Ever since I was a little girl, I've looked on the change of the weather toward fall in September as my "birthday weather." With a birthday near the end of September, as the time neared for my special celebration, the weather always got nicer. With the self-centeredness of childhood, I allowed myself to think something nice was happening just to please me. Of course, I can't still consciously think that, but somewhere deep inside, I feel secretly personally pleased by the weather's improvement.
Folks "up North" might laugh, but some time in September -- whether it's the second week or later, or, when we New Orleanians are lucky, earlier -- the weather breaks, and we know it's fall. The air dries out, the temperature dips, even if just a little, and the cloudless sky is a bright, dark blue. The lower humidity makes the outside air feel sweet and light, and though these temperatures may not be considered "cool" further north, anything lower than 90 degrees feels mighty good to us. Since we in New Orleans don't get turning leaves and really chilly weather, this is what passes for the coming of autumn here. And we welcome it.
New Orleans started feeling the change this year in the first few days of September. Going out in the morning to get the newspaper or to leave for work, the air was noticeably cooler on our skin. We'd leave the a/c off in the car, rolling down the windows to enjoy and savor the sweetness. The sunlight dappling through the oak trees looks as though screened through a green filter, and instead of wilting and strained in the heat, the folks waiting for the streetcar seem cheerful and energetic. The idea of a long, long walk down Magazine Street with Big Man no longer seems like torture, but something to be eagerly looked forward to.
Of course, this being New Orleans, September doesn't mean the hot weather is completely over (it never is -- don't get me started on those Christmases where you have to turn on your a/c just to keep your Christmas tree from frying in the living room). Big Man and I still find a day hot enough to go over to my sister's and swim. It still gets hot enough that folks at outdoor festivals seek out the shade.
But we have this tantalizing hint that cooler weather, really cooler weather, is truly coming, and we love it. And for me, it always means by birthday is coming.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
And Now, Ike
Thursday, September 11, 2008.
Starts windy and rainy and does this, back and forth with muggy partly-cloudiness all day, until late afternoon when the weather settled down for good into wind and rain and the occasional flash of lightning. Looks like we're getting the bands of Hurricane Ike sooner than expected, but then it's a big storm.
Lots of feeling with folks here towards the folks of Texas -- people say things like, "Well, I'm sorry for Texas, but at least it's not us." In what feels like an ironic twist, my church and our co-religionists have offered evacuation space to our congregations in South Texas. Ike is predicted to make landfall early Saturday morning, so it looks like another 2 days of this weather.
Big Man and I told ourselves there was no point in putting the outdoor furniture back in the courtyard, and so there's nothing else to batten down for this storm. We'll just wait and see what happens...
Friday, September 12, 2008
A crazy day, with intermittent sun and white clouds alternating with dark clouds and spates of rain, wind the whole time. Gusts of over 40 miles-per-hour, with steady winds over 20. Everything not nailed down or tied down is blowing like crazy -- and now it's clear there should have been an accelerated clean-up after Gustav. Stuff piled up helpfully after the last storm is now shifting with the winds; lines not yet repaired whipping like lassos. Kids in schoolyards laughing with the power of the wind, letting themselves lean into it.
Even driving is a chore, the car physically pushed around by the wind gust. Big Man and I run a couple of errands, amazed at the trees bending over and the way he has to work to keep the van straight on the road. He's also nonplussed at how we can have this much wind and clouds, and it's still HOT. He says, "Up north, weather like this would cool everything down." I explain that the wind is coming straight off the Gulf, and that hot wind is why there's so many storms right now.
I'm glad it's a sermon preparation day -- a good excuse to stay indoors the rest of the day. Of course, I have a Board meeting tonight, and one can only hope things won't be any worse. The forecasts are for the storm to make landfall to the west of us late tonight/very early Saturday, and so, once again, it's wait and see...
Saturday, September 13, 2008
A rainy day, of course, with times that the sun tries to break through. No real impact here in NOLA, just the bamboo screening on the fence in my back courtyard ripped free and blowing like a sail. Driving around, we see more "tree trimmings" and other debris, a few more houses and buildings with some roof damage. More houses that were badly wrecked by Katrina but still (somehow) standing have collapsed, one 2 blocks or so from the church I serve.
By afternoon and early evening, it's not even raining any more, just muggy and warm and a bit more windy than usual.
Let's hope and pray that that "conga line" of storms in the Atlantic is done and we won't have any more unwelcome visitors.
Starts windy and rainy and does this, back and forth with muggy partly-cloudiness all day, until late afternoon when the weather settled down for good into wind and rain and the occasional flash of lightning. Looks like we're getting the bands of Hurricane Ike sooner than expected, but then it's a big storm.
Lots of feeling with folks here towards the folks of Texas -- people say things like, "Well, I'm sorry for Texas, but at least it's not us." In what feels like an ironic twist, my church and our co-religionists have offered evacuation space to our congregations in South Texas. Ike is predicted to make landfall early Saturday morning, so it looks like another 2 days of this weather.
Big Man and I told ourselves there was no point in putting the outdoor furniture back in the courtyard, and so there's nothing else to batten down for this storm. We'll just wait and see what happens...
Friday, September 12, 2008
A crazy day, with intermittent sun and white clouds alternating with dark clouds and spates of rain, wind the whole time. Gusts of over 40 miles-per-hour, with steady winds over 20. Everything not nailed down or tied down is blowing like crazy -- and now it's clear there should have been an accelerated clean-up after Gustav. Stuff piled up helpfully after the last storm is now shifting with the winds; lines not yet repaired whipping like lassos. Kids in schoolyards laughing with the power of the wind, letting themselves lean into it.
Even driving is a chore, the car physically pushed around by the wind gust. Big Man and I run a couple of errands, amazed at the trees bending over and the way he has to work to keep the van straight on the road. He's also nonplussed at how we can have this much wind and clouds, and it's still HOT. He says, "Up north, weather like this would cool everything down." I explain that the wind is coming straight off the Gulf, and that hot wind is why there's so many storms right now.
