Day 33 PM: Pictures Up; Growing Up After Katrina; Machelle

Pictures Up: Photographic evidence from my first return trip to New Orleans are now available for viewing. Yesterday’s post has been embellished with some of these images. As a favor, please distribute these images far and wide; let the world know what CNN’s “contaminated and dangerous city” really looks like. Offensive major-network reporters have just encroached on my last nerve reserved for The Modern Press: Americans can cope with good news and the resilience of the human spirit. There is a lot of character to be had in not feeling sorry for oneself all of the time, and vicariously at that. Grow up, people! Speaking of which …

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Adulthood In The Aftermath Of Katrina: This past month has been one long and hard experience away from all that I know as normal. (Says she who doesn’t even consider herself normal!) While this time has brought me closer to my friends, especially txyankee, each day is bewildering in its weight and simultaneous lightness. Someone once referred to life as a bittersweet symphony, but at this moment, mine is performed in only two keys: happy C Major and doleful B-Flat Minor. Especially now that I just saw and left my home in a hurry again, the pitch is heightened. So much joy on having seen my home and a few of my friends, and indescribable sorrow on leaving behind that which is rightfully mine.

Driving into New Orleans was heartbreaking. As we came up on downtown, my feelings sank and swelled with each successive view of what the hurricane had done to my city. One month has taken off so much of the city’s former sheen and brought back a wonderful surge of restoration. Every block on the highway between St. Charles Parish and the Mississippi River has some sort of rebuilding work in progress – a testament to the intensity of the destruction and the cleanup.

I have never been prouder of a city. The hot tears that surged forth were equal parts hurt and admiration. This only redoubles my desire to return to New Orleans as soon as possible. She needs some valuable time to clean up nice, however, so PLEASE give it to her.

Patience is the operative term, is it? Those who know me well understand that I consider patience a waste of time; they may be surprised to know that I am starting to consider it not necessarily as a virtue, but as a necessity for sanity. The following is what I realized and meditated on during the car ride back to Texas from New Orleans two nights ago:

“Here in the car, outside Maringouin, Louisiana, by the light of my clip-on flashlight, I smile at the darkening bayou with the knowledge, not just a guess, that everything is going to be alright. Yet, a fear of what the next three months will bring. Three more months, at least, of being away from home. Being a scientist, an assiduous Indian woman and mildly obsessive-compulsive is a dangerous triumvirate. Plans are constantly concocted with a particular end in mind, without allowing for the intrusion of outside factors beyond human control. This situation is very useful in that it has two lessons, one learned and one remembered –

“1) We do not live in vacuums. As motivated, assertive and independent as we are, we exist as a part of a system that exceeds us in the realm of invincibility. I am to learn to make a plan and allow for parts of it, but not all of it, to fail or take alternate routes. Even now, none of my plans have failed, they’re just taking detours. This feeds nicely into the next point.

“2) It has recently come to my recollection that a lot of things I want do end up happening, but not the way I wanted for them to happen. Everything has been a hard-fought struggle all the way from earning the right to be who I am to getting my geology education, and from maintaining good health to what I’ve faced in Kuwait and my current interaction with New Orleans. Yet, through it all, life has been good to me – what irreplaceable friends, experiences and accomplishments!

“Patience is a fine advantage, but only appreciated when the vagaries of the world, i.e. those outside factors beyond our control, are given their due. It will not come overnight, but it comes.”

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A Short Visit With Machelle: At long last, I jumped out of the car, grabbed my bag of goodies and dove into the open arms of Machelle. As I commanded myself not to cry, those tear ducts burst open, but soon shut when we began to laugh. La Bella Rella looks great for having spent most of a month in New Orleans; mentally and emotionally, however, I can most definitely see the soreness, despite my girl’s tough-as-nails exterior. Having left Houston in a hurry that morning, I forgot to take along the bottles of fermented grape juice, which I had promised her, but she liked her new t-shirt, earrings and other assorted goodies. (It is in the joint Machelle-Maitri nature to buy each other goofy and glittery treats for any and all occasions. You fell down and hurt yourself? Here’s a band-aid with pirates all over it!)

Maitri & Machelle
No, no, John Rogers, this was so Bands Reunited!

Machelle’s apartment building seems to be the local HQ for some members of the 6th District Police. One of them, Dave, is nice (a “plucky chap,” as the Brit Dr. C would say) and has taken quite the shine to our friend. *wink*

For almost an hour, I was in the right place at the right time. Hurricane or not, twelve hours spent in a car or not, it was worth it.

