In the 1930's, a ten year drought led to widespread bankruptcies in the Midwest and to the dissolution of scores and scores of family farms - which in turn led to a vast inner-migration as impoverished farmers - known as Okies - left the drought-stricken dust bowls of the Midwest and tried to make a new life for themselves - all over the USA, but mostly out West.
They were refugees of sorts - evacuees - vacating the Dust Bowl for a new "promised land"... The novel THE GRAPES OF WRATH immortalized the ordeal many faced as they made this journey.
The drought was slow and insidious and pernicious; it wreaked its havoc months by month and year by year - months and years that seemed hopeless.
Last week, Nature wreaked a massive and sudden blow to a region almost as large as the area hit by the Great Drought, and has displaced - in one fell swoop - perhaps as many as a million people. Some will make new lives for themselves and their families in the wake of the storm surge and the flood. Some will return and rebuild in their cities and towns, and replant their roots.
With the help of a feeling nation, ALL the survivors, (those who relocate and those who return) - and this nation, will sumount the difficulties brought on by this natural catastrophe, and the efforts and its results will reinvigorate the entire nation. It will be a struggle - just like in the 1930's, but we will make it. And we will be the better for it, too.
Godpseed.
UPDATE: More HERE - (YAHOO/CSM: "The great Katrina migration"), (hat tip PRAIRIE PUNDIT).
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