Dear loyal bloggers,

I hope everyone is well and happy. I’m sorry to report that I am no longer in Egypt, but rather in a place that needs my attention more desperately. Here is my story…

Disaster struck and I had to return to the place of my youth. When I stood in a sea of empty houses that once teemed with life, rusted piles of twisted metal two stories high, temporary parking lots filled with hundreds of abandoned cars, all I could do was wonder where all the people were. Where are all the residents of this lonely neighborhood? Where are all the owners of these cars that are covered with a thin white film of dried river water?

I had coffee and beignets at Café du Monde, the proud shop that sits across from Jackson Square on the Mississippi River. There are one hundred tables, usually full with laughing tourists and locals, but on this sad day only five people offered their patronage. I sat there and wondered where all the people were. The city that usually dances with inescapable music at every dirty corner sits quiet and sad today, as I do on this lonely day in November.

I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 12 FEMA workers and wondered where all those lost souls of New Orleans were eating their turkeys, if they were at all. The devastation of their lives did not become clear until I stood in their neighborhoods. There is talk that New Orleans should never let the poor back into the city, to leave them where the federal government placed them in Texas and Georgia and Utah and Alabama. But we cannot discard them in rancid hotels where a family cannot cook a meal and the one room is filled with 5 or 6 or 7 people. A hotel is not a home. Are the officials talking of ignoring the poor or are they talking of ignoring the colored or is it the same thing? This would surely be another stain on the quilt of American History if we do not give them the means to return, whether poor or black or white or red.

Katrina is already ignored in the media and no long-term solutions are being discussed. Surely developers with big ideas and flashy PowerPoint presentations will try and convince city council to bulldoze these neighborhoods and build condos and estates along the Mississippi River, a river whose bank has always been home to the poor and lively. But why was the poorest part of the city destroyed? I drove down Magazine Street and all through Uptown, the area of the affluent, and besides some fallen trees and water damage, it was intact and safe. I was pleased that the historic integrity of the homes gracing St. Charles Street were intact, but the ghettos brought me to tears. I cried for all those souls who have suffered countless pains that I’ll never understand.

The day after Thanksgiving I took a drive to Gulfport, Mississippi. I have Army Corps of Engineers paperwork from my FEMA friends, so I was able to enter the militarized zones. The whole coastline is fenced with sharp barbed wire and humvees roam the streets with guns drawn. What are they afraid of? Looting houses that no longer stand? Stealing cars that are broken in two by dead oak tress? People like me who come to pay my respects to the suffering?

Many pine trees that once stood proud and strong were broken and dying on the side of every road. The smell of pine was intoxicating, but I gained no pleasure from the aroma because it hangs in the air at such a cost. The only people of the roads it seemed were disaster relief workers and contractors out to make a buck from the devastation. As I crossed Interstate 10 and approached the Gulf of Mexico, it was not only downed trees I saw, but downed dreams.

Gulfport is a working class town that now sits a ghost town near the shore. I imagined that those with homes on the water waited years to achieve their dream of waking every morning to the smell of the salt air, but all that stood on the shore is concrete slabs. The emptiness of the area was eerie and the hollow air that once filled with children’s voices and lawn mowers on Saturday was chilling. I could almost feel the loss as I sat to stare at the sea on what once were the front steps of a house of love. The house next door, or rather the slab next door, had a plastic Christmas Jesus figurine, the kind that stands two feet tall and lights up, with a sign saying, “Pray for Us.” I began to pray.

But what shall we pray for? For money from the federal government to restore the tangible goods lost?

Maybe for FEMA and the federal government to operate according to their mission statement? Or maybe for the realization that material goods are meaningless and love is our only hope?

Love is the answer to all of the questions and fear in our world. I want to give love and receive love. I feel there is a wonderful opportunity here to fix our broken souls.

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