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Anderson Cooper, who this whole year has been painstakingly and relentlessly covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on CNN, dedicated a couple of shows this week to the 1st anniversary of the devastating storm and sinking of New Orleans. I didn't get a chance to watch him contextualize what was a career-making because personally resonating experience for him (read Dispatches from the Edge, and you'll see what I mean), but I feel sure he is still asking all the right questions. Someone has to.

This photo was by far the most affecting to me out of all of the terrible images back then. It appeared on the front page of the Globe and Mail just days after the levees broke. There is still no precise estimate of dead, which is both tragic and unacceptable. 

The way you die is just as important as how you live and noone should die like this anywhere, but particularly not in a country as rich as the United States. 

"Hope is not a plan," said Anderson Cooper about the city, state and federal non-action for cleaning the mess up. Neither are quotes from the Old Testament, which I heard from Mayor Ray Nagin at a gathering to mark the anniversary. I'm not saying hoping and praying aren't appropriate and human, they're just clearly not enough. One year later certain areas of New Orleans remain untouched, work is still unfinished on the upgraded levees and hurricane season is just getting underway. Some people are still saying it's a class and race issue, since some of the more affluent areas are up. Maybe they're right. What else explains the disparity?

It's so hard to tell what motivates world leaders sometimes. If it's popularity we should not give them the satisfaction (I don't delete our PM from this line of thinking, since he manipulated our minority parliament to extend Canadian troops commitment to 2009, a scuffle we really have no business being involved in). Sometimes I just think it's easier, like the millions of people who do it everyday, to turn a blind eye to this stuff. Maybe the only thing that matters is what Jessica Simpson wore to the MTV Video awards last night, or if she was hanging with her ex, Nick Lachey (I just unfortunately heard some Entertainment Tonight headlines!)

I've been called a bleeding heart, and maybe I am. I fail to see what's wrong with that! Shouldn't we all be?

(For an interesting take on the Bush government and Katrina please read this Now Magazine article, Making a Killing on Disaster by Naomi Klein.)