Response to Should We Abandon Louisiana? In some ways, we already have.

    Should We Rebuild Louisiana by Zack Kopplin is an article that addresses the question: Should we rebuild Louisiana after the flood? During the flood in August, there were 13 people who died and many people who were dispersed all over Louisiana knowing they might have lost everything. This was the biggest disaster since Hurricane Sandy in the United States. Unlike Hurricane Sandy, this flood did not have any media attention before the flooding began. Kopplin says, many people woke up one morning with water in their house. Hurricane Sandy was in the media for a while before it actually hit, but no one expected the flooding Louisianans got. 

This disaster was devastating to Louisiana's People, Ecosystems and culture but facing the facts the people of Louisiana have persevered by gutting their houses. I think this is what we should do because if we don't stay and abandon Louisiana then we lose this culturally diverse area within the United States. Many people cannot rebuild due to the governmental organization FEMA not supplying flood evacuees enough money to rebuild. I feel like the government should be focused more on finding ways to prevent this culturally diverse heartland instead of finding places to relocate inhabitants of Louisiana.

The Flood

I got into a good routine, school in the morning, football after school. I thought this was going to be a good start but then the disaster hit.  It started pouring rain without letting up.  When we first got news that school was canceled, we didn’t know why. But then as the week when on, it kept raining every single day. I started hearing of people going and getting sandbags for the fear that their houses may flood.  I immediately tried to do whatever I could to help. As a football team, we started to go and help people that needed it. We would go out at 9:30 every morning and not come back until around five.

          The first day we went to Wayne Stabile’s house. Immediately when we opened the door, the smell of mildew and mold rushed into my nose. We started taking out furniture, books, and beds.  After that we started pulling up the floors. This was one of the worst smells I have ever smelled. We had to pull up all the floors in every room. I thought we would never get finished. Then after that we started pulling out the sheet rock that got wet in the flood.  It was painstaking work but we finally finished it.  After that we did eight more houses as a team.  Most of the people who went to Episcopal did not get flooded. But when the disaster hits like that one the only thing you can do is help and that is exactly what we did.  This event helped me realize that even if nothing happened to you, you still need to do your part to help others.

A land more kind than home

         This week I read chapters 8 - 11 in "A Land More Kind Than Home." In these chapters the narrator is Jess. The chapters start with her and her grandfather leaving Mrs. Lyle's house because Jess shouldn't be there with Stump's dead body, so the Grandfather takes her home. Then Jess start to think about what her life would be like without Stump, and all her memories flushed out of her.   She was thinking about how Stump's favorite thing to do was catch fireflies. 

         Then the grandfather told Jess to go get ready for bed. When Jess goes into her room she remembers about Stump's private things which are in a shoebox on a shelf. When she opens the shoebox, she sees something that she made for him. It was an ornament for a Christmas tree which resembled a firefly. Jess gave this to him for a present before he died. Then when Jess was trying to go to sleep she heard the door close and saw her grandfather in the tobacco fields cutting down tobacco. Then she falls asleep and that's for the chapter ends.