Another day out of work with this creeping crud. The antibiotics seem to be helping, so at least there's an end in sight. It has been a long time since anything has sidelined me for four whole days, though. Especially if two of them were work days. Tomorrow I will be back at it, armed with DayQuil and OJ.

Today was a haze of sleeping and waking and sleeping again, news reports mixing with dreams to make a weird gray fog. I have sniffled and coughed and dosed up until it has all run together and I am thoroughly tired of being sick. L went out for a little while today, and bought a dog whistle, which he has been trying to calibrate. It is certainly not, as the packaging claims, silent in any sense of the word. The dogs endure and ignore it. You can almost see them saying one to the other, "keep a stiff upper lip, old boy."

We just watched another of the hour-long "specials" on the New Orleans disaster.. It's unbelievable what has happened there. And unbelievable how some people feel the need to politicize and sensationalize the dispair of others. What happened in New Orleans was a disaster, plain and simple. Disasters happen. They are catastrophic. They are unpredictable. It is idiocy to try and blame them on anyone, especially on the President of the United States.

If anyone wants to lay blame, here's where it belongs. First, Mayor Nagin should have done more to get the word out and to evacuate his city before the storm hit. Second, the governor should have called for Federal assistance immediately, which she did not do. I have read several different reports stating that she refused Federal assistance in the first 24 hours after the disaster. The Feds can't just come marching in, even in this day and age. The proper channels must be used.

FEMA's response was a joke, and there is a major problem there. Brown, the FEMA leader seems ineffectual. Let General Honore be in charge of FEMA.. he'd do a much better job. Sometimes people just want to hear the truth, and in cases of disasters like this the truth is important whether it sounds pretty or not.

I've heard people try to make this a race issue, a political issue, a class issue.. and I'm not saying that those issues can't be questioned. I do think that now is not the time. Not while people are still sloshing around in that filthy muck trying to find survivors. Not while coffins are floating down the street and children and separated from their parents. I've heard people say that God was punishing New Orleans; I don't think I've ever heard a less educated or more bigoted opinion than that. If God were still in the punishment business, why hasn't he hit Vegas? And let's not forget that New Orleans has a ton of churches.. and that it 's been there for 300 years. Mustn't forget that. Pfft!

A few heroes have come out of this, though. I didn't expect some of the celebrity response. Sean Penn basically made an ass of himself, taking his camera crew along to photograph him playing hero, forgetting to plug his boat. I'm not even going to approach the subject of Kanye West. But Harry Connick.. wow. The footage of him taking the shirt off his back to give to an old man he found and rescued.. That was really something. I am profoundly impressed with Mr. Connick for being a real person and not a camera-courting celebrity snot. I am sure that he has more than one new fan today, and rightly so.

I still can't get over the devastation. I keep seeing places where I have been, there on the news, windows broken, floors covered with mud. I saw footage of Cafe Du Monde, swept as clean as can be, all of the tables gone. I didn't see Joanie on her Pony, but Jackson Square seemed to be all right, as did the cathedral. It's also heartening to see Johnny White's still open. Still. Now that's tenacity, folks. That's what makes me certain that there will be a Mardi Gras in New Orleans again. There will be another Jazz Fest.