Hurricane Katrina: Being Back in New Orleans

Being back in New Orleans, my home city, is incredibly wonderful. These are some of the things I'm enjoying about life in New Orleans.

A PLACE WHERE YOU LIVE: This may sound odd, but I had an interesting impression the first time I returned to New Orleans after moving to North Carolina. I left New Orleans at the end of April 2006, and I drove back in October 2008 for my high school reunion. As I drove into Mississippi, I began to feel more and more at home, largely because the land is flat and there are lots of pine trees, which are familiar to me as a plentiful type of tree in Louisiana and Mississippi, north of New Orleans. Then, when I drove into New Orleans itself, I had an overwhelming sense of familiarity. Everything was familiar--the architecture, the streets, the vegetation, the speech patterns, the people. And this was my thought: New Orleans is a place where you live. North Carolina is a place where you go. I'm trying to live in a place where you go. This is completely subjective, of course, and I imagine that North Carolinians would have the reverse impression. Nonetheless, I feel very blessed now to be in what, for me, is a place where you live!

MY APARTMENT: I have a great apartment on the second floor of a two-story double, with a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The bedroom and living room are quite spacious. I have two beds in my bedroom and I bought several room dividers so that I can accommodate a house guest by sharing the bedroom and yet give us each some privacy. The living room is large enough for nice parties. I have off-street parking and many windows that let in lots of light. A friend of our family, Rae, lives across the street.

I'm just a block from the Mississippi River, and I can look out my windows and see the Mississippi River bridge, boats sailing past, and bikers riding on the levee. Besides the river, I'm also right near a set of train tracks and the streetcar line. I can hear boat horns, train whistles, and streetcar jangles.

BIKE TRAIL: The Mississippi River levee is just a block from my house, and it has a paved bike trail atop it. This makes a wonderful bike ride of an evening. I like to ride as far as the Huey P. Long Bridge and back--about forty-five to fifty minutes. It's also nice to ride to River Shack Tavern in Jefferson LA--Monday evenings are the red beans & rice special with live blues music by Amanda Walker.

The paved portion of the levee trail is quite long, extending from Audubon Park, through Orleans Parish, Jefferson Parish, and into St. Charles Parish as far as Destrehan LA. Beyond Destrehan, the bike trail continues but is no longer paved. It shouldn't be hard to ride on, though, as it is well-packed dirt. I rode as far as Destrehan and back on Labor Day--it took me four and a half hours.

BIKING: It's wonderful to be back in a place where I can ride my bike. I can bike to work and to many other places. I can go for a week or more without needing to use my car, especially in summer when we have daylight well into the evening. In North Carolina, beautiful as it was, I had to use my car to get anywhere. This was a concern because if I ever had car trouble I wouldn't be able to get to work. (Actually, this never did happen.) Here in New Orleans, I'm so close to work that I can walk if I need or want to.

FRIENDS: I have my family and long-time friends in New Orleans. My brother Danny is in New Orleans, and the families of my two married sisters are a forty-five-minute drive across Lake Pontchartrain in Mandeville LA. I sometimes drive over for family dinner at my sister Janet's on Thursdays.

The Party Pals are a group of friends who like to have each other over for parties. These include Barbara & Dick, Ellen & Paul, Toni & Ken, and me. We are the core members. Other people sometimes attend our parties, too. These are some parties we've had.

• Black & White Party. Everyone wore all black, all white, or a combination of black and white, and I served black and white foods--black beans and white rice, black olives and white cauliflower, pumpernickel bread and white bread, blackberries and vanilla ice cream.
• Paul Revere's Midnight Ride Party. I showed the scene of Paul Revere's midnight ride from the film Johnny Tremain, we read Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride," I displayed pictures of Paul Revere's silversmith work, and we discussed the concept of connectors from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, since Malcolm Gladwell uses Paul Revere as an example of a connector.
• Santa Lucia Breakfast. This is a Swedish custom. I served coffee, coffee cake, and spinach-cheese-egg casserole, I told the story of Saint Lucy, and we all sang the Santa Lucia song.
• New Year Party. I've had several of these shortly after the New Year, but I especially remember one that featured the singing of "Good King Wenceslas" as an eight-part round. (If you have enough people, you can sing it as a sixteen-part round--I've been in a group where this was done.)
• Saint Nicholas Party. We had an appearance by Saint Nicholas himself in the person of my friend David.
• Name Bugs. This party featured drawing name bugs. You fold a piece of paper in half lengthwise, open it and write your name along the crease, fold the paper and rub so that you get a mirror image of your name on the other side of the crease, open the paper and use the double version of your name as a base to draw an interesting bug.
• Snowflakes. This party featured making paper snowflakes.
• Story Circle. Each person told a story from his or her life.
• Talent Show. Each person shared a talent, very broadly defined.

My class from the Academy of the Sacred Heart has been meeting for monthly lunches ever since our fortieth class reunion in October 2008. The Academy of the Sacred Heart is a Catholic girls' school in New Orleans that goes from Pre-Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade, so many of us in my class were together for fourteen years. Our classmate Ninette has been wonderful in organizing these lunches.

EATING: I'm in walking or biking distance of great eating places! These are just a few.

• La Madeleine Country French Cafe--wonderful French onion soup
• Bangkok Thai Restaurant
• Pupuseria La Macarena
• Franky & Johnny's--neighborhood seafood restaurant
• Oak Street Cafe--boudin fresh from Opelousas LA
• Rue de la Course coffeehouse
• Cafe Luna
• Casamento's Restaurant--oysters beyond compare
• Bee Sweet Cupcakes
• Blue Frog Chocolates

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY NEW ORLEANS: It's wonderful to be back at Loyola. I'm enjoying teaching the international students and reconnecting with colleagues old and new. I also like the spirituality at Loyola. The Jesuit priests are far removed from the oppressive version of Catholicism that I grew up with. I feel very much at home at Loyola. It's right in my neighborhood, and Audubon Park is just across the street.

PRYTANIA MOVIE THEATER: The one-screen neighborhood Prytania Movie Theater is close by. The Prytania is doing a classic movies series several days a week. The eighty-eight-year-old father of the Prytania's owner, Mr. Rene Brunet, introduces the classic movie of the day and stays around to chat over coffee and cookies in the lobby afterwards. Some of the classic movies recently shown or to be shown include The Sound of Music, Singin' in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Vertigo, The King and I, To Kill a Mockingbird.

CULTURAL HOME: It's extremely nice to be in a place where I know the history and understand the cultural references.

Hurricane Katrina: Moving Back to New Orleans

I moved back to New Orleans on May 25, 2009, after living in western North Carolina for three years following Hurricane Katrina. Here is how my return to New Orleans came about.

My return home was precipitated by the economic crisis and its effect on Western Carolina University (WCU), where I was teaching. WCU is a part of the University of North Carolina state system, and thus subject to state-mandated budget cuts. The state mandated an eight or so percent budget cut for 2009-2010, with seventy or so percent to come from reduction in personnel. This hit faculty in positions like mine especially hard. I had a year-by-year renewable teaching contract at WCU. WCU decided to eliminate most faculty with this type of contract--easy to do by simply not renewing the contract for the following academic year.

