Katrina Refrigerator

Trunks, Trumps, Tornadoes and FEMA

2009-09-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

NOTE: THIS POST WAS A LOST POST ORIGINALLY SENT 2/30/06. POST DATE SHOULD READ 2/30/07.

Hi all,
Well, you'll be happy to know that whatever was left in storage is now on our porch and in our living room until it can be cleaned, another attempt to salvage it, and either re-packed or given the final heave ho. All in all it took five days to go through it all, not done all at once, but two days this week. The difference this week was that the power has been restored to that area of Tulane Ave so we got to do it in the light and not feel like characters out of a Zola novel. That, however, was a mixed blessing.

With the lights on in this huge place, we could see the totality of the filth and waste and loss. In the dark, some of that was blissfully not in our awareness. (I did take some pics and will get them out to you in the next day or so.) It was actually kinda worse in the light. So many people just opened their storage unit about two feet, took one look and left. We couldn't do that, but we absolutely understand those who did. We spent yesterday and the day before in there, and just navigating the hallways to get stuff out was difficult as so many pieces of lives were littering the hallways. I can't really find anything to compare it to. What was a gorgeous antique cabinet ten feet from a unit full of brand new, never-to-be-opened laminate flooring, down the hallway from a unit clearly filled with someone's business inventory. It looked like she did party planning and weddings, lots of colorful ribbon spools, never opened, the only color in the place. Everything else is kind of a gray brown. I was sitting on the cart at one point and looked over at the unit next to me. From the lock to the door was this spider webby black goo that was now dry. Strangest thing. We couldn't see all that with our flashlights.

As for our unit, we just kept going through it. Some of the boxes, as you've seen from the other emails and pics, were just slid around and were still so wet you couldn't pick them up, so the method became "rip the side out and see what was in it." That's the method we employed, trying to hold up the soggy sides, pick through, drop something possibly salvageable into a tupperware, pitch the rest into the pile in the corner. We didn't have to take the stuff out to the dumpsters. The guy from UHaul said just leave whatever you're not taking, some guys will be in to clear all this out next week. God help those guys. So that's what we did.

We started with the trunks. First trunks, dolls top to bottom. Saved a couple we think, and are going to make a valiant attempt to save Meg's first Cabbage Patch dolls. Of all of them we chose two that looked like they might be washable enough to make it and their hair wasn't falling off. One little clown doll that she went everywhere with was unsalvagable. That one hurt. Those three trunks on top of each other were hard to move. They had rusted together in a way, so we fought to get the first one down, then the second, then the third which was also pretty much rusted to the floor. Second trunk, Indian pots, Indian rugs, most of the Native American artifacts I've ever had including feathers. Some of the pots made it, some had returned to the clay they began as. We found the cremains of three dogs. The fan I'd made from an owl wing was gone. The pipe I'd made and used in so many classes was in there. I had been sure it was in the house, it wasn't. A talking stick that was one of the first things David and I bought together, all bone and leather and feathers, gone. We put anything ceremonial in a separate box even if it wasn't salvagable. Third trunk, ah yes. All the baby clothes, mine, my fathers, my daughters. I brought some things home and and hoping that it won't disintegrate in the washer on gentle. Meg's patches, ribbons and her jacket from drill team, I will be able to save most of them. Her graduation gown, probably save-able. It's the little things, ya know?

Then boxes. Rip. Oh no more photos. There is a smell to the wasted emulsion. Stew a picture in a mason jar for about five months then open it and you'll get close to the smell. Once again, hurray for Polaroids. We found some pics of Meg at Christmas, all polaroids. We dug through just about every pile of pics we found hoping to find a Polaroid. It was like the prize in a box of crackerjacks to find one. The rest of the pics turn into this slippery stack of nothing. The ones we saved we're thrilled about. We never did find any of the yearbooks, Dave's, mine or Meg's. Can't figure out where they went. We never saw them, or maybe didn't recognize them. They could have been in the initial book sludge boxes.

Found a lot of Meg's little treasures and found ourselves laughing over some. In one box, incredibly wet the box was, there sat a perfectly dry stuffed elephant from when we took her to the circus long ago. He was pristine. We can't figure it out.

We took some pics of the inside of our storage, and the rest of the facility and walked away. Now the real work begins as the stuff gets put out all over the place to dry. Then we'll see what we really have. If it was hard, wrapped in newspaper and didn't feel or sound broken, we put it in a box. Gotta get the newspaper off to see what it is. Ironically, it will probably require our soaking it once more in water, to get the paper off and clean it up. Priorities are the fabric and paper stuff. The rest can wait. We're told that they will have some units on the second floor soon. Thank goodness as there isn't a storage unit to be found for 50 miles and we're on the waiting list in two other places. We looked upstairs and it was fine. We know that some of this will have to go back into storage, so we'll dry it out, clean it, re-pack it and put it on the SECOND floor this time, in a much much smaller unit. We could look at this as a cost saving measure.

The night before last poor Lakeview had a tornado. A rather strong one. All those who had already started working on their houses, were now terrified about putting in another claim to their insurance. Some of what they'd already done was destroyed in the tornado. One woman's roof had just been completely re-done from Katrina, then got a tree through it from the tornado. Another man's wall made it through Katrina only to be blown down by the tornado. They have good reason to be worried. A guy at storage told us that he had bought a house in St. Bernard. Two story. Was told when he bought it that he wasn't in a flood plain, didn't need flood insurance. (I hear this story over and over, it's starting to really make me mad.) Now the same agent who said he didn't need flood insurance, is saying "We'll pay from the water line up. We'll give you 1000 bucks for your roof. That's it." The guy told the insurance agent to shove it. It will probably wind up in the thousands of lawsuits against insurance co's that are coming down the pike. Unfortunately for some people, the bank will have foreclosed on their property before the lawsuit and the insurance issues will be handled, so either way their house is gone.

The night before that we watched as his Bush-ness (a FABULOUS term that I'm stealing from a friend's email! Thanks, Louis, it really says it all!) showed us that his wish for global "freedom and democracy" trumps his wish for his own citizens to be taken care of in any way. We love the "math and science high school" idea, even as he cuts student loans, which will make it close to impossible for many of these highly educated high schoolers to build on that. Oh yeah, and no child left behind still hasn't been funded, so I'm not entirely sure how these math/science whizzes are going to BECOME such whizzes. Stories of teachers having to skew data just to keep funding rather than actually teaching the kids anything is the legacy of that snappy slogan. I played cards the other night with a 12 year old, 4th grade student, who can tell me his middle name but can't spell it. So with any luck, the children of Iraq will have good schools and not too much anger at their occupiers to come over here, help out our students, become doctors to staff our hospitals, and maybe some will be engineers who will know how to build a good levee system. Whaddya think? As he went on about the down trodden and oppressed, we kept thinking maybe he was talking about the Gulf Coast! Nope. He kept talking about people feeling "secure", but turned out it wasn't his own citizens he was concerned about. I keep thinking that the Gulf Coast states need to unite, make some kind of threat, be considered a "rogue nation" and maybe we'll get something done.

No Child Left Behind, no funding. A great promise, poorly planned, but a great promise. He's good at promises. Here's the latest on FEMA, broadly and personally.

There are currently about 5000 FEMA trailers in St. Bernard parish. Just sitting there. On the news this morning, one woman called in and said that she had called FEMA for the 100th time (the average time spent by a citizen of this region on FEMA/insurance/permit issues is 20 hrs a week.) She had been trying to get a trailer since October. They said, "Your trailer has been ready since Dec 3." She said, "No one called me!" "Oh, sorry." One of the officials in St. Bernard is now saying that he and his city council members and others are ready to go commandeer the trailers since FEMA can't manage to get them to the people who need them. FEMA guy on the news this morning says, "We will get them to the people by LEGAL means." Well, the elected guys in St. Bernard are over it. They might just go in there with trucks and take them, kinda like the Boston Tea Party, only they won't drop the trailers over the side of a ship, they'll put them in people's yards. And as for promises local companies would have first dibs on contracts for work has also gone by the wayside. News report last night, "A company out of Colorado has been awarded 1 million dollars to tow away the 100,000 abandoned cars in New Orleans." Okay, wait, 1000 bucks per car? And there was NO ONE here in Louisiana that could have done that? The local contractors are furious.

Now our personal FEMA journey. David has faithfully gone to the Disaster Relief Center every single week for nearly two months now. He's doing it as a matter of principle at this point. Each week he's been told, "We can't figure out why you didn't get the first 2000 that was promised and we can't figure out why you didn't get the second check either. There's nothing we can see on your paperwork." So each week, they'd fax their supervisor, one week he was told they were reviewing our case that day, the next week he was told it should be any minute now. THIS week he was told, "Oh, the first 2000, they turned program off six weeks ago. If you haven't gotten it yet, you won't be getting it. We're not even taking appeals on that anymore. You might get the second check, we don't know." "But we FILED Sept 10" says David. "Oh that doesn't matter. They stopped that program." Um, when did they tell these FEMA workers this stuff? If it was six weeks ago, why were they telling him TWO weeks ago that everything was fine? One FEMA worker actually said, with frustration, that she couldn't understand why there were so many people who did NOT get that "Bush on Jackson Square" promise. She sees them all day and probably would be fired if they knew that she said, "More people did NOT get it than DID."

But hey, in Iowa somewhere, people think everyone down here got rich and that we're getting handouts every single day. And Machiavelli always said, "Perception is everything."

Did ya know Karl Rove reads Machiavelli's "The Prince" once a year?
Love and Light,
Bec and David

The Last Mass Email

2007-03-31T13:58:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,
My mailing list has grown out of control, and I get emails every day from someone asking me to "forward" it to them, or add them to the list. I have also had one person ask to be removed from the list, which I did. I get no end of mailer daemons when one of you changes your email address, then I get mail saying you didn't get my last email! Some of it has been just funny and I laugh a lot.

I will continue writing, and have been posting regularly already on the blog, www.nolaslate.blogspot.com. In fact, you guys have already missed several posts. I think you'll like the medium. You can still email the post to someone, as you've been forwarding my emails, just by clicking on the little envelope at the bottom of the post. You can compliment me or blast me, or add some pertinent info just by clicking the comments link.

I haven't figured out all the ins and outs, that's for sure. I was trying to figure out how everyone got links into their writing without it saying "http blah blah blah." It just said, "this article" and blammo, click on it and you're at the article. I'm not sure if I'm right but a light bulb went off over my head about 3AM, so I think I might have figured it out. That would be great. No more attachments to emails!

Pictures can also be posted on the site, so that should make it easier for those of you who for whatever reason, spam filter, etc. haven't been able to see some of the photos that were either embedded or attached.

I also haven't figured out how to jazz up the page yet, but give me a little bit and I will. For now, all the posts from the last few days are there. I truly hope that you guys will continue to read what I'm putting out there, and this will let you do it at your leisure, or not at all if you don't want to. I've also found that the "blog" community is a wonderful, humorous, thoughtful, encouraging and helpful bunch. It's really amazing and the flow of information is remarkable. I think you'll find it that way too. There are some links on the right side of my blog page to other blogs. Those will grow as I go.

Either way, thank you all so much for reading the emails these seven months. And please let me know if you're still reading. Your email comments have always been wonderful and I'd still like to have your feedback. New Orleans still has a long way to go, and David and I are still struggling determinedly along. We're not going anywhere. It's been you guys that kept us going so many nights, and your forwarding of the emails has kept the New Orleans/Katrina experience in the forefront of folks' heads who might have forgotten what happened here. It is more appreciated than you know.

See you all at www.nolaslate.blogspot.com I hope!
Love and Light,
Bec and David

Broken People and a Lost Little One

2007-03-26T13:53:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
In the last three days, I've heard these stories. There are reports of progress being made here with houses being gutted, people trying to return, the strong spirit of the people here. There are also reports of Corps of Engineers reports contradicting themselves, laws that keep the Corps from being sued, insurance companies refusing to pay. Mostly these stories are about stuff. Homes, money, jobs. But there are ancillary stories connected to all of the above, and I've heard them this week.

We took Zola up to the levee so he could see people and bicycles. We watched as they shot a scene from the Denzel Washington movie, "Deja Vu", on the Ferry (which Disney rented for a month causing no end of problems with commuting from the Westbank). A woman came up to us with some binoculars. Everyone, it seems, is waiting for a glimpse of Denzel, but so far no one has actually seen him. We started talking with her. She lives on Powder Street here on Algiers Point, a street that we delivered lots of food and water to in early September. There was an entire family that hadn't evacuated and they had nothing. One of the women we met up there was an elderly woman, about 83 as I recall. She was one of the women who needed her medication refilled and was part of the surreal tea party under the Army tent at Blaine Kern's as she waited with the others for a ride to West Jefferson. Her hair was black, her makeup severe, her laugh raucous and wonderful. I can't find my notebook (been searching all morning, her name is in there), but I think her name was Joy Boudreaux, a very common surname here in New Orleans. She told me that she had been born on Powder Street and had lived on Powder Street her entire life. She was a fascinating woman. She died this week. Evidently she had other ailments, as her list of prescriptions could attest to, but her heart gave out.

The woman we were talking with was probably in her late 50's, also lived on Powder Street. She said she had a circle of girlfriends that consisted of 12 women. They'd known each other for years. Five of them have died since the storm, of heart attacks from stress. Four others had moved out of New Orleans because of their jobs. She just shook her head, still not believing her personal human loss.

You've read about our friend Louis from up the street. He's the one with the amazing evacuation story that took him to Utah after being refused entry to the Westbank by the Gretna police which was really just the second to last chapter of his harrowing story. Louis is in his 50's and always rode his bike to work in Metairie, which is a long way by bicycle. Before the storm, he lost a grandson, 21 yrs old named Christopher, to kidney failure. While in the Convention Center for four days, he lost his nephew, shot by police while getting water for some older ladies. His nephew died in his arms. Yesterday he buried his 20 year old son. Coroner said heart failure due to stress. No drugs in his system. TWENTY YEARS OLD?!?! He now is trying to raise money to return to Utah to get his car. He has to leave day after tomorrow and he has no money because his landlord, a man named Mr. Cooper who owns many properties in this area and has rented them out Section 8 for years, has raised their rent from $900 to $1500. Louis, Marie and their grandson Christian, are planning to move to Baton Rouge or maybe Houston. Shoved out of their hometown by greed after suffering so much loss. You can see it in Louis's eyes. He's not the same man that we knew before the storm. Something is broken inside of him.

The doctors told him that they were seeing very large numbers of heart attacks due to stress in the New Orleans area. While everyone is busy talking about money, insurance, FEMA, they are overlooking the people that these delays and lack of money are affecting. Can they come home? Will they be safe if they do? Will they be able to rebuild? Many people are still searching for missing relatives. A local tv news station reported that in addition to the two bodies they found in the Ninth Ward this week, they also found a child's body at an intersection off of Forstall. My god, this is an area that we've driven by over and over when we went to the area. We no doubt drove right by where this little one was found. Who's looking for that little one and what agency will find the people who are looking? The impersonal rules and regulations simply aren't taking into account the toll, physical and psychological, that this is taking on human beings who are just trying to get by after an historic catastrophe.

It's not just the money and the delays. It's the loss of family, through death or because they're still missing. It's the loss of their neighborhood, their social safety net. It's the loss of friends. We will be losing two of our dearest friends to Houston this coming week. Company setting up shop in Houston, not in New Orleans. This happens every day here. "We are moving. We have no choice." And most really don't have a choice. The reasons vary but the void is still the same.

Yes, indeed. The people of New Orleans have a wonderful, tough spirit. That's what's going to see us through all this, I think. A sense that one doesn't just abandon their home because it's too hard. But somehow in the midst of these commentaries on the billions of dollars, the levee failures, the loss of the structure that was home, there has to be some way to really address the post-Katrina loss of life that all this has contributed to.

Hearing about seven fatal stress related heart attacks, in people ranging from 83 to 20, over the course of three days is overwhelming. These seven came from every ethnic and socio-economic group. The stress is an equal opportunity killer, it seems. When you see all the reports about structures and dollars, please remember the humans involved. They seem to be getting lost in the shuffle now that they're off the roofs and off your TV screens.

And pray that the ones who died when the levees broke are reunited with the families who are looking for them.
Love and Light,
Bec

Old River, Lost River. . . . A Roadtrip and a Return

2007-03-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
Sorry to have been out of touch. David and I went on a road trip. Why would we do that when we're still living hand to mouth and hoping that Jazzfest helps? Because our dear friend in Albuquerque, whom we helped with German Shepherd rescue before we moved, called and said, "I have your dog here." We had just lost Jasper and had decided we were not getting another dog for a while, but here was the same story that brought us Jasper. Puppy mill jerk, 18 German Shepherds, living in filth and starving, seized by the county, needed homes. And one of them looked like he was probably Jasper's grandson, great grandson, grand nephew, something. Or so she said. Well, us being us, we couldn't turn that down and she knows us and what kind of dog we tend toward. So we got in our car and drove to get him. He's back home with us now, learning about people and struggling to figure out that most of them won't hurt him. He's handsome and smart and somewhere between 2-3 yrs old, but he's got the experience level of a 3 month old. He's fabulous and we're glad we went for him.

It was also the first road trip we'd taken together that wasn't a family visit in years and years. And it was our first long trip since Katrina hit. I had gone back to Albuquerque in November, but flew in, worked for two days and came back. It's a different thing from a road trip. We headed out having decided to take the "short" route through Shreveport to Dallas to Amarillo to Albuquerque. No problem. We'd done it before and we knew that Texas is the endless state. We both abhor driving through Dallas but managed it with few issues as long as we paid attention to the cutoffs. We got to Albuquerque, had no time to do a lot of socializing but got to see a couple people briefly, and that was great. Spending time with Kathy and her own pack of dogs was really a treat. We were also surprised by how many people we met in stores and gas stations who upon hearing we were from New Orleans, seemed almost compelled to tell us that they were ashamed and appalled at the federal handling of Katrina. It was interesting to hear what they had to say. Most of them, however, had no idea that about 30% of New Orleans still has no power. They were stunned.

We loaded up the dog and headed home via the "long" way: Albuquerque, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, Baton Rouge, home. We did the TexasWorld Tour. Yes I did mean for TexasWorld to be all one word. Anyone sensitive about Texas might not want to go on reading from here!

Having seen almost all of the major cities in Texas in a six day period (two days each way), we were astonished. The roads are, by and large, wonderful. Something that cannot be said of New Orleans before or after Katrina. We noticed the Texan intent on being BIG: big auto dealerships, big flags, big steaks, big vehicles. We were fascinated by some of the tiny little towns, a lot of them agricultural or ranching towns, that had nothing but a few trailers strewn together in some semblance of a village. There's a lot of that in New Mexico too, but we didn't expect the huge contrast between these little burgs and the bigger cities. Trailer colonias and a truck stop out your window, then the blazing overdone glass of Dallas. We'd seen that before as we had gone that way on other trips across Texas. But we saw the same thing on the southern route. It seemed that the gap between the rich and poor in Texas was huge and obvious. I did say they like things big there.

The first five to ten miles of any one of the cities we went through were endless parades of franchises. Everyone is represented: Applebees, Chilis, McDonalds, Burger King, Target, Walmart, Home Depot, etc. We talked a lot about the homogenization of America. If someone dropped us in the middle of a good size city in Texas, it's virtually indistinguishable from Kansas City or any other city in America. The franchises have taken over, and only the trees and the freeway number will tell you where you are. Home Depot and a palm tree? Probably Miami or San Diego. Applebees and a cactus? Probably Albuquerque but could be Phoenix. Nothing distinguished one city from another. It's happened all over this country and it's made our country a bit boring. We really had to look hard to find a small, non-corporate owned local/regional restaurant amid all the mega-chains. Since we didn't stop a lot going or coming, it didn't really matter to our stomachs but it did matter to our psyches.

The roads are packed with newer model cars and many of the major freeways are being expanded. Lots of money in Texas it seems. The contrast between Texas and Louisiana was stark. Texas was very, very generous to our evacuees, and for that we will be eternally grateful. We also understand why some of them decided to stay put and not come back. The cities LOOK affluent. Of course we didn't see the crime problems, the gang problems. Local problems can't be seen from a freeway driveby. What did strike us was that we felt like "foreigners." Our political views certainly weren't in evidence anywhere that we could see in Texas. We know that the entire state of Texas isn't ultra-conservative, but that was what was most in evidence. We also actually had a concern that our car, with Louisiana plates and an "I love New Orleans" decal on it, Mardi Gras beads hanging from the rearview mirror, might make some people think that we were "that element from New Orleans." I am truly sick of the word element. It's become a euphemism for so many things.

As we drove out of Houston, where the weather started feeling like New Orleans, we passed a sign that said, "Old River, Lost River" and it appeared that two rivers joined up there. It was beautiful, and wow, what lovely, romantic names these rivers had. We couldn't wait to see "our" river. We got home and were very happy to be here, even as we drove in still seeing hurricane damage and ravaged cars under the overpasses. It wasn't pristine but it was home. Once here we caught up on the local issues, which we couldn't do a driveby on.

Crime is up here. Apparently some of the Houston gangs have moved in. As David says, "Don't forget, nature abhors a vacuum." Two real gems, B Stupid and his buddy, Man Man (no, guys, I am NOT making this up) were finally caught. These two lovelies were here trying to set up a new drug network. Man Man evidently was standing on a neutral ground shooting a gun in the air. I think it was on Esplanade. B Stupid was picked up by a cooperative (imagine THAT!) effort between the NOPD and the Kenner cops. In an interview when asked how he got the name, he said sort of intelligibly, "The street gave me that name." Oh, not your behavior? Well, at least they got these two, but it appears that the Houston/NOLA gang foreign exchange program won't let up for a while.

The elections are much contested and amazingly haven't gotten nasty yet. Mitch Landrieu is so far behaving like a real class act, and most people I've spoken with think he's pretty much a shoo in, if not based on his ideas, which so far have been a bit vague, by his connections at city, state and federal levels. The consensus seems to be that he can probably do a lot as Mayor just because of his connections. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that, but I think he'll probably win. I have to go to his website and see what he's really saying. Meanwhile, there is a question about whether or not the elections should be held in April at all since so many of our citizens are out of state. The racial issue is also being introduced into this argument as the demographics of NOLA have changed significantly since the storm. By some reports, we went from 80% black to 60% white. The argument is that the black citizens, who seem to have been more significantly scattered than the white citizens, would not have a real voice in this election. Given the mail service and the idea of absentee ballots, oh yeah, and the nutbar we have as county clerk, I think some of the arguments are valid. I'm not at all sure how long we should wait though. Will the situation change enough in one month, two maybe, six (?) to make people feel that the election should be held? I don't think so. It's been nearly seven months now and things are still moving at a snail's pace in terms of rebuilding and repopulating. I'm not sure postponing the election will accomplish anything. On the other hand, holding the election and having it appear unfair will only lead to more negative press locally and nationally, not to mention some hard feelings along racial lines. I've read arguments on both sides, and they both make sense. This is a tough issue.

Oh yeah, the mail. According to the Post Office, our mail service should be back to normal "by summer." We'll see. It does seem to be improving a little, but still not enough for papers that need to be sent back by a particular date to GET to you before the due date.

Housing and business, the two words we hear daily in some context or other are intertwined so intimately here, but amazingly few people are talking about the two issues as they relate to one another. Rents are out of control. Landlords, seeing the corporations as the geese laying nests of golden eggs, are gouging. Local message boards are addressing this issue, but the news media isn't. 6000 dollar "corporate apartments", "furnished one bedroom luxury corporate condo, $3900 month, all utilities paid." Well I should say so! Rents have doubled and tripled in some cases, but now we're starting to see them drop a little as the contractors go home and people who were renting while their house was being rebuilt finally get to go home as well. It's a slow process. In the meantime, it's not real people paying these rents. It's expense accounts. Prices like this are driving people out of New Orleans. This becomes a vicious cycle for businesses, especially small businesses. "I can't make enough money to keep my business open if I can't get workers and I can't get workers because they can't afford the rents and I can't pay them enough to afford the rents so they leave and I can't make money to keep my business open. . . . " On and on the circle goes. Many, many landlords are NOT gouging, our wonderful landlords included, and many are sick of the "corporate turnover" of two month leases. There are more and more people looking for "long term leases" in their ads. But the gougers really should be ashamed. This whole cycle is going to come back and bite New Orleans in the ass if something isn't done to curb it. Granted there is a supply and demand element, but what's happening is that some of these landlords have decided to make as much as they can while the corporate expense accounts hold out and locals be damned. It's a mess and something has to be done, but other than people just refusing to pay those rents, I don't know what will curb it.

The levees, MRGO, floodgates, FEMA, SBA, insurance adjusters all continue to be problematic and the daily reports on any one of those topics can alternate between excuses, resignation, and screw 'em. Can't put FEMA trailers in a flood plain, so we can't get them down here, besides we're doing the best we can, and oh yeah, another hurricane season is coming and these things could be flying all over the place if a good size tropical storm arrives, nevermind another hurricane. So the best idea is to rebuild. But if you rebuild you need the money to rebuild and the insurance isn't giving it to you and FEMA isn't giving it to you and besides we can't agree on the FEMA flood plains anyway and how high should you have to build your house off the ground? Raising them, yeah, that's the ticket. Oh your house wasn't completely washed away? It's still extant and you just finished gutting it and dealing with the mold? Well, we don't know what to tell you. You might rebuild it, if you've got your own money to do it, and then we might say you have to raise it. How high? Didn't you see yesterday's report? We haven't decided yet. We've given out a lot of money here, but we have to comply with the FEMA rules and you KNOW we're audited so we know the wheels grind slowly and it's frustrating, but it's a bureaucracy those of us on the ground are doing the best we can. Army Corps of Engineers can't be sued. Insurance companies saying "act of god," lawyers saying "act of man, negligent man at that", adjusters saying "not wind damage, house is settling." Oh really? The house "settled" into this giant mountain of debris? "Too bad, you're not getting anything."

I could go on, but I'll spare you. For now, anyway.

Many, many kids are not in school yet. They're on a waiting list. Waiting for a school that can accomodate them, waiting for a school to open. The latest is that they will be back in school by April but WILL NOT BE HELD BACK. Excuse me? So we'll have marginal fourth graders from a school system that was abysmal before the storm, becoming even more marginal fifth graders after missing 7 of 9 months of school? Are you kidding me? Keep them in school all summer. Help them catch up. Some of them are really traumatized. They're going to need help. Everyone is hoping that we will utilize this chance to make our school system better than it was before. If we do this, just ignore that these kids missed nearly an entire year of school, we will blow that chance inexorably.

Well, there is certainly more to say. And to those of you who have written me privately, I will answer your emails as soon as possible.
Love and Light,
Bec and David

Incident of National Significance---No NOT Cheney's Bad Shooting

2007-02-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

Hi all,
First I have to correct something from my last email. The contract for the abandoned cars that a Colorado firm was awarded was 100,000,000 bucks, not 1 million as I said. 1000 dollars per car projected was correct though.

Tomorrow the full House report on Katrina comes out. The report was leaked to the Washington Post a few days ago and some of the conclusions the House arrived at are stunning, but not so surprising to those of us who live here. One of the most damning things, among so many, in this report is Chertoff's delay at designating this disaster an "incident of national significance." This is the "highest designation under the National Emergency Response Plan." Chertoff put this designation off for 24 hours. Doesn't sound like much, but when water is pouring into your house it's a big deal. (The Washington Post report is attached to this email for anyone interested in reading it.)

What we've noticed is that a lot of Americans still don't feel this is an incident of national significance, and for those who watch any coverage of the upcoming Mardi Gras parades, I think they'll be pretty upset by how we perceive the situation. Krewe du Vieux, a notoriously irreverant bunch, paraded Saturday night. The floats lampooned our governor (I've told you about the refrigerators in the Quarter that had statements about who was IN them) in any way possible including "What's in your fridge" and inside the freezer were the Governor's, well, her upper chest area is the most PG way to put it. The mayor, the president, FEMA, everyone got nailed by these guys. One bunch was handing out giant fake ten dollar bills and saying it was "your FEMA money." We did find that saying "Throw me something FEMA" got us a lot of throws. One float begged, "Take us back Chirac." While Krewe de Vieux is definitely a bit of a renegade Krewe, and the super Krewes will no doubt be much more family oriented and tamer, the anger amid the humor was palpable. Many of the floats were made entirely from Katrina debris and one even included a levee breach (their theme was "C'est Levee") and it was squired down the street by the Comatose Corps of Engineers. Does that sound strange? There's much stranger stuff than that going on.

The FEMA trailer saga continues. Some people who were moved into them were subsequently moved out of them. Some were moved out because they weren't evacuees but people who had come here to work so they didn't qualify. Some were moved out because they were homeless. We need to define that for everyone. They had no homes prior TO Katrina, so they didn't qualify for a FEMA trailer AFTER Katrina. Homeless now means two things in New Orleans. First definition is someone who was living on the streets before the storm hit. The second is someone who is living on the streets because their home was destroyed and/or FEMA tossed another 2300 people out of hotels yesterday (that's in addition to the 900 families evicted from hotels last Friday.) I'm also of the opinion that we need to quit using the term "evacuees." Many of the evacuees have become de facto refugees, hundreds of thousands of them all over the Gulf Coast. They have no place to go. The refugees evicted from hotels will now be sent to state run shelters in Shreveport. As a friend said, "That's a hell of a commute." If you're fighting insurance adjusters, FEMA, maybe the SBA, living in a hotel and managed to get a job or keep your old one, how on earth are you going to do that from Shreveport? And the loss of those employees puts businesses in an even bigger bind. It's a gigantic circular mess.

One bar that was always filled to overflowing before the storm costs 60,000 dollars a month for rent. Sounds extreme, but pre-Katrina they brought in 13K a DAY. No problem. Now they're taking in an average of 700/day. Yes, I got that math right. Seven hundred dollars per day. New Orleans is losing an estimated 1.5 million a day in tourist dollars. Businesses are really struggling. You couple that with the loss of population, the extreme lack of housing, the loss of schools, and it's a recipe for disaster long term.

