What happened to the vigor of youth??

A few weeks have now passed after a terrible wind, a wind that raised the ocean and leveled the earth. Every newspaper, magazine, radio and television station could talk of nothing else. As our President and government was shocked to the point of inaction a nation was to weather one of the worst storms in the history of our mature country. Hurricane Katrina, derived from the word Huracan, the Amerindian storm God.

How quickly our minds wander as we television stations go back to their normal scheduled programs. At one time our youthful country was the envy of the world, we were the scrappy child who could not be held down, neither war nor famine not strife or oppression kept this country bay as we continually rose to a challenge. Now in relative old age of a country I need to ask have we passed our prime? Have we become so arrogant and forgotten history that we will follow in the past of so many other former great nations, we see them rise and then of course fall. It is of arrogance of their own greatness that defeated Napoleon, the Monguls and of course even the Soviet Union. Are we next?

In literally hours a major city was converted from a normal orderly and calm city to lawlessness that rivaled Lord of the Flies, without a conch shell to be held. How well we balance on a wire between chaos and order. With our own sense of importance we continue to create policies and protocols after the fact, a level of bureaucracy rarely seen in the history of governments. Here in recent events we actually saw it paralyze us to inaction.

I raise this as hopefully a wakeup call. As we continue to help the victims of this storm god, and we must continue for as long as it takes, even if it is years, we must also ALL look to what went wrong and how we can change. This is not exclusively for government officials, each and everyone of us can do something to prepare for the future. If you have any medical training from boy scout first aid to more advanced, sign up with the red cross or community emergency response teams (CERTs) to assist in the case of regional situations. If you are a technology geek, volunteer for the same teams to help create communication systems, as these are more important that even medical aid. A good doctor can help dozens, a communication system can affect thousands. We need people with tech skills. If you have neither, sign up to be able to help distribute food or blankets in the future.

There was a time when we felt that being a citizen of a country required us all to take a ownership role and help where we can, not necessarily as a job but as a volunteer, as a citizen. This is our wake-up call, to survive the next century when other countries want to become greater than us at all cost, and some praying daily for our demise, we need to come together and WANT to be citizens, we need to remember it is a privilege and we can help. Not all of us need to fly to the southern states, we can start preparing for the future, by volunteering today. So asses your skills (teachers, medics, engineers, social workers, etc), pick your favorite organization and sign up to help.

God Bless America.