Sunday Afternoon

If you live in Louisiana or anywhere in the path of Hurricane Katrina, I hope you're reading this either from a safe location elsewhere, or days later when you return to find your home safe and undamaged.

Events like this that remind me of a line I quoted here a while back. Someone asked Kurt Vonnegut, "What's the purpose of life?" and he replied…

Well, I have a son who writes very well. He just wrote one book; it's called The Eden Express. It's my son Mark, who is a pediatrician and who went crazy and recovered to graduate from Harvard Medical School. But anyway, he says, and I've quoted him in a couple of my books, "We're here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."

I think of that in times of crisis. I'm not sure if we can ever stop wars and man-made destruction in this world but I know we can't stop things like hurricanes. All we can do is help each other get through these things.