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I have a friend from Louisiana and has lived all but three years of her life near New Orleans. She and one of her old friends used to go to Central Market, buy olives, and then sit together while spitting the pits. Something so simple and seemingly unimportant, but that's what builds the character of a place and the people from there. Through disaster and bureaucracy, tragedy and red tape, it's the two old friends, snacking on a locale delicacy and acting silly - that's the fabric of our society.

That love and joy is enough. Without it, we'd all be shooting each other in the streets.

There but for the grace of God go all of us. Hurricanes don't happen everywhere, but you just never know. Floods, tornados, earthquakes, drought - they all happen here.

In 1993 I spent six weeks with my basement bedroom ankle-deep in flood water. The night before the Missouri River crested in Jefferson City, my roommate and I made a stupid, spontaneous road trip. We lived 30 minutes north in Columbia and often made late-night runs. We would hang out at the fountain behind the capitol building, where it wasn't unusual to find stoners playing guitar. Once, another friend of mine tossed me into the fountain and I had to make the traditional post-capitol trip to Dunkin' Donuts soaking wet and stinking of bleach. Much to my surprise, Carl - the guy who worked the Dunkin'Dontus third shift by himself and had a real dislike for humans - didn't throw my giggling, soggy ass out without my coffee and glazed donuts holes.

But the night the river crested, there was none of that. The town was silent. It seemed wrong to eat donuts. So there we were, at midnight, standing a block down the bluff from the capitol building with water that wasn't supposed to be there lapping at our toes. We took a few photos, got in the car, and drove home. As we left the city the river was starting to seep onto the highway. By the time we got home, the highway behind us had been closed.

That flood was devastating, but it's nothing compared to what's happening on the gulf coast. There were loses, but not at that extreme magnitude. But you know what? If the flood happened to claim Carl from Dunkin' Donuts, I would have been devastated. Not because we had some close relationship. Our interactions consisted of Carl making the donuts, my friends and I buying the donuts, Carl yelling at us, and me stealing coffee cups and attempting to throw pennies down his exposed asscrack everytime he bent down in front of us. But if he had died in the flood, it would have been a loss. He was a thread in the fabric of that summer and those late-night trips, an essential part of my memories, the memories of the people who were my friends at the time, and who knows who else.

Six years ago today, B. and I stood on the front porch of my parents' old house and exchanged wedding vows. I wore a simple dress made by my grandma. My friend Rusty, who had just been ordained as a Methodist minister, nervously performed the ceremony while my friend Big Daddy B. held onto my veil - borrowed from my mother-in-law - because it threatened to blow away in the gusty wind. Afterwards, we took to the backyard, surrounded by the ghosts of the summer's corn crop in the surrounding fields. Barefoot, I traipsed from table to table, talking to 120 people who loved us enough to be there. Many stayed until well past dark, which we hadn't expected from our afternoon wedding. We eventually moved the party inside, where my Basset hound Chloe stuck her head in a 30-gallon vat of barbequed beans and had quite a snack.

Just a few weeks prior to that wonderful day, an estimated 30,000 people died in an earthquake in Izmit, Turkey. Do you remember that? 100,000 apartments were lost and 4000 buildings collapsed. $18 billion dollars in damages set the economy back an estimated 15 years. Do you remember that?

I barely do. It's a footnote in my wedding book on the "Recent Events" page. Even the Wikipedia entry is scant. All of that destruction and loss, and it's a sidenote.

I don't know and I don't have any suggestions. We can't enrobe ourselves in the tragedies and make them the sole focus of our lives. But how is it that they become so minute once the big picture unfurls over the years? How many Carls and olive pit-spitters were lost in Izmit in August, 1999, and do the people they casually passed in their lives remember them? I'll bet they do. Hell, I haven't seen Carl since 1998 and I'm still talking about him. Just by virtue of yelling at my stupid friend who had the audacity to ask if he could write a check for a $2.97 order at Dunkin' Donuts, Carl left a sugary, angry handprint that I'll always cherish. Not as much as my family and friends, but cherish nonetheless, because he was there, and he was.