September 30, 2005 | hurricane katrina, new orleans, photographs | 2 Comments »

Day 32: Back From New Orleans And She Is Fine!; Reality & Reporting; Nagin’s New Re-Entry Schedule

New Orleans Is Coming Back And She’s Looking Good! The last two days have me nothing short of physically exhausted and emotionally asunder. Going back to New Orleans yesterday was one of the greatest endeavours I have undertaken yet. Even my camera is out of sorts and needs a full recharge. Before launching into anything else, let me tell you this: One month after the storm, the city of New Orleans is on its way back with a vengeance. The scale of the devastation and quick recovery is evident in the huge piles of debris neatly piled up on every block of the city. Additionally, D left for Wisconsin this evening to return to a job at DoIT, and much of today was spent packing and seeing him off. Tomorrow, I will collect all of my thoughts, along with some jotted down on paper on the ride back to Texas, and write about an experience that has changed my life forever. Until then, here are a few useful highlights of the trip:

D and I drove back into NOLA yesterday from Houston – we left at 7:30 AM and got back at midnight. I-10 is open all the way through to the Westbank between the hours of 8AM and 6PM. Quite a few of my neighbors in the Garden District have already moved back into their homes and were seen outside cleaning up. Remarkably, our house got power exactly 4 hours and 20 minutes before we walked in. Apparently, our refrigerator is the source of the Toxic Gumbo in New Orleans. Seriously, D had a vat of shrimp, chicken and sausage gumbo in the freezer before we left which we believe is responsible for the current smell of death emanating from the kitchen. Damage to the house includes decay, smell and bugs related to the refrigerator, roof leak in master closet, water stains on master bath curtains, sappy tree that fell over and took out the wall separating our property from the B&B behind the house, grill and all back deck material knocked over and the trellis surrounding our deck down. Other than that, the whole house is fine! One end of the house smells like a carcass warmed over, noxious fumes and all, while the other smells just like home.

Stinky Refrigerator
One bowl of Toxic Gumbo coming right up!

Power trucks and cleanup crews are everywhere between the French Quarter and our neighborhood . I talked to a couple of 6th District cops at Machelle’s place and they say the city is returning to normal. Machelle is doing great! More about her in the next post as well. A lot of my Gentilly and Metairie friends have returned to clean up and start rebuilding – everyone estimates to have their place finished by the end of the year. Not that I saw it, but I know from friends that the Ninth Ward, of course, is a different story – looks like a full loss for most of it.

What I did see (and promise to flesh all of this out late tonight or tomorrow): The CBD is so clean, you won’t believe it, as are the Warehouse District and the Lower Garden. Machelle is working at one of the reopened bars on Bourbon – in fact, the FQ is really coming back to life with music venues reopening and business owners back in there with a vengeance! With tears in my eyes and a smile in my heart , I want you to know that pride and joy are what I feel for this city and how it has bounced back in such short time!

While I expected Special Operations Combat Navy Seals to rappel down from our roof once we got to the house, not a one stopped us or visited to check our credentials. Cops are everywhere, though, driving past, waving and moving on. Even I felt safe driving around by myself in the Lower Garden District. New Orleans has a small, quarter-year journey to recovery and, at the rate it’s going now, this is a wholly achievable goal.

The emotions soared and plummeted, especially on seeing the inside of my home and Machelle again, but those are words for a post when I have a chance to sit down and write without laughing and crying at once. Along with pictures, it should make for a story I will tell my grandchildren.

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Be Positive And Report Positive! CNN and the major networks won’t publicize this now (the let’s-prey-on-disaster-alone shysters), but the floodwater is almost gone, except for really bad areas like St. Bernard Parish and small portions of New Orleans East. All naysayers and people who want to abandon New Orleans as a lost cause, when this city needs loving residents the most, are so wrong. If you don’t want to go back, you don’t deserve New Orleans. If you return a year from now, when the city is a shiny new morsel waiting to be consumed, we’ll have you anyway.

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New Re-Entry Schedule: As long as you adhere to curfew, all residents of the following zip codes are welcome back in New Orleans starting Friday, according to Mayor Ray Nagin.

More ZIP codes will be opened for re-entry for business owners on Thursday, and to residents on Friday … areas of 70112, 70113, 70114, 70115, 70116, 70118, 70130 and 70131. Those areas include Algiers, the Central Business District, the French Quarter and Uptown.

There is a curfew in place from 6PM to 8AM every night that will be strictly enforced until further notice. This means you may not be outside between 6 pm and 8 am, in a vehicle or on foot … Traffic lights are out throughout the City. All intersections are four-way stops and the speed limit is 30 mph, regardless of the posted speed limit.