As an aside, these faculty cuts have been especially hard on the English Department, where I taught. Many of the first-year writing sections were taught by yearly-contract faculty and had a maximum student enrollment of twenty students. With most yearly-contract faculty gone, the tenured and tenure-track faculty must now teach one or more sections of first-year writing, and each section now has a maximum student enrollment of twenty-five. Some faculty members are teaching four writing classes this year with twenty-five students enrolled in each--this means one hundred writing students. I had eighty writing students at a time (four sections of twenty students each). I can't imagine what it must be like to teach one hundred students!

Well, back to my story. Fortunately, WCU has an admirable Provost--Provost Kyle Carter. He sent a strong message to all WCU Deans and Department Chairs that went something like this: The budget cuts mean that we will need to eliminate faculty members next year. These faculty members are persons with meaningful lives here in western North Carolina. Losing their teaching positions will cause great difficulty for them. We need to be aware of this and help in any way we can. At the very least, we need to make decisions now about who will remain and who will go, and communicate these decisions to the faculty. That way, those who will not be here next year will know early enough to make other plans. Please make these decisions by the end of January and let your faculty members know.

As a result of Provost Kyle Carter's compassionate directive, I learned before the end of January that I would not be at WCU the following year. I am very grateful for this. Also, the English Department at WCU was very supportive. Many faculty members kept us informed of postings for teaching positions that they became aware of and offered to write letters of recommendation.

This was all very helpful but didn't prevent me from slipping into a funk, from which I finally emerged with the support of my friend Merry. Merry insisted that I come to New Orleans over spring break (the first week of March) and that I stay with her and look into teaching in the ESL (English as a Second Language) Department of Delgado Community College. Delgado has a large array of ESL classes, but had to limit the number of classes offered in 2008-2009 for want of enough teachers. I did this (I was in such a funk that Merry had to lovingly insist) and I had a great time staying with Merry and re-connecting with my colleagues at Delgado--Betty, Mary Ann, Linda, Yadira, and Cindy.

As it happened, though, I wound up with my old teaching position in the Loyola Intensive English Program (LIEP) of Loyola University New Orleans. When I emailed Debbie at Loyola to let her know that I was applying to Delgado and that she might be contacted as a reference, Debbie told me that Loyola was ready to re-open LIEP, where I had taught for thirteen years (1992-2006) and which Loyola had closed after the initial post-Hurricane Katrina semester of Spring 2006. I felt incredibly fortunate (and actually somewhat guilty) to have two work possibilities (Delgado and Loyola) at a time when so many people are struggling to find work. I chose Loyola.

I moved on May 25 with wonderful support from family and friends. Marsha, my landlady and friend, was incredibly helpful with finding packing supplies and other helpful moving information. My friend Ken actually flew from New Orleans to North Carolina to help me drive back to New Orleans with a small U-Haul truck (Ken driving the truck and me driving my Toyota). My brother Danny helped me unload the U-Haul at a storage facility. Ellen and Paul housed me for my first two nights back in New Orleans. Merry then housed me until I located an apartment. Once I had moved into my new place, Noel hung bamboo shades on the windows, extra clothes hooks in the bathroom, a full-length mirror in the bedroom, and a mailbox on the front porch. I felt incredibly blessed and supported.

My next post will tell what it's like to be back in New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina: Living in North Carolina - Reading, Writing, Teaching

This post continues my thoughts on my three years in North Carolina following Hurricane Katrina, focusing on reading, writing, and teaching.

CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE. This is a wonderful local bookstore in Sylva, owned and operated by Joyce. Joyce brings in many interesting authors, who read from and speak about their works.

One of the first authors I heard speak at City Lights was Kit Bakke, author of Miss Alcott's Email, about an imaginary cross-time correspondence between Kit and Louisa May. Kit would email Louisa, and Louisa would receive the message as a hand-written letter in her mailbox in Concord, Masssachusetts, in the late 1800s! Louisa's hand-written replies, sent by post, would appear in Kit's email in-box! This sounds a bit cutesy, but Kit pulls it off very well, and her book is an insightful, in-depth look at Louisa May Alcott and the cultural context in which she wrote, as well as at the latter half of the twentieth century, particulary Kit Bakke's years as a member of the radical left-wing group the Weathermen (or the Weather Underground)!

City Lights also brings in many local authors to read. At these readings, the owner, Joyce, often gives away advance copies of newly published books that Joyce receives from publishers. As one enters the room for the reading, one sees that every chair has a different advance copy book on it, so one can sit on a chair that has a book one finds interesting. The idea is to take and read the book on one's chair, if one wishes, and let Joyce know whether or not one recommends that she stock it.

City Lights has a wonderful custom of inviting volunteers to help with the annual inventory at the beginning of January. I did this in January 2009. I had a fun time working with a partner to catalogue the inventory of the store. We all had lunch together, and we each received a book of our choice as a reward for helping.

READING. I read all kinds of books that I never would have read if I hadn't lived those three years in North Carolina. These were books by local authors.

Ron Rash is a wonderful author who teaches at Western Carolina University. He has written poetry, short stories, and novels. I am especially taken with Ron's four novels: One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, The World Made Straight, and Serena. My favorite is Saints at the River. This novel begins with the accidental drowning of a twelve-year-old girl on vacation with her family near a fast-running river in the mountains of northwestern South Carolina. The girl's family wants to dynamite the river to bring up the girl's body so that they can bury her, while the local people don't want their river disturbed. It's easy to see that Ron began as a poet because his descriptions of the area and the people are exquisite and poetic.

Pam Duncan is also an author on the English faculty of Western Carolina University. Pam has written three novels: Moon Women, Plant Life, and The Big Beautiful, each one about rural women in North Carolina. I have enjoyed all three of Pam's novels. She is working on a fourth one, The Wilder Place, which I am eager to read.

Joan Medlicott is the author of the Ladies of Covington novels, about three ladies who become friends and reinvent their lives in their late sixties and seventies. I met Joan at a book fair in Sylva, as she sat at a table surrounded by her books, which had caught my eye. Joan assured me with great sincerity, "You will love my books!" I thought, Well, then, I'd better get started reading them! And Joan was right. I believe that I eventually read all the eight or so novels in the Ladies of Covington series, and I did indeed love them!

Charla Muller lives in North Carolina and wrote 365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy. This book is Charla's account of the year following her husband's fortieth birthday, the year during which she provided him with a very special birthday gift--sex every day for a whole year. And then she wrote about this in a book.

Thomas Rain Crowe. Thomas is the author of Zoro's Field: Life at the End of the Road. This memoir tells of Thomas's four years living on the land of Mr. Zoro Guice in southern North Carolina in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Thomas, in fact, had determined to live as Thoreau did, but to do so for twice as long, as well as more thoroughly. Thomas really stayed on the land, living in a log cabin without electricity or indoor plumbing and feeding himself with what he grew. His trips to town for supplies were infrequent. In Zoro's Field, Thomas tells what it was like to live so close to the land, following sun time instead of clock time. He is realistic about the joys as well as the difficulties of his life during those four years.

Haven Kimmel lives in North Carolina and has become one of my favorite authors. Her books (two memoirs and four novels) take place in small-town Indiana, where Haven grew up. Haven's memoirs are A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana, about her childhood through age ten, and She Got Up Off the Couch, about her depressed mother's decision to get up off the couch, attend college and graduate school, and begin a teaching career that has lasted into her seventies.

