New Orleans.

We are here in New Orleans. The damage from the 2005 hurricane season actually became quietly noticable about an hour outside of Beaumont, Texas, where Rita came in. It started off as a few branches down on the ground here and there. Then, whole trees down. Then whole sections of trees down. And you would start to see more and more blue tarps on roof tops as you drove along. Then the debris piles became more noticeable. At first, you would drive by a house and think, "Wow. They sure are throwing out a whole bunch of stuff." Then, more homes had junk out by the driveway. Then, the piles became bigger. Then, we passed a HUGE pile of I-don't-know-what that was burning. This particular pile was at least a quarter acre in size and 20 feet high. By the time we drove through Beaumont, I would guess one in every six commercial signs was completely destroyed or damaged. The McDonalds signs fared the worst. They were damaged everywhere we drove from Beaumont east.

As night fell we drove into Louisiana. We saw two more huge debris piles burning outside of Lake Charles. And by huge I mean that these piles were easily acres in size. It was apocalyptic. The drive into New Orleans from Baton Rouge did not betray any great differences to us, as it was dark. The only thing about the drive that was odd, since we were on I-10, was that there were no 18-wheelers. We came into New Orleans at about 10:15 p.m. local time. We were diverted off of I-10 into Metairie, through a neighborhood that was flooded. As we left the highway, there were no streetlights. The streets were dark, and debris was EVERYWHERE, except in the streets. That had been cleaned up. For instance, you would see a plastic lawn chair and hundreds of pieces of micro-garbage in a front lawn, and the home itself would have the black lines from where the water once was. There are dead cars everywhere, dusted with dried mud in strange tan stripes. The road we were on eventually rolled passed the Metairie Cemetery, and that was pretty creepy to drive by in pitch dark. You could see the outlines of the crypts in the moonlight. We were able to get back into the City of New Orleans proper, and the electricity was on there. We found the way to our destination on St. Charles Street, and sat, stunned, at what we had just driven through to get there. There is a moldy smell throughout the city. I'm not sure if that was here before Katrina or not, but I can smell it.

Yesterday, we went down to the French Quarter and, from a visitor's point of view, all is well there. Those people and businesses are putting on one helluva show considering what lies just outside of the downtown area. We walked the dog for a bit and she really like the Quarter (see photo). I would take more pictures, but I find it really strange to just walk up to a trash pile and take a picture. It was "large broken/useless appliance pick-up day" in the Quarter, and we saw dozens of refrigerators sitting on curbs on every street we walked down. One refrigerator had a this message scrawled on it with magic marker: "Dick Cheney's heart inside." Most of the city, no matter where you are, still has broken tree branches just lying by the curbs, and there are random, huge debris piles everywhere you look. Fighter jets fly over every morning, and the military police ride around in desert-camo hummers, although they are fairly low-key. As fate would have it, Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin were on Capitol Hill testifying before Congress yesterday, and that is all the buzz around town. It was on every TV everyplace we went in the Quarter, and the local talk radio channel was also carrying it. Not surprisingly, the folks here are still angry about what happened that week. I overheard at least two very heated conversations about how the governor screwed up. Oh yeah, they keep finding bodies in attics, too.

We are staying in an old apartment building that is now a condominium. It is gorgeous. The windows are amazing, there is little to no storm damage, and we are up on the third floor looking down on St. Charles. All the houses and buildings along here are pretty amazing. They tested the streetcar line yesterday, so I did get to see a streetcar, even if it was pulled by a pickup truck. I am not used to city noises at all. A huge fire truck freak-out occured at some point in the night last night and woke us both straight up. We're used to quiet, so when people here say the city is a ghost town I have a little trouble believing that. There is the most amazing apartment building one block behind us. It is really old and strange--of course I adore it. It looks just like a haunted house. It is antebellum, brick, and has greenish-black iron railings and a huge iron fence around it. There are very tall shutters on very tall windows. It looks like no one has come home since the storm. I will get a picture of this fabulous place in here soon.

Until this moment, sitting in a coffee shop in Metairie, I have had trouble finding an internet connection that works. Although the City of New Orleans had a big to-do about their wireless internet service they were offering for free, I tried it yesterday with no luck. I had a strong signal, but no connection. I suppose that EVERYONE and their dog was using it, and there was no available bandwidth. So, yeah, it's free, but...you get what you pay for, don't you? I don't really trust government to do everything right, though. Especially here.