For the last two days, I’ve been mulling a few words around in my mind, and some of them have been “thank god for the Superdome.” In every picture of New Orleans, it just looks like a big welcoming indestructibly huge thing, waiting patiently far above the water, with room for everyone and more.

That was before I realized it was dark in there.

Read this. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/31/katrina.refugees.ap/index.html

This idea is flabbergasting. Beyond the logistics of getting the people and their things onto buses when even Army trucks are just tall enough to drive to the Superdome, think about the sheer number of buses it will take to move 25,000 people 350 miles. At $2.60 a gallon for diesel, that’s probably a million dollars right there. Then they’ll have 25,000 people stranded 350 miles from home. How is that better?

I can’t get my mind around this whole thing. It’s bad enough that a storm probably took your house and everything you own away, but then to be taken away from your city? Your cell phone doesn’t work, you can’t tell your friends and relatives you’re alright unless you somehow make it onto TV, and now a government agency is going to plant you in another fucking stadium, in another state, after what must promise to be a horrific six-hour (probably much longer) bus ride? Your kids haven’t been to school yet this year, none of you have had a shower in days, even once you go back and try to rebuild, your employer is probably in dire straits too … and you have to live in the Astrodome. Until December.

Thank god for the Superdome, yes, but I feel waves of relief of behalf of those people from Louisiana and Mississippi who had the luck and presence of mind to leave earlier, the ones who are in, for example, motels in Pensacola right now, cool and safe and in touch.

Edited to add:

Now THIS is something else. http://www.tulane.edu

The visitor map from gvisit (linked on a small icon bottom right) indicates the location of several visitors I didn’t know I had. Including one repeated visitor in Sydney, Australia. I don’t know anyone in Sydney, so that’s bizarre.

Apparently I also have a reader in the person of someone who’s friends with a couple of my friends. And apparently I insulted this person by complaining about the shitty service I received at that Starbucks in Florida. Apparently I am, and I do quote here from her email on the topic suggesting I “learn Spanish if [I] want to get decent service anywhere in Florida,” (a ridiculous notion on par with suggesting Americans must learn French in order to buy condoms at any Walgreens in antediluvian New Orleans) “a racist dumb white bitch.”

I apologize to all Mexicans everywhere. I did not take the time to inquire about or ascertain the nation of birth (her race, a completely separate piece of data, was very clear) of the person who was too incompetent to sell me a cup of iced coffee and a muffin during the breakfast rush.

When I do crossword puzzles, especially my favorite one each week, which is the one in the Sunday Washington Post Magazine, I have a system of marking certain answers.

For answers that fit the theme, I circle the number. This way I can go back through the puzzle when it’s done and laugh at the puns.

For answers I get from the surrounding letters but didn’t actually know, or answers I can’t fill in because two answers I don’t know intersect, I draw a square around the number. This way I can go look all that stuff up (usually on Wikipedia) when I’m done, and then I know it. This is, lately, my primary source of learning, as very few answers don’t lead to more Wikipedia entries to enjoy.

While I was in Florida I did two, count ’em, two, Washington Post Sunday crossword puzzles. In the one from August 14, there are seven circled numbers and seven squared numbers. In the one from August 21, there are eight circles and six squares. I want to say that these counts are higher than average, but I don’t know. So I’m going to start keeping track of what I learn from crossword puzzles. I’m going to keep track here, of course, because where else would I do it?

This is hugely for my own entertainment and posterity, and a little bit for yours, just like the book list is. Don’t feel obligated to enjoy.