Haven has four novels: The Solace of Leaving Early, Something Rising (Light and Swift), The Used World, and Iodine. The first three novels form a trilogy about women in small-town Indiana: a young woman intellectual struggling to relate to two orphaned little girls, a young woman pool hall champion and carpenter, and three very different women who run the Used World Emporium and suddenly find themselves caring for an abandoned baby. I LOVE Haven's first three novels and each of the main women characters.

Haven's fourth novel, Iodine, is in a category of its own. It is written in the first person, from the point of view of a young woman with an abusive past and a shaky grasp on reality. In reading Iodine, one follows the workings of this young woman's mind, but her mind slips between fantasy and reality, and one is never quite sure how things stand. I would say that Iodine is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of someone with mental illness.

Wayne Caldwell is the author of Cataloochee, a historical novel about the settlement of the Cataloochee Forest in western North Carolina. In the 1800s, a number of families established themselves on this land and then raised several generations there, but their homes were taken over by the United States government in the first half of the twentieth century to create a national park, forcing these families to leave the land they had become so much a part of.

I was once present for an interesting and slightly disturbing interchange between Wayne Caldwell and Hattie Caldwell Davis, author of Reflections of Cataloochee Valley and its Vanished People in the Great Smoky Mountains. Hattie is in her eighties and is very close to the events surrounding the removal of her people from Cataloochee. Her book is a historical account of these events, while Wayne Caldwell's novel is fictional.

The interchange between Hattie and Wayne took place during a writers' panel on the importance of place in novels, where Wayne was a member of the panel. (The panel was part of a day-long book fair in Sylva.) During the question-and-answer session following the panel members' presentations, Hattie raised her hand and criticized Wayne for fictionalizing the Cataloochee events. Her own book, said Hattie, was the true authentic factual account, and Wayne had no right to take a true event and fictionalize it. Hattie seemed to think that she owned the Cataloochee events. The panel moderator tried to explain the very legitimate role of historical fiction, but Hattie would have none of it.

This explained to me the odd feeling I had experienced upon seeing Hattie's book display in the book fair area. The information posted at her table declared that her book was the one true authentic historical accurate factual account of Cataloochee, nothing fictionalized. Okay, I thought, why are you protesting your factuality so much? The display definitely turned me off. When I heard Hattie criticize Wayne, I understood where she was coming from, though I think she's dead wrong. No one owns the events they lived through, and any author has the right to compose historical fiction.

THE AMMONS SISTERS. The Ammons sisters are two remarkable women in their sixties: Amy Ammons Garza (a writer) and Doreyl Ammons Cain (an artist). Amy and Doreyl are the founders of Catch the Spirit of Appalachia, an organization dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of the Appalachian Mountains. Amy and Doreyl's work includes the following.

• Cultural workshops in schools: Amy and Doreyl visit schools and engage the children in cultural workshops that involve storytelling, artwork, music, writing, and drama.
• Writing and art workshops for adults: Amy offers a writers workshop and Doreyl offers a pastel painting workshop.
• Publication help: Catch the Spirit of Appalachia publishes books, often by first-time authors telling their stories. Amy works with the author through all aspects of the publishing process, including marketing the book.
• Amy's novels: Amy has written a trilogy of wonderful novels about her family: Retter: A Novel of the Mountains (about Amy's grandmother Retter Coggins Ammons), Cannie: The Hills of Home (about Amy's mother, Cannie Owen Ammons), and Sterlen: And a Mosaic of Mountain Women (about many other women in Amy's family).

I participated in Amy's writers workshop and began writing about my experience of Hurricane Katrina. Amy invited me to be the Spotlight Personality for the monthly paper Fun Things To Do In The Mountains, for which she writes and which she edits, and each month for four months, I wrote an article about Hurricane Katrina for Fun Things.

I also participated in two public readings associated with Amy. Each November or December, the members of Amy's writers workshop read from their work at an event sponsored by Catch the Spirit of Appalachia. The first time I read, I chose "Baseball Bonanza," an imaginary account of a baseball game in New Orleans based on the bare-bones outline of a shaggy dog story that I embellished considerably. The second time, I read "Hurricane Katrina and Refrigerators," which I've posted on this blog. These public readings were quite extraordinary in that Amy created a meta-story that she narrated between our pieces, and Doreyl illustrated our reading in pastel painting on a large canvas as we read. The audience listened to the reading and watched Doreyl's spontaneous illustration at the same time.

WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY. Western Carolina University (WCU) is a mid-size (about 7000 students, I believe) state university in Cullowhee, North Carolina. I taught at WCU during my three years in North Carolina. Mostly, I taught First-Year Writing. My students were mainly straight-from-high-school first-year college students, many of them local. This was quite a change from the international students I had taught at Loyola University New Orleans. The number of students was also a big adjustment. In the Loyola Intensive English Program, classes often had about twelve students, whereas at WCU I had four classes of twenty writing students each. This added up to eighty writing students and involved a large amount of work.

Besides First-Year Writing, I also occasionally taught Writing for Careers and Introduction to Professional Writing & Editing.

My colleagues in the English Department at Western Carolina University were very friendly. I sensed no barriers between tenured/tenure-track professors and non-tenure-track faculty like myself. Faculty members often had parties at their homes and invited the whole English Department. I remember especially Beth's annual Halloween party, with a different theme each year. In 2006, the theme was monsters, and I went as a generic monster using normal clothes in my wardrobe that would make a monster outfit--black shoes, black socks, black slacks, black long-sleeve turtle-neck blouse, red gloves, red ski mask. In 2007, the theme was cult movies, and I went as Sam Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings--white tennis shoes, white socks, overalls with vegetables sticking out of my pockets, gardening shirt, gardening gloves, straw hat, and gardening shears in my hands. In 2008, the theme was games, and I went as a chute and a ladder from the game Chutes & Ladders--regular outfit of slacks and t-shirt but with poster board made into a chute in front and a ladder in back.

Western Carolina University had a great library, good technology in the classrooms, and a vibrant Center for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. There was also a wonderful drama department, and I bought a subscription each year to the season of student productions.

My office mate, Lizzie, was a very generous person, a dedicated and skilled teacher, and a joy to know. I miss Lizzie. Although all in the English Department were wonderful colleagues, I especially miss Bill, Chris, Deidre, Julia, Lizzie, Maggie, Marsha Lee, and May.

NO MORE DISSERTATION. Finally, it was in North Carolina that I decided to discontinue work on my dissertation for the Ph.D. in English Composition at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I believe that I might have managed to complete the dissertation had there been no Hurricane Katrina and had I remained in New Orleans, where I had a stronger support system. But the adjustment to living in a new state along with the greatly increased teaching load, and dissertation work on top of this, just didn't work for me.

Thankfully, I didn't dither around but made a clear decision to stop. I communicated my decision to my dissertation advisor, detailing my reasons for discontinuing the dissertation and my gratitude for all I had gained at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In fact, my advisor appreciated this, having all too often worked with Ph.D. candidates who simply weren't going to be able to finish the dissertation but who kept clinging to what clearly wasn't working.

