"You can knit a sweater by the fireside...Sunday mornings, go for a ride..." -- John Lennon Today's post is dedicated to the memory of John Lennon, who was murdered 25 years ago today. So, dear knitters, whilst I prepare my next knitting post and try to get back on track with my knitting blog, and reel it back in to the topic of knitting, where were YOU when you learned that John Lennon had been shot? I was in college at Louisiana State University. I was working at the campus radio station, WPRG-FM, which is where I met my husband. There was a spontaneous memorial the following night, held on the levee, next to the Mississippi River. Thousands of people were there. It was cold and damp and windy. I wore a favorite knit scarf and sweater under my windbreaker. We all held candles and cupped the flames in our palms so the wind wouldn't extinguish them. Many people brought guitars. We sang "Give Peace a Chance" and other songs. We cried and hugged each other. Yes John, we will still need you when we're sixty-four. And for long after that. My guitar gently weeps. --Mambocat

I Have A Non-Knitting Announcement to Make...

I am taking on a new job.

This took a lot of soul-searching, because the East Baton Rouge Parish Animal Control Center is a fine agency, and I feel a great deal of loyalty to the animal shelter itself, to my boss, to our veterinarian and to my co-workers. I am leaving some of the finest people I have ever worked with in my life, but I am moving on to work with some equally fine people.

I have been offered a job as director of operations for LA/SPCA in New Orleans, and I have accepted, but not for the salary increase alone. There are much deeper forces at work here.

Hurricane Katrina has irrevocably changed something inside me. The day I watched New Orleans drown was the most horrifying and shocking day of my life -- more awful than 9-11.

I grew up in New Orleans, and, when I was old enough to go to college, I wanted to get out and stay out, as young people often do. In order to become yourself, you usually have to get both physically and spiritually away from your roots.

But watching New Orleans drown, watching fires within the flood, working in the animal rescue efforts after Katrina, hearing tales of survival, witnessing parts of the ghastly aftermath firsthand, and being a small part of the vast effort to rescue animals and reclaim my hometown ... all of these things have flipped a switch inside me. And just as a vagabond youth comes rushing home when news arrives that a loved one is at death's door, so do I feel compelled to be directly involved in picking up what is left of my hometown and trying to breathe new life into it. It's like giving blood, or even a kidney, to a loved one whose life is on the line. There is no explanation for the motivation to do so. You just have to do it.

This is going to be a tremendous challenge. During the three days before Hurricane Katrina hit, the LA/SPCA evacuated all of the animals from their landmark shelter at 1319 Japonica Street, in the heart of the flood-ravaged Ninth Ward. But that shelter is now completely unsalvagable. Below you will see a photo of the ruined SPCA lobby after the floodwater was drained. Bad enough, I suppose, but this isn't the worst part by a long shot. It actually doesn't look so bad compared to the rest of the building.

We couldn't even get into some other parts of the building.

The new shelter will be constructed directly across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans, in an area which does not flood.

We get to transform an old coffee warehouse, with half a roof and no plumbing except for a toilet and washstand, into an animal shelter. We get to live and work in FEMA trailers while we do it. And we need to do this within the next two years.

After that, there are long-term plans for LA/SPCA to build a regional shelter, inland, high and dry. This shelter will also serve as a regional emergency preparedness center for animal evacuees during future hurricanes or floods. It is extremely likely that this regional shelter will be in, or very near, Baton Rouge. This shelter will be able to serve the entire region. Like Lou Reed said, "It's the beginning of a great adventure."

I won't be moving to New Orleans. I will be commuting.

Some of my friends and co-workers see my new job as a well-deserved promotion, some folks think I am insane to even consider commuting, some people are just plain happy for me, and a few think I am quite mad to accept a job "patching up the Titanic."

But to me, New Orleans is not the Titanic. I may choose to live in Baton Rouge, but New Orleans is home, and I cannot stand by without attempting to revive it. And if it were not for the lessons I learned as a child from my family and from the example set by the good people of 1319 Japonica Street, I might not be doing what I am doing today. This is a chance to close the circle and pay back with thanks.

And so that is my news.


And Now For An Important Knitting Annoucement:

It's almost time to send those cage cozies. The warehouse is being repaired and renovated into a permanent animal shelter, but at the same time, it is being used as an emergency shelter. As yet, there is no climate control. This building promises a chill, damp winter for the animals. Cage cozies are needed in both 18" by 18" size for cats and small dogs and in baby blanket size for larger pets. Gather up those cozies you have been making and in the next few days I will be able to post maling instructions.

And A Few Mundane Updates:

My hiding place is making a bit of progress. I have discovered that I can fit a considerable portion of my stash into this little space, along with my spinning wheel, a stool, a small mattress, and a bunch of pillows. A progress report is forthcoming.

Several shawls are finishing themselves at the same time. Don't ask me how this happened, but it is a very good thing, because I have only six inches done on the alpaca lace vest I am making Mom for Christmas. Photos of FOs and WIPs should be coming soon.

Now I have to get busy untangling myself from my current job and getting ready for my new one.

More soon....

--Mambocat

Tiger Feet

If anyone ever tells my mother that I am taking pictures of my feet and putting them on the Internet, she will absolutely faint, even though after forty-mumble years of my existence, she should be accustomed to this sort of oddity coming from me.

And it will do no good whatsoever to inform Mom that a great many other people in this world regale the Internet with photos of body parts far more alarming than feet.

Nor will it do any good to tell her that all the other knitters are putting pictures of their own be-socked feet on the Internet.

"All the other kids are doing it" didn't work in high school, either.

But anyway, here are my feet.

Mom, please note that they are very modestly encased in wooly socks. You canot tell from the still photo, but I am wiggling my toes in delight.

