Katrina

The storm bearing down on the Big Easy is, in a word, awesome. Some of my deeper roots extend to Bogalusa and we still have family in the Pontchartrain area. We're thinking about them today as well as everyone else threatened by Katrina, including my lawyer buddies at Adams & Reese. Good luck, down there.

Although I doubt many have forgotten, I will remind folks that not everyone is on the side of humanity in these circumstances. There are people like James Wolcott who will watch this gathering storm with hopes of great destruction and loss of life:

I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.

Wolcott, of course, writes from New York -- one of our few remaining pristine natural spaces. Oh, and he writes for Vanity Fair.