Good news

I just heard from my landlady, who got back into New Orleans today. She rescued Miss P, who is fine!

She said the house had minimal damage, though the tree in the backyard fell and smashed someone else's roof. It was still locked up and nothing was missing. So at the very least I should be able to salvage my kitchen stuff and CDs. There might be a problem with mold in the linens and clothes. It's possible that I will be able to move back into the house in December, though it will have to be thoroughly inspected before I will know for sure.

But at least I know something, and the news is mostly good, which is better than wondering and worrying.

Still, I'm in shock when I hear people on the news debating about whether New Orleans should be rebuilt, when I was living my life there just three weeks ago.

And the news is still upsetting--I was flipping through the issue of People magazine with the hurricane on the cover--there was an interview with Charmaine Neville, who described people getting pulled under water by alligators, and her own experience of being raped at knifepoint in a shelter. And on NPR, people describing trying to walk over the bridge to the dry land of the Westbank, and having National Guardsmen send them back at gun point. What a cluster fuck. Most of Lakeview and Gentilly and Mid City and the Ninth Ward will have to be razed. Just huge tracts of the city. I take some comfort that many of the neighborhoods I was most attached to have survived. Well, the architecture has survived. Whether the people and the businesses will return is another matter. Part of the Bywater, the Marigny, the Quarter, the Lower Garden District and the Irish Channel and the Riverbend are at least physically intact.

In the day, I'm busy and even sort of optimistic. I'm being forced to start all over, which is an opportunity, in a way. I'm trying to make a good start.

At night, though, I have bad dreams or I lie awake and mourn.

I take A's sarcastic point about how all the heroics he's heard about have been directed at saving pets; and thus how all the middle class people in New Orleans should have adopted a poor black person instead of a pet.

But I'm very happy to know that Miss P is okay and that I will be able to get her back. Hank will be glad to see his cat friend, too.