Many pixels are due for slaughter this weekend to note the ‘anniversary’ of the Katrina disaster, which drowned a still-disputed number of our fellow Americans, the day-to-day lives of a great many more, and (from its instant enshrinement as a media trope) any last mutual illusion that most of us, most of the time, shared some common goals if not common interests.
To start the discussion here, I asked commentor lamh32 permission to front-page what she wrote last night:
Hope this is not a downer, but I’ve had visitors for the past 2 – 3 weeks. My cuz was here last week, my sister is here til tomorrow.
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I planned to go home to NOLA tomorrow, cause my Aunts an Uncles are having a party. I was wishy-washy for a minute, but then I’m just now watching the HBO documentary by Spike Lee “If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise”. Being in DFW, away from Nola since Katrina, I missed all the damn corruption that occcurred. The documentary is 4 hours long, but it is worth your time to watch it. It’s illuminating! It seriously almost made we weep a number of times.
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All I can say is damn It’s a truth, that many don’t wanna see now, and didn’t wan to see then.
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Spike Lee did good!
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I gonna go home after I drop off my little sister. I’m gonna drive home. I’m gonna pray and let God lead me back safely. But I’m going regardless.
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One guy on the doc, said, that people from New Orleans, who may now be living somewhere else, even if where they are now has less crime, less poverty, higher income, they would all still if they could, pick up and move back to NOLA, if they could keep all the good! That is definitely true.
arguingwithsignposts
Lee’s documentary was great.
One thing that will be missing in the pixel massacre will be the areas outside of New Orleans that were destroyed by Katrina, and the areas impacted later by Hurricane Rita. I mean, what happened in New Orleans was a tragedy. But lots of Gulf Coast residents were impacted by Katrina. I hope they get some pixel love too.
I grew up on the Gulf Coast, and Hurricane Ike basically demolished the Bolivar Peninsula three years later.
There are few things more frightening than sitting through a night of a hurricane with no water, no electricity, and only the howling of the wind (a constant howl, not an occasional gust) to keep you company.
jacy
I’m not from New Orleans – I ended up here by accident. But my husband has been here since birth. He’s been skipping the news lately because it’s all Katrina all the time right now.
We have lots of stories. He knows personally two people who died. A priest who was swept into Lake Catherine when he stayed behind. An insurance agent on the Northshore who had a heart attack when a tree fell on him in his home.
We have a friend who ended up in the Superdome. He had sent his wife and children to Mississippi, but he stayed behind with his house in the 9th Ward. We have another close friend who swam to the Interstate with her two dogs, and walked for more than a day until she found a bus that would take both her and the dogs.
The thing I remember the most though was small. The baby was only three months old when the storm hit. We were without power for a week, and he had a terrible heat rash. We would lay with him between us on the bed at night, all the windows open, and fan him for hours with magazines. It was so dark. Pitch dark. And quiet. That’s what I remember, the absolute darkness and the sound of magazine pages fluttering.
Cat Lady
That was the longest most fucked up week of my life. I never would have believed even one day before it happened, that what I was watching on my tee vee was happening in America. I smoked then, and all I could do from 2000 miles away was make daily emails and phone calls to my Senators and my Representative leaving incoherent rage filled messages, and pace outside chain smoking and yelling to no one, OH MY GOD! It’s so painful to think about that, because I think now that was the harbinger of more to come.
I still do chuckle when I think of Michael Brown being called Drownie. Other than that, it’s all just FAIL.
Rick Massimo
That really was Ground Zero (reference intentional) for the “those Americans aren’t Real Americans so screw them” mentality, wasn’t it?
Not that the mentality never existed before, but 1) I don’t know whether it had been so blatant since Jim Crow and 2) I think even the mainstream Republicans were surprised what a large percentage of the country was willing to go along with it.
WereBear
That was when it really hit the fan; The People in Charge were both as callous and idiotic as I had feared.
Stillwater
I was living in Colorado when it happened, but I spent lots of time I NOLA as a kid – my dad lived there. I understand the frustration, panic, anger at distance that Cat Lady was describing. I distinctly remember the moment I finally snapped – it was watching Geraldo Rivera on Fox interviewing the relief coordinator (Coast Guard, Army? can’t remember which) who kept saying he couldn’t get his relief vehicles to where the people were stranded, while Geraldo, with a sorta controlled hysteria, showed him the Fox news van already there. The guy’s casual disregard for the suffering of people made me snap. That was four days into the nightmare. I lost my shit at that moment.
