I haven't been moblogging as much lately because I've been absorbed by the horrific events in the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina. I was at a funeral the day the hurricane hit, which was the also day after my birthday. What a kaleidoscope of emotions to experience. As the events unfolded throughout the week, one big question was would I still have to go work in New Orleans with hundreds of other co-workers at our National Event at the end of the month? The town was effectively dead, and wouldn't be any place for a celebration at the end of September. So no surprise when the cancellation was announced (pic 1). What hit home for me was that the airport I would have arrived in was now a mobile field hospital, and the convention center where I would have done classes on photo sharing and blogging had become a hellish place of suffering and death. Particularly poignant for me were Harry Connick, Jr.'s reports from the French Quarter on the Today Show. At a time when Bush and Brown were congratulating themselves as thousands were kept trapped in the Superdome, Convention Center, and elsewhere around the city, Harry was able to drive right into the city to do a live satellite TV report. He (and so many others) asked repeatedly where was the help. Harry was going to be the top billed performer at our event. There' so much to rant about given the social, economic, environmental, and political shockwaves that the displacement of a million people and destruction of their home towns is causing. This dwarfs 9/11.

Here are links I've been reading: New Orleans' home town paper, live reports from the DirectNIC Data Center in NOLA, "Escape from New Orleans", my neighbor Jeff's blog post on our encounter with an MRE (pictured here), and Alvaro's Photo Journal.

Lastly: Shaun, are you OK? Where are you?

- mike lee - wheaton, md