I am pickled tink and deeply honored to report that I have received this gift of a very special pair of Tiger Feet from Master Sock-Knitter Joan Richardson of Baton Rouge.

Although these are made from the new, more truly tiger-colored version of Opal Tiger, these are no ordinary socks. Only people who have knee injuries, specifically a torn AL, get a pair of these socks from Joan, and that honor has, to date, been reserved only for women on the LSU women's basketball team. However, having managed to injure my knee and damage an AL this summer (see my earlier post in the archive from this past summer: Knit One, Patella Two), Joan has decided that I deserve a pair of these magnificent socks.

Joan, I am delighted with these socks and wish to thank you in public, on the Internet, for this wonderful gift. I plan to wear them on game days for the LSU women's basketball team for good luck for the team and of course during LSU baseball games as well.

And here they are, sans pieds, displayed upon the Jupiter Gravity Couch at our house:

What, you may ask, is a Jupiter Gravity Couch?

That is a perfectly reasonable question, which deserves a perfectly reasonable answer.

The Jupiter Gravity Couch began as a sturdy, well-made sofa bed with a comfortable mattress but a poorly made pull-out metal bedframe. When after much use, it finally twisted into a pretzel and firmly refused to fold back into the couch, I simply disassembled it, tossed the frame at the curb, folded the mattress into thirds, and placed it in the gaping rectangular hole left behind by the previous mattress-frame combo.

But oops! Being frameless, the folded mattress was far too shallow when the seat cushions were replaced.

So, I inserted a thick chunk of sofa-seat-sized furniture foam, wisely covered in plastic, at floor level, and place the mattress on top of that.

Still too shallow.

Another layer of furniture foam was placed atop that. And finally, the seat cushions were put in place.

The end result is that, after a great deal of cussing at inanimate objects and dis-assembly of cheap frame components, I achieved in a weekend afternoon something that the world's greatest physicists have been working on fruitlessly for decades:

I have achieved Jupiter Gravity on Earth.

Once you sit -- or worse, lie down upon -- this couch, it is physically impossible to get up.

So. It is Sunday afternoon. I have some important decisions and plans to make this afternoon, which I shall announce to all of you very soon.

I think I will retire to the Jupiter Gravity Couch for awhile now, to sit and contemplate my future.

Thanks again, Joan!

--Mambocat

My Hiding Place

Our house started out as a wee, two-bedroom, welcome-home-GI house built in 1947. Over the years and through various owners it was expanded a bit, and, amongst the eccentric add-ons is a wee loft over the den, the addition of which happened sometime in the late 1970s.

For many years this loft housed a futon mattress, which often served as sleeping space for guests willing and able to climb the steep, ship-like ladder-stairs to the loft. And I admit that it was often -- make that "usually" -- a bit overcrowded with large boxes full of miscellaneous household items.

It was also a good nap, reading, and, of course, knitting spot.

Best of all, it sports a small, operable skylight so you can invite the breeze in on fine days.

It's like having an indoor treehouse.

For several months, I've been of a mind to convert this space to a real knitting nest, and Hurricane Katrina has forced my hand. After the first few days of seeing Mom trying to be comfortable on the lumpy sofa-bed in the den, I was inspired to buy a new futon frame, drag the mattress down out of the loft, and set up the futon in a small room downstairs so Mom could be more cozy.

This left me with a (mostly) empty loft to clean and de-junkify.

So. Now I get to play "Design On A Dime." To wit, I plan to transform the former sleeping space and junk storage loft to a cozy knitting and spinning nest.

The floor space you see is only 8 feet by 8 feet, and the side wall where the pictures are is only about 40 inches high, so I will not attempt to store much of my stash up here, aside from works-in-progress. One can't exactly stand up in this space (perhaps the Yarn Harlot could) but one certainly can lounge around in it or sit on a spinning stool or in a not-so-big chair. I am inclined to make use of my existing cot-mattress and pillows so I can lounge around like a sultan while Iknit.

So, what to do?

Perhaps I shall paint the walls. Perhaps not.

I will definitely rearrange the pictures on the wall into a more fetching configuration, and perhaps add or delete a few of them.

I do plan to stock that little shelving nook (3 feet high, one foot wide) with my favorite knitting books.

I also want to lug my spinning wheel and spinning stool up there, and bring up some of my covered baskets full of fleece and spinning supplies. I might even have room for my Navajo loom. The loom is a tad over four feet tall and the space where I want to put the loom is a little under 50 inches tall. It will just exactly fit.

I considered scavenging a bit of leftover carpet from a friend in the construction business, but decided that it's easier to clean cat vomit off the painted wood floor.

Just in case you are not familiar with the Captive Feline Code of Ordinances, I shall quote:

Title 14, Section 201:3; Placement of Hairballs and Liquid Vomitus in Human Habitations

(k.) Felines residing with humans who have installed new carpet at any location in the human dwelling are obliged by this section to deposit hairballs, liquid vomitus and insects and/or grass rejected by the stomach upon new carpeting within twelve hours of installation, and as often as possible thereafter until said carpet is sufficiently stained to match other carpet elsewhere in the human dwelling.

So. There you have it, in writing. I might add that it took a considerable bribe of tuna and sardines to obtain that information from a certain feline member of our household, who, for his own safety, shall remain unnamed.

So, dear readers -- ideas and suggestions?

What would you do if you had such a small space and wanted to squeeze in the following items:

1. A trunk and several Rubbermaid bins of yarn stash and WIPs

2. Several baskets of fleece and spinning supplies.

3. A small cot mattress (28" by 72") to be set along one wall with a convention of pillows upon it.

4. Knitting books.

5. Etc.?

Welcoming input from you all ...

