Texas and Louisiana

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. I have been watching the news all weekend as Houston and the surrounding area is inundated by Hurricane Harvey. It's brutal and hopefully this will be handled better than Katrina. When that storm hit it set the stage for the return of Randy Newman's Louisiana 1927. Newman's lyric was remarkable and seemed to capture the future event using the circumstances of the past.

What has happened down here is the wind have changed

Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain

Rained real hard and rained for a real long time

Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

Obviously the song isn't suited to the current situation, but it is still evocative. Randy Newman is good at story songs whether it be Sail Away, Burn On, or any number of other songs. I thought about Galveston by Jimmy Webb, but it doesn't really apply here as it was an anti-war song. Especially the Glen Campbell version. The Jimmy Webb version is closer, but still... the other important part of Newman's song is the way President Coolidge dealt with the tragedy. We know how George W. Bush handled Katrina (heckuva job Browny) so let's hope that Trump doesn't get in the way of the recovery. We'll see. 

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train

With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand

The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame 

What the river has done to this poor crackers land"