I'm glad it's a sermon preparation day -- a good excuse to stay indoors the rest of the day. Of course, I have a Board meeting tonight, and one can only hope things won't be any worse. The forecasts are for the storm to make landfall to the west of us late tonight/very early Saturday, and so, once again, it's wait and see...
Saturday, September 13, 2008
A rainy day, of course, with times that the sun tries to break through. No real impact here in NOLA, just the bamboo screening on the fence in my back courtyard ripped free and blowing like a sail. Driving around, we see more "tree trimmings" and other debris, a few more houses and buildings with some roof damage. More houses that were badly wrecked by Katrina but still (somehow) standing have collapsed, one 2 blocks or so from the church I serve.
By afternoon and early evening, it's not even raining any more, just muggy and warm and a bit more windy than usual.
Let's hope and pray that that "conga line" of storms in the Atlantic is done and we won't have any more unwelcome visitors.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Aftermath
Gustav gone, the all-clear signal given, and the mayor, under considerable pressure, calling "Ollee-ollee-oxen-free!", New Orleanians returned from a week of evacuations in Birmingham, Baton Rouge, Atlanta, Memphis, Houston, Oxford, Jackson, Mobile, Florida, and even further away. (The folks coming home from Baton Rouge were especially relieved, since it turns out that our capital city was hit much harder than was New Orleans.) In fact, so many people tried to get home on Friday that parts of I-10 West were turned into a giant parking lot and accidents were common.
Big Man and I stayed at my brother's in the mid-panhandle of Florida until Friday morning, and took I-10 all the way to the junction of I-59, I-12 and I-10 north of Slidell. At that point, we got off and took Highway 90, which was blessedly (and amazingly) clear and free from traffic. We saw A LOT of damage from Hurricane Gustav -- boats in the road (we drove around them), tree trunks and tree limbs, lots of electric wires down, damaged cars, fences knocked over, some fishing camps knocked off their pilings, a lot of detritus from what must have been a storm surge. There were many utility trucks out and about, putting things right, but no traffic. Our biggest hold-up was the little Bayou Sauvage bridge, at the back of Venetian Isles, which was down to one lane, with each side taking turns. It took about 20 minutes for us to cross, but once over, it was a breeze getting home. Meanwhile, we kept hearing on the radio how bad things were on I-10. (Hm, maybe I shouldn't blog about the Highway 90 route -- there's a small chance that local folks will read this and then clog the artery during the next evacuation.)
Friday late afternoon as we entered the city, we saw what Gustav had done. Tree limbs, branches, and piles and piles of twigs and leaves were everywhere, and in the inhabited neighborhoods had already been swept and raked into heaps at the curbs. Lots of people lost bits of siding, roof tiles and shingles, gutters, and window panes from their houses; even more commercial establishments had their large signs busted, twisted, or knocked down. Lots and lots of power outages and traffic lights not working at all. A house on St. Charles Avenue had a giant old magnolia tree leaning on the front porch and part of the roof. We held our breaths as to what we might find when we got home.
As we pulled up, our street was littered with roof shingles -- on the sidewalk, in the neutral ground, in the street, and even on our front porch. Luckily, they were not from our house. Our next-door neighbors, in the 1840s mansion that has been converted to condos, lost some boards from the side of the house that faces ours, and at least one window was broken. Our electricity was on, thank god, but there was no cable or Internet connection. (You know you're hard up when you're walking around your house with your laptop, trying to see if you can pick up a wireless signal from any of the neighbors.) We were ecstatic to find all cable service restored on Monday night (yesterday, as I write this) -- we were even more excited to learn that Cox Cable was going to credit us for that week of non-service. Every little bit helps.
Around New Orleans, approximately 50-odd houses, damaged by Katrina, were done in by Gustav and have collapsed completely, after sagging progressively for 3 years. One, on Magnolia and Upperline near Baptist Hospital, hasn't finished falling yet and looks like it could crash down any second. Another house in Central City, had been carefully gutted with someone putting in a new subfloor when Gustav hit, collapsing what was left of the walls, and plunking the roof, all in one piece, onto the floor. I felt bad for the person who had been doing the work, only to have this happen.
I've blogged before about how the neutral ground signs are a barometer of Life in the New Big Easy -- by the Saturday after Gustav, neutral grounds sprouted signs saying, "Tree Removal", "Repairs", and "Debris Removal." You also started seeing home made signs everywhere saying, "Welcome Home" or "Welcome Back." At banks, at cafes, at churches, at the Salvation Army returning evacuee center, at the drugstore, the signs recognize our shared plight and our shared relief at being back home. A sushi place on Magazine Street near our house had a blackboard menu outside on the sidewalk with a list of offerings that included a "Welcome Home roll." On Sunday, we greeted each other at church, "Welcome home! Welcome back!" One local radio station is running a promo with testimony from New Orleanians on why this is home and how much they love this place, hurricanes be damned. Makes me choke up a little every time I hear it.
The church sustained minor damage. The large plexiglass windows in our Fellowship Hall blew out and lots of water came in to pool on the tile floor -- but luckily did not hurt the floor. A window in a storage area also broke. The sign out front was completely blown away, but then we were planning to replace it anyway. Lost power for a time, but the refrigerator had been emptied, so nothing was lost. We were lucky.
Most of my parishioners are OK. One or two have minor roof damage, or lost power for a number of hours, but most had transferred food to ice chests, and thus did not lose any perishables. Most either had an OK evacuation experience, and a few, like Big Man and I, actually had FUN evacuations (which a parishioner of mine described as "hurrications"), and a smaller number of my folk rode out the storm at home or at a neighbor's house. No injuries, thank god. Emotions and spirits are another story. If folks are fragile, to have a hurricane threat right during the Katrina anniversary is a hard thing.
