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Email From NOLA IIm
There was a map in the Times Picayune recently that show the developed areas of New Orleans in the mid 1800s and that map can pretty well be laid over the post Katrina map of areas that stayed dry or relatively dry, and those areas that flooded.
So the Urban Land Institute is recommending that the rebuilding of New Orleans follow that same footprint and yesterday's paper has another map, one drawn up by the ULI and it shows this Rocheblave neighborhood and the Dumaine neighborhood as falling inside that area they consider to have minimal or moderate damage and this is their recommendation--"Should be repopulated immediatedly and services restored to current needs."
I called another electrician and they said they just merged with somebody and have 23 licensed electricians coming in from St. Louis and, can I call you back? (yeah sure), so I'm still trying to arrange for electrical inspection of this property and possibly two others. And there is rumor of more city inspectors being hired or, accepting the volunteering of outside inspectors, so things are really amping up, sorry about that last bit.
I finally heard from M, owner of the Dumaine house (and wherefrom Email from NOLA began) and she is still in the southern Pacific Northwest but has allowed me to work off some debt (for a couple years worth of taxes and insurance on the NC house we own together) and so I have started cutting away the tree that fell on the back shed and dismantling that shed and hauling it and its contents to the street, each trip each way 140 feet, carrying the debris through a 24 inch gap between the house and the cyclone fence separating properties, and so it is a little slow going but the pile in the street is growing and today or tomorrow I should finish it. And it is true what M always felt would be true--her backyard is greatly improved with the removing of that shed. But I can see why the quotes for removing it were kind of high. Lucky it is the sort of work I am best cut for.
I have heard from or about virtually everybody on my Find Katrina Victims list and so there that. They all fine; one or two, predictably, have discovered the criminal justice systems of their host cities.
There are still a few cadavers being found under the debris in the Lower Ninth Ward, now, almost three months later.
Those wild dogs I refer to are based in the first riverbound block of Iberville, below N. Broad, and they are a married couple (I'm not talking about Benji from Hell). They live mostly now under a house across the street from where their owner used to live, and ostensibly, will live again. Anyway, they got babies, Katrina pups from the looks of them. Or maybe born two weeks after. Somebody or multiple somebodies leaves food and water for them. They are so damn cute playing inside that fenced parking lot, come here little puppy, come here, let's play, but no, they gotta run away and hide under that house. There's four or five of them.
The Chevron at Canal and Broad opened a few days ago, and luckily for them the gas prices finally fell to pre-Katrina levels and so they didn't even have to change their signs, $2.49 for regular. Also that dude that has all the laundramats and car washes in the area has his Broad St. Car Wash open. And the Car Repair place at Galvez and Bienville was open when I got here on Oct. 2Osomething, and shortly after, Santos Car Repair opened (it where me and my nephew get our brake tag state required vehicle inspection) and the Midas Car Repair place on Canal between Dorgenois and Rocheblave, between the used car lot, which is also open, and the Rent-a-Harley place, which is not, I think, open. But that's it for now, as far as I can see. I mean those are the only places open within 10 square blocks of me. The open/closed business ratio would probably stay about the same if I extended the geographic parameter to 30 square blocks, or more, and excluded the French Quarter.
I walk around the St. Louis Cemetery #2, now, like its my own private park. Dammit, I should have annexed the cemeteries when I incorporated Louisville. Yesterday paid respects to Dominique You, Jean Lafitte's lieutenant, in the 1812 Battle of New Orleans.
When I work Dumaine I walk over to the truck at the shut Shell Station and get my Red Cross food. I get a little squirt of that quick evaporating sanitary hand gel, a stryofoam mystery plate and a couple bottles of water. Yesterday there was a whole car load of fully made up debutante chicks huddled inside a Land Rover in the Shell parking lot and possibly one from their group was obtaining food for some needy people they know. Or possibly they were on a treasure hunt, like that movie? William Wyler? I don't know, but the one where the debutants are on a treasure hunt and the last item on the list to obtain is a homeless person. It sort of felt like that, looking in at the pretty debutants looking away as I looked in.
I've got me a nice little home though. The temperature dial on the old school-style, non electronic thermostat for my central heating and cooling system, located in the side hall of my house which you would think was a shotgun if I didn't tell you it had a side hall, sits at 50 something this morning and that is fairly comfortable. It doesn't show any number lower than 50 but the dial will bottom out at a location to the left of the 50 and implies a number as low as you want, but probably only 40something at the coldest thus far. I have yet to see my breath, and it has really warmed up again during the days, but not muggy. Lorina and I can't decide if not talking to each other at all or talking to each other a little bit is the best formula for our respective healthy futures, so we hedge toward the potential mistake which best suits our needs, and that is talking a little and my point of mentioning this is I wanted to thank Lorina for not giving me shit about my cold weather complaining in this subtropical New Orleans climate and compliment her on the finesse with which she dropped her own weather report, "yeah, its getting a little cold here too, got down to 19 last night" (in Rappahannock, Virginia).
I locked my keys in the car again yesterday, on Dumaine. I walked back over here to Rocheblave to get my spare key, six blocks each way, and did not pass one single citizen either way, along the broken glass littered sidewalks of N. Broad St. Cleanup crew people on side streets and a few worker cars or trucks moving up and down Broad, but that's it.
One last thing. There are two, pristine condition tennis courts, hidden away, near here, in this area that has always had a bit of the armageddon feel to it, and as long as anyone doesn't think I'm including myself as anyone, I would like to end by saying--tennis anyone?