I've never been to the Gulf Coast.

But I know that from now on, everything about the place is going to be talked about in terms of before Katrina and after Katrina. It's much too early to say what either was or will be like, just as it's too early for the political advantages and disadvantages to be discussed in Washington, D.C. (I have been there.)

I agree with Bill Clinton. A non-partisan panel ought to be set up later, a group similar to the 9-11 Commission or the Warren Commission that looked into the death of President John F. Kennedy. They should take a non-partisan (if that's possible in 2006) look at everything that happened -- what federal, state, local officials and citizens did or didn't do.

Disasters and the handling of them is not my area of expertise, but I do have some experience in reporting on them. And for several hurricane seasons, I've been amazed at the reporting of disasters.

I can't understand why reporters are asked to stand in the wind with their station's logo on their windbreaker and yell into a microphone that the wind's blowing. Having worked in television, I know the basic rule: Don't make the viewer feel like an idiot by telling him what he's seeing! And if you can only state the obvious in a written account, shut up.

For about 24 hours during the worst of Katrina, the reporting was about the looting that was happening. The looters caught on long before reporters did that with no electricity, it wasn't going to do much good to swipe a TV, washing machine, CD's, VCR's, etc. etc. if you couldn't do anything with them. Besides, they had to carry whatever they stole great distances through neck-deep water in order to keep any of it.

Whomever was at fault, there was a long time between basic needs and having those needs met. Many obviously took things they needed.

The note on a New Orleans wall photographed by Grayson County's EMS crew says it. This person probably will return the books, if the owner can ever be relocated.

It is like the story my parents told me about when they were moving back to Grayson County from Illinois, traveling in a Model T with three small children and a baby. They were met in the middle of a desolate stretch of road by a man with a shotgun who made all of them get out of the car while he searched it.

It was early in the Great Depression, and someone had stolen the man's winter supply of potatoes.

Mom had thought of bringing their sack of Illinois potatoes, but there wasn't room. If she had brought them, would they have been shot? Neither party could prove ownership of potatoes.

During and since Katrina there has been much talk about compassion, but compassion without action is about a notch and a half from lying.

We have heard a great deal about compassion from the current administration, but the gap between the haves and the have-nots got wider this year by about four million as it has now for several years. On the other side of the coin, we have seen Katrina victims valuing material possessions more than life itself.

What Katrina may have done, if a real Katrina Commission can ever be reality, is to force the me generation to finally look in the mirror. Much of what this generation has created amounted to a house of cards in the reality of Katrina.