This is my first evening at home in New Orleans in six months when I am not visiting from Houston and/or Mardi Gras is not going on. Stuff is everywhere. For instance, the scanner is on the living-room floor under Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, surrounded by a stack of unread magazines, a bag of clothes and a can of garbanzo beans. Funny that this particular still life almost sums up my material life and interests. Normally compulsive me would shudder at this collection and return said objects to their “proper places” around my domicile, but … eh. I am content just to sit in this recliner, be cooled by the air that frolics through my space, and to know that all of my things and I are now finally home.

Thanks to all for your birthday wishes, especially brimful, who nicely broadcasted that particular vital statistic on her blog the other day. The attention was nice for a change, to tell you the truth. It’s never bad to know that you are loved, but the eHugs and real hugs this year were terribly appropriate – the right sentiments from the right people. The birthday celebration was mostly Lenten for two reasons:

1) it fell on Ash Wednesday this year
2) the evil cold virus (or some mutation thereof), which I have successfully thwarted for almost a year now, touched down and made full contact with my immune system on Lundi Gras day. Yes, ladies and gents, the DayQuil is out from hibernation. Bring on the Sierra Mist Free, a blankie and the remote control! The woman is contagious! And before my mom whips out her #1 diagnosis of this cold, I agree with her. It was because of all this roaming around and nothing else. If three trips between Houston and New Orleans in one month via car and airplane don’t constitute “roaming around,” I don’t know what does.

Feed the cold and feed it well: D and I dined at the exquisite Asian Cajun, where Chef Philip Chan himself wished me a Happy Birthday and his team made us a meal fit for royalty. Chef Chan’s sauces are so delectable that I will eat cardboard that has been smeared with them. As we walked back home, D said, “When you see me eating everything including the garnish, the food is excellent.” If you are in New Orleans, make it a point to stop at this great restaurant at the corner of Decatur & Bienville in the Quarter.

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A mere cold did not stop this intrepid wonder from meeting up with Mark of Wet Bank Guide, Troy of Gulf Sails and a few other New Orleans bloggers last night at Fahy’s. Mark and his wife, Rebecca, are neat people (with ample upper-Midwestern background) and I look forward to getting to know them more in the coming months. As D and other close friends kept stealing my attention (those troublemakers), I didn’t get a chance to talk much with the rest of the bloggers, but I hope to organize another one of these within this month. That will afford the bloggers who missed this meetup an opportunity to catch up. It might become a regular thing – who knows?

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The next few posts will center on stories and pictures from Mardi Gras, the city and the upcoming mayoral election. The good news: the election is on. The bad news: the press refuses to take any candidate seriously who is not Ray Nagin, Mitch Landrieu or Ron Forman. As a constitutional republic and a global champion of democracy, can we at least pretend that we don’t deal in foregone conclusions?

Back At Le Blog After A Trip To New Orleans: Not that there wasn’t excellent wireless signal emanating from my house over the course of the weekend, but who wants to sit at a computer with only 2.5 days back in La Nouvelle Nouvelle Orleans? Now I have nothing to do but (take care of puppies, kitties, puppy-kitty havoc and) sit at my computer to work and blog.

And go through a mountain of mail?! As I suspected, the ever-helpful USPS suspended my mail-forwarding order and all correspondence to me is now sent to my New Orleans address. Good thing C and I share a mailbox. Or I wouldn’t have received items of great import such as my URGENT insurance bill which asks me to pay $NONE at this time and a Christmas card from my company’s CEO, along with a few magazines, trivial notices, and the ever-faithful Door County Advocate. It’s amazing how much of our life’s business is now accomplished online. Except when friends send you packages and they sit somewhere in the bowels of the Loyola Ave. post office for four months.

But, I digress. My weekend in New Orleans was just what I needed. On Friday, I cleaned the Smell Of Dead Gumbo out of my kitchen and have set up the official Stench-Thwarting Station – a tray filled with Asian Spice room spray, Clean Linen scented oil refills, Sandalwood votives, incense, and a can of Lysol. Instructions: When spirit of said dead refrigerator threatens, attack with items from station.

