Miss Hayley Elizabeth Needs a Nuk:
Hayley, my 3 1/2 year-old granddaughter came into my room at 3 am the other night and said, "MiMi, I need a nuk." She gave up her pacifier some time ago so I was unprepared. I found one of the baby's and gave it to Hayley and put her back to sleep. The next day I went out and bought 6 nuks, different colors and two of them glow in the dark. I keep them in a plastic bowl next to my bed for Hayley when she wakes me up in the middle of the night. It seems to be a great comfort to her.
I'm eyeing the purple, glow in the dark one for myself.
Tyler's Streetcar:
From my house I can hear the streetcars rumbling down St. Charles Avenue. It's one of the things I have always taken for granted. In fact, one of the best pieces of advice my grandmother ever gave me was, "it's never a good idea to live too far away from the streetcar line."
My grandson Tyler shares my love of streetcars. In March, for his third birthday, I rented a streetcar for his party. We all had a great time. I also gave him a painted ceramic streetcar to take back to Houston. It reminds him of his home. Now my husband and I are sleeping in his room while he sleeps in his Spiderman tent with his cousins in the playroom. That ceramic streetcar is the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night.
As I watch the news, I see the looters. I know some need the food and water. But, there are the scum who take advantage of this difficult time. Our mayor just declared martial law. I'm glad. What these few vermin are taking is not only goods, it's also the reputation of New Orleans, and that really hurts. I know this old city very well and I know the vast majority of her citizens are good, lawful, family people.
I'm going to bed now. As I go to sleep I'm going to stare at Tyler's ceramic streetcar and try hard to hear it rambling happily along St. Charles Avenue again.
Charlyn: Still in Shock:
I'm Charlyn, Sharon's daughter in Houston. I own the house that everyone is staying in now. It took me a while to compose myself to write this, because the last couple of days have been, to say the least, trying. And I still have a house -- even if it is a bit messy.
I grew up in New Orleans, and my childhood memories of hurricanes are -- OK, I'll say it -- fun. They were great. They were the Deep South's equivalent of snow days. Everyone got so excited and bought a lot of junk food. Grandma and Aunt Jamie came to spend a couple of nights at our house. The electricity went out, and out came the candles and flashlights. We all huddled around the TV for updates, and spent the night in sleeping bags. If we were really lucky, the streets filled with water. We would wait anxiously for news that our school had closed for a day or two.
Of course, my mom and her generation, who lived through the monster storms of Betsy and Camille, felt much differently. I remember visiting my mom's cousin on the Gulf Coast as a child. Next to their house, in the yard, was a tile floor. I was told that was the kitchen, before the original house was blown away in Camille. The foundation was all that remained of their childhood home.That generation gap, and the forty years of false alarms and near misses that followed Betsy and Camille, is one of the reasons many younger people didn't feel a rush to leave when Hurricane Katrina hovered in the Gulf. I think now we all will have a very different feeling about hurricanes.
Charlyn: Fire and Flood:
WWL-TV just announced that Oakwood Mall is burning down. Ironically, despite the fact that 80 percent of the city is covered in water, firefighters don't have enough water pressure to put the fire out. They think the fire was started perhaps accidentally, by looters. Worse, there may still be people in the mall who had found shelter there earlier in this ordeal.
One of the first disturbing images from this hurricane, for me, was a few nights ago (the days have run together -- is it really September today?). Southern Yacht Club, the second oldest yacht club in the country, was filled with water and yet burning down. No one could get near it, and all that history was lost forever. Watching that video, I got a feeling that would become a very familiar one: helplessness.
Since then, houses have exploded and burned down from broken gas lines. The flames actually shoot up from underneath the water. It would have been hard to imagine if I hadn't seen it.
