The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little:

Oh my. Teresa, Patrick, add my sympathies and well-wishes to the basket. If I were any nearer you than I am, I'd also add my offer of a place to crash away from the smells and the emotional freight, but I fear that Boulder, CO would be a bit of a drive.

When I was in college in Seattle, I came back from a visit home to the sight of police going in and out my boarding house front door and up and down the stairs. I didn't think much of it beyond "Keep out of everyone's way." Hauled self and luggage through living room and kitchen and into my room. Noticed a sign on the fridge that said, "WHERE IS MY STEREO?" Referred to a housemate's boombox which he'd left in the kitchen for general purposes. I remembered, just before I left, a particularly unpleasant upstairs tenant saying he was going to borrow it for just a bit. So I wrote on the note, "TALK TO [WHAT'SHISNAME]".

Then one of the police officers pulled me aside for questioning, and it became rapidly apparent that they'd discovered WHAT'SHISNAME dead on his bed just hours before my arrival. He'd evidently been like that about half a week.

So I went back to the note and added another inscription: "OOPS! NEVERMIND!" Then I got the hell out of the house for the rest of the day.

(Turns out that the deceased had probably pawned the boombox. It was entirely gone. My housemate was kind of annoyed about it, but got a few giggles out of my reaction to his note.)

I was lucky in that I never caught a whiff of the smell that alerted the upstairs tenants and prompted them to call the police--I think he hadn't been there long enough for it to spread. And the consensus appears to be that he'd been sick. Coughing a lot, I remember that much. No foul play. A friend took over the room and never did complain about odors, though I think the bed was replaced.

Anyway, more sympathies and hugs as needed. Be good to you.

Meh. Came back to report on Katrina: The Gathering, but of course y'all had already particled it. Well done.

Ah, well, and speaking of Barry Manilow--

Never, never, never, until such time as they begin successfully screening for weapons at the door, nevernevernever fall in love at the Copacabana.

Charles--thanks for posting that quote. I watched the briefing yesterday, but failed to take notes. His answer of "there has to be TEH PLAN" falls pretty damn short. People *died* waiting for TEH PLAN.

I do recall that Brown was also asked, "Are you worried about getting fired?" and "Will you be tendering your resignation?" His answer was "I serve at the pleasure of the President".

He was also asked, "Can you comment on why the Red Cross are being kept out of the city?" He sort of "um er well"d for a second, and then another official stepped between him and the microphones saying that "Mr. Brown won't be taking that question; we'll be getting you a better answer" from someone else, presumably from Homeland Security.

The briefing ended without that "better answer" ever materializing.

Every rule has its exception, but it's best not to bet the bank that you'll be it.

On redhead lassies: The jury is still out. Best guesses? If you meet her on the way to the fair, she's optional, but discouraged unless you have a mean right hook. If you first see her on your own land after inviting the Gypsies to camp there, she's Right Out (although you'll probably end up mad regardless, so best not let the Gypsies camp on your land in the first place). And if you see her rising out of a lake when you're half-dead of your wounds, she's compulsory if you want to arrive home with your shield rather than on it.

Is it just me, or does it seem that a whole bunch of the advice on this page is equally applicable to contracts with Publi$hAmer!ca?

Maybe I'm just naive, but I can't believe that Mayor Nagin's distress has all been nothing but orchestrated political showboating. That statement he's going to be famous for comes relatively late in the game; in the days before, reporters from local media (WWL, WDSU) had been pinging him daily, and I got the impression of someone in the thick of the disaster response from the beginning with first-hand knowledge of the situation. I believe his frustration with the slowness of the Feds ("They say it's coming, but it's not here!") has been genuine.

(His comments via WWL feuled a telephone argument I had with my mother Tuesday on the phone, where I reported him saying that FEMA still aren't there, promised supplies still aren't there, and she said That's not true, FEMA said on CNN that they sent aid.)

I can't comment on his political history, not having lived in the city since the mayorship of Marc Morial, but whatever it may be, the things Nagin's saying now ring true, and the distress he's broadcasting strikes me as real.

I'll turn a more cynical eye on him after his current complaints are addressed and FEMA aren't starving those remaining in the city.

If she invites you to court her in the kitchen, what with the Captain being out fishing, countersuggest that she let you take her out for a beer instead.

And, as a rule, your mother is always right.

I don't know if this is the best thread to post this on, but

http://www.moveon.org/

...has organized a housing drive.

To whoever said "Rememeber that the Red Cross isn't a first responder": Five days after the event isn't exactly a first response, either.

Anonymous: Your interpretation works well as far as "keep people from evacuating" goes, but how would Red Cross's traffic "encourage others to return"?

I have tried very hard, but I cannot come up with any interpretation that doesn't boil down to "you know how those po' folk will do anything for a handout".

