Katrina or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Technology

I'm a technophile though I'm not an early adapter.  I'll let others deal with the frustrations of Beta software and whatnot. I want the bugs worked out. A couple of months prior to Katrina my in-laws gave my husband, G, his grandmother's cell phone. Neither one of us had one yet. Many of our friends had them but we didn't want to feel like we could always be tracked down. We didn't blog. We weren't on any sort social media that was around at the time. It wasn't until 2009 I embraced social media. But Katrina introduced us to texting and blogging.

We had given G's cell phone number to our neighbors across the street. Several days after the storm his phone chirped and he received his first text message. It was from our neighbors, they were OK! But it took us a while to figure out how to reply to them. This was years before smart phones when it took forever to type anything out. I remember when G snuck back into New Orleans with his cousin, I was so nervous and scared. We had heard the stories. I was in Baton Rouge and tried to call G with no luck. The phone lines were still all screwed up. I ended up sending an email to a friend in Chicago and asked her to call him. It worked! She emailed back that she talked to him and they got in OK. When we got back to New Orleans in October, one of the first things I did was buy my first cell phone. The landline was out at my office and we had no idea when it would work. (Side note, our AT&T landline at home never went out.) Now I'm addicted to my iPhone.

After the storm, email was the only reliable way to communicate with people. Unless you were teaching at a college that was stupid enough to 1) have their server on the first floor on a campus that flooded and 2) not have a back up server in another location. I was teaching part-time at Delgado and I hated all the crap I got through my DCC email, so I had set up my own email address to communicate with my students. So glad I had that so I could check on my students and report to them what little I knew. I even heard from former students who were checking on me and their friends. The college boated in, rescued their soggy server and eventually was able to send emails out. So many emails wizzed back and forth between us, family, friends and clients. It got to be chore to respond to all our well meaning friends. We started sending out blanket emails. At some point we set up a blog. I knew G used to read blogs before the store but wasn't blogging himself. Blogging made communicating so much easier and was/is therapeutic. We read other New Orleanians blogs and the message boards on nola.com to figure out what was really going on back home. The message boards were also a life saver. Through blogging, we made new friends after Katrina, real friends we see face-to-face. I think the post-Katrina NOLA blog community was unique. We had each other backs and we were trying to get the truth out there to anyone who would listen.

Author Cynthia Joyce collected and published a bunch of blog posts "Please forward: How Blogging Reconnected New Orleans After Katrina." I don't know if I can read the book, and I guess it's not really for me as she says "I think I wanted this collection to exist not so much for people who lived through it, but for people who didn't but who wanted to better understand it." Interviews with her resonate with me. So it is now I return to my blog to rant and get relief.

I was a graphic designer at the time and I reached out to my clients to see how they were, where they were, and what could I do to help them. As a small biz owner, I understood the helplessness they felt, and the desire to get back to work. Updating my clients' web sites kept me busy after the storm. We posted their new cell phone numbers so their clients could get in touch with them. I posted status of them and their businesses. It made me very happy on the days I got to update their websites to say "Now Open."

My first foray into social media was MySpace. Remember that? A friend had a profile on MySpace and that was the best way for me to keep up with what was happening with her after Katrina. Of course I had to join to be able to see her posts. Is MySpace is still around? Yep. And you can log in with your Facebook or Twitter account. Ha! Now I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Nextdoor (and probably some other sites I'm forgetting). I have this blog, a blog about my cats, a retired gardening blog, and a blog for my pet sitting business. I also do social media for my business plus a couple of other businesses and organizations. I also have more email addresses than I can count on both hands.

For better or worse, this is how we communicate now. I rarely talk on the phone anymore. Faxes, remember those? But nothing beats good, old fashioned face to face interaction. And I still love getting a card or note in the snail mail.

Today, it's a beautiful, rare, cool, dry day and I have dogs to walk. So it's time to walk away from the computer and sign off.

Quick car update: I got my car back, after a few sweaty days of riding the streetcar to work. Got a new ECM relay, battery terminals and a fuse. Everything seems to be working now *fingers crossed.*

When I worked downtown I used to ride the streetcar every day. Some people think it's just a tourist thing but it's not. I must say I'm impressed by their punctuality. I checked the times on the RTA web site and they were right on. The first day I just missed it. I was drenched in sweat by the time I got to the office. After the first day I got smart and took a change of clothes with me. Yesterday I had one of those drivers with the fun personalities. The machine didn't want to take my dollar and he was cracking jokes the whole time. "Did you print that dollar last night?" Most of them are pretty nice. I remember the one man (pre-K) who would talk to the cars. "Whooo, hold that buggy!" he'd say when a car looked like it was going to cross in front.

Last weekend we did the Lafitte Corrodor Hike (I need to post photos!) and we rode the Canal Street line back to our car downtown. A great way to ride.

Petition to open Lyon's Center Pool

Lyons Center

The pool

NORD's Lyon Center is in my neighborhood. No renovations have been done since Katrina. Last July at the Mayor's Round Table I attended last August a representative from NORD said that the Lyon's Center was under Architectural review and construction would start the end of the year. No work has been done since then.

Last summer the pool was open and kids from all around went. These are kid who parents can't afford to send them to a summer camp. And it's hot down here in the summer. The pool is a safe, supervised opportunity for the kids to have some fun.