Sunday after services, we brought the church computers down from where they had been stored for safekeeping, and hooked everything back up. I changed the message on the church machine and removed all the hurricane signs from the church doors. A larger congregation on Sunday than I expected, but no Order of Service. But we were all together, and able to share what happened to us, how we felt.
And so we return to whatever is normal for us, for this place, for this time. What else is there to do, but cope and move forward?
Big Man and I stayed at my brother's in the mid-panhandle of Florida until Friday morning, and took I-10 all the way to the junction of I-59, I-12 and I-10 north of Slidell. At that point, we got off and took Highway 90, which was blessedly (and amazingly) clear and free from traffic. We saw A LOT of damage from Hurricane Gustav -- boats in the road (we drove around them), tree trunks and tree limbs, lots of electric wires down, damaged cars, fences knocked over, some fishing camps knocked off their pilings, a lot of detritus from what must have been a storm surge. There were many utility trucks out and about, putting things right, but no traffic. Our biggest hold-up was the little Bayou Sauvage bridge, at the back of Venetian Isles, which was down to one lane, with each side taking turns. It took about 20 minutes for us to cross, but once over, it was a breeze getting home. Meanwhile, we kept hearing on the radio how bad things were on I-10. (Hm, maybe I shouldn't blog about the Highway 90 route -- there's a small chance that local folks will read this and then clog the artery during the next evacuation.)
Friday late afternoon as we entered the city, we saw what Gustav had done. Tree limbs, branches, and piles and piles of twigs and leaves were everywhere, and in the inhabited neighborhoods had already been swept and raked into heaps at the curbs. Lots of people lost bits of siding, roof tiles and shingles, gutters, and window panes from their houses; even more commercial establishments had their large signs busted, twisted, or knocked down. Lots and lots of power outages and traffic lights not working at all. A house on St. Charles Avenue had a giant old magnolia tree leaning on the front porch and part of the roof. We held our breaths as to what we might find when we got home.
As we pulled up, our street was littered with roof shingles -- on the sidewalk, in the neutral ground, in the street, and even on our front porch. Luckily, they were not from our house. Our next-door neighbors, in the 1840s mansion that has been converted to condos, lost some boards from the side of the house that faces ours, and at least one window was broken. Our electricity was on, thank god, but there was no cable or Internet connection. (You know you're hard up when you're walking around your house with your laptop, trying to see if you can pick up a wireless signal from any of the neighbors.) We were ecstatic to find all cable service restored on Monday night (yesterday, as I write this) -- we were even more excited to learn that Cox Cable was going to credit us for that week of non-service. Every little bit helps.
Around New Orleans, approximately 50-odd houses, damaged by Katrina, were done in by Gustav and have collapsed completely, after sagging progressively for 3 years. One, on Magnolia and Upperline near Baptist Hospital, hasn't finished falling yet and looks like it could crash down any second. Another house in Central City, had been carefully gutted with someone putting in a new subfloor when Gustav hit, collapsing what was left of the walls, and plunking the roof, all in one piece, onto the floor. I felt bad for the person who had been doing the work, only to have this happen.
I've blogged before about how the neutral ground signs are a barometer of Life in the New Big Easy -- by the Saturday after Gustav, neutral grounds sprouted signs saying, "Tree Removal", "Repairs", and "Debris Removal." You also started seeing home made signs everywhere saying, "Welcome Home" or "Welcome Back." At banks, at cafes, at churches, at the Salvation Army returning evacuee center, at the drugstore, the signs recognize our shared plight and our shared relief at being back home. A sushi place on Magazine Street near our house had a blackboard menu outside on the sidewalk with a list of offerings that included a "Welcome Home roll." On Sunday, we greeted each other at church, "Welcome home! Welcome back!" One local radio station is running a promo with testimony from New Orleanians on why this is home and how much they love this place, hurricanes be damned. Makes me choke up a little every time I hear it.
The church sustained minor damage. The large plexiglass windows in our Fellowship Hall blew out and lots of water came in to pool on the tile floor -- but luckily did not hurt the floor. A window in a storage area also broke. The sign out front was completely blown away, but then we were planning to replace it anyway. Lost power for a time, but the refrigerator had been emptied, so nothing was lost. We were lucky.
Most of my parishioners are OK. One or two have minor roof damage, or lost power for a number of hours, but most had transferred food to ice chests, and thus did not lose any perishables. Most either had an OK evacuation experience, and a few, like Big Man and I, actually had FUN evacuations (which a parishioner of mine described as "hurrications"), and a smaller number of my folk rode out the storm at home or at a neighbor's house. No injuries, thank god. Emotions and spirits are another story. If folks are fragile, to have a hurricane threat right during the Katrina anniversary is a hard thing.
Sunday after services, we brought the church computers down from where they had been stored for safekeeping, and hooked everything back up. I changed the message on the church machine and removed all the hurricane signs from the church doors. A larger congregation on Sunday than I expected, but no Order of Service. But we were all together, and able to share what happened to us, how we felt.
And so we return to whatever is normal for us, for this place, for this time. What else is there to do, but cope and move forward?
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Hurricane Gustav
As we watched Gustav in the Gulf, it began to get more and more obvious we'd almost certainly have to evacuate. The proposition started to shape itself as WHEN will we have to leave, and not WILL we have to leave. By Wednesday, I was pulling together clothes for both Big Man and me, and thinking about what else we'd need to bring. Unfortunately, lulled into a false sense of security by Hurricane Faye, and bothered by an empty cupboard since our return from vacation, Big Man and I went out and made groceries on Monday -- BIG groceries, filling the house, the fridge, and the freezer with something like $350 worth of food, both perishable and nonperishable. My sister L hollered at me when she found out, "What were you thinking??" and the truth was, I wasn't thinking. I guess those 15 years I spent away from the city made me forget about hurricane season and how you always have to be on the alert, keeping your larder low and easy to pack.