I also made a decision to view my Ph.D. work positively. I did not complete the dissertation or the Ph.D. degree, but I do have ABD status with all that this entails. Specifically, I accomplished the course work for twelve challenging and informative classes, wrote interesting papers for those classes, connected with great friends and colleagues, received stimulating teaching ideas, and completed fascinating reading and notes on the subject of story in the preliminary work for the dissertation that I didn't complete. I choose to view this as a success! Best of all, I do feel free of dissertation work that had become overly burdensome.

Hurricane Katrina: Living in North Carolina - Friends and Environment

After Hurricane Katrina, I lived in Jackson County, North Carolina, for three years, from May 2006 to May 2009. This post will tell something about my life in North Carolina, focusing on friends and the environment.

DONNA GLEE. Donna Glee has been my friend since we met in New Orleans at Newcomb College of Tulane University in 1971. Donna Glee was sixteen years old and a freshman. I was twenty-one years old and a senior. Donna Glee is a highly creative person. She lives in Balsam, North Carolina, and works in the town of Cullowhee, where she designs experiential week-long seminar retreats for public school teachers through the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching. An example of such a seminar retreat might focus on the theme of bread: the participants would learn about the history of bread, hear about the role of bread in story and myth and religion and art, recall memories involving bread, visit a flour mill and a bakery, taste various kinds of bread, bake their own bread, write poems about bread, and experience bread in as many ways as possible.

Donna Glee is very versatile: she is a seminar designer, a teacher, a writer, a Spanish speaker, a problem solver, a registered nurse, and a deep thinker.

I stayed with Donna Glee for my first month in North Carolina. She lives in a brown log cabin on a mountainside in Balsam. During my month with Donna Glee, we took regular hikes up Balsam Mountain and watched old episodes of the TV program Frazier in the evenings. We both agreed that laughing at the Frazier episodes together heightened our enjoyment--we seemed to laugh more heartily together than we would have if we were laughing alone!

MARSHA. After a month with Donna Glee, I moved into what became my permanent address in North Carolina--the basement apartment of a very interesting and creative woman named Marsha. Marsha lived (and still lives) in the main part of the house upstairs. Her house is at the end of a series of ascending paved mountain roads and a long upward dirt road. Marsha's grounds include a wonderful flower and vegetable garden, a large lawn, a forest, and various trails. Marsha also has several blueberry bushes. Marsha's dog, Bella, became a good friend, too!

Marsha is very enterprising. Her enterprises include a thriving landscaping business, a small business in essential oils, a flower nursery business, teaching communication skills and community organizing skills at a community college, offering her home and grounds as a retreat or seminar center, and renting out her basement apartment.

COUNTRY LIVING. I was definitely out in the country, living at Marsha's. I learned that we didn't have to lock our doors! Coming from New Orleans, I had never heard of such a thing! I could see the glorious stars and constellations at night. In fact, I could even walk safely around the mountains at night, often accompanied by Marsha's friendly dog, Bella--who loved to walk with me, day or night.

MOUNTAINS. Living in the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains, the Smokies, was brand new to me, coming from the very flat lands of south Louisiana. Wherever I looked, there were always the mountains, strong, solid, surrounding. Bare and brown in winter, lush and green in spring and summer, aflame with color in autumn. Roads sloped up and down. When I walked around in Sylva, the county seat, I found that the next block over was often directly above or below the block where I might be situated; in other words, I had to climb or descend to walk to the next block!

DRIVING. Living out in the country, in the mountains, meant that I had to drive to get anywhere. Getting to work was a ten-mile, twenty-minute drive each way, and this was considered close. In New Orleans, on the other hand, I was used to a bike ride of ten minutes or less to get to work. In fact, it was often possible in New Orleans to have a week or more go by without needing to use my car.

SNOW. Snow was a problem, though a beautiful problem. I taught at Western Carolina University, which didn't normally close when it snowed because most students lived in campus dormitories and could walk to class. Although faculty and commuting students were told that we should discern safety for ourselves and not come to the university if we judged the snow and road conditions to be dangerous, I nevertheless felt obliged to be present for my classes if at all possible. The first time it snowed heavily, I actually tried to drive to the university and had a terrible, frightening time. The normally twenty-minute drive took over an hour and a half, and I got stuck twice. (Marsha was out of town that week, so she wasn't present to advise me!) After that, I spent the night at the university on the sofa in the faculty lounge whenever snow was predicted. This got old very fast! I also had to park my car at the bottom of the long dirt road leading up to Marsha's house when snow was expected.

FARMER'S MARKET. I discovered a fantastic farmer's market in Rabun County, Georgia, called the Osage Farmer's Market. Naturally, I gave it a French pronunciation at first--Osahge--but I quickly learned that the pronunciation is Osayge. The Osage Farmer's Market is open from appoximately Memorial Day at the end of May until the end of October or beginning of November. The wonderful fresh produce includes amazing heirloom tomatoes! Oh, these are so delicious! The Osage Farmer's Market also has wheels of hoop cheese and various homemade breads and honey from home-raised bees.

THE FOUR TOWNS. Four towns interconnect in the area where I lived: Sylva, Dillsboro, Cullowhee, and Webster. Sylva is the county seat, with a main street and lots of small businesses. Dillsboro has artsy shops and boutiques and caters to tourists. Cullowhee is the site of Western Carolina University, with many students and professors living there. Webster is a country town--most of the houses are surrounded by land with cows and horses.

WEST CAROLINA INTERNET CAFE. This wonderful internet cafe opened in Dillsboro right about the time I moved to North Carolina. The proprietor, Theresa, lives above the cafe. Theresa offers a menu of delicious soups, salads, sandwiches, and pastries, as well as all sorts of coffee and tea and smoothies. She also has an array of computers as well as wireless service for those who bring their own laptops. The cafe also has a room with a television and a movie screen, and Theresa occasionally shows a film of an evening. Various groups and classes meet at Theresa's cafe. Theresa has two small dogs, Oscar and Rusty. Oscar starred as Toto in Smoky Mountain High School's production of The Wizard of Oz!

SOUL INFUSION TEA HOUSE AND BISTRO. Soul Infusion is a great tea house owned and operated by Karin and Jason. Soul Infusion has a huge variety of teas and beers. Karin also prepares delicious lunches and dinners daily on a rotating menu. Her cream of mushroom soup is absolutely fantastic, and I have never had a more delicious (or more lovingly prepared) Cobb salad anywhere! Interesting conversations always happen at Soul Infusion--with Jason or Karin or with any of the many interesting people who frequent Soul Infusion.

SPRING STREET CAFE. This is the best reasonably priced fine dining place in Sylva. Spring Street Cafe is owned and operated by Lisa. Lisa herself bakes the delicious cakes and pies for dessert. Lisa's blueberry pie is one of my favorites. I always loved the Sunday morning brunch at Spring Street Cafe, especially the Rock Star Oatmeal--delicious oatmeal with soy milk and fruit, a huge bowlful! During the summer months, Spring Street Cafe is open for lunch and serves wonderful sandwiches. My favorite was the one named for my office mate at Western Carolina University, the Lizzie! Designed by Lizzie herself, this is a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with avocado!