Once Julie showed up on Friday afternoon, we promptly headed to Fahy’s where we ran into everyone in the usual crowd of ne’er-do-wells and met Alan of Blogometer and ThinkNOLA fame (blogger meetup – geeks unite!). The Fahy’s gathering turned out to be the 12th Night / Epiphany / Let’s Get Our Mardi Gras On / Any Excuse To Eat King Cake party and, apparently, Julie, Alan and I were the most underdressed people there, despite that I saw on my calendar that it was indeed an epiphanous night but still forgot to costume.

While K readied her Uptown home (the basement of which fully flooded and has since been redone) for her son’s 10th birthday party, all I seem to remember of Saturday is Breakfast #2 at Surrey’s and driving through Mid-City, the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish with Julie. My next post will elaborate on what I saw there, how I saw it and a comparison with the growth of the relatively-undamaged parts of the city, including mine. A precis for those of you who can’t wait: driving up Magazine St. or St. Charles Ave. and then down Claiborne Ave. into Chalmette and Arabi makes you wonder if you’re living in the same city.

Sunday morning involved a nice episode of Coffee Klatch starring Mac, Julie and me at my dining table. More heartwarming came about at our noon krewe meeting, where everyone was, as usual, terribly happy to see me there and sad to watch me depart back to Houston soon after. K and I had a great drive back, in sharp contrast to the one there that took us 7.5 hours. Lesson learned: hit the road early in the afternoon to avoid traffic pickles in Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

More perspective and fresh pictures in tomorrow’s Return To New Orleans 4 (Kurt Russell sold separately).

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Four Months (And Some) Later: Speaking of my krewe, its oldest member and the music captain of the greater organization, Krewe du Vieux, was featured in a BBC news article on the fate of a handful of Katrina survivors three months after the storm. John Hyman appears in Katrina victims – where are they now?:

[John] is already lining up musicians to parade in February, and says the federal government is likely to come in for some scathing humour because of its response to the disaster.

“I felt from the start that New Orleans would not come back bigger and better, but smaller and better,” he says. “I still think that is likely to be what will happen.”

Just change the word likely to most decidedly in that first line. Take it from me, folks, you do not want to miss the Krewe du Vieux parade this year! [More details forthcoming as they are released to me by our krewe captain.]

BBC coverage of British expats in the Crescent City including John, the only person not to evacuate his block of the French Quarter during and after the storm, is available here.

The historic area where he lives is in the centre of the city, but escaped the worst of the flooding … Mr. Hyman’s telephone still works, the water came back on Thursday morning and he has enough tinned food and water to last for weeks.

Something I liked about the Three Months Later article is the Before & After picture set. In this case, however, they are not pictures of NO before and after the storm, but a comparison of right after the storm (before) with more or less now (after).

Also of great sociological and psychological interest is a Harvard Medical School project that will track the lives of Katrina survivors for two years.

As per the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group website:

Government policy-makers need to know the practical problems these people continue to face as they try to reconstruct their lives. This can best be done by monitoring a group of people who represent those displaced by Katrina over time … Quarterly interviews are being carried out with all the Advisory Group members to monitor the pace of recovery. Reports are being prepared for policy-makers … The Advisory Group consists of a representative sample of over 1000 people who had to leave their homes because of Hurricane Katrina.

Perusing the website shows that it is fairly new; this will be a good study to bookmark and see how much people achieve and how far the project gets over a period of time.

A note before I close: More than anything I did in New Orleans, the simple pleasures of sleeping in my  bed and lounging in my recliner (with my woobie) have yet to be paralleled in life’s best experiences.

The ultimate piece of news I absorbed before falling asleep at a very late hour last night (or early this morn) was that 12 of the 13 West Virginian coalminers had been found, and that one was definitely dead. “Been found … what is that supposed to mean? Found alive?” was all I thought before plunging into one of the shortest nights of sleep in a long while. With txyankee leaving for Paris this afternoon to begin his “long commute,” the weather doing weird things and the haul of January ahead, insomnia has found me again.

