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.Sheila, Get Wise.Mr.Wise?You’re on the air.Yes.I have been listening to these last few callers, and what I wanted to say is this.You all believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ.You have a personal relationship with the Lord.Yes.What I don’t hear in what the people has said is any compassion for people in trouble.You seem so mean…I haven’t listened to your show before this, but we had to evacuate here and I heard your show…Where did you evacuate from, ma’am?We are from New Orleans.Well I am glad that you listened to the warnings and got out and made it to safety.Thank you, praise God, but there was a lot of people in New Orleans and other places who weren’t…who didn’t have the means to get out.And also the people whose houses got flooded out, that was the fault of the levees.They had levees that cracked and that’s what sent the water.Now people can’t fix a levee by themselves.But what I mean is, how can you look at people when they suffering, some of these people lost their parents or children…My brother had his two children had to be sent two different places.Families got tore apart, and some of these people had nothing to begin with.And it seem to me that if we are talking about what Jesus would do or say, how can you look at people suffering…Ma’am……and say “I wash my hands of him.” You almost sound like you’re making fun of people who lost their house…Ma’am…If that is how I sounded I didn’t mean it to sound that way.But now let me ask you a question.You say you are from New Orleans.Yes, I am.I live in the Seventh Ward, and I lived there my whole life.Did anybody ever tell you that it wasn’t smart to build a house below sea level?What you want people to do? Your mama and daddy are there, and your grandparents, and the church you go to…You didn’t just get dropped someplace and pick up and leave…Answer my question: Did anyone ever tell you it wasn’t smart to build a house below sea level?Look, motherf—Okay, next caller; Frank from Arlington, Virginia.Frank, Get Wise…One afternoon early in their third week in Elkton, Craig found Gus in the kitchen listening to the radio and shaking his head.Craig recognized the voice; everyone knew that voice:Nobody wants to see anybody lose their homes, and our thoughts and sympathy go out to everybody who listened to the weather service and got out of town, took the kids and the most valuable stuff and acted like responsible adults.But I think most of us wonder why we should be stuck cleaning up after people who didn’t bother listening to the warnings, who just sat around and said, “Why should I bother? Somebody’ll give me a handout like they always do…” It’s another case of wanting Big Brother to do everything.Like—do you remember this one?—the lady who sued McDonald’s when she spilled coffee all over herself, saying the coffee was too hot? And won? Do you remember this? Okay we’re going to go to Billy in St.Augustine…“Tell ’em, Bobby,” Gus said.Craig took a deep breath and looked in the refrigerator for the soy milk he had bought the day before.Bobby Wise’s voice was a sound guaranteed to drive him up a wall.The show was hard to escape, especially through the South and Midwest.“I can’t see,” Gus said, “why people would just sit around scratching themselves when they know something like this is on the way.Can you explain this to me?”Calmly, Craig thought to himself.It would be so much easier if Gus were a bad drunk and you could blame it on the booze talking, or if he were just a coldhearted son-of-a-bitch.But he was a loving, generous-hearted man who had worked hard his entire life.How could he be so susceptible to this vile crap? Craig usually tried to avoid the kitchen during the times when Gus was listening to Bobby Wise.“Well,” Craig began, “a lot of the people I think you’re talking about don’t have cars and couldn’t get out.The city was supposed to provide buses, which they never did.And a lot of them aren’t particularly sophisticated…”“How sophisticated do you have to be to get out of the way of a Category Five hurricane?”Craig kept on.“…people; they hear year in and year out about storms coming and it’s always a false alarm.Evacuating is expensive and a lot of them have big families…”“That’s part of the problem right there,” Gus said.“They have five or six kids on the welfare that they can’t take care of, and it’s everybody else’s problem.”Craig was about to say that “families” could mean aging, sick parents, it could mean a lot of things…But he stopped himself.The gray-haired, crew-cut man with the craggy face looked up at him from the kitchen table as if he really expected an answer from Craig, and at that moment Alice walked into the room and a quick glance between them told her everything she needed to know.“Uncle Gus,” she said, kissing him on the cheek, “I’m going to have to steal Craig away from you.We have to go to the store and then he has to go do an article.”“Okay, Allie,” he said, kissing her back.“I was just giving him a hard time anyway.Sorry, there, Craig; there’s a lot of things the old flight mechanic doesn’t understand too well.”“There’s a lot of things I don’t understand, too, Gus,” Craig said, jollying it along.“I guess we’d better be going.See you for dinner?”“You bet,” Gus said.Outside, Craig thanked Alice for saving him.“I really thought I was going to lose it.”“Well, don’t lose it; they are putting us up and being incredibly generous to us.”For his second column, Craig had decided to track down some New Orleans evacuees.By talking to Catholic Charities, the Red Cross, and the Salvation Army, Craig came up with a provisional list of sites, mostly churches, where groups of New Orleans evacuees were being temporarily housed.Small groups of evacuees had landed all over Chicago, awaiting the next step, whatever it might be.That afternoon, Craig visited a church, Our Lady of Lima, which was embedded on a short street that connected two longer streets in Old Town, on the North Side.Eight New Orleans families were reportedly quartered there.As he approached the church, Craig found three people sitting on the front steps of the brick building next door, two women in their thirties and a boy who looked to be about nine or ten years old, who was bouncing up and down in place, shaking one of his hands.The women returned Craig’s tentative nod, warily, watching him.On a hunch he asked them if this was where the “folks from New Orleans” were.The women looked at him guardedly.The one wearing a kelly-green T-shirt, culottes and sandals, said, “We from New Orleans.”Craig’s heart quickened.He introduced himself and told them what he was doing there.“You from New Orleans?” the one in green said.“You evacuated up here?”Craig told her the short version of their story, and how he came to be doing these articles, told them he was the editor of Gumbo, which she had not heard of.“I heard of it,” the other said.“It like a magazine.”“Where you stayed at in New Orleans,” the other asked.Craig told her.“When they going to let us back in?”Craig, slipping his tape recorder out of his bag, tried to establish control of the conversation by asking her, in return, where they lived.“Lafitte Projects, baby,” the second one said.“Orleans Avenue
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Tematy
Index3.Longin Jan Okoń Longin Jan Okoń Trylogia Indiańska. Tom III ladami Tecumseha
O. CZESŁAW KANIAK ZA PRZYCZYNĽ MARYI PRZYKŁADY OPIEKI KRÓLOWEJ RÓŻAŃCA WIĘTEGO (Przykłady na maj) Tom I
Erikson Steven Malazańska Księga Poległych Tom 5.2 Przypływy Nocy. Siódme Zamknięcie
Clancy Tom Jack Ryan 04 Polowanie na Czerwony Padziernik
Encyklopedia spraw międzynarodowych i ONZ (tom III) Edmund Mańczyk
1. Piękny Drań Christina Lauren
Antoni Ferdynand Ossendowski Lenin (1930)
wladyslaw syrokomla wycieczki po litwie w promieniach od wilna
Gina Wilkins Lato
134. Marshall Paula Urodzona pod szczęÂśliwą gwiazdą