Cold Spaghetti

We have had a windy, rainy day and night. Last night, the rain started in torrents and continued through the day. According to the news, we’ve had more rain than Galveston and Houston — which I believe. Even a few tornadoes. The rain should stay for days.

Last night, low lying clouds were flying across the sky at unbelieveable speeds. Even Will noticed, pointing upwards and saying “sky!” with a tone of disbelief and wonder. It was very impressive.

Laughing with Granna 

Having fun with Granna! Will raided my parents’ bookshelf in their living room — a few wooden carved animals and some books. He was very intent on running around with one of the finds from the shelves explaining what it was to us over and over and over again: “Duckie! Duckie! Quack! Quack!” Then my Mom and Will started on a serious game of hide and seek. Playing this game with Will means you always end up with lots of tickles, hugs, and kisses! 

As Hurricane Rita, still a very strong category 4, moves on to Texas, we let out a huge sigh of relief. New Orleans will no doubt see some intense winds, but not a direct hit. It seems like Katrina was a good lesson for many in Texas and west Louisiana… so many folks on the news have been saying that they normally wouldn’t evacuate for a hurricane, but after Katrina, changed their minds.

My friend, Niki Wolf (formerly Peterman – you can see pictures from her visit to NOLA in the February archives), is in the touring company of Evita, currently showing in Houston. Her cast is stuck in the city, the prospect of leaving too daunting for a large cast with trucks and crew. They are holed up in the city’s Doubletree hotel and will be hunkering down among 600 guests to weather the storm in the interior hotel conference rooms.

Tulane University’s School of Public Health was temporarily set up in Houston and has shut down again. Our department (International Health and Development) head and several faculty were in Galveston; they’ve left. Two evacuations in a month! We have other friends in the area (like Bela’s brother and sister-in-law!) and are hoping that everyone is safe.

Meanwhile, friend Alex has tickets to fly into NOLA next Saturday. Paul is picking him up and they are planning on spending a few days in our city to assess damages to our homes and neighborhoods. Alex lives in a beautiful house in Lakeview, the charming family-oriented middle class neighborhood on the lake side of the city… a few short blocks from the 17th street levee breech. We are thankful that we don’t have the additional worry about this storm covering our thoughts.

In the last two days, we have had a sudden flood of incredible surprises that have us literally walking a little higher.

The Lemms, friends of ours from Michigan, sent a huge care package with a ton of clothes, fun kids CD, and even Halloween washcloths for Will! Then, a generous check came from Gary and Deb Scheib in Pennsylvania. (My Aunt Deb is the family photographer who takes all the great pictures at our family events!) And then, Paul’s company, SAIC, deposited a cash bonus and encouraging note to employees who have been displaced by the hurricane. Every act of kindness has made a big difference to us and we are so grateful and thankful!

Despite having two bouts of the dry heaves this morning in front of my very distressed child, I actually am feeling somewhat better some of the time. What helps:

– Herbal tea (peppermint and chamomile are my favorites)
– Ginger ale (the “diet chek”, a questionable-looking local generic, is actually quite good)
– Eggs
– Toast
– Yellow rice with peas and corn
– Salad
– Crackers (with and without peanut butter)
– Lying down

All this lying down makes me wonder what I’d be doing if a storm hadn’t ripped up our lives. I’d be just a few weeks from comps… just the thought makes my stomache do flips. The lack of work, absense of daycare, and total nothingness of being here is making me feel like a housewife… honestly, I really do believe it’s a terribly difficult job because I would loose my mind. I’m crafty and all that, but I don’t think I could handle it if my biggest daily acheivement was keeping the kids alive, making dinner, and getting extra points for some scrapbooking or something. Not to be crass, but shouldn’t we educated ladies be figuring out ways to have serious professional contributions in the world — but in line with our part-time, ever changing lives? If we don’t fight to make it exist, it’s not going to magically appear and lay itself at our feet. From that perspective, we’re not being kept down, we’re keeping ourselves down. Are we really that happy being kept women?

Will practices his “air guitar” on one of PapPap’s putters.

Unfortunately, the direct link may have problems. But you can also go here, look under the column for “Your Photos” and click on NOLA.com: Magazine Street.

The first 10 or so pictures are of our neighborhood. The Reginelli’s is one of our local pizza places; it’s where we found one of our favorite babysitters. St. Joe’s Bar is not two blocks from our house and is across the street from Whole Foods — both of which are featured in the photos (we live on Joseph Street). Little Laughter is around the corner from us. The stretch of Magazine between Octavia and Joseph is part of my morning walk to one of our neighborhood coffee shops, CC’s (also featured in the photos) where I study each morning. Not in these sets of photos but confirmed in others is that one of our neighbors perished as a result of the aftermath in the storm.

In short, these are photos that show the ravaged remains of our beloved lives. We will eventually (a distance of time we think best described in months) go back to our house, our home, our neighborhood. We are so happy to have a home to return to, but look warily toward that return. What we face is unknown and scary. Every day is full of uncertainy, waking and remembering, working to piece together what we have and what we can remember to try to make a temporary life while we plan for getting back to the one we miss. What is happening here goes much deeper than “stuff”, property, and replacement. No amount of FEMA money can cover that type of loss (let alone our deductibles). I’ve been feeling that the losses on the Gulf Coast keep getting tied back to finances and feel that it is important to remember that loss is so much more than numbers.

