were stranded for days at the Superdome and at the New Orleans Convention Center, all in filthy conditions. They were literally abandoned with the lack of water, food, ice, and essentials that would allow them to survive. The citizens of New Orleans continued to be filled with empty promises that someone will be there to rescue them. When a situation as bad as this occurs the million dollar question of course is…What went wrong? There are many different factors that you can take into account to answer this question, but I will focus on what went wrong with the rebuilding effort. In Gernsteins Flirting with Disasters he states that we should “pay attention to weak signals and early warnings.” If only people took heed to the many warnings pre Hurricane Katrina we would have avoided a lot of pain as a country.
After the Civil War the country had what was called the reconstruction period. After The Great Depression they implemented The New Deal and even after World War II, The Marshall Plan. These were all efforts to show that the government will help and rebuild after a tragic event. Yet in the country America, you have an entire city that is being treated as a third world country. There hasn’t really been any huge effort made in rebuilding since the Hurricane in 2005.In an article written in Baruch’s newspaper the Ticker, one student clearly expressed her disappointment in the rebuilding efforts. She said “We passed countless neighborhoods of rotting houses with garbage, cars and debris littered everywhere. My throat clogged up…Where was the federal aid? Why did the city look like Hurricane Katrina struck weeks ago instead of almost two years ago?"
Repairs from Katrina were estimated to cost $200 billion, making the storm the most expensive relief operation in US history. As The Frontline video states, “This is a high cost to pay for being unprepared.”One problem with the rebuilding effort was that the victims needed more. More than 136,000 people applied for the road home assistance program and less than 17,000 received money. Many people are looking to rebuild but cannot find the resources necessary without aid. They cannot come home because as described by many, ‘It no longer feels like home.’ I watched a documentary called the ‘Nightly News: Hurricane Katrina (Long Road Back)’ with Brian Williams and he discussed the rebuilding process in the South. In one segment of the video he focused on the Convention Center which they spent $60 million to rebuild. Sadly about 7 miles away on Fillmore Ave. there was nothing being done. Two years after Katrina, the city was still in ruins. Fire Departments were still living in trailers. The city still has 16,000 FEMA trailers. It is hard to rebuild a city when a majority of the middle class has moved to somewhere else. Two years and many of the stores and companies have yet to come back.Many families had to be relocated and forced to start a new life with hopes of one day returning to their home in New Orleans.
The mostly African-American neighborhoods of New Orleans are largely underwater, and the people who lived there have scattered across the country. But in many of the predominantly white and more affluent areas, streets are dry and passable. In areas where the water was deep (pre-dominantly black areas), little recovery or reinvestment had taken place. The pictures to your left show a contrast in rebuilding efforts between two neighborhoods: The top picture shows Lakeview which had 8 to 10 feet of water. The city officials just put up survey cards on abandoned houses to see if people would return. The bottom picture is from Chalmette where residents have started repairing while they live in FEMA trailers. By early October 2006, displaced individuals were located in 369 different cities. Many were in large southern cities such as Houston, Atlanta, Memphis, and Baton Rouge.
In the Frontline video The Storm, I learned a lot. The more I watched the more I became interested as to know what really happened and I even grew really sad to see what took place. They stated that maybe the government “was indifferent to poor and black victims” or that FEMA was poorly led. Perhaps it was because of failure to plan or that the military took too long. Whatever the exact reason, no one deserved to be abandoned like that.
Since Hurricane Katrina, many victims have lost homes, schools, jobs, shops, places of worship, and networks of family and friends. Of New Orleans’s 73 neighborhoods, only eight neighborhoods did not flood. Thirty-four were completely flooded. Many neighborhoods remain uninhabitable because of damage to residential structures. A year after the City of New Orleans still didn’t have a comprehensive rebuilding plan. So many rebuilding efforts have failed. Congress assigned over $100 billion to rebuild the Gulf Coast. But there is little evidence of actual reconstruction. There are many examples of fraud and waste. There were opportunities to avoid such a terrible outcome and they were ignored; now the country has the opportunity to rebuild the city and they continue to move slowly and make errors. We continue to be saddened “not by the natural disaster wrought by Katrina but by the human disaster that followed.”
I have never been the girly girl which is probably because I a grew up around a lot of guys. So I was the extreme tomgirl. So I never went to dance school or did ballet or any of that cute stuff .. I played sports. I have no regrets but sometimes I look back and wish maybe I would have participated in one dance recital. But that is besides the point.
I was lucky enough to watch TV in between studying and I saw the cutest commercial. It was The GAP commercial with the little girls. I think it is sooooo cute. I love seeing little girls acting their age and just enjoying being a kid. Anyway you guys cant take a look and let me know what you think. ENJOY
We all know that times are changing and there is nothing wrong with that... I am all for change. I just had to share with you guys a conversation that I had with my niece. She is 5 years old and I asked her what she wants for Christmas. She told me "aunty I want the Ipod touch ...the 8g not the 16g because I don't need that much space." I just bust out laughing because I really felt like I'm talking to someone else. My parents barely grasped the concept of gigs and look at this 5 year old talking to me about it. I asked her why does she need that and then she says well youu have one and besides I want to go on the internet, listen to music and play all the apps. I am not lying...this really gave me a good laugh.
