19 Years Later
Next year there will be a glut of remembrances, so I'll sneak this in on the 19th-ish. Katrina really was "the big one" for me. Ordinarily I would talk about it from the perspective of a late-blooming son of unique parents, being the baby of the family that was sort of programmed to stay close in case of emergency. Not that I was all that useful in emergencies, mind you. Just being there was it, as if I'm just that precious a human commodity. I'm older now, and realize a lot of a misapprehensions, so the way I would describe my experience is greatly humbled. Alfred Sr. and Lynn had inculcated wanderlust and creative ambition in all their kids, and we were all diasporized to varying degrees. I, however, was least of all inclined among my siblings to forge a completely independent, orthogonal path in life. I loved where I came from, and I had long reconciled and conceded that my birth position was somewhat deterministic of what my role should be. It mattered o