September 29, 2005 | hurricane katrina, new orleans | 8 Comments »

Day 30: Leaving For NO; Some More Kingwood-Humble Damage

Back Into New Orleans, Finally: After exactly one month of being away from home, we return tomorrow. Citywide curfew is in effect and we may not legally stay, but we don’t intend on spending the night anyway. The plan is to drive in, perform an inspection, grab items of value and of great use when away from home and leave before sunset. It sounds easy as pie, but not one of you has seen me make pie. It’s a mess – as I probably will be when I leave my home again and not by my choosing. I should feel lucky to have a home with everything relatively intact, but I cannot get completely past the cruelty of having a viable home and not being able to live in it. On the other hand, the Hounds Of Ultimate Goof & Sweetness would miss me.

Friends assure me that seeing New Orleans, my home and a few of my friends is positive – seeing home with my own eyes will dissipate the stress a bit, I guess. For as long as I stay away from home, it is a dream, a myth, a legend relayed to me by others. As always, I promise to take a lot of pictures, especially of the Lower Garden District.

Guess what, I get to see Machelle and give her hugs, kisses and goodies, like this and this!

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More Pictures Of North Houston After Rita: Here are a few more pictures of our area after Rita – txyankee and D clearing debris and warping of the Spec’s sign.

September 27, 2005 | hurricane katrina, new orleans | Comments Closed

Day 29 Late PM: Us In, Refrigerators Out; Rita Pictures Up; Gelfand Passes Away

And the natives rejoiced as high-speed internet access was once again restored to Kingwood, TX. Good news from New Orleans as well – Machelle informs that power is back on in the French Quarter, most of the Central Business District and parts of the Lower Garden District up to a couple of blocks past St. Charles and Jackson.

Return To NO: With Rita gone, D and I resume our earlier plan of returning to New Orleans for a day or two. The initial plan included cleaning out the refrigerator, but I’ve since talked with three colleagues who went back to NO to do the same thing in the last couple of weeks. Each one said the same thing – any refrigerator, without power for more than two weeks and which contained a lot of meat and perishables, has to be thrown out even after excessive cleaning as the smell and decay are almost impossible to get rid of. As intriguing an exercise in forensic pathology as it could have been, all of this talk of decomposition and insects in various larval stages has led to a house-wide consensus – we’re tossing both units and procuring new ones. (Well, not so much tossing as grunting and heaving while the beasts are ushered to the curb after being taped shut.) End of refrigeration story.

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Hurricane Rita Pictures: As promised, pictures of parts of Houston after Hurricane Rita have been uploaded. Surprisingly enough, our suburb of Kingwood suffered the most damage related to downed trees and, hence, extended loss of power. In Houston proper, other than a fallen telephone pole that blocked passage on Westheimer, we didn’t see anything untoward at all. Except for very few open restaurants that served food, the Tragedy At Burger King and the truly pathetic taping-of-windows job at one place of business. As Kenya Hudson comments, “I’ll never understand why people tape windows. The only benefit is that maybe the glass will stay together when it’s broken.” In reality, the glass does not stay together when broken. Studies have shown that the glass merely cuts through the tape and makes for one sticky mess. The same studies mention that taping serves to make the taper feel better – all benefits are welcome.

100% Humidity
Humidity Inside The House = 100% Can you say microclimate?

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Professor Gelfand Passes Away: M. David Gelfand, the Ashton Phelps Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law at Tulane Law School, passed away last night while swimming near Pensacola, FL. Gelfand was also the president of the recently-created From the Lake to the River: The New Orleans Coalition for Legal Aid & Disaster Relief, which I’ve publicized on this blog. Machelle writes, “Morgan [another New Orleanian friend and lawyer-to-be] has been working closely with [Gelfand] since the storm, and we were ready to get rolling on some stuff … Morgan was especially depressed.”

In this FindLaw article, the professor outlined the need for careful reconstruction, optimism and cooperation in New Orleans 2.0. It’s never a great time to lose someone of such vision and vigor, but right now?

Caution is necessary, lest policymakers again ignore the planners who have long insisted upon a higher, better-engineered levee system (like those in the Netherlands) and tougher building codes (like those in Florida).

… the “new” New Orleans should take account of the racial impacts of demolition and reconstruction. A model for this could come from the racial justice movement in the environmental field. Though the movement has typically focused on challenges to the location of undesirable industrial plants in poor and minority neighborhoods, it provides mechanisms for assessing the racial impact of changes – even those deemed “gentrification” by the developers — on a particular neighborhood …

… even if that vision proves to be a chimera, I know that on February 28, 2006 (Mardi Gras Day), or sooner, real gumbo will tantalize my tongue … I will catch throws from a parade on the Avenue, I will sing … and I will second-line while waving my handkerchief in the air — all in my beloved New Orleans. But that handkerchief also must dry the river of tears I have shed for flooded neighborhoods and my lost neighbors.