Thursday I had planned to loan my car to my sister L, but that was abandoned when we discovered I had yet another flat tire. (With all the debris, New Orleans is flat tire central since Katrina, and my car is a case in point: I've had *3* flat tires in the year I've been home.) Our favorite quick and cheap repair and used tire place is across the river, and we headed there after Big Man got up. While we waited for the repair, we had a conversation with the Creole gentleman next to us, who showed us what he thought was an essential piece of hurricane preparation: a gas can full of gas to help you get through the chaos of evacuation. It was an "aha" moment for us.
After getting the tire fixed, we headed to Academy to get a large ice chest so we could do our best to preserve all that meat and all those frozen veggies. Academy, a favorite store of ours, had moved hurricane items -- giant water jugs, gas cans, ice chests, lanterns, battery-operated fans, crank radios, waterproof match holders -- to the very front of the store. We got the ice chest we had originally come for (debating for a LONG time over relative merits and sizes), a 5-gallon water jug, as well as the gas can recommended by our new friend, and a new pair of athletic shoes for Big Man. We were surprised that Academy was not as crowded as we had feared, but it turned out that most folks were vacillating over preparing for the storm, and that all the Academy stores were jam-packed just a few days later.
We could not decide where to evacuate. Our choices were above I-12 in Slidell, where my one of my sisters and her family has relocated after the loss of their house in Chalmette after Katrina, and my brother and his wife's house a few miles east of Pensacola, Florida. Ironically, we had been planning for some time to spend Labor Day weekend at the latter place, but as Gustav approached, we went back and forth, back and forth, over where we wanted to go. Ar first we settled on Slidell, it being closer and my brother-in-law having a couple of back-up generators, in case they lost power. But more and more, as the storm got closer, it seemed to make more sense to go further away.
Or maybe it wasn't exactly that it made sense. Maybe sense didn't have much to do with it. It was the Katrina anniversary, and everyone was on edge, anxious, jumpy, close to tears. I made the mistake of reading Tom Piazza's City of Refuge, his Katrina novel that was chosen for "One Book, One New Orleans", and it upset me quite a bit. By the time Saturday rolled around, I had had enough. I wanted to leave town and I wanted to leave like *yesterday*. My preparations grew more and more frantic and almost panicked. In the end, I wanted to be as far away as we could go, and I wanted to be with loved ones. So Big Man agreed to Florida.
I spent Friday alternately looking at the hour-by-hour news reports about Gustav's dawdling in the Caribbean, packing, and trying to tie up loose ends at the church. Big Man went with me to the church office, and we moved my desk away from the window (in case the glass broke), picked up the hard drive, grabbed a couple of the more beloved art work from the walls, changed the outgoing message on the answering machine, and posted signs around the building canceling everything until Thursday. We unplugged things, and looked around, trying to decide if there was anything else to be done. We left with a funny feeling. What would all this look like when we returned?
But we could not leave town until Big Man was assured that he was not needed at the nightclub, and we did not get that assurance until he got home from work early Saturday morning. So our plan was to leave Saturday as soon as Big Man woke up.
I woke that morning, as usual, before Big Man and continued with packing, but it's true I was getting more and more upset, and even frightened. I wanted to be AWAY. Big Man finally woke up and we loaded the van with 10 gallons of water, the new ice chest absolutely full with just about everything from the fridge and freezer, a box with unperishable food items, 2 laundry baskets full of clean clothes, Big Man's horns and keyboard (practice goes on even in a hurricane), and the cat carrier with a mad-as-a-wet-hen Smokey Robinson (he hates his carrier). We checked the house and made it as secure as we could, propping open the doors of the empty refrigerator, per instructions from our landlady, reluctant to buy more appliances after another hurricane's power outages. We were on our way by 2 pm; with noises being made about "encouraging" evacuation, we decided Highway 90 was our best bet.
The drive along 90 was an exercise in nostalgia and patience. Nostalgia because I don't think I've driven that route in 30+ years; patience because of all the traffic. (Although it wasn't near the gridlock that I-10 was.) The drive to Pensacola, which should have taken 3 hours if done under normal circumstances on the interstate, took us fully 7 hours. (To be fair, however, it must be noted that we stopped for a half-hour in Biloxi so that Big Man could swim in the Gulf for a little bit.) The same drive took my older sister B 12 hours to do. She arrived all frazzled from the traffic and the long drive.
We unloaded all our stuff from our refrigerator into the fridge in my brother and sister-in-law's rec room. Then B did the same. Later, my sister-in-law's brother and his wife arrived, also with the contents of their kitchen, and then her dad, with the stuff from HIS. All told, we ended up stuffed with the food from 4 families, some of it defrosting. We've been eating royally -- we began with pork tenderloin and pasta on Saturday night, hot dog for lunch and red beans and rice with sausage for dinner on Sunday, and Labor Day we ate hurricane thanksgiving, with roasted turkey and crabmeat stuffing and macaroni and cheese. Monday is barbeque pork shoulder, since that was also defrosting. (Big Man and I were lucky -- the new ice chest worked great, and none of our food had defrosted or was in the process of defrosting when we arrived.)
Hurricane Gustav's bands moved into this section of Florida early Monday morning -- along with tornado watches. The wind was terrific, the rain pounded periodically as the bands went through, and the water rose in the boat canal behind the house up to the sidewalk. The metal roof in the sunroom/rec room began to leak like crazy, all of us moving the furniture around to avoid the wet spots. The closest tornado to us passed 10 miles from where we were. The sky remained heavily clouded all day, with rain becoming increasingly less frequent. Tuesday there was still tornado warnings and predictions of heavy thunderstorms all day.
We spend our time reading, doing jigsaw puzzles, playing computer solitaire (the house is now home to 4 laptops), watching TV, arguing politics, and playing Scrabble -- things we might have been doing anyway on a rainy Labor Day weekend, even without a hurricane.