Get arrested? Need a lawyer and can't afford one? No problem. We'll just let you out, no matter what your crime. The public defender coffers are dried up, gone with Katrina's wind and the population who paid the taxes to keep it afloat (no pun intended with the afloat remark!)

Conversations in the local hair salon:
"Get any water?" Sounds normal here. If asked in San Francisco the bewildered person being questioned would look in their grocery bag and say "A couple of bottles." Here the answers vary from "None" to "Five feet in my second floor." There is an interactive map that shows the water levels anywhere on the map you click. Great little map. http://mapper.cctechnol.com/floodmap.php

"Hey, you getting any mail??" "We get it at the shop but not at home." "We get it every Thursday." "How come UPS can get through?"

"Why don't we secede?" From there the conversation turns to a brilliant term coined by a friend of mine, "economic secession." Blanco's on the right track with the idea of withholding oil leases. Other ideas being bandied about: Close down the port and hold all cargo hostage. Tally up every federal dollar of taxes paid by Louisianians and refuse to send them to the IRS, keep them here instead. Boycotts of all types are being discussed to change the way the oil revenues come into Louisiana. Although this state pulls 70% of the oil found in the Gulf Coast out, our revenues are smaller and cover far less offshore mileage than any other state, particularly Florida and Texas. Some ideas heard in grocery stores and on the street are silly, others make sense. Big headline in the Times/Picayune saying Blanco is ready to play hardball. Let's hope so.

Found a house in the Ninth Ward the other day. Stars and stripes hung on the front and blowing in the wind, intermittently hiding the "big X" spray paint coding. The flag was tattered, full of rust and mold. Clearly had been there since before the storm. Meanwhile in Arabi, I saw several Confederate flags flying in place of the stars and bars. People are feeling very betrayed here. And of course, as more and more information comes out with these various reports, I'm afraid that that feeling will just grow deeper.

It's late. Much more to say, but will let you be for a while.

And will someone please tell Uncle Dick that his spin on the hunting accident is just too transparent to stand? I wonder how many people here in Louisiana would be willing to pony up the $7 he needed for that stamp on his hunting license? Maybe FEMA will give it to him.

Love and Light,
Bec and David

Disaster Tours, Shopping Carts and Glasses filled with Water. . . . .

2007-01-30T12:58:00.000-08:00

Hi all,
It was five months ago today that people saw on their TV's the water pouring into our city. The storm itself had moved its way north, and the levees broke. (Granted, the media was showing only the worst aspects of human behavior but that was, as we discovered, not only their bias but the fact that almost all the media trucks happened to BE on Canal Street at the time.) At that time, we thought we were part of the United States. For a long time David and I have discussed our situation in those terms, feeling very much as though we are not citizens in the same country as the rest of America. It's the kind of thing we talk about quietly at the kitchen table, usually a little bewildered. Then the anger comes and we start thinking about secession and laugh because the same conversation was had in these environs 150 yrs ago. A friend of mine sent me an article today about some of the refrigerator art that cropped up. In the article the authors say the same thing. Funny how sometimes you think you're the only one thinking a thought and then find that a lot of others feel the same way. The authors of the article ANDREI CODRESCU and NILS JUUL-HANSEN, said " For a week or so after the storm, when the city wallowed in its filth and misery without help from the United States of America, which it had mistakenly believed it was part of, people helped one another drag the taped-up fridges outside."

Our monarchy has dismissed the Baker Bill and then asked for a "plan." Well, George, actually that WAS a plan and a pretty good one at that. Not perfect but a start. Not quite as convoluted as your Medicare Drug plan, but hey, some of us aren't into that kind of byzantine stuff. Besides, we're still dealing with FEMA, and that's quite byzantine enough for our taste. And what WERE you thinking putting FEMA under Homeland Security?:::::::::::I used to come up with questions for God to be asked upon my death if I was faced with the all knowing one. I had lots of questions for God. Now my mind more often goes to questions for George:::::::::::

A friend of ours came for a visit last week. It was great to see him, and it was absolutely fascinating to take him to the 9th Ward. We aren't jaded, that's not the right word, but we are used to seeing debris piles and houses that are flattened. It takes a really SPECTACULAR car in a tree for us to notice. What we saw on our friend's face was a rush of emotions. They played across his face like a montage, flash edits with no seams. I'd watch him get out of our car, look at the barge or something else, stand there a second and shake his head like he thought if he shook it hard enough the scene would change when he opened his eyes. He also understood that no pictures can ever show the scope of the catastrophe. Miles and miles of destruction that even David Lean couldn't ever quite capture. Well, maybe David Lean could.

We told you that Grey Line Tours was doing Disaster Tours and we'll admit that we had some misgivings. We saw that they were sold out the first day, and apparently they continue to do a good business. One day while we were down in the 9th we saw a tour bus. We were concerned that the tour might be in bad taste. What we subsequently learned was very heartening. At the end of the tour, the guides hand out petitions and letters for the tourist to send to their representative. We are delighted. Our view is that the more people see the devastation, the better off we'll be in the long run. Watching our friend's face convinced us of that. We will continue to send emails and pictures, we figure everyone has a delete button on their keyboard. We continue to get email from people we've never heard of who have somehow been forwarded our emails. As long as there are some of us refusing to let the public forget, although it will be a long haul, I think the city will survive albeit in a different form. So we've taken back our objections to Grey Line, and I might take the tour just to see what is being said. Evidently one man, digging through the wreckage of his house, saw the tour bus and came over to it. The tour guide wasn't sure what was going to happen. It could have been a very negative encounter. He was surprised when the man looked into the tour bus and told the tourists, "Don't forget what you saw here. Please go tell everyone you know."

Talk about surprises! There are plenty of shopping carts at the big stores now. Sounds like a silly statement huh? Not here. Not now. So many thousands of people used shopping carts to put their stuff in while evacuating on foot to I-10 or wherever they could find high ground, that the stores, once they got the boards off the windows, staff at the registers and stuff on the shelves, had no carts. You can still see them on the sides of the freeway or on a neutral ground somewhere. There must have been a whopping big truck on our roads recently, filled with nothing but shopping carts because on Saturday I didn't have a problem finding one. Sometimes it's the big things like the Baker Bill that get you, sometimes it's the little things like finding a shopping cart to put the catfish and the milk in.

Our beloved Rock has closed. The club in which we spent many hours and many dollars and many wonderful nights dancing. It is dark there now. Another casualty.

Disaster tours, shopping carts, and. . . . oh yeah, glasses filled with water!

Saturday was David's birthday. We had run into Walter Williams, the creator of Mr. Bill and an acquaintance of ours (the Quarter is a small place and one finds that running into someone repeatedly over the course of a week is standard), and he had said that he had been talked into doing a sort of performance at Harry Anderson's club, Oswald's Speakeasy. The show was for Saturday night and he was a bit nervous he said. We said we'd be there. We went and were lucky to get tickets. There were only five tickets left when we arrived. We found a seat, ordered a couple drinks and looked up to the stage. Under the lights was a man with a long white beard, glasses, and an elfish demeanor disguising a wicked wit. In front of him, gleaming in the light, were glasses. So many I can't begin to estimate the number. Each with water in them to a certain height. You think you know what's coming, right? Well yes. He DID indeed play the glasses of water, but the man was incredible. Playing everything from Bach to Amazing Grace, and lacing each song with repartee, he was entrancing. He then called for requests and of course, the crowd being an interesting group of bohemians, someone laughingly hollers out "Freebird." The whole place starts laughing, as that has become the cliche of my generation. He then says he can play a little heavy metal on some fragile glass and launches into Stairway to Heaven. A beautiful rendition actually that had everyone speechless. He then related a story about how Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had been in some town he was working in years ago. He had called for requests, someone requested Stairway. He played it, only to find that Jimmy Page had requested it. He said, "The bastard requested his OWN song!" This man was a joy.

When Walter Williams got up on stage, he was clearly nervous. He had no reason to be. His presentation, liberally sprinkled with Mr. Bill clips, including one with Sluggo as the insurance agent coming to do the adjuster thing on Mr. Bill's demolished home, was brilliant, funny, poignant and brave. He did a piece on how Louisiana as a land mass had been made by the shifting of the river over centuries. In it he interviewed climatologists, Corps of Engrs' guys, levee specialists, environmentalists. He gave some history, lots of facts and made it so interesting that although he had said before he played it, "Maybe this is too long. If you get bored just let me know and I'll turn it off," no one said it, no one shifted in their chairs. He told some stories about his time on Saturday Night Live laughingly saying, "Yeah, I worked with Belushi, Gilda, Aykroyd, Bill Murray, but there was no talent there!" All in all it was a wonderful time and typical of New Orleans in that the citizens will somehow find some humor and art in just about anything. We think he should take the show on the road!

We were supposed to finish up our storage today, but life intervened in the form of glitches in scheduling, so that will again be put off til Wednesday. We just want to get that over with, get the stuff dried out and be done with that part of our process. Everyone here is in the middle of some process, but this being the kind of place it is in this little warp of time, they muddle through.

We will send more pictures soon,
Love and Light,
Bec and David

Carnival Season in NOLA 2006--Some Sketches in Confusion

2007-01-20T12:44:00.000-08:00

Hi all,
Carnival, or as you know it, Mardi Gras season started on January 6, also known as Twelfth Night. Mardi Gras will go on, but it will be a much abbreviated version with altered routes. Many Krewes (the groups that parade with their floats) have had their own routes for years. This year they have agreed to a set route, after much argument, in order to make the policing of the event easier. For those of you who think Mardi Gras is just a day, a little explanation. In a normal year, there are events for weeks, culminating in 10 days of parades. The city comes to a virtual stop. The "Girls Gone Wild" stuff you see definitely can happen on Bourbon Street, but the parades themselves are very much family affairs, and the krewes are civic organizations of varying types. This year some of the krewes that would normally roll 70 floats will only roll 30. After much haggling, Mardi Gras celebrations will go on and there are decorations on houses all over the place in green, gold and purple, the official colors of Mardi Gras. That's good to see, but it still doesn't feel normal at all. Some are saying that this will be the most important Mardi Gras ever held here. I tend to agree. But there are shadows on the beads this year.

People here are still in a daze. Sometimes little sketches are the best way to illustrate that.

In the 9th Ward, when we went over to drop off the supplies, it was just plain eerie. And the pictures can't possibly convey the scope of the damage (miles) or the smell, that moldy, watery, pervasive smell. No water marks on those houses or the houses in Arabi and Chalmette in St. Bernard. We had gone all the way to Chalmette that day and circled back. No water marks because the water was way over top of those roofs. Some of the houses look okay from outside, but as you drive through you'll see weird images. One that sticks with me from Chalmette is an old Lincoln Continental that had been parked in a garage. The garage door was a little more than half way up, torn up by the wind and water. The Lincoln had been wedged into that garage on an angle by the water. No telling how it was gonna be removed. Looked like you'd have to take the whole garage down to move the car.

On the news, members of Congress have been coming down. Two batches of them this week alone. Finally! They're all appalled at what they're seeing. They don't understand why more hasn't been done. Power not restored, FEMA trailers not in place. We think they should bring the entire Congress down here on a mandatory field trip. Take a look for yourselves. See what's happening here and cut some of the red tape.

A woman, on her cell phone, walking around her property. It's devastated and so is she. The insurance companies are dragging their feet, hers among them. A cop waiting for a haircut in the hairdresser's shop I go to saying that his brother-in-law's house in St. Bernard was worth 200,000. The insurance gave him 63,000, not enough to rebuild. How are people supposed to come back, work, rebuild, when they spend all their time haggling on the telephone and commuting to wherever they're staying at the moment?

A phone call to a house restoring expert on the news: What should I do about mold treatment? Well, he says, you have to make sure all the lumber is no more than 20% wet, 15% would be better, then do the mold treatment on the beams (this is after the house is gutted down TO the beams). If your house is in the areas where water stood for weeks in it, then it might take til April for the beams to dry enough to do the mold treatment. And you should do the treatment UNDER the house as well, your insurance should cover it. No, said the caller, my insurer will not cover it. Where is this person to live until the house is rebuilt? Supposedly a FEMA trailer on her property but they are few and far between. We've seen some lately, but not many.

Levees. Levees. Levees. Our legislators took a trip to the Netherlands. Mary Landrieu was in an exhibit showing the devastation of their flood in 1953. That flood caused them to create the brilliant structure they now have to protect them from the North Sea. As she looked at the pictures from 1953, she points to one and says, "That's what OUR levees look like NOW." I was stunned that they didn't edit that out of the footage. A telling remark.

The levee issue is the lynch pin. Without good protection, there won't be investment in this area, there won't be people coming home. People here can't understand why there isn't a national commitment to this important port city. Every day you'll hear someone in a grocery store or on the street say, "Why can we rebuild bridges in Iraq and not take care of the people in our own country?" The look on their face is one of total bewilderment. Walter Cronkite said what's on most people's minds here: This was a perfect exit strategy. Sorry, guys, we've gotten Saddam out, but now we have to take care of our own people. The new term is VietRaq. Tshirts around saying, "Screw Fallujah. Save New Orleans."

A couple days before our trip to the 9th Ward, our president came for a visit. He was here about three hours on his way to a fundraising event in Florida. He only saw the Garden District, which looks pretty good. Says we've made lots of progress. He was kept away from the girls from Sacred Heart School who, with school permission, staged a demonstration at Jackson Square wearing life jackets. Next time get the chopper to land on the barge over there and let him make his way down. Drop him off about 4PM when the mosquitoes really start biting and the sun will go down soon. We'll give him a flashlight. Tell him we'll meet him in the French Quarter for a drink once he makes his way there.

People are in limbo here. Insurance won't pay, FEMA isn't much help, the levee issues are looming with 5 months til the next hurricane season. The health care system here is dire. The only hospitals open at the moment are hospitals that are for profit, private hospitals. By law they can't turn people away. They've seen a 400% increase in uninsured patients. They figure in four months time, if something isn't done, they will run out of money. And they're operating with extreme short staffing since only 1 out of 4 doctors returned to the area. The patients haven't returned so many doctors have set up shop elsewhere or they'd be bankrupt here. As a result, word is going out that if you have a condition that requires a lot of visits to the doctor, stay where you are.

City hall is giving mixed signals. No, I don't mean the chocolate city remark, which I frankly think is getting way too much press. What most people out of this area do NOT know is that Ray Nagin was elected mostly by the white people here. Nine out of ten of his voters were white. He's been accused of being white on the inside and black on the outside. So although the press is acting like he's against white people, the new Huey Newton, he's SOOOOO not. But he needs someone to check out what he's saying before he says it. He's going to piss off some people no matter what, and that's something he doesn't want to do. That is part of the reason for all the mixed signals.

All zipcodes are open for people to come and stay now. New Orleans East opened two weeks ago. Once again, with the insurance industry running amuck, people aren't sure what to do, but they start gutting. Meanwhile the rebuilding commission issues a plan that recommends a four month moratorium on building permits in certain zipcodes while they do a study to see if rebuilding there is a good idea. The building permit desk at City Hall, just recently reopened with most agencies running abbreviated schedules, was inundated with people trying to get their permit before the moratorium went into effect because any permit issued PRIOR to the moratorium would stand. WHAT???? Today on the news, "Building permits can be gotten free at these locations or online or by fax." Although the moratorium wasn't accepted as a final proposal, those who are gutting houses and preparing to rebuild their homes are confused. Add in the idea that they could go ahead and rebuild, and then, in a year (time spans vary depending on what study you're reading), if your neighborhood isn't considered "viable", you might have to leave anyway. WHAT?????

Articles abound about the real estate market here. What they're NOT saying is that unless you can afford to buy the property outright, there's almost no way to get a mortgage because no insurance/no mortgage and the insurers don't want to insure here. So many people are praying for the Baker bill to buy them out, although that doesn't seem to be going anywhere and it's a convoluted mess, with some people thinking it will pay them 60% of the market value of their house when from what I've read it will only pay them 60% of their equity, with the city kicking in another 40%, but only if the person buys another house in New Orleans. WHAT????

Breathless isn't it. That's how it feels writing it. That's what people sound like talking about it. Completely confused. Our local leaders could definitely be doing a better job, but we need a federal commitment. We need levees first and foremost. We need to feel as though the rest of this country cares. The whole Gulf Coast needs to feel that. A friend was in Gulfport and took a video as he drove down the street. You knew there were houses there once because you could see driveways, but that's all you could see. Flat land, then driveway leading no where.

Those of us who stay here are here because it is home, whether native or adopted. And we're staying here because we'd feel like miserable wimps to not stay and do something, even in the hard times. Economically things get tough, but the tourism industry is starting to get better. Now if we could just get some of those hotel rooms emptied out so tourists could come in. . . . ..but that goes back to housing, trailers. . . . ..

Well how about that! Too surreal. Right after I typed "trailers" the doorbell rang. Guess who it was? A FEMA inspector. He has nothing to do with the FEMA money, (no, we still don't have it for those of you who ask weekly!). He was just here to make sure the LAST inspector did his job correctly. He stood at the front door, asked me if the last inspector was courteous. I actually started laughing. I then told him I was afraid to say anything about anything to him because every time we did something went wrong with the FEMA application. He said he had nothing to do with "that program"--that each state sits down with FEMA and if the state says "we're not paying for damaged personal computers" FEMA then says, "okay then we won't pay for fences." No kidding. That's really what he said. I said, well while all of you are negotiating, there are people who are completely stuck with no jobs, no homes, living in some hotel room or another state. He said, yes, he knew that was so then launched into a story about his uncle who also hadn't gotten a FEMA payout even though his house was pretty much gone, and told me his grandfather used to own a bar a few blocks from here. All in all very productive! (Please add a healthy does of sarcasm to that last statement.) As he left, I told him to be careful. A lot of people want to string up anyone from FEMA. He said, not to worry. He works for a company that is a subcontractor for FEMA out of Washington, some company called PaRR. He said, "They're just bureaucrats like the rest of them. Have a nice day and I hope you get everything squared away."

And so it goes.
Love and Light,
Bec and David

Good Morning, America, How are ya?

2007-01-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

Don't you know me I'm your native son? I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans. . . . .

New Year's Eve in New Orleans, those lyrics sung by Arlo Guthrie to an overcrowded Decatur Street block at the bottom of Jackson Square had people singing and crying in the fog. Good ol' Arlo was only 20 yards from the spot in which the President stood to give his post-Katrina speech. Arlo was better.

It was a really foggy New Year's Eve here, both literally and figuratively. People just seemed a little bit jumbled, and not from drinking.

David came home from work and we decided to go out. We were trying to meet some friends, but they had a head start and we never caught up. We had dinner at one of our favorite cheap restaurants on Decatur, Fiorellas. We were so glad to see it reopen. It had only been open three days and they have a lot of the same staff, including the cooks from the old day shift. We were glad because we've noticed that some of the restaurants definitely have different cooks. Food is still good, but not the same. But then what is around here.

We walked from there down to Oswald's Speakeasy just to see what was going on there. Many of the bars on lower Decatur were planning on giving out free champagne at midnight when the Baby dropped the Gumbo pot, (I'll explain that later!) and Oswald's was on the list. Neither of us likes champagne, but we like the ambience of Oswald's. The bar was nearly empty so we talked, then a couple other patrons came over and there was a discussion about politics that was fun and relatively sedate given the topic. One of the guys had moved here after Katrina, can't remember from where, but said he was staying. It was good to hear someone say they were coming here rather than going somewhere else.

We left there and walked toward Jackson Square. It was a warm night and the fog was really drippy thick. We looked up at the Jax Building to see if they had the Baby up there. Rather than a ball like in NYC, New Orleans has this giant baby that stands on the corner of the old Jax Beer Brewery building that has been converted into shops and condos. It's a beautiful building and the Baby, all lit up, just makes ya smile. At midnight as the countdown begins, he drops the gumbo pot and then the air is full of shrieks and beads. People stand on balconies along Decatur and throw the beads to the folks in the street. We were there last year and there was no way to even walk through the crowd, it was more like being inside a wave without a surfboard. This year it was much, much less crowded. We would rather have been complaining about it being too crowded than not crowded enough, but even though the numbers were fewer it was encouraging as many of them were actual, real live tourists.

We could hear the music as we walked toward the foot of Jackson Square and knew that Arlo Guthrie was going to play that night as well as many other bands of different types. We got there just as Arlo's set began. People were having a great time, then he sang St. James Infirmary Blues and people went wild. After he finished he said that that song and the following one were for this wonderful city and he launched into Good Morning America. The New Orleanians in the crowd were hollering and everyone was singing along. (At the foot of Jackson Square is Decatur Street and right across the street is a large open amphitheatre of sorts, pre-Katrina it was usually filled with tourists watching various street performers. New Year's Eve it was full of people watching the music, so there were faces singing along all the way up to the Moonwalk level at the top of the amphitheatre steps.) Some people were crying, many were thrusting their fists in the air for every chorus. The sound of everyone singing got louder and louder as the song went on. It was really wonderful.

We left when the next band came on. They were very good. I can't remember their names, but we had decided to keep going. So we headed toward Bourbon Street. Bourbon Street looked more normal than it has in months. It didn't look like New Year's Eve Bourbon Street, more like a slow Wednesday night before the storm, but there were actually people from one side to the other pretty steady. And there were even people on balconies throwing beads. Hand Grenade containers and beads in the gutters looked normal. A few alcohol casualties sitting dazed on the curbs. Again, very encouraging. The businesses on Bourbon need for the street to look like that more often. They are struggling to stay afloat. Shops and clubs are all having trouble staying in business. There definitely is music, but we haven't heard any zydeco that wasn't a recording played over a shop's speaker system in months. Jazz still comes out of Fritzels, Al Carson is still playing at the Funky Pirate so a good blues riff will knock you in the head on that block, other clubs have music of course, and the New Orleans Levee Board (yup, that's really their name), arguably the best R&B band in the city is still playing at the Rock. We had decided that we wouldn't be out late but that we'd stop in the Rock, say hi to the owner and the band who are friends of ours, and then go home. As of this minute, I don't know if the Rock is going to be open this weekend. They might have to shut their doors.

This is happening to businesses left and right. I've heard estimates of 1.5 to 4.5 million tourist dollars per day have been lost since the storm. For a city that relies on tourist dollars for a hefty part of their economic base, this is catastrophic. The first cruise ship since the storm came into Port this week, with more to come. That will help a lot. We hope they keep them coming. New Orleans was the second largest cruise port in the US and was planning on expanding their capabilities before the storm.

Today is Twelfth Night. This is the traditional opening of Carnival season. We hope that the tourist industry blankets the airways with "Come to New Orleans" ads, and that the 20,000 new hotel rooms scheduled to open this month, will be ready.

There is still so much to do here, but flipping the calendar over helped the overall mood a bit. I don't know if we can sustain the optimism as a City. We try to maintain it on a day by day basis. It's the only way or we'd be overwhelmed. The "plans" for rebuilding are a mish mash with nothing definitive coming out of City Hall. The health care system is a mess. Only 1 of 4 doctors returned so far and only 2 of 9 hospitals are open. The Charity Hospital system, one of the largest medical facilities for indigent care, is gone, possibly never to be reopened. We have no Level One trauma facility at this time. I giggle every time I see an ad for the various testing facilities touting their latest MRI or CAT scan equipment and saying "We're open!" I'm not sure who's sending anyone there. The insurance companies are still holding up payments or just out and out denying payment. Signs have sprung up all over the city posted by attorneys who are specializing in insurance problems. The federal help is still not what it should be. There are still no real answers about accountability of the Army Corps of Engrs and the levees they built. Nor are there any real answers regarding a new levee system. Fifty percent of the parishes of Louisiana have nixed providing sites for FEMA trailers, should they actually arrive. I saw a couple of them. I know they exist. I understand that people are afraid that the FEMA sites will become permanent fixtures as they have in some parts of Florida, but I'm still ashamed of them for not putting themselves in the displaced citizens' shoes.

The list goes on and on. So much to do, a logistical and economic nightmare for everyone.

We are hoping that those who have hung in there, like the business owners on Bourbon Street, will be able to hang on a little longer. We are hoping that those people who are determined to come home, will in fact be able to.

We are hoping that the New Year is wonderful for all of you.

Love and Light,
Bec and David

Christmas in New Orleans

2006-12-29T14:07:00.000-08:00

Well there have been lots of articles about Christmas in New Orleans. Some of them about families who came back to spend their holidays together as they always had, others about the evacuees who couldn't get back home.

David and I have our own little New Orleans Christmas story to tell.

When we first started writing these emails, we sent one out about the people who were missing. These were people we actually knew, not the people of the statistics. As they've turned up, we've let you all know. On Christmas Eve some of those on our personal "missing" list showed up on our doorstep. Gifts.

We were standing outside, the weather was warm for this time of year. Zack and Melissa's folks were here, and they're always a joy. So we stood out there talking, laughing, having a couple drinks. David was due home shortly but was still at work. I had come back in the house for something and the doorbell rang. When I opened it there was a man with a wonderful smile on his face, dressed in a bright Christmas red sweatshirt, black pants, and red hush puppies. It was Louis Towns, our neighbor. All he needed was a bow on his head and he would have been the best gift of Christmas. Before he could get the "Hello Miss Marie" out of his mouth we were hugging each other. Then the phone rang and it was David. I told him there was someone here who wanted to talk to him. I handed the phone to Louis and he said, "Hey, Mr. Dave!" David was thrilled and hurried home.

I still don't have the whole story of Louis' odyssey, but I'll give you what I do know. First a little bit about Louis. Louis is one of the most decent and one of the hardest working men I've ever known. A black man, born and raised in Louisiana, very intelligent, not very well educated. He's married, has a son who wants to be an engineer, and he had two grandsons. He may have former wives, other kids, other grandchildren, but we've never discussed any of that. Pre-Katrina David and I met him on the Ferry as it seemed we were usually coming and going at about the same time, all on bicycles. He lives a few doors down on our block and of course we'd seen him, but it was on the Ferry that we made friends. Many nights we'd be coming home from work the same time as he did and we'd talk about lots of things. He worked in a warehouse in Metairie, which is by bicycle a very long way from Algiers Point. Louis is in his early 50's and he rode his bicycle to and from his job in a warehouse every day. If we didn't see him on the Ferry we knew that his boss, who thought he hung the moon, must have picked him and his bicycle up over near the bridge, but usually if the boss did that it was at 4:30AM. Louis, grateful for the ride, would go to work early then ride his bike home. Our relationship was casual. He'd come to our porch to talk, we'd stop at his porch to talk, but we always talked on the Ferry.

About three weeks before the storm, Louis had somehow dropped either a pallet full of stuff or a large 5-600 lb drum on his foot. I can't remember which, I only remember him telling me the story and it was a totally freak accident. His foot had been literally smashed and the doctors had put multiple pins in it just to keep the bones together. One of the pins was sticking out of his big toe. Just looking at it made you cringe because you could imagine, or thought you could, how painful this injury was. David and I had talked back then about how difficult it would be after this accident for Louis to do his daily Algiers to Metairie ride. Louis said he'd find a way to get to work because he was trying to help his son become an engineer, besides, he had said, he'd been saving up some money to buy some old beater car. About a week before the storm, Louis moved up to a friend's house in Metairie, or near there, because it was closer to the doctors who were treating him and walking to and from mass transit wasn't really an option for him at the time. Then came Katrina. We didn't see him again. When his family returned to the flat up the street, we'd ask every time we saw them if they'd heard anything from Louis. They had no idea where he was. They were worried too. We all knew that he had been in a part of the city that had flooded. At least once a week David or I would wonder if Louis had made it. It was one of those vague little aches that we didn't know how to fix, someone once there suddenly gone. We didn't know his last name---he was simply Louis and we were David and Marie, a name that I am not sure how he ascribed to me but he's always called me that and I've never corrected him. We weren't really close with his family so felt like we'd be intruding if we asked for last names and we figured they'd already checked all the various lists.

On Christmas Eve when he showed up on the doorstep we found out what had happened to him. Unfortunately, it's not a particularly unique story. He's just one of many. He had been in Utah. I should have figured that out by looking at the Utah Utes red sweatshirt, but hadn't noticed anything but his smile. How he got to Utah is a story that I hope to get in toto one day. He says he's written some of it down and has warned me that his spelling is no good. I don't care. I got the "short" version the other night and want to hear the complete version. (He said he'd been interviewed several times by the Utah newspapers. I wonder what they made of his story.)

When the storm hit he was lakeside in the City, either in Metairie or nearby. That is the area that the 17th St Canal breached and flooded. His foot still full of pins and in a cast, he walked through waist deep polluted water until someone rescued him and took him to the Convention Center. There he spent five days. Another couple of friends were also in the Convention Center and have told me about the level and degree of filth, including two inches of urine on the floor. He was there with his 19 year old nephew and some other friends or family. His nephew went to get bottled water for some of the elderly people near them at the Center, and somehow he wound up in the chaos of evacuees and police and was shot and killed. Louis stood in my kitchen at one point and sobbed saying, "I watched my nephew die and all he was doing was going to get some water for the old people." He looks utterly bewildered when he says this. There is some anger in him, but his anguish over not being able to help his nephew outweighs the anger. At least for now. At this point his feet and legs were in terrible shape from walking through the water in combination with the injury he had sustained prior to the storm. He left the Convention Center on foot and joined the people on the Crescent City connection. He was one of the people the Gretna police turned back. Remember, he lives over here. He was told that if he could get someone on the phone to come and get him, that he could come through. He didn't have anyone's phone number and no cell phone, so that option was gone for him. He walked back to the other side of the river and through some intervention, not sure whose intervention, he wound up on a Jet Blue to Utah.

When he got to Utah, they put him straight in to a hospital, where he was told that his feet and legs were so horribly infected that they might have to amputate them. Evidently his feet and lower legs were triple the size they normally are. They pumped him full of antibiotics and painkillers, and remarkably, saved his legs. I told him he was actually lucky not to have been allowed to cross the bridge because at that point I'm not sure that there would have been a hospital in the area who could have taken care of him. There was still no power in most places. He spent weeks in the hospital and was so sick and so out of it that he said he didn't realize how much time had passed and he didn't know where the rest of his family was either. Finally he was released, evidently has been set up in some kind of living arrangement, still has medical issues that need to be dealt with so he could only stay here for a couple of days before heading back to Utah. He also found out once he got in touch with his family here that one of his grandsons had died. So his return here was bittersweet, but he was so grateful to be home. He says he'll return home permanently at the end of March, but for now he'll be in Utah not liking the snow but grateful for all the help he's had. He believes absolutely that he was saved for a reason. His emotional pain will take much longer to heal.

