Gwen

Tuesday, the 6th-First of all, let me just say that Hurricane Katrina was awful and that the response that the victims got was the inevitable result of a government that subsidizes corporations, cuts taxes for the rich, but continues to cut the budgets of agencies that are primarily there to help the helpless, the poor, and the infirm. I kept watching the news on the internet waiting to see if things would improve and they didn't for a very long time. And when a journalist wrote that our government's response to the tragedy was shameful I had to agree. I mean, this is America. What kind of country are we when we can't even take care of our own? There's a lot more to be said about this, but the journalists I've read have been so much more eloquent about it, so if you want to read some really good editorials about it, go read the editorials from Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, or www.nytimes.com if you're a member. When we first moved to LA, we met a lovely lady named Gwen, who was evicted from the little bungalow she'd been living in for about 30 years. She told us of her plans to move back home to New Orleans to take care of her elderly father. Well, you can imagine how we felt when we found out that she didn't go to Burning Man, but that she stayed behind to help her dad. There was a listing on craigslist New Orleans about her. No one had heard from her since the hurricane hit. I was at Christian's vainly trying to learn another program from the tutorial book I'd been reading when I heard the phone ring. Now normally, I won't answer Christian's phone while he's gone, but for some reason I answered this one and it was Gwen. She was in North Carolina in a refugee center and she was trying to reach Christian. He was still driving back from Burning Man, but I thought she might be able to reach him on his cell phone. She got separated from her dad and is currently still looking for him. She lost everything she had and she doesn' know what happened to her pets. Eventually, I think she will move back to LA. I hope so. She's a really sweet person. Also, we got to see Maurissa's ImprovOlympic show, Emperor Penguin, with her friend Josh. And then we went to play pool, or really everyone else played pool and I watched.