News on the TV tells us that power is out in widespread areas in the city, and there's scattered reports of wind damage to roofs and buildings. We are expecting to get official word of when we all can go home sometime today (Tuesday), and it is expected to be some time on Thursday or maybe Friday. Schools in NOLA are closed until Monday, when hopefully, things will be back to "normal."
Things could have been way worse. We are thankful for the near-miss, for the love of family, and for all the pretty-well organized preparations back in the city (unlike 3 years ago). Our family "evacuation center" has great food, 2 bathrooms, 4 working TVs with cable service, and electric power. Things could be much worse.
Thursday I had planned to loan my car to my sister L, but that was abandoned when we discovered I had yet another flat tire. (With all the debris, New Orleans is flat tire central since Katrina, and my car is a case in point: I've had *3* flat tires in the year I've been home.) Our favorite quick and cheap repair and used tire place is across the river, and we headed there after Big Man got up. While we waited for the repair, we had a conversation with the Creole gentleman next to us, who showed us what he thought was an essential piece of hurricane preparation: a gas can full of gas to help you get through the chaos of evacuation. It was an "aha" moment for us.
After getting the tire fixed, we headed to Academy to get a large ice chest so we could do our best to preserve all that meat and all those frozen veggies. Academy, a favorite store of ours, had moved hurricane items -- giant water jugs, gas cans, ice chests, lanterns, battery-operated fans, crank radios, waterproof match holders -- to the very front of the store. We got the ice chest we had originally come for (debating for a LONG time over relative merits and sizes), a 5-gallon water jug, as well as the gas can recommended by our new friend, and a new pair of athletic shoes for Big Man. We were surprised that Academy was not as crowded as we had feared, but it turned out that most folks were vacillating over preparing for the storm, and that all the Academy stores were jam-packed just a few days later.
We could not decide where to evacuate. Our choices were above I-12 in Slidell, where my one of my sisters and her family has relocated after the loss of their house in Chalmette after Katrina, and my brother and his wife's house a few miles east of Pensacola, Florida. Ironically, we had been planning for some time to spend Labor Day weekend at the latter place, but as Gustav approached, we went back and forth, back and forth, over where we wanted to go. Ar first we settled on Slidell, it being closer and my brother-in-law having a couple of back-up generators, in case they lost power. But more and more, as the storm got closer, it seemed to make more sense to go further away.
Or maybe it wasn't exactly that it made sense. Maybe sense didn't have much to do with it. It was the Katrina anniversary, and everyone was on edge, anxious, jumpy, close to tears. I made the mistake of reading Tom Piazza's City of Refuge, his Katrina novel that was chosen for "One Book, One New Orleans", and it upset me quite a bit. By the time Saturday rolled around, I had had enough. I wanted to leave town and I wanted to leave like *yesterday*. My preparations grew more and more frantic and almost panicked. In the end, I wanted to be as far away as we could go, and I wanted to be with loved ones. So Big Man agreed to Florida.
I spent Friday alternately looking at the hour-by-hour news reports about Gustav's dawdling in the Caribbean, packing, and trying to tie up loose ends at the church. Big Man went with me to the church office, and we moved my desk away from the window (in case the glass broke), picked up the hard drive, grabbed a couple of the more beloved art work from the walls, changed the outgoing message on the answering machine, and posted signs around the building canceling everything until Thursday. We unplugged things, and looked around, trying to decide if there was anything else to be done. We left with a funny feeling. What would all this look like when we returned?
But we could not leave town until Big Man was assured that he was not needed at the nightclub, and we did not get that assurance until he got home from work early Saturday morning. So our plan was to leave Saturday as soon as Big Man woke up.
I woke that morning, as usual, before Big Man and continued with packing, but it's true I was getting more and more upset, and even frightened. I wanted to be AWAY. Big Man finally woke up and we loaded the van with 10 gallons of water, the new ice chest absolutely full with just about everything from the fridge and freezer, a box with unperishable food items, 2 laundry baskets full of clean clothes, Big Man's horns and keyboard (practice goes on even in a hurricane), and the cat carrier with a mad-as-a-wet-hen Smokey Robinson (he hates his carrier). We checked the house and made it as secure as we could, propping open the doors of the empty refrigerator, per instructions from our landlady, reluctant to buy more appliances after another hurricane's power outages. We were on our way by 2 pm; with noises being made about "encouraging" evacuation, we decided Highway 90 was our best bet.
The drive along 90 was an exercise in nostalgia and patience. Nostalgia because I don't think I've driven that route in 30+ years; patience because of all the traffic. (Although it wasn't near the gridlock that I-10 was.) The drive to Pensacola, which should have taken 3 hours if done under normal circumstances on the interstate, took us fully 7 hours. (To be fair, however, it must be noted that we stopped for a half-hour in Biloxi so that Big Man could swim in the Gulf for a little bit.) The same drive took my older sister B 12 hours to do. She arrived all frazzled from the traffic and the long drive.
We unloaded all our stuff from our refrigerator into the fridge in my brother and sister-in-law's rec room. Then B did the same. Later, my sister-in-law's brother and his wife arrived, also with the contents of their kitchen, and then her dad, with the stuff from HIS. All told, we ended up stuffed with the food from 4 families, some of it defrosting. We've been eating royally -- we began with pork tenderloin and pasta on Saturday night, hot dog for lunch and red beans and rice with sausage for dinner on Sunday, and Labor Day we ate hurricane thanksgiving, with roasted turkey and crabmeat stuffing and macaroni and cheese. Monday is barbeque pork shoulder, since that was also defrosting. (Big Man and I were lucky -- the new ice chest worked great, and none of our food had defrosted or was in the process of defrosting when we arrived.)
