Writing in the latest issue of East Texas Catholic, newspaper of the Beaumont Diocese, editor Karen Gilman puts into perspective Hurricane Ike and the damage it caused along the Texas Gulf Coast and elsewhere.
“When my life is disrupted I feel I am having problems and have to find solutions,” she wrote in her column in the paper’s latest issue.
“Alone in a house in an evacuated neighborhood, stay the night with friends. No power for eight days, boil water on the gas stove for my coffee. … Can’t get to the grocery store because of short hours of operation, a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast is just fine,” she said.
“But when I sit and think, these are just inconveniences, not problems. Because it’s all perspective,” she added.
Some in Beaumont say Ike wasn’t as bad as Hurricane Rita in 2005, according to Gilman, but she urged everyone to think about the storm from the perspective of those in communities that got slammed and found that the storm surge deposited fish in the yard, drowned family pets, poisoned crops and ruined pastures.
“You just got your East Texas Catholic in the mail. Others in our diocese don’t even have a mailbox,” she told readers.
Filed under: CNS