EL PACIFICO MEXICAN RESTAURANT. This is a wonderful Mexican restaurant in Sylva where Donna Glee and I liked to eat. El Pacifico serves huge bowls of delicious chicken soup (sopa de pollo) with avocado in it and cilantro, and limes to squeeze into the soup. I always gave Donna Glee my lime because she LOVES lime in her El Pacifico chicken soup, and it's far more fun to watch Donna Glee enjoying TWO limes in her soup than to enjoy one myself!

ARTHRITIS. I've had arthritis, particularly in my right hip, for years. Much to my surprise and delight, I found that when I began taking daily walks in the mountains, the pain in my right hip all but disappeared! I haven't set up a walking routine in New Orleans, but I can tell that my right hip needs one!

Hurricane Katrina: Move to North Carolina

In 2005 I was rooted. My roots extended far into that deep but shifting alluvial soil of New Orleans. I was born in New Orleans, as were my parents, my grandparents, some of my great-grandparents, my three sisters and two brothers, and most of my cousins. I had lived in New Orleans for over fifty years.

I felt secure with family close by. I could meet my sister Maria or my brother Danny for lunch at a moment's notice. The families of my married sisters, Sandra and Janet, lived a short forty-five-minute drive across Lake Pontchartrain. My brother Michael, disabled from a stroke, lived in a neighborhood nursing home, so I could pop in anytime for visits. I had a wonderful circle of friends--from school days, family connections, neighborhood, work, writer's circle, piano studio, yoga, reader's theater, French club.

It was my thirteenth year teaching English to international students in the Loyola Intensive English Program of Loyola University New Orleans. I knew the ins and outs of Loyola, whom to see to get what done, the short-cuts around campus and around any red tape.

I knew the language of New Orleans and all the cultural references. I oriented myself by the four New Orleans directions--uptown, downtown, toward the river, toward the lake. I used French-influenced expressions with the verb "make," as in "He made twenty-one last Saturday," meaning that he turned twenty-one years old last Saturday. My closet held items I could throw together for a costume: ballet slippers, a grass skirt, a Mexican straw hat, face paint, beads, feathers, a black velvet tail.

But after Hurricane Katrina, I lost my teaching position: the post-hurricane financial cut-backs at Loyola included closing the Loyola Intensive English Program after our Spring 2006 semester. New Orleans was broken, and no one seemed in a hurry to fix it. People around the country questioned the wisdom of living in a hurricane-prone area--and I began to see their point.

I decided to move. I chose Jackson County, in the Blue Ridge Mountains (the Smokies) of western North Carolina, where my lifelong friend Donna Glee lives. I wanted to be near someone I knew.

I had also heard of the NC TEACH program, a summer program that prepares mid-career adults to move into public school teaching as a means of alleviating the teacher shortage. I applied and was accepted. Once I arrived in North Carolina, though, I learned of openings for renewable one-year-contract lecturers in the English Department of Western Carolina University. This would involve teaching first-year writing at the college level, and would leave my summer free to continue my studies for a Ph.D. in English Composition in the summers-only program of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This latter position is the one I ultimately chose.

I left New Orleans on Thursday, April 28, having sent the bulk of my belongings on ahead with a moving company. I packed my car with the help of my sister Maria and her friend Malik, took care of a last-minute slow leak in one of my car tires, and drove to my friend Marcella's in Chattanooga--the same Marcella who had sheltered me on evacuation from Hurricane Katrina.

The next day, Friday, April 29, I drove the rest of the way to Donna Glee's home in Balsam, North Carolina, right near the entrance to the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway. I would stay with Donna Glee while searching for a more permanent address. I arrived at Donna Glee's with a heavier heart than I had realized: Donna Glee had no sooner welcomed me than I collapsed in tears on her porch. Actually, it was a blessing to stay with Donna Glee. She is a comforting sort of person, and her supportive friendship smoothed the path for me in countless ways as I adjusted to living in a new place.

Part of that adjustment involved getting a North Carolina driver's license. This might seem like a fairly straightforward task upon moving to a new state, and indeed the process itself was straightforward. My internal feelings, however, were not. For several weeks, I felt disoriented and slightly dizzy whenever I glanced at my new North Carolina license. Was that really me pictured on the license? But how could that be me on a license that said anything but "State of Louisiana"? There was something jarring about the two identities--me and the name of a different state--that my mind refused to put together at first. If I wasn't a Louisianian, a New Orleanian, then who was I?

Ultimately, I spent three years in North Carolina. My next post will tell something of my life in North Carolina during those three years.

Hurricane Katrina: Deaths After the Hurricane

In the year after Hurricane Katrina, people died. Of course, people die all the time, but somehow these post-hurricane deaths became part of the whole trauma of Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane heightened the sadness of these deaths. In fact, these deaths loomed in our minds, certainly in mine. Here, I'd like to write about some of these post-hurricane deaths, plus two deaths that weren't exactly post-Hurricane Katrina but still seem related.

GAVIN MAHLIE. Gavin Mahlie's death affected me deeply. It still does. I didn't know Gavin personally, but he was my favorite New Orleans actor. I miss him. I had seen Gavin in many Shakespeare plays at the summer Shakespeare Festival at Tulane and in "Twelve Angry Men" at Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre and in other plays. I LOVED Gavin Mahlie, as did so many New Orleanians. Gavin was a prince of the theater, a down-to-earth, humble guy, dedicated to his craft. Gavin died in April 2006 in his sleep of heart problems at age forty-one. The whole city was shocked at Gavin's death. I write of Gavin's death with tears.

BATTLE BELL. Battle Bell was a well-known Jungian psychotherapist in New Orleans. I heard him speak several times at the New Orleans C. G. Jung Society. Battle also helped one of my friends greatly. My friend was going through a difficult family situation and had a series of vivid related dreams. She turned to Battle for dream interpretation work. Whether or not you believe that dreams have messages for us (I do), what happened with my friend is that she and Battle, using the dreams, worked out healthy ways to understand and respond to the family situation, which helped my friend a great deal. My friend remembers Battle with gratitude. Battle died in June 2006 of a stroke at age sixty-one.

CHEF AUSTIN LESLIE. Chef Austin Leslie was a beloved chef of New Orleans soul food. He was the chef at Pampy's Restaurant at the time of Hurricane Katrina and was especially famous for his fried chicken. My sister Maria loved Chef Leslie and his cooking. She was devastated by his death. Chef Leslie, at age seventy-one, was rescued from his home two days after Hurricane Katrina and died about a month later in Atlanta, Georgia. The very first jazz funeral to be held in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was for Chef Leslie. I think New Orleans is still mourning for Chef Leslie.

JOE CASAMENTO. Joe Casamento was the son of the founder of Casamento's Restaurant on Magazine Street in New Orleans. Joe Casamento's father founded the restaurant in the early 1900s. Joe lived above the restaurant. Joe Casamento died at age eighty, immediately after Hurricane Katrina. In fact, I think he may have died right after or even during his evacuation. I grew up eating at Casamento's--always oyster stew or oyster loaf served on Casamento's special pan bread. Casamento's always closes for the summer, during the months without the letter "R": May, June, July, August. Once my mother, speaking in favor of the idea of having school year-round, said, "Now, really, do you know any other business that closes for the entire summer?" and my sister Janet immediately replied, "Casamento's." All New Orleans misses Joe.