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Kristen of From the Lake to the River, the Tulane University-sponsored legal aid group that I introduced back in September, asks me to share the following with my blog community:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW ORLEANS From the Lake to the River: The New Orleans Coalition for Legal Aid & Disaster Relief today released An Alternative Vision for Redevelopment, Rebuilding & Reconstruction, a report to Mayor Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission that addresses a number of challenges that lie ahead of the city. The report applauds officials for organizing a number of town hall meetings to solicit public input on the rebuilding process while offering broad recommendations on how best to rebuild the city and repair systemic issues that existed pre-Katrina. The full report, which includes recommendations from a number of Tulane Law School professors, community activists, educators, social workers, and others, along with an executive summary is available at www.fromthelaketotheriver.org.

Although there is much that needs to be rebuilt in the aftermath of Katrina’s destruction, people need more than bricks and mortar if they are to return. The region also needs to create social institutions — political, economic, educational, and others — that will effectively serve all city residents. This report seeks to offer a sound basis for public policy discussions, community economic development, urban planning and political negotiating in the challenging months that lie ahead. This report outlines a set of policies that will help ensure that the rebuilding process unfolds in a way that benefits all New Orleanians. It is our hope that local, parish and state officials might develop alternative policies and positions based on the proposals, recommendations and analysis that are set forth in the following pages.

“After Katrina, non-profit organizations, civic groups and community leaders united to help provide immediate relief to evacuees who had been displaced. Now is the time to turn our attention to repairing and rebuilding the city to ensure that those who were involuntarily displaced have a place to come home to. Because of the extent, in both distance and pervasiveness, of forced evacuation, it is critical that we build a New Orleans that facilitates the return of all New Orleanians,” said Bryan Mauldin, President of From the Lake to the River.

From the Lake to the River can be contacted at 866-NOLA-AID.

Warm, muggy and sunny in Houston, Texas on January 1st. A good sign that 2006 is for me? Last night’s party was a blast, with almost all of the invitees present, even one with a bad back! The Mexican-German-Indian-American food and drink selection was a great success; cultural crossover gatherings make my globe-loving heart go pitter patter. Everyone smiled and joked, the party was at peace.

At one point in the evening, however, one of the guests began to complain about the amount of crime in his area of Houston and how life is so awful because his car has been broken into twice in the last few months. Suddenly, quite unprovoked, he turned towards me and said, “YOUR people are the cause of all of my problems right now.” MY people? Indian-Americans? Women? Geoscientists with black hair? Huh? What? The guest continued, “Ever since you people from New Orleans showed up, crime in Houston has skyrocketed. The cops have told me so.” Other guests protested, “You can’t blame all new crime on New Orleanians. Crime was already on the rise before Katrina. Of course, that’s what the cops are going to say if they cannot control crime.” etc. etc.

The guest stood accused of two things I loathe – cultural generalization, viz. “you/your people” and spouting unverifiable second-hand information and opinions as fact. My face took on what my brother and I refer to as Mom’s patented Daggers Look, the steely glare with eyebrows arched and the solemn promise that you are about to get your ass lopped off and handed to you.

“So, you know for a fact that all of this crime was committed specifically by New Orleanians? You have proof.”

“But, yeah, the cops told me.”

“Of course, they are going to say that to you if they want a criminal scapegoat. Have they told you that crime in that area is also generated by people with Houston addresses on their DLs?”

“Yeah, but I know … because I saw it.”

“You saw their identification cards yourself?”

“I videotaped a gang of 20 breaking into a car.”

White fright tends to amuse and scare me at once; for a second, I almost lost the glare. Since when does it take 20 “hardened career criminals” from anywhere, much less New Orleans, to break into a car? For pete’s sake, just get me a wire hanger.

My next question was “Did they have special markings on them that identified them as New Orleanians or did you walk up to them and bravely ask to see their ID cards?” But, it wasn’t to be as John arrived to stand between the guest and me, and Mark attempted to ameliorate the situation by vouching for me: “Her people? Indians are some of the most hardworking and nice people I know.” This was when I shook my head with that “No, that’s not the point, either” look, glanced at John, rolled my eyes, and walked away. At which, the whingy guest said, “Well, I don’t know about all Indians …”

“That Mumbai Mafia and their vendettas …” was all they got as I joined the other partyers in the study.

