A good cigar

I have a tradition to welcome the New Year. I smoke a cigar at midnight.

In a way, it's just like handing out cigars when you have a baby. We sometimes depict the year ending as an old man and the new one as a baby in a diaper. This is not so different.

Cigars have long been associated with wealth and influence. Smoking a cigar is a way of showing the world that you're prosperous. What more effective means is there to declare you have money to burn than to fire up an expensive cigar?

And each year, Santa helps me keep this tradition by bringing me cigars on Christmas Eve. He puts some in my stocking every year without fail, this year included.

There will be bonfires and fireworks, and they're nice in their ostentatious ways, but I prefer the quiet glow and flavorful smoke of a good cigar.

To say 2005 was not a good year would be a massive understatement. We took it on the chin in New Orleans, with Hurricanes Cindy, Katrina and Rita. The whole Gulf Coast was on the ropes at one time or another this year, and the referee is still counting over some places, uncertain if we can or will get up again.

This January 1st, I am certainly many thousands of dollars poorer than I was last January 1. At this time last year, I had a beautiful house, nice furniture, books and art and boxes of mementos and photographs of family and friends that are all lost to the flood brought by Hurricane Katrina.

But I will still light up a cigar at midnight. I will in my own quiet way remember what I have and not grieve for what I have lost. I have a nice place to live, food in great supply, clean clothes and hot water. I have a good job with challenging work, full health insurance and money in a retirement account. I have a TV and a DVD player, and music and a computer to amuse me.

And I have a lovely wife and a wonderful daughter, and family and friends who are happy to see me and eager to help when I need it.

It's New Year's Eve, the last day of 2005, and as I cross that threshold into 2006, I will not do so richer than last year. But prosperous? You betcha! Wealthy? Absolutely! Happy? Yes indeed.

Happy New Year!

Son finds body in rubble

That's a headline from today's edition of The Times-Picayune. The story made me angry and sad at the same instant.

A Lower 9th Ward man who saw his mother die on the roof of their home as Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters rose in their neighborhood, returned Thursday and found their house collapsed and her skeletal remains in the rubble, police said.

The body was tentatively identified by police as Joyce Green, after her son found her remains in the debris outside their home about 3:30 p.m. in the 1600 block of Tennessee Street, said officer Juan Barnes, a police spokesman.

Her son, whose name wasn't released by police, told police he and another relative had taken refuge on the roof of the home with his mother after the Industrial Canal levee broke, police said.

He told police his mother died before he and the other relative were rescued and evacuated from New Orleans.

After returning to New Orleans, the son told police that he went to the home Thursday and found his mother's remains. The grieving son said he recognized her body from the clothes she was wearing at the time she died.

Imagine the horror and the guilt this man must feel. Yes, his mother had already passed on when he left her, but to know that her body lay in the trash and debris, unceremoniously disposed of in the heap of garbage--that has to weigh heavily on his mind.

And how did this happen? How could a human body remain unfound, undetected in the middle of a major city for four months? How could this happen in America? What are we going to do to protect this city from ever having this happen again?

Sadly, this story is being repeated over and over as people come back to New Orleans. The body count is not complete.

The suffering brought by Hurricane Katrina continues.

Boogie Night

World Famous Rock'n'Bowl. That's where I was last night.

The first thing people usually ask about Rock'n'Bowl is, "Is it really a bowling alley?"

Yes, it is.

The next thing they ask is, "Do they really have live music?"

Yes, they do.

It usually takes a minute or so before the next question, but it finally comes. "Can you bowl while the band is playing?"

Why not?

Located on the second floor of a strip shopping center on the corner of Carrollton and Tulane Avenues, Rock'n'Bowl is everything a New Orleans music club must be to thrive in this town: funky, funny, affordable, ecclectic and a little run down looking.

And what about the music? Last night was The Boogie Men, a horn-powered mega smash dance band that's been making a name for itself for I guess about a dozen years. You like it funky? They can do that. You like rock? They can do that too. The emphasis is always on the dancing, though, so no matter what era or style of music they're playing, the floor is filled with moving feet.

Since this was not a school night and the band started early, I took my daughter with me. Her primary observation: "It's LOUD!" Well, yeah, they do that too. We danced to a few tunes, and I'm sure she was very impressed with my moves that have not changed since the 80's.

As always, Owner John Blancher was there, meeting and greeting and genuinely enjoying things. He's the man who took the World-War-II era bowling alley and turned it into an internationally known icon by mixing pins and pop music.

John especially loves Elvis, and is known for hosting a birthday party for him each year and dressing up as the King himself. If you stay late enough, you might even catch John and the bar keepers hula-hooping to the music.

Rock'n'Bowl survived Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that filled Mid City unscathed since it's on the second floor. Still, getting the place back up and running in this decimated city was a feat for which you have to give John due credit.

My girl wanted to bowl, which is a unique experience there. When the band is playing, the house lights are dimmed. The pins glow in soft white light at the end of shadowy alleys. And you can't hear a pin drop because, as my girl noticed, "It's LOUD!"