MARY AND ERNEST HANSEN. Mary and Ernest Hansen operated Hansen's Sno-Bliz on Tchoupitoulas Street in New Orleans for over fifty years. Ernest invented the ice shaving machine that makes the most wonderful thin snowball ice, and Mary created the recipes for the many flavored syrups. I certainly ate my share of Hansen's snowballs as a child and teenager. Mary and Ernest Hansen were in their nineties at the time of Hurricane Katrina. Mary died in September 2005 and Ernest in March 2006. Their grand-daughter, Ashley Hansen, now runs Hansen's Sno-Bliz. Generations of New Orleanians grew up on Hansen's snowballs, and we miss Mary and Ernest Hansen.

PAM MURPHY. Pam Murphy was an all-around creative person, brimming with innovative ideas. A major theme of Pam's life was increasing people's self-esteem. She did a weekly local television show on self-esteem, created a board game to build self-esteem, and wrote a series of lively animal tales for children. For several years, I belonged to a small writers' group that met in Pam's home. Before moving to North Carolina in April 2006, I met Pam for lunch. I emailed Pam when I got settled in North Carolina and then sent her a Christmas card in December. Upon receiving the Christmas card, Pam's husband called me to say that Pam had died during the fall of 2006. She just got sick and died, her husband said. Pam's husband attributes Pam's death directly to post-hurricane stress.

BIG CHIEF TOOTIE MONTANA. Well, Big Chief Tootie Montana actually died in June 2005, two months before Hurricane Katrina. This was so close to the hurricane, and it was such a huge loss for New Orleans, that Tootie Montana's death gets connected with Hurricane Katrina in my mind. Big Chief Tootie Montana was the Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas Mardi Gras Indian Tribe, and he was also recognized as a kind of Father Chief by all the Mardi Gras Indian tribes. He died quite dramatically, speaking before the New Orleans City Council at a hearing about the way New Orleans police had interfered with and disrespected the Mardi Gras Indians during their St. Joseph's night march. I mean, Big Chief Tootie Montana actually fell to the floor in the middle of his speech. He had died of a heart attack. He was eighty-two. We all miss Big Chief Tootie Montana.

RUTHIE THE DUCK LADY. Okay, Ruthie the Duck Lady died well past Hurricane Katrina, actually at the time of Hurricane Gustav in 2008, but I want to include her anyway. Ruthie lived for years in the French Quarter, roller skating around, followed by her ducks. Everyone in New Orleans who ever went to the French Quarter knew Ruthie, or at least recognized her. At the time of Hurricane Gustav in 2008, Ruthie was living in a nursing home in New Orleans. My brother Michael lived in the same nursing home as Ruthie from 2003 to 2005 because of a stroke, and whenever I visited Michael, I also spoke with Ruthie. She'd be sitting on a couch in the lounge, surrounded by stuffed-animal ducks. Ruthie evacuated to Baton Rouge for Hurricane Gustav with the other residents of her nursing home, but she was ill and the evacuation was hard on her. She died in September 2008 in a Baton Rouge hospital at age seventy-four. I imagine her in heaven, reunited with all the ducks she loved over the years.

Hurricane Katrina: Why Didn't They Evacuate?

Why didn't they evacuate? A Category 5 hurricane? Massive? Heading straight for New Orleans? Why didn't they leave?

Many were too poor. They had no money. No credit card. No transportation. Nowhere to go. And they couldn't envision going outside the city. Such a thing was not part of their experience or their mental landscape. For their entire lives, their world was restricted to the neighborhood circumscribed by work, home, church, school. A trip across town was a rare adventure, maybe to see a doctor at Charity Hospital when the need arose. A trip to the state capital, Baton Rouge, seventy-five miles northwest of New Orleans, was unheard of--maybe like traveling to a foreign country.

This is hard to imagine for those of us who think nothing of hopping in a car and driving across the state or hopping on a plane and flying across the country. We are privileged. Many New Orleanians were not and had neither the means to enact nor the vision to imagine an evacuation. These were the ones who crowded into the Superdome and the Convention Center; who spent days in the stifling heat with no electricity and no plumbing, and in the case of the Convention Center, with no food and no water; who saw their infants and their grandparents die of exposure and dehydration right there on the sidewalk; who were finally, finally, after days of waiting, bussed out and taken to Texas or Arkansas or Georgia or Florida--or to Connecticut or Wisconsin or Minnesota or Utah--truly foreign territory with all the accompanying culture shock and disconnection.

But those with means--why didn't they evacuate? Many were elderly. They lived independently and got along well. They could manage their lives easily in their own homes, their own neighborhoods--where they knew all the folks, knew where everything was, had their routines. They knew they had slowed down with age, were no match for the young ones. But at home they didn't have to be. On evacuation, though--that was a different matter. Even if they went with family. Where would they be? How would they get their needs met? How would they know where anything was? Home had a strong sense of psychological safety that evacuation most decidedly did not. Besides, old timers had weathered many a hurricane at home. Home felt safe. These were the ones who died, trapped in their attics--of heat and dehydration--when the waters rose to the eaves.

But those who were younger. Why didn't they evacuate? Many were caring for ill, disabled, or elderly relatives at home. The logistics of evacuating with a person who may be bed-ridden, who may be incontinent, who may have dementia, who may have constant medical and physical needs that can be managed at home--but not on the road, not in bumper-to-bumper traffic inching along the interstate for hours on end, not in a strange motel or evacuation shelter in a distant city or town. No, the logistics of evacuating like that were overwhelming. Better to prepare the house well and stay at home. Among those were some who watched their ill or disabled or elderly relative drown, who simply could not maneuver their loved one up the stairs to the second floor or attic before the waters engulfed the first floor, who were left with a water-logged body to bury when the waters receded.

And others--why didn't they evacuate? Many stayed to care for their animals. One could evacuate with a small dog or a cat. But it's amazing how many people have several animals or large animals or unusual animals--like Jan with her brood of hens in the backyard, or Jim with his huge pig, or Lainey with her three dogs and five cats.

Lainey stayed with her animals, and although she lived in the crescent of land near the Mississippi River that didn't flood, she found in the days after the hurricane that conditions in New Orleans were such that she could not provide for those three dogs and five cats. So she loaded them into her station wagon and drove to her parents' home in Nebraska. She must have had to drive straight through. Where on earth could she stop for the night with three dogs and five cats?

I also think of Mary, rescued by boat from her roof and forced to leave her two elderly but still active dogs behind. Seeing a policeman she knew, Mary begged him to go and shoot her dogs, who would die quickly that way and not miss her and wonder why she didn't come and slowly starve to death in the flooded city. The policeman assured Mary that he would. Mary hopes that he did.

Many didn't evacuate for fear of looters--a very legitimate fear. Many of these actually believed in evacuation. The mother and children evacuated while the father stayed to guard the house, perhaps with a teenage son.

And then there were those who simply didn't believe that the hurricane would hit New Orleans--or if it did, that they could hunker down and be just fine when it passed. They were used to hurricanes headed toward New Orleans that always turned at the last minute and hit somewhere else. They may even have lived through Hurricane Betsy, which did hit New Orleans in 1965--and they stayed in the city then and did just fine. So they weren't going anywhere for Hurricane Katrina. And you know what? They were right. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it was a Category 3 hurricane. Much of New Orleans was actually okay after Hurricane Katrina passed through. It was the breaches in the levees--levees that were supposed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane--that flooded the city, after the hurricane had passed. It was not the hurricane itself.