The lasting image of the Bush Presidency will be folks stranded on roof-tops with signs pleading for help, while military and police vehicles were busy blocking roads to contain them, to prevent ‘looting’.
geg6
Lee’s doc is simply…masterful. Just an amazing film. Captures everything tragic, outrageous, comic, infuriating, poetic, stunning, and, finally, joyful about this entire enduring catastrophe the people of New Orleans have been through and are still going through. I thought “When The Levees Broke” was a great film, but this one is brilliant. I sure hope Mitch Landrieu can get a handle on getting that fantastic city back to some sort of normality, but based on what I saw in that film, I don’t know if anyone can. And now with the BP oil spill, the outlook is even more bleak. It came home to me that Big Oil has pretty much taken over this country, watching this film. I despair for New Orleans, Louisiana, and this entire country. We are well and truly fucked and only likely to get fucked even harder come November.
As a kid, I was fascinated by history and the fall of empires, the British, the Romans. It is not nearly as interesting living through such a fall as a powerless citizen as the empire crumbles. It is too mean and brutish.
Omnes Omnibus
The thing that sticks in my personal memory is that my wife was working for a company that did catering for private aviation at the time and she came home from work through that period astounded that people who were flying out of the area on private planes would have the gall to complain that her company was unable to provide the brand of champagne that they had ordered. She said she would explain that with the storm and the flooding and the drownings, sometimes it was impossible to meet every detail of every order. She managed not to swear at them about the type of assholes that they were.
Cat Lady
@Cat Lady:
I started to like Shep Smith then – he did some amazing reporting, if amazing means honest, and if you’re being honest while reporting for Faux, it’s amazing. It’s been five years and he’s still at Faux which is amazing, cuz he still occasionally is honest. The FAIL was so obvious to everyone that even the media whores woke up to the fact that the emperor had no clothes. But like the whores they are, they’re back doing the bidding of their corporate pimps, and I apologize in advance for insulting prostitutes by comparing them to the Mika, Fluffy, and Chuckies of the world. Nothing was learned, and we’re apparently doomed to repeat the same obvious things over and over and over. The end.
ETA: Thinking about this again makes me want to sit with a bottle of gin and chain smoke three packs of cigarettes. That was fucked. up.
Stillwater
@Omnes Omnibus: She managed not to swear at them about the type of assholes that they were.
I don’t think I could have been so polite. This is gonna be a long weekend for me. Get too fucking angry. And if Brian Williams tries to get all patriotic about the ‘resilience’ and ‘spirit’ of Katrina survivors, how this is an exemplary story of American perseverance, and the strength of a uniquely American character, I’ll punch him in the fucking neck thru the TV screen. He’ll celebrate it, when it ought to be an epitaph.
Emma
I was never more proud of being a member of the American Library Association than I was when they decided to keep their annual convention in New Orleans even though they didn’t even know if the Conference Center was going to be ready. We were welcomed as heroes — the only time in my memory where we were the front page of the local paper.
I am fairly shy in person, but I overcame it that week so I could ask people their stories. Bartenders, taxi-drivers, waiters, whoever. And a couple of times I went back to the hotel room wanting to cry my eyes out.
Then I spent an afternoon at the Art Museum, where they had filled — and I mean crammed, not a single inch of space left — with photographs of the storm and the aftermath. Everyone who could supply one did. I stood in front of one of the pictures, a small snapshot, trying to figure out what was wrong, and then I realized what it was: the man rowing the boat was floating past one of the street signs… at the street sign’s level.
madmommy
I’ll be avoiding the news this weekend, though it’s been wall-to-wall Katrina for what seems like weeks already. I don’t want to remember what it was like, because it sucked. I evacuated that Saturday morning with the kids, the dog and 3 days worth of clothes while my husband stayed as a first responder. I couldn’t get in touch with him for several days, and it was more than a week before he could get to our house to see how badly it was damaged. I watched the news in horror, seeing places I knew well looking so different as to be almost unrecognizable. I saw a friend launching his boat on Bonnabel Blvd. to go help rescue people. We ended up staying at my mom’s for 6 weeks, then back down here to my mother-in-law’s for another month until our house was repaired.