As we were talking with Louis and the neighbor/family next door, we see two short people walking toward us. It was two of our "angel urchins" and they had also been lost. Kendrick and Trevonne are brothers. Their mother works offshore on a oil rig, they live with an aunt a few blocks from here, but last we'd heard they were going to move to St. Bernard parish. Gratefully they didn't, but we hadn't seen them since about a week before the storm and we'd worried about them and their cousin Terrence. Kendrick is 12, his brother Trevonne is about 14, Terrence is about 14 too. We were delighted to see them. I grabbed Kendrick and gave him a big hug and we told them how much we'd worried about them. Melissa said she saw Kendrick's bottom lip quiver when I grabbed him. I didn't see it, I was so grateful to see these boys that I had tears in my own eyes and wouldn't have noticed if Kendrick did too. Trevonne stood down at the bottom of the steps til I asked him if he was too big to give me a hug on Christmas Eve. He grinned and came up and hugged me. They told us they had been in Napoleonville, "the country" as they call it, and were glad to be home. Terrence is in another little town "in the country" and probably won't be coming home. Kendrick and Trevonne will start back to school sometime in January.

So we got to chalk four people off of our personal "missing" list. It was a lovely Christmas!

Others won't be so lucky. You've all seen the death toll numbers, which I'm still not really convinced of. (Does that number include people like Louis's nephew?) But no one's talking about the "missing" numbers. As of last week, according to I believe it was an Associated Press story, these are the statistics so far:

-80% of New Orleans was under water
-284,000 homes were destroyed
-81,000 business were destroyed

Horrible stats, but the following statistics are rarely mentioned:
-6644 people are still listed as MISSING, and this number includes 1000 children

Where are they? Is someone doing anything to find them? With over 1000+ confirmed dead, what about the 6600 missing people?

Seems to me this needs to be looked into, not just reported and dismissed. We are lucky. Most of our missing people are turning up. I cannot imagine not knowing where my daughter and grandson were for all these months. Wondering if they were under a building somewhere dead and still not found, or had been sent three states away but not put on any list. Them being so untrackable would be torture. This is the reality for many people in this region.

I am so grateful that our Christmas gifts this year were on two feet walking up our steps and giving us peace of mind as far as their well being was concerned. We couldn't have asked for more.

Love and Light,
David and Bec

It's the week before Christmas, and all through the house. . . .

2006-12-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

. . . . is the second trip to storage salvage. Really. Behind me as I write are dolls, lots and lots of dolls. All sitting in front of the electric heater, where they've been for days to dry out. I turn them like chickens on a spit. There's another tupperware full on the porch, still wet, but there's only so much room for salvage so I do it a little at a time.

Meg had a large doll collection, which was added to each Christmas for many years til she decided she'd rather have a stereo at 12, a car at 15. You know the way that goes. We had carefully packed them all up and brought them with us, figuring some day she'd probably want them. When we pulled them out of the sludge that is our storage, the porcelain was mostly okay, but the bodies and the clothes were soaking wet and starting to mold. I've discovered that salvaging this stuff is a three pronged operation. First you get it out of the storage unit, yes it's still in the dark out there, then you get it home and try to dry it out, then you try to clean it up. Some of what you think you can save you can't, some of what you think is just gone, you can. It's pretty schizophrenic. Once this batch of dolls is dry, I'll bring the other batch in and do the same thing. It poured yesterday. Some of the stuff on the porch got wet. Oh well, it's already wet. What else can happen to it?

Snapshots------OOOOOOOHH now there's a bad word for us this week.

Lemme back up a bit. We got into storage again on Wednesday. Apparently it won't be such a problem now as there's going to allegedly be someone there all the time. THAT is a big help. Of course it was still wet, of course it had no power, but we got smart and got little hangie lanterns. The coal miner idea is cemented in our heads now. It looks like a mine in there. So we open the door, get some carts, hang up the lanterns and move some more book sludge. The floor is very slippery and our unit is in the dead center of this maze like building. After a couple of trips in and out with the cart, I literally slipped/tripped and saved myself from falling completely in the dark by placing my face squarely onto the corrugated metal of the corner of the units that I didn't see. Hey, at my age the eyes don't adjust as fast as they did. Don't panic! Quit gasping! I'm okay. I had a fat lip and a couple bruises and a bad headache for a couple days. It was to be expected that one of us would fall. We had to sign waivers prior to going in saying that no matter what happened UHaul wasn't liable so they're off the hook and next time I wear better treaded shoes.

The books don't get any easier to toss out. Each box harder than the last. Then came the box of games, Monopoly, Scrabble, all the games everyone has and soggy Monopoly money flew around us as we tossed the pulpy scraps into the dumpster which is about 10 feet tall. It was a windy day and it drizzled a little, which made tossing things over one's head a redundant effort in a lot of cases. "Hey, honey, here's the FEMA money!" The great golden 500 dollar Monopoly bills going up towards the mouth of the dumpster and then back down on top of us, kinda like a really perverse jewel thief movie where the thieves put all the "take" on the bed and toss it in the air. We are a sick couple. We'll take our humor where we can get it.

Back into the mine we go and now I must issue a retraction of my last email. TUPPERWARE DOES NOT SAVE PHOTOS. We look down and find a gigantic green tupperware. Lid firmly attached, looked pretty okay, sitting on the floor. This was a coup in and of itself as getting to the floor level in this thing is done in little increments by taking all the sludge from the top, then the middle, then finally you clear an area and see floor. Neither of us had any idea what was in it. David opened the lid and the worst odor came out. We picked it up and it was incredibly heavy. We wheel it out, open it up and it's full of black water, then I realize what else is in it. Photos. Tons and tons of family photos. Baby pictures of me. Baby pictures of David. Baby pictures of Megan. The Christmas card I made of her when she was four in her leather jacket and hat eating a candy cane. I had several extra. No more. School pictures from every year of her school. Mine too. My mama had given my sisters and myself our "kid pictures" and they were gone in the black water. I felt like I had let her down, I hadn't protected them. Bullshit, I know, but it's one of those flickering thoughts which must be multiplied 100,000 times all over New Orleans every day. It was horrible. And there are more photos in that storage unit. I haven't gotten to them yet. We're still only about 2/3 of the way through. We figure it will be one more, maybe two more trips to the mine before we have dealt with all of it.

Snapshots, gone. Snapshots of the day, some of which made it through stage one of salvage. Bizarre things. Meaningless things that have become meaningful:

A temporary driver's license with my Guerrero St. apartment address on it. Some old shoot schedule from Video Caroline. The complete Videowest staff list and contact numbers, which I typed on an ancient Xerox word processor years ago. A contact sheet of photos of a video shoot with Greg Kihn, the only picture still intact was one of Juanita, smiling up at me. I'm going to dry it out and send it to her. A sketch Joe Dea made 23 years ago of Meg with bunny ears. A postcard of the Jefferson Starship shoot. Meg wants that. Some sketches made for paintings that I had to throw away. Found the "heart" sketch from the Janis Joplin painting which did survive in my house. If it makes it through the drying process I'm giving that to Stuart and Lon, our dear friends here. A faded picture of me in a baton twirling recital when I was about 6 I'd say. I remember my Mama sewing every stinking green sequin on the yellow fabric and how proud I was of my boots. Pictures of two cats, now gone, the only pictures of pets that remain. Our beloved Dakota's photo was a mush. I had to ask David what had been in the frame. A photo of David's nephew and his dad fishing. We could only see their feet before we tossed it. Some touristy postcards and old newspaper articles from the Dalton Gang Hideout in Kansas. If any of that lives, I'm going to divvy it up between Meg and my nieces who were along for that trip. A Blue Angels tshirt that Meg got when she went to see them with David at age 6. I'll save that for her.

Talk about your life flashing before your eyes. It was all there in storage. I tossed out 30 years of my work. Any writing I'd done was gone, the paintings went into the dumpster, most of the sketches are pulp, and any photography I'd done was now matted blank space. Funny though, one painting that I was always unsatisfied with went into the dumpster but the sketch survived and it was better than the painting had ever been and having spent so much time in water on top of a water color that was in there, it's now a kinda cool piece of art itself. I'll try to keep that. It's a weird kind of numbness that overtakes you when you're sorting through the crap that we all save that reminds us that we were here, we created, we experienced. I actually am nuts enough that I took some photos of some of the stuff before it went over the top of the blue dumpster, especially some of Meg's stuff, so she knows what she had. And I need to tell Angie that I saved most of Meg's Barbie's, and the clothes that Angie had given her for them. At least I think I did. We'll see how stage two goes.

Now, put that kleenex away. This is one of those things that comes with living through Katrina. We'll sort through the rest after Christmas. What else can happen to it at this point? And we'll see Christmas. We'll be walking around dolls and boxes of other stuff that most people would call junk, but we'll be walking around.

David has a friend at work whose neighbor was so distraught that he took his own life this week. Those numbers keep climbing. He had been estranged from his wife prior to the storm, then his house went under water, and he lost his job. He hadn't gotten his FEMA money either (we're hearing that only 13% of people have, and I also heard a story which I've yet to be able to confirm that a large percentage of people were listed as "ineligible" because they had bad credit ratings. I don't get the relationship there. I'll let you know as soon as I can confirm that story.) He had started gutting his house, was getting on with rebuilding. Contractors were coming in. His house was in Mid-City and was reasonably stable. Unfortunately, the whole thing took it's toll on him and the contractors found him upstairs in the house, dead.

City Park did the Celebration in the Oaks this year, much to our surprise. I heard some people griping about that. How can one do a celebration of any kind, they asked. Tonight the traditional carolling on Jackson Square will happen. People with candles and song sheets singing in the Christmas lights and the shadow of the Cathedral. I hear several restaurants will manage to do reveillon dinners, the dinners traditionally served after Midnight Mass. Of course they must.

We are months past the storm, and still there is so much to be dealt with personally and in terms of planning what the future of the City will be. I was in Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop one evening and heard some guys standing at the bar discussing all this. One said, "Okay, it's time to STOP CRYING. We can go on crying forever, or we can get to work and get something done." No doubt we'll cry some more, it's unavoidable, but this guy made a good point.

One thing that will help is for people to celebrate. This is a city that five months ago would hold up traffic for any kind of parade. "Mayor Nagin's dog had a litter!" "GREAT! Let's have a parade!" "It's Wanda's birthday!" "Get a permit, we MUST do a second line!" "No parade today?" "Nope." "Why not?" "No reason." "WAIT, it's St. Theralian's feast day." "Who the hell is St. Theralian?" "No idea but let's have a parade!"

New Orleans won't be that way again for a long time, but celebration is needed. Hell, I saw an actual streetcar coming down Canal the other day! PARADE! There was no parade, but there should have been. Every little step has to be applauded, celebrated, and built on. There's so much depression and despair in this little corner of the world that every bit of joy has to be noted. Christmas lights up on houses, singing, reveillons, these things must be there however sparse. It will help so many get through the ongoing salvage and rebuilding process. And we'll all have to help those who have a real let down once the holidays have passed, because many will still not have a home, or will be going through one more room in their house throwing out everything in it and gutting the walls. David and I will still have to wade through the muck of storage and go through the trunks, the things we're dreading most. It has to be done and we'll do it along with everyone else in New Orleans.

What we need the rest of you to do is not to forget us. Don't let the current quick fix levee solution become a permanent, neglectful patch so that this happens again. The storm would have been a bad one, but it was the failure of the levees that caused this wholesale destruction. I got a great email from a friend in Montana. Showed the system London uses to keep water out, then showed the Netherlands system, then showed the New Orleans system. Appalling. (I'll forward it to you if you want it.) Write the Army Corps of Engineers and tell them that we can do better. Write your representatives and tell them thank you for the 3 billion, but we're going to need so much more than that, then those of you who are versed in "finance speak" can tell them how it wouldn't be a lump sum but would be spread out over the life of the project and it will cost so much less than rebuilding New Orleans a second time. Tell them the insurance industry lobbyists will thank them in the end and contribute more to their campaigns. (Hey, whatever works!) Tell them that if we can afford to run an outrageous deficit to rebuild Iraq, which we spent over 300 billion on last year, that we should be able to make this city safe for it's citizens. Oh, and tell them that you know people here, and that they're tenacious and willing to throw them a parade if they just make it seem like they give a shit.

Tell them that a phoenix rose from the ashes, and that there are a bunch of us here waiting to see what kind of glorious City rises from the sludge. Tell them we won't let them bury any more of us in it.

Now, after you've done that, take that damn kleenex in your hand. That's it. Good. Hold that hand up in the air. GREAT. Put on a brass band CD. Got it? Okay. Now, stand up, wave it in the air. Move your hips around to the music. Get a few of your friends to join you. Now take it to the streets. People will look at ya funny, but they'll get over it. Now you've created a second line. Have fun with it! Pour another eggnog if you want! Keep going, don't wimp out.

Now imagine how wonderful it will be to do that in a renewed New Orleans, knowing that you're in a City that wouldn't let itself die.

Love and Light,
Bec and David

But we don't have a drink called the Typhoon. . .or red headed step-child. . . .

2006-12-12T12:10:00.000-08:00

Hi all,
First let me say thanks to all of you who sent birthday greetings last week. It was much appreciated, and for those of you who sent snail mail cards, don't despair, they'll get here. Maybe it will be January but they will arrive. Mail service here is still hit or miss. Sometimes we get mail two days in a row, then nothing for days, but eventually things do show up. Priority Mail to New Orleans can take as long as two weeks to arrive here, so please, if you sent something, don't think we're unappreciative. We might not have gotten it yet. I'm not doing my usual Christmas this year. I'm only sending to my grandson and daughter and anything that we sent we had shipped from the place we bought it. Online shopping! The only way to go at the moment.

We've been thinking about a lot of things, so this will probably be a little disjointed. Forewarned is forearmed, they say. Consider yourself forewarned.

One thing we've been thinking about is Mardi Gras. The arguments surrounding do we do it or do we not do it are astonishing. There is the racial issue, which can seem insurmountable in just about any discussion of anything at the moment. There are truly some valid points on all sides, but the Mardi Gras issues are really something. Our mayor, whom I have mostly liked, really screwed up this week by saying in Atlanta that he didn't think we should have Mardi Gras this year but that the tourism industry people said it had to happen. Um, YUP, they're right, Mayor Nagin. The police, underfunded and understaffed, are saying they can't patrol Mardi Gras as it has been since there's no money for overtime, so apparently some agreement has been made that all the krewes will parade on the same route (not standard, but workable). Okay, phew. Now come the weird arguments:

1. We shouldn't do Mardi Gras because for decades it was segregated (true, absolutely) and it sends the wrong message to the displaced citizens of color that only white returnees are welcome. These people seem to ignore the fact that Zulu, one of the super krewes is in negotiations now re:their route and will parade. I do hope the city lets them go into the Treme as is customary, because it's needed. For those of you not from here, Zulu is a huge mostly Afro-American krewe that started out as a parody of white krewes and has become one of the premiere krewes in Mardi Gras, and the Treme is an historic black cultural area. Without Zulu, it just wouldn't be Mardi Gras, and they appear to be coming back which leads to the next weird argument.

2. We shouldn't do Mardi Gras because it sends the wrong message to the country that we're all down here partying on the bodies of the perished. New Orleans needs to continue moving forward. That doesn't just mean getting tourists back here (although that's needed and is indeed happening slowly but surely). It doesn't just mean cleaning debris up and rebuilding houses. It doesn't just mean re-opening businesses and doing what we can do to keep existing small businesses viable (a real problem since SBA loans are taking so long and the employees can't come home with no where to live until FEMA trailers show up). Of COURSE all of that needs to be done and it will be done. It will take time. In the meantime, though, we have to psychologically change this city. This is a very sad, very tired, very depressed citizenry at the moment. The culture of New Orleans is something that everyone here is hoping to retain because without it we might as well become Atlanta or Tampa or someplace other than New Orleans. Our collective psyche needs Mardi Gras. Everyone has worked hard and is continuing to. You see people everywhere digging through their stuff, gutting their houses, standing on their rooftops fixing the roof. While Mardi Gras may not be "normal" in any other city, it IS normal here, and we need a dose of normal.

Meanwhile, as everyone argues about Mardi Gras, Grey Line Tours has started tours of the devastated areas. At least that's what we heard. This wouldn't necessarily be as tasteless as it sounds IF the money was going to help the areas being toured and IF it showed people that parts of this city still aren't anywhere near what they were four months ago. There are so many people who think things are back to business as usual here. If those taking the tour would act as ambassadors when they returned to their hometowns, great. BUT I fear that is NOT what will happen and it will just be more horrible exploitation with Grey Line making money.

We went to some friends' house the other night. They were determined to have a Christmas tree this year, so over we went to help decorate it. There were about nine of us, til David showed up after work. We wound up with a tree covered in ornaments that they'd had for a long time that had sentimental value, along with ornaments made from various pieces of an MRE (well, except for the one that Churchill the glorious bulldog ate! It was MRE wheat bread with beads glued to it and he, apparently, is the only creature I know that likes it.), and instead of tinsel, it was strewn with Mardi Gras beads. It is a beautiful tree, and a shining symbol of hope, as hokey as that sounds. Just the act of DOING it was hopeful. And we avoided a huge vet bill for Churchill after a panic over the probability of his having eaten the wire we had used to hang the bread, so all was better than well with the universe.

The next day I went through all of our ornaments from storage. The tin can they were in is a rust bucket and the water still in the can was extraordinary. I do have some words of wisdom for you. Never ever wrap your ornaments in colored tissue paper, particularly red. I have an elf that started out with a little blue jacket and shoes on. He's plastic or resin, something like that. With the red stain of the paper, he's now quite a showy guy. His pants are orange and his jacket and shoes are purple! I have a porcelain angel that survived, but she looks like she's spent entirely too much time in the sun. I saved some, and others are still in the "maybe" column, but at least they weren't all wiped out. Aside from the tissue paper advice, make sure you pack anything that matters to you in tupperware! It will float and keep the water out. It took me about 6 hours to slog through all the tissue paper in that can and clean each one to see if it was salvage pile or trash pile. The ones that made it will be treasured, even though they are few. They are drying in front of the heater right now, then they'll go to stage two sorting. If we can keep the mold off of the wooden ones, we'll be good!

We think we should sell New Orleans to Japan. ::::::::::::::::::::Can you all say LEFT FIELD?????::::::::::::::::::::::::Think about it, folks. As the Japanese say, "You won the war, but we won the peace." Japan, as you know, is tiny. It's an island. It has typhoons, which are the Pacific version of a hurricane. No evacuation routes to Atlanta or Memphis or Texas. Where are they going to go? No where. So they have put together a remarkable system of floodgates and levees to protect their highly populated, heavily urban cities. While FEMA goes on and on about should we rebuild near our coastal cities, Japan is surrounded by coast line, and they manage. I was reading an article about a typhoon a year ago or so, and there were some deaths, three I think. Why can't we manage that? I believe it's a question of will.

There are flood plains in the Midwest. There are fault lines in California. Do we just say that anywhere a catastrophic brush fire is probable there should be no building--certainly no REbuilding. No one blinked an eye when New York needed help. No one blinked an eye after the San Francisco earthquake in 1989. I do not remember a discussion about whether or not to rebuild. And we're certainly not booting people out of tornado alley. "So sorry, this is your home but the insurance companies and we, the other citizens of the country feel it's just entirely too dangerous and expensive to rebuild here, so you need to relocate to.. . . . ." Canada maybe? I imagine they have their weather problems there too. Fact is New Orleans is not recognized for her Port, which is extremely important to the nation's economy. Louisiana, and the entire Gulf Coast, is viewed as the red-headed step-child of this country. Nothing but decadent rich white people throwing beads and eating etouffe or criminally oriented impoverished black people live in New Orleans. At least that seems to be the perception. So now the battle rages over whether to rebuild, where to rebuild, and who's going to pay for it. (Don't get me started on the thieves who call themselves the insurance industry.)

Screw it. Louisiana has been bought and sold more than any other state historically. Let's just sell it to the Japanese. Get their engineers in here, along with some from Venice, Italy and the Netherlands. They'll fix these levees, which have to be the first order of business, and I bet they'd do it right.

Of course we'd have to keep the Calle's and the Rue's for historical accuracy. Rue Royal Tokyo. Rue St. Louis Amsterdam. Rue Bourbon Venezia. We can do this. And we'll just have Pat O'Brien's start serving Typhoons, instead of Hurricanes.

Love and Light and forgive the rant,
Bec and David

A Christmas Tree on Canal Street, Aaron Neville and Tennyson

2006-12-02T11:57:00.000-08:00

Hi all,
Well Thanksgiving was a little schizophrenic, but lovely. First we went to Bridge House, a place long known as a haven for the homeless and the substance abusers (hey, wait, wasn't that the TOURISTS in the pre-Katrina days?) of New Orleans. We had called them up and told them that we would volunteer on Thanksgiving as they always feed people there. We got there and found that the definition of homeless had changed radically this year and furthermore, there were more volunteers than those needing food. They were prepared to feed 1000 people, but didn't get nearly that many. Most of those who arrived had lost their homes and jobs, or were here from Honduras working on roofs. It was truly surreal. The woman in charge asked us to just sit and talk with people who were coming in so they wouldn't have to have Thanksgiving dinner alone.

The first man we sat with was probably in his fifties. He said, "My mother and father had 15 kids, all of us still living, and all the nieces and nephews are still living. But last year Thanksgiving was at MY house." His family is scattered to the four winds, his house is gone, he emptied his refrigerator and strapped it closed as he knew the storm was coming. He said he did it because he knew it would float and it did. He floated out of his house. He is trying to rebuild and says he is NOT leaving, but he cried when he said that most of his family won't be coming back. This storm has destroyed families in a way that can't be expressed. All I could do was hug him.

The second man was in his early 80's. He grinned as he told me that his house was all but gone, just a shell really. He had thought the grandkids had taken the dog. They hadn't. When he found out that the dog was still here somewhere, both he and his remaining son went to the house daily and never found the dog. They started gutting the house, and the son went upstairs, lifted a mattress to get it out of there, and heard a growl. The dog had gone to high ground in the upstairs and had stayed under that mattress for 38 days. Roger, was the man's name, Roger thought the dog must have survived on the water that was seeping through some damage on the roof. We were all celebrating the survival of that dog!

There were others. All with similar stories. All sad, all displaced, all saying they're not leaving.

We left Bridge House and headed for the Quarter. We were meeting some friends for dinner at Muriel's, a lovely restaurant on Jackson Square. It was kinda like going from a workhouse to Versailles in a matter of moments. We sat on the Square and enjoyed seeing some families walking together and then met our friends. Muriel's is truly exquisite, great ambience, great food, great service. We sit down with our sweet friends at this huge round table and we found ourselves talking about our collective mental states. All on a rollercoaster in various ways. And we talked about our determination to stay and help rebuild this wonderful city. Then Bruce says, "I really hate poetry, but am wondering if you all would mind if I read this?" We said no, of course we wouldn't mind. He had searched for days for this passage from "Ulysses" by Tennyson:

"Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

I'm in tears just typing it for you. We were all in tears at dinner when he read it. It's perfect for us right now, and neither the dislocated at Bridge House, nor the friendship connected family at Muriel's are willing to yield. It really was a beautiful day and we were all so grateful.

David and I were steeling our courage to go to storage. We were finally going to be allowed in on Tuesday at 10AM. We knew what it looked like, but nevertheless we were ill prepared for what the reality was.

Still no power out there, so one feels like a miner out of Germinal. We opened the garage type door to the storage unit and started filling up the carts with what David calls "book slop." We heard that you could freeze books, papers, photos, and save some of them, but we'd need a freezer the size of a meatlocker to freeze all of our papers, books and photos. David wondered out loud how much we had paid for all these books. We decided better not to think about it.

We rolled the carts out, piled high, and went straight to the dumpster, looking at the titles as we tossed them in. All of my first edition Zola's were gone, David's first airplane book that he got from his dad at the age of 6, also gone. All the Native American books we had, all of Jim Gonsey's beloved auto books, all of our film books, everything, just gone. The toxic water and mold had taken them and we slogged them in to the dumpster. Every now and then one of us would find one of our favorites and the other would hear, "Oh god." THUMP. "Jackie gave me this book." THUMP. "You and Meg got me this one for Christmas." THUMP. We made trip after trip. We went through every single thing piece by piece because it was so jumbled up that we couldn't take for granted that the remnants of that box were actually the remnants of the box we thought it was. Just sludge. On one trip I pulled out a black box. I hit the deck on that one. It was all of Megan's graduation pictures from Kim Jew in Albuquerque. I sat in the middle of the street and sobbed. I remember being upset at how much they had cost. I'd give about anything for them right now. So many photos, just plain gone. Some look like weird art projects and if I can salvage them like that, I will, but most, certainly any in stacks were just pieces of white photo paper with a black slime that was emulsion showing a smile or a dog or. . . . .We think Meg was right when she said it might have been better that we couldn't see what WAS on them because we don't know exactly what we lost in some of those soggy stacks.

We walked back through the eerie black hallway and when David stepped into the unit I heard a little "clink." I told him not to move, took the flashlight, and looked down. There on the floor in pristine condition, no mud, no sludge, was a little white bone china tea pot that was from Megan's childhood tea set. I bought that for her in Chinatown in San Francisco when she was about five. Not a chip on it. Amazing. A precious little gift. We found other precious little gifts as we went along.

An oak microwave cart that had been holding up several boxes was unrecognizable. Just a jumble of wood pieces. This thing had been built for stout. David and I couldn't figure out what all the wood WAS, then he said, "Microwave cart. I put that together one Christmas eve in the garage." We stood there amazed that it was just pieces, then tossed them aside.

After four hours, we managed to get through about 1/3 of the unit. Out of that one third we have about three tupperwares and a small box. That's all that could be saved and even in that some of it is still iffy. I haven't had the courage to go through the can of Christmas ornaments to see what lived. David was so hopeful when he opened it, he thought since it was metal, maybe just maybe. . . . .but the water had gotten in and the bottom had rusted. I'll go through it piece by piece and see if anything is salvagable. (Pictures of what we salvaged will be in your mailboxes soon. It was such a surprise that that was all there was left. Can't imagine if this was my entire home like some people.) We have to go back on Monday and we're hoping to get it all done by then, but the steamer trunks, I fear, will be casualties along with everything in them. We're both dreading those. The mold is just horrendous and had we been allowed to get in sooner, we could have saved a lot more. Another week, another layer of mold, one a fluffy white like angel hair, the other a nasty black mold that eats things. We're talking way past mildew. We brought it all home in the rented Ford Focus (tiny little car!) and it's sitting on the porch. We're hoping that it will dry a bit in the air and we'll have a better shot at saving some of it, like some of Meg's dolls. If I can dry out the bodies, get rid of the clothes, they might be okay. We'll see. There were a couple dog crates in there, just full of the black water that this stuff steeped in for three months. Took a picture of it so you can see what people are dealing with in their houses.

Oh yeah, the car was rented because our car was finally getting fixed. The body shop just opened back up. Hurray, the voodoo mobile is whole again.

Sitting at Yo Mama's filthy, having a drink and a burger. We looked shell shocked, but everyone does at the moment. A woman sits next to me and orders a shot of tequila. It was clearly not her first. She told me her house was in Lakeview, was being the operative word. She had been a nurse at Tulane for 18 years in pediatric chronic illness. She's moving to Mississippi although she was born and raised here. She looks like a ghost. She told me of her house, pristine on the outside, like my storage unit on the inside. Then she told me a story of her friend, another nurse, in Gentilly. Weathered the storm okay, then the next morning got out of bed and felt a little water on the floor. No idea where it was coming from. Two hours later, her friend was floating on furniture cushions and anything else that would float until they got to I-10. The water from the Industrial Canal came up from nothing to rooftops in two hours.

You'll be getting a rant soon about the levees. About a petition we want to start in the next week or two. You'll hear us rant about the Army Corps of Engineers and the lies about the depth of the levees. You'll hear how we started a conversation in a bar one night and now there's a move to march on Washington. But I'll leave that alone for now. Give you warning that you might want to hit the delete button on the next one!

But for now, remember that for you: The mail comes to your house every single day. The stores are open, some 24 hours and you don't even have to think about it. Custody issues in your city are no doubt difficult as they all are, but the various parties aren't scattered all over the country and the records at your courthouse are not flooded and being frozen so they can be re-copied. Gas prices are up, but most of your gas stations are open. Businesses that were there last week, are probably still there. Your neighbors, those loudmouths, are still annoying you, but they're still there. Your city's population hasn't gone from 500K to 60K in three months. Your doctor is probably still right where you left him or her. More importantly, you know where your family is whether you want to know or not. Your mayor doesn't have to do a tour rivalling U2 in order to talk with his citizens. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The mental health issues are skyrocketing. The grief counselling clinic is saying that people come in because they lost a loved one in the storm, then the counsellor finds out that this person also lost his house, his belongings, his job, his friends, his traditions, and his family is scattered into four states.

People keep asking me when I'm going to turn all this into a book. I truly have no idea where or how to start. But yesterday morning on WWL TV news, Eric Paulsen did a phone interview with Aaron Neville. There had been rumors that he and his brothers were not coming back. He said that wasn't the case, but his house was gone, a lot of the musicians lost instruments, I'll be sending stuff out on that too, and that all the musicians he meets on the road have a strange look in their eyes. He said he'd been interviewed by Rolling Stone, and when they asked about his childhood in New Orleans, he had a difficult time keeping it together because, he said there was "A River Behind My Eyes." That's how we all feel, and thanks, Mr. Neville, for the title!

