New Orleans

Quite a few peo­ple have con­tact­ed Paula and I because they know we’re from Louisiana and they’re con­cerned about our rel­a­tives and friends.

Thank you.

For those who might be curi­ous but haven’t con­tact­ed us, our imme­di­ate rel­a­tives were hard­ly affect­ed. Extend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends all sur­vived but some lost every­thing.

When I was a kid we used to joke about how stu­pid it was to build a port city below sea lev­el. Every year it seemed that New Orleans would have a near miss with a hur­ri­cane and we’d start jok­ing about how dumb we Cajuns were. We knew with all the cer­tain­ty child­hood pro­duces that New Orleans would be wiped off the map one day.

Of course, when you’re a kid you don’t real­ly think about all the suf­fer­ing such a cat­a­stro­phe will entail. The news out of New Orleans is stag­ger­ing. The scari­est thing is that it could eas­i­ly have been much worse. Times like these remind us of just how frail and frag­ile all of human­i­ty’s accom­plish­ments real­ly are.

Any­way, all this leads me to won­der what jokes kids in Cal­i­for­nia make about the “Big One”. New Orleans final­ly got a bul­let it could­n’t dodge. I won­der when Cal­i­for­ni­a’s is com­ing… I hope I’m not here to see it.

Con­voy of Hope is doing a fine job of help­ing peo­ple. If you’ve been want­i­ng to give in some way, I know sev­er­al peo­ple who work for the out­fit and can assure you that they’re doing a stand­out job.