Good evening fellow Performers...

I'm watching the Spike Lee special on HBO..."When the Levee's Broke, a requiem in four acts"...

I have a unique, to ME, perspective...I went down to the Gulf Coast last winter to help with the rebuilding...I had hoped to make a living through the slow winter months in Branson, and also to do my part...To help where help was needed....To lend a hand to my fellow man...

Watching this television show is hard...

Ok, that's a bit weak....

It's just this side of impossible....One of those that were there commented on how different it was for them...To have BEEN there....T.V. news coverage can NOT convey the tragedy...The injustice...The horror....

The grief.

HOW these folks, the ones that survived, have carried on is beyond me....The only answer I can find is God and His love....

I saw the devestation up close...
I smelt the odor of decay and ruin...
I FELT the pain of those that lost so very much...
I witnessed the loss...

I, however, am blessed...I didn't lose a DAM thing in Katrina...I was safe in the Ozarks...I was BEYOND the devestation...

Where were you?

What is the point of this email, you might ask?

Just like 9-11, let us NEVER forget the lives and history that was lost when Hurricane Katrina devastated the lives of MILLIONS of AMERICAN citizens...

They, to this day, are dealing with an event that happened a year ago...

Life has gone on for almost all of us....

Let us not forget or forsake those whose lives were ripped apart by this storm.

Take a minute and remember...Do what you can, every little bit helps believe me...Whether it be a donation to a verified charity or a simple moment of prayer...

It ALL counts!

Remember.

Sincerely and in tears...

Terry L. Tidwell
(Prof. Piper)

It is amazing what these storms can do. Not only did Louisiana, Mississippi and the rest of the Gulf Coast have the storm, but the floods that came with it. It can be devastating.

They will, however, recover and it will be but a memory one day. How do I know? It happened here, where I live, in 1989. Consider the following.

Source: USA TODAY research by Chris Cappella

"Hugo blew into Charleston, S.C., on the evening of Sept. 21, the autumnal equinox, with winds of 138 mph and a 20 foot storm surge on top of astronomically high tides. Hurricane Hugo's impressive intensity made it the strongest storm to strike the East Coast north of Florida since Hazel in Oct. 1954. Hugo devastated South Carolina's barrier islands and flattened the Francis Marion National Forest, to the north of Charleston. Its price tag hit $7 billion, earning Hugo the title of costliest hurricane in U.S. history, which it would relinquish to Hurricane Andrew in 1992."

It has happened before, and will happen again. So...what can we do? Pray? Yes. Help others? Yes. Anything else? Yes...give it some thought.

Our magic club has formed a "Hurricane Response Team" to work with the Red Cross in the event another storm occurs and people get evacuated into our area for a while. We can go out and do some magic for our new "guests" and help to put a smile, if only for a moment, on their faces and let them escape their situations for a few minutes.

Give some thought to what you, individually or collectively, can do. You CAN make a difference.

Mark.

Thank you Mark for the perspective...

To have the hindsight to see that, YES, a new day will dawn is something that the folks of the Gulf Coast will appreciate...

God Bless,

Terry

Terry,

I was performing my final day at the 2005 Nevada State Fair in Reno.
My wife, who is from Biloxi, Miss., was home in Albuquerque.

Her brother was on campus at LSU in Baton Rouge.
Her mom and dad, road out Katrina in their home.

It was 2 1/2 days until we made any contact with them and at that, it was only a brief phone call long enough to know they were alive.

Their house survived Katrina, as it had Camille in '69.

I'll never forget where I was.

-Robert

PS:
A Perspective:
When Camille came ashore in '69 her eye was 5 miles wide.
When Katrina came ashore just one year ago, her eye was almost 35 miles wide.

Although I live about 150 miles from the Coast, our village did sustain wind damage. I posted some local post-Katrina photos at:

http://erh2.homestead.com/Katrina.html

I grew up, most of my life, in the Corpus Christi bay area. I've seen some very bad hurricanes since born there in '68. There are remnants of hurricanes past including Hurricane Beulah, September 1967 (one of five severe hurricanes to affect the Texas middle coast in this century) which we still talk about to this day.

