(no subject)
I underuse this blog horribly and mostly use it to be nosy, but this is what I did on my summer evacucation (copied from the email I sent to the family, so it's breezy and brief... but here includes special bonus picture of the dog in his evacuation spot, wearing a sweatshirt like I like him to do.)
Dear all,
Since the weather has been so exciting here on the Gulf Coast for the last week and apparently has more action in store for us, I thought I'd do a quick friends-and-family update and let everyone know how our household fared.
Lefty, Pepperoni and I took the opportunity to visit our friends Jay and Stephanie Thomas at their new house in Memphis, where they moved after Katrina. We took everything off the floor and low shelves and put it in the upstairs part of the house, and packed up Lefty's van and parked it in a friend's offstreet parking spot on high ground in the Marigny. We left Sunday afternoon in my car. After we saw the now-famous parking lot that was the I-59 contraflow, we escaped to the (very scenic) Mississippi two-lane state highway and got to Memphis adding only an hour to the normal travel time (feeling guilty the whole way while we listened to callers on AM radio talking about their 20-hour ordeals on the highway). Since our apartment on Poland Avenue is only two blocks from the Industrial Canal, the first two days of evacuation were pretty nerve-wracking, as we watched the canal splash into the street, but luckily it held. Our roommate Robert Starnes, who was in the middle of moving during the storm, kept us updated on the state of the neighborhood and reportedly dined like a king on the abandoned contents of all our friends' refrigerators.
As it turned out, the Memphis trip was pretty efficient and productive, all things considered. I blogged for Gambit Weekly all week and filed stories for the new issue. We also got to get some interviews taped with Memphis musicians for the Ponderosa Stomp's archive and new radio program... I got to meet the only member of Otis Redding's band to survive the 1967 plane crash, plus Al Green's guitar player. I also finished recording for a podcast and an NPR piece over the phone with my editor at Paste magazine. We visited the Stax Records museum and saw the famous ducks in the fountain at the Peabody.
Our power wasn't on yet when we left Memphis on Friday, so we took our time and went down Highway 61 and visited some Mississippi Delta blues landmarks. I've never been in that part of the south, and it's strange and beautiful country... we saw the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, and lots of kudzu and cotton. We spent the night in Jackson, Mississippi, visited Eudora Welty's house, and got home Saturday night about four hours after the power came back on.
All in all, we were surprised and happy about New Orleans' hurricane response this time around. The levees held, the city evacuated almost 20,000 residents efficiently on buses (and they seem to be coming back promptly too - we saw a bus dropping off evacuees on our block yesterday), cell phones worked, and power and sewage were up and running pretty fast. The mail is backed up, but coming. The West Bank of the river was hit pretty badly, but it really looked like most things worked as well as possible.
The pool and yard at the house are a pretty horrible mess of branches, debris and weird algae growth, and we spent Sunday tidying up, although there's no trash pickup in our neighborhood yet and we're still waiting for Ike to make its intentions known. We'll have a solid idea by Tuesday. Most of you know that I had plans to be in New York working for the CMJ music conference at the end of the month anyway, so if it looks like the new storm will be a problem, I'll fly out early and probably have Lefty evacuate my car to somewhere dry.
Thankfully, this time around, the ducks at the Peabody Hotel (see attached) got wetter than the house... so cross your fingers that that'll hold true this time.
love,
Alison
Dear all,
Since the weather has been so exciting here on the Gulf Coast for the last week and apparently has more action in store for us, I thought I'd do a quick friends-and-family update and let everyone know how our household fared.
Lefty, Pepperoni and I took the opportunity to visit our friends Jay and Stephanie Thomas at their new house in Memphis, where they moved after Katrina. We took everything off the floor and low shelves and put it in the upstairs part of the house, and packed up Lefty's van and parked it in a friend's offstreet parking spot on high ground in the Marigny. We left Sunday afternoon in my car. After we saw the now-famous parking lot that was the I-59 contraflow, we escaped to the (very scenic) Mississippi two-lane state highway and got to Memphis adding only an hour to the normal travel time (feeling guilty the whole way while we listened to callers on AM radio talking about their 20-hour ordeals on the highway). Since our apartment on Poland Avenue is only two blocks from the Industrial Canal, the first two days of evacuation were pretty nerve-wracking, as we watched the canal splash into the street, but luckily it held. Our roommate Robert Starnes, who was in the middle of moving during the storm, kept us updated on the state of the neighborhood and reportedly dined like a king on the abandoned contents of all our friends' refrigerators.
As it turned out, the Memphis trip was pretty efficient and productive, all things considered. I blogged for Gambit Weekly all week and filed stories for the new issue. We also got to get some interviews taped with Memphis musicians for the Ponderosa Stomp's archive and new radio program... I got to meet the only member of Otis Redding's band to survive the 1967 plane crash, plus Al Green's guitar player. I also finished recording for a podcast and an NPR piece over the phone with my editor at Paste magazine. We visited the Stax Records museum and saw the famous ducks in the fountain at the Peabody.
Our power wasn't on yet when we left Memphis on Friday, so we took our time and went down Highway 61 and visited some Mississippi Delta blues landmarks. I've never been in that part of the south, and it's strange and beautiful country... we saw the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, and lots of kudzu and cotton. We spent the night in Jackson, Mississippi, visited Eudora Welty's house, and got home Saturday night about four hours after the power came back on.
All in all, we were surprised and happy about New Orleans' hurricane response this time around. The levees held, the city evacuated almost 20,000 residents efficiently on buses (and they seem to be coming back promptly too - we saw a bus dropping off evacuees on our block yesterday), cell phones worked, and power and sewage were up and running pretty fast. The mail is backed up, but coming. The West Bank of the river was hit pretty badly, but it really looked like most things worked as well as possible.
The pool and yard at the house are a pretty horrible mess of branches, debris and weird algae growth, and we spent Sunday tidying up, although there's no trash pickup in our neighborhood yet and we're still waiting for Ike to make its intentions known. We'll have a solid idea by Tuesday. Most of you know that I had plans to be in New York working for the CMJ music conference at the end of the month anyway, so if it looks like the new storm will be a problem, I'll fly out early and probably have Lefty evacuate my car to somewhere dry.
Thankfully, this time around, the ducks at the Peabody Hotel (see attached) got wetter than the house... so cross your fingers that that'll hold true this time.
love,
Alison