--Mambocat

Red Hats

Is it just me, or is anyone else out there puzzled by all these Red Hat Societies?

I am, and I shall tell you why.

The poem goes, "when I am an old woman, I shall wear purple, with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me."

You ever see one of these Red Hat Societies? First, they are usually in the Society section of the paper, which is exceedingly proper, and second, those ladies' hats, albeit red, certainly do coordinate with their purple dresses, and suit them quite nicely. Granted, a lot of these Red Hat Societies are doing wonderful charitable work, but gals, puh-leeze -- stop coordinating.

Not matching is a principle concept. Along with learning how to spit. Okay?

So here is my contribution to the subject of aging:


When I am an Old Woman,
I shall wear enormous sweaters
With faded jeans and old roper boots.
And I shall spend my Social Security checks on yarn and cat food
And live entirely on tea, cheese and bread.
I shall sit on the porch on fall evenings,
With my feet propped up on the porch rail
And I shall knit and watch the sun go down
And nibble on chocolate all the while.

When I am an old woman I will spend all the time I want
With cats and dogs
Knowing that their love is unconditional
And, if they could speak and had thumbs,
That they would care for me if my old bones and addled brain
Fail to allow me to care for myself.

I will hang out in bookstores, sleep late every day,
Go to baseball games
And be glad for the warmth of my cats on the bed at night.
I will write long letters, full of unsolicited advice,
in my own handwriting,
and send them to my relatives,
And I shall knit blankets for each of my friends.

When I am an old woman I shall ride horses
Old horses, like me
They won't have to go fast because I will want to see
everything that goes by.
I shall stroke my cats and take naps with my dog
I shall incessantly wear a tired rain hat (the tan canvas one),
And take walks in the woods on foggy mornings.

I shall flip the bird to bad drivers and cuss whenever I want to
and I shall drive an old car covered in bumperstickers,
advising those behind me of my opinions.

I shall cut my hair close, and not give a damn if my butt looks big
Or if people think I talk too much
I shall not apologize for inconsequential matters,
Or explain myself to anyone.

Old women can get away with things.

-- Mambocat

copyright (c) 2005 Dez Crawford; all rights reserved

'Nuff Said ...

This photo, taken at the end of Magazine Street, about a mile from my mother's home and only two blocks away from New Orleans' Audubon Zoo, says it all. The building is a former corner grocery, deli and sandwich shop.

This area was not flooded. This is wind damage.

This photo was taken on my weekly trip into New Orleans to salvage a carload of belongings from Mom's house. Residents are slowly trickling back into the city. It will be a long, long time before most of New Orleans looks like anything besides a war zone.

New Orleans remains predominantly empty and eerily silent, with only the sound of the occasional car, military vehicle or debris truck passing by. While I was loading a box of Mom's clothes into my Volkswagen, I heard southbound geese honking overhead.

That's right. I heard them.

I looked up, expecting low-flying, feathered 747s to be directly over my head. They were not. Instead, I saw a skein of about twenty Canadian geese in a ragged V, urgently flapping their way southbound at the usual altitude.

Way up there.

That's how quiet it is in New Orleans. It is quiet the way the desert is quiet. Quiet like an empty house -- you can hear your own voice echoing off the neighbor's houses.

Walking back from the car, I could hear Mom's neighbor, Clint, listening to a news radio program. It was a fine October day, so his windows were open. Clint has moved back home and is one of the few people living full-time on Mom's block.

Out in Mom's backyard -- or at least the junk pile that used to be Mom's back yard -- I could hear him walk across the wooden floor of his apartment, cough, sneeze, open and then close the refrigerator door. I heard an aluminum can go, "pffsst."

He came out onto his porch, followed by his dogs. He wore a T-shirt, shorts and Birkenstocks, and was carrying a can of Coke. "Y'all doing okay?" he asked in a cheerful, mellow tone.

I told him we were packing a carload and waiting for the FEMA inspector. I told him the Army Corp of Engineers had failed to notice the "obstruction" on the roof when they taped their checklist to Mom's door.

"You mean the pecan tree?" Clint said, astonished. "They didn't see the pecan tree?"

We laughed and shook our heads. I patted his dogs. He told me he'd set his fridge at the curb when he got home and was lucky enough to be able to find a small, dormitory-type refrigerator to replace it. His landlord, so far, has refused to replace anything. The ceiling of Clint's apartment is leaking because the roof is gone from the apartment above his. Those tenants came in to salvage some belongings, piled what was ruined at the curb, and went back to their temporary digs out of town. The Corps of Engineers gave them a blue roof tarp, but it still leaks a bit when it rains.

We commented on the silence. No car alarms, no air conditioning compressors cycling on and off, no songbirds, no airbrakes from the city busses, no earth-shaking teenage car stereos. None of the usual urban audio mishmash.

The shipping docks a few blocks away are silent. The loading stations at the docks and grain elevators are silent. There is no ambient traffic noise. Each passing vehicle is an individual audio experience.

The only steady sound is the breeze, and an occasional human voice or barking dog.

But signs of life and occupancy are beginning to show. Some stores are open part time. The neighborhood bakery and coffee house is open. So is a neighborhood sandwich shop. The grocery is supposed to re-open next week. A convenience store, although the shelves are mostly empty, has some chips, bottled water and soda. They also have fuel -- not scandalously expensive, either.

The city is starting to relax a little, too. Quite a few taverns are open for business -- after all, this is New Orleans -- and a few restaurants are open as well. The curfew is now only from midnight till six a.m. Military humvees, which were cruising around last week with the doors removed and four heavily armed soldiers to a vehicle, are now riding around with the doors on, and only one soldier riding shotgun.

The perfume of the city is slowly transitioning from Flood Funk to Rotting Garbage as residents deposit their ruined refrigerators and freezers at the curb.