I hate this time of year.
Elisabeth
@arguingwithsignposts:
I lived on the MS Gulf Coast during Katrina. We were, and many still are, quite angry that NOLA got all the media attention.
I know people who had almost nothing lose what little they had; I know people who had lots of things and lost them all. I know people who left their homes realizing they would never see what they left behind.
I remember the seventh-grader who watched her mother and sister get swept away in the storm surge. I wonder where she is now.
I also remember to this day feeling the walls shake in the wind, watching debris fly by and wonder how much of that was my house. I look at my cat, Frannie, and wonder how I could have put her in danger. I think of my other cat, Jack, and wonder whether I killed him by staying, when veterinarians were scarce in the aftermath and he was in kidney failure.
I thought I had worked through most of this but, obivously, I can’t wait until this anniversary has passed.
Jennifer
I’m not from New Orleans and never lived there, but I’ll never get over Katrina. The unvarnished racism and lack of concern for our own fellow citizens – I’ll just never be over it. As someone noted in Lee’s excellent documentary, a decision was made for a political response rather than a humanitarian one. 5 years on, I still find it unfathomable that the leadership of this country could be so crass in neglecting the immediate need for humanitarian aid of its own citizens. Or that there would be anyone who would have defended said neglect.
The aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans was exhibit A of what the norm would be in the Randian paradise proposed by our GOP brethren. The lack of concern for any and all who are not John Galt – that was a feature, not a bug, of the last administration.
Remember that grim joke, the one about “How does Bush feel about Roe vs. Wade?” with the response being “He doesn’t really care how you get out of New Orleans”? It was only somewhat sickly funny because it was so clearly true.
arguingwithsignposts
@Stillwater:
You obviously didn’t watch the Daily Show the other night, because he’s already talking about how NO has “adopted” him. I’d suggest locking up the sharp instruments.
Ruckus
@Jennifer:
Bush would never have considered that people suffer at all. He picked Chaney to be VP. He started wars. He hired people with the competence of toads. Because that is his level of competence. And worst of all, as bad as that joke is I don’t think he’d of gotten it.
And you are correct, Katrina was just a preview of how bad it would get if the idiot party comes back.
loon juice
Is anyone considering building a mosqu in new orleans? It is hallowed ground now.
Stillwater
@arguingwithsignposts: Aaaaarrrrggghhhhhhhh! Well, I know now that I have to do. And Brian Williams, if you’re reading this, pro-tip: keep your chin down.
arguingwithsignposts
@loon juice:
Silly loonjuice, there were too many brown people in NOLA for it to be considered a hallowed ground.
I cried several times when watching Lee’s documentary. I just kept thinking “In America? WTF?”
getsmartin
@Elisabeth:
I lived here on the Miss. Coast as well (still do) and can clearly relate to what you’ve related about the paucity of reporting about our plight here. The coast actually took the full impact of the storm. Had the levee system been adequately constructed and held, NOLA would have been fairly unscathed. That said, I spend significant time in the city and I’ve seen the bad stuff with my own eyes. The breadth of the disaster is incomprehensible and for whatever it’s worth, I don’t dwell on the uneven reporting of the disaster.
Must say, I was totally impressed and humbled by the legions of volunteers who arrived here for the post disaster recovery / rebuild. Their selfless labors truly made me take a critical look at myself and how I react to people in need.
SiubhanDuinne
I had been in NOLA for a convention not long before Katrina and visited the wonderful aquarium of the Americas. I understand it lost a lot of the animals, and that breaks my heart.
Not long before that trip I was in Biloxi for yet another convention, and took a little private time to go to Ocean SPrings and visit the wonderful and astonishing Walter Anderson museum. It was totally destroyed, so I understand. What a loss to art, and to Gulf Coast history and culture.
Haven’t been back to NOLA since then, but I was back in Biloxi about a year ago and saw a pretty interesting photo exhibit on well-known GC structures before Katrina, soon after, and reconstructed.
