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Day 6 PM Update: Troops, Crime, Levee, TV

The Ohio special ops trio ventured out on a recon mission in the west suburbs of Columbus, codenamed Indiana. Even the strongest of us can only take so much of this suffocation, and must periodically surface to … anything else. Walking on a brand new street lined with brand new, trend-driven stores accomplished but one thing: it made me want to go home.

Friends in New Orleans are still doing alright, especially with the visible troop presence, and haven’t been asked to leave. No “bad people” since troop arrival – residents of Uptown and the Garden District, holed up in their houses until now, are out and about cleaning up. (They can’t vouch for the rest of the city, but the news sounds positive on this topic. Besides, cleanup cannot commence in a lot of the rest of the city until water is drained.)

It looks like a while before evacuees are allowed back in the city because:

a) clean water and food are in very limited supply,
b) there is no running water (there is talk of it coming back in less-hit parts of the city some time early this week),
c) the power grid will take a while to get back up, and
d) rotting property and dead bodies have to be accounted for and removed before the city is inhabitable.

Bottom line: Don’t bumrush the city yet and induce unnecessary strain in a just-recuperating system. Your home has been through this much, it can wait a little longer.

If you are aware of any relief operations that perform generator deliveries, please contact me. We’ll work something out.

The gap in the worst levee breach (300-foot gap in the 17th St. Canal) has been repaired. Mild sigh of relief.

Jeff Koinange, CNN TV reporter, stood on the corner of Canal & Magazine today and said, “Just take a look at the deserted streets of New Orleans.” At that moment, the camera panned right to a white couple assessing damage to their property, a black man cleaning up his business and a truck turning right from Canal onto Magazine. Granted the city is not as full as it used to be, but it’s no ghost town. Tell it like it is.

The father and brother of Irvin Mayfield, renowned musician and artistic director for the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, are still missing in New Orleans. If you know of their whereabouts, please notify the Missing Persons forum.

Someone please get Richard Simmons and Celine Dion off Larry King Live. The hyperbole (“New Orleans is the Venice, Italy of the world”) and hysterics are offensive, not helpful.

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