sept 2

it is official - summer is just about over. not meterologically, most certainly not. but for families and children, it's just about done. this monday is labor day, the unofficial end of summer. but ours came earlier - we started school this week. All Keystone College, Kings College, and Luzerne County Community College started classes this week.
things are going all right there. the drives are getting easier for me, parking is no longer the extreme headache it has been,t hough it will always be one, as there is so little parking at kings. Rylan's doing well. His first cross country meet is tomorrow at Misericordia i think? I am still amazed at what he does. he goes and runs eight mikles like it's not a problem and i just go DANG. I can run, but i never said iw as amazing. I do it cause i enjoy it..and it's all good, and i dont want to die. (just a few of the reasons.)

our local yarn store is closing. very very very sad face. so today i went and bought on sale yarn, knowing the ones i boght today wouldn't be there next time i went. that's how i rationalized going and doing it. so if anyoen wants good yarns and yo're inthe tunkhannocka rea, hit endless mountain quilt works before september 26th! after that they yarn store is no more. now i have to drive to clarks summit or buy the non wool yarns at wal mart..

but i think this week, like everyone else in the country and perhaps the world, i am just glued tot he hurricane damage and the fact that New Orleans is basically drowning. It's been days and days. I wanna say a week, but it's been days... no food, no drinkable non contaminated wont burn out your esophogus if you drink it water.... no clue as to how to even gett o where its safe. I am just stunned by what i see on tv, what oi hear on the radio. Anderson Cooper with CNN was saying that there were rats eating bodies in the streets. a dead body had ben inthe streets for 48 hours and the rats went to it.

Another story was strangly Faulkner-esque - having echoes to As I lay Dying.. A woman stayed in her house with her husband who was on oxygen. And as he started to run out, she went out to the streets to try to find someone to help, ambulance, something, anything. She found nothing. came back and he'd already passed away. So she wrapped him up, fashioned a small raft out of plywood and some debris-planks.. and floated him in the flood waters, trying to find anywhere to take him to be taken care of, to be stored, morgues, anything. One person helped her to bear this burden. There were times when the raft almost tipped and she had to rescue him.
I can't imagine that, having to bear the body of my beloved, having to float someone down a flood to find a place to bury or whatever... it just breaks my heart.

How can we as a country say we are so wonderful that our politicians are so in our favor and helpful, practically high fiving each other over their bravery, and the need for vacations.. when there were (and possibly still are!) 25,000-50,000 people in the convention center -aside from the Stadium (the Super dome? not the one in Texas where they have sent some, but where they went when they could leave New Orleans.. the dome in Texas has since gotten filled up and is turning people away...) that people didn't know about, that had no food, or water, or help. and that no one knew were there?
The broadcaster on NPR when he spoke to the guy from Homeland Security? or FEMA or something like that, on the radio yesterday, kept asking the offical about the convention center, asking whentheyw oudl ave water or food. The official kept referring to the refugees in the Dome.. and when the broadcaster corrected him, the official went asf ar as to say "I do not want to purport rumors... i have no knowledge of that so i dont want to start any rumors.." The broadcaster had their journalist on the other line in the convention center who was giving the broadcaster information. And again the offical said, they were rumors....

How can we support our government that is so proud of themselves for getting some food around.. when there's tens of thousands of people dying from neglect, starvation, lack of water... people being raped, murdered, places being looted. I think that the government has a bit of skewed vision of themselves right now. There seems to be so little being done on the government's part. The Red Cross is fantastic. Salvation Army! I am sure the LDS Church is doing something.. (I haven't heard yet, i haven't checked the website yet but we're good for that)
it is just so terribly sad.

And what about GAS??? how can we afford to go to work??? it jumped fifty cents yesterday. DANG.