During actual Katrina and the days immediately following, I spent a lot of time on the phone with friends who had just given birth to twins. Whenever we talked, we were watching TV at the same time. So all the joy about the new babies was muted by the awful pictures coming out of the Gulf — and all the horrible post-Katrina stories were slightly balanced by the wonder of new life (“oh my god, LOOK at all those people in the Superdome — can you believe what Barbara Bush said? — and did I tell you, the boys spit up tonight, one on each shoulder, isn’t that adorable?” etc.)
Also, I seem to recall that I really liked Jean Meserve and Andserson Cooper for about two weeks there.
Mike in NC
Best exemplified by Barbara Bush’s notorious statement about how “this is all working out very well for them”.
freelancer
@Jennifer:
@arguingwithsignposts:
This is how I felt the entire time I watched this whole thing unfold live on TV from hundreds of miles away. I saw it as the biggest repudiation to every goddamn Bush ’04 voter, and I would have been so fucking smug about it if not for the gravity of the tragedy that happened there. Their entire campaign was about stoking fear and that they alone possessed the means with which to defend our National Security.
The subtext was pretty clear:
“Don’t vote for the other guy. He won’t protect you like we will. We will defend your home, we will respond swiftly. We. Are. Ready.”
Then, an unthinkable disaster happens on US Soil, and they knew about the danger and the possible havoc it could wreak for DAYS IN ADVANCE. And then you saw what we all saw and I was just so livid as to be resigned to myself, meanwhile my extended family bitching about all the N-bombs who were looting and why didn’t people just walk out of NOLA, and I don’t know. I’m still pissed about Katrina to this day and I’ve never even been to Louisiana.
Cat Lady
Shameful.
I’ve never been to NOLA either, or a lot of other places in this country, but so what – I’m an American. I kept ranting to anyone who would listen that week, but especially on my phone rants to my Congressmen, “These are AMERICANS! THESE ARE AMERICANS! What is wrong with us?! HOW IS THIS HAPPENING! IN AMERICA!? What are you doing about this! What is happening in this country!?! Over and over and over, for days. That was a shameful and revealing week, and like you, even though I wasn’t there, I remember the shame and the impotence, and it still burns hot.
God damn that Bush asshole to eternal hell. Like Letterman said that week about Bush, why shouldn’t he drink – he’s got everyone else drinking. ha ha ha
demo woman
Katrina evacuees could shop where I volunteer in Atlanta for clothing, furniture, food or what ever they needed. I had one person who was able to save some belongings but was looking for her mother. This was just a few weeks after Katrina and at that point she just hoping to go home. I walked around the store with her and she finally found something, a CD of Harry Connick Jr. and she just broke down in tears. She left with a few items of clothing, a CD and a big hug. Most of us are fortunate enough that we never have to live through that type of loss.
When I mentioned that they could shop, I should have said that they had coupons for whatever they wanted.
Mnemosyne
@Rick Massimo:
But it’s also when the tide started to turn. At the time, I worked with a guy who was a diehard Republican and he was absolutely livid about what was happening and the fuckups of the Bush administration. Katrina opened the eyes of a whole lot of people who had been going along with the Republican program because they didn’t really care what happened to people in the Middle East, but Katrina made them realize that Republican politicians didn’t give a shit about American citizens, either.
Katrina is a big part of why the Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 — once reasonably sensible people figured out that the Republicans would literally leave them to die in a disaster, they fled in droves.
Nick
I have to say, the only time I ever emotional over a news story was Katrina….not 9/11, not the tsunami, not the Haiti Earthquake, Katrina, and it wasn’t the suffering, because working in the news business, I’ve become desensitized to it. It was the fact that it was embarrassing. I felt humiliated as an American. I had to face my cousins overseas and explain to them how we, the most powerful country on earth, the country our ancestors were so desperate to come to, almost to the point where they were willing to die to do it, couldn’t take care of its own people, in one of its pride cities, one of its top tourist spots, the site of an epic military victory. What happened to us?
Katrina was the point I realized we were finished as a world power. It was also the point where I thought the American people had decided the empire wasn’t worth sustaining if our own people are suffering. I think now that I might have been wrong. I think had it been Beverly Hills, Georgetown, South Beach or the Upper East Side that went through what New Orleans went through, America would’ve responded in a very different way.
