Miracle on the Mirabeau

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Push on Survivors!  We will never forget, will always praise, and will one day applaud your revival.

Reflecting

  

I remember vividly that desolate summer morning when Katrina slammed ashore and turned this once vivacious city upside down.

Understanding

    

Since my endearing college days, when I would embark on an yearly pilgrimage to N'awlins for Mardi Gras, this vibrant city of Cajun, Creole and Crawfish pie has stayed mythically close to my heart, soul and palette.

    But for the last ten years until now, I had failed to make my trek even after the levees catastrophically failed and after my heroic hospital ship COMFORT steamed ahead full speed to deliver aid.

Negotiating

    Just like many cataclysmic events of grand enormity, Katrina is rifed with heated controversy. Surely evacuation could have occurred earlier. The Convention Center and Superdome where hundreds of thousands of refugees stayed had no food and water. Where in the matter of mere hours, New Orleans had slipped from a popular tourist hub to third world decadence livid with homeless people, missing children, damaged homes and destroyed lives.

Inspiring

    

   That is why this purposeful run was so inspiring. It wasn't the trot through Bourbon Street or the French Quarter that was so mesmerizing. It was the long 26 mile run that took us through Mirabeau Avenue that gripped my heart and gilded the inner reaches of my soul.

Navigating

    

    So as I pushed on, the realization sinked in that the pain that I was feeling right now, paled in true comparison to the pain that these victims of the most devastating natural disaster in the US felt -- the remorseful pain that seared our collective images as we clicked our remotes -- the storm that Louisianans had always known would come, but forever feared it desolately.

     Putting things in perspective, the last five miles became a dreamy cake walk and I look forward to remembering and revisiting the nice people (Noel, Joelle, Oliver) who so magnanimously invited me to their homes and gave me a slim but sensational taste of the sights, sounds and sorrows that echoed from the deadly eye of the storm.

    Push on Survivors!  We will never forget, will always praise, and will one day applaud your revival.

    The rest of us will always support you.