We only bowled a few frames and didn't do a good job of keeping score, but somehow my daughter decided that she had 37 and I only had 22. We left near the end of the first set because it was after 10 and she's not usually up so late.

Ultimately, I think her favorite part of the outing was the Ms.PacMan machine. Nine years old and begging for quarters like a strung-out junkie, I guess that's what I once sounded like, too.

I took some photos with my cell phone and posted them here, but these lo-res images don't do it justice. The joint was jumping last night, you'll just have to take my word for it.

And, I'm sure my daughter would add, "It's LOUD!"

Rocket Science

I visited with some old neighbors last night. Well, I should say, "prior neighbors of several years," because they are both many years from AARP eligibility.

They used to live right down the street from me here in New Orleans. My daughter used to ride her bike down to their house to play with their oldest daughter. And it was not uncommon for us to get a Saturday morning phone call from their girls asking if our calendar was open.

When Hurricane Katrina came to town, they packed up their two girls and assorted cats and headed to high ground. When it was all said and done, they landed in Denver, Colorado where the husband's company has an office that needed help. The wife works for the federal government and also found work with the same agency there. And the girls, well, you know how easily most kids can adapt to new surroundings.

So they came back to town for a few days, to rescue some belongings from their flooded house, to visit family and friends, and to chart their return course.

The husband is a mechanical engineer and I'm a civil engineer, so when I saw him he almost immediately asked me to sit down so we could talk about the levees. "The news we get from CNN in Denver is crap," he said. "Tell me what's really going on here."

He knew I'd have the scoop on what the real situation is here, and he asked very specific, insightful questions. I filled him in on the current effort to fix the levees, the initial findings on why the city flooded, and the plan to build more significant hurricane protection if the feds will fund it.

"So, basically, we'd be crazy to rebuild until the levees get fixed," he said. "I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out."

Did I mention he's a rocket scientist? Well, he is. He works for a company that does a lot of work for NASA. He's been hands-on with the Shuttle program, so he knows a thing or two about quality control and risk assessment. He quickly agreed with me that the risk of living with 100-year flood protection just doesn't cut it. And he understands that rebuilding right away and the same way, before the failed levees have even been properly fixed, much less improved, is not a good plan.

Let me be clear about this: I want to rebuild. I think we should rebuild. My only reservation is that we have to rebuild better and smarter. I think New Orleans needs and deserves significant hurricane protection--much more than what we have now. And I think we need to rebuild our homes and businesses higher, so that if and when the streets fill with water, the impact will be lessened.

I'm waiting on the federal government to take care of elevating the levees, and I'll take care of elevating my home.

So where does this leave us, we two neighbors who now live a thousand miles apart? They head back to Denver on Monday, and I will continue to live in my apartment in the "sliver by the river."

And two families continue to hope for good news.

121 Days of Darkness

Photographer Mark Rayner has posted dozens of photographs of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina on his Wild Dog Digital website. The most recent photos illustrate how one part of town, Gentilly, remains almost totally dark even 121 days after Katrina hit us. Be sure to click on each photo to read the narration. It's hard to imagine that thousands of homes are still deserted at this date.

Mark also writes, "While there has been amazing progress in cleaning up the city of debris left by the storm, there is still an incredible amount of work to be done."

Christmas Present

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were spent with family, gifts and talk, perhaps no different than the many such annual gatherings as before. But it was not the same. How could it be?

For one thing, Christmas after-lunch talk was all about Katrina. My various relations from St. Bernard Parish each had a strange and exciting story to tell about what happened to them when Hurricane Katrina came, or what happened to their neighbors, or worst of all, what rumors they had heard about what happened when no one was looking. It was just a little overwhelming.

And then my brother, who had not come to visit this Christmas, called me with holiday greetings. I had thought he was spending time with his wife's family, or hosting people at his own home this year and that's what prevented him from visiting us. But no. He told me the reason he did not come to New Orleans this year was because he did not want to impose.

Impose? Since when is it an imposition to visit with family during the holidays? I scolded him of course, and told him that family is always welcome under any circumstances. At least that's my rule. Over the course of a long conversation, he explained his reasoning to me and I give him credit for at least trying to be considerate.

But as I've written here more than once, things like houses, clothes, cars and other things really aren't what makes life good. Life is about interacting with others, especially loved ones.

In the end, I probably came down too hard on him. After all, he's living in a whole different state and can't possibly fathom what is really going on here. Yes, there's devastation. Yes, there's decay and debris throughout the city. A lot of people away from New Orleans don't understand that; my brother perhaps understands it too well.

But there is life and hope, too. Although the city is mostly dark, there are Christmas lights. Although the gardens are brown and drowned, there are new leaves sprouting from the earth. Although our homes are shattered and uninhabitable, families gather to share a meal, talk and celebrate.

It is what we did in the past, what we do in the present, and what we will do in the future.

Sweet Light

My friend and fellow New Orleanian Bart posted an entertaining account of how he spent Christmas Eve this year. Naturally, the whole evening revolves around food. The power just got turned back on this week at his house in Mid City, so he makes some interesting observations of his own regarding the Sweet Light. Hey, Bart, more power to ya!