When your fridge has been sitting for six weeks, full of groceries, with no electricity, you don't empty it and clean it with bleach and a scrub pad. You sling about forty yards of duct tape around it and deposit it at the curb, or in the median if your street has one. The medians (called "the neutral ground" in New Orleans) have become the unofficial dump sites for the citizens of the Big Easy.

I have learned a lot of things about the refrigerators of New Orleans in the past several weeks.

1. There are way more refrigerators on any given city block than you would think possible. There must be people living in laundry rooms and attics.

2. Freezer-on-top, fridge-on-bottom is far more popular than side-by-side or any other style.

3. White refrigerators. New Orleanians really like white refrigerators.

Being the sort of person who wonders about this sort of thing, Mambocat is naturally pondering -- if you took all the refrigerators sitting at curbside and on the medians in the city of New Orleans and stacked them into various configurations:

1. How many Great Pyramids could you build?

2. Would they reach the moon if you stacked them all atop one another?

3. How many times would they go around the Earth at the Equator?

Or, from a more pragmatic point of view: If we duct-tape all of those refrigerators together:

1. Could we landfill the entire city and raise it to, say, 85 feet above sea level, if we compressed the fridges and started filling up the Big Soup Bowl we call home?

2. Could we use them like bricks in the world's most amazing levee system, made entirely from recycled refrigerators? Come to think of it, we also have about 350,000 ruined cars and busses to throw in this pile, too.

It would take a lot of duct tape, but we could do it.

It seems like most of the contents of many residents' homes have been piled at curbside. Any given street looks like a landfill with an aisle down the middle for cars to pass through.

Even in the rare neighborhoods where houses were not invaded by floodwater, at least half the homes suffered sufficient roof damage to have earned a heavy-duty blue plastic roof tarp courtesy of the Army Corp of Engineers. These houses display large piles of mildewed belongings at the curb.

And that's just what's been set outside by the relatively small number of people who have already come home to stay, to clean up, to rebuild.

I placed a bunch of junk from Mom's yard at the curbside. The FEMA guy showed up. His name was John Swider and he was exceedingly nice to my mother. He, too, was amazed that the Corps of Engineers had not noticed the pecan tree engulfing the rear of the house. He made note of the fact that the fallen tree had wrecked the utility connection, which is why Mom has no electricity even though her neighbors finally got their power about a week ago. He informed my mother that her house would be unsafe to live in until the tree was removed, any needed repairs were made to the roof beneath it, and, most importantly, until the utility connection was inspected and repaired so the house would not catch on fire. Mom signed some papers and the FEMA guy went on his way..

While cleaning up his own yard after Katrina, Clint found this flag on the ground, shredded and knotted by the wind. He hung it carefully from the small crepe myrtle tree in his front yard.

Clint put the flag on the tree. Katrina put the stuffed animal in it.

In the background, you can see a pile of brush in front of the neighbor's house across the street. The family in the adjacent house cleaned up their yard and carted off the mess.

What you don't see is cars parked along the street. To me, the street looks amazingly wide.

Only a native New Orleanian can fully appreciate the true magnitude of vacancy in the city if there are places to park.

The people in the pink house in the background had little damage. In fact, most of the houses on that side of the street suffered only minor roof damage, lost shutters and a few broken windows. The grass is about a foot tall after marinating in the knee-deep flood water which covered the streets, but it didn't rise high enough in this part of town to invade houses, unless they were newer homes -- built on slab foundations -- or ground-level apartments beneath older homes.

Mom's side of the street (the side where the flag is) is heaped with garbage bags and debris. Three doors down, the young couple living in the ground-level apartment of a two-story home had piled nearly all their belongings at the curb. When we drove off, they were hauling out a roll of dripping, reeking carpet. They wore masks and gloves. Garbage bags, bottles of bleach and other cleaning implements were stacked on their patio table. They waved at us. Their dog wagged his tail.

So very sad, so very amazing. I am proud of my hometown.

--Mambocat

Copyright (c) 2005 Dez Crawford; all rights reserved

Gotta Admire This

Went down to New Orleans today to meet with the FEMA inspector for my mother's house. While she is fortunate enough not to be flooded, she does have a downed fence, downed power lines, and a fairly large pecan tree sprawled out on her roof and blocking the rear entrance/exit to the house. FEMA, wisely, considers this Unsafe to Live In.

Interestingly, when the Army Corps of Engineers made their inspection a few days prior, they left Mom a note advising her that she did not qualify for the Blue Roof program (a sturdy tarp secured inplace until your roof can be fixed). If you enlarge the picture, you can see that one of the things they checked off was "no visible damage" to the roof.

But they also did not check off the last option: "obstruction on roof."

Guess they didn't see this.:

Of course, I admit that a pecan tree on the roof does tend to preclude one from seeing visible damage.

Hm.

--Mambocat

Recipe for Hell Soup

For those of you who are wondering what hurricane recovery might be like for the citizens of New Orleans -- just how bad it might be -- I have given my most serious (truly) thought to re-creating what approximately 800,000 people might be facing in New Orleans, Jefferson Parish, St. Bernard Parish, and the surrounding areas.

So, for a virtual flood and hurricane experience:

Go into your living room. Toss about all your furniture and belongings, as though Godzilla waded through Tokyo, but on a single-household scale.

Bash in your living room windows.

Throw in a few large tree branches along with the neighbor's garbage cans and their barbeque grill.

Add three pounds of sand and one bushel of dead oak leaves.

Add your yarn stash, all of your family photos, Granny's quilts, your wedding dress and anything else you consider irreplacable.

Get a very large plastic garbage can.

Go find someone with an RV, if you don't have one of your own. Empty the septic tank into the garbage can until it is about six inches deep.

