WATCHING THE STORM ROLL IN

I've spent the last 24 hours obsessively checking the NOAA website and watching the progress of Hurricane Gustav.

Three years ago, I was doing much the same thing as hurricanes Katrina and Rita stormed towards the gulf coast. Back then, I was working crazy hours while covering the storms affects on the Texarkana and Shreveport area. I spent time hanging out at hotels as evacuees filtered up to the city. I spoke with Red Cross volunteers as they loaded up supplies and drove south. I shot video as evacuees who were stranded at the Superdome finally ended a two day bus trip that included stops in Houston, Dallas, and five other cities.

The people who came off that bus had a look that is hard to describe. Most had blank stares that hinted at the horrors many of them saw during the previous weeks. Almost all the people I spoke with had to step over dead bodies as they made their way to shelter. Some had been victims of violence. When I asked one man how he was holding up, he simply answered, "I'm alone."

These images come back to me as I look at the maps and read the evacuation orders for cities like New Orleans and Beaumont. I think of friends like Darrell who find themselves in the path of the storm. I know of the great destruction and misery that will likely visit thousands of people. My prayers are with those people tonight.

The good news is that Gustav appears to be weakening it nears landfall. Perhaps I will awake on Monday and learn that Gustav is more annoying than deadly. That's about the best outcome anyone can hope for at this point.

Of course, there is the selfish side of me that wishes I was heading east with a photographer right now to cover the storm and it's aftermath. It's one of those sick things about journalists: you want to be where the action is, even if the action is in a place you shouldn't be.

Indeed, one of the coolest things about being a journalist is getting to witness things that few others get to see. You get to see cities that have been completely evacuated. You get to visit locations that are guarded by barbed wire and security cameras. You get a front row seat for the rally/concert/trial that everyone wants to see. It's a shallow reason for liking journalism, but, well...

This time, I'm thousands of miles from the action, and the closest I'll probably get to the story is interviewing local volunteers who are headed south to help with the recovery efforts. But for the next few days, I'll be looking southward, praying for my friends, and wishing that I was there.

NOTES FROM THE BUS

It’s early Saturday morning and I stagger onto a bus with about 40 journalists, most of whom are hung over. I’m not hung over, but I certainly look and feel like it.

We’re going to tour New Orleans’s 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish. Both neighborhoods were devastated by floods following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I’m uneasy about the tour. I interviewed countless evacuees when I was working for a television station in Texarkana. Some of their stories haunt me to this day. Now I’m on vacation, and I’m concerned their misery is being used for my entertainment.

Perhaps I’m making too much of this. After all, I’m a journalist. We’ve got a license to rubberneck. We pull over at horrific traffic accidents and start taking pictures. We walk up to people who have just lost a loved one and ask, “How do you feel?” Why should this be any different? Well, technically, I’m off duty. So that’s different. I feel guilty, but not so guilty that it keeps me from getting on the bus… with a camera.

Our bus eases down Canal Street, and an oppressively cheery tour guide explains how high the water hit various buildings. There are spray paint markings on various buildings left by National Guard troops, but the neighborhoods seem only a little worse for the wear.
Then we hit the 9th Ward. It is mostly deserted. Thick stands of weeds conceal the concrete slabs where homes once stood. I’m later told this represents progress. Not too long ago, the area was dotted with debris piles larger than most houses. Those have been cleaned up, and in their place is nothing. Whole blocks have been completely cleared of homes. Others have one or two homes looking fresh and rebuilt, dropped into a sea of weeds.
St. Bernard Parish is in slightly better shape, but that’s not saying much. Small community stores are open, but the area’s big box retailers still stand derelict in the middle of giant, empty parking lots.We stop at a high school and the principal tells us harrowing stories about the days that followed the flooding. Later the directors of the St. Bernard Project tell us about the army of volunteers who have rebuilt more than 100 homes in the parish.

They all begin and end their remarks by thanking us for coming to their neighborhood to view the destruction and rebuilding process. They’re worried they’re being forgotten as newer natural disasters grab the popular attention.
Implicit in their welcome is the understanding that we will go out and tell the world what we’ve seen. But it’s hard to know just what to say. By all accounts, things are much better than they were even a few months ago. More than half the population has returned to New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. The work of the volunteers in these communities is substantial and helps restore my confidence in mankind.

But underneath it all is a lingering sense of despair and disbelief. Three years later, and this is all we could fix? Really? The country that brought you the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift can’t get homes rebuilt on its own home turf? The country that can find 340 million dollars per day to fight the Iraq War can’t find the money to get New Orleans back on its feet?

I know it’s not that simple. Between private property rights and insurance and multiple layers of government, the scene I see outside of the bus as we head back to the hotel is a product of thousands of small individual choices that somehow add up to something larger. I know this. But that’s still no excuse for what’s happening, or more accurately, what’s not happening.