A Christmas tree went up on the gallery of the Crowne Plaza Hotel this week. The shops that are open are decorating for Christmas. Those of us here are delighted to be here, and just being here is our present this year.

Love and Light,
Bec and David

PS Pictures will be on the way soon. Also, my mother sent me a story written by a man who was just here a couple weeks ago. It was fascinating to see his take on what we see every day. Here's the link:
Deroy Murdock on New Orleans on National Review Online

Thanksgiving in New Orleans 11/22/2005

2006-11-22T10:54:00.000-08:00

Subject: Thanksgiving in New Orleans Date: 11/22 4:12 PM

Hi guys,
I know it's been a while since I sent out an email. My first problem was that AOL thought I was a spammer, evidently forgetting that there's a delete button on every keyboard, and absence was my second problem. I went to New Mexico for a week to work the Whole Expo and do a workshop.

I am totally humbled by what has gone on in my life since "The Storm" as it's called here. As most of you know, I am known to have a big mouth, some have said I alternate between the profane and the profound. What I know is that I can be both brazen and very, very shy. If I know you well, the brazen part comes out spontaneously, if I don't, or if I have to teach a class or speak in public, the shy part takes over and I appear to be brazen by sheer force of will. Inside I'm usually in total panic mode. It has always been worth it to pony up because the people I've ponied up for are so spectacular. I'm not going to use names. Most have asked me not to.

A dear friend Fed Ex's money to us, apologizing that it's not more, but that it's what would have been sent to the Red Cross. She and her husband decided to send it to us instead, knowing that David's job, while allowing us to hold our own, is not what it was prior to Katrina's wrath. We were clearly informed that it was NOT a loan.

Just a day before I left for New Mexico, some very dear friends sent us what they called a "care package." It was like Christmas! We just sat there with tears in our eyes as we went through the treasures---a box filled with various wonderful wines, rums, vodka and incongruously, a gigantic box of bandages---probably figured we'd need them if we drank all that! A second box was filled with luscious treats and vitamins, shampoos and body lotions (David laughed at how thrilled I was by that, but hey, it's a girl thing!). Also inside the box a book on home remedies (one which we had owned and is no doubt paper pulp in storage right now, already miraculously replaced by these angels), some fabulous and varietal CD's, and a DVD called The Corporation that you absolutely should track down and see. They also sent cash. So incredibly sweet and it came just in time for me to rent the car I was going to need in New Mexico and cover some other expenses. Synchronistic perfection and we were so grateful for it.

Once I arrived in New Mexico, miracles kept coming. I stayed with friends whom I have known for 24 years, and just seeing their faces was a gift. Okay, so I had to learn to like a very perverse thieving dog, and I did like him in the end. Their generousity was over the top.

Then came the workshop and the Expo. My former students came out of the wood work to support me. One handed me a little purple gauze bag saying, "This is for you" and then she ran out the door. I opened it and thought there was a note in it that turned out to be a check. Not a check for any service rendered, just her generousity. I was stunned and ran out to grab her to return it to her. She refused saying that she knew if we didn't need it we'd make sure it got to someone who did. One student was collecting the "door money" for me at the workshop. When she handed it to me, it looked like more than should have been there. It was. She just smiled when I started to say NO, and said, "I don't know who put in extra. Bec, we all KNOW how you are with this kind of thing." This happened over and over. They all seemed to just happen not to have change, or drop an extra ten on the table at the Expo. It was truly overwhelming. Person to person generousity.

The producer of the Expo gave me my booth there free, although we'd worked out an agreement ahead of time that I would pay her off in little bits. An amazing gift, and so incredibly kind. This news was delivered to me with no fanfare, just a gift given from her heart.

Great friends with whom lunch had always been a joy, opened their homes and their cookbooks and filled me with great food, wonderful conversation, and the love and joy of friendship that is unconditional. "Sure we think you're nuts, but we love you anyway." Another gift.

It's pretty easy for most of us to give, not so easy to be on the receiving end. It's a hard thing to learn, the whole yin yang balance of giving and receiving. We've all been raised to be independent, to take care of ourselves, and then suddenly an entire city finds itself in a position of needing help. Oooooooh, that's a hard thing to admit, particularly on a personal level. I learned an important lesson since the storm. Well, many lessons actually. One of the biggest lessons I've learned is how to say "Thank you". Of course I've always known how to do that, but there's always been a tinge of something akin to guilt. Comes from being raised with the old standard of never handing back a plate empty if it came to you with something on it. You know. You learned it too. If the neighbor bakes cookies, brings you some on a plate, you damn well better make some cupcakes to put on it before you return it. We weren't really taught a balance. We're good givers, and terrible receivers.

What I learned is that everyone who gave us a gift, no matter what the gift was, WANTED to do it as much as David and I wanted to help when we came back. Every person or organization that packed up cookies and canned goods did that from their hearts. Every person who helped distribute it did it from their hearts. So many came from all over the country to help, because it was important to them. And all that's needed is to say THANK YOU with grace, not guilt. Besides, we can't possibly refill all those neighbors' plates in our lifetime. It's a good thing to get past a weird kind of pride and just say thank you.

This Thanksgiving we have so much to be thankful for. Friends who have supported us emotionally with everything from emails to food. They supported us with their time listening to us and money falling from heaven just when we most needed it. We've made some wonderful new friends since the storm, people we wouldn't have known had Katrina not come through here. People who are also living this surreal existence and understand if we've got tears in our eyes 15 minutes from now, because they will have them too 15 minutes after that. Every single one of those people is precious, as anything that survived this storm is made more precious by virtue of its survival.

We went to storage today. Couldn't get in to really deal with it. The frustration level is horrible because we just want to get what we can salvage out of there and move forward. We already know how bad it is. We took pictures with the flash on the camera when we were allowed in to do a recon. Saw better in the pictures than in real life with a flashlight how bad it's gonna be. No power there yet. Hydraulic fluid all over the floor. Slippery blackness with a strange unforgettable smell of histories and lives turned into debris in less than 24 hours. We'll have to wait to see how much is salvagable. The waiting is horrible. But it's not our house.

We called the storage guy and were in hopes that he would respond before we crossed the River again. So we headed through City Park to Lakeview. We saw what the full force of the water did as it breached the 17th Street Canal levee. Some houses were literally only feet from the levee. Some moved off their foundations, sliding into the house next to them, stopped only by a tree or a boat or a truck or the other house. The devastation is beyond description and pictures simply don't do it justice. (I'll have pics of our storage and Lakeview out to you tonight.) And again, the smell. The water is still leeching through the sandbags and the huge iron sheets they've put in place to keep the canal from breaching again. The hole in that levee looks about 75 yards long. Signs on houses, "two dead cats", "dog found DOA in kitchen". Sign on a tree, "Found, beautiful little kitten found alive. Please call this number." And that's just the animals. Piles of boats in marinas. Piles of boats is a strange thing to say, but that's what it looks like. Yes, that's what it looks like still, three months after the storm.

We drove all over the city. Sixty percent of the city still has no power, which is a minor inconvenience if your house isn't even standing anymore. The population of New Orleans at night is now about 60,000, down from nearly 500,000 prior to the storm. A friend who lives about three blocks from us said he is one of two or three people on his block at night. We're not quite sure how to answer people who ask us if New Orleans is okay now. It would take lots of time to explain and saying "It's doing okay"---which we do say a lot of the time just to not go into it, does a huge disservice to the city that we love. But we simply don't know what else to say sometimes.

We've only lived here a year. We were lucky to have had a year here prior to the storm. We can see the before and after pictures in our heads. We hear the silence in the streets, instead of the loud music goading drunken tourists to buy giant green feathered hats which always made us smile. The sound of a child's voice is musical, so many have left as most schools aren't open. Most of the people who lost their homes had lived here for generations. We cannot imagine living anywhere else and we've been here such a short time. How hard it must be for those people who are displaced.

This year Thanksgiving will mean so much more to us than ever before. We are so grateful to be here because, as my sister said the other day, our hearts are here. We are eternally grateful to all of you. Without your help and support we don't know how anyone could get through this.

We are in hopes that you won't forget the historic catastrophe called Katrina that knocked New Orleans to her knees. And please don't forget all those who still need our help. Don't let your legislators forget either. Write them. Remind them.

Please know that our gratitude can't be expressed. And know that on Thanksgiving, every single one of you will be in our hearts.

THANK YOU!
Bec and David

_________
NOTES: Thanksgiving is here again. We still hope that you will not forget. There are still problems here of monumental proportions, not the least of which are the levees, which the Army Corps has decided will only be armored in "certain spots."

We are still grateful to all of the people who helped us. I don't know what we would have done without them. The feelings of that time will be with us every Thanksgiving for the rest of our lives.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Rebirthing Elvis and the Pirates10.30.2005

2006-10-30T10:54:00.000-08:00

Subject:
Rebirthing Elvis and the Pirates
Date:
10/30 2:50 PM

Hi all,
Last night was the Saturday night before Halloween, which in New Orleans, is a huge holiday. It was also the re-opening of the Cabildo, closed since the storm. The Cabildo is a gorgeous building right next to St. Louis Cathedral. Now a museum, it is where the Louisiana Purchase was signed.

It was a little chilly last night. On Jackson Square, right in front of the Cabildo, a stage was set up. The Rebirth Brass Band was coming back to town to play for us. They are a premiere New Orleans brass band that started on Jackson Square playing for tourists and now tours the country regularly. They are local favorites, and known for being late or sometimes taking a "break" that lasts for two hours! David had gotten another tour so I was going to have to wait another hour before we could have dinner, so I got a rum and coke and headed for the Square. Once there I took up my favorite observational point, sitting at the base of the lamp post on the corner of Pirate's Alley and Chartres. I've spent hours sitting there over the past year just watching people. Last night was a great night for it.

Waiting for Rebirth to show up were about 250 stalwarts, many locals, some curious tourists. Some of the women were dressed to the nines in dresses, glorious fall shawls and heels. Most people were dressed more casually and some were dressed for Halloween. One couple had gotten a blue roof, a big blue tarp being put on roofs all over the city, and had fashioned it into suspendered pants for him and a strapless gown for her. They did a beautiful job. The stage was well lit, and on the stage little tiny kids were dancing around the big bareness of it, barely avoiding knocking over mic stands that were awaiting a screaming trumpet. Bicycles rode by, one of the local artists was back with his bike trailer filled with his work. He stopped to wait for the band a while then decided to head out instead and barely missed a collision with a krewe of folks dressed in highly imaginative anti-FEMA costumes. There were about five of them, some in coveralls with the big X's that are spray painted on all the houses explaining in code what was found inside, when and by whom. Most of us can now read the "X legends" on the sides of houses without benefit of a code book. A giant human MRE passed by, simple but smart--an overly large brown paper bag onto which had been glued all the various pieces and parts of an MRE, including the heater pack.

The area in front of my lamp post was noisy with laughter and squeals of delight as friends caught sight of each other. No one was bothered when the spokesperson from the Cabildo opened the mic and explained that the band had been caught in traffic coming from Baton Rouge. Everyone here knows that the traffic between here and there these days is horrendous. She apologized and one of the guys near me collected money from all of his middle aged friends along with their drink orders and trudged down the Alley to bring back a few more glasses. The trash container next to my lamp post was already full and had the usual array of empty go-cups sitting on top. Looked pretty normal for New Orleans. Felt more normal than it had since Katrina came along. I even saw some people on a balcony just the other side of St. Peter on Chartres stringing lights on their iron work and dangling it like Mardi Gras beads almost to the street.

I turned around slightly and behind me, leaned up against the Cathedral was Elvis and two pirates. The news crews seized on them, interviewed them and Elvis camped it up. The two pirates leaned against the wall trying to look as tall as possible as the news camera rolled. The Cathedral Elvis was short, but his costume had outdone theirs so they did their best Lafitte on Pirate's Alley and it all came off as casually indifferent exhibitionism, and it was wonderful.

The spokesperson returned to the mic and said that some of the band members had arrived. Four of them got on stage in the glaring light and before a note was sounded, the trumpet player says, "Don't even ask. NO I didn't get my FEMA check, my house is gone AND my wife left me, so when someone says they lost everything, I got them beat! But I sure am glad to be home in New Orleans!" The crowd screamed and there was a strange echo through the crowd of "I didn't get mine yet either did you?" Then the tuba player turns, starts moving up and down, plays those deep notes---do do do DO DO do---and then the blast came. People jumping up and down, dancing everywhere, laughter and joy and shouts. This continued for three songs while the old black danced with a broom in an intricate set of steps, hamming it up for the cameras in front of the stage. A man known to the band was called up onstage to sing. The music started up again, rolling over us with the power of the Mississippi River moving a log, and no one could stand still but there were tears in our eyes as the man sang, "Lord Lord Lord Lord you sure been good to me, and I know it was the hand of the Lord." By now some of the other band members had made it in from Baton Rouge and the sound grew and the crowd grew and the love of the city grew.

Between songs a little banter between the band and the crowd had everyone laughing. I'm not the only one who is upset with Tom Benson! And there was such resolve to rebuild this wonderful place, even knowing how difficult a task that will be. Naturally, all this would have to be followed with "The Saints Come Marching In" and it was, and just as naturally a second line started snaking past the stage and through the crowd. People cakewalking, some waving white sweatshirts or cocktail napkins as they hadn't brought their hankies. One man, in his 60's, naked from the waist up, joined the second line and leapt through the crowd grinning while Elvis incongruously danced near the corner of the stage. No hip-shaking from Elvis. What he really needed was a parasol to pump up and down.

From behind me I hear, "Hey lady, is this lamp post taken?" David, finally off work and in his top hat was staring down at me and we both just giggled. He leaned his bead laden bike against the over filled trash container and we stood thrilled hearing a brass band on the Square. This little patch of Jackson Square was the whole of New Orleans for that moment. The band played a few more songs then had to head to Tipitina's to re-open that club. The lights on the stage went out and everyone gathered their belongings and their drinks, rearranged their costumes, and turned to go to their next stop of the evening. The gratitude for what they'd heard was palpable.

The ladies in heels, Elvis and the pirates, the Blue Roof couple and the rest of us walked past the Cathedral and through a phalanx of National Guard MP's and a fleet of Humvees parked on the Pedestrian Mall. But while the music played, they were behind us, unseen, and life seemed normal for a little while.

Love and Light,
Bec and David

PS I took a few pics. Will send them along in a little while.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Food, Football, Musical Chairs and Blackwater 10.27.2005

2006-10-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

Subject: Food, Football, Musical Chairs and Blackwater Date: 10/27 7:50 PM

Hi all,
It's been a few days since I've had a chance to write.

We went out to storage. They will let us in to look, and you ought to see the waiver we have to sign. Basically if the roof falls down on our head it's not their fault. No problem. We'll sign it. We've been trying for two days to get hold of the guy who can open the door. There's still no power there, so we have to go through the non-electronic doors. We did get a chance to see into the building through the windows and it's pretty grim. We just want to go in and see what's left. Get it over with. Maybe next week we'll get hold of the guy.

Mail service has been bizarre. Our Netflix sat in the mailbox to go out for three days. We went to the Post Office where we were told that if there's nothing to go IN the mailbox, the guy isn't going to come up to get outgoing. Everything is being processed through Baton Rouge and it's kinda like we get mail once a week if we're lucky. I can only imagine the logistical nightmare of trying to sort mail when so many have put in change of address forms. It's gotta be a horror show. That being said, though, it's still frustrating not to get mail when you're waiting for things like forms from FEMA or something.

Speaking of whom, we played musical chairs for two hours last week at a Jewish Community Center on St. Charles. The Garden District fared pretty well but the streetcars aren't running yet. Very little mass transit is. Besides, the neutral ground (which for those of you unfamiliar with the term is the median in any other city) has become a de facto parking lot all over town, including on the tracks of the St. Charles streetcar line. We found a spot on the neutral ground, parked and went into the JCC. We went because we'd heard there were people there from FEMA who could actually DO something. Medicaid, Social Security, various other groups were represented out there. It was a nice change seeing everything in one place. Upon entering, we were greeted by a guy with khaki green cargo pants, a tan cargo shirt with a logo that said BLACKWATER, and a belt with a holstered 9mm. He also had three more clips of ammunition. Blackwater is one of those odd companies that provides "security" (check out their website blackwaterusa.com) but these aren't security guards from central casting. These guys are armed and very very serious. We were curious why this disaster relief center needed the four or five guys Blackwater had checking us as we came in and checking us as we came out. "What are you here for?" We tell the guy who then points us to a check in table where we tell the woman there the same thing we just told the first guy. She then tells us to go talk to the woman in the red shirt. Okay, off we go. She points us to the chairs that are set aside for people who need to deal with FEMA. The chairs had been labelled for whatever agency was being waited for. We were told to sit down and that the two lines of chairs ahead of us were FEMA also. Every few minutes, someone would get to the front of the "line", get up from the chair and go to the table where a FEMA worker was sitting with a laptop. Then all the rest of us would move over one seat, or two seats if it was a couple. The whole time Blackwater guys are keeping an eye on things. Very strange. We did get giggles from thinking that if FEMA was doing a better job, maybe they wouldn't need armed guards!

We finally get to the guy with the laptop. We had been told the day before that we'd been turned down, didn't qualify. This guy looks at all our papers, looks at the screen and says, "Here's the problem. This box was checked wrong. We'll get it fixed and that should take care of it. It will probably be two weeks at least til the change gets through the system." Well, THIS is progress! We're not holding our breath, but we are trying to believe that this might actually fix the gigantic mess that is FEMA in our lives. We'll see.

So what does food and football have to do with all this?

Nothing.

New Orleans is known for, among other things, great food and horrible football. Two people who are huge "New Orleans names" have been conspicuously missing from the recovery of this city. Both have made millions by virtue of their connection to this city and from the residents themselves.

Emeril Lagasse, yup, you know, the BAM guy. Owns restaurants of the highest caliber, writes books, does TV shows, toothpaste commercials. Has made a fortune from this city's cache and tourists. Lagasse hasn't been seen in New Orleans since the storm blew us away. Paul Prudhomme was out in the street cooking beans for people who were here and working. Not Lagasse. He had some books to sign. He had some interviews to do. He had to be at a Sam's Club in Indiana or some such place to sign his new cookbook. His employees have heard little or nothing from the corporate entity, unless it was a message telling them they were laid off. To his credit, he did put together some sort of fund for his employees, which they have to apply to get help from, but beyond that he has done nothing to help really in two months. Incredible to me. With the kind of exposure this guy has he could have helped boost morale if nothing else. His flagship restaurant here was damaged, but he should have been here, broom in hand with all his bravado, hollering "We'll get this place up and running for the renewal of New Orleans!" But he didn't. I've always wanted to go to his restaurant. Don't know if I will ever do that. It'll be a long time before I can forget his absence.

The New Orleans Saints, bless their hearts. The owner of the team, Tom Benson, has made money on the irrationally loyal fans of this city for years. Being a Saints fan is often akin to being a White Sox fan------oh wait, until this week that is! Everywhere you look are Saints tshirts, hats, you name it. Season ticket holders continue to buy their tickets every year, and they hope and they hope and they hope that maybe THIS will be the year. Prior to Katrina, Benson had been holding up the city for a new stadium. He'd been playing the "maybe I'll take the team elsewhere" game that I saw in San Francisco years ago with the 49ers and their owner extorting a new stadium from the city. On TV sets all over New Orleans the game is followed faithfully--ignoring the piles of debris outside in the street--and the fans wear their jerseys and their hats and shake their heads at one more turnover, then order another beer---but they'll be there again next week hoping. Tom Benson has not been seen here either. He has been busy in San Antonio and the bars are full of rumors that he's trying to move his team there permanently, or that San Antonio doesn't want them. For what this city has provided for this man over the years, and for all the fans who stuck by that team no matter what, he owes this city and its residents something. He and his wife, with her queenly wave, ought to be here taking part in discussions about rebuilding. Shame on him. At the very least, if he moves the team, he ought to have to relinquish the name "Saints."

The stadium issue is a whole 'nother thing. David and I have been talking about the Superdome a lot lately. We really feel that the thing has become a gigantic symbol of shame, of failures at all levels, of horror and sorrow and fear. It needs to go. It needs to be packed full of C4, have Mayor Nagin call a City holiday, set up booths with food, drinks. Make it an event. "The Superdome Blast Party!" Naturally the party would take place far enough from the blast to protect everyone, but close enough to be seen and heard. It would be so cathartic. It's a sad looking place now, if you've seen pictures. Blow it up! Make Emeril cater the party and Benson pay for the damn new stadium. Yeah, that would work.

And now we see Florida dealing with yet another storm. Our landlord/neighbor/friends' families live there. We heard they were okay. God bless them all, they'll be dealing with FEMA themselves soon.

More in a day or two,
Love and Light,
Bec and David

PS OH YEAH, forgot to tell you. The Red Cross actually sent us a check! We couldn't believe our eyes. Took it to the bank immediately. We thought maybe it had a self-destruct mechanism on it or something. Invisible ink perhaps. Only visible for 12 hours. Amazing. More than 40 days trying to get through on the phone, and one little form gets it done in two weeks. We're still stunned!

_______________________
NOTE 10.27.2006
This just does NOT feel like a year ago. Sometimes it feels like two weeks ago, other times it feels like ten years ago. It's also interesting that life in New Orleans two months after the storm was a bit insular in a strange way. Everyone was so busy trying to figure out the paperwork, or their job, or their home situation, that some information just didn't get to people until much later.

Blackwater, it turns out, had been sitting on porches in the Garden District, hired to protect property over there, and then, somehow wound up in the Community Center. It's still unclear to us who hired these guys. We still see them around now and then, and they're still scary.

Emeril, to his credit, did re-open his restaurant and it seems to be doing pretty well. He did go on national TV and talked about what was happening here back then, and from what I hear also put together some foundations, so I guess I can go to his restaurant some day when I have a couple hundred to spend on dinner. I still feel that he should have been here at the time. It would have helped morale in an enormous way.

Tom Benson is still a jerk, in my opinion, and the issue of will the team stay or go is evidently not yet decided, although I heard that the NFL wants them to stay here. Not being a great follower of the ins and outs of football league rules, etc., I don't know what will happen with all that.

I DO know that there was a "Superdome Blast Party" that was probably more productive than our idea of blowing the place up. The day the Saints returned to play in the Dome was the biggest morale boost I've ever seen. And their continued success is making everyone a fan. We are not football fans per se, but we are indeed Saints fans. They have redeemed and transcended the horrid energy of the Superdome, turning it into an ecumenical cathedral of hope for the entire city.

We took our grandson and daughter to the Children's Museum a week ago Sunday. There was a home game. Everyone in the place was monitoring the game on their cell phones and when the Saints won, the news rippled through the museum passed word of mouth. I went outside and was waiting for the family to come out. A man was sweeping up the entry way. He asked if I knew if we had won. I said, yes and told him the score. He grinned, leaned on his broom and said, "Then it's a good day."

The Red Cross check did not self-destruct.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Tree Limbs all OVER the Tomato Plants

2006-10-19T10:42:00.000-07:00

Subject: Tree Limbs all OVER the Tomato Plants Date: 10/19 5:32 PM

Hi all,
David and I were absolutely drunk with frustration. Giddy in fact, after having spent five hours in a WalMart in Boutte, LA to get a new tire. We'd gone there because we heard the line wasn't as long as it was in Marrerro, where a woman had purportedly waited eight hours. Anyone who knows me knows that five minutes in a WalMart can make me pissy. Five hours was beyond the pale. We bought a few things we needed and a few things others needed, but hey, that was all done in the relatively short period of 45 minutes. Then we bought reading material, Vanity Fair for me, a Patricia Cornwell for him and that was only because I couldn't remember how far behind I was in the Harry Potter series! A little Hogwarts would have made the time go faster. I plowed through the pages and pages of Vanity Fair ads wondering if everyone but me really WAS a 15 year old waif with unlimited income, then ranted about the image politics and psychiatric/plastic surgery bills that would become some kid's baggage if they looked at these too long. Checked out the new Turquoise something or other perfume that the magazine was pretty much soaked in thanks to the ad for the perfume, decided it was not bad but probably not for me and finally found the table of contents. Good articles as always but my god, you have to WORK at finding them. I thought it ironic that I was dressed haphazardly sitting on a pallet of landscaping bricks outside a WalMart in Boutte, LA where trees are still leaning precariously on power lines looking at baby women dressed in 7500 bucks worth of clothes if you don't count the handbag!

But when all was said and done, we had one new tire and had patched the rear tire in which David found five nails. No big surprise really given what we'd been driving through. One more chore out of the way and we'd laughed as much as possible throughout at our really bad WalMart jokes.

The road to Boutte (about 20 miles from here) is littered for miles with Katrina debris. Some of it was damage from the storm itself that hasn't been attended to yet. A daunting task given the scope of this storm and the additional miles to the West decimated by Rita. But some of the mess is from debris being hauled to the Jefferson Parish Landfill. Trucks for miles filled with debris. Small pickups straining from towing gigantic walled trailers filled with the former contents of their destroyed homes---couches peeking up over the top of the plywood walls, huge scraps of carpet, a toybox, clothing, books, everything you can think of. Much of it blows out on the way to the landfill, as a result side of the road is a strange combination of broken trees and baby car seats spread for miles. There are the bigger commercial trucks filled to the brim as well, but they seem to have their loads secured a little better and for them, it's not personal. For them it's a paycheck. The smaller trucks were mostly driven by the contents' former owners with numb faces after their second or third trip down there. We saw one truck full of nothing but refrigerators. Clearly a freelancer, he had filled his open trailer with about 15 refrigerators. David wondered where all the freon was going. It's supposed to be evacuated according to some EPA regulations, but we're hearing that that probably isn't happening.

Our little street looks almost normal, well that's not quite true---normal by post-Katrina standards. Contractors, power trucks, various city vehicles up and down regularly and still mountains of debris but the debris is at least concentrated into the mountains rather than scattered all over the place. People are talking on their stoops at night if the mosquitoes aren't too bad, complaining about the "little flitty things" that have joined the fly population thanks to the garbage everywhere. Rumors and gossip fly through the air with the insects, along with complaints about intermittent broadband, a neighbor who hasn't seen fit to get someone over to remove that tree from a power line, and the standard FEMA stories. There are now so many newly minted versions of what the acronym FEMA stands for that I might start collecting them.

We talked with a real Southern belle of the Scarlett O'Hara type but of an older vintage. When asked how her house made out, her response was given in a beautiful molasses tinged accent. "The house was fine, but there are tree limbs all OVER the tomato plants!" We were stunned. People had lost everything and this woman was overwrought about tree limbs. So subjective and insular, we thought.

We're finding that there is a strange unspoken issue in the wake of this storm: Grief and guilt as concurrent emotions adding to all the other tensions. "How's your house?" "Gone." "How's your house?" "We were very lucky, only the back wall is gone." "How's your house?" "Hey, we can't really complain. A little water damage and the roof will need to be done, but overall, we did great."

Given that so many lost so much, those who only lost a little feel guilty feeling the grief of the losses they did incur. "We're all still alive and that's what matters." Yup. Totally true, but that print of Nantucket that they bought 30 years ago when they vacationed there that was drowned in water dripping down their walls is now residing on top of the carpet from the front room in the street. A memory gone. A shared experience. A little treasure that made them smile every time they walked by it.

David and I have much of that in storage. We don't even know the extent of the damage yet. Twenty years of artwork, collected and created. Almost half of our treasured book collection, including the rare copies of Zola that we searched for and bought piecemeal over years, antique Peter Rabbit books I'd been saving to give my grandson. Boxes and boxes of books. All the family photos from my 50+ years and before my birth--all in storage. Three steamer trunks full of personal treasures. All the Christmas decorations, including a little cookie bell that Meg made for me in kindergarten and then the can full of ornaments that she picked out every year of her childhood. A lot of Meg's stuff is in there too. Her childhood treasures, her yearbooks. None of this compares to loss of life or loss of a family home. Doesn't come close. But still there is grief, enormous grief over the loss of those memories.

We're not the only ones--our mantra these days. We're not the only ones who've lost personal treasures and grieve, and we're not the only ones feeling guilt over grieving about such small stuff in the scope of things. It's nevertheless a weird combination of emotions.

Read today about a woman whose son had been in a motorcycle accident ten years ago. She had taken care of him ever since. He was wheelchair bound and brain damaged. His family had been evacuated, first to the Superdome, then the Astrodome. At some point he had been with his father, but his father had a medical issue. When the curtains around his father's bed were opened, his wheelchair bound son was gone. The son knows his name and date of birth, but that's about all he can communicate. The family is frantically searching to find their lost son.

These are the stories that cause the guilt over grieving about books. I wish I could tell the people I hear feeling the guilt that mourning the loss of their memories is okay, normal in fact. Grief isn't reserved for catastrophic loss only. Some lost family members, some lost books, some had tree limbs in their tomato plants. Everyone sustained loss of some kind and if we don't address that loss emotionally and quit turning it into guilt we're gonna be in trouble down the road.

I think I'll sit here and be grateful for our relatively minor losses while concurrently mourning that little cookie bell ornament with Meg's name on it. And I'm not gonna feel one bit of guilt about it.

I'll let you know how that works out!
Love and Light,
Bec and David

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Walking to New Orleans 10.15.2005

2006-10-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

Subject: Walking to New Orleans Date: 10/15 1:28 AM

". . . . . Gonna need two pair of shoes. . . .when I get through walking me blues
when I get back to New Orleans."

Fats Domino lived in the Lower Ninth Ward. His family thought he had perished in the rising water, but one of his daughters or nieces happened to see footage of a rescue on the news. It was Fats Domino. When David and I heard that he was okay we jumped up and down we were so happy. He's a musical legend and a New Orleans fixture. Today the local news accompanied him back to his home in the Lower Ninth where he's lived pretty much all of his life. Fifty years of mementos and his white piano covered in sludge. He's going to rebuild. He's going to stay. He's not the only one in that area who's made that decision. Meanwhile the developers are chomping at the bit to get the land in that area. We are hoping that the residents have more of a say than they seem to have right now.