AAbshier
Elisabeth @13: I lived in Gulfport for six months in 1988, working at the Marine Life Aquarium, so I was more than usually interested in the fate of your city and what happened to the old aquarium. Saving the eight top deck dolphins, over half of which I had personally worked with, was probably the only bright spot in those weeks after the storm hit. I’m still stunned that they survived, considering how wrecked the actual facility was.
Last I heard the rebuilding money was going to the casinos, while homeowners, even five years on, are still waiting for funds. Sounds like Haley Barbour and the R’s to a tee.
demo woman
psycholinguist
Brian Williams needs to be punched in the mouth. I just turned off his “special anniversary report” because he went strait to the scary black guys with guns and decided to camp there a bit- not really seeming to get a sense of the irony when he said “we had to have cops watching our back so someone wouldn’t steal our car” TO GET THE FUCK OUT you douche. Somebody let us know if he mentions the people getting mowed down on the bridge as they were trying to get to safety.
My people on the Mississippi coast lost everything, and that storm came inland for miles and miles in Mississippi. Hattisburg looked like a bomb dropped on it – My brother and I loaded up the back of my truck with gasoline and guns and went down there to get my little brother and bring him back to Tennessee, his house was destroyed, his car was totaled, and he and a few other students had taken refuge with one of their professors, using his pool for drinking water.
Mike Furlan
@Mnemosyne:
The Governor, one Senator, and 6 of 7 US Representatives in LA are Republican.
Clearly, Katrina was a failure of Obama and the Democrats.
Nick
@Mike Furlan: Well for the rest of the country, Louisiana does not scream sensible.
PPP released a poll today that showed a third of Louisianans say the oil spill made them MORE supportive of offshore drilling and 90% supported it generally and all I kept thinking is…come again?
It’s like saying lung cancer makes you more supportive of smoking.
Mike Furlan
@Nick:
The point that some folks here are trying to make is that the response to Katrina was a Bush failure.
Clearly the people of Louisiana have spoken, and they were pleased.
The weather assisted “ethnic cleansing” was wildly popular.
Your point about Obama’s Katrina while true, doesn’t seem to make any sense at all. Evil I can understand, but not stupidity.
How do you explain it?
Nick
@Mike Furlan:
The President’s a black man with a Muslim name.
getsmartin
@SiubhanDuinne:
Ocean Springs was “mostly” spared by the storm (except for some of the flood prone areas) and the Walter Anderson museum is alive and well.
asiangrrlMN
I remember watching the whole thing unfold and becoming increasing more and more outraged and pained that it was happening. And, I was pissed off at all the pundits with their hoocoodanode attitude and people in real life being surprised/shocked by W’s woeful inability to respond. Seriously? This is who the fucker was. And, yeah, it was clear that had this happened in a different (read, less black) city, the response would have been MUCH different.
I remember watching a documentary on PBS about how scientists knew ahead of time this was going to happen and how they got blown off for their concern. It infuriated me all over again.
I haven’t watched the documentary yet. Not sure I want to go through the emotions again.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
For those of us who don’t get HBO anyone know how we can view the Spike Lee documentary?
arguingwithsignposts
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
The Doc is also available on DVD. You might check the local library. That’s how I saw it.
rachel
@freelancer:
Wow. You wouldn’t happen to be related to blackjackrocket by any chance?
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@arguingwithsignposts: Thanks – didn’t think of the library.
Steve T.
I was never really angry about Bush and the Rs’ response to Katrina. Seriously. But only because I could never have expected better from them.
We fled the city two days before landfall, going to a condo in Jackson, MS we had just bought specifically as a hurricane refuge. When we got power back — the storm did serious damage that far inland — I remember pacing in front of the TV watching CNN, feeling nothing but shock and horror. I would watch until I couldn’t stand to see any more and would turn it off. And in a bit I couldn’t stand to not see any more and would turn it on. And so the pendulum swung.
