Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
One Mississippi....
Last Mississippi post - promise.
We flew in last Friday on what was to be the only nice day of the trip. It was a glorious spring day, and you could see the green tint of the landscape with spots of white flowers in all the trees. It was interesting to see all the damage from Hurricane Katrina flying into the Jackson area. Parts of the area looked like scenes from the Mt. St. Helen's eruption where trees were all blown down like little toothpicks in the same direction. Vast tracts of them.
Mississippi is host to a huge chicken farming industry. Most of these birds are raised in long, low lying, tin sheds that are each about 100 yards long. You can see them glinting in the sun and dotting the flat landscape in groups of 2, 3, and 5 or more everywhere you look. Here and there, they had been crumpled like pieces of aluminum foil.
There were plenty of blue tarps on roofs, evidence of recently replaced roofs, new construction, huge debris piles, obvious recent damage to the older trees in town, the State Fairgrounds next to the downtown area had a lot of damage, and the Capitol Museum was still closed because it's roof had been badly damaged.
Jackson, Mississippi is 150 miles INLAND from New Orleans.
