texas & Katrina

apologies to all of you avid rachael-readers (i know, there's just so many.. hahaha)... i've been busying about with class, getting acquated with college life, texas, and trying to figure out where i'll be landing come january '06.

so many things have sped through my mind lately--

i spent the holiday weekend in texas for my cousins bat mitzvah and shared a hotel room with my bubby (grandma). the weekend really was awesome -- from being with my parents who are two of the funniest people i know, to my drunken cousins, to hot beautiful south africans with sexy acents, to dancing around like the free lady i am, to laying by a pool and soaking up the sun... it was a great time. but there was one thing that kept bothering me.. about 50% of what my bubby talked about when we were in the room together was how being old sucks. from her messed up feet, to wrinkles, to forgetting things. and when she wasn't talking about things that sucked regarding being old, she was talking about things that sucked in the world. i kept telling her that wrinkles were beautiful and showed character. but she didn't agree. and it just made me hope that when i grow older, i'll focus more on the positive attributes of aging, like wisdom and knowledge. at every stage in life we are left with the option to savor and revel in our possibilities, or frown for those we cannot enjoy.. i just want to revel.

with that said, sometimes it's hard to revel in a life that provides us with so much less than the bare minimums. as we were flying down to texas, i kept thinking.. 'stop one state east and drop me off by new orleans! i want to help!' most of us are devestated by the lives, history, homes and beauty that was taken by Katrina... and at the same time, most of our lives continue on in a completely normal fashion, while theirs are at a stand still. so it goes, right? sucks to be them?

we can and should do more than carry on. we should stop and ask ourselves, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS? HOW am I going to HELP? if it were me, i'd want the country to give me a hand too.
i was shocked and really happy to hear my mom ask my dad if they could take a family in to our home for a few months since we have so many open rooms. i was even more shocked and happy to hear my dad say that it was a good idea and for my mom to get more information.
obveously we can't all house victims in our homes, but we can do something small like go to the redcross website and donate 25$, or have a bake sale and send the proceeds to the red cross, or go around campus with a collection bucket, or send paper plates, or plastic wear, or napkins, or bottled water. anything!

i donated 100$ from cash i made this summer to the red cross and tomorrow i'll be standing outside with signs and a donation bucket. i'm making pamphlets to hand out to students with info on the travesty, hopfully inspiring them to donate.

there are easy things that you can do, that might be out of your every-day cycle. but for you or i, one or two days might be spent in flux and then back to our normal lives. for the people of new orleans, normal life is no longer there for them to go back to-- they're forced to recreate it. let's help them.


http://www.redcross.org/