Hurricane Gustav's bands moved into this section of Florida early Monday morning -- along with tornado watches. The wind was terrific, the rain pounded periodically as the bands went through, and the water rose in the boat canal behind the house up to the sidewalk. The metal roof in the sunroom/rec room began to leak like crazy, all of us moving the furniture around to avoid the wet spots. The closest tornado to us passed 10 miles from where we were. The sky remained heavily clouded all day, with rain becoming increasingly less frequent. Tuesday there was still tornado warnings and predictions of heavy thunderstorms all day.
We spend our time reading, doing jigsaw puzzles, playing computer solitaire (the house is now home to 4 laptops), watching TV, arguing politics, and playing Scrabble -- things we might have been doing anyway on a rainy Labor Day weekend, even without a hurricane.
News on the TV tells us that power is out in widespread areas in the city, and there's scattered reports of wind damage to roofs and buildings. We are expecting to get official word of when we all can go home sometime today (Tuesday), and it is expected to be some time on Thursday or maybe Friday. Schools in NOLA are closed until Monday, when hopefully, things will be back to "normal."
Things could have been way worse. We are thankful for the near-miss, for the love of family, and for all the pretty-well organized preparations back in the city (unlike 3 years ago). Our family "evacuation center" has great food, 2 bathrooms, 4 working TVs with cable service, and electric power. Things could be much worse.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
As the Katrina Anniversary approaches, emotions are running high in the church I serve and in the greater New Orleans area. What happened to us would be unreal if it weren't that we have to look at the evidence of it every single day. There are still neighborhoods even Uptown -- not just Lakeview, Gentilly, and the Lower 9 -- with ruined boarded-up houses, streets with no street signs, blue FEMA tarp everywhere, and Grand Canyon potholes in the streets (even major arteries). You can always tell experienced native drivers, because they're the ones automatically making wide swerves around the known road hazards, while the newbies plow straight ahead, dropping off "cliffs" and falling into big gaps in the road. Things that ought to be fixed RIGHT AWAY are left to rack and ruin -- like the smashed wooden utility pole looming dangerously over the corner at Felicity and Simon Bolivar, apparently held up by nothing except the electric wires.
Amazingly, proving the old saying that you can get used to anything, we begin to be inured to these sights and experiences.
I was asked by the Mayor's Office to participate in the city's interfaith Katrina Memorial in Jackson Square on Friday evening. My disgust with the poor performance of the incumbent Mayor and U.S. president over Katrina made me think twice about accepting. (I wasn't sure I wanted to share a platform with the Mayor.) In the end, I decided it was more important for me to be there than to make some kind of flimsy, ineffective protest by staying away. It's been a REAL challenge, trying to compose something that doesn't indict, even if only by implication, the Mayor and the president and the Corps of Engineers and the insurance companies and .... (Well, you get the idea.) I'm sure I'll have all these feelings under control (mostly) by the time the event rolls around at the end of this week.
My church will hold its 3rd annual Katrina Dinner on Saturday night, along with the ritual based loosely on the Passover seder that was developed by Justin Lundgren, a New Orleanian, soon after the Storm . We eat our favorite New Orleans foods (pralines for sweetness, dill pickles for bitterness), the youngest children present ask ritual questions, and we always keep an empty chair for all those New Orleanians who have not been able, or have not been allowed to, come home.
The rebuilding and recovery of our poor building goes very, very slowly. (If it went any more slowly, it wouldn't even be happening.) I'm still preaching from a flimsy and rusty music stand, trying to be a good sport about it. The floor in the Sanctuary is still scarred and pitted bare concrete, the water line is still visible above the new paneled wainscoting, and the ceiling shows missing and drooping acoustic tiles (which weren't attractive even before Katrina). The chapel has no electricity, but at least now has a new bamboo floor. The RE wing, with the exception of the new admin and minister's offices, has no floor, except for painted (pitted) concrete. The area where the kitchen and old board room used to be has at least been cleared and gutted, and is ready for the construction of the planned commercial kitchen that will be shared with a local AIDS agency. We hope to begin construction this fall, as soon as engineering plans and permits are taken care of.
So much of church life seems on hold -- we can't easily hold regular potlucks or dinners or social gatherings without a kitchen, and the unfinished, even ugly, appearance of the Sanctuary requires a suspension of feelings and awareness for a good worship atmosphere. Sometimes it all seems overwhelming.
And yet...
And yet there are many hopeful, happy signs. The people who live here, who've always lived here or who've moved here since It happened, are determined and committed, and absolutely united in their/our love for the city. As Ned Sublette wrote in the coda to his new book, "The World That Made New Orleans": "They refused to cooperate in their own erasure." He was writing about Mardi Gras Indians, but it now stands as a fitting declaration for all of us New Orleanians.
We refuse to cooperate in our own erasure, our own Disneyfication, our own irrelevance. We stand together, united in our affection for our culture, our music, our food, our way of life, our beloved, still beautiful city. We will not be erased or removed.
We are New Orleans. We go on.
Amazingly, proving the old saying that you can get used to anything, we begin to be inured to these sights and experiences.
I was asked by the Mayor's Office to participate in the city's interfaith Katrina Memorial in Jackson Square on Friday evening. My disgust with the poor performance of the incumbent Mayor and U.S. president over Katrina made me think twice about accepting. (I wasn't sure I wanted to share a platform with the Mayor.) In the end, I decided it was more important for me to be there than to make some kind of flimsy, ineffective protest by staying away. It's been a REAL challenge, trying to compose something that doesn't indict, even if only by implication, the Mayor and the president and the Corps of Engineers and the insurance companies and .... (Well, you get the idea.) I'm sure I'll have all these feelings under control (mostly) by the time the event rolls around at the end of this week.
My church will hold its 3rd annual Katrina Dinner on Saturday night, along with the ritual based loosely on the Passover seder that was developed by Justin Lundgren, a New Orleanian, soon after the Storm . We eat our favorite New Orleans foods (pralines for sweetness, dill pickles for bitterness), the youngest children present ask ritual questions, and we always keep an empty chair for all those New Orleanians who have not been able, or have not been allowed to, come home.