To this, add a couple of road-killed animals.

Fill the garbage can with (preferably) brackish water from a nearby marsh or shallow lake close to the sea; if seawater is unavailable, use water from a nearby freshwater pond and add a generous handful of salt. Toss in a couple of dead fish. Do not use tap water.

Add a cup of gasoline, one-quarter-cup of deisel fuel, and one tablespoon each of motor oil, brake fluid and transmission fluid.

Randomly add handfuls of pesticide, fertilizer, ammonia, and other household chemicals, whatever is handy. Add two cups of food garbage. If you have a bit of medical waste handy, add a pinch.

Stir vigorously until well-mixed.

This mixture will approximate the proportions of sewage, lake water, chemicals, and dead human and animal carcasses in the floodwater.

Evenly pour this mixture into your trashed living room, preferably to a depth of about 4 feet, whuch seems to be the average flood level after comparing the lowest and highest flood levels throughout the city. be sure that all of your belongings are thoroughly saturated.

Turn off all utilities, and leave your house and belongings to marinate in this mixture in 90-plus degree weather in 90-plus humidity for one month.

Drain liquid.

Clean it up. Remember to bring a flashlight. Your utilities are still off.

Repeat 799,999 more times.

--Mambocat

This photo was taken in the flood-trashed lobby of the LA-SPCA animal shelter in New Orleans, LA. Copyright (c) 2005 Dez Crawford; all rights reserved

Interview Time

I need to steer away from storm reportage for a while and get back to knitting.

I have received by personal e-mail the following unsolicited questions from one Kelly Rice of New York who informs me that cross-interviewing is popular amongst those who blog.

Having never been interviewed about my blog before, I'll give it a whirl.

[tapping microhone]

"mic check .. test one, test one..."

[cough]

Hi Kelly, thanks for interviewing me.

Why do you blog?

Because I have knitworthy things to say and I don't have time to chase publishers.

Also, so I don't have to stay on topic, an activity contrary to my nature, and because I can say anything I damn well please without someone else editing it.

If I did manage to find a publisher who was willing to print my ramblings, the book would either be entirely unclassifiable in the Library of Congress, or else it would have to be cross-referenced under: knitting, animal sheltering, yarn, herpetology, politics, spinning, animal behaviorism, fiber, meteorology, Star trek, drop spindles, animal husbandry, rock and blues music, nautical knots, fleece preparation, ghost legends, weaving, herbal remedies, natural dyes, sheep, alpaca, things you can do with a Swiss Army knife and duct tape, how to use objects for purposes other than their intended use, and 10,849 Reasons to Spay or Neuter Your Pet. .

That not being possible, I blog.

How big is your yarn stash?

Bigger than a breadbox.

Actually, much bigger than a breadbox.

But not all that big compared to some legendary stashes of which I am aware, and if I blew a whistle and ordered it all to assemble in one place it would probably fill an average closet.

Well, maybe a very large closet.... if I subdued it by compressing it into those clear-plastic vaccuum-bag things, a process which reminds me of 1960s moms squishing themselves into girdles. What seems beyond comprehension can be done with force of will.

Seriously, though, my stash remains considerably smaller than stashes of legend, even smaller than the stashes of a few friends.

However, the relatively small size of my yarn stash is more due to the small-ish size of our house than it is due to lack of covetousness for more yarn, and also due to the fact that every other cubic inch of available storage space in our house is occupied by my husband's impressive collection of Vintage Computer and Stereo Components.

Some even work.

What is the strangest object you have ever knitted?

Hmmmm. I have knitted a lot of strange objects, including a tea cozy that looked like a Tribble, a hat-scarf (a harf?) resembling a boa constrictor -- the hat-end was the mouth, which engulfed the wearer's head, and the scarf-part wrapped around the neck in a very fetching manner.

There was also a curled-up-snake pillow I knitted for my former veterinarian as a retirement gift, a toilet tissue cozy resembling R2D2 for a friend enamored with Star Wars, and a one-armed sweater for a three-legged dog. Those are just a few oddities off the top of my head, but I am afraid they were all gifts and I no longer have visual documentation.

But, I shall not disappoint you.

Currently in my possession is a hat I made that looks like an armadillo. I will update this post with a photo of said hat over the weekend.

Oh! And I also have knitted a case for my blowgun -- probably not too many hand-knit blowgun cases going around -- but I don't have a picture handy. Coming soon.

Why do you knit?

Because there is yarn.

What are your non-knitting interests?

There are non-knitting interests?

No, seriously.

See my answer to Question Number One.

I always ask knitters if they knit in public, and if they do, when they started. How about you?

I knit everywhere. I keep a sock project in my purse/tote at all times, a mindless car project (usually pet cozies), and a five-gallon plastic kitty litter bucket under my desk at the animal shelter containing a mini-stash of needles and scrap yarn for pet cozies and cat toys. This way I can knit on my lunch breaks, that is, when I actually get a lunch break, and I can be certain that if I am trapped somewhere away from home, I will not be devoid of knitting.

When I was a teenager, I thought of knitting and crochet mostly as sedentary activities, so I mostly knitted at home, although I sometimes popped a project into my backpack when I bicycled to the park on fine days.

In college, I often carried a small project in my backpack to knit between classes. I often ventured into the common room of our dorm with my knitting to watch TV or study, where I met a dorm-floor-mate who knitted, and we began to take our knitting with us to a college pub to watch Star Trek re-runs (the Captain Kirk Generation) after the evening news and drink 50-cent mugs of draft beer.

To be a member of the Star Fleet Beer Academy, you had to stand up facing the pub TV when the show began, raise your mug high in the air, intone the introduction ("Space, the final frontier...") and sing (or, more correctly, "ooooh") the entire wordless Star-Trek tune, you know:

"woo-OOH-woo-ooh-hooh-OOH-hoo...."