Hurricane Katrina: Refrigerators

Refrigerators were a huge problem in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. When I evacuated to Chattanooga, I removed the food from my refrigerator, unplugged it, and propped the refrigerator door open. This seemed like common sense to me, but I know of only one other person who did this.

Most folks evacuated and left their refrigerators with all the food inside. What happened, of course, is that the electricity went out and stayed out. Food sat for weeks in stifling heat in the refrigerators of New Orleans--and molded and mildewed and rotted and stank.

Many people--the smart ones--simply didn't open that refrigerator. They sealed it with duct tape and put it on the curb for pick-up. Others did open their refrigerator--and immediately shut it, sealed it with duct tape, and put it on the curb. Then there were those who removed all the moldy stinking mess and scrubbed their refrigerator--and scrubbed it and scrubbed it and scrubbed it and scrubbed it and scrubbed it. And then scrubbed it some more--in vain. It was the rare person who managed to eliminate the stench. Most of those scrubbed refrigerators were completely unusable--the smell would not come out.

As a result, neighborhood streets were lined with refrigerators waiting for pick-up. Decorated refrigerators. New Orleans became a gallery of refrigerator art. Refrigerators with funny faces, monster faces, weepy faces.

Refrigerators with graffiti.

• Katrina stew
• Free gumbo
• Help yourself to gravy

Angry refrigerators.

• Katrina, I hate you
• FEMA sucks
• Go to hell, George W.

Sometimes we drove out of our way to look at particular refrigerators. I'd be driving somewhere with a friend, and one of us would say, "Hey, let's drive by that shark-face refrigerator on Pine Street--with the wide jaws and jagged teeth," or "Let's check out that refrigerator by Audubon Park--the one that's completely covered with political commentary."

My favorite refrigerator said, "Only a fool would open this--I was that fool."

You were supposed to put your refrigerator in front of your own house for pick-up. But some people didn't. Some people put their refrigerators in front of other people's houses or on street corners. These rogue refrigerators attracted others. In fact, it was amazing how refrigerators would congregate on a street corner. One day you'd see an odd refrigerator on the corner, and the next morning there'd be five more. They cropped up like mushrooms after rain.

Eventually--though it took months--all those refrigerators were removed from the neighborhood curbs. They went to Pontchartrain Boulevard--with all the other Hurricane Katrina trash and debris and ruined furniture. Pontchartrain Boulevard has a huge wide neutral ground, or median. The neutral ground is like a park, it's that wide. The Pontchartrain Boulevard neutral ground served as a colossal dumping ground after Hurricane Katrina--a looming pyre, over eight feet high, stretching from Veterans Boulevard to Lake Pontchartrain. Miles of towering trash on a park-wide strip of neutral ground.

But all that trash is gone now. Where? Where did it--and all those refrigerators--go?

Hurricane Katrina: Flooded Homes

The New Orleans to which I returned six weeks after Hurricane Katrina was not the New Orleans I had left.

I was fortunate, though, to live in the unflooded crescent of the city near the Mississippi River (the sliver on the river), so I returned to a relatively unscathed home--my second-floor apartment in an old New Orleans house on Napoleon Avenue. Each of our six apartment units had been broken into by the National Guard, and our front door had been spray-painted in code with their findings. Every house in the city carried these markings, which--if you knew how to decipher the code--indicated the name of the National Guard unit, the date of entry, the number of survivors found, and the number of dead bodies. Some houses carried actual spray-painted words: "1 white Manx cat taken to Winn-Dixie," or even "1 dead body."

Driving was hazardous and circuitous. Traffic lights didn't function and STOP signs were down, so we had to treat intersections as four-way stops. Flat tires were a constant threat because of glass in the streets. We could never count on driving a straight route from here to there, as we'd find the streets blocked by piles of debris or by work crews clearing it away. At night, we drove through a checker-board of lighted and darkened neighborhoods, depending on where electricity had and had not been restored. Twice, in a darkened area at night, I almost drove into a deep pond of stagnant water still sitting in an underpass--and stopped just in time.

Flies and fleas were everywhere--you couldn't get rid of them.

Damaged roofs were covered by blue tarps provided by FEMA. From the air, New Orleans became a sea of blue. But the tarp that covered my apartment behaved more like a sieve than a temporary roof. Until we got our permanent roof in March 2006, whenever it rained, water streamed into my living room, and I had to collect it in five buckets and empty those buckets frequently.

But all this was minor. Beyond the unflooded crescent where I lived, conditions deteriorated quickly. Every home beyond the crescent was encircled with a brown water-ring showing how high the waters had risen. The farther from the Mississippi River, the higher the water-ring. Out near Lake Pontchartrain, those water-rings were above the eaves.

What hurt me most was entering the flooded homes of friends. The home was distorted beyond recognition. Furniture had floated about the house and landed wherever it had floated to when the waters receded. The kitchen table, upside-down in the living room. An armchair, tilted on its side in the bathtub. It was as though a giant had picked up the house, shaken it, and plopped it down with all the contents scattered. The furniture and walls and floor were water-logged, buckled, and moldy. The stench was nauseating.

I learned that my love for my friends extends to their homes. To see a beloved home so horribly distorted shocked me. It was like seeing the mutilated face of a loved one after an injury. My shock, though, was small compared to the shock of the friend whose home it was. Like Yvonne.

I spent hours with Yvonne, a pianist, sorting through wet page after wet page of sheet music--her first pieces from childhood recitals, hand-written pieces she had composed, pieces she had played and loved and carefully annotated. We painstakingly separated the sheets and set them out to dry, salvaging most of the music. But Yvonne's baby grand piano--her musical companion of thirty years--was ruined.

One bright spot in the bleakness of sorting through Yvonne's soaked belongings came from her pantry. Canned food on the higher shelves was in fine condition, but Yvonne would be moving on to Missouri.

"Karen, could you use this food?"

"Sure! I know just how! I'll invite the Party Pals for dinner. We'll call it Yvonne's Pantry Party!"

The Party Pals are ten new Orleanians who celebrate our friendship through parties. And Yvonne's Pantry Party was a success! I prepared a meal with the pantry contents, and we telephoned Yvonne in the midst of the festivities to thank her.

Hurricane Katrina: Where Are My Loved Ones?

Monday, August 29, brings disturbing news. Hurricane Katrina has passed, but New Orleans is filling with water. Marcella and I watch the unfolding nightmare through the lens of the TV news reporters.

• Desperate people on rooftops awaiting rescue
• Loyal people refusing rescue if their cat or dog will be left behind
• Maverick boat people ferrying the stranded from flooded homes to helicopter pick-up
• Angry people shooting at the rescuers
• Weary people trudging out of the city
• Uniformed people forcing the weary back at gunpoint
• Dedicated people keeping patients alive in sweltering hospital hallways
• Critically ill people on blankets at the airport awaiting airlift
• Crowded people on overpasses with no food, water, shelter, or toilets
• Dead people in flooded beds, in lonely attics, on exposed sidewalks

A searing question burns in every evacuee's mind: What has happened to my loved ones who stayed in the city?