Mother recounted Beaulah's power and said she and her two brothers, Grandfather, and Grandmother had to hold front door of the house shut while they continued hammering it shut. At one point Beaulah took down a huge tree in the front yard and thrust it down onto the house roof. That damaged part was sucked up and away leaving them to be poured down on.

The eye of the storm was amazing. A calm much like that before the first half of the storm. Once the eye passed over it was the second half of a nightmarish storm.

Once over, they were without power for 10 days and survived on what food they had stockpiled. The city was devastated with nothing in operation.

Tornadoes were extremely numerous with Beulah; a total of 95 have been estimated. Many of the funnel clouds were as small as 20 to 40 feet in diameter where they touched the ground. Many persons living in low areas were homeless for the several days of persistent high water. The damage directly attributable to the storm in the Coastal Bend, not counting the subsequent flooding, was of the order of $20,000,000. Water remained for months on poorly drained areas of the Coastal Plains south of Corpus Christi. The total dollar damage from the floods is estimated more than $100,000,000.

From (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/crp/docs/research/hurrhistory/Beulah/beulah.html)

"At landfall winds near the center were about 136 miles an hour, and the central pressure, which had been as low as 27.26 inches which gave the storm a tide producing potential of about 15 feet. As the storm center moved over land southwest of Corpus Christi, generally higher winds occured in inland areas of the Coastal Bend than in coastal areas. Gale winds began at Corpus Christi International Airport at 10:30 AM on Sept. 20 and continued a duration of 15.5 hours."

HERE'S A HURRICANE ARCHIVE OF HER PATH (You can see she had made up her mind to hit where she landed) : http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at196702.asp


Some of us are accustomed to the Hurricane season and can weather most of it but when these babys reach Category 4 & 5 they are NOT TO BE IGNORED. It's not a question of IF you can evacuate, it's a question of why are you still sitting aound when it's in your backyard?

Many times we tend to laugh it off and don't even bother boarding up the windows when we see Cat 3 and just prepare for heavy winds, tons of water, and power outages.

As a child, while visiting the Grandparents, I'd ride my bicycle over a ramp in the sidewalk. Two segments of the sidewalk were elevated forming a ramp if you will. I later learned it was caused by Beaulah's wrath pushing the lawn tree down onto the house. The tree roots several feet away caused the concrete sidewalk to raise as it did. Today 2006, it remains that way. Beaulah showed us good!

Together, Katrina and Beaulah reminded us we should never underestimate Nature's power.

And to think Katrina was worse...

Yes, Katrina was worse. And the Nat. Hurricane Center has set Katrina at only a Cat. 3.

Category 3????!?!??!

If Katrina was a Cat. 3, then Mt. St. Helen's was just a fireworks show.

Robert

Cat.3 makes me wonder too! Not sure where they measured her at that level but had I visited the aftermath not knowing what struck I'd suspect Armageddon!

The damage was caused by the levee breaking. You know, the ones that money sent to be used to repair it over the last 40 years was used by other folks for other things in Lousianna? The same damage would have occured if a barge broke the levee and no storm was involved. Hopefully soon everyone will move back to NO and the crime rates in other cities, like Houston, can come down again. Not that there is a connection or anything.
Steve V

Despite our best attempts to outwit nature by engineering the best working solution; Venice still sinks, space shuttles fail, airplanes crash and levee's break.

I may be misunderstanding, so for clarification let me just say this...

Katrina did NOT make landfall on New Orleans.
Katrina made land fall on the Pearl River, the border of Louisiana and Mississippi.

That puts New Orleans on the Northwest quadrant of the storm.(The best place to be if you have to be at all)

Unfortunately where it made landfall put put cities across the Mississippi Gulf Coast on the northeast quadrant at ground zero.

Bay St. Louis was devastated.
Waveland was completely destroyed. Some estimate the storm surge in Waveland as high as 62 feet.
Gulfport suffered unbelievable damage.
Biloxi took serious damage.

Make no mistake, what happened in New Orleans was awful. But as Steve V. points out, was a flaw of their government, not Katrina.

Katrina is being remembered for the "flooding in New Orleans."