Then you would sit down, drink your beer and watch Star Trek. This was not an initiation ritual. All members were required to do this each and every time an episode began.

At the top of their lungs.

After that, I figured I could knit in public just about anywhere.

What inspires your creative process?

I like structure and texture. I see the structure of things in nature, architecture, sculpture, ceramic tile, bones, leaves, spiderwebs, animals, plants, bricks, stained glass windows, and especially American Indian and African art ... also ancient graphic patterns, like the borders on Greek urns ... and I want to copy or mimic these things.

One of the reasons that winter is my favorite time of year is that I can see the architecture of the trees and the true depth of the woods, not just the exterior wall of biomass we see in the summer. Trees and leaves are endlessly inspiring for lace.

I feel the texture of bark, soft moss, a birds nest, twisting vines, and I want to duplicate them.

I like both subtle and brilliant variations of color and I like to mimic the color patterns of snakes, birds, sunsets and geological color patterns. I especially like to play with colors to get camouflage-like variations in hue and tone -- think Koigu yarn or Noro here. I am a huge fan of space-dyed yarn.

I also like to use contrasting or complimentary space-dyed yarns to do Fair Isle or other colorwork. It always looks so much more complex than it really is.

Math and geometry are inspiring. I like to play with Fibonacci numbers and proportions, and number sequences for striping.

Also inspiring, mathematically, is the actual three-dimensionality of knitting. Working out a complicated shape is very inspiring to me.

And sometimes, I have a couple of glasses of wine and suddenly, urgently decide that I really, really need a purple mohair-and-eyelash scarf, or a hat that looks like an armadillo.

Do you have any knitting fantasies?

Many. I dream of taking a knitting cruise to Alaska or Patagonia. I dream of winning the Koigu Lottery. I dream of taking a knitting, camping and walking tour of Ireland, England and Scotland and all the wee British Isles which have inspired so much knitting. One day, I would like to make an Orenberg lace shawl.

Making an Orenberg shawl would require a considerable amount of Uninterrupted Sitting-Down Time, another fantasy of mine.

And ... I have a much more humble dream of simply having two weeks off work to visit Luisa Gelenter at her shop, LaLana Wools, in Taos and do absolutely nothing but knit and soak up the scenery. I would also like to visit my Knit Bud Lisa Louie in Hawaii, sit on the beach, knit, and drink large, pink rum drinks with purple paper umbrellas sticking out of them, and enough fruit in them to make Carmen Miranda a hat. There are many other people on KnitU I would like to visit and LYS owners I would like to meet as well.

I admit that I have also visited the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina and seriously wondered how much yarn I could fit in there if somebody would let me live there for awhile.

Have you ever considered opening your own LYS?

I have fantasized about it .. and consider it best left as a fantasy.

My mother spent her working life in retail and is very, very good at managing all that orderly stuff like inventory and payroll and taxes and quarterly statements. She was able to say "no" to salespeople trying to fob off inventory of questionable marketability, and she also has had the steel spine and cast-iron strength of will not to bring every single thing in her shop home with her.

I am not in my mother's league and will not pretend to be. It's bad enough that I go into a shop looking for a 60-inch, size 5, Addi Turbo needle for a poncho, and come out with the needle, six skeins of Koigu for a shawl and enough Inca Alpaca for a sweater.

I justify this by deciding that the shawl is for my mother and my total purchase costs less than one hour with a decent psychiatrist.

I work at an animal shelter and we have 15 pets, okay? So I can only imagine how soundproofed and well-insulated our house would be if I owned a yarn store. Hmm, think of what I could save on utilities....

--Mambocat

We Is Po'

If I had a spacecraft with a transport beam, and I zipped around the United States and the rest of the world, abducting random individuals for a few minutes out of their daily lives to survey them on their ideas of what life is like in the city of New Orleans, and I took all of those images and created a composite city, it would be assembled from banana trees, riverboats, live oaks, horse-drawn carriages, trolleys and ancient brick buildings festooned with flowering tropical vines.

It would be populated with jazz saxophonists, voodoo queens, gourmet chefs, Southern belles, artists and sultry Creole mamas, all sprawled out on a giant, fern-encrusted wrought-iron balcony, drinking exotic beverages, and tossing leftover jambalaya to the pet alligators on the patio. Those not feeding the alligators would be dancing, carousing, and throwing Mardi Gras beads to inebriated people in the street below.

But the truth is, the daily life of the average New Orleanian is not resplendent with gourmet food, zydeco music, and spontaneous street festivals. It is filled with the daily grind, and we ain't talking Starbucks.

If I abducted those aforementioned people, and also surveyed them regarding what images come to their mind when they think of poverty in America, no doubt they would name rural Mississippi, Appalachia, the Cabrini Green projects in Chicago, or the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation.

But, with the American psyche so flash-blinded by New Orleans' reputation for food and fun, I suspect that none of those people surveyed would mention New Orleans when I asked them, "What place in America comes to mind first, when you think of poverty?"

But I have news for them.

New Orleans, my friends, is po'.

Exactly what, you may ask -- and rightly so, if you are not from the South -- is "po'?"

Well...okay...I'll take a stab at that.

"Po'" is like "poor," only with less money.

New Orleans struggles with a highly skewed economy based on trade and tourism -- a fair representation of wealthy and upper-middle-class citizens, a surprisingly small middle class, countless minimum-wage workers, a vast number of senior citizens surviving off their pensions, and, overall, considering that we are in the United States of America, a teeming sea of incredibly impoverished humanity.