Driving through New Orleans is another thing altogether. With power restored only in limited areas, traffic lights are sometimes working, sometimes not. When we first arrived it was traffic anarchy. Not a lot of traffic other than military vehicles, lots of debris, no power at all, power lines draping across mountains of brick and a roof that landed in the middle of the street. This was all over town. One way signs meant nothing. You got where you needed to go however you could get there. Now with power returning and traffic lights on in some areas, we're having a hard time adjusting! Still in some areas the lights are on but no one's home. What I mean is a traffic light may be on, but that doesn't mean it's actually working. We just treat every intersection like a four way stop unless we actually see the light change. David came across one that was lit red AND green! Civilization is returning slowly and we're having to learn to adapt back to it.

Heard at the grocery store: "I just got a job. I will be the first female waitperson ever hired at Galatoire's." That's really something. Don't know the woman but hurray for her, hurray for Galatoire's, and hurray for New Orleans that the grand old historic restaurant will be back.

Still need a new tire. Will have to drive a ways to get it fixed. None of the local WalMarts are open yet. The one in Gretna MIGHT open November 1. Heard that one in Marrerro is open but it's a long wait to get a tire done so we'll probably have to drive to Boutte where the scuttlebutt is that the lines are shorter.

In the window of a store on Bourbon called Alternatives: Up on the left, a tiny shelf with three Ken dolls dressed in drag. Above them a sign reading: "Let the Queens in, the rest will follow." Beneath the drag Kens are three skeleton sculptures, one female with two males. One male carrying a mop, the other a broom. Maybe paper mache, certainly gorgeously creative. Behind them a sign: "Miss Refugee was crowned Miss Evacuee. She was sponsored by "In This Together, Inc.", her platform is "We'll be clean by Halloween!" Her backup boys are Mop Boy and Whisk Boy." Fabulous! Loved it. Will try to get a pic of it for you.

Two days ago we heard about a Red Cross Financial Aid station open in Kenner by the airport. ::::::::sigh::::::::Okay, we say, we'll try it. People were sleeping out in their cars all night in order to get dealt with there. We braved it the afternoon before yesterday. Incredibly they handed us a form that asked our names and addresses and asked for ID. That's it. No other questions. This, btw, is all being done like a drive thru. Lines and lines of cars in lanes with Red Cross Volunteers gathering the papers, checking them, sending you on your way saying "Check should be in the mail." WHAT? No kidding? Why couldn't they have done this weeks ago. So many have given up, including us until we were urged to try this. But what about the people who can't GET to Kenner? It's a long way. You really do need a car. If you don't have one, I don't see how you'd get there. We'll see if the check's really in the mail.

Meanwhile back at FEMA: We got the flag off our application for having duplicate apps. Okay, cool. We were to check both the applications, make the changes that needed to be made and fax them to FEMA 1-800-827-8112. I know the number by heart. We started faxing them Oct 6. We gave up Oct 11 after being unable to get through the busy signal on their fax machine day or night. We went to the Post Office--a post office is a very cool thing at this point!--and sent it Express Mail with return receipt. I made copies before we sent it. Post Office says Express Mail doesn't mean overnight anymore. Maybe two days. Okay we say. Hell it's better than trying to fax it. Yesterday a FEMA inspector comes. Now remember, we've been at this since Sept 10. "Everybody in the disaster impacted area will get $2000," so said the press conference. We did everything we were supposed to do. The inspector says, "No problem. My being here will probably move it along faster." Today David found out that we don't qualify. Our case was closed upon receipt of the inspector's report. "Not enough damage." Well, you shoulda seen what this neighborhood looked like when we got here. No power, trees everywhere, shingles everywhere. Looked like a hurricane hit it. Wait, a hurricane DID hit it. Granted it was nothing compared to the Lower Ninth Ward and some of the other areas, but there was an enormous amount of damage here. Perhaps the inspector should have gotten here in a shorter time than 40 days. A lot has been cleaned up. Guess we should have just left everything rather than cleaning up around here. David is outraged after 7 weeks of jumping through their hoops. Gotta admit that I'm pretty angry too. We can appeal and we're trying to decide whether to do it or not. Our feeling is that we should but our energy level with regard to jumping through anymore hoops is pretty low. Thing is that we are so NOT the only ones that this is happening to. There are thousands whose cases were just stamped "CLOSED." Some people got their help right away, others are in the same boat as we are, and it's NOT just New Orleans. We'll let you know if we decide to appeal and what happens with that. Our neighbors, an elderly couple who stayed through the storm, don't qualify at all because FEMA somehow can't find Mr. Mitchell's social security number and keeps telling him that he's not him! He gave up weeks ago.

Curfew was extended to 8PM then to 12AM. No one was really paying that much attention to it. One young woman in the neighborhood works a 6-2AM shift in the Quarter. No problem getting home. In the last three days since the cops beat that old man up in the Quarter, the police have been running through the Quarter at 11:30PM warning about the curfew even though many of the places around have 24 hr permits and the street is just starting to pick up again in terms of business. We actually saw tourists yesterday. It was a wonderful thing. Tonight the bars and businesses on Bourbon are going to do an organized civil disobedience and ignore the curfew talk. They're just gonna plain stay open. They're trying to get their businesses up and running again and are refusing to let the police shut them down. We'll see what happens there.

I have also learned about Vampire Internet and found a new definition of "unlimited." Our broadband comes up for a few hours here and there, mostly during the night. I called Cox and got several different answers, none of them definitive, although Cox was great and credited everyone for the month of September. But getting online is difficult these days as my modem driver apparently didn't LIKE dial up any more than I did and now I'm having issues with that. Which brings me to the new definition of "unlimited." I have long distance service with AT&T. Have had for years and just left it that way. Plus they had an unlimited plan which was a great help. Three days ago I tried to make a call with an area code. Got a busy signal. Couldn't get there from here. Figured it was a glitch. It continued. So I called AT&T this morning. Was informed that I had "exceeded my unlimited plan", probably by using the dial up through New Mexico since the NOLA lines weren't working. I was confused. I asked, "But I have the UNLIMITED plan." "Yes, but you exceeded it." "Well, if it's unlimited then it's unlimited. How can I have exceeded unlimited?" "Ma'am, I'm sorry but we blocked many numbers in Louisiana for exceeding their unlimited plans." "But unlimited means WITHOUT LIMITS right?" "Well, no, there are limits." "Okay, WHAT is the limit?" "Ma'am, I'll have it unblocked in the next two hours." So no answer, no new definition of unlimited, but she was a woman of her word and it got unblocked. I'm getting very good at sitting on hold. And David is convinced that we've gone WAY beyond Catch 22 and are now getting to Catch 77.

I won't start on FEMA and housing and the 11 million a day hotel bills! I'll save that one!

"I'm leaving here today
yes
I'm going back home to stay.
Yes
I'm walking to New Orleans."

That's what some of the folks in shelters waiting for FEMA temp housing are probably singing.
Love and Light,
Bec and David

The Looters, the Cops and the Media 10.12.2005

2006-10-12T20:16:00.000-07:00

Subject: The Looters, the Cops and the Media Date: 10/12 7:56 AM

Hi all,
The other day I was sitting on the porch with the neighbors. Up comes a New Orleans policeman who lives in the neighborhood but works in the 7th Ward. Tough neighborhood. No doubt about it. He tells us some absolutely harrowing stories about the rescue operations he was on, and god bless him for doing it. He then says that he's dreading the return of "the denizens of the Lower Ninth Ward for their look and loot, I mean look and leave." He repeated that little witticism about three times. I had already decided that if he said it again I'd have to excuse myself. It was clear that he had a very generalized and negative view of all the citizens of the Ninth Ward, and the black citizens in particular.

Don't know how many horribly racist comments I've heard in the last six weeks. One was a man sitting on my couch, I didn't hear it, David told me later. Probably lucky as I would have come unglued. His comment? "Well at least we cleared all the n***** out of the Ninth Ward."

A black person from New Orleans isn't necessarily a looter or a criminal. Conversely not all looters were black people from New Orleans.

The policeman on our porch had made his generalized negative statement but was incensed that the media had aired tapes of cops looting during the first horrid week after the storm. He felt that they should have handed it over to the Internal Affairs people in the New Orleans Police Department. Why? Because having seen the tape, some people out there might, just might, form generalized negative views of our police force?

Two weeks after the storm, I called a friend of mine who's a cabbie. He was in Atlanta where he'd been waiting three days with 2000 other people for FEMA to show up. He was already mad. But then he said that the first thing he was buying when he got home was a camera phone. WHAT? A generator maybe. A camera phone? Yup, he said, with video. Why, I asked. "Because I saw the Westwego cops looting a grocery store, saw the Gretna cops looting an electronics store and taking out big screen TVs, I saw New Orleans cops looting a computer store and stacking laptops in the backs of their squad cars, and if I'd had a phone like yours I could have taken video and busted them. They're going to blame it on someone else." I asked him if he actually SAW this or had just heard it from someone. He said he'd been sitting in his cab when he saw all three incidents and he was very upset when he told me. This man is, by and large, a very conservative guy. He's not given to anti-police force sentiments.

Not all looters are cops. Not all cops are looters.

A guy we know has a brother who has a boat. He and his boat were all over the city helping rescue people stuck in houses with water up to the roof. At one point, when the rescues were coming to an end, he was asked by a BBC crew to take them around the city on the boat. He did so. He returned and there was another press crew. They asked him to "take us where the bodies are." He said no. He was appalled.

Not all media/press people are sensationalist seeking. And not all sensational footage was sought out.

Unfortunately for two weeks after the storm, almost all footage included pictures of young black people looting and lugging TV's out through the chest high water in a city with no power. Absolutely that happened. A friend of mine saw looters in the Quarter looting Mardi Gras beads from a store. Real morons. There is no doubt at all that some people went completely nuts and vandalized and looted just because they could. I've also heard reports of two guys wading through the flood waters, one with an ATM bungied to his back, the other with a poker machine tied to his. Horrendous.

But the fact is that it was a very small minority of people who were looting. New Orleans prior to the storm was 80% black. Not all of those people were busy looting. Most were busy trying to get to a safe place. The black population of New Orleans is being painted with a very wide brush these days, and it's not a flattering picture.

By now all of you have seen the awful footage of New Orleans cops beating up an elderly man in the Quarter the other night. The cops were white, the elderly man was black. After that they pinned a news producer up against a car and cussed at him. Wonderful. The charges against the elderly man can't be substantiated. The cops have plead not guilty but were charged. These cops were out of control, but once again, as in the case of the black population, the police department of New Orleans is being painted with a very wide brush. Not all of them are racist brutes and looters blaming the crime on the local black population. The majority of them have been on duty for 6 weeks with little or no time off and are living on cruise ships since their houses are gone. Oh yeah, and the Police Chief just resigned and about 100 of them are just missing.

Some of the media types here have been just awful. Many of them looking for the Pulitzer Prize. They miss the extraordinary miracles in the ordinary progress of people making their way back to a semblance of normalcy. They want sensationalism, tragedy, bodies, looting. Some have been very compassionate in their reporting. Others, unfortunately have been busy helping to paint my city with a very wide brush. As a result the rest of the world is seeing New Orleans as a very violent place, with violent thieving citizens and violent thieving police. Our long held reputation for corruption is seemingly corroborated by all this negative coverage.

Some of the reports have been outright nonsense and I have never seen a retraction or a correction anywhere. As Machiavelli said, perception is everything. Right now everyone from news directors to cops to citizens black and white need to understand that. Those who have lost their civility need to be charged with whatever crime they committed and punished. News directors could help by not playing the violent footage in a continuous loop and maybe airing some of the remarkable stories I hear every day about people refusing to let this city die by rebuilding their homes and their businesses. We cannot afford to sweep any of the negative stuff under the rug. In some cases, it's a good thing camera crews were there or some of this outlandish behavior would still be happening but hidden. Our dirty laundry is hanging out there for the world to see and we have to let the world see us wash it clean. We don't need censorship. We need balanced coverage and personal responsibility for our actions by those of us here trying to rebuild. Everyone here is stressed out to one degree or another. Not an excuse for anything, just an explanation.

What the police did in the Quarter the other night was outrageous. What the looters did was outrageous. I wish the news directors didn't just LOOK for the outrageous. What you're seeing is a very generalized and negative view of New Orleans after the storm. The tension can be felt in the air and it's going to become incendiary if we don't start using smaller paint brushes.

Please know that what you're seeing on the news isn't always all there is.
Love and Light,
Bec and David
_______________
NOTE 10.12.2006
This was written six weeks after the storm.

Today the perceptions made by that footage remain entrenched in many people's minds around the country. That is unfortunate.

It's also unfortunate that our legal system is broken---too many records lost, too few police, too many criminals with guns, and now, I fear, too many scared citizens with guns as the crime rate moves up one week, down the next.

Crime here is a problem that has to be addressed, I just wish that that wasn't all that made it out to the world in terms of reporting.

The Elevator Ride 10.8.2005

2006-10-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

NOTE: 10.08.2006 Multiple photos----keep reading!

Subject: The Elevator Ride Date: 10/8 2:54 PM

Hi all,
I must write a correction. As per MJ: "Tommie is a girl, her name is spelled Tommie, and she's not nasty, just temperamental." There ya go, MJ. I said I'd correct it!

It's been ups and downs for the last couple days. My friend T came in to clean out his apartment in Uptown. Hadn't seen it since he evacuated. Everything was fine, and even better, he found his cat. He had thought she'd been lost but she turned out to be fine. She went back to Pennsylvania with him and his brother this morning.

Heard at the Walgreens: "Hey MAN, how ya doin!" "HEY, good to see ya. A storm came through and shook us up a little bit, but we're gonna be okay now!"

Still trying to fax FEMA. Their fax line has been busy for three days. Got through to the Red Cross. HURRAY you say! I had hit redial on my cell phone for about 1/2 hr then heard something I hadn't heard before in all the calling for the last 37 days. It says, "You've gotten through to the Red Cross Disaster Relief line. Your expected wait time is 45 minutes." Okay, no problem. I hook the cell phone up to its charger and sit there to wait it out. Put it on speaker phone. Fifty two minutes later, guy answers. I'm thrilled to hear a human voice instead of a busy signal. I explain that I've been trying to call for more than 30 days, this is the first time I've gotten through. We then start the process. He asks me if I was impacted by Katrina or Rita. I say both. He asks me where I am. I say New Orleans. He says, "Well they just changed the rules on us. You are no longer eligible because you are home." HUH??? I confess I got mad. I said that because I could not get through on THEIR line for all this time, and now I am home, I no longer qualify? He says that yes, that is unfortunately true. I said get me a supervisor. I then talk to his supervisor, she tells me the same thing. I am furious. Actually yelling at her, probably not the best tactic, but it was insanity. She says, "You're home now so you don't qualify." She then says, "Let me see what I can do." I was then put on terminal hold. Literally. I kept the cell phone on speaker, we went to get something to eat, still connected to the Red Cross. Two hours went by. I had spoken with these people a total of 3 minutes in that two hour period. Yesterday someone told us that we should go to Kenner where they've set up a Red Cross Disaster Financial Assistance center. We were told we should go out there about midnight and that by 9AM we'd have the ATM card. Our neighbors who evacuated to Atlanta also wouldn't qualify because they are home and our neighbors on the other side of them wouldn't qualify because they stayed through the storm, never left. WHAT??? That's not what the answer really is from all reports but we're not sure we're willing to sleep in our car for 8 hrs for $650 bucks. On the other hand, the principle of the thing is infuriating. Because THEIR line was busy we don't qualify. Awesome in its audacity! What we've learned is that we had done this when we were out of state, it would have been a done deal. The supervisor actually told me to "go to the local Red Cross office." Is she kidding? I told her there IS no local Red Cross office, just field stations which don't HAVE the paperwork necessary. This call was placed at the end of a very long, very strange day.

The day started with us taking all the medical supplies from Barnhill Bolt to the Clinic. They were so delighted. Photography isn't allowed inside the clinic for privacy reasons, but I have attached pictures of the outside. They have now hooked up with FEMA and are able to get the pharmaceuticals in. This is a huge deal and it took a month for it to happen. They are really doing great work there. There is another Common Ground station about two blocks from our house. They are housing people, providing food, clothing, other things. End of September one of them was arrested and beat up. (Article is on their website as well. Same link that I sent you in the last email.) He was then jailed. Truly the big guns don't like them. They've been argued with by FEMA, Red Cross, pretty much anyone who has a large organization. These people go straight TO the people and most of them are young volunteers. They were particularly happy about the toys in one of the boxes. Said they'd had a lot of kids coming in who would love them. They also said they are in need of multivitamins but don't ever ever need more hydrogen peroxide! They have gallons of it now, which is remarkable since they started out with nothing but bottled water to clean out a wound. They are hoping to make this clinic permanent. I hope they manage it.

We went from the Clinic to the grocery store and did a little scouting trip to see if a WalMart or something was open. We definitely need a new tire. (Not a huge surprise given what we'd been driving over for a couple weeks.) Grocery store open, Walgreens, no WalMart yet. Lowe's and Home Depot are open and a lot of the gas stations are starting to run at full steam. We buy what we need, drop off the milk at home and head to the Quarter to drop off some things at the shop. After that we went to check on our storage unit. It's on Tulane, right down the street from the huge Police Headquarters. No power over there yet and the water level was easily 6 feet. (We took pictures that day. I'll put together another album tonight for you.) If I'd been standing where my storage is, the water would have been over my head. UHaul had done a smart thing and parked a truck inside the electronic doors and three outside to prevent looting. David went and looked inside through the doors. He came back kind of ashen. When I asked him what it looked like inside, he said, "Like six feet of water had been in there." We don't know if anything survived but our unit was almost in the dead center of the building. Some things might have been spared. Hope so. Most of the family pictures, among other really important items, were in there. Three steamer trunks full of stuff, and innumerable boxes. We still have to pay them even though we can't get access and since we want some control over what happens with the stuff, we'll pay them.

We then went down St. Claude toward the Lower Ninth Ward. In the neutral ground was an impromptu art memorial to the Lower Ninth. First I shot pictures, then I just cried. Toxic art they called it. It was improvised and heartbreaking. We tried to get to the Lower Ninth, but still can't get in there. We want you to see pictures of it without the water to the roofs. We've heard from people who have been in there that there are no insects, no birds, nothing alive.

TOXIC ART PHOTOS. St. Claude Aveneu October 2005----KEEP READING!

Heard everywhere you go: "How's your house?" "Gone." "You coming back?" "No, we're staying in Dallas, you?" "No, we're staying in Houston. Got the kids in school already." "Hey you coming back?" "Yes! We'll be back"----------from here it varies from next week to six months to January to end of the school year. Three of our missing friends, Rod, Ryan and Chuck found us yesterday. All three of their houses are just plain gone. New Orleans East.

Yesterday the Royal Carriage buggies were back on Jackson Square. It was a beautiful sight. The people who live across the street from the stables applauded as the buggies rolled out. I rode the bike down and took pictures of the first buggies back on the Square. Then the drivers started tooling around the Quarter just to let people know they were back. I got to ride with David through the Quarter and we tossed beads to stunned out of towners. They loved it. The locals were cheering as we went by. The drivers worked all day yesterday and most got at least one run. Some of them were taking people to their hotels for $20, something not usually allowed. We hung out down there just grinning and happy. Usually the area of the hack stand is jammed with people and artists and traffic on Decatur. Cafe du Monde is buzzing. Not yesterday. But seeing those buggies and the joy on the faces of the drivers and the locals was fabulous. I rode through the Quarter all day yesterday just kind of checking on what was open and what wasn't yet. I'd come around a corner and here would come a buggy. Seemed almost normal! One guy hollered out his car window, "Hey man, I never thought I'd ever be HAPPY to be stuck behind a carriage!" For now they're only going to roll three days a week to see what happens and see if it's worth it. A lot of the contractors are bringing their wives down on weekends and little by little as things open again it might be worth working them all week, but it will be a while. One of the local carriage companies (there are four, but Royal is the largest) is never coming back at all. There were six drivers out there yesterday. The first ones back. And there was one out last night on Bourbon Street. A weird image: Bourbon Street at night, Humvee driving past a carriage.

NOTE: 10.08.2005 Blogger is giving me fits with the photos. I'll get the rest uploaded tomorrow.

Oh yeah, the big red dog that the Army helped us rescue has a name. His name is Jake. We went down to the house where we found him and his owners, an elderly couple, were there. They were thrilled that we knew their dog. Their son called and I gave them the number of the woman who knows whether Jake is in Utah or Cincinnati. When I told the people that their dog was fine, the lady just grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go. She'd been so worried and was so happy.

On the news yesterday: "Many owners of pet snakes just let them go as the Hurricane arrived. Here is a picture of a 12 foot python, formerly someone's pet. This python had just ingested a 6 foot alligator. Officials are concerned that these pet snakes could become problematic." The picture was amazing. That snake had to have been uncomfortable after eating that gator! As for problematic? Yup. I'm thinking so!

There's much more for you. But enough for now. I'm praying for the people dealing with the earthquake in Pakistan. I heard a woman say to her friend, "Forty years I lived in that house, and my whole life changed in one day." That's how it is here. That's how it is in Pakistan this morning. I'll never be able to look at a disaster the same way again. It's not an event. It's a process and the process is like an elevator ride, up and down. Joy and hugs of gratitude punctuated by tears when you least expect them. I loved kaleidoscopes when I was little. Still do. Unfortunately, right now everyone's emotions move like those little colored glass pieces, quickly, jolting, into a new pattern. No one is immune.

I'll get the pictures out to you later today.

Love and Light,
Bec and David

_________
NOTE 10.08.2006
The buggies are still rolling, but few of the drivers can actually make a living at it as they could in the old days. The tourist industry has slacked by 85%. Yesteryear's is still in business. I keep my fingers crossed every day for them.

Tommie, if I recall right, didn't make it but my memory might be faulty on that. I think the trauma was too much. I'll double check my facts.

The Lower 9th is now accessible and I'm working on a piece about going there now. It's eerie. I still can't look at the photos without sobbing like I did as I stood on the neutral ground taking them that day. Those images will stay in my mind on my deathbed, of that I have no doubt.

Oh yeah, and T, who showed up to clean out his apartment came home. He is now a cook at a prestigious hotel/restaurant and seemingly happy but I don't have as much time to see him as I'd wish.

Blogger is giving me fits tonight as I race to the ten minute deadline to get this published in real time. It's not uploading photos as it should so check back tomorrow and we'll have all the photos of what I'm talking about. Amazing that I could find them, but I did!

So weird, looking at the photos and re-living it all.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Update from NOLA 10.6.2005

2006-10-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

Subject: Update from NOLA Date: 10/6 9:22 AM

Hi all,
First order of business the updates: Many of the missing found. All of the shop people now accounted for. TH is in Mississippi too. TL, who owns the shop and her mother, MJ came home so the cats are home at least. And Tommy, MJ's cat, one of the cutest but meanest cats on the planet, was found. He had been residing in his very own room in foster care. We can't figure out why MJ was so glad to see him when he's already bitten her a couple times. T's house will need some work but they got the shop cleaned up very fast. Seeing the lights on in there was a good thing after all the days I'd been in there in the dark. It was nice to see color in there again. She's already opened the shop limited hours, is giving discounts to relief workers and while not doing a land office business yet, can be proud of being one of the very first shops, if not THE first shop on Bourbon Street to re-open. We've seen bars and restaurants coming to life, but I hadn't see any shops open til Yesteryears opened its doors.

Our wonderful landlord/neighbor/friends returned home. Set right to work fixing and figuring out what to do. We celebrated with MRE's and rum and cokes the night they came back. It was marvelous. We had other food, but sat there giggling and eating MRE's, digging the lemon/poppy seed pound cake out of the brown plastic hermetically sealed bag. One of the best dinner parties I ever attended. I was so happy to see their faces and just get to hug them.

David missed it as he had left for Florida that morning. He's back now but it was a rough trip in many ways.

Before he left, he spent another four hours dealing with FEMA. We love their standard answer, "Call us back tomorrow." He said, "Do you realize that that's a four hour commitment?" They just say that they know, but. . . . . .so here we are, six days later, still no FEMA money, and now we are supposed to fax them something, they say, so we will. They're claiming it will be 3-5 days after that when they'll know something, but no one at FEMA can actually answer a question. We'll see. We need for them to come through and fast, but fast isn't in their vocabulary. We're not the only ones having this problem. There are thousands of others out there with no jobs, some with no houses or missing family members and mounting frustration with the agencies that are supposed to help.

Oh yeah, and if you call this number 1.800.975.7585 and get through, please call tell them to hang on then call us for a conference call. That is the Red Cross number. We've called non-stop at all hours for over a month and can't get through. If you get the tape, it will tell you that it's for Katrina Disaster Financial Assistance ONLY, and that they are overwhelmed, and they know it's frustrating. Then you go into an interminable busy signal. At least it's better than the busy signal one gets hitting speed dial! One word for the Red Cross: INTERNET. They can manage to put links on every single website to solicit money, but they do not have any set up for taking applications for financial assistance online. They felt they could "reach the maximum number of people with an 800 number." I've set my alarm for ridiculous times in the middle of the night, no dice. A representative on the news said if "you get through, get your neighbors together and pass the phone around so they can all file while you have a representative on the phone." Cool! I'll get the megaphone out. No doubt there are several folks around who would be thrilled to get through to that number. We figure if we ever have to live through another disaster like this one, we'll just get names and addresses of the people that need the money and tell everyone who wants to give it to the Red Cross to send it directly to those people.

Four boxes of over the counter medical supplies came to my house via UPS the other day. (Oh yeah, and we have mail service now! Amazing! Still wondering what happened to the mail from September, but hey, there's someone putting bills in our mailbox! That's progress!) They were sent by the employees of Barnhill Bolt in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Benadryl, alcohol, all kinds of things, and thrown into one of the boxes were some toy trucks for the kids. C and M H, dear friends of ours, organized it. M works there and the employees all went to Walgreens and other stores, bought things and put them in the boxes. The owner of Barnhill Bolt paid for the UPS. Amazing generousity. The boxes will be delivered to the Common Ground clinic tomorrow. I'll take some pics of the clinic for you so you can see the amazing little place.

So much more to fill you in on, but have been asked about places that one can donate to, so have compiled a list.

PET
Noah's Wish Home Page
LA/SPCA - Hearts Unleashed

MEDICAL/FOOD/CLOTHING/OTHER
Common Ground
South Baton Rouge Church of Christ

Love and Light,
Bec and David
____________________________
NOTE 10.6.2006

As mentioned last week, I think, we are still getting letters asking for documentation from FEMA. Sent it off last week. Have heard nothing back, which may be a blessing in disguise as there are rumors about of folks being sent letters telling them they have to re-pay FEMA for the emergency money they were sent last year. Still haven't seen one of the letters, but have heard it from enough credible (and honest, non-fraudulent people) that I believe it's probably true. Although that money was never given with a caveat that it was a loan, it might turn out that it was for some. We'll see.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Red Cross Redux 9.26.2005

2006-09-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

Subject:
We've moved from vignettes to montages. . . .. or Red Cross Redux
Date:
9/26 7:36 PM

Hi all,
Just a note to say that I haven't forgotten the objections of the eloquent ladies in NY. I will respond when able. For all of you wanting to send things to us personally, UPS is running but the Post Office isn't.

First I need to tell you that we have to put David on a plane to Florida so will do so this Thursday. His father is very ill, and we're lucky that we were able to do it considering the financial situation here. He has to go, bless his heart. He needs some time to talk with his dad now, while his dad is with us. He'll be gone for a few days, but will come back and continue doing what we're doing. I just feel badly that he's getting such a double whammy in his life and there's nothing I can really do about it except support him emotionally.

Today we found one of the missing from yesterday. LC from the shop called while we were feeding the cat at HeadQuarters, who was indeed still in the shop. Her house is gone and she's in Mississippi complaining that it's hard to get beer because, "they don't BELIEVE in that stuff around here." Lucedale, Mississippi. She was stunned that I knew exactly where it was. I knew because it was on our horrendous evacution route AND our circuitous return route. Was so delighted that she was okay considering. Also grateful that the HeadQuarters cat was okay. Now we need to locate R because putting food through the mail slot is a bit difficult! But the cat looks healthy.

Last night on the news, the crawl says: "New Orleans' re-entry plan may start as soon as Monday, Sept 26, starting with the business owners and residents of Algiers." COOL BEANS! Does that mean it's now legal for us to be here? No more checkpoints? Anyone's guess. Too hilarious in a horrid sort of way. Clearly the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing, no matter what the topic or issue is here.

Still no FEMA money, although David and I have graduated. We BOTH actually got a tape at the Red Cross financial line. I called during Hurricane Rita figuring everyone else would be hunkered down or evacuating. Got the tape. David and I have called that number countless times. It's programmed into our phone. We just hit redial. We get the busy signal. But the tape! New and different! "Due to the overwhelming number of calls regarding Hurricane Katrina, we are having difficulty answering all the calls." We think, GREAT, it'll flip over to a hold thingie. No dice. Flips instead to a busy signal which then hangs up on you. It's been two weeks of calling every minute, then every half hour, then every hour. Now we call here and there, laughing all the while. One day someone will answer it. No one we know has gotten any of their Red Cross money. Wait. I lied. One couple applied in Tennessee on their way home and got it.

David spent a day going from the Red Cross station, ("No, we don't have the facilities or the paperwork for the disaster aid program. Please call this number." :::::::::::::Hands him card) to the FEMA office, where they told us our application was pending, but we knew that since we had been checking it online. Now we can't get to the server anymore as it's overloaded and I heard today that the 800 line for them is as impossible as the Red Cross line. He then bravely calls the Unemployment Office. We filed for him as soon as we got home. He's told, "Call the Luling Office." He does. They say, "Call the Gonzales office. There's no one here." He does. They say, "We're evacuating for Rita, call THIS number." He does. He gets some woman from the Louisiana Dept of Labor. She says, "We've sent you two checks for about $350." "Okay, that's great, but we have no mail service." "Oh dear, well then I'll have to send you a form." "Okay, but, um, we HAVE NO MAIL SERVICE." "That's a problem." "Ya THINK?" Finally he asks her, "Where are you?" "Montana." At that point both of them just start laughing. All this money to help, but no way of getting any of it. We'll keep trying the Red Cross line, oh yeah, AND FEMA.