The rebuilding and recovery of our poor building goes very, very slowly. (If it went any more slowly, it wouldn't even be happening.) I'm still preaching from a flimsy and rusty music stand, trying to be a good sport about it. The floor in the Sanctuary is still scarred and pitted bare concrete, the water line is still visible above the new paneled wainscoting, and the ceiling shows missing and drooping acoustic tiles (which weren't attractive even before Katrina). The chapel has no electricity, but at least now has a new bamboo floor. The RE wing, with the exception of the new admin and minister's offices, has no floor, except for painted (pitted) concrete. The area where the kitchen and old board room used to be has at least been cleared and gutted, and is ready for the construction of the planned commercial kitchen that will be shared with a local AIDS agency. We hope to begin construction this fall, as soon as engineering plans and permits are taken care of.
So much of church life seems on hold -- we can't easily hold regular potlucks or dinners or social gatherings without a kitchen, and the unfinished, even ugly, appearance of the Sanctuary requires a suspension of feelings and awareness for a good worship atmosphere. Sometimes it all seems overwhelming.
And yet...
And yet there are many hopeful, happy signs. The people who live here, who've always lived here or who've moved here since It happened, are determined and committed, and absolutely united in their/our love for the city. As Ned Sublette wrote in the coda to his new book, "The World That Made New Orleans": "They refused to cooperate in their own erasure." He was writing about Mardi Gras Indians, but it now stands as a fitting declaration for all of us New Orleanians.
We refuse to cooperate in our own erasure, our own Disneyfication, our own irrelevance. We stand together, united in our affection for our culture, our music, our food, our way of life, our beloved, still beautiful city. We will not be erased or removed.
We are New Orleans. We go on.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Drink and Draw
Add this to the long list of "Only in New Orleans" stuff:
The Circle Bar, St. Charles at Lee Circle (the one in the gorgeously decaying old house that was once, I believe, the home of the first woman physician in the city), has a new offering to attract customers on Sunday afternoons. It's called, appropriately enough, "Drink & Draw," and it features a live nude model and Happy Hour pricing on all drinks. You pay $20 for two hours, bring your own drawing pad, stretched canvas, or illustration board (or, knowing how folks are, blank typing paper or an old legal pad) and your favorite drawing and painting media (ball point pens, anyone?), and sketch away. For slight extra fee, there's an actual art teacher to help you improve, if you're that interested.
Regularly, there's a "show" of the works produced at the weekly Drink & Draw, at places like Surrey on Magazine (the food there is divine, but don't try to go for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays -- the waiting line practically goes around the block). From what I could observe, the finished works of "art" are pretty much what you would expect from folks who are drinking and drawing on a Sunday afternoon, but what the hey, most people are definitely NOT going to Drink & Draw because they are, or have aspirations to be, Great Artistes.
Only in New Orleans. Sit in a decadent old mansion on a Sunday afternoon, look at a naked woman, drink low-priced drinks, and draw or paint (or pretend to draw and paint). How can you beat that?
I love this city.
The Circle Bar, St. Charles at Lee Circle (the one in the gorgeously decaying old house that was once, I believe, the home of the first woman physician in the city), has a new offering to attract customers on Sunday afternoons. It's called, appropriately enough, "Drink & Draw," and it features a live nude model and Happy Hour pricing on all drinks. You pay $20 for two hours, bring your own drawing pad, stretched canvas, or illustration board (or, knowing how folks are, blank typing paper or an old legal pad) and your favorite drawing and painting media (ball point pens, anyone?), and sketch away. For slight extra fee, there's an actual art teacher to help you improve, if you're that interested.
Regularly, there's a "show" of the works produced at the weekly Drink & Draw, at places like Surrey on Magazine (the food there is divine, but don't try to go for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays -- the waiting line practically goes around the block). From what I could observe, the finished works of "art" are pretty much what you would expect from folks who are drinking and drawing on a Sunday afternoon, but what the hey, most people are definitely NOT going to Drink & Draw because they are, or have aspirations to be, Great Artistes.
Only in New Orleans. Sit in a decadent old mansion on a Sunday afternoon, look at a naked woman, drink low-priced drinks, and draw or paint (or pretend to draw and paint). How can you beat that?
I love this city.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
No Such Thing as a Private Conversation in NOLA
Big Man leaned across the restaurant table to the transplants from Tennessee, his eyes alight with merriment. "I'm serious," he said, "Unless you're in your car with the windows rolled up, or in your own home, there's absolutely no such thing as a private conversation in New Orleans." Our guests were already agape since a few minutes before, our waitress had "butted in" to the table's discussion of the exact boundaries of the Irish Channel, and given us the benefit of her opinion and experience. The good folks from Tennessee had never before experienced such a thing.
It happened to us again on Sunday, during the Satchmo Festival. We had taken refuge inside Coop's on Decatur for a seat, a restroom, and air-conditioning (drat the heat!), and had stayed to eat from their excellent fare. (You gotta love those lamb ribs! Man, I could eat like 5 orders!) We were seated at the long table that faces the entrance, and since there were only two of us, another couple was already seated at the other end. It didn't take more than a minute for us to be in conversation with the people at that end of the table, after the male half of the couple overheard part of our conversation and joined right in. When they were finished and left, and as the place got more crowded, more people were seated at that end, and the whole thing started up again.
I do not know of any other city where this is true, that strangers so readily talk to each other, where "eavesdropping" in order to join a conversation already in progress is so widely accepted, where at any moment in public you have to be ready to respond to the remarks of someone who, up to now, you didn't know at all. Big Man says you're likely to get comments from passersby while you are making groceries ("Oh, that's good stuff, we use it at my house" or "Honey, don't buy dat, it's a rip-off) and if your car windows are rolled down, somebody is apt to comment if they can overhear any part of your conversation, or even if they can just hear your radio.