New Orleans is a city of commerce, shipping and international trade, of dazzling hotels, stunning mansions, spectacular restaurants, and tourist attractions ranging from fun and funky to downright scandalous. Each of these industries employs a variety of human beings, ranging from CEOs and stockbrokers to cabdrivers, bartenders, cooks, hotel maids, musicians, clerks, waiters, barristas, dishwashers, and more waiters.

There are a whole lot more waiters, hotel maids, cabbies and clerks than there are millionaire restaurateurs and shipping magnates.

And there are just as many unemployed and unemployable as there are minimum-wage workers.

In New Orleans, a great many people wait for busses to go to work. Unlike the residents of some other large cities, where taking the bus is sometimes an option for the environmentally conscious and for those who do not wish to pay exorbitant parking fees, most New Orleanians who wait for the bus find themselves wanting for wheels, not by choice, but by lack of sufficient employment even to have the option of independent transportation.

These people do not live in the mansions strung out along St. Charles Avenue for the tourists to admire from their seats on the gently swaying trolleys. They live outside the peripheral vision of the tourist, in shabby shotgun houses, bleak Section 8 apartments, and dilapidated public housing dating to the Great Depression.

Unlike the images portrayed on the news about Hurricane Katrina in the first few days of horror, New Orleans is not overrun with criminals. Like any other large city, New Orleans has its share of crime and gangs, a small but lawless percentage of the city's population. Just as in the Los Angeles riots, when disaster happens, it is the gangs and criminals, not the humble citizens, who take over the streets, shoot at the cops and set cars on fire.

It's true that while the police department tries to maintain a thin blue line around the perimeter of the French Quarter, senior citizens and single moms cringe behind their doors at night a few blocks away, in fear of the gangs who rule the neighborhoods within walking distance of Bourbon Street.

But there are far more senior citizens and single moms than there are gangbangers.

In a clever marketing burlesque, the Grayline tour busses and the deliriously cheerful walking-tour guides carefully display those parts of New Orleans they wish the tourists to see, while discreetly drawing a veil of silence over the undesirable bits, much in the same manner that a girl with spectacular breasts and a formidable fanny might show off her cleavage while wearing a slimming black skirt.

Point a neon sign at the good stuff, and hope nobody looks at the rest.

Hurricane Katrina has ripped that veil of illusion right off the city of New Orleans, showing all the world the sad, stark truth which truly makes New Orleans the City that Care Forgot.

Evacuation was ordered, but no coherent plan was in place for the enormous chunk of New Orleanians who exist without their own means of transportation: the underclass, the elderly, the disabled, the sick, and the animals all suffered together in one vast, steaming toilet, waiting and hoping for the busses to come.

Saddest of all, the law-abiding po' folks of New Orleans suffered from the actions of the same criminals they have always feared. And it is the majority of New Orleans' poor -- not the gangs -- which give New Orleans its color, its flavor, and its indominateable spirit.

Out of poverty came the jazz, blues and mambo music for which the city is famous. Out of poverty came Mardi Gras, an opportunity for everyone, regardless of class and wealth, to be king or queen for a day. And out of poverty came New Orleans' famous food. Gumbo is not a rich man's meal. It is humble food prepared with the spice of life.

Baton Rouge, where I have spent most of my adult life, is where many native New Orleanians choose to land in their flight from the warped economy of New Orleans and the glue trap of Southern decadence. Long-time New Orleans expatriates who live in Baton Rouge are often either the black sheep of the upper class or the more ambitious offspring of the non-wealthy, who can find an affordable college education at LSU or Southern University and who can seek refuge in Baton Rouge's somewhat lower cost of living and its broader economy. Baton Rouge is only 90 miles from home, so family is accessible, but it's far enough away to have a life of your own.

And now my adopted home is rapidly filling with the expatriated residents of my home town: black and white, rich and poor, and the animals that were lucky enough to get out. Most came in on busses. Many will go out on busses.

But for now, we all live together. Most Baton Rougeans have opened their hearts, homes and wallets to those displaced by Katrina.

A few harbor the groundless fear of an insurgence of crime and lawlessness. In fact, since the storm, crime has not increased in Baton Rouge, but traffic accidents have skyrocketed, so almost everyone gripes about the population doubling overnight and causing hellacious traffic problems.

But for the most part, the citizens of my adopted home have been gracious hosts to the citizens of my hometown. And the citizens of my hometown, I hope, will infect Baton Rouge with the unsinkable, defiant and jubilant spirit that defines New Orleans -- the spirit that makes music to defy poverty, the spirit that motivates people to rebuild homes and businesses in spite of meteorological temper tantrums.

New Orleanians have always believed in miracles, in luck, and in the impossible.

New Orleanians believe that, one day, the Saints will win the Superbowl.

Perhaps that is why so many fled to the Superdome when they had no way out of the city.

The Superdome is much more than a mere football stadium. To New Orleanians, it is the cathedral of optimism. The poor of New Orleans fled to the Dome to escape the wrath of Katrina just as the poor of medieval times fled to the cathedrals of Europe when Nature or invading barbarians threatened life and limb. When death is at the door, you don't just run to safety. You want a miracle.

At the emergency anmal shelter the other day, I ran into a young African-American woman who had escaped from New Orleans with her dog, her purse and some water and personal belongings in a backpack. She tried to get on one bus, then another, but she couldn't bring the dog. So she started walking.

She walked through New Orleans, meandered through the suburban cities of Metairie and Kenner, and picked her way along the elevated highway to LaPlace.

Somewhere along the way, she found a family on their way to Baton Rouge. They gladly took her, and her dog, the rest of the way.

Tired, filthy, and hungry, she checked her dog into the emergency animal shelter before she checked herself into a Red Cross shelter.

I asked her what kept her going. She said, "You just have to believe you're gonna survive."

