Lavender is an herb that has been used since ancient times for medicinal purposes. We use it currently for its aroma therapeutic applications (to relieve headaches, stress, PMS, rheumatic pain and nervous exhaustion) and in high-quality perfumes (Kircher, 9). Lavandula angustifolia offers this rich scent that reminds us of grandmother’s soothing bosom. Lavandula latifolia, or spike lavender oil, is used medicinally as a dressing for burns and as an additive for cleaning products and insect repellant (Bown, 301.)

From an artistic point of view, lavender is purple, muted with white. Purple is formed by combining red and blue; it is also the highest chakra color and represents our connection to the divine. I believe what our nation needs now, more than anything else, is to strive to become lavender. The colors of our flag—red, white, and blue—combine to form lavender. Let us do away with the bickering of red and blue states, and once again become one people, one nation, accepting & melting all of our color differences into a pot of compassion, love, and lavender light.

When Hurricane Hugo slammed the Virgin Islands sixteen years ago today, as I write this, with 180-200mph winds (depending on which island you were on) it was the most horrific experience I had ever endured. Previously, growing up in California, I’d rock-n-rolled through some pretty substantial earthquakes. On Satori, we’d broken a rudder in a storm off the Channel Islands and wallowed, disabled, at sea until a crew member’s dream gave us a temporary fix that allowed us to sail into port for substantial repairs.

On our seventy-day-at-sea passage from California to Panama we were beaten down by so many storms that I never would consider returning to that stretch of Pacific Ocean again.

In our early years in the islands, Hurricanes David and Fredrick, with 90 knot winds, had been our introductory hurricanes, making landfall a week apart. We had weathered them in Hurricane Hole, St. John, with a sense of awe, but little fear. Lives were lost, but in our watery nook we had felt safe and protected, tied into the mangroves. Hugo was our wake-up call. We survived without physical damage to ourselves, our home or our schooner, but the psychological stress was enough that when, a year later, another hurricane formed and began to follow the same b-line to the islands, we called “uncle” and made plans to leave.

At times I miss the islands and the lifestyle, but I never regretted the move. I knew I no longer had the wherewithal to face the eye of a hurricane. I knew this before Katrina. But, I never imagined a hurricane could wreak such damage as Katrina did. We had survived Category 4 horrific winds and storm surge, but on our mountainous island the heavy rains ran downhill to the sea. The shelters on St. Thomas were not much stronger than the majority of houses, and people had little chance to flee, unless they were one of the wealthy that could fly out at a moment’s notice. Instead, we hunkered in our houses with water and food and buckets for our waste, and prayed that our roof held. Ed was on our schooner in Virgin Gorda, forty miles from St. Thomas. I taped windows and prepared for the worst with our five-year-old daughter, Lyric, in our villa in Hull Bay on the north side of St. Thomas. As I said, we survived without major damage.

And, after the hurricane passed, people of all colors helped each other clear away the debris and try to regain some sense of normalcy. Our home was two months without power. Parts of St. Croix, where the hurricane stalled for hours, waited a year for poles and wires and resumption of what most of us consider a basic right— electricity. I felt that the recovery was even more stressful than the hurricane, but there was not the sense of lawlessness that infected New Orleans. Tempers frayed in our existence of searching for basic needs, like food, on an island where ice became as sought-after (and more expensive) than gasoline was stateside post-Katrina.

The lack of power initiated our family’s rejection of television, which I have often remarked upon in this column. After Katrina, I was again glad we have chosen to live our lives without the insidiousness of television. Watching the horrific images on the multiple screens at the YMCA while doing my thirty-minute workout on the ellipse was all I could handle. Internet news and Newsweek gave me what I needed to know of the story. By the third day, I wondered where the government was. Why weren’t they doing anything? Why did they send search helicopters on ships that would take five days to reach New Orleans? And, sending hospital ships? What were the sick and dying supposed to do in the interim? One of my co-workers, who is black, asked me what I thought was happening. I said I thought the President didn’t seem too concerned about the people that were not members of his “base.” My friend put it more bluntly, saying that the government was not responding because it was poor black people suffering and dying. I don’t believe it was racism. I believe it is an example of the government not being prepared to do what it promised us it would do foremost after 9/11—take care of us in the event of a crisis. We had civil rights and certain freedoms taken from us in the Patriot Act “for security” which Katrina has proven false. The fallacy of “Homeland Security” has been brought to life. It is our tax dollars in action, as they have been siphoned for pork projects and no-bid contracts in America by those we have elected to office, Republican and Democrat alike.

I am tired of politicians blaming one another, and wrapping themselves in sound-bytes of name-calling. I am tired of an energy policy determined by big oil. I am tired of seeing money wasted for no-bid contracts to cronies of the administration. I am tired of inept appointees sitting on their hands because they don’t have a clue about what they are supposed to do. I am tired of seeing terrified people fleeing for their lives only to spend hours stuck in traffic because the “drill” didn’t notify the Department of Transportation to open all lanes of the interstate to traffic abandoning a city in the eye of destruction. I am tired of Americans’ gas-guzzling SUV’s and trucks not being able to flee a few hundred miles without running out of gas. Hurricane Rita, churning toward Texas as I write, will be the frosting on the Homeland Security cake. Already, the icing is melting as people are stranded and spending six hours to travel five miles in grid-lock conditions. One of my best friends is leaving Houston tonight, having packed what she could and saying good-bye to her husband who refuses to flee. I pray for Texas and its people.

I pray for all of us. I pray our nation wakes up to its energy policy that is self-destructive before it is too late, and that it will end this war in Iraq that is being fought for oil, not democracy. I pray that we can move away from divisions among people and offer basic services and standards of living that were touted as a new approach in “compassionate” American policy. I pray that we feel the caustic cleaning of a nationwide dose of l.latifolia against the waste and greed that have become rampant in our society. I pray that we join together in a blending of colors to form one people who hold each other in soothing comfort when life becomes too difficult to bear.

Instead of the olive branch, let us offer one another a gift of lavender in a spirit of love and compassion. Let us radiate our violet light. Let us reach for the best that we can be, and demand the same from our government.

• Bown, Deni. The Herb Society of America Encyclopedia of Herbs & Their Uses. London: Dorling Kindersley, 1995.
• Kircher, Tamara and Penny Lowery. Herbal Remedies: An Introduction to Herbs and Their Therapeutic Uses. NY: Macmillan, 1996.