I'm just asking people to remember that it was actually the Mississippi Gulf Coast that took the direct hit...and the brunt of catastrophic damage.

Robert

That is correct. Only Mississippi didn't have the PR that NO had and the people in Mississippi don't run around with their hand out as publicly.
Steve V

That's true.
Mississippi residents & police, search and rescue were trying to save people from their flooded homes while the mayor and his gestapo in New Orleans were going to door to door in undamaged neighborhoods confiscating legally owned firearms.

Sad state of affairs.
And then they reelected him.

I'll always remember the first trip down there last Christmas. I've never seen such devistation. I couldn't even find my way around. No buildings, road signs, landmarks. Nothing was there.

And nothing remains.

Robert

While many points that are being made are absolutely correct:

I.E.:

The devastation in Mississippi eclipses that of New Orleans...
Miss. was overlooked and neglected in a HUGE way...
The squeaky wheel got the grease...

Ad noseum...

The entire point of MY post was to REMEMBER the PEOPLE that were affected....

I spent 4 MONTHS on the Miss. Gulf Coast...I lived in a borrowed RV that was parked in a mechanics storage yard...Sometimes we had water/electric...sometimes we didn't...I worked 12-14 hour days trying to help out (Yes, I was being paid, but that's not what it was about, ok?)

I willingly went down and seperated myself from my wife and menagerie of animals in order to help the PEOPLE of the area that was affected.

No offense...I mean this...NO OFFENSE intented...

But I started this thread as a REMEMBERANCE for ALL of those who lost their lives/loved ones/property/history/WAY OF LIFE...

Due to a storm named Katrina.

I could care one rat's *** about the politics/retoric/etc of the entire event, ok?

What it REALLY comes down to is the ENORMITY of what was lost and the fact that those affected need our prayers/donations/and good thoughts...

They are brothers and sisters...I don't care what color/region/religion/etc you identify yourself with...

You are AMERICAN...First, foremost, and always....and I will always be there for you.

God Bless.

Prof. Piper
(Terry)

Darn! I wish I had known this would be on to remind those interested but tonight Discovery Chanel aired "Killer Hurricane: Anatomy of Katrina" on it's Big Science show. Some of the images I saw I don't recall ever seeing on the news. This coverage was unbelievable.

The scope of Katrina's destruction and storm surge greater than that of Camile '69. I've seen my share of Hurricanes but this is something I wouldn't want to be anywhere near!

Hey Terry...Amen, brother.

Mark.

Just noticed that Discovery Channel will be airing "Surviving Katrina" tomorrow 8/27/06 around 8 or 9pm PST. Check your listing. This one will show the rescue and reparation efforts.

Yeah Randy, I'm watching the Discovery offering now...

And yes, it's hard...and yes, I've shed a few tears...

Mark,

Thanks brother...and Amen to you as well.

Terry

I have been in Gulfport for a week now. We have worked with Hope Crisis Response network for many years and have come dowwn here to help people out. HCRN has been here since one week after Katrina. They have a place called Hope City with two bunk trailers that sleep 20 volunteers each, a double wide trailer used as a dining hall and offices, a shower/bathroom trailer and a kitchen trailer. Pretty amazing set up they have here.

It is amazing that Tuesday makes it one year since the hurricane and it is still a disaster area in many places. Last week we blue roofed some houses, did drywall, and took on more cases from case managers. HCRN has 12 'new builds' they are doing right now, amongst tons of rebuilds. Two days ago we ran into a really bad situation where 8 people are living in a shack turned into apartments behind a house. The homeowner is charging these people $160 a month to live there. It isn't good enough for animals, the bathroom had a water mocassin living in it...just really bad. Even in that situation, those people still said they could find something to be thankful for.

I don't write this to brag or show what HCRN or myself are doing...but rather to share my experience with how things are today in MS.

I'll post again Monday evening with some pretty cool news, unfortunately I can't share it till after it happens. I can only add this..if you can watch the cabkle news channels tomorrow moening around 11 central time.


Terry, you're right...politics and all that mess don't mean anything. We found a downed billboard vinyl. It had a childs face on it and said...
"You're helping people, That's all that matters"

That is the truth.

Kevin