Disasters

Disasters come in all shapes and sizes. Personal disasters may be health related, employment related, finance related, "my team didn't make the playoffs" related. There are degrees of disaster, and what may be a disaster to someone, may just be an "oh well" to someone else. Personally, that is.

Other disasters happen on a much grander scale. Earthquakes, hurricanes, disasters that are the work of Mother Nature. We may not be in their path, but we may feel their affects. Not in New Orleans during Katrina, many of us still were impacted. We sent aid, we paid at the pump for the increased cost of oil, we suffered the effects of the temporary housing provided by the government. We struggled to find goods and services, people and materials to rebuild, we found a sense of purpose in volunteering our time and efforts. Now we do the same for Galveston in the wake of Ike.

At a time when the man-made disaster of the economy looms large over all we can see, there will be jobs...come to Galveston and help rebuild our city. Come to Galveston, Houston, Texas...and find work. Come together as we do during these earthly disasters and help those in need, and help yourself. Work, grow, be a part of the greater good.

We band together during times of national disaster (Katrina aside); we strive to pull ourselves and each other up. Man-made disaster is another matter. Greed and lax oversight have driven the economy into something of a black hole. Just when you think it can't get worse, it does. Our resiliency as a people is often undone by our ineptitude in learning from our past. Each generation produces its "whiz kids"...and hubris dictates that they make leaps made with disastrous results previously...claiming it won't happen now. We amplify the folly of the past, by not only taking the same path, but by failing on a much grander scale.

So here we are. In spite of claiming otherwise by our inept leader...the economy is NOT solid. Downturns in many industries (housing, manufacturing), higher costs for food, gasoline, medical care, failures of some of the largest financial entities in the world, and hubris. We're so good this can't happen to us. Like the short-sightedness that kept us from understanding the lead up to Sept 11, 2001, we continue to wear blinders and believe that all is ok, cause we got Bubba in the House. A disaster...on the economy, foreign policy, the environment, the list goes on. The disaster grows.

We work together to overcome disasters that are out of our sphere of influence. Standing on the shore and telling a hurricane to go away is not effective. Pointing fingers at others and assigning them the blame for our failures is not effective. Disasters. Hindsight, foresight. Somewhere we have to begin to lessen the disasters we can control (human failing it is), and to respond better to those we can't. Otherwise? What a disaster that will be.