hopelessly devoted to deconstructing popular culture and conventional wisdom, one blog at a time

Published Tuesday, September 06, 2005 by seanlmccarthy | E-mail this post

IT IS A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL: A week after Katrina, and still, plenty of shock to go around -- from the news and images on the ground to the lack of explanation from those who should be in charge. The other night, one of many stories to come out of New Orleans piqued my interest as the local TV newscast Sunday retold the tale of a guy who commandeered a bus out of the city and picked up strangers along the way. I was curious to hear exactly what the story was there, but I quickly became distracted when the guy they showed on the screen looked more than vaguely familiar. He looked like a guy I knew. A guy whose sister I dated back in the mid-1990s. And then the TV newscast put a name to his face and I was certain of it. Even though he was more than 10 years and thousands of miles removed from when and where I knew him -- Twin Falls, Idaho -- Sean Thorpe found himself in the middle of Katrina's wake. A Google search last night turned up no print article on him or his Katrina story. Google could locate his sister, so I e-mailed her. She replied, said he is doing OK physically, more info to come. All of this makes it more than difficult to focus on the often-trivial nature of my work. And that's a good thing.