Must See and Must Read


And to think Ms. Douchemook, pictured below, would literally throw all these kids and their parents away. Unbelievable.

Link to the article. Link to the slide slow.

One of the most common images in children’s art is the house: a square, topped by a pointy roof, outfitted with doors and windows.

So Karla Leopold, an art therapist from California, was intrigued when she noticed that for many of the young victims of Hurricane Katrina, the house had morphed into a triangle.

"At first we thought it was a fluke, but we saw it repeatedly in children of all ages," said Ms. Leopold, who with a team of therapists has made nine visits to Renaissance Village here, the largest trailer park for Katrina evacuees, to work with children. "Then we realized the internal schema of these children had changed. They weren’t drawing the house as a place of safety, they were drawing the roof."

Countless articles and at least five major studies have focused on the lasting trauma experienced by Hurricane Katrina survivors, warning of anxiety, difficulty in school, even suicidal impulses. But few things illustrate the impact as effectively as the art that has come out of sessions under the large white tent that is the only community gathering spot at Renaissance Village, a gravel-covered former cow pasture with high truancy rates and little to occupy youngsters who do not know when, or if, they will return home.

Even now the children’s drawings are populated by alligators, dead birds, helicopters and rescue boats. At a session in May one 8-year-old, Brittney Barbarin, drew a swimming pool full of squiggly black lines. Asked who was in the pool, she replied, "Snakes."

You know, what's amazing is that, in spite of being told by the likes of Confederate Douchemook that their lives are worthless, the vast majority of these kids will overcome the awfully steep obstacles that have been put in their way...hell, at this point, most are already more accomplished than Douchemook ever will be, and one day we might well discover that a few of these kids are truly talented beyond any of our imaginations.

On the flip side, though, is the possibility of a far more ominous future for some of these kids. And it's not like we haven't been warned.

Just as is the case for some of the soldiers we've sent off to Iraq, where they've discovered that the Douchemooks of this world likewise consider their lives worthless.