Paul sent this to our uptown mail group (a listserv for our neighborhood that Paul set up in the aftermath of the storm.) I wanted to share it here.

—-
For those of you who have not been following the forums on NoLa.com, I
wanted to share with you a message from Kenny Bellau. Kenny is a
professional cyclist who lives in uptown and stayed to weather out the
storm. In the aftermath, he started working with the rescuers since he
knew the city so well. He has been feeding information to his girlfriend
who has been posting updates to the forums on NoLa.com. Together they
have helped rescue countless numbers of people and animals as well as
provided a great bit of insight into the real situation in the city.
Kenny recently left the city for a few days to recover and posted the
following message which I found particularly poignant.

– Paul

Hello NOLA.

I am out of the city for a couple of days and I just wanted to say a few
things about what I have been through. First, I want to thank all the
people who helped me in so many ways from the outside. It was a bit
surreal being there and getting words of encouragement , messages of
gasoline drops and offers of food or any supplies I could find in some
of your houses was very reassuring and comforting. And the coordination
and information provided by Candy was invaluable. I wish I could have
done more for all the requests I received, but as you can imagine I got
extremely busy and was restricted to uptown.

I feel like I did some good, but honestly, I am consumed by an
overwhelming feeling of guilt. There were people I couldn’t get to, or
couldn’t convince to get in the boat. I honestly wish at times that I
had never gone in. One person asked me if I enjoyed what I was doing. I
can assure you that seeing dead Americans floating in the streets of New
Orleans was not enjoyable. The hardest pill for me to swallow was the
paint marks on all the brick houses in New Orleans East. The marks are
permanent. They signify that the house has been searched, how many dead
or alive and they say to me, “Goodbye”. The devastation is total and
final. New Orleans East will not be saved. It was so lonely and dark. I
couldn’t help but cry.

Please understand, no house was entered Uptown unless it was deemed
absolutely necessary based on the information we had. Believe me, the
National Guard is full of honest, hard working and caring people who do
their best to protect life and property. These kids are professionals
and it was recorded if there was an open door and patrols were increased
past houses that were not secured. Several times we found people so
incapacitated by starvation, that there was no possible way they could
answer the door. Often, we found no one. There was no other alternative,
but if you are still upset about your door, sue me.

I wish I could have done more. Every day, we would have to acquire new
boats, shuffle troops to the deep areas where the boats were parked,
search for looters and survivors and un-do all of this before 5PM. It
was hard, dangerous and occasionally rewarding work. If there was a dog
barking, there was a 50/50 chance there were people inside who were
hiding for one reason or another. We took with us every living creature
that would come in the boat. The dogs were the easiest, but sometimes we
would find houses full of people, all wanting to leave. The despair on
their faces was unforgettable as they had to leave their home and many
times you could witness the soldiers trying to hide their own tears.

I drew my weapon twice, (I sleep with it), had one man pull a gun on me,
captured looters, delivered water, begged and pleaded people to come
with me, almost punched a jerk of a pro golfer, hotwired and sank
countless boats and drove at over 40 MPH down Claiborne in a 24 foot
Skeeter getting a sick man to a doctor. This was no vacation. It was
hard, depressing work. One of the boats I used carried over 400 people
to safety.

So many tough decisions had to be made. I can’t tell you how many times
I had to leave people behind. Dehydration and starvation makes you crazy
and some people believed that if they leave their house that they would
never see it again. Mostly, they were right. Every dog I hear howling
will die. Every desperate cat or kitten crying for help will cry no
more. It hurt me beyond comprehension to leave behind any living being
that wanted to or needed to get in the boat. I was told not to use
force, and even though I don’t answer to those people, I would not rule
out forcibly removing someone to safe ground. That never had to happen.

I morn for your losses. I cry for the people we couldn’t save. And I
miss the city I once knew and loved. I wish I could have done more. We
were failed by our government and for several days, my American Flag
flew upside down.

Please believe me, that most of the people working on the boats, and
most of the people carrying M-16’s are there to help. We needed the Army
here 25 years ago. They are sad for us. They care about us and our
houses and many have expressed moving here. They truly want to help. I
would do anything for them. And when you return home, I hope you thank
them. They are doing the work our police force was untrained, unpaid and
unable to do. These guys truly are America’s best and they are all here
because they volunteered to be here.

I hope you find your family. I hope you come home. I hope all is well
with you and your home. And I hope you can forgive me for any thing that
I might have done to infringe on your privacy, your property or any
insult you might have taken from my words or actions. I was only trying
to save lives. I only wanted to help.

Kenny Bellau,Civilian Intelligence Liaison to the U.S. Army

I’m desperate. Who has suggestions on dealing with nausea? It’s 24-7, not just the morning, includes that awful metalic taste, and I’m miserable.