Dang.

Your Katrina posts continue to be excellent.

Thanks, Julie. I'm not sure why I'm doing them, to tell the truth. I just don't seem to be able to stop.

As I understand it the Vietnamese population in the deep south originated with boat people in the late 70-80s. So yes, they have experienced worse and yes, they have worked hard to be contributing members of the society that gave them a chance when they were down. It's a great testament to their people and their culture and their endurance - to experience this disaster and still put others before themselves.

Jen, I think you're exactly right about the "boat people" background. I just couldn't think of that term when I was writing the post.

Most likely they are shrimpers. There's a huge population of them all along the gulf coast from at least Galveston to Sabine Pass, and I'm sure the same in La.

Of course, today Geraldo was back to his goofy antics, standing in sewage water somewhere in N.O. in hip waders doing a live shot.

You know what they say. It's a dirty job and...well, you know the rest. Geraldo's just the guy to do it.

I'm surprised he was wearing the waders. You'd think he'd be immune to the stuff by now, as much as he's ladeled out in the past. ;-)

I am reading Philip Cuputo's "A Rumor of War" chronicling his experience as a Marine officer during the Vietnam War. Following are a few of his observations about the reaction of the Vietnamese people after a platoon of marines had burned their village to the ground.

“They just stood there, silent and still, showing neither grief nor anger nor fear. Their flat, steady gazes had the same indifference I had seen in the eyes of the woman whose house I had searched in Hoi-Vuc. It was as if they regarded the obliteration of their village as a natural disaster and, accepting it as part of their lot, felt no more toward us than they might feel toward a flood. Such passivity struck me as inhuman. It might have been a stoical mask, concealing deep feelings of sorrow or rage; but if that was the case, their ability to control their emotions was just as inhuman. In this way, my pity for them rapidly turned into contempt. They did not behave the way I expected them to behave; that is, the way Americans would under similar circumstances. Americans would have done something: glared angrily, shaken their fists, wept, run away, demanded compensation. These villagers did nothing, and I despised them for it. Their apparent indifference toward what had happened made me indifferent. Why feel compassion for people who seem to feel nothing for themselves? For I had no conception of the ordeal that constituted their daily existence. Confronted by disease, bad harvests, and above all by the random violence of endless war, they had acquired a capacity to accept what we would have found unacceptable, to suffer what we would have considered insufferable. Their survival demanded this of them. Like the great Annamese Mountains, they endured.”

...they had acquired a capacity to accept what we would have found unacceptable, to suffer what we would have considered insufferable.

John, that pretty much seems to nail it.

It begs the question of where the line is drawn that separates stoic resignation in the face of unconquerable odds, and apathy that sucks the will to survive and thrive from the soul, leaving only the desire to find someone or some thing to blame. I guess each society and city and individual arrives at that line on their own and it distinguishes the survivors from the perpetual victims.