Of all the things I wanted to wake up to this morning, CNN.com declaring in the largest letters possible

54 DEAD IN MISSISSIPPI

Levee Breached in New Orleans

wasn’t one of them.
I’m sure that number will rise, as these things inevitably do. I pray for the families who have lost loved ones to this storm – may God bless them and provide for them in this time of loss and grief and may He strengthen the rescue workers who have a lot of dangerous and exhausting work ahead of them. For those of you in Mississippi, Louisiana and surrounding areas – know that we’re praying for you. For those of us unaffected by this – let’s pull together and do something akin to what we did for the victims of last year’s tsunami in S.E. Asia. I’m sure opportunities will arise.
(Small point: Does anyone else find CNN’s headline just a tad, well, ghoulish? Fox News’ main headline is “Flood Waters Burst Levee Barriers”. One conveys a bit of information, one gets caught up in the numbers. It’s almost as if their obsession with the Iraq body count has been carried over into this tragedy.)