So what to make of this? What to say about this scene before me? There’s likely nothing I can add that hasn’t been stated more eloquently by the people who live in New Orleans and lived through the storm and its aftermath.

But I’ve still got an implicit promise to keep to the people I’ve seen and heard: the promise that I would write about them in whatever forum I write for (in my case, this little ol’ blog).

So I’ll post a few admittedly weak photos taken from a moving bus and pass along the message I’ve heard time and again down here. It’s a simple yet somewhat contradictory message.

First, New Orleans is back, please come visit. Second, New Orleans is nowhere close to being rebuilt and the trauma and sorrow continues three years later. Third, please don’t forget us.

After what I’ve seen, I doubt I ever will.

MSY-ATL-SLC-MFR

Breakfast in the Central time zone. Lunch in the Eastern time zone. Dinner in the Mountain time zone. Now I'm back in the Pacific and very tired.

But with all that time on airplanes, I just about finished reading "The Geography of Bliss," which I heartily recommend.

Didn't have time to write about the 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish while in New Orleans. I'll have that up in the next few days. But for now, I'm going to sleep.

NOLA 1

After an inauspicious start to the day that included sleeping in past my alarm and muttering some obscenities, it has been a good day here in New Orleans.

Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke today, and I was struck by two things. The first was the overwhelming challenge of trying to rebuild a city that was completely shut down by the storm in 2005. While many people have returned, officials are still trying to persuade people displaced by the hurricane to return home. And they're trying to get businesses to come back, too. And crews are still rebuilding broken infrastructure like roads, power lines, and the sewer system. They're talking about decades until the city is made whole again.

But more striking was the anger conveyed by both Nagin and Landrieu. It has been almost three years since the city was flooded, yet officials still find themselves essentially begging for money from the feds. Both men said they felt like the city had been forgotten and disrespected by America.

I was taken by an expression Landrieu used just before ending his remarks. He said the city appreciated, but did not need any more "drive-by empathy" from Americans. Instead, they want solutions.

So I'm left to wonder if I am here engaging in "drive-by empathy." I've been joking that New Orleans is the ideal liberal guilt destination right now. You can come here and take a vacation, and no matter what excess you engage in, you can chalk it all up to "helping out a city that really needs it." Will our consciences be soothed if we all blow a lot of money in this city? I don't know. Every local I've spoken to has said how happy they are that people are returning to the city and holding conventions and spending money.

Tomorrow I'll have a chance for some drive by empathy of my own. We'll be taking a bus tour of the parts of the city that still haven't been rebuilt. I'll let you know how it goes.

AWAY AT LAST

Our plane touched down just before 10 tonight. Getting a taxi was easy enough and there was almost no traffic between the airport and downtown. And as I'm being driven into town, I'm taken back to my last trip to New Orleans in 2005. It was about 5 months before Katrina hit.

As we pass through the outlying communities, I think back to the aftermath of the hurricane. I was working in Texarkana and the city was full of evacuees from New Orleans. I didn't know where Metairie was the last time I came here. But now I can't stop thinking about the man from Metairie who fled to Texarkana and was working out of donated office until he was allowed to return home. Or the girl who lived in the Lower 9th Ward who got separated from her family and had to sleep on top of a freeway overpass and was eventually reunited with her parents in Texarkana. Or the man who stayed in the Superdome and simply said, "I'm alone" when I asked him how he's holding up.

I don't know where these people are now. Don't know if they've returned here. From the nighttime drive from the airport, it's hard to see anything different here. I'm staying in the French Quarter, and the area was spared the flooding that other neighborhoods saw.

But it stands to reason that the city is different. Will I be able to notice? I don't know.

MFR-SLC-MSY

In a few hours I will board a nasty regional jet and head out to New Orleans. I'll be attending a writer's conference there.

I find myself apprehensive as I prepare to leave. This whole endeavor is somewhat foreign to me.

I've never attended a conference in my life, but from what I can surmise, it's a gathering of people who do the same thing. They converge to share war stories, network, and get really, really drunk.

There are all kinds of problems with this scenario. First, I'm not really like the other people at this conference. They will be professional writes. I'm a television journalist.

Second, I'm not much of a networker. The whole act of networking feels sleazy and insincere to me. Every time I try, I feel like the other person is thinking, "this man is trying to use me... and I thought he was interested in me as a person!"

And most importantly: I don't drink. That's not to say I don't go to bars and socialize when my friends do. But there's something of a "brotherhood of drunkards" that I'm just not a member of.

So why am I going? Good question. I'm anxious to escape my comfort zone and experience new things and expand my social and professional network. So off I go. Off I go to New Orleans by myself. Off I go to the Big Easy as a prudish, teetotaling Mormon.

I'll let you know how it goes.