Gratefulness

Amazing how difficult it is to write about how much fun I had last week in San Francisco, and all the great wine I tasted and food I ate, when New Orleans has been wiped off the map. The hub and I were talking about sheer numbers of people who would have to begin whole new lives, and how the majority of those people had just lost what little they had to begin with. Most of the people, who we are now forced to call refugees (that's right, refugees, right here in the U.S.A) barely had two quarters to rub together in the first place. Those who got out of the city with a bank account should remember how fortunate they are.

I keep wanting to riff on the scope of this disaster, just to get my mind around it: an entire city, drowned. The heat and stagnant water. Days on rooftops with no sustenance. And then the images to terrible to think about.

You know what this makes me remember? Is this: if you have sat down to a beautiful meal, opened a bottle of wine, you had damn well better be grateful. This is one thing your mama was right about. I don't care what superior entity you do or don't believe in, make one up if you need to. But take a good, long moment---not to feel guilty in any way for your own fortune, quite the opposite---to feel grateful that you are there. Guilt does no one any good. Gratefulness connects us to the rest of the world.


God Bless everyone Katrina ravaged, wherever they may end up.

Clinkies.