Here comes the story of the Hurricane...

This landlocked-Midwest-raised gal came closer than she's ever been to a hurricane on Monday. We experienced Katrina from the vantage point of our ill-timed four-day vacation in Walton County, Florida (on the panhandle, just east of Panama City). Mostly, this meant a smattering of rain, very high winds for 24 hours, and a beach, already ravaged from the season's previous storms, that vanished as if it was never there. It wasn't particularly dangerous for us. One perky out-of-towner interviewed on the local news actually described it as "totally awesome!" Um, I hope you meant that in a Biblical sense, honey, because the reports coming out of Louisiana and Mississippi are totally horrific and scary. Impossible to wrap one's head around, really, and there's no way I could write anything insightful about it, so here are two links:

Network for Good :: Home

Hurricane Katrina - Slate's take on the natural disaster.
particularly: Jack Shafer