The Season of Lights

It's Christmas Eve, the day before the day chosen to remember the birth of a baby.

It's popular to think of Christmas as being the "reason for the season," but as anyone who knows their history and theology knows, the winter celebration is about more than Jesus.

It is the season of lights.

The deepest, darkest day of winter, the Winter Solstice, has always been an important day for humans. That's when the new year used to begin. That's when the days would begin to grow longer, and the promised return of spring became real. It's unfortunate that over the centuries the calendar has been adjusted, corrected and manipulated so that the new year no longer falls on Winter Solstice.

And it has also been the custom to celebrate the arrival of kings and man-gods on Winter Solstice. Jesus is just the latest to receive this honor, although again, various circumstances have skewed things so that Christmas misses Winter Solstice on the modern calendar by four days.

And we cannot overlook Hanukkah, another religious tradition that recognizes the despair of darkness, and the hope of light.

It is no accident that all of these things come at this time of year. This is the season of lights, a time when all of us can celebrate the changing of the season, the elongation of days, and the return of light. With the new year come new opportunity and hope.

New Orleanians are experiencing this in a very special way this year. Having had our city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, we are more than ready for a new beginning. We're ready to close out 2005, a year that will reside in the history of catastrophe next to 1965 and 1927.

We're looking for any sign of help, any indication that this winter will end soon, and that our city will again bloom.

The darkness is inescapable. Whole areas of the city, neighborhoods and boulevards that used to be lit up with life are now dark. Even the street lamps are off. Even the porch lights are extinguished.

To celebrate this season of lights, some of us have put up the traditional holiday decorations. In the part of the city where I now reside, the "sliver by the river," there are homes and businesses with bright and colorful Christmas lights. And why not? We need the light. We crave the light.

I continue to cling to the belief that the light is coming. I have hope this season of lights will be the threshold to better things, the birth of a new year that will bring a new New Orleans.

Happy Holidays to all.

A voice from New Orleans

I hope everyone heard the interview on NPR's Weekend Edition this morning with hurricane Katrina evacuee Randy Adams. If not, you can click here to listen to the story on NPR's web page.

Mr. Adams explains why he has returned to New Orleans, and recounts some of the difficulties he is experiencing. It runs about 4 minutes, but the most important part is at the end of the interview when he says, "I would like to share one other insight..."

Mr. Adams is what we would call "good people." Best wishes to you, sir. Welcome home.

Body count goes up again

As fellow blogger Polimom says, "they should NOT still be finding bodies" in the Lower 9th Ward.

Rest in peace.

Homeward bound

Well, this is a banner day in my life. Anyone who's visited this blog before knows how my life was blown off course by a nasty hurricane in late August. We're all still recovering, and some of the small steps back to that place called "normal" have been documented on this blog.

But now comes a big one. Back in September, Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. He issued a second such order a few weeks later when a second hurricane threatened our waterlogged city. And he declared the first universal curfew for the city of New Orleans in my 44-year lifetime.

Today's big announcement is this: residents of all areas west of the Industrial Canal are now free to return to their homes. Permanently, if we choose.

As The Times-Picayune reported:

That means people can officially reoccupy their homes in Gentilly, Lakeview, the Upper 9th Ward and other areas in four ZIP codes: 70122 and 70124, as well as parts of 70117 and 70126. The rest of the city west of the Industrial Canal was already open for returnees to stay.

Yep, 70122, that's my neighborhood! That means I now have official permission to not just visit my devastated home during daylight hours, I can now sleep there if I want to.

Not that I would want to.

Why would I want to sleep there, in a house that was filled almost to the ceiling with putrid flood water for about two weeks? Why would I want to sleep there, in a house that is still littered with soggy and shattered furniture, popped and puckered floors, and a kitchen made foul by an overturned refrigerator and a collapsed pantry of rotting food? Why would I want to sleep there, in a house with no gas, no electricity, no sewerage, and water pressure so low that we are warned it could be difficult to fight a fire if one occurs? Why would I want to sleep there, in a house that lies in the shadow of the shattered London Avenue Outfall Canal, whose two rocky patches are still leaking into the adjacent streets?

Officially, my neighbors and I have permission to go home. But no one in his right mind will.

Unless and until we fix those levees, restore basic utilities, and get some assurance that at least a few neighbors will join us there, no one in his right mind will return.

Heck, FEMA won't even put a travel trailer on my street until we get electricity and sewer service back online.

So although today, December 23, 2005, is the official day I am permitted to go home, I think it will be many months before I am able to go home.

Tags: New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina

Moved on Too Fast

Here's an interesting editorial lamenting the short attention span of the federal government and the media.

Editor & Publisher: The Press Has Moved on Too Fast
By Mark Fitzgerald, December 19, 2005

The recurring themes in all such pieces are that no one really understands how bad it is until they come here and see it in person, and that much, much more needs to be done to help.

The writer was surprised by the lack of traffic signals through most of the city. If he had been a regular reader of this blog, he would have known that before coming to town.