Bernard
being born and raised in New Orleans, losing property/things in Katrina is one thing. watching the white people go Nazi on the blacks was something else. the unvarnished truth was exposed. the whites here in New Orleans or at least a whole lot of them HATE Blacks to no end.
any thing good said by Brian Williams about blacks was just more “liberal” media bias. ask me to shut up my family members who think blacks are the reason Katrina ruined New Orleans. just ask me to respond to family members who blame it all on Blacks/shiftless, worthless, etc.
mindless hate that assure Republican majorities in Congress.
the PR campaign of the right works!!!! blacks vs white rather than rich vs poor. smart Republiklans.
the whole right wing mantra of “it’s all the Blacks fault America is so “screwed” up.” lol.
if only this weren’t the South. and only “if” were a skiff, we could go for a boat ride, as my father would say.
the Beck phenomenon is the Republican answer and it will prevail.
New Orleans will go back to be a backwater full of ignorant people. i love New Orleans in spite of the stupidity that characterizes the people.
South of I-10
I was on the “good” side of the storm, here in SW La. Everyone I know had someone from New Orleans staying with them. Afterward, the Cajundome was full of people being bussed out from the Superdome/Convention Center. We did what we could to help, and some good friends stayed at my parents’ camp for months. There were still people in the Cajundome and houses were all still full when Rita hit. I stayed with my parents for Rita, since my husband was working. Half of my neighbor’s pecan tree fell on our house, but it wasn’t too bad. At least I still had a house.
lamh31
Looks like it’s gonna be a rainy coupla days in NOLA, and i’m loving it. Made it safely to N’awlins. Gonna be here til monday. Not gonna spend much time online, but I just wanted to check in since Anne told me she was gonna post my comment. I’m gonna def post something longer In the next open thread on tuesday.
Laissez les bon temps roulez!!!!
Larkspur
Oh, lord, Katrina. I recall the very very first reports, suggesting that maybe New Orleans had dodged a bullet (a bullet that hit real hard elsewhere on the Gulf Coast), and then: hell on earth.
I remember hearing about “looters” vs. “people obtaining emergency supplies”. I remember there was a little kid named (I think) Larry Champagne who drove an entire busload of people to Houston. And I remember that stone-hearted Barbara Bush, who could have just shut up, but didn’t.
I recall hearing about a group of young black men breaking into a restaurant…and then opening it up while they cooked and served breakfast for anyone who wanted it.
I remember hearing about a little boy being evacuated with his family, and forced to leave his beloved little dog Snowball behind, because there was no plan in place for companion animals. The boy was beside himself, puking from heartbreak and anxiety.
I remember being ashamed, because I’m no good in the heat. I have this ancient Honda Civic that I bought without AC, because I was cutting corners, and I live in Northern California…and because I had no idea how fast that little car could heat up on a sunny day. I’m always looking for shady spots to park.
And there were my fellow citizens, without even a flimsy Honda Civic roof to block the sun, so hot, nowhere to go, little clean water to drink, and you’ve got your grandma with you. Your grandma.
And I remember my dear friend Kristi, lying unconscious in a hospice up in Little Rock, in the last stages of metastatic breast cancer. She’d hoped to see her 30th birthday, but she died September 1, 2005, a couple of years short. I remember thinking that at least she wasn’t in New Orleans, and at least she was spared seeing the destruction. It’s no comfort at all.
Rekster
Must agree with many of the comments regarding Spike Lee’s Documentary. It returned me to those days where I could not stop watching what happened in NOLA. I to was screaming at the TV that this is a city in the US, how can this happen?
I grew up on the Gulf Coast in Mobile and spent a scary night in the 60’s when Camille hit the coast and thought nothing could ever be as bad as that.
I am somewhat glad that my Mom and Dad weren’t around to see those scenes after Katrina for that surely would have killed them. I have a brother who lives on the West Bank and they lost very little though a daughter lost her new home in NOLA.
I saw Rachel Maddow the other night reporting from NOLA and as usual she did a superb job.
My heart breaks a little more whenever this time of the year comes around.
Steve T.
Another memory. My mother, an unstoppable force over 80, was treating herself to a solo tour through northern England and Scotland. She had resolved to avoid the news, and to think of nothing but her vacation. She was having breakfast in a B&B in Scotland, and after a while it registered that the voices on the radio in the kitchen kept talking about New Orleans. She asked her waiter, and he said, “Oh, it’s been destroyed.”
That got her attention.
She was quickly on the phone and reached my cellphone, so I could tell her that yes we were safe in Jackson. As safe as anyone could be at that time.