April, two men were arrested after doing over $300,000 worth of damage to the Lyon's Center. Here's what someone from NORD emailed us about the damage:

There was substantial recent vandalism to the facility:

Room housing electrical breakers for pool area- Stripped wiring, electrical breakers and pool valves and mechanics-Total loss

Under Gym Bleachers as well as Restroom- Copper tubing for water lines stolen and cut-Total loss

Large Conference in front- Most copper electrical wiring in ceiling striped ceiling destroyed to get to the copper

Additional rooms throughout building- copper electrical wiring in ceiling striped ceiling destroyed to get to the copper

Restroom Facilities used in summer season 2008- Inoperable -copper waterline tubing cut and stripped.

We have assigned an architect to the project- have to get the contract through the process- but never anticipated this most recent and significant damage of this extent and nature that will now have to be addressed. Of course with our high insurance deductibles the repair cost will be borne by the most part by the City. There are bond funds available ($1.7M)which were supposed to go toward overall improvements which will now have to be used for this remedial purpose. There is little to no likelihood that FEMA will even entertain the idea of any funding to address that vandalism. It is my understanding that the thieves were apprehended but any help that Council could give making copper theft less attractive will greatly help our and thousands of others efforts in the recovery. We will do what we can but this is a major blow to that facility which will be exceptionally costly and time consuming to repair.

I have instructed MWH that the City will no longer use copper piping in the construction of any of our facilities; however, electrical system, the most costly in the construction, remain wholly vulnerable.

Why wasn't the building better secured and monitored? That much damage can't be done in a day. Plus when the arrest was made there was evidence that people were living in the center!

So I started a petition, to be presented this Friday at meeting with the City Council, NORD and FEMA, stating it is NORD's responsibility to do what need to be done so that the pool can be opened this summer. If you agree, PLEASE sign the petition and tell your friends. THANK YOU!

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/open-lyons-center-pool

I'm glad THAT's over... August that is. Now to get through September. Last night we were out with friends at our new hangout, the Rendezvous on Magazine, G played "Wake me when September Ends" by Greenday on the jukebox. That was sort of a mantra September 2005 and holds true still.

The eve of K+2, we got together with neighbors after dinner. We stayed in contact with our neighbors through out our Katrina imposed exile. I'm the secretary of our neighborhood association so I had the email list of everyone. A couple of our neighbors also ended up in Houston and we got to see them there. It was nice Wednesday evening, sitting around and talking about normal stuff and not talking about K+2. G and I agreed that ignoring the anniversary was a bad idea. We needed to do something; getting together with the neighbors was good. We also drank a bottle of good wine we brought home from California last fall.

School has started, the college students are back, football season has started and we have elections coming up. People are starting to shake off their summer hibernation and the energy in the city is starting to pick up again. Thursday was a football first - the Saints and LSU Tigers were playing at the same time. I know there were many people attempting to watch both (we didn't watch either). Of course the LSU game actually means something. I don't pay attention to pro pre-season. Speaking of college football (Go Seminoles!) Gaby and I did the media guide for Tulane football this year. Our client has promised us tickets to the first Tulane game. Not that tickets are particularly expensive (I take taht back, looking on -line they . And they play in the Superdome so it's unlikely they'd sell out. I still say football played indoors is wrong. I've been to one Saints game and a couple of Sugar Bowls, and it's unnatural watching football in air conditioning.

Hmmmm... searching on-line for Tulane tickets and I guess I was wrong! The first home game is against Mississippi State and there are no individual tickets available for the game. I remember when I was at FSU my roommate sold her ticket for the U of Miami game one year for $50. Cha-ching. I went to the game. It was good and FSU won . If they had lost I would have been kicking myself for not selling my ticket too.

I think I can safely proclaim summer has begun in New Orleans. It started, was it Thursday or Friday? Up to that point I could still drive around with the car windows down and we hadn't turned on the AC in our house yet. This weekend has been blazing hot and no cooling rains. Last summer, people were still in panic mode, especially with the first hurricane season since Katrina bearing down. This summer, people are fed up with the slow pace of recovery, corrupt politicians and insurance companies and quality of life issues. Trash, littering and recycling have been hot topics lately. Lots of ink spent covering these topics in the T-P. Chris Rose is back in fine form and sums up some people's feelings:

We may feel powerless in our battles with the faceless bureaucracies of the Corps of Engineers and FEMA and Allstate and the Road Homeless and the drive-by shooters and Bill Jefferson and everyone else who would screw us over, but when affronted by a potato chip let loosed in an uncivil fashion, then we feel like maybe that's a battle we can win. (read whole article)

I think you do have to be crazy to live here. Bill Jefferson... indicted... everyone asked "how did he get re-elected?" How indeed. The murder rate keeps growing and historically it increases with the heat. And there may be litter related shootings soon. June 1 the media was waving the "hurricane season has started" red flag, but it only lasted a few days. I think people didn't pay attention. We all know things don't get bad until August and we all had already made our disaster kits last summer.

On a positive note... Saturday Greg turns 40! Greg not one to make a big deal about his birthday, but the big 4-0 is cause for celebration. He's been making steady progress on the bedroom renovation (too hot to work outside). The cats are happy and healthy - I still haven't replaced my digital camera. My garden is growing out of control and it's a challenge to keep everything watered. For the past few months, Sunday was grill out night but not tonight. The grill will be lonely until October when the heat breaks.