At the Dry Dock, a local bar on Algiers Point, actually open. Guy in a blue polo shirt with a FEMA logo on it. David says, "Buddy, you got BALLS wearing that in here!" He did too. He's lucky he didn't get lynched.

Tall guy on the Ferry today. Dancing to music in his head along with the music on his Walkman. Older guy. Clearly a self medicated schizophrenic doing a relentless and graceful Tai Chi in the style of the Four Tops. He has his "forty." He's been drinking a while. His batteries die, so he slams the side of the Walkman. We have Otis Redding Live on in the car with the sunroof open, so I crank it up and he smiles broadly and begins his dance again. Finally he comes over, I say to him that music makes everything okay. He says clearly and sweetly, "Yes, like the warmth of a smile on a person's face." We talk for a while and we find out that he lives on Claiborne, a ravaged area. He sent his entire family off on whatever form of evacuation he could find. He stayed behind because "it's MY city, and I'm not leaving---it's gonna be GREAT again, you'll see." Then he tells us that the blue roof, a giant tarp people put on their broken roof, is at his house, but he's afraid of heights and he can't put it up and he's the only one on his block. It broke our hearts. He knew about the clinic on Teche run by Common Ground so we told him to ask some of the volunteers over there to help him put it up. He said maybe he'd do that. Then he put his hands out and bowed to us, smiling big and warm, saying, "Sunny days! Sunny days! Sunny days!"

Power blinked on in the Quarter while we were there feeding cats and checking on the shop. Life returned with lights and neon blazing here and there. Alarm systems all over the place hollering as the power came to the buildings. House next to Tennessee Williams' house on 1000 block of Dumaine looked like it had imploded. Bricks everywhere. Towers of trash, a story high on corners. Businesses opening their doors and cleaning out. They're saying that right now, the amount of debris is 12 MILLION cubic yards. After they start demolishing houses, it could go as high as 25 million. That's just New Orleans. Where are they gonna put this stuff?? Someone suggested they use it as the bottom of a new levee system. Not a bad idea. There are probably enough refrigerators alone to put a good bottom layer up and down the canals in this city. There are 168K homes that are trashed, many of which will be demolished. And there are about 100,000 abandoned CARS in this city right now, all of which will be a write off on insurance. Engines useless, sheet metal and glass in good shape. What will we DO with all of this? Couldn't it be USED somehow? :::::::::okay, I'll quit hugging trees for now::::::::::

For any of you who don't know, David was a buggy driver before this all happened. He loved it. For days we worried about the mules.

Royal Carriages is the largest and best known of the buggy companies that take tourists around the Quarter and the Garden District. They have about 30 mules and 15 carriages. When the hurricane hit, four crazy guys stayed in the stables with the mules. Feeding them water dredged from the streets' flooding and pouring some bleach in it, which made it okay for the mules to drink, but not them, they kept them hydrated. The guys themselves hid from the cops and National Guard trying to evacuate everyone. The only food they had was the food in the vending machine in the lounge. The standard crackers, chips, candy, junk, found in vending machines everywhere. There was a soda machine and bottled water machine and luckily the vending machine also had cigarettes. These guys stayed with the mules until the owner could arrange to have them trucked to Mississippi to the "farm." They'll be brought back soon to go to work. They didn't lose a single mule. The guys that saved them are scattered now all over the country, Pablo in New York, Smitty and Roger in Oregon somewhere, and Randolph, we figure, is somewhere close by.

One day we had a Netflix movie that had been delivered prior to Katrina. (Netflix, btw, was fabulous! They not only didn't bill anyone in this area for the month of Sept, they credited back any payment already made.) It was Day After Tomorrow. We figured the trailer looked okay, and hey, Dennis Quaid's in it. Worth a look, we think. Editorial comment here, ignore it: They shoulda left out the wolves. Badly done and a terrible metaphor. But be that as it may, while watching it we found ourselves laughing a bit at our timing. Okay, not the best movie ever made, but hey, watching it while the winds of Rita were still howling outside was something. The day before Texas had dealt with a horrible evacuation, and here was a movie talking about evacuating all the southern half of the US into MEXICO??? Talk about a bottleneck! It was an apropos movie and looked a little different to us now that it would have if we'd watched it before this storm hit.

Could go on, but will leave it alone for now. More to do tomorrow. Trying to help put some folks to work if Lily Duke really has an "in" with the FEMA guys as far as hiring contractors. That's our job tomorrow, along with various other "check-for-me's".

Am trying to compile a list of names and addresses for those of you who want to contribute things, money. Will try to get you a variety as some of you are interested in animal rescue, others medical stuff, others basic needs. So very much appreciated.

Love and Light,
Bec and David
_________________________
NOTES 9.26.2006
The man on the boat had told me another story while leaning into our car window. He had indeed gotten his entire family out including his 18 yr old daughter who had left with his brother, her uncle. The only time his face went dark was when he said, "I know that son of a bitch. I know he's fucking my daughter and there's nothing I can do about it. I want to kill him 'cuz I know him and know what he's up to and what he's done in the past. I don't know where they are and can't get hold of them to find out if she's okay. I heard they sent them off on a plane to Atlanta but I don't know that for sure." I was appalled at what he was saying, appalled that this might be happening. I asked him why he'd sent her off with him if he knew what kind of man his brother was. His answer was simple, "It was better than keeping her here to maybe die. It was the only choice I had, but it ain't right. It just ain't right." I've always remembered this man and wondered if what he thought happened had really happened, and if it did was he told, what did he do, and how hard it must be for him to live with a choice like that. He truly felt he had no choice.

As for the stable guys, Randolph is back and still taking care of the mules.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Missing 9.25.2005

2006-09-25T10:09:00.001-07:00

Subject:
Missing
Date:
9/25 12:17 PM

Hi all,
Around here folks are starting to call all this "Katrita". The newscasters, and even our governor, are having trouble keeping Katrina and Rita straight in their broadcasts. "With the events of Katrina, um, I mean Rita. . . . . ." We watched the coverage as the storm was approaching, when we had power, which was intermittent. We lost power both nights all night, and once in the morning, day before yesterday I think. It's kind of a blur. We've decided that watching the coming of a hurricane on the satellite radar stuff is kind of like standing in front of the wall with a firing squad facing you----You don't hear the shot but the bullet moves toward you in super slow motion. The little hurricane symbol moves and takes aim, and everyone tries to figure out the trajectory, but either way you know it's gonna get to you in some fashion.

We didn't get much sleep for the last two days. A lot of wind, a lot of stuff blowing around, a lot of rain. Some weird form of hypervigilance kicks in as you hear a thump and hope, since the roof or the porch or whatever made it through Katrina that this tropical storm wind spike doesn't break something else. We're tired so will answer individual emails as soon as possible.

A couple months before Katrina, David and I had put a five year plan together. We love music and the music here is just pure joy. No matter what your taste, you can find something that will satisfy your hunger. We became friends with many of the bands and club owners on Bourbon and had also watched as so much of "our" music was exported to Europe. A lot of the great Zydeco bands in the area do better anywhere BUT here. The old Professor Longhair music is also everywhere but here. Many, not all, but many of the clubs treat the musicians horribly, no appreciation for the music. We had decided that we wanted to open a club that specialized in keeping New Orleans music and culture IN New Orleans. Of course the music can still be heard, mostly blaring out of the shops on CD's, but many clubs have switched to "party bands" that seem mostly to attempt to accomodate the college kids. We floated the idea to a club owner who's a native New Orleanian and asked if he thought we were nuts. He said, no. He thought a club like that would work very very well. We were going to talk to him about how much it would take to do this, then we'd work hard for five years we figured, and then open it with some help since we don't have a clue how to run a club. We were going to talk with him the weekend Katrina headed our way. We felt like we were on track with a plan. It was lovely.

What was even more lovely was the encouragement of the people we talked with about this. And right now we don't know where many of them are. Billy Fayard, and all the folks from musicians to waitresses, at the R & B Club. Where is Dr. Blues? Where is Tina, the great lithe bartender with the ready smile and the contagious dancing? What about Rhonda, the melding of Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee? Humphrey, the quintessential musician, waving to us as we went by even if we didn't go in. We heard Josie was in Montana. Dopsie and the guys were headed for Europe 9/12. We hope they got there. They all lived in Lafayette area, and one in East Texas, right along Rita's path.

Two from our shop are missing. Yes we're still missing two cats, but we're missing two people as well. Last we heard they had evacuated. LC, her three kids, aged 27-14 and a grandbaby. She had just bought a house free and clear in Arabi. No flood insurance. Was so proud and just settling in. St. Bernard parish is now under water again. We heard three weeks ago that she might be in Tuscaloosa, but haven't heard anything since. Wonderful cheerful smiling person, warm heart, good friend. No idea where she is. TH, another woman who worked at the shop. Lived in New Orleans East I think. Heard she'd gone to Hammond but we don't know. Haven't heard. Teresa was a special ed teacher until she got attacked by a student causing permanent brain damage and making her legally blind. LC talked very fast, TH very slowly. Miss both of their voices and am praying that they're okay.

Ken, the ultimate gentleman buggy driver. Lived in Arabi. Had horses, the true loves of his life. Last David saw him he said he was going home to take care of the horses. Apparently his property was wiped out, we don't know about the horses. Rumor is he's never coming back. A real loss if true.

Three little boys, Kendrick, 12, his brother Trevonne about 14, and Terence also 14, would stop by our house regularly to see if we needed our car washed. Real entrepreneurs these little guys. They could be a pain in the neck as their timing was often not in synch with ours, but seeing their smiles through our windows was a gift. When we moved here, they helped us move in and showed up regularly ever since. Terence was fascinated by the computer. He wants to go to college. I told him that I'd expect an invitation to his graduation. He has the motivation to do it. Kendrick and Trevonne weren't sure what they wanted to do. Trevonne's big goal in life was to have a gold tooth and a diamond earring. When asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, he said NBA star. I told him I hated to break it to him, but he wouldn't be tall enough. Okay, then, he said, "I'll be a rap star." These three boys have byzantine living arrangements. They seem to live with an "auntie", but we aren't sure. Kendrick and Trevonne's mom supposedly lived in St. Bernard parish, but no one knew exactly what the arrangements were. We'd see them heading to the eastbank on the Ferry at night when we'd be coming home. "Where ya goin' boys?" "Home to Iberville." Evidently they continued in school on this side of the river. We don't know. Don't know their last names. Don't know if they're okay. It weighs on us.

Moses and Nette lived across the street. We waved as we pulled out of town, they said they were staying. I heard they left day after the storm. No idea where they are.

Dee and Delise were our buddies. They were waitresses at Sammy's on Bourbon. They had both just bought houses in New Orleans East. Worked so hard to do that and were busy renovating. Dee was going to have a house warming and wanted us to come. They might have lost it all. We miss them. We also miss the great Walter. Gruff voiced smooth talker. "Hey baby! I got your catfish just the way you like it. And for you, my man, my SPECIAL seafood pasta. I always take care of my friends." He had become a friend.

Pat O'Brien's. We met there every Friday night after work. Rebecca and her son lived in Slidell. An incredibly beautiful and generous woman, we don't know where she is or if her house was enough away from the lake to make it. Reggie and Love, the doormen on the Bourbon side. Hope Reggie's dog is okay. She had a cough. Ryan, Chuck and Rod lost everything, but will rebuild and are okay. We found their numbers and they are okay. Kathy is in Pennsylvania and aching to come home. We miss them.

I could go on and on. So many that are missing and that WE are missing. So many that we at least know are okay, but still, we are missing. The faces that populate your life, even when you don't know their last names, these are the faces that bring a smile to your face. Hell, even some of the folks that made you roll your eyes or try to avoid them are MISSED right now. Are they okay? Where are they? Will we see them again?

Too many scattered so far.

We miss our landlords, Z and M, who have become our friends. M getting ready for a triathlon (yup, she really DOES that!), Z with his white shirt hanging out on his way to work with his iPod playing. The killer dachschunds running down the street with Z hollering SHIVA get BACK here! Little things like that are missed. Normalcy, or what passed for it in our lives, is missed.

Now there is one thing that we're grateful for missing. The full hit of Rita. Although the Lower Ninth is flooded again, at least everyone was out of there. Still just made me cry to see first the overtopping then the erosion of the makeshift levee repairs. We're also grateful that Houston didn't get hit too badly. The lower lying parishes here are flooding but so far we haven't heard anything catastrophic like we heard in Katrina. Heard from the glorious Polimom outside of Houston that it was not bad there. We're glad Rita missed her.

Got a call from Lily Duke today. I hear the tent city is going up today and tomorrow over at Blaine Kern's. We'll head over there tomorrow after we go check on the shop cats and the Preservation Hall cat (who, rumor has it, was pictured in a People magazine last week! Would love to see the pic!), and there's one more that's been added to our list. The cat at HeadQuarters on Dumaine. We need to check on that one. The owner, R, someone else we care about, is also still MIA. We're hoping he's in Mississippi with his daughter.

Once we finish with the cats, and see if we can get pics of a couple of people's houses and a crypt if we can get there, we'll head over to Kern's. They're gonna need some help and the thinking is to take the operation, with FEMA's help, across the river. It needs to be done, but don't get me started on FEMA helping anyone.

Will answer your questions and comments soon.

Love and Light,
Bec and David
____________________
NOTES 9.25.2006

We were wrong about the devastation in the Lower Parishes from Rita. They got hit hard. At the time I wrote this, the full impact hadn't been reported yet.

As for the missing:
Billy Fayard closed the Rock. The band there was nominally called the New Orleans Levee Board, which in hindsight, was pretty funny. They were a great R&B Band. We talked to Billy a couple days before he closed the place, and he really did give it some time to pick up. But in the end, he couldn't make it. The Rock is now another daiquiri bar. One night, we were walking along and saw the remaking of one of our favorite dives into a bright college kid friendly daiquiri bar. The Levee Board sign was still up behind the stage. David went in, told them we wanted the sign, they said no problem they were just gonna throw it away anyway. So it's here in our house, soon to be wall decoration. We are on a quest to locate the musicians we loved there. We started our quest on Saturday night. I'll write about that on New Orleans Slate.

Dopsie is still touring. We saw him and his band and they're doing fine, but they're not here where we can hear them.

LC and TH are also okay. LC is back in town and has been fighting FEMA, insurance companies, you name it. She and all the kids were renting three expensive, tiny apartments over Chris Owens' club and somehow making the rent and remaining reasonably sane. TH, I heard was in Mississippi and doing very well, not coming back.

Tina, the lithe bartender has vanished. She's probably still here working somewhere else. Josie had returned, worked at the Blues Club (which has been closed but we heard will reopen in October) but then went somewhere out on St. Charles St.

Sammy's is still there. Doing far less business than before the storm. Dee, Jamie and Walter are back. Walter looks a bit haggard but is still glad to see us when we pass by. We don't eat there as often as our money situation isn't what it was either. Walter had a very hard time in Houston and it's showing on him.

Moses and Nette eventually came back, to be greeted by a racist idiot that lived a couple blocks over. The three of us were walking around the block when this moron comes over and says to Nette, "Where'd you guys go?" "Alabama." "Why'd you come back? Not enough cotton to pick over there?" Nette just ignored him, I wanted to kill him. Fucking idiot.

The three boys turned up at Christmas time. I wrote about it then. It was wonderful to see them, but we still don't quite know where they are or if they are in school.

Pat O's no longer serves food. We keep hearing that they're GOING to do that again "next month." Not sure if it's staffing issues, or customer issues or both, but we miss their gator bites and their staff. Love returned but Reggie didn't. Our friend Ryan is still there. We owe him a visit.

There is a picture in my head of a standard Saturday night after I'd get off work and David and I would wander around eating, drinking and listening to music. The street would be filled with people having a great time, at least until tomorrow morning. All the bead tossing and fuzzy hats never bothered me. I loved seeing people having a great time doing things they'd never do at home in Duluth. I even loved the stupid, drunken frat boys. When they are 60 they'll be telling their grandchildren about when they visited New Orleans while in college and what wild bad-ass young turks they were, and the New Orleans gleam will be in their eyes.

It's just a picture now and the picture is minus so many familiar friendly faces, even after a year. We still are missing them.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Quickie Update While the Power Holds 9.23.2005

2006-09-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

Subject: Quickie update while the power holds Date: 9/23 11:48 AM

Hi all,
I have many of you to answer. Today isn't the day. Yesterday I was forwarded a very eloquent letter re: my use of the Mirror link in the last email. I will absolutely answer that. It was beautifully written and made good points.

Rita is on her way. Winds gusted to 48 mph this morning here in NO. It's been raining pretty much on and off since last night. A tree across the street was just too wet and weak and fell over in the night. Heard things bouncing off the walls of our house and the house next door. Looked this morning, no damage, just a lot of noise. We're currently under a tornado watch til 6PM and are being told that if we won't leave, we need to write our social security numbers on our arms in Sharpie so they can identify us.

Lost power for most of the night last night, but it came on gratefully this morning about 6AM. Cable is gone again, so back to dialup. If the wind keeps increasing the power may go again, so wanted to let you all know that we're fine.

Lower Ninth Ward levee was topped. You'll hear on the news that it was BREACHED. It wasn't. It was topped by storm surge. The eye wall of the Rita has gotten smaller, which means that it can gain strength before it hits landfall. If it gains strength it could cause more storm surge and yet more rain. We were thrilled when it looked like it would be downgraded. Might not be the case if continues forming the way it is now.

Pray for all those Houston folks who are still in their cars, out of gas. I hope they don't have to ride out this storm in their cars. That was my greatest fear during Katrina.

Looks like this storm will split the difference between Houston and New Orleans if it keeps on this track. But things change fast.

Right now we're just watching for tornadoes. They can pop up fast.

So far so good here though. Will write more when this is over.

Love and Light,
Bec and David

________________________
NOTE 9.23.2006
The Lower 9 flooded again as the levee had already been breached by Katrina. From what we heard, Rita caused a storm surge that caused what was left of those levees to overtop, as if that area hadn't had enough to deal with.

Rita did indeed "split the difference" and hammered Southwestern Louisiana, an area that has been greatly overlooked compared to New Orleans or the Mississippi Gulf region. Homes and businesses in SW Louisiana were just gone and they're still struggling.

I spent the night Rita hit sitting on my front porch hitting redial on the phone that still worked trying to get through to the Red Cross. I figured everyone had either evacuated or would be busy battening down their own hatches and maybe I'd get through. No. Never did get through to them that night.

I do remember vividly the power of the winds, which in my area were really nothing compared with SW Louisiana. But having grown up in the Midwest, when I thought of high winds, I thought of cold winds. I remember being struck by the warmth of them on that porch that night. I sat there in shorts and a tank top, dialing the phone and being amazed at the warm powerful winds. And, hey, I was so totally on the outer edge of it. Rita blew a few more shingles off roofs around where we were, but nothing too huge, and after what we'd just been through with Katrina, there was a strange sense of resignation.

The stories of the people in Texas on the roads were horrible though. What a mess. Just mass panic and gridlock.

But we were lucky she didn't hit us again.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

A Couple of Minor Miracles and a Prayer 9.21.2005

2006-09-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

Subject:
Okay, guys, a couple of minor miracles and a prayer. . . .
Date:
9/21 2:01 PM

Hi all,
Two miracles today: cable tv is back on, my broadband is not yet, can't figure that one out but am working on it, and UPS GOT THROUGH!! (C and M, THANKS!! The chocolate was a bit melted so it's in the fridge but the medical supplies will get to the clinic today.) We hear a knock on the door, hard knock. Figure okay, it's someone trying to get us to evacuate. No! It's a UPS guy! Amazing! And two packs of Gauloises in there too! It's gotta be Christmas!

We're currently under voluntary evacuation for Rita. We hate seeing the storm track heading toward Texas or anywhere for that matter. When one lives in this region during hurricane season, every time a tropical storm comes up and looks like it could be a hurricane, the weather forecasters say, "It's tracking this way, at this speed, in this direction, and we don't want to wish this on anyone else, but. . . . ." The implication is always "But HEY it ain't coming here! HURRAY!" This time it's harder to say any of those things. Most of our evacuees are in Texas. Galveston is already being evacuated. Many of the Houston Astrodome evacuees from New Orleans are now being flown to Arkansas, bless their hearts. Where are they going to wind up?

Rita is about 500 miles across and getting stronger. Unless we can find a way to make her go away, I fear that there will be five states in trouble when this is done. Florida to Texas, the hurricanes have destroyed things and people and lives. The Gulf water is just so warm that it's inviting to a hurricane. (Altogether now, THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING!) I was sent some pictures of Katrina as she approached. They are absolutely beautiful for something that was so utterly destructive. (Thanks, Sher!) If you want to see them, write and I'll forward them to you.

Meanwhile, here on the ground, the National Guard and some of the other aid people have been moved to keep them safe from destruction so that they can come back in sooner when Rita is over. Some are being moved over toward the Texas area. The Red Cross people David talked to yesterday, (more on that later), said they might be evacuating, they don't know. The city is full of media, contractors, various alphabet soup law enforcement. Workers are feverishly trying to get the broken parts of the canals fixed, but one of the holes is at least 300 feet across. Not sure if they'll get it done in time.

On the news today, a woman from Kenner, now in Baton Rouge, screaming at the news reporter about the incompetence of the Red Cross and FEMA.

David's experience yesterday was typical:

He takes our FEMA case number over to the FEMA disaster relief station. He finds a very nice fireman from Las Cruces, New Mexico manning the computer. The guy tells David that they've been given very little training, pretty much only told how to turn the computer on and check status. Well we can and have been doing that from here on our little dialup connection. After spending time there, he is told that our FEMA stuff is "pending." Yup. We knew that. Check it a couple of times a day. Most people have not gotten their FEMA money. Some got it in two days. The vast majority we've talked with either didn't qualify or haven't received it.

Red Cross Disaster Relief had no forms available for David to fill out for that relief. They were sorry, but they didn't have any. "Here's a card with the 800 number." Well you can't get THROUGH on that number unless you have a computer running a redial program to find a nanosecond breach in the busy signal, then you can sit for literally two hrs trying to get things filed there.

David had filed for unemployment as soon as we got home. At one of the centers, FEMA I think, he was told that the LA Dept of Labor was supposed to have reps there to help get that squared away, but they hadn't shown up.

St. Bernard Parish sheriff, so hard hit, along with Jefferson Parish sheriff department is asking where IS the money? They were supposed to be given funds from the big money Washington says is coming. So far, no one, including law enforcement agencies, has seen any of it.

Wanted to write an open letter to Laura Bush: "Dear Mrs. Bush, Evidently you have some influence over your husband. Please tell him to stay home. Everytime he comes to New Orleans for a photo op everything has to come to a halt, including relief work, for his security people. Please ask him to save the gas money and send it to the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's office instead. Thank you."

Was sent an article today that made me sick as well. Food sent by England, Spain, Israel, held up by the FDA because of regulations. It's in the British newspaper if you want to read it: Mirror.co.uk - News - EXCLUSIVE: UP IN FLAMES

There's still much to do here, but we're all keeping a low profile until Rita passes over. It will continue to be citizens, not institutions or agencies, that rebuild here. We will stay and pray for the people in Rita's path, then start back with our requests for food and meds.

Then we'll start asking why are we importing workers? We are forever grateful to that fireman from Las Cruces, and all the other people who left their families to come here to help us. But if FEMA is hiring people to help process, why not hire Louisiana people who are without jobs, can't GET the freaking FEMA money, and could use the paycheck? Ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous. Reports every night about the Louisiana people and New Orleanians without jobs. HIRE THEM to work HERE. Kill at least two birds with one stone: They get a paycheck (while waiting for their relief money), the city and state get rebuilt, and they are no longer in other states wondering what's next.

Had a wonderful Church of Christ pastor tell me that these sorts of ideas are just entirely too logical.

Keep those prayers coming, and love your return emails. They warm our hearts and encourage us more than you can ever know.

Love and Light,
Bec and David
__________________________
NOTE 9.21.2006

Incredible reading this. Day before yesterday we sent yet another packet of stuff off to FEMA, return receipt, Priority Mail, certified. We had done the FEMA dance for months, then were shuffled off to the SBA, who in turn sent us back to FEMA. We got a piece of mail from them a couple weeks ago asking us WHY our things had been in storage, could we send photos, and could we send receipts.

I wrote them back, included all prior letters and forms and affidavits with the dates (starting September 10, 2005) circled. Oh and I sent photos of our storage unit sludge. To date we have not received any money from any agency other than the Red Cross for $325 I think it was. That story will be in later emails I think.

The area is still full of out of town workers, and our evacuees are still flung far and wide.

Oh yeah, and evidently Mrs. Bush didn't hear my plea. He was back again on the anniversary and the traffic on I-10 was a nightmare. Also there was no posted itinerary for him anywhere that anyone could find.

As for the dollars the St. Bernard folks were waiting for? I think they're still waiting.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Strangled in the Red Tape of the Safety Net? 9.20.2005

2006-09-20T01:49:00.000-07:00

Finally got Blogger to upload the photos.

Subject:
Strangled in the Red Tape of the Safety Net? Get this off my NECK!
Date:
9/20 11:03 AM

Hi all,
Couldn't write to you yesterday. Was just too damn tired.

A friend wrote a couple days ago, calling some folks "hurricane angels." Well, we met some yesterday. Sent here by a group called Van Nuys Relief, in trucks evidently donated by Avon, the marvelous Schlene and friends (don't know if they want to be named or not so won't presume until they tell me) got four guys to drive them to us here. These trucks were full of stuff. Clothes, linens, toiletries, tons of medical supplies (not just neosporin, guys, amazing necessary stuff), food, water. It was incredible. These guys, Ian Sothenberger, Pete Sanchez, Shawn Booth, Jeffrey Snyder, drove these trucks all over the place. Took one to Picayune then headed here. We told them the route in here then David and I met them and took them to the distribution place at Blaine Kerns. There we were told that they couldn't take the linens and clothes and toys, but would take the food. So David and the four guys started unloading the truck. We put all the medical supplies in my Voodoo mobile and I took off to find someone who would take this awesome stuff. Many people lost all their clothes, their bed linens, everything. Even if their houses survived in some parts of this neighborhood, some of their stuff was just gone from water damage through the roof.

First stop, Red Cross. They had set up a station at Landry High School, right across the street from some of the most decrepidly maintained housing projects I've ever seen. A very poor section of Algiers. I find a woman there. Tell her I have clothes, bed linens and toys but I need a truck to get them to her. The stuff is only ten blocks away. She says no problem. She's delighted. She then takes me to the head of the Red Cross station who is a lovely woman hog-tied by Red Cross regulations. She says that because they aren't brand new in the package she can't take them. She wishes the Red Cross would give the field workers some authority but they don't and it would take a MONTH to get the paperwork through to get this stuff to where it's really needed. She said she REALLY needed it but couldn't take it. Regulations. She suggests I go across the street to the other part of the high school or start my own relief organization.

I head across the street. It's FEMA. I start to tell the head of that field office what's happening. She starts hollering at me, flapping her hands and repeating NO NO NO NO. I was fine til she did that. Then I was pissed. She said she had talked with Jackie Clarkson, our city councilwoman. I said, good. Give me her number. I called Ms. Clarkson, got an answering machine, still no answer and those guys and David are still standing in 94 degree Louisiana heat with these boxes. She keeps hollering at me, I turned around with her still talking and left. She had the same excuse, not new in packages.

I headed to a local church. No one there. Found another church with Red Cross people in front of it. (By now I'd called David a couple times, first saying I had a truck, then saying I didn't, trying to explain what was going on where I was.) I get a Red Cross Chaplain. Explain the situation to her. She says I have to go over and talk to, you guessed it, the FIRST lady I talked with. I said, why don't YOU get in my car and come see what we have. She says she can't. There's a baby faced Red Cross volunteer in front of the Church. I say, fine send HIM with me. She says he's not authorized to go with me in my car. Regulations.

By this time I'm furious. I KNOW people need this stuff. I've been in their houses. I go back to Blaine Kern's and the guys have taken matters into their own hands, literally. There are news crews all over the place and these guys just open the boxes and start giving the stuff out themselves. SCREW the bureaucracy. People NEEDED this stuff. What they couldn't give away in the time they had before they had to go home, they packed up and decided they'd give away on the way back. I found out later last night that those linens had come from four of the finest hotels in Los Angeles. Places the people who got them couldn't possibly afford to stay at for a night. Places the people flocking to the Red Cross center would dream about. The whole thing was unbelievable and I was well beyond mad, but it was just starting.

What about all the medical supplies?? I'd been given a list of supplies needed by a doc who was running the med tent over at Kern's. There had been a clinic set up somewhere else, and he had left a message for me that he "couldn't take the supplies" I could get in. The list he gave me includes everything from alcohol swabs to antibiotics. It's a huge list. I not only can't FIND the clinic he's supposedly at, but the Red Cross and FEMA won't take the med supplies either. You should have seen the back of my car. Incredible stuff had arrived. Better than Christmas. I stop by the 82nd Airborne and find a doc there. He comes to the car, helps me cut open the boxes and sees what's in them. His eyes told the whole story. He said he really needed this stuff but "wasn't allowed to take it." For gods SAKE, the stuff is sealed in individual sterile containers. IV stuff, a sharps container, I can't begin to list everything there was so much. By now I'm near tears. There are people, David and I have FOUND them, who need this stuff. But no one can freaking TAKE it? Why? Because it's regular private citizens like us who are getting it donated and trucked in and distributed. I don't have the right paperwork. It's absurd and obscene.