Anyone who hasn't read/watched the interview with my Parish President posted over at ThinkProgress, please do. I think this was the interview that, along with the scandal of keeping the Red Cross away from the stranded, starving folks awaiting rescue, finally broke down all barriers to my assuming actual malice on the part of FEMA, Homeland Security, and Bush.

We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel. Yesterday — yesterday — FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines...

Gods bless Harry Lee and Aaron Broussard.

It's a wonderful source of info--I've heard from several people there that my parents' block is dry, too.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of racist sentiments regarding the looting floating around on that forum. Wade carefully.

Gods. Now the NOLA forums are reporting that those people still in the Bonnabel and West Esplanade area were fearing for their lives due to looters with guns going through whatever houses are unflooded.

Granted, that's a predominately white area that may simply assume that black people in the neighborhood are armed thugs; I don't know the truth of the matter. But, if true, there's certainly a difference between cleaning out the grocery store and committing armed robbery on frightened unevacuated neighbors.

Anna--I know you didn't mean that. It's a complex situation without the comfortable black&white morality my simplistic soul would like.

I've got the live coverage at WWLTV.com up right now, and I have to say that local news anchors and personages have seemed much more sensitive to the motives prompting some of the "looting"/"finding" going on. The... Sherriff of Baton Rouge? ...on the... State O. E. P.? I tuned in late ...responded to questions about looting with much sympathy and benefit of the doubt. Someone asked him about escalating violence, and he said it wasn't so much a climate of violence as it was of desperation, fear, frustration with the situation. I've heard that kind of generosity a lot over the past few days.

I guess this is why I haven't turned on the TV since Monday morning. I've been trying to stick with WWL, WDSU, and bloggers.

The main thrust of the press conference was the impending evacuation of the Superdome refugees to Houston.

adamsj--thank you for your kind offer. I am happy to report that today my mom and grandmother should be en route to the Atlanta area, where one of my mom's sisters lives.

My brother's crew, she says, will either head to a friend's house in Houston, or go with her to Atlanta. So they'll be out of hotels soon, too.

I'm in the sort of amusing position of being one of the family information hubs. Since I have a non-504, non-985 area code, people can actually get ahold of me.

I've also discovered, via a suggestion from my brother, that text messages can often connect where phone calls cannot. The Tinywords Haiku Site Mobile Subscription Page is a good resource for figuring out the email address corresponding to a given cell phone, based on phone number and carrier company.

And besides--haiku by moblie phone! Too cool.

I am duly chastised for my own hard-ass attitude towards looting. I admit, a lot of my anger yesterday was, "These people are victimizing their fellow victims! That's lower than low!" On the other hand, the reports I was hearing focussed on what sounded like opportunism: not desperate scrambling for the necessities of life, but organized expeditions to grab jewelry and electronics and such. Granted, as you all have been saying, barterable goods may well be life-savers when the opportunity to trade them arises; but it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt when you hear about looters shooting cops in the head.

I'm torn. On the one hand, I understand that if my mother owns jewelry, left behind in a house that is miraculously still intact, and when she finally returns home it's gone, it was probably taken by people who needed its cash value more than she. On the other hand, I can't get out of my mind her laments about never having invested for the future, and the way she called her tangible possessions "my retirement fund" in a less than tongue-in-cheek fashion.

I have never been a good judge of whether my own needs outweigh someone else's. It instinctually raises my hackles to see others make that call in their own favor when the result of that decision is armloads of others' pawnables. I freely acknowledge that my hackles may not be acting in the best interest of humanity.

Many waters cannot quench love;
Neither can the floods drown it.

Speaking of Guthrie tunes, I had begun plotting when I might next have a chance to go home on the City of New Orleans via the California Zephyr from Denver. Next year's French Quarter Festival was looking like a good excuse. I bet the FQ Fest will go on next year out of pure ornery, but I fear the trains might not yet be running in late April.

Wow, Kathryn, that's pretty dramatic.

I just heard the news from Mom, who heard it from Dad, who's still holed up at Touro Hospital.

I have nothing useful to add. Stay safe, everyone.

Mom finally called. She said she'd heard from Dad. He's OK! Thank the Gods. But he had some somber news--the pumping station practically in their backyard had its top blown right off. If the wind did that, it didn't exactly use kid gloves on their home. Mom is beginning to contemplate the phrase "all worldly possessions." But she's trying to put a good face on it. Yesterday on the phone, she said, "That'll teach me to collect stuff."

I'm glad to have the opportunity to mourn stuff, since it's looking like I have no people to mourn. (I hope.)

Watching the video at WDSU is heartbreaking. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who is now homeless, and to the whole city.

And, of course, the other cities in Katrina's path.

More live coverage via Daily Kos:

Live Coverage at WDSU.com

Right now talking about the on-site shelters. All the links to WWL seemed to have stopped working.

Oops. The live video switched back from Baton Rouge to New Orleans; the link appears now to be http://www.wwltv.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=beloint_wwltv&props=livenoad.

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