My brother Michael is one of those, though not by choice. In 2001, at age forty-nine, Michael suffered a severe stroke that left him physically and mentally impaired. Before Hurricane Katrina, he lived in a New Orleans nursing home with a prompt evacuation plan. But Michael did not evacuate with his nursing home. He suffered a seizure four days before the hurricane, was rushed to Touro Hospital, and was still hospitalized when Hurricane Katrina struck.

From Chattanooga, I telephone the staff of Michael's nursing home, evacuated to Baton Rouge with their residents. Naturally, they have no idea where Touro Hospital sent Michael. I check Touro Hospital's website and find a list of all the hospitals in the country where Touro patients have been sent. I call every one of them--even those with names like Women's and Children's Hospital. None has Michael. I list Michael as a missing patient and make my peace with the thought that death--should that be the case--will release my brother from his broken mind and body.

Meanwhile, my sister Maria, who has finally reached safety in Atlanta, asks a knowledgeable friend to conduct an Internet search for Michael. Three weeks later, Michael surfaces--at a nursing home in Houston.

The folks in Houston are delighted when I call. Michael arrived with exactly one piece of information--his name. The nursing home staff doesn't know whether his mental difficulties are caused by stroke, head injury, or psychosis. They are grateful for the details I can provide of Michael's medical history.

In October, my brother Danny and I, both newly returned to New Orleans, drive to Houston to see Michael. We have a favorable impression of the nursing home and Michael's adjustment. Until we can make other arrangements, Michael will stay in Houston. (As of August 2009, he's still there.)

P.S. Michael died in Houston on Wednesday, December 9, 2009. May he soar freely and joyfully in the world of spirit.

Hurricane Katrina: Evacuation

Saturday, August 27, 2005. I have been home barely two weeks from an intense and exhausting summer of course work for a Ph.D. in English Composition at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I still feel tired. Today is Saturday, and classes begin on Monday at the Loyola Intensive English Program, where I teach English to speakers of other languages. It's a great teaching position and I enjoy my work, but this year I don't quite feel ready for classes to start.

In any case, I'm enjoying my Saturday afternoon, when the phone rings. It's Valarie, Director of the Loyola Intensive English Program.

"Karen, what are you doing for the hurricane? Are you evacuating?"

"What hurricane?"

"Hurricane Katrina."

"Hurricane Katrina? That was a Category 1 hurricane that hit Florida earlier this week."

"Yes, that's what it was, but now it's in the Gulf of Mexico, it's pushing Category 5, it's huge, and we're directly in its path. They want everyone to evacuate. You'd better turn on the TV."

I thank Valarie, hang up, and turn on the television. I haven't watched the news for the last couple of days, which is a real mistake in New Orleans in August and September, the height of the hurricane season. The TV news more than confirms what Valarie said. The message is unequivocal and frightening: "New Orleans is directly in the path of a massive Category 5 hurricane--GET OUT OF THE CITY NOW!" In my fifty-five years in New Orleans, I have never heard such a direct and urgent call for evacuation.

I telephone friends and family members to consult. Some will evacuate, others will stay. I try to persuade my sister Maria to come with me. "No, no," Maria says, "I'll be fine."

I telephone Marcella in Chattanooga to enact our Hurricane Evacuation Plan, arranged seven years earlier, after Hurricane Georges.

"Come!" Marcella says.

I devote the rest of the day to covering the furniture with plastic, criss-crossing the windows with masking tape, and packing what I'll need for about a week, including books I want to have with me, my journal, and of course my stuffed animals, Amy Karen Rabbit and Robert Bear, and my stuffed doll, Ashley Rainbow.

I wake early the next morning, unplug all the electrical appliances, remove the food from the refrigerator to take with me, prop the refrigerator door open, hop in my car, and drive off.

I need to get to the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, but I have enough sense not to get on the I-10 or on the Causeway, the twenty-four-mile bridge across Lake Pontchartrain. At a time like this, when everyone is driving across Lake Pontchartrain, the thing to do is to go around it. I take Napoleon Avenue to South Broad Street to North Broad Street to Gentilly Boulevard to Chef Menteur Highway, and then I'm on US 90, which takes me around Lake Pontchartrain and along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I am one of the last people to see the fishing and crabbing camps and boats along Lake Pontchartrain, and the Gulf Coast homes and beach shacks and casinos before they are blown away.

At about 7 a.m., Donna Glee calls me from North Carolina on my cell phone as I'm entering Mississippi on US 90. Concerned, she asks how I am. I tell her I'm on my way to Marcella's, just entering Mississippi.

"It must be quite a challenge with the traffic," Donna Glee empathizes.

"Actually, no," I reply. "I'm avoiding the interstates. I'm on US 90, and I have the road practically to myself."

"Really?" says Donna Glee. "I'm going to call Lee and Harvey and some other folks to let them know US 90 is clear."

Donna Glee loves to collect helpful information and pass it on to people. It energizes her, and It's very helpful to other folks, too.

I know how to get out of New Orleans on the back roads and into Mississippi, but once on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I don't know the back roads at all. So I consult my Mississippi road map. I choose a route that takes me north and east through Mississippi and Alabama, all on back roads. I enjoy my drive through the country towns, all alone on those back roads. Where is everybody? Aren't people evacuating? Are they all crowded onto the interstates and the Causeway? Why inch along on the interstates and overheat your car, to say nothing of overheating your temper, when there's a whole network of back roads?

Once I get into Alabama, I decide I can probably connect with the interstate at Tuscaloosa. I figure I'm now far enough north and east to avoid the evacuation traffic. I'm right. There's no more traffic on the intestate at Tuscaloosa and beyond, than you would expect on a normal Sunday.

I decide to stop at a Cracker Barrel near Tuscaloosa for lunch. I select one of the entrees--I forget which--and give my order.

"And which sides would you like with that?" asks the friendly server.

I had forgotten about this--at Cracker Barrel the meals come with a choice of two or three sides to be selected from a long list. I look at the list of sides and suddenly feel overwhelmed. Choosing from among all those side dishes just seems exhausting.

"A surprise," I say. "I'd like the sides to be a surprise."

Apparently, this is a surprise to the server, who isn't accustomed to people ordering surprises with their meals.

"Well, uh, do you think you'd like the peas, the carrots, and the mashed potatoes?" the server asks.

Having been told what I'll be getting, it won't be a surprise, but at least I don't have to put forth the effort of choosing.

"Yes," I say, "those sound great." And they are!

Then, back in the car, and straight on through to Chattanooga and Marcella's. I arrive at twilight--warmly welcomed by Marcella and her dogs, Sam and Lucky.

After a short visit with Marcella and a glance at the news, I am ready for bed in Marcella's extra bedroom. But first, I call my sister Maria, still in New Orleans. She's fine, she says--all prepared for the hurricane in her second-floor Mid-City apartment. Her friend Malik is with her, and the people downstairs are staying, too. Maria isn't concerned--everything will be fine.

"Well, that's not what they're saying on the news," I tell her. "You still have time to leave--I think."

"No, I'm fine," Maria insists.

That is the last thing I hear Maria say for a week. In the end, she is fine--but only after a harrowing escape from a flooded and dangerous city.

Back at Marcella's, I fall safely asleep as the first bands of wind and rain begin to batter New Orleans.