Kids are really advanced in technology. They are all about their Xbox,PS3, PSP etc. I remember I used to love playing board games especially Monopoly. Now you can play all of those games on your computer or gaming console. Well that is all for now...and by the way in case you were wondering... she is NOT receiving the Ipod touch. :)
Today it seems that children aren’t really learning anymore. It seems as if the Board of Education is just preparing the children for their state tests and they aren’t learning for the sake of learning. I tutor children at an elementary school. The way that I know what to focus on is first having a meeting with the child’s teacher and I meet with their parents to find out what exactly it is that they want me to do. My main purpose was to get them ready for the Math and ELA state Exams. From time to time I did homework with them. At one point I had to help him study for his vocabulary test. This particular test was about contractions. So ‘can’t’ stems from ‘cannot’ ‘wouldn’t’ from ‘would not’. Seems simple right? Apparently not!! He did not know what ‘don’t’ came from or ‘shouldn’t.’ Another day he had a social studies exam and I helped him prepare for it. He didn’t know that New York City was broken up into 5 boroughs, the capital, and the abbreviations of States. He literally didn’t know a lot.
I didn’t want to just assume that it was the teacher because I know that there are some kids that don’t pay attention or don’t remember learning that. So I decided to go to the teacher and ask her about these things (contractions, social studies). She said well we don’t really need to focus on those things because they are not on the state exam. So I said well doesn’t he need to know them for …I don’t know maybe …for LIFE. She said yeah these are important things to know but only if you have time after you do test prep. After that convo I was a bit disappointed, are we grooming them for life or just to pass a test. The poor kid always comes down to our sessions talking about how tired he is of taking KAPLAN practice tests, and tired of hearing his teachers tell him that they have to get 3s and 4s. It’s sad but that’s what I am getting paid for. I have to prepare him for the exams. It really makes you wonder…what they are teaching the children.
New Orleans has such a powerful history. It is the place to be and a popular place to visit. It has strong characteristics that clearly make them unique from the rest of the country. In New Orleans African Americans had the ability to acquire, purchase and own real property during an era when America was still immersed in slavery. New Orleans had such a strong heritage and it seems like not a lot of people knew about this. I myself was not aware of their strong culture. New Orleans was very popular for its Mardi Gras celebrations and its architecture. Jazz was a vital attribute to the New Orleans culture. Many famous musicians speak so highly of this place. Music saved the lives of many in New Orleans. New Orleans differed greatly from the rest of the young United States in its Old World cultural relationships. It is a European African Caribbean American Southern city with a large “Creole” population. New Orleanians had an appreciation of good food, wine, music, and dancing and festivals were frequent. Watching the video it seems as if they have a preoccupation with dancing. New Orleans is the city at the bottom of the bowl… the Mississippi River surrounds the city giving it the shape of a bowl.
The Stages of Metropolitan Growth states that “while their city (New Orleans) was unique in many ways, it was not immune to the various ills that America’s urban flesh is heir to.”(p71) Like the rest of the African American population, Plessy v. Ferguson knocked New Orleans down and the strong movement that they had going was put on hold. Schools began to resegregate, public schools were shut down, and 900,000 black voters were eliminated. New Orleans was now racially segregated. As a result of racial segregation middle and upper income whites were located in the outlying suburban communities which were literally higher than the rest of the city, while the blacks were located in the lower parts of the city where the flooding was most severe. They couldn’t avoid the perils of White Flight, and it wasn’t long before the White population fled the city. With the building of roadways and highways that ripped the streets of Clairborne Ave. in Treme. A city that embodied New Orleans heritage was overshadowed by Interstate 10 which provided the road for Whites to move to the suburbs. James Carr said “If the city of New Orleans had been a more diverse community, it may well have had the political clout to secure the levees long ago.”(The Social construction of Disaster p275)
Engineers have been worried about the levees since 1927 and they knew that it was only a matter of time before the levees gave way. The Brutal Hurricane in 1893, The Great Storm of 1909, the flooding of the Mississippi River in 1927, the list goes on and on. So many warning signs yet the city thought that they could buy more time. Even their survival in 2004 with Hurricane Ivan hadn’t taught them any lessons. They still didn’t have a Hurricane Command center and lacked strong communication of what to do. They knew that their levees could not survive a Category 5 hurricane. Unfortunately August 27, 2005, their luck had run out. People can hypothesize about what could have happened but no one would have guessed it would be this bad. Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, straight through the levees that they thought would uphold and ruined the lives of many.
The hurricane ruined many important cultural landmarks. If not for the vivid memories in the minds of so many New Orleanians and scholars it would have already disappeared. In the video he said that “this rich history doesn’t shield us from our problems, it helps us deal with them.” Often times for New Orleanians it is their memories that keep them going. The hope that one day things may return to the way it used to be before violence, drugs, segregation and Hurricane Katrina hit their city.
People always say that New Orleans didn’t feel like America but does this give the country any right to treat it like it is not? Perhaps if the same efforts were made in New Orleans as in Plaquemines Parish, Hurricane Katrina would not have had such a horrible impact. Plaquemines Parish made sure that they put a plan into place and followed through with it. They knew who needed to be rescued, where they lived and what had to be done. The Great Deluge explains to us that numerous studies had been done and they knew that the levees would not suffice in the event of a serious Hurricane. Even on August 26, 2005 Mayor Nagin had reservations and continued to make excuses as to why they could not evacuate. In the article they spoke of how the animals in an animal shelter were evacuated in the event of a Category 3 or above, yet no one found it important to evacuate human beings at a fear of lawsuits and losing money. It doesn’t seem fair does it?
All of this history all of this culture and love was ripped away. It still hurts the hearts of many because of so many warning signals. It makes you wonder, could it had all been avoided? We have to realize that it isn’t merely about putting fingers; we have to state the facts. We are not trying to play the blame game, so whether it was FEMA, the mayor of New Orleans, or the president, the fact still remains that New Orleanians were abandoned. As a country we definitely should feel disappointed that something of this magnitude happened on our own soil.
