Recently, Houston has been the recipient of several thousand refugees from the Katrina affected areas. Most of these refugees are being housed out of the Astrodome and, according to sources, are loving every minute of it. Brandy and I had planned to do some volunteer work there, but according to her parents the volunteer ratio is pretty high right now, so we decided to wait until Houstonians have ADD’ed about volunteering before going down there since, from the looks of things, they will be here for several months, if not permanently. Houston ISD has already decided to accept the refugees into local schools so that they don’t fall behind.
My cold heart goes out to these people, since their lives kind of suck right now. Don’t forget to get see the Galleria and water wall; they’re great tourist attractions. If you get hard pressed for something to do you could visit all the locations in Houston where Reality Bites was filmed. Here are a couple of reasons why Houston is a cool place to be, even though it’s hot as hell. I don’t actually know how hot hell is, but it HAS to be close. This place is hot.
While watching the news I’ve seen countless people proclaim that this tragedy has increased their faith in god, which I just don’t understand. I can see how interacting with the good Samaritans might increase your faith in human goodness, but not in god. From my perspective, Kanye west may think that Bush doesn’t care about black people, but it looks to me like god just has it in for people in the south, black and white. Maybe god is trying to destroy the electoral base that make up the red state gimmes in MS and AL, but decided to take out the semi-swing state of LA out as well. Judging by this electoral map, these states don’t make up a very large portion of the electoral votes needed, but every electoral vote counts. For detailed election results check out this election result site maintained by Dave Leip.
As if there weren’t already enough links in this post, here are a few storm and charity related links:
Services (via Matt)
Survivor locator
Charities
Red Cross
SPCA (they need newspapers for the pets)
Charity scams/gotchas
http://www.komotv.com/news/mnewsaction.asp?ID=38871