Finally I find another clinic, by pure luck. I see a sign saying First Aid Station. I head in there and there is a fabulous midwife nurse practitioner. First she wants to treat me for heat exhaustion (I was pretty red in the face by then, coulda been heat, probably anger!), I laugh and grab a bag of ice and take her to my car. She sees what I have and says "Take it to the Clinic on Teche. They need it desperately." I know the Clinic there but in my frustration hadn't thought of them. They're run by self proclaimed anarchists, getting support and supplies from folks like the Vietnam Vets for Peace out of Baton Rouge, Common Ground they call themselves and the Black Panthers are also helping them out. Well of course they are! It's a poor black neighborhood in need and the sign outside the clinic in a Black Muslim mosque says, SOLIDARITY NOT CHARITY. Incredibly I find a doctor there. He sees the treasure trove that I've been driving around for nearly three hours and he adds more requests to my already huge list. He says the state is trying to shut them down because they are a volunteer clinic. All the people working there medically are doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, along with the volunteers who are doing outreach on bicycles, but they aren't a HOSPITAL. They are working under the radar and are the only ones getting anything actually DONE from what I can see.

The guys who brought the trucks through from LA are angels, David termed what we're doing "guerilla relief" and he's right. If you try to go through the governmental safety net, you'll never get anything DONE. Nothing will get to the actual people who need it without tons of time (and ya know, time isn't something we have a lot of when some people have been in need for three damn weeks now---we don't HAVE another freakin month to wait for the properly stamped paperwork).

We're still working with the Church of Christ people. Dana, the guy who's running things now that Stan had to go home, is from Minnesota. Wonderful man. I asked if he was with the Church of Christ. He said no. He'd signed up to volunteer with the Red Cross, but was told it would be a year and a lot of hoops before he'd be sent down here. So he said screw it and came down, got hold of Stan and here he is. Bless his heart.

I am including some pictures from yesterday. I only took a few because I was too busy gonzo driving from one place to another. "Try over there, they probably need it. We need it too but CANNOT take it." Incredible. Wanted you to see the angels handing things out on their own.

For the rest of you who want to send stuff, boy do I ever had a medical list including a lot of high blood pressure meds, things like that. Until we find out if Rita drowns herself in the Gulf or not, we're going to wait to send you lists of requests and ways to get them in. They're talking about a mandatory evacuation for us tomorrow. We're not going. Want you all to know that. We plan on still being here next week. The storm is now headed for Texas, but could veer off. We would hate to see a lot of necessary stuff get here now and just get blown away if this storm DOES hit a little more east than they are currently predicting. We will keep in touch with those of you trying to send stuff here. Our phone works most of the time and I actually got a voicemail retrieved the other day, but don't count on that. Our cell phones seem a little better and text msgs do seem to get through. We'll keep in touch because it's citizens, just plain folks, who are going to get things to the people who need them from what I can see. The people working for the big guns are by and large wonderful, whether they're the field workers or the Army/National Guard/Navy/AForce guys. These guys are fabulous. But the bureaucracy that oversees them is too unwieldy to get any real help in in a timely fashion.

Please know how grateful we are to you and how grateful the people getting this stuff are. We can never thank you enough.

Oh yes, and found two more cats in the shop yesterday while walking around inside with no flashlight, just a lit "Prosperity" candle. Still two missing, but the candle was appropriate. What was sent to us by the hurricane angels (thanks for the term, Louis!) was prosperity indeed. THANKS VAN NUYS RELIEF!

There was a little tea set in the toy box. It went to Terrianna, the little girl who's laughter helped us out the day we got the medical runs done. Will send a picture of her when I can. I have lots of pics to send out. Just gonna have to do it piecemeal with this connection.

Love and Light,
Bec and David
_________________________
NOTE 9.20.2006
The trucks filled with supplies were pulled together by a group of film and television stars in Los Angeles. They had solicited help from Beverly Hills hotels and anyone else they could contact, then they funneled it through a wonderful woman named Schlene. Somewhere here, I have photos of those same trucks being loaded up in Los Angeles by Matthew McConaughey and others. I'll try to track them down. It was mainly Patricia Arquette and Jake Webber behind all this from what I could glean at the time. I didn't mention their names in this email, but feel they need to be recognized now for their remarkable efforts during a horrid time. Ms. Arquette's assistant, Schlene, was the point person and worked tirelessly to help us relay information on routes in to the incredible guys that ran that gauntlet. We will be forever grateful to these people for their tireless efforts. (Evidently this group is now called ReliefSpark and can be found at www.reliefspark.org and I found a slide show of the same trucks that got here being loaded there. They didn't mention that they had gotten to New Orleans, but they did. A slide show of the Los Angeles end of things can be found here.

I have photos of the trucks, and the impromptu distribution at this end, but couldn't get Blogger to upload them this morning. I will add them tonight.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide Red Cross

Johnny White's and the Great White Cat 9.18.2005

2006-09-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

Subject: Johnny White's and the Great White Cat Date: 9/18 2:21 PM

Hi all,
Yesterday at Blaine Kern's I was handed a huge list of medical supplies that are needed by the doc over there. I've passed that on and I now have the trusty "pass" needed to get trucks in here, so for those of you who have contacted me telling me you have truckloads of supplies to get in, contact me again and give me a fax number. I'll fax you back the pass needed to accomplish this, the address of Blaine Kern's to deliver it to, and Lily Duke's number for the latest route in. (The routes change almost daily as this road opens and that one closes.) I'll try to get in touch with the free pet food people J turned me on to because boy that really is needed. Food distribution will continue for a few weeks at least. I think it will wind down on the Westbank as the stores open and start up on the Eastbank right after that. David waited 20 minutes to get into a local grocery store, then ran amok buying groceries which our bodies then couldn't figure out what to do with after eating lots of crackers for a while here! But we were indeed grateful for the food.

They let business owners into the Quarter yesterday so we headed across to check on the cats at the shop I work at. The SPCA had gotten many of them out. There had originally been 10 cats, two dogs, two snakes and now I hear 2 ferrets. They got as many as they could out but there are at least five still in there. Moose and Pickle are the shop's cats, and T, the owner's house cats were there too, one is still there we think. Her mother's apartment is upstairs from the shop, one of HER cats is still there. We could only find three, one we couldn't identify. We have to find an open Home Depot and put a new hasp and lock on the alley door which the SPCA kicked in to get the others out. We don't care that it's kicked in. There was food and water in abundance still in the shop and we brought more. But with that door ajar in any way, the cats can get out to the street and we want to keep them contained where we can feed them.

The shop, Yesteryears, is full of wonderful masks and beautiful dolls. It was eerie going in there with a flashlight. No power, dolls all over the place, but the mess isn't as big as expected. Masks on the stairs. Cats in shadows. It's usually so bright and full of color, but yesterday it was dark, hot and so quiet that we could kinda hear where the cats were. We'll go back tomorrow and give them fresh water and do the lock.

We decided to walk down the street to "our block." That is the block of St. Peter between Bourbon and Royal. I walk that block to go the A&P when I'm working and David drives his mule UP that block. Often we see each other as we pass. I know every crack and potentially ankle breaking dip in the sidewalk. It felt funny to walk down there and see nothing but law enforcement and military. We got to Preservation Hall. Looks fine. The grand old bastion of jazz appears to have made it through with little damage. They have a huge white cat with white/green eyes that lives there. He can often be seen as you walk that block, sitting outside the Preservation Hall gate, taking in the sun, ignoring the tourists. He was there. He'd run out of food and water. He jumped the gate and sat in my lap while David went back to the car for more food and water. The Preservation Hall gate has a sheet of iron all the way to the ground so getting food in was tough. We poured two lbs of cat food on the sidewalk and I sat there pushing it under the gate for him. David cut an empty gallon container of water into a bowl, squeezed it through the upper bars of the gate, and perfectly aimed the fresh water into the makeshift bowl. The place and the cat are landmarks. At least we can take care of the cat, so he's now on our list critters to keep track of.

We continued down the street to St. Louis Cathedral. The Presbytere, the building to the right if you're looking at the Cathedral, had its cupola blown down in a hurricane in 1915. It's roof had been bare since then. About two months ago they finally replaced it so that it matches the one on its sister building, the Cabildo. We were looking up to make sure that it was there and it was. An Immigration and Customs guy who was down there wondered what we were looking at. We told him. He said, "They musta used super glue this time." We were both okay til we got to the front of the Cathedral, then all I could do was cry. I cried for the next four blocks as we made our way around the Square. Stacks of cots where the artists usually are. One artist who paints cats every day near the hack stand where the buggies sit, had dripped paint for years on the block at the bottom of the fence around the Square. The paint was still there, she wasn't and we hoped that she was okay. Shops in the Pontalba building filled with masks all fine, just waiting for the doors to open, and in front of them bags and bags of trash and a lost filthy surgical mask. Giant media trucks and mobile medical units in front of Cafe du Monde. No human statues, no jugglers, no balloon guys, not even "One Note Johnny", a guy who played on the Square for change and annoyed everyone with his one note. We were worried about all of them and wishing we could hear his one note.

We made our way back up to Bourbon, where our car was, to assess what we needed in the way of hardware for the shop. We took a look and got in the car and headed down Bourbon to go check on another shop T owns in the Marigny. And then we see it. A crowd of people on the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann. Johnny White's Bar. It's been open during and since Katrina struck. It's become a de facto supply center and story collecting area. Outside a guy sleeps on a cot, oblivious to the people running in and out. A Washington Post photographer comes in, shoots pictures, listens to stories, and hears the gripes. Across St. Ann a mobile med unit manned by an 82nd Airborne doc is giving out tetanus shots. Coming in, getting folks from the bar, giving them their shot, sending them back to the bar for a "shot." They ran out of beer for about 1/2 hr then miraculously several cases appeared, but they needed ice. Street guy we know, who we were delighted to see vertical and breathing, grabs David and says there are pallets of ice just melting in the sun. He and David take off to find them, find it's only a rumor, then find a truck filled with ice. The driver doesn't want to give it to them, it's under lock and key. He warily asks where these two guys are from. Steve, the street guy, not known for soberness or tact, says, "Johnny White's Bar." David says, "I've been doing some work for the Church of Christ." Which is true. I guess the truck driver was a good man. He gave them 18 bags of ice and the beer was cold again. We had some toilet paper still in our car from our supply runs, and the Quarter hasn't really had as much relief as the Westbank. We gave it to them over there. Those folks needed it. There were people there who had no homes to go back to. Larry, the bartender, says to me, "I'm 61 yrs old, but have been running on adrenalin so long I feel like I'm 25."

We're wondering what's going to happen when the adrenalin runs out. They can always get beer and ice, but the adrenalin will give out sooner or later. At some point the city is going to have the "after the funeral" syndrome. After a death, the house is full of helpful people, wonderful caring helpful people. They all bring a covered dish, food of some kind. They clean up, organize, do what they can. But eventually they have to go home and the bereaved is left to deal alone. Sooner or later that will happen to this city. I hope we're ready when it does.

Little weird story: David goes to get gas the other night. He finds a station with gas but no one there. It had pumps that took an ATM card, so he puts the card in and hopes it works. ATM machines have been iffy at best with the phone system being what it is. It works! HUZZAH! Up rolls a seen-better-days Taurus with two women who also fit that description. They have to get to Baton Rouge. David tells them that the ATM function is working. They tell him they don't have a credit card or an ATM card but they have ten dollars in cash. Could he put the ten on the card so they can get to Baton Rouge. Well, truth be told, everyone is a little leery of each other in this city because, well, just because---until you know what you're up against you kind of have your guard up. They give him their ten dollars and he puts the gas in their car. They both get in the car and say, "Thank you, David." He says he froze in his tracks. He turned to them and said, "How did you know my name?" They both looked as confused as he was and said they didn't know how they'd known his name. Then one followed that with, "You must be an angel." At that moment he was and there are so many angels here working their hearts out, doing whatever needs to be done. Right then that's what he was doing.

Love and Light,
Bec and David
______________________
NOTE 9.18.2006
Just prior to the storm, I had ordered two new fax ribbon rolls. Thank goodness I had.

Allen Broussard, the President of Jefferson Parish, had issued two permits, one for passing through Jeff Parish, the other a work permit. Our neighbor's neice worked somewhere that gave her access to them, so she had faxed one of each over to us. They were remarkably non-official looking, just a fill in the blanks form with Broussard's signature on the bottom. We were suddenly faxing and copying these passes all over the place. If someone wanted to get in to check their house, they'd contact us and we'd tell them to get to the Kinko's in Dallas, or Atlanta, or wherever they were and we'd fax them "zee paperssss" and we did. We could do it as long as the power, phone and fax ribbons held out. We still have copies of them in our glove compartment, one of those little holdovers. No idea how many of them we faxed out during that time.

Preservation Hall's cat, it turns out, had food in the back, but who knew. And his name is Champ. There is a really good bar that makes great burgers across the street from Preservation Hall called Yo Mama's. One of our favorite haunts. After the storm, Champ would sashay across the street and say hi to me if I was in there.

Yesteryear's is still in business, barely holding on, as is the case for all French Quarter businesses. All the cats are okay, but we worry that the businesses we know and love might not make it to the new year. There has been little or no help for the small business owner, and SBA is offering loans which are hard to get, rarely seen, and are LOANS. For many small business owners, getting a loan right now is a scary proposition when they are having trouble making the rent on their shops and feeding themselves. T started that business over 27 years ago. It's been a fixture on Bourbon Street, a wonderful shop in the midst of tshirt places. There were customers who had come to New Orleans every year for a decade, and had bought a doll at Yesteryears every year.

To visitors and locals alike: PLEASE SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESSES. If you're visitor, you'd hate seeing nothing but big box stores in New Orleans. You come here to get away from them. So did we. I needed a new mouse for my computer last week. I bought it from a tiny computer store in the Quarter that is making it literally day by day (there is a letter from the owner of this business on New Orleans Slate). I could have gotten in the car and headed for Best Buy and maybe gotten it cheaper, but if we don't support these businesses they'll be gone.

That would be a horror.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World 9.16.2005

2006-09-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Subject: Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World Date: 9/16 4:20 PM

Hi all,
We are just amazed at how far afield these emails are going. We couldn't be more grateful for the support and the offers of help.

So many of you need some answers from us that you'll get one liners here: ML, by all means if they're interested, send our emails to them. We're humbled and grateful. Thanks! J, C, and anyone else who's offered to get stuff to us, I have a meeting with Lily Duke tomorrow at 10AM. She's the one who can tell us what paperwork we need to get things in here like the free dog food or the medical stuff. BTW, C, the doc over there said he'd have a list for me when I see him next. We'll get all this coordinated somehow. M and Z, we keep trying to get pics taken of YOUR house, but just haven't managed it. Will try again tomorrow. And we didn't hang up on you M, sometimes the line just stops working! And the bamboo plant is still hanging in there!

We were told by the doctor at the food distribution place yesterday that we looked tired and should go home and take a day off and have a drink. Best prescription ever. We tried but David wound up doing a roof over on the East bank today, checking on a house over there, really taking in the disaster in Kenner. I could see it in his eyes when he got home. I wound up figuring out ways to get stuff in here, so our day off didn't really work out but we're trying not to run around quite so much today.

Old red dog in our neighbor's yard should be picked up tomorrow by a rescue group from Utah. We duct taped his address to his collar and hope that he will be found. The owner of the shop I work in on Bourbon had had to evacuate leaving 10 cats, two dogs and two snakes. The SPCA got all but four of the cats out last week. Said they trashed the shop trying to catch them and couldn't get them all. She drove from San Antonio, Texas to Gonzales, LA yesterday and found all of them. At least now we know who's actually still IN the shop. David and I are going over to Bourbon tomorrow to put food and water in there. Businesses will start opening in the next couple weeks over there and as of tomorrow I can legally get into the Quarter to deal with these four guys. One of them is very shy anyway and the SPCA could never have found all his hidey holes. We'll just leave them there and keep the food coming.

We keep talking about the distribution area. I have almost 100 pics but with this horrid dial up connection I can't take the time to get them all uploaded for you. Give me a bit on that. One of the reasons we want you to see it so much is that the whole thing is so utterly surreal. The staging area is Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World.

For those of you unfamiliar with this area, Blaine Kern's is a gigantic complex of enormous warehouses and workshops. They design and make about 1/2 the floats for the various Krewes of Mardi Gras. Some Krewes have their own workshops. They also design and make things for Disney, Las Vegas hotels, other things. A third generation family business, it's really something to see. There was a huge 20 foot tall Jester there, but his face is now in the dirt. Looks like everything in the warehouses was fine and very little damage to the buildings themselves is evident. As army tents went up and stacks of food were placed in what was the parking lot, there was a gigantic alligator in the middle of all this. Take a picture of a soldier, there are the tail ends of floats in warehouses behind him. Big blue tractors that were lugging pallets of diapers are usually used to pull the huge floats down the street during Mardi Gras. In the warehouse staging area is a dead on Alien (Giger would probably love it!) float from last year's Alla parade and in front were towers of cases of cookies. Look around and there's a Captain of the 82nd Airborne talking to Rev. Stan Cunningham in front of a one story fiberglass statue of Elvis, with Marilyn looking on. At one point the guys at Kern lit up the big boat and a couple of the other signature floats so the relief workers from out of state could see them. Blaine Kern says there WILL be Mardi Gras this year. It is, after all, the 150th. I don't doubt it. And his generosity has been so appreciated.

The food distribution issues are changing as more stores open but will remain up and running for few weeks as the stores in our immediate area still aren't in business. We have to go a few miles for things like milk and gas, both precious commodities but becoming a little easier to get. There are long lines at the local Winn Dixie, about 6 miles from here. In the coming week, on the other side of Blaine Kern, a giant tent city will be erected to house workers coming in to help rebuild. I think those workers are coming through Habitat for Humanity, but I'll have more info after my meeting with Lily tomorrow.

Yesterday I took dozens of Mardi Gras beads over to the distribution center. I started handing them out to the soldiers. They loved it. I put some around the Reverend's neck. He said he was pretty sure all the NOLA relief workers were going to be preaching soon and that he'd be drinking and smoking. This guy is amazing. Went home to Nashville today. I told him he had to preach his first sermon back home with the beads around his neck. He might just do it! Of course he will still have to deal with the media circus that will no doubt ensue when one of the guys over there goes to CNN with the band aid on his eye and claims that Stan hit him with a cross and that there's footage to prove it! Bless Stan's heart, he took all the ribbing from us degenerate unsaved New Orleanians with great humor and gave as good as he got. We'll miss him.

Still no mail service, still no social workers that I've seen. Still so much to be done. It remains a very fluid situation, absolutely no pun intended so we'll just have to see what jobs need to be done tomorrow and what kinds of supplies we need. When you all ask we're not dodging the question the answer just changes so fast.

Love and Light,
Bec and David
__________________
NOTE: There was indeed Mardi Gras this year, albeit a tad smaller as so many Krewes had lost membership. Blaine Kern got the floats he was contracted to do out on the street when they needed to be in spite of Katrina having damaged some.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Day 17 9.15.2005

2006-09-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

Subject: Day 17 Date: 9/15 10:30 AM

Hi all,
David and I really want to tell you how much your emails matter to us. You keep us going. Yesterday we got our tetanus shots courtesy of the 82nd Airborne, our arms hurt, we were tired, and we had a report of three relief workers in a car being shot at on the Westbank, where we are, by some idiots in a white van. Your emails got us out there again, although yesterday was a little different than the days before it. I'll get to that.

Years ago I worked for a while at the local public access station in San Francisco. Somehow, with absolutely zero knowledge of such things, I wound up in the booth, fussing with wires and cables and a board with holes in it from top to bottom. The puzzle was, which cable got plugged into which hole and in which order. There was a guy there named Julio, and this place was his little fiefdom. JulioVision we called it, and we were pretty sure that he purposely rewired the board prior to our arrival just to keep himself amused and us stressed out. How grateful I am for that experience now! David and I have come up with a little list of things we're going to be sure to have in an emergency situation. The first is a UHF antenna adapter. No kidding. We're all so cable or satellite dependent that unless we're really survivalists with the battery powered tv, we couldn't get any news. The information void was horrible. Since I've never seen a cable or cord that I didn't keep, I pulled out my magic box and voila! There it was. The glorious little brown square with two screws on it! Out comes the cable, in goes the adapter hooked up to some speaker wire, and an antenna liberated from an abandoned taxi cab. We were in BUSINESS!! I could have started a business doing that if only I'd had enough adapters! Oh yeah, and after we make sure we have water and adapters, a generator and a wireless laptop would be nice!

Resourcefulness is everything here. We've been writing you what we're seeing but there are so many others out there helping.

Here on Algiers Point are three guys who call themselves Fort Pelican, after the street they live on. Vinnie, Garrett and Greg have cleaned out fridges, shut down power for people out of town, checked on houses, held off looters with bravado and guns if necessary, kept people fed by emptying their own supplies. They stayed during the hurricane and an amazing woman in Houston had a blog. Her blog got hijacked into a sort of Algiers information site. She asked anyone who wasn't here to let her know privately if they had anything in their kitchens that Fort Pelican might be able to use. These guys were running all over, setting up generators, keeping tabs on people, staying up all night to keep the looters out. Their ingenious alarm system on the street was hundreds of empty aluminum cans strewn about the street. Anyone who walked there made noise and got a warning that they would be shot. There were a few actual Wild West shootouts here in our neighborhood. These guys were here through it all and still are. They're amazing. Vinnie had a van, which was helpful. The second or third night he got carjacked and beat up. He was okay, but his transportation was gone. Still he stayed. I saw him day before yesterday on a roof putting up "blue roof" for someone (blue roof is a huge tarp), and Garrett was helping and telling me that he had some insulin in his fridge should I need to get it to someone.

Over a couple blocks from them are the Irish Mafia. These are two crazy Irishmen, Paul and Irish, yeah that's what they call him, and about four families. They were using small generators, and a Blaine Kern tractor as a large generator, feeding and helping everyone on the block. They commandeered food and supplies and delivered ice all over the place. It's the local underground trading post. They were also here during the storm, carrying babies up to the Ferry Building to get them on evac buses. That bunch sat on overstuffed chairs out in the street with rifles and shotguns to keep looters away.

Betty and Ray live right on the point of land that gives us the name Point. Betty has been doing animal rescue, riding on her bike all over the place, finding rescue organizations to come in and get these animals out. So many were left behind and there were plenty of strays to begin with. We called her yesterday after our find.

We went to get our shots and a woman comes up and asks if we're able to bring her and her brother, who has health problems, some toilet paper and canned goods. We say yes, get her address and a list of what she needs. So we go to the distribution point and load up a box and some ice. There is a volunteer over there who knows us and says, "Hey you guys do animal rescue too dontcha?" Yes we say, but we're running out of dog food so we're praying it's not another dog. He says go to the corner of Slidell and Brooklyn St. He tells us there is a retriever there under debris behind a locked gate, needs food and water. So off we go and we do indeed find a very aged, red lab/golden retriever mix. This guy is a miracle of survival. There was debris he was crawling over and under and out of. The entire yard was three feet deep with siding and corrugated metal and worse, the power lines were falling right onto the iron gate. Luckily the power wasn't on yet, but this was an untenable situation for this dog. Unfortunately the gate was chained with heavy chain and a padlock and was too high and the dog too big for us to lift him over. So we drop him some food and water, then head for the Irish Mafia for some bolt cutters. They don't have them but the giant army truck full of guys does. One guy holds up the industrial size bolt cutters he has, another comes out with a chainsaw! Amazing. Their commanding officer lets us take the bolt cutter guy and two others, so we put them in the Voodoo mobile and go over. They get him out really fast and we put him in our car. (pictures of these saviors are attached!) We put him in our neighbors front yard because he can't get out, and a rescue group from Utah will be coming for the old boy today or tomorrow.

It's all resourcefulness, and the people I've told you about are just a few. I have lots of pictures but haven't had time to put them into any kind of reasonable format. Will try to get to that tonight.

Things are winding down in terms of food distribution. As the power comes on ice is no longer an issue. Stores are opening up, but farther down the Westbank from us so people with no cars will still be in need. What we're finding is that this storm not only took the roofs off houses (in fact a block from our virtually untouched house a house was removed from its foundation and dropped into the intersection. It is now kindling), but it has taken the roof off of some of the pre-Katrina problems that went unnoticed or purposely ignored. We're finding that some of the problems we're encountering are just pure poverty and these people will still be poor when this is done. That's bothering us a lot. The kind of community outreach that's been done during the aftermath of this storm, needs to continue for some of them who are ill, old, poor and without transportation. A store open 6 miles from here won't do them a damn bit of good if they can't get their food stamps, their money out of the bank if they have any, or transportation to get there. We keep hearing public service announcements, or pieces on the news, saying "Call your doctor and ask. . . . . ." WHAT DOCTOR? These people by and large don't have one, and many of the docs have moved to Texas where Tulane set up shop. I'm not mad at Tulane. They're doing what they have to, and god bless Charity Hospital which has opened their doors again albeit in a limited way. But the people on this side can't GET there. It's on the Eastbank. West Jefferson Medical Center has been wonderful, but again, no public transportation so how do they get there. Many of the people we're seeing were working in service industry jobs, mostly maids at the hotels, things like that, and getting some public assistance. We haven't seen social workers or anything like that running around here. That's what's needed. We need to be able to turn our list over to someone who will make sure these folks get their meds, have food, get the kids in schools in Jefferson parish, or whatever.

Generations have tried to fix this problem. The two of us won't be able to. We sure don't have the resources to do it all ourselves. We ARE hoping that maybe since some of this is coming to the surface in a huge way now, that someone who does know how to make inroads into the neglect we're seeing, will do so.

Thanks so much for your words of encouragement! I'll start uploading some pics tonight or tomorrow, but with our dialup through New Mexico finnagled connection it's tough! But we want you to see the generosity we've seen and the pictures will give you an idea of the outpouring of the rest of America.

Love and Light,
Bec and David
_____________________
NOTE 9.15.2006
Polimom's blog was instrumental in information dissemination when we were still in Alabama. Yesterday the Times-Picayune gave her her due in this article. Our gratitude to her remains undiminished by time.

The old red dog was returned to his equally elderly owners sometime in late October or early November 2005. We kept going back to the house to see if they'd returned and one day they answered the door. They were delighted, with tears in their eyes, when they heard the story. They put us in touch with their son so that he could facilitate the dog's return. When he got back they were surprised by how fat he was (although he was clearly on his way when we found him!) They told us that they had left him gallons and gallons of water and 100 lbs of dog food when they left. The food we'd left for him was just an appetizer or dessert, depending. We hadn't see the food as it was on the other side of the debris in the backyard. The looks on their faces when we told them the old dog's story was one of the highpoints of our "aftermath time."

The servicemen who helped us had given us their email addresses. Each of them emailed us to find out about the dog and ask for the photos.

The hospital, public transporation, poverty and inequity issues remain and will probably continue for some time. We still don't have the answers, and we're not seeing much coming from our leaders on these issues either.

NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

More Vignettes from Bec and Dave 9.14.2005

2006-09-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

Subject: More Vignettes from Bec and David Date: 9/14 11:07 AM

Hi all,
Wow! Amazing where the email is getting forwarded to. Some of the names on the return emails are so lovely to see and we just sit here grinning. We won't be able to respond to you all personally for a while. Please consider this our gigantic THANK YOU.

The medical issues were handled yesterday. We're just delighted. All those years in film work are really a help right now and the woman who's getting the trucks in with the food is a film producer and PR type herself. We understand each other. More on that later.

We talked to the wonderful Lt. Duane Stulz about the plight of our ten medical issue people. That was day before yesterday. It took a while, but I had shown him the list of medications, dosages and how many of each everyone had. He understood the problem. We went to load up the car and he came up to us and said, "Can you get them here by 10AM tomorrow?" Of course we can we figure. He said he'd have a van or something to get them to West Jefferson Medical Center. So we go off to deliver the supplies and on our little route (route is a much more disciplined sounding word than what we're actually doing, which is driving around in a grid) and on our way we stop at each of the ten "medical issue" people's houses and set it up to pick them up in the morning. We had them scheduled for pickup at 8:30, 9:00, and left time for anyone who couldn't manage it. Luckily we did.

David dropped me off at the distribution center while he went to get the folks. Lt. Stulz tells me he has somehow wrangled 4 ambulances to take them down there. They don't really NEED ambulances, but it was all he could get and we didn't care. It was a miracle. I go sit under a tree and wait to escort them as they are dropped off. Moses Page can barely walk, he only has half a foot due to diabetes and he's a large man, so I got to order a couple of cute Army guys around. "Young MEN! I need help getting this man to the medical tent." They came out of the tents lickity split and helped him across the couple acres. Once there the docs checked him and monitored him the entire time as it was hot and it was going to be a wait. Mr. Fink had brought a little overnight bag full of all his meds and his ID. One of the people up on Powder Street, (there were about 6 of them and most of them were on psychiatric drugs) wouldn't come out. This man is a Vietnam Vet with severe PTSD. He just plain wasn't coming out. He's like watching a mole exit a hole, breaks your heart. I tell Lt. Stulz the situation and he says that if we can get the pill bottles from him and his ID that it will be taken care of. So his wife gets to us before the ambulances leave and drops of two huge ziploc bags with his pill bottles and ID in it. It was indeed taken care of. All of these people were shuttled down to the Medical Center and then returned home. After my griping about FEMA, on this one I can't gripe. Apparently FEMA was paying for the medications, which had been a real issue for some of these people.

The little girl, who it turns out is nearly three, not nearly two, came with her grandmother and auntie. We had wrangled a doll for her as she had no toys, then she discovered my cell phone. As I sat under the tent with the patients waiting for the ambulances, she talked and talked and suddenly peals of laughter filled that tent. None of us had heard a child laugh in a long time and we all just sat there laughing with her as she threw her little pigtails back in a pretend conversation. Then I dialed my fabulous daughter, Meg, and Meg talked to her for a while so the little one could hear a voice on the other end. More peals of laughter amid the choppers flying overhead. It was also interesting to note that all the people we had there had gotten dressed up to go. Mr. Fink in what looked like a shirt that he'd ironed, 83 yr old June with full makeup and a black dress and flats. All of them sitting in an army tent in the heat having conversations and dressed up. Looked like a party that had flipped through some parallel universe. Shoulda been couches and cocktails, instead there were Army chairs and baggies full of pill bottles. A really weird image.

So HURRAY, one issue fixed.

