"Hurricane Katrina obliterated Waveland, and state officials said it took a harder hit from the wind and water than any other town along the coast. The storm dragged away nearly every home and business within a half mile of the beach, leaving driveways and walkways to nowhere.
"The town of 7,000 about 35 miles east of New Orleans has been partially cut off because the U.S. 90 bridge over the Bay of St. Louis was destroyed. Rescue workers there Wednesday found survivors in makeshift shelters, surviving off what they found in the rubble. The air smelled of natural gas, lumber and rotting flesh.
"The storm surge left a few roofs intact but without the buildings attached to them. The water scattered random reminders of what had been normal, quiet lives: family photos, Barbie dolls, jazz records, whiskey bottles."Â (http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl083105waveland.11adc324.html )
Interestingly enough, the same year that Camille struck, 1969, an apparently unrelated incident was occurring in San Francisco, California, my old hometown. The first gathering of a "hippie" counterculture "peace, love and harmony with Mother Nature" group that came to be known as the Rainbow Family, or Rainbow Tribe, took place, the first of many, for unlike most 60's countercultural movements, this one had staying power and has attracted an international following, meeting annually on US Forest Service lands with thousands of attendees. To quote from their website:
" The Rainbow Family of Living Light, sometimes known as the "Rainbow Tribe", is an international loose affiliation of individuals who have a common goal of trying to achieve peace and love on Earth. Those who participate in, or sympathize with, the activities of this group sometimes refer to their group simply as the "Family". The words: Rainbow Family in the longer title are a reference to the group's inclusiveness of all colors or races. The use of the phrase: Living Light in the longer title is a reference to "living lightly", or living with little mass or impact on the environment. Rainbow family participants make the claim that their group is the "largest non-organization of non-members in the world"....There are no official leaders, no structure, no official spokespersons, and no membership. Instead, the Rainbow Family forms community through shared "traditions" of love for the Earth, and gatherings to pray for peace. It is maintained by councils consisting of any "non-member" who wishes to be part of the council." (see http://welcomehere.org/2007/ )
ÂTheir guiding principle is based on an old Native American Prophecy:
Â"When the earth is ravaged and the animals are dying, a new tribe of people shall come unto the earth from many colors, classes, creeds, and who by their actions and deeds shall make the earth green again. They will be known as the warriors of the Rainbow." (see http://welcomehome.org/rainbow/index.html )
ÂTo finally make the connection between Waveland and the Rainbow Family, just as in New Orleans when, in the days and weeks after Katrina hit and FEMA was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, the activist group Common Ground stepped in to take the lead in helping the destitute, so too did the Rainbow Family step in at Waveland, right out of the clear blue sky, to help save the day for thousands of traumatized, starving and injured residents. The Family, never before running any kind of major disaster relief, gathered its forces from afar and made up its mind to set up, right in the parking lot of what was left of Fred's Department Store up on Highway 90, the "New Waveland Cafà © and Clinic", serving, with plenty of smiles and compassion, hot meals three times a day to between 2,500 and 5,000 people, as well as providing emergency medical assistance to everyone in the area. The juxtaposition of the "hippie" Family serving an historically red-neck, Baptist region may have seemed a bit weird, a kind of "Hair" meets "Deliverance" scenario, but it worked, and worked well. While FEMA fiddled and Bush postured in front of Potemkin Village stages, volunteer doctors and nurses traveled in from around the country to serve those in need, ultimately treating over five thousand patients before the Clinic finally folded its tent. (photo source: http://blogs.roanoke.com/kiln/archives/images/skd%20Brad%20Stone%20.jpg )
The altruistic organization, International Aid, facilitated donations of supplies and medicine from around the globe, and the Bastrop Christian Outreach Center also joined in to help. One of the Rainbow Family volunteers, Arjay Sutton, writing beautifully online in December, 2006, had this to say about his Katrina experiences, past and present:Â
"The first time I drove into Waveland, on September 11, 2005, almost two weeks after the storm, I navigated an obstacle course of the remains of Waveland's houses, businesses, cars, trucks, photo albums, children's toys.... everything.  All floated, mingled with the hidden, silent corpses of the people who used to live there, removed from moorings and foundations, and unceremoniously deposited in the middle of Route 603.  "Now imagine this drama played out in every beachside neighborhood, town, city, hamlet as much as 100 miles inland on every square inch of the coastland from New Orleans to Slidell to Pearlington to Waveland to Bay St. Louis to Pass Christian to Long Beach to Gulfport to Biloxi...all the way through Pascagoula, Bayou LaBatre, All the way to Mobile.  And you're the least densely populated of the lot.  And the poorest. "I don't try to imagine the horror the good people of Hancock County have endured.  And with a little help from their friends...friends they never knew they had...friends they might have ridiculed, chased away, or even locked up on August 27, 2005...I'm pleased to report that life in Hancock County is pretty much getting back to normal." (from the New Waveland Cafà © website, December 10, 2006, see http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl083105waveland.11adc324.html )
ÂBut Arjay also points out that this normalcy is rather superficial and ephemeral:
Â"....most people still live in FEMA trailers in the yards next to the wreckage of what used to be homes full of memories....Many watched as the debris truck picked up the remains of their homes, crushed them, then off to the dump for an eternity, perhaps to be uncovered by anthropologists centuries hence documenting the American Pompey.  "Like most of the Gulf Coast, the rebuilding has been tentative.  It's as if the entire region held its breath over the summer (of 2006), resigned to the worst--that another Katrina would rescramble the pieces as they were picked up--but working toward a future where people will tell their grandchildren about the "Hippie Cafà ©" across from the water tower. "....There are still no buildings along the beach and fewer contemplated.  Many of the lots stand abandoned, appearing much as they did on the morning of August 30, 2005.  Much of the beachfront is for sale...no insurance company will write a policy there, which might be just as well.  The waterfront looks like a grassy park where, for over a hundred years, grand Victorian houses opened their bay windows wide to catch the sea breeze under the shade of 300-year-old live oaks in the drenched summer air." (ibid)
ÂAnd he points out the cynical politics and economics overriding recovery:
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