Randy Byers, Seattle, WA, USA

I’ve just read much (but not all) of Challenger 23, and I feel a bit overwhelmed by the hurricane coverage. I feel that I learned a lot about both you and the city from your piece. I’ve read a lot of post-Katrina stories, but yours was one of the best I’ve seen at personalizing it. Likewise for Linda Krawecke’s story of watching the events from the UK while worrying about what was happening to her family.

Both of these stories brought back the horror and anger and distress I felt in the aftermath of the hurricane. At the time, the destruction of New Orleans seemed worse to me than 9/11, because my own country was failing its people. Both my sister and my mother went down to the area with the Red Cross afterwards, and listening to their stories helped me feel that decent people were working to fix things. But the Bush administration’s stall tactics with the congressional hearings are in the headlines today, and just this morning I overheard a woman in a coffee shop talking about how she’s just been down in New Orleans and how devastated it still looks.

I hope you continue to give your perspective on the aftermath in the years to come. As you say, it will take years to see how well the city can survive this disaster. It seems like the soul of our nation has been laid bare, and it’s hard to look at. It’s not a pretty sight, and yet you can’t look away, because it’s you, too.

Don’t know if this makes any sense. Reading the stories in Challenger was like grabbing onto the live wire again. I feel like I’ve been jolted.