They don't realize that on a national basis, the Red Cross responds to a disaster every seven minutes. Probably a half a percent of those ever make the news, so you do forget day in and day out what we do.

It is difficult to understand the lack of preparedness and the ineffective initial response to a disaster that had been predicted for years and for which specific, dire warning had been given for days.

[With billions of dollars to boost disaster preparedness at all levels of government,] we would have expected a sharp, crisp response to this terrible tragedy, ... Instead, we witnessed what appeared to be a sluggish initial response.

It's been a standing program since the first Gulf War. They put this program together with the National Disaster Medical System. We're the receiving team down here. We partner with the community, sign up different hospitals that have reserve beds on an ongoing basis.

Katrina was a disaster that scientists, emergency management officials and political leaders had anticipated for years, yet the initial response was woefully inadequate,

So you raise up a few generations of young girls, telling them that they should step to the back of the bus, ingrain that in their psyche, preach it to them from the pulpit, hold up as ideal examples women doing precisely that, and in a few years, you can step back; you need say no more. Your work is done, because you have carefully created a herd of women who know and even begrudgingly accept that their place is secondary, just outside the limelight, clapping for and cheering on the important people who were never taught to put others first.