Santa Gets Rowdy

Yesterday I had to drive through another desolate section of New Orleans, this one near the French Quarter area. It was heavily flooded and is still virtually deserted, but like the horrific Lakeview area I saw previously the destruction abruptly ends where the section adjacent to it seems almost normal. That's because the flood waters stopped at that point.
There is life where there was no flood water (only about 20% of the city) and emptiness elsewhere. Anyway, after seeing an automobile that was both overturned and still covered in the mud from the flood waters that carried it to it's death, sitting upside down on it's top in the middle of an interstate on ramp (which of course is still closed and the reason authorities left the car where it was), I decided I would take Jane to view part of Lakeview (it is closer, about 15 minutes from my own home) after I picked her up at school.
Well, we went. Her reaction was telling. She seemed speechless as we drove through the remains of what had once been a thriving, affluent community of homes, but now is simply rubble and gutted frames of damaged houses, some of which have fallen off their foundations from the rush of water that engulfed them for almost two weeks. Jane has seen the area pre Katrina, so the contrast now was eye popping for her.
"Is this worse than you expected," I asked Jane. She mumbled a "yes" and I could see she was having trouble believing the sites she saw. I worried that she was upset or would be traumatized. In one of those all too familiar but silly Hollywood disaster films it would be believable, but this was her home city and it wasn't a movie. Jane was mostly silent as I narrated an straightforward version of the scene and explained some of the repercussions of what had happened.
So why did I risk upsetting, no scaring Jane by taking her there? I wanted her to understand the magnitude, no the inhumanity of the obliteration. One can never understand a huge disaster site unless seeing it him or herself. The scope is too broad to be interpreted correctly, other than with the naked eye. Jane did utter a "I never knew it was so big" when I mentioned that the destruction went on for many miles in all directions, that this was a tiny part of it, and that it was much worse in some parts of the city, the state and in the neighboring Mississippi and Alabama coastal sections hit directly by Hurricane Katrina.
I reassured Jane that the mess was the result of negligence by politicians and engineers, who built a levee system that was far from what was supposed to be built. "Nature could not do this with assistance from man". Further, I told her what I hope will be the truth, "I want you to see this so you can tell your own children what happened, because it will never happen again." Well....it shouldn't happen again.
Oh, my! That naughty Santa is loose again. Not only are there drunken Santa's pillaging Auckland, but two more reports have surfaced of pre Christmas hanky panicky in Germany, as Santa sowed his oats this year before making his Christmas deliveries. In Ludwigshafen, Germany one Santa dressed in his best red suit, grabbed a gun and robbed a furniture store by forcing two cashiers to open the store safe.
You guessed it! He filled his sack with cash, locked the two female employees in the safe and escaped. Well that Santa may still be on the loose, but the one in Tuebingen, Germany got nabbed. He grabbed a toy machine gun , put on his red suit and robbed a bank in the town. But apparently Rudolph and the other reindeer are slowing down That Santa was caught hiding in a ditch in a nearby forest shortly after the robbery. "The machine gun was fake, " said the police who nabbed that fake Santa. It seems the impostor is also wanted for stealing 500,000 euros in four other robberies.
But what about another Santa in Dabringhausen, Germany who was found drunk in a Christmas market............Sigh.... I guess I should stop believing in Santa and stick with the Easter Rabbit this year.