Let me reiterate my gratitude towards Texas, and Houston in particular, for generously taking in people from the storm-ravaged parts of this nation. The disruption to your daily life and strain on your city is more than duly noted, but we would do no less for you if you were in this situation. You may also notice that quite a few of us have well-paying jobs here, pay non-FEMA rent or live with friends and family, and put money into your economy everyday, money that we ought to be spending in New Orleans. And, for the record, a New Orleanian friend has had his car broken into twice now, both times by Houstonian perpetrators. This isn’t a tit for your tat, but presenting some more sides of the given situation.

I also understand that while most of the nation welcomes and supports its fallen neighbors during this tough time, there are a few who have the tendency to place the grand blame of social ills on one party or the other. This time it happens to be New Orleanians. Who’s it going to be tomorrow?

Yet another point to ponder: I don’t deny that the criminal element of New Orleans, America’s pre-Katrina murder capital, has now moved to the rest of the nation. How did the plan for this? Did they think that some bad habits would fritter away if their bearer was taken out of his or her environment? Did they believe that a storm makes everyone suddenly nicer and socially responsible?

Again, they have. Criminals and gangs usually form when employment and the vision of a future, much less a bright one, are absent. Moving to new territory has presented many New Orleanians with economic and educational opportunities they did not have before. For example, a family of four from the Ninth Ward, with an underemployed mother and unemployed father and two kids faltering in school, now live in Janesville, WI with both parents gainfully employed and happier kids. Taking a lot of New Orleans’ children out of a failing educational system and spreading them across the nation may just help them. While they deal with the trauma of losing a home and their heritage, they gain the tools for a better future than before.

Quite a few New Orleanians were and are contributors to the American economy, and now have a greater ability to do so. This is one of Katrina’s gifts, if I may attempt to find some good come of a very sad sequence of events.

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This morning, I awoke to a Washington Post article on New Year’s Eve revelry in New Orleans. All of it sounded good until I read two things: the Lower Ninth resident who is suspicious of the Army Corps of Engineers’ plans to raze whole neighborhoods, and the tourists who brought in the new year in New Orleans because “we felt it would be good to put some money in the city … we feel so bad for the people here.”

Two things the city of New Orleans does not need right now:

* Wholesale and bad design decisions based on sympathy for former residents of areas below sea level or the environment, i.e. the sentiment that an entire neighborhood should be completely dispatched back to nature. For my part, I don’t believe that there is A Grand Plan to rid the city of its economically-malnourished. I also think that, if we don’t jump onto Grand Unifying Rebuilding Bandwagons and now, there is a way in which humans and nature can live side by side. Both are going to have make some sort of compromise as we move forward.

* Pity. Do not come to New Orleans because you feel bad for us. Sure, we can use the money, but the principle behind your presence matters to me. We don’t need a pattern established in which you gain karmic brownie points by visiting the city.

On that fateful day of September 11th, 2001, I cried as an American and sent money to New York City’s firefighters because my nation was hurting. I, too, want to visit Ground Zero, but not out of pity for the citizens of New York. Please visit to enjoy what New Orleans has the ability to offer, just four months after a major disaster, and stay a while with your fellow Americans.

With the dawn of a new year and a new life for our city, I ask New Orleanians and America to gauge the kindness of your heart before you offer it. And try to see what effect it will have in the long run for yourselves, the nation and, a new stretch, the rest of the planet. What seems like a mindless sweeping generalization, kind word or gesture on your part may actually be an insult to the receiving party. Each unchecked utterance and passive-aggressive response to it piles into a mountain of mutual resentment, something you, me and our cities can do without. Of course, New Orleans cannot go forth in a squeaky-clean manner, with happy-face confetti and permanent goodwill everywhere, but some things can and ought to be headed off at the pass with honesty.

The power to foresee the future may not be ours, but if we are aware, proactive and go at it with the spirit of ingenuity and cooperation, we have a stab at a better tomorrow.

More hurricanes notwithstanding.