What a great spirit. Let’s remember Professor Gelfand’s message and, on February 28th, wave our handkerchiefs for him and his beloved New Orleans.

September 26, 2005 | hurricane katrina, new orleans, weather | 2 Comments »

Day 28 Late PM: Back To New Orleans Re-Entry; A Familiar Voice Speaks

New Orleans Re-Entry: Despite heavy rains that flooded the southwestern portion of Louisiana and caused another round of evacuations, New Orleans continues to dry out nicely. Mayor Ray Nagin wishes to get back on track repopulating the city with the able-bodied and business owners.

Meanwhile, Governor Blanco seeks $31 billion in aid and Vice Admiral Thad Allen still doubts Nagin’s vision and schedule. Our state is going to need a lot more money than the governor’s request. Also, what is not mentioned in the press but serves as a major concern to NO law enforcement is the re-entry of looters and violent criminals along with rightful residents. This is a double-edged sword: looters and other miscreants may not be kept at bay sucessfully, but as the city is populated with residents and business owners, these people can take care of their own. Structures that weren’t hit by the storm and that remain unoccupied currently make easy targets.

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Another New Orleanian Writes From Exile: Author, musician, frequent contributor to the Gambit and occasional reviewer for my former music project, whatcharockin?com, addresses us in last week’s Houston Press. Michael, a resident of the Bywater, evacuated to Conroe, TX (a far northwest suburb of Houston) with his girlfriend and pet goat, Chauncey, whose picture gives me warm fuzzies all over.

Chauncey The Goat
Isn’t he simply cute?

This paragraph from his article, Between Is And Was, speaks eloquently on behalf of a lot of us:

… after three days in Conroe, Texas, Chauncey’s ears are drooping. By now, our initial shock has worn off. I think of all our dead neighbors in Bywater, and somehow I see and feel it all less clearly than I did at first. Shock almost felt better. There was electricity running through us then, at least, even if it was a negative charge. Now we’ve deflated. We’re puddles. And we’re in Conroe: the exact opposite of New Orleans, of how I want the world to be. Chauncey doesn’t like the manicured grass, the sterile uniformity of my parents’ neighborhood, located somewhere along the 15-mile stretch between Wal-Mart and Super Wal-Mart, any more than we do. His movements have visibly slowed. Like he’s as lost and despondent as his owners.

Even if as a tiny respite from the wilds of big-city suburbia, it appears that I have to get in touch with Michael and introduce him to Houston inside the Loop. As grateful as we New Orleanians here are to the city of Houston for taking us in, this isn’t home and we want to go back. Now that Rita spared us her worst, let’s get back to that ever-important task of smart and passionate rebuilding.

September 25, 2005 | hurricane katrina, new orleans | Comments Closed

Day 28 Early PM:Twice The Cleanup

Cleaning Up After Rita & Katrina: Hurricane Rita blew through Texas and southwestern Louisiana northeast of us as a Category 3. The four of us took an “African safari” of the city in the Land Rover last evening. Other than trees, branches and signs downed by the wind, greater metropolitan Houston suffered no major damage. Humble-Kingwood, our area, was the only one to that had sustained power loss, which was restored late last evening. Cable and internet services are still down and, therefore, here’s another post over a 28K connection.

Today saw us cleaning up in and outside the house. Chores included vacuuming, sweeping, collection of leaves and branches and the three guys putting up the blown-down fence. All while I wandered around the house in a Benadryl haze following a very violent allergy meltdown. Something in the post-Rita air has had me sneezing non-stop since 8AM. The dogs look at me like I’m possessed.

Once this house is back in order, D and I will hit the road to New Orleans for more damage survey and cleaning. Our landlady’s fiance is back and he confirmed that the large tree in our backyard fell in the storm. Thankfully, it did not fall onto the house, but knocked the rear garden wall into the neighbor’s yard. I hated that sap monster anyway.

The refrigerator will be awful. *shudder* Insects were found living in the one downstairs. Our landlady heard from some people that refrigerators left with food in them for more than two weeks will have to be discarded, while others talk about cleaning theirs out for reuse. I believe the operative phrase is “We shall see.” If insects thrive in an almost-bare refrigerator, I’m pretty sure evolution and a few mass extinctions have already taken place in ours upstairs.

Otherwise, life is back to normal in Kingwood, Texas and most will resume work tomorrow.

Pictures of Houston during and after Rita will be available for viewing just as soon as we have a faster intenet connection.

| hurricane katrina, new orleans, weather | 1 Comment »
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