234 animal, vegetable, miracle
We allowed ourselves a break before the challenge of hoisting, pluck-
ing, and dressing the turkeys. While Lily and her friends constructed
feather crowns and ran for the poultry house to check in with the living,
the adults cracked open beers and stretched out in lawn chairs in the
September sun. Our conversation turned quickly to the national preoc-
cupation of that autumn: Katrina, the hurricane that had just hit southern
Louisiana and Mississippi. We were horrified by the news that was begin-
ning to filter out of that flooded darkness, the children stranded on roof-
tops, the bereaved and bewildered families slogging through streets
waist-deep in water, breaking plate glass windows to get bottles of water.
People drowning and dying of thirst at the same time.
It was already clear this would be an epic disaster. New Orleans and
countless other towns across southern Louisiana and Mississippi were
being evacuated and left for dead. The news cameras had focused solely
on urban losses, sending images of flooded streets, people on rooftops,
broken storefronts, and the desperate crises of people in the city with no
resources for relocating or evacuating. I had not seen one photograph
from the countryside—a wrecked golf course was the closest thing to it. I
wondered about the farmers whose year of work still lay in the fi elds, just
weeks or days away from harvest, when the flood took it all. I still can’t say
whether the rural victims of Katrina found their support systems more
resilient, or if their hardships simply went unreported.
The disaster reached into the rest of the country with unexpected ten-
tacles. Our town and schools were already taking in people who had lost
everything. The office where I’d just sent my passport for renewal was
now underwater. Gasoline had passed $3 a gallon, here and elsewhere,
leaving our nation in sticker shock. U.S. citizens were making outlandish
declarations about staying home. Climate scientists were saying, “If you
warm up the globe, you eventually pay for it.” Economists were eyeing our
budget deficits and predicting collapse, mayhem, infrastructure break-
down. In so many ways, disaster makes us take stock. For me it had in-
spired powerful cravings about living within our means. I wasn’t thinking
so much of my household budget or the national one but the big budget,
the one that involves consuming approximately the same things we pro-
duce. Taking a symbolic cue from my presumed- soggy passport, I sud-