while i remember having similar thoughts in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 indian ocean tsumani as odin gets older and more perceptive i find myself thinking much more concretely about how i would explain what is ostensibly unexplainable.

beyond the unfathomable direct devastation caused by hurricane katrina, how do you explain a mayor issuing a “desperate SOS” or sniper fire during hospital evacuations or many of the other things that seemed impossibly implausible in a major american city just a few days ago.

no, really. i’m serious. what would/do you say to your kids? save the children put out a press release some pragmatic advice such as “turn off the television” and “give children reassurance and psychological first-aid”, but it seems like that sort of advice will only suffice for kids up to a certain age and at some point you’re going to have to answer some pretty tough questions.

and again, i know we’re a long way from needing to explain such things, but it’s impossible to not try and imagine how we’d justify to little odin, how something like this could happen again, eighty years after the great missippi flood of 1927 which diplaced some 700,000 people into hundreds of refugee camps – a disproportionate number of whom were poor african americans. it was an event that dramatically altered race relations then, and i suppose it’s an open question whether current events will alter them again.