Remembering Mississippi

A friend wondered via IM this evening why New Orleans is getting all the press, post-Katrina. My response was because it’s New Orleans. Gulfport, Biloxi, Pass Christian: they’re not famous for anything, whereas the Crescent City is famous for food, music, and floozies. (And not necessarily in that order.)
Also, the water came in to Gulfport, et al, then left. When you have a metropolis that’s below sea level, the water comes in and it stays, aka, the “bowl effect.”
What is doubly unfortunate for Mississippi residents is their state’s decision to put all of its eggs in the basket of the casinos, some of which are now in the middle of highways and further inland. These were previously floating casinos, mind you. Personally, I saw little in terms of results with regard to the casino revenue bootstrapping the state up from the bottom of every good list and off the top of every bad list things are measured by. Perhaps the silver lining for Mississippi will be the forcing of the state and local governments to look at alternative forms of revenue, etc., instead of relying on gambling, which, let’s be honest, annually took in more money from its own residents than it did tourists.
This was especially true once Louisiana legalized gambling, and goes back to the point of being famous mentioned above. Why go to Gulfport or Biloxi to gamble when you can do it in New Orleans?
So in the hope of showing at least a sliver of the Internet-using population why Mississippi is as deserving of your donations as the Big Easy, I’ll point you to photos of the devastation courtesy of the Florida Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.