This is SO characteristic of New Orleans. One time, the year after Katrina, my sister L accompanied a friend to Manhattan for a buying trip for furniture and decorating fabrics to rebuild the friend's flooded family home. I joined them just for the day from where I was living in suburban Philadelphia. At the end of our day-long "forced march" -- my sister does not believe in taking the subway, a bus, or, God forbid, a taxi, when you can just as well walk and "see more" -- we ate dinner at a little Spanish restaurant in Greenwich Village. While we were there, it began pouring rain, trapping us inside with the staff and the few customers from the neighborhood. The three of us were talking about New Orleans and the recovery process, and my sister noticed a man seated near us who seemed (to her) to be listening to us, and she began including him in our conversation. He was at first uncomfortable, but soon warmed to our Big Easy style. L ascertained that the man was from the neighborhood, and ate in this little restaurant several times a week. Spotting the only other customer in the place besides us and our new friend, L asked, "Do you know that guy?" Looking over, the man said, "I don't know him, but I've seen him in here before." "That's ridiculous," declared my sister, and she marched over to where the second man was seated, and introduced herself to him. "We're from New Orleans," she said, as if that explained everything, "and we can't stand to see people eating alone." She then introduced the two men to each other, and admonished them not to be strangers to each other. "Y'all see each other in here all the time," she chided them, "you don't have to be strangers."
I still get a little teary thinking about that incident, how three women from New Orleans, in the immediate wake of the Worst Thing That Could Happen, could still represent the spirit of our beloved city so well, introducing these New Yorkers to each other. I often think about those two men and wonder if they ever sat together after that, or if at least they nodded in a mildly friendly way to each other, remembering those crazy women from the Big Easy and how they spoke so easily to strangers.
There is no such thing as a private conversation in New Orleans because we're all just dying to get in your business, to contradict, to embellish, to share a clue about a restaurant, grocery store, or music club you haven't heard of, to give you directions, to offer unsolicited advice, to become your new best friend. We talk to people in elevators -- now how crazy is that? (A young adult parishioner of mine said she was so glad to home, where, she said, no one would think she was a bag lady if she greeted them on the street or in an elevator.) We don't know why Yankees think you can't say "good mornin'" on the street or "hey y'all" on elevators; we feel sorry for their self-imposed isolation.
Us, well, we've never met a stranger. There's just folks you haven't spoken to yet.
It happened to us again on Sunday, during the Satchmo Festival. We had taken refuge inside Coop's on Decatur for a seat, a restroom, and air-conditioning (drat the heat!), and had stayed to eat from their excellent fare. (You gotta love those lamb ribs! Man, I could eat like 5 orders!) We were seated at the long table that faces the entrance, and since there were only two of us, another couple was already seated at the other end. It didn't take more than a minute for us to be in conversation with the people at that end of the table, after the male half of the couple overheard part of our conversation and joined right in. When they were finished and left, and as the place got more crowded, more people were seated at that end, and the whole thing started up again.
I do not know of any other city where this is true, that strangers so readily talk to each other, where "eavesdropping" in order to join a conversation already in progress is so widely accepted, where at any moment in public you have to be ready to respond to the remarks of someone who, up to now, you didn't know at all. Big Man says you're likely to get comments from passersby while you are making groceries ("Oh, that's good stuff, we use it at my house" or "Honey, don't buy dat, it's a rip-off) and if your car windows are rolled down, somebody is apt to comment if they can overhear any part of your conversation, or even if they can just hear your radio.
This is SO characteristic of New Orleans. One time, the year after Katrina, my sister L accompanied a friend to Manhattan for a buying trip for furniture and decorating fabrics to rebuild the friend's flooded family home. I joined them just for the day from where I was living in suburban Philadelphia. At the end of our day-long "forced march" -- my sister does not believe in taking the subway, a bus, or, God forbid, a taxi, when you can just as well walk and "see more" -- we ate dinner at a little Spanish restaurant in Greenwich Village. While we were there, it began pouring rain, trapping us inside with the staff and the few customers from the neighborhood. The three of us were talking about New Orleans and the recovery process, and my sister noticed a man seated near us who seemed (to her) to be listening to us, and she began including him in our conversation. He was at first uncomfortable, but soon warmed to our Big Easy style. L ascertained that the man was from the neighborhood, and ate in this little restaurant several times a week. Spotting the only other customer in the place besides us and our new friend, L asked, "Do you know that guy?" Looking over, the man said, "I don't know him, but I've seen him in here before." "That's ridiculous," declared my sister, and she marched over to where the second man was seated, and introduced herself to him. "We're from New Orleans," she said, as if that explained everything, "and we can't stand to see people eating alone." She then introduced the two men to each other, and admonished them not to be strangers to each other. "Y'all see each other in here all the time," she chided them, "you don't have to be strangers."
I still get a little teary thinking about that incident, how three women from New Orleans, in the immediate wake of the Worst Thing That Could Happen, could still represent the spirit of our beloved city so well, introducing these New Yorkers to each other. I often think about those two men and wonder if they ever sat together after that, or if at least they nodded in a mildly friendly way to each other, remembering those crazy women from the Big Easy and how they spoke so easily to strangers.
There is no such thing as a private conversation in New Orleans because we're all just dying to get in your business, to contradict, to embellish, to share a clue about a restaurant, grocery store, or music club you haven't heard of, to give you directions, to offer unsolicited advice, to become your new best friend. We talk to people in elevators -- now how crazy is that? (A young adult parishioner of mine said she was so glad to home, where, she said, no one would think she was a bag lady if she greeted them on the street or in an elevator.) We don't know why Yankees think you can't say "good mornin'" on the street or "hey y'all" on elevators; we feel sorry for their self-imposed isolation.
Us, well, we've never met a stranger. There's just folks you haven't spoken to yet.
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