Marshall Ramsey

Just a few things you’ll need in your “Hurricane Isaac Survival Kit:”

1. Water: Unless you are Kevin Costner in Waterworld and can drink your own pee, you need a gallon of water per person per day. Or something like that.  Fill a tub, too. Flushing the toilet is necessary every five days or so (although my sons would argue.)

2. Food: If you only have an electric can opener, don’t buy 1,000 cans of tuna.  The cat will start to look delicious after three days.  Buy stuff you can actually eat without having to cook it.  Raw Ramen Noodles are crunchy and suck.

3. Batteries: Your house will get freakin’ dark without power.  Trust me. Oh, and a flashlight helps, too.

4. A hand-crank radio: You can go the “battery radio,” but this way, you get a little exercise while huddling in the dark, wondering if you’re going to die.

5. Prescription drugs: Make sure you have lots of Xanax — especially if you have small kids whining about not being able to play on their X-Box.  Make sure you have plenty of blood pressure meds, too.

6. A generator: If you have the cash, why not? At least you can keep your freezer going and be able to watch the national media refer to Mississippi as “the land mass between Mobile and New Orleans.”

7. A chainsaw: Um, no, scratch that.  You don’t want to end up like Jack Nicholson in the Shining and cutting through a door screaming, “Here’s Johnny!” (although they are handy when cutting the pine tree off of your house.)

8. Patience: You need lots of this so you don’t end up shooting the guy who tries to cut in front of you in the gas station.  And of course, when your kids get in a fight every three minutes for fun.

9. Cell Phone: Make sure they are charged up and your five-year-old doesn’t wear the battery down by playing Angry Birds all day.

10. Evacuation plan: If you are along the coast, be prepared to evacuate.  If you are inland and don’t have A/C for a week, also be prepared to get the heck out of Dodge.

11. Cash: ATM’s and cash registers become boat anchors when there is no power.  Unless you have live chickens to barter, you’ll need something to buy stuff with after the storm.

12: Toilet paper: It’s crappy if you run out. You’d hate to use pictures of your in-laws and the daily paper.

13. A Sense of Humor: If you can’t laugh at a time like this, you have bigger problems than a hurricane in the Gulf.

Feel that burning sensation? I do. It’s our scars. Those deep, ugly ones we received seven years ago when Hurricane Katrina blasted ashore.

Recovery is a funny word.  It means getting back to normal.  Yeah right, “normal.”  We didn’t go back to where we were before the storm. No, not at all.  I suppose, the cliche “new normal” probably would be more appropriate.  You know it as well as I do that Katrina changed us.  And if you don’t believe me, watch how we’re acting now that a hurricane entered the Gulf of Mexico.

Enter Isaac.

Isaac is no Katrina.  So far, he has not intensified as rapidly as his nastier aunt.  And he has not caused the same amount of damage to South Florida, either.  As I write, his path continues to migrate west of Katrina’s (more like Betsy’s at this point) — but Mississippi is still under the gun.  Each hurricane has his or her own unique way of killing. The residents of the Gulf Coast and inland will feel his effects. Surge, high winds, tornadoes and copious amounts of rain are coming.  It’s bringing up some pretty nasty memories for me.

And I’m not alone. Last night at 8 p.m., the Madison, Miss. Kroger gas station and several other gas stations in the area were swarmed.  If you weren’t around back then, after Katrina, you couldn’t get gasoline in Central Mississippi for days. And let me tell you, that was so much fun. Gas lines formed. School was cancelled. Civilization began to break down.  That not-so-pleasant memory is driving people to fill up their cars’ gas tanks this time.  I know I did. And people are flocking to grocery stores, too. We all know this is more than the “bread and milk” panic you get before a Southern snow storm.  Trees down after Katrina caused electrical outages for days.  It’s good to have lots of peanut butter on hand when the electric stove becomes a nice kitchen decoration for a couple of weeks.

But what really irked so many people yesterday was that the national media once again practically ignored Mississippi during its coverage. And that scar burned like the sun. It was like Katrina all over again. Back then, we all heard about was New Orleans and its (horrible) drowning due to levee collapses. I didn’t realize how bad Mississippi had been ignored by the coverage (due to power outages I wasn’t watching a lot of TV) until 2006 when I spoke at a Katrina conference in Boston. I actually had a student of a very expensive college ask me “Did Katrina hit Mississippi?”  She had thought the hurricane had only hit New Orleans. I felt nauseous.  Yesterday, in a cruel deja vu, CNN and The Weather Channel both glossed over Mississippi when the forecast tract was aiming right at the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Apparently someone on the The Weather Channel referred to the “land mass between Mobile and New Orleans.”

Social media exploded in rage.

My twitter feed lit up like a Biloxi casino. A great Facebook page “The landmass between Mobile and New Orleans” was born.  People contacted The Weather Channel, Al Roker, Jim Cantore, CNN and others directly on Twitter. When Katrina hit, social media didn’t exist.  Today, we have ways to talking back to the people who cover hurricanes.  Our scars burned and they got an earful.  Jim Cantore acknowledged us in a Tweet. The Weather Channel sent reporters (although it is only fair to mention that Cantore rode out Katrina in the VA Hospital in Gulfport).  The word “Mississippi” was rolling off tongues by the end of the evening.

So how do we soothe our scars? We just have to ride this one out. But in the meantime, we can’t panic. We just have to do what we have always done: Hope for the best and plan for the worst.   It’s time to get our three-day plan in place (be able to be self-sufficient for three days — check MEMA’s website for more).  We learned that lesson during Katrina, too.

Godspeed for the next few days.  I pray that Isaac fizzles and no one is injured by his wrath. I pray Mississippi’s strength shines through this week. And I pray that someday, our scars from Katrina will finally heal.

So the United State Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) finally caught its white whale. The anti-doping agency has pursued seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong with Captain Ahab-like persistence; and last night, Armstrong cried uncle. While he still denies he cheated, he refused arbitration. Immediately the USADA stripped him of his titles. And in their glee, I’m surprised they didn’t take away his birthday, too.  The agency protected the honor of a sport that’s as pristine as a sewage lagoon. It’s a dark day in Livestrongland.

Don’t get me wrong: If he truly cheated (he failed no other drug test to this point), he cheated. You do the crime, you do the time. There has to be punishment for breaking rules. And Lance Armstrong has now been punished. Severely. But part of me wonders what is next for the dethroned king of cycling.  Will he wander the Earth like Pete Rose, claiming innocence but never being allowed into the promised land?  Or will he attack this like he did cancer or the mountains in the Pyrenees and overcome it?  Time will tell.

What the USADA and all Armstrong’s critics can’t take away, though, is his effect on the cancer community. Thousands and thousands of cancer survivors have been inspired by his fight and survival.  I know: I’m one of them.  He may have cheated in cycling, but he also cheated death. And in the process, he gave the ultimate prize to so many: Hope.

I’m not going to allow last night’s news to take that hope away from me.  I learned a longtime ago about human frailty. I’ve seen priests, coaches, politicians and friends fall short of the esteem I held them in. But in a world that contains lots of gray between the black and white, I know that even flawed messengers can have powerful messages.  I wish Armstrong well as he rebuilds his life.  And I thank him for helping me rebuild mine.