Power is going on every day more and more. We actually had a trash pickup yesterday. We couldn't believe it. And we couldn't have been more grateful. The pervasive smell of old food cleaned out of fridges was made worse every day by the heat. Stores are starting to open. Walgreens down the Westbank Expressway is open. We walked in, bought milk! And the ATM cards were working. I told David we looked like okies who'd never seen a store before! We bought two dozen eggs and two gallons of milk. Really valuable commodities. Our neighbor, Mr. M was thrilled to take one of each. He had found an open Popeye's Chicken somewhere, we have no idea where and had brought us some chicken the night before. Best we ever had! We've been looking out for each other when it comes to supplies of any kind. Gas is not a non-issue, but way less of an issue. Stations were opening all up and down the Westbank Expressway. Home Depot is open, looks like Lowes will follow suit soon. We had the Jefferson Parish passes in our car but didn't need them. We don't know anyone who HAS needed them yet, but we keep them here just in case.

Cop from Raleigh, NC comes up to me and asks if we're working with animal rescue. I say yes there's a loose bunch plus the SPCA. He says there's a dog in a yard, a pit bull no one can get near but him. I give him a number and he gives me a hug.

Truckloads of MRE's. David is asked to please try to get them distributed. He and some Army guys are loading them by the case into people's pickup trucks. There are literally tons of them! David said one guy warned him off of the black bean burrito. I said that later to a group of Army guys and wound up with a hilarious version of "The Disaster Area Food Critic." They're all telling me which ones are good, which ones are bad, having arguments because the beef stew really isn't TOOOOOO bad if you put hot sauce on it and how the addition of hot sauce to the packets was the biggest boon to MRE eaters ever!

Stan Cunningham who has been heading up the actual nuts and bolts of distribution is an amazing guy. He'll be leaving on Friday. Lily, the woman who's been getting the trucks IN, wants David and I to take over Stan's job. We've told her that we will only if they can't get someone else. We're actually better field producers in this situation, we told her. She cracked up, agreed and said she wants to talk to us today about it. We will take the job, it's monumental, but we'll do it if she can't get anyone else. I told Stan I was going to wear a tshirt that says, "We're only PLAN B!" Church of Christ apparently wants one of their own to head it up and that's fine with us.

Found a house the other day with four kids in it. Ages 3, 11, 14 and their sister 18 is taking care of them. They said they had an auntie who was an adult, but we didn't see her there at all. Not a stick of furniture in the place, no food. We passed their address on to Stan, talked about the issue of social workers. There aren't any. The Army will be going over there to evacuate them probably. They need to be in school.

Schools here MIGHT open in January but no one knows. The Post Office MIGHT be up and running this week. No one actually knows. Welfare checks are lost, payroll checks can't get to the people via direct deposit because some of the banks still aren't quite up to par. The situation is so fluid that from one day to the next, hell, from morning to afternoon, things change radically. The speed with which some things are being done is incredible, then there are other things that just are not being done at all.

The local Firehouse has boxes of MRE's and water. They complain of being bored. We went over there to get information. They had none. We asked them to please check on Bernice around the corner, old and alone, they responded with, "Ask the National Guard." Useless. They're BORED?? There's so much to do here. What is really needed is a central information point. Some place, like a fire house, where there would be FEMA packets for filing for relief, Red Cross packets, info on schools and options for parents with kids, food stamp workers (the nearest place to apply for food stamps is Boutte which is a LONG LONG way if you don't have a car!), social workers, just a general information center. We don't know how to get that done. Everything is separate.

Some of you have asked how to get stuff to the distribution center here. We'll be talking to Lily about that today. We told her how many of you had offered help and wanted it to come directly here to the center. She said she can find a way. It will probably be through the Church of Christ. We'll let you know what we hear.

One liners:
Sign on a local church says on their pre-Katrina marquee "Live in the overflow!"

Sign in the street on a board taken down from a house: Looters will be severely reprimanded, then shot.

Sign painted in huge white letters to be seen from a chopper: Got milk? Need GAS!

We found a liquor store open yesterday way down the Westbank. Got some rum. A happy day. Had been asked by someone to let them know if we found vodka. We got vodka and traded it for mayonaisse that wasn't out of date and had been refrigerated so we could make tuna salad!

Mayor Nagin says, "Property values in Algiers will skyrocket, so if you have a few pennies you might want to invest there!" (Good job, Z and M!)

Guy who lives on our block looks around and says, "There's no reason to stay here." Um, how about picking up a tree branch or six?

We keep wondering whose landfill is gonna wind up with the hundreds of duct taped fridges on every street. These are the fridges that no one cleaned, they just duct taped them and got them out. Meanwhile on a block over from us was a guy who had actually cleaned up 9 fridges on his block. Man deserves a medal.

Last quickie: Moses Page got his insulin. Oh yeah, and Mr. Fink got "the shot, the shot." Moses leaves his keys at the medical center. Lt. Stulz tells David and I and flashes his big blue eyes at us til we are convinced to go down and get the keys. David and I go over to Moses' house and David gets out to tell him that we're going to get his keys. He says, "How did you KNOW?" David just laughed and said, "We know EVERYTHING!" We went to get the keys and came back, Moses was still on his porch asking "How did you know."

Love and Light to you all!
Bec and David

ML, I'll answer your mail asap. We gotta get out of here right now and get moving. Many thanks!
___________________
NOTE 9.14.2006

There is still not enough public transporation for people like the ones we met last year to get to medical care easily. The medical care situation here in New Orleans is still abysmal, and not getting much better. If you have a psychiatric patient in your house, you're really in trouble as there simply aren't enough beds in the area for them.

The people on Powder Street, which we called "The Powder Keg" because of the preponderence of psychiatric patients, all family, that lived there, suffered a loss. June, the lady in the black dress under the tent, died of a heart attack earlier this year from stress we were told.

Although we were and remain unattached to any religious group, we truly were impressed by what Church of Christ did. They were here working their butts off trying to help, not trying to convert, and for that they will always hold a special place in our hearts.

As for the landfill, well. . . . . .One was opened in the New Orleans East area and is still a subject of great disagreement and debate. As we drove around we kept wondering why they didn't use the fridges and other debris as some kind of base to stabilize the ground they were going to build levees on. Not being engineers we didn't know then, and don't know now, if that was a feasible idea or not, but it seemed to us that someone should have been looking at an environmentally friendly way to USE the debris rather than just create another landfill. We still wonder about that.

Social services are still an issue. The house that we found the kids in was something that has stuck in our minds since then. We knocked and knocked on that door. Finally, the older boy opened it a few inches and looked out at us, that's when we noticed that there was no furniture in it. The boy was the oldest at 14, and he was hiking his pants up as his 11 year old sister quickly put hers back on. The three year old little boy was just walking around dazed and dirty and probably hungry. Our stomachs were sick as we realized what was happening in that house, and we had no authority to do anything at all about it. After we told Stan what we'd seen, he sent the Army over there, but we were told that if the 18 yr old "auntie/sister"----we were never clear on who she was from the kids-------really existed, that they had no legal way to force those kids out of there as she would be considered an adult. We went back to the house that afternoon and a couple days later and no one answered. We never knew whether they had been evacuated or whether they just stopped opening the door. It haunts us.

Last time I was on Algiers Point, the "Got Milk? Need GAS!" sign painted on the street pavement was still visible.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Vignettes from Bec and David

2006-09-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

Subject: Vignettes from Bec and David Date: 9/12 8:56 AM

Hi all,
First of all, once again, our gratitude can never be expressed for all the words of support, the prayers, the offers of help and the help already given to us. It is greatly appreciated and we wish that words could do more than just say THANK YOU.

We are back in New Orleans as you know, and doing whatever needs doing. Baton Rouge Church of Christ has managed to get trucks in here with food, water and ice, and we've been distributing them all day for days, finding people that apparently no one knows are here. Many of them extremely elderly and extremely poor. We load up the Voodoo Mobile and drive a grid looking for people, some of whom haven't had much food in two weeks. With no power in most places still, there is an information void, so while there are truckloads of food 8 blocks from them, they don't know it. And some are too frail to get there anyway. The gas situation is a mess. You try to buy a couple gallons here a couple there, but it's all black market. I'm ready to write on the car, "Hey mister, you got power back on YOUR street, how about selling me the gas you still have in your generator!"

The Army and National Guard are setting up areas and we see squads of them walking the streets every day, and choppers flying overhead all day and all night. There is now an underground economy here on Algiers Point with many of us trading this for that and passing on information. Of course we have to do all this before the 6PM curfew. Below are some vignettes of what we've seen.

Woman in her late sixties, pushing a shopping cart in the 94 degree heat with a nearly two year old girl in it. She was trying to get to Blaine Kern's food area, but it was a long way away. We found her, loaded up her cart, and the tiny one, oblivious to the plight of her grandmother, jabs a box of apple juice I'd given her back at me to open it.

Ancient man named Moses Page, sweeping his living room. Out of insulin and food. Sees us coming and says Thank you Jesus. Keeps calling me Ma'am. I finally told him I'm not Ma'am, I'm just Rebecca and he laughed. We need to find him some insulin today.

Pages of a notebook, with notes Dave or I have taken. Notes include addresses sent by email, "Can you check on my house?" We're taking pictures but are hooked up to the internet via dialup through New Mexico so it's a long process. Also in the notes are names and addresses of people whose medications are running out and a plan is still not cemented to get them to medical help to refill those prescriptions. No gas to get them there but we're working on it along with the Church of Christ people.

Little clinic set up in a Black Muslim Mosque. Two EMT's with pierced ears and tattoos running all over to addresses on bicycles with stethoscopes around their necks. One woman locally is 102, we've personally found several in their 80's. Bernice around the corner was born a block from where I live, has lived here all her life, she's 85. Had been in an assisted living home but was told if she had a place to go she should go there, so she went home and weathered Katrina by herself in her home. Still sits on the porch every day feeding the pigeons. Not senile at all, just old an alone. Not the only one like that we've found.

Got an SOS that there was an OLD man down off the point who was out of everything. We get to the house and I go to the door. I bang and bang. I can see his feet on the bed. He's NOT moving. After five minutes of this, my stomach is in my mouth and I call David. We're pretty sure that we are too late getting to him. Suddenly his feet stir and he opens the door for us. Do you have food Mr. Fink? Yup. We start looking through his cabinets. He has a can of soup and a box of hot chocolate mix and a few other paltry things. He won't eat veggies or fruit, and the MRE's are too hard both to navigate and to digest for most of the elderly. His meds are almost gone, and he's very worried about the "shot." What shot, we ask. That shot, that shot. Turns out he doesn't have much food but wants a tetanus shot. We loaded up the car and took food over to him along with some cops to see if they could take him to get his meds refilled as we'd heard there was a doctor at Dist 4 station. They tried to convince him to evacuate instead. It's not gonna happen. He's now on our list to keep track of.

Old woman and her son, Miss Sarah, live in a rundown area. We're directed there by someone who knew they were there. We hand her a bottle of juice and she looks at us like we'd just handed her the winning lottery ticket.

We're handed a note: Family of 6-7, need everything. 320 Alix St. The Church of Christ people put together a box, we don't know the ages of anyone there so it includes everything from baby food to soap and toothpaste. We find the house. The house next to it is a pancake that has fallen over onto the house they were living in. We got there 1/2 an hour after someone had evacuated them. So we ran our grid again and gave out what we had. It was all gone when we got home, except the baby food. (I took a picture of this home and the pancake next to it so I'll never forget how lucky I am.)

Yesterday we're directed to a home which had more people in it than that and this home will most assuredly be bulldozed when this is over. It has a serious lean to it. We arrive at the same time as a Red Cross truck. We find that there are two families in there. Their grandmother had passed away the week before Katrina, then the second family's house burned down, so now they were all together in this little house. David was throwing things in boxes, into Red Cross people's hands, dragging it up there himself, anything we had that we thought they could use. I asked the Red Cross woman if there were any young women in there, yes was the answer, so we included tampons, which are at a premium.

Toilet paper, tampons, these things are going fast if we have them in our car. Trucks roll in with stuff, random stuff, and we just load up whatever comes in so some days we're handing out cans of chicken, two cans of green beans, nutrigrain muffin bars and grapefruit juice. Other days we have nothing but green beans, corn, peas and cases and cases of canned pears. It's all appreciated. A case of toilet paper was gone from our car in less than an hour as we gave it out.

Not much protein around, that's starting to worry us as there are so many diabetics and people with high blood pressure.

No mail service here yet. We have power, but most don't, so ice is still important and it comes in by the truckload. The generosity of people has been amazing. FEMA has not been any help, in fact probably a hindrance in some cases, like cutting the lines to the Jefferson Parish sheriff's department, turning away three truckloads of water that WalMart sent and telling the Coast Guard they couldn't deliver the 1000 gallons of diesel they were bringing in. While they're all figuring out jurisdiction and measuring the male parts of their anatomy, people are suffering. And don't get me started on the paperwork issues.

We've been working with the animal rescue folks too. Many have been rescued, more need to be. We don't know where they're taking them, but we keep scrounging up dog and cat food wherever we can and giving it to people who are 'babysitting" a stray cat who lives in the neighbor's house but got left behind. The feral chickens on the Point are being fed by us, yes there really are feral chickens, and the stray cats wait for them to eat then go to the cat food bowl!

Today we'll head for the food distribution area, get some ice and take them the list of people who need to get to West Jefferson Medical Center. From there we'll see. We need a day to figure out our own situation in terms of bills. And then we'll go back out tomorrow. Call a few of the old ones today and see what they need, take it to them if necessary but our gas situation is now a a point where we have to watch every drop we use. We'll probably scavenge some somewhere. If one had pride when they got here, they learn to ask for help really quickly once they're running around here. Funny thing is that the Army, cops and National Guard all know our car and leave us alone as we run around.

Have been taking some pictures, not many, been too busy really but will try to get more of them and send some to you.

I know this is disjointed, but thought you should know we're just fine. The critters are delighted to be home and hey, someone brought us cigarettes last night. (All you ex or anti-smoking folks can just close your eyes and get over it!) They also might be useful in our little underground economy.

You've all asked what you can do. Right now not much but keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We will absolutely ask if we need something. We've learned that lesson well here.

Love and Light to you all,
Bec and David

PS S can you print this out for C please? Thanks!

Vignettes from Bec and David 9.12.2005

2006-09-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

The Army and National Guard are setting up areas and we see squads of them walking the streets every day, and choppers flying overhead all day and all night. There is now an underground economy here on Algiers Point with many of us trading this for that and passing on information. Of course we have to do all this before the 6PM curfew. Below are some vignettes of what we've seen.

Woman in her late sixties, pushing a shopping cart in the 94 degree heat with a nearly two year old girl in it. She was trying to get to Blaine Kern's food area, but it was a long way away. We found her, loaded up her cart, and the tiny one, oblivious to the plight of her grandmother, jabs a box of apple juice I'd given her back at me to open it.

Ancient man named Moses Page, sweeping his living room. Out of insulin and food. Sees us coming and says Thank you Jesus. Keeps calling me Ma'am. I finally told him I'm not Ma'am, I'm just Rebecca and he laughed. We need to find him some insulin today.

Pages of a notebook, with notes Dave or I have taken. Notes include addresses sent by email, "Can you check on my house?" We're taking pictures but are hooked up to the internet via dialup through New Mexico so it's a long process. Also in the notes are names and addresses of people whose medications are running out and a plan is still not cemented to get them to medical help to refill those prescriptions. No gas to get them there but we're working on it along with the Church of Christ people.

Little clinic set up in a Black Muslim Mosque. Two EMT's with pierced ears and tattoos running all over to addresses on bicycles with stethoscopes around their necks. One woman locally is 102, we've personally found several in their 80's. Bernice around the corner was born a block from where I live, has lived here all her life, she's 85. Had been in an assisted living home but was told if she had a place to go she should go there, so she went home and weathered Katrina by herself in her home. Still sits on the porch every day feeding the pigeons. Not senile at all, just old and alone. Not the only one like that we've found.

Got an SOS that there was an OLD man down off the point who was out of everything. We get to the house and I go to the door. I bang and bang. I can see his feet on the bed. He's NOT moving. After five minutes of this, my stomach is in my mouth and I call David. We're pretty sure that we are too late getting to him. Suddenly his feet stir and he opens the door for us. Do you have food Mr. Fink? Yup. We start looking through his cabinets. He has a can of soup and a box of hot chocolate mix and a few other paltry things. He won't eat veggies or fruit, and the MRE's are too hard both to navigate and to digest for most of the elderly. His meds are almost gone, and he's very worried about the "shot." What shot, we ask. That shot, that shot. Turns out he doesn't have much food but wants a tetanus shot. We loaded up the car and took food over to him along with some cops to see if they could take him to get his meds refilled as we'd heard there was a doctor at Dist 4 station. They tried to convince him to evacuate instead. It's not gonna happen. He's now on our list to keep track of.

Old woman and her son, Miss Sarah, live in a rundown area. We're directed there by someone who knew they were there. We hand her a bottle of juice and she looks at us like we'd just handed her the winning lottery ticket.

We're handed a note: Family of 6-7, need everything. 320 Alix St. The Church of Christ people put together a box, we don't know the ages of anyone there so it includes everything from baby food to soap and toothpaste. We find the house. The house next to it is a pancake that has fallen over onto the house they were living in. We got there 1/2 an hour after someone had evacuated them. So we ran our grid again and gave out what we had. It was all gone when we got home, except the baby food. (I took a picture of this home and the pancake next to it so I'll never forget how lucky I am.)

Yesterday we're directed to a home which had more people in it than that and this home will most assuredly be bulldozed when this is over. It has a serious lean to it. We arrive at the same time as a Red Cross truck. We find that there are two families in there. Their grandmother had passed away the week before Katrina, then the second family's house burned down, so now they were all together in this little house. David was throwing things in boxes, into Red Cross people's hands, dragging it up there himself, anything we had that we thought they could use. I asked the Red Cross woman if there were any young women in there, yes was the answer, so we included tampons, which are at a premium.

Toilet paper, tampons, these things are going fast if we have them in our car. Trucks roll in with stuff, random stuff, and we just load up whatever comes in so some days we're handing out cans of chicken, two cans of green beans, nutrigrain muffin bars and grapefruit juice. Other days we have nothing but green beans, corn, peas and cases and cases of canned pears. It's all appreciated. A case of toilet paper was gone from our car in less than an hour as we gave it out.

Not much protein around, that's starting to worry us as there are so many diabetics and people with high blood pressure.

No mail service here yet. We have power, but most don't, so ice is still important and it comes in by the truckload. The generosity of people has been amazing. FEMA has not been any help, in fact probably a hindrance in some cases, like cutting the lines to the Jefferson Parish sheriff's department, turning away three truckloads of water that WalMart sent and telling the Coast Guard they couldn't deliver the 1000 gallons of diesel they were bringing in. While they're all figuring out jurisdiction and measuring the male parts of their anatomy, people are suffering. And don't get me started on the paperwork issues.

We've been working with the animal rescue folks too. Many have been rescued, more need to be. We don't know where they're taking them, but we keep scrounging up dog and cat food wherever we can and giving it to people who are 'babysitting" a stray cat who lives in the neighbor's house but got left behind. The feral chickens on the Point are being fed by us, yes there really are feral chickens, and the stray cats wait for them to eat then go to the cat food bowl!

Today we'll head for the food distribution area, get some ice and take them the list of people who need to get to West Jefferson Medical Center. From there we'll see. We need a day to figure out our own situation in terms of bills. And then we'll go back out tomorrow. Call a few of the old ones today and see what they need, take it to them if necessary but our gas situation is now at a point where we have to watch every drop we use. We'll probably scavenge some somewhere. If one had pride when they got here, they learn to ask for help really quickly once they're running around here. Funny thing is that the Army, cops and National Guard all know our car and leave us alone as we run around.

Have been taking some pictures, not many, been too busy really but will try to get more of them and send some to you.

I know this is disjointed, but thought you should know we're just fine. The critters are delighted to be home and hey, someone brought us cigarettes last night. (All you ex or anti-smoking folks can just close your eyes and get over it!) They also might be useful in our little underground economy.

You've all asked what you can do. Right now not much but keep us in your thoughts and prayers. We will absolutely ask if we need something. We've learned that lesson well here.

Love and Light to you all,
Bec and David

PS S can you print this out for C please? Thanks!

__________

NOTES 9.12.2006

Interesting that as this was written, some things were left out because we weren't sure how long the phone line would hold out and our power was a generator.

The little girl was in her grandmother's care, and her great Auntie's as well, because her mother was incarcerated at the time. The ladies hinted at a drug problem with the little girl's mother. But at that time they had no idea where her mother had been moved to, and they were worried. They also had no cash, no food stamps and the mail wasn't getting through. They, along with Moses, lived on a forgotten part of Ptolemy Street in Algiers, near the cemeteries. They and Moses were the only people on that street at that point.

The cops who went with us to Mr. Fink's house were less than useless and wholly disinterested. We had gone to Dist 4 station to see if we could find the doctor that we'd heard was there. There were huge barbecues set up and very tired, haggard cops. One very cranky dispatcher was manning a battery powered communication system and the phones still weren't working properly at the station. The cops, two local and one from ICE, accompanied us to Mr. Fink's house when we told them that he'd run out of his meds and we needed to get him to a doctor. They walked in, treated him like he was a problematic child, and harangued him about evacuating. It was eminently clear by Mr. Fink's reaction, first laughingly saying his house was all he had, then finally defensively putting his foot down, that he was not going to be moved out of that house. Once that was decided by him, the police told him he was our problem.

We eventually went back to the station, a couple days later asking if there was any gasoline around. A guy, not a cop but working with the cops, said he had some but that he wasn't allowed to sell it, but would indeed sell us some for $5 a gallon. We paid him for a five gallon can of blackmarket gasoline, but it allowed us to get around for a little bit longer until we could find more.

The clinic on Teche is still there. It was being run and is still being run by Common Ground. They were the first medical care on the scene there, and they determined to make it a permanent fixture in the neighborhood. We've heard they're still there and doing remarkable things in the community. At the time that this was written, they had little more than some band aids and aspirin, but knowing they were there made a huge difference to the neighborhood. They later set up a tent city on Claiborne and were sending their people into the Ninth Ward to gut houses.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Why Katrina Refrigerator?

2006-09-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

I was asked this weekend, "Hasn't the whole refrigerator thing been done to death?" Yup. We now have Katrina Fridge magnets for our post-K refrigerators being sold at gift shops. Interestingly, it's mostly locals buying them. Someone not from here wouldn't really understand their significance.

Some local bloggers had decided to re-post their posts from last year at this time. A brilliant idea. It seemed to me that the best receptacle for some of what we wrote was indeed the refrigerator. Keep the reality fresh, now that we've bleached the things to death.

Starting tomorrow I will be posting the emails that were written out of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. A little background seems appropriate.

My husband and I evacuated on Sunday, August 28th at about noon. A little late in the game. We had already determined not to leave, (which in hindsight probably was the choice we should have made.) The Saturday before, we were both at work in the Quarter, I was listening to press conferences with the Mayor, everyone was trying to figure out what to do, and David was told he could go back to the stables early if he wanted to. He said no. In fact, when I called him, he acted like everyone was overeacting, but he wasn't hearing the radio and feeling the tangible tension of customers in the store, who were quickly buying things while talking on their cell phones trying to make changes to their flights.

I left work, filled up the gas tank on Rampart, as there were reports of stations running out of gas. I figured it was a good idea. Then I went back to work. My big fear from hearing the radio was that they were going to start contra-flow any minute and since we lived on the Westbank, I wasn't sure we'd be able to get from the East bank to the Westbank if we waited. We did go home a little early that evening. We had invitations to weather the storm on Bourbon Street at the shop, where several others were going to stick it out.

We knew our house was a pretty safe place to be, including an interior bathroom with no windows that could be blown out. Sunday morning came and we were okay with our decision to stay. Family and friends were calling, and emailing, urging us to leave. Then Mayor Nagin got on television and ended his statement with something along the lines of "God help us all." (Might have been something a little different, I haven't looked it up, but definitely something like that.) That seemed to flip a switch in my husband. He now thought perhaps we should evacuate. We sat at our kitchen table, ambivalent about the possibility, then decided to flip a coin. Heads we stay, tails we leave. (I had been sworn to secrecy about our decision making method, but figure at this point, our total reliance on serendipity seems less bizarre than the Corps of Engineers seeming reliance on the same thing with our levee system.)

We quickly packed a couple of bags, put the cats in carriers, the dog in the back of the car, tossed pet food in the back and pbj makings and water bottles in the front. We grabbed all the cash we had in the house and headed out. It took us five hours to get to the Twin Spans. Twice my husband decided we were turning back. Twice I said, "We're already on the road, let's just keep going." We have since decided that in the spirit of equal blame for a joint decision, that my mistake was saying in the kitchen that day, "Okay, let's go" and his was not ignoring me when he wanted to turn back.

We were heading toward Mobile, to my mother's, which in hindsight was also a stupid decision. While it was a generous offer and we are grateful, we should have headed in the other direction. We got contra-flowed onto 59 going North to Hattiesburg, and only made it into Silverhill 13 hours later thanks to my daughter staying on the cellphone and her husband navigating with a great mapping program he has. They got us onto side roads and we made it into Mobile just as the outer bands were starting to send sheet rain across the streets there, and the Bay Way was minutes from being closed.

What we saw on the road that day will stay with us forever. I haven't started writing about the evacuation yet because some of the faces still haunt me at night.

The next morning we watched, along with the rest of the nation, as the levees broke. The anger and hopelessness and helplessness we felt was extreme. We felt that we'd abandoned the city we love, and that while we were grateful for our extreme comfort, we should have been in New Orleans. We should have been helping. We determined to leave as soon as possible.

We started checking the nola.com forums. There was information there, and I was directed by a post on one forum to Polimom's blog. She seemed to have a direct line to what was happening in Algiers, and Algiers Point in particular. We checked satellite photos (our house looked fine) and rabidly read her blog and any on-the-ground dispatches we could find. We decided to head back home on Labor Day, but realized we had to wait for the banks to open. We had no idea when or if we'd get access to cash once in New Orleans, and we knew that the power was out.

We busied ourselves refilling prescriptions, looking for gasoline, buying batteries and anything else we thought we might need. We looked at maps and tried to figure a way back home. We decided that the best way was to go 150 miles out of our way in order to cross the Mississippi at the Sunshine Bridge in plantation country. We would bisect Mississippi on a road between Hattiesburg and the Gulf, a plan, as it turns out, that was probably one of the only ways in. We knew the Gulf cities were flattened, but we were still astonished and sobbing as we saw the miles of downed power lines and trees broken in half like matchsticks. Bogalusa looked like a bomb hit it. My husband drove with me looking up watching as the heavily leaning trees loomed over our car. They looked as though they could come down on our heads at any moment.

Finding gas was a challenge. If the station was open, there was a line for blocks and most had a maximum purchase limit, so we'd buy the maximum at every open station we saw. Everywhere were people with dazed looks on their faces, and ours probably looked the same to them. We had no idea whether our route was going to work or not. Were the roads we wanted to take even open? Were they even there? We figured we'd just keep going.

When we got close to the Sunshine Bridge, we met up with another couple who was also trying to get home. They knew the way to I-90 so we followed them. All the way in, we saw convoys of National Guard and regular Army troops coming into the city. I'd open my window and holler thank you to them. They'd wave. None of us knew what we were going to find in New Orleans. There were miles long traffic jams going out of New Orleans. Trucks with mattresses and chairs tied on to them, people hauling everything they owned, creeping along at 1 mph heading OUT, OUT, OUT.

We finally got to 90 and prayed that the last exit before the Crescent City Connection would be open. As we saw the sign saying it was a mile away, we held our breath. We weren't sure if we'd come all this way just to be turned back or not. We looked at each other in amazement that there was no roadblock (we'd seen some on the way in) and my husband turned into Steve McQueen. He floored it down that exit, with both of us secretly wondering if there was going to be a force field to knock us back when we got to the bottom. And there we were. Mere blocks from home.

While Algiers didn't flood, the devastation was unbelievable, trees laying across roads, houses and signs twisted and broken, and my husband kept driving trying to avoid the tire popping minefields of debris strewn everywhere. We saw no one. Not a person walking, not a car moving all the way from the Bridge to our house. It was eerie.

When we got to our house, our neighbor who had stayed through the storm came out to greet us. Tears all around as we hugged in meeting, and we were the only four people on that block that day. We got all the information we could get, and set about checking out the house. Seemed okay. By New Orleans Katrina standards, there was minimal damage. No power, but the phone lines worked intermittently. We took stock and did the obligatory gag-a-thon refrigerator clean out, but we were lucky. Our fridge had only been there for a few days, so we didn't encounter the horrid messes that others did weeks later. Once that was done, we did a little re-con to see what was going on nearby.

We heard that the Church of Christ out of Baton Rouge was setting up a food and supply depot at Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World. The next day we went over to see what we could do. Our neighbor set up a generator in our backyard (we were grateful for the ten gallons of gas we'd brought in with us), and we ran both households off that generator for a couple of hours a day. I rigged up an internet connection via a dialup to an AOL access number in New Mexico and started sending out emails to friends and family letting them know we were okay and what was happening.

Those emails morphed into the New Orleans Slate blog. This blog will re-publish those emails in real time (some with photos that I'm finally dealing with that were taken at the time.) Curiously, I hadn't read those emails since they were written so hastily last September. Reading them and seeing the faces of those who helped has really been hard in some cases. The anger came flooding back, no pun intended, and the gratitude to all of those who helped was overwhelming. There were so many regular people who set about doing what they could, and in that moment they became heroes. My husband and I are both so humbled by the help that strangers gave our city and ourselves when we needed it.

We hope in reading these emails as written, with minimal editing--only typos fixed and names changed to initials for privacy--we will give you a view of life here immediately following Katrina. I will be adding notes here and there as updates on what the issues were then and what is still an issue today.

The links haven't been done yet. I'll do them this week. This post will be crossposted on New Orleans Slate today, and the links there will eventually point here. The first email will be published tomorrow, exactly one year from when it was written.

Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Remember

2006-09-07T19:57:00.000-07:00