You can't go home again

I haven't been writing because what's going on with my southeastern neighbors has me dumbfounded. Silence seems like the only response shy of conjuring some miraculous mechanism to turn back time.

I don't think the world understands yet that entire U.S. cities are now gone. Worse than gone--they are cripled, sick, deadly, and dying. Many of these cities aren't coming back. Some will come back in months, some years, some decades and some -- as officials who've toured parts of southeast Louisiana say -- have been reclaimed by nature.

We have real live refugees in the U.S. and they aren't illegal immigrants, but it probably won't be long before they're treated as such. Lack of the right insurance, combined with FEMA's ineptness, will render tens of thousands poor -- or poorer -- over night.

Our troops are trooping in Iraq. Our Tsunami dollars have tsunamied elsewhere. And in parts of two U.S. states, martial law and a roof-deep, stew of debris and dead bodies and oil and gasoline -- is all that's left. This is a tsumani, only worse: There are more survivors to deal with.

It's not a matter of "covering" this story. I don't cover stories. I'm not a journalist. Bloggers aren't journalists just like corporations aren't people. We are simply human beings who can be silenced in an instant inside the enormous power of nature and the helplessness of poverty.

Meanwhile, Ernie the Attorney is trying to get out. If you know how to escape New Orleans under martial law, without gasoline and quick, let Ernie's proxyblogger know.

Somewhere, in a room of just a few, you have to wonder if they're discussing getting as many poeple as possible out, and then just opening the levies and letting it go.

And Mississipi. My God. Again, it seems pointless to talk about technogy or marketing or PR or conferences today. I don't have the words.

I really don't have the words.