She told me she lived in downtown New Orleans, was a prep worker in a kitchen at a major downtown New Orleans hotel, and doesn't have a car because she had been saving her money to go to cooking school so she could have a shot at being a chef.

She earned a little over eight dollars an hour and lived in a tough neighborhood, where she feared the gangs and tried to look out for the old folks in nearby apartments.

She loves her dog. She is now looking for a hotel job in Baton Rouge, an apartment where she can have her dog, and is hoping that she can put her life back together here.

Tears rolled down her face when she told me she feared she would never return to her home in New Orleans. But she said, "You just gotta believe."

People in other parts of America, in other places in the world, ask, "why? Why would she want to go back?"

Perhaps, simply, because it is home.

And that's all that really matters.

--Mambocat

A Bit of Cheer Amidst the Drear

So.

I'm up to my eyeballs in hurricane-refugee animals, and one day I get to my office and find a large box awaiting me. Upon opening said box, what do I find but a large selection of soft, warm cage cozies destined for those very same displaced pets.

Even though I had not yet requested cozies, considering the fact that the refugee animals are cooled only by fans and it is still hot enough here in South Louisiana to bake oatmeal cookies in your car, I was still extremely cheered to open this box full of bright, warm, snuggly things.

And, serendipitously, these arrived in time to be put to use right away as some of the hurricane animals go home with their owners as they find new places to live, so they will have their very own warm, snuggly thing to curl up on and a spot to call their own.

Here is "Blue," an elderly Siamese cat, test-snuggling the cage cozies before they are distributed to animals in need. Yes, he is dimensionally challenged, and he does resemble a harbor seal, but I promise you he is really a blue-point Siamese.

Being a homeless cat himself, Blue heartily endorses these cozies to go home with the refugee animals from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

With me being a helpless sucker for old-geezer gatos, Blue had the run of my office until he was adopted the day after this picture was taken.

A million thanks, purrs and tail-wags to Jean Anderson of New Jersey, the maker of all these cozy objects, who had planned to donate them to her local shelter when winter arrived, but decided instead that the hurricane refugee animals needed them more.

Which brings me back to something approaching normal -- the subject of knitting.

It's about time for those cage cozies you kind knitters offered to send, for the animals as their owner reclaim them. People are starting to find jobs and apartments, and many people are reclaiming their sheltered pets. Some lost pets are being reunited wit their families. And there are many who will remain unclaimed when the shelters close, and who will welcome warm, snuggly cozies as they move along to their new, adoptive homes.

If you would like to send cozies you have already made, it's time to pack them up. If you would like to make a cozy, there is still time. Cozies must be machine washable and dryable, so use superwash wool, cotton or acrylic. Knit at a denser, firmer gauge than you would to get nice drape in a sweater. Cozies are supposed to feel like a pad. Plain old garter stitch is fast to knit and makes a nice, thick pad -- or you can practice your double knitting.

This is a great way to use up scrap yarn oddments, or the yarn bestowed on you by friends and relatives who, with your very best interests at heart, thoughtfully pounce upon 55-gallon bags of weird-colored 1970s yarn for 25 cents at garage sales. Animals don't care if the colors are ugly (at least none have ever complained to me personally), provided they are warm and soft.

Sizes: about 18" square (half a meter) for cats and small dogs; about 3 feet square (one meter) for bigger dogs.

Send completed cozies by October 15 to me, and I will distribute them as needed:

Dez Crawford

c/o Animal Control Center

2680 Progress Road

Baton Rouge, LA 70807

Each and every cozy will be paired up with an animal in need. Thanks again to everyone who has offered to send cozies for the animals. They will provide a welcome bit of comfort for confused animals in the midst of chaos.

The relief efforts go on. Tomorrow, some New Orleans residents will be allowed back into specific areas which are safe to re-enter. I'm bracing myself for the day when I can take Mom back to see the house. Supposedly her part of town didn't take much water, and her house is an old house up off the ground, so we are keeping our fingers crossed.

Off to bed. Tomorrow is another day.

Mambocat

The Calm Before the Perfect Storm

This picture was taken in New Orleans the Friday night before Katrina hit. The blue lights are strung along the twisting curves of the ancient live oak trees lining the street just outside the Botanical Gardens in New Orleans' City Park. The silver lanterns, each about eight to ten feet tall, are suspended from the branches. Compared to the huge trees, they look like Christmas baubles. For a size reference, you can just barely see the front bumper of a white sedan parked next to the base of a tree at lower left. The tree's trunk is a bit wider than the car; the root base is much wider.

My niece got married that night and her wedding reception was held inside the Botanical Gardens. As we got out of our car and admired the lighted trees, my husband said:

"I really have the creeps about this Katrina storm. I'm having a premonition. This thing will hit Category Five. It will hit New Orleans. These trees will all be underwater next week."

I started to say, "Dave, it's only a Category Two today. It shouldn't be disastrous." But the hair prickled on the back of my neck. Dave doesn't announce his premonitions lightly.

Hurricanes always make New Orleanians nervous. This edginess is usually kept at bay with lame jokes. But this time, we didn't jest about it.

Katrina was rapidly strengthening, with a one-way ticket to wherever the hell she wanted to go.

"We're not staying for all the after-wedding stuff tomorrow morning," I announced. "We're going to get Mom early, and have her pack her important stuff, and we're taking her up to Baton Rouge."

Dave nodded, and we entered the reception.

People drank, people ate, people danced. My niece, Laura, was lovely in her mother's wedding gown and veil. Her mother, Susan, died from breast cancer several years ago, but I know she was in attendance anyway, and so proud.

People spoke in low, nervous, tones about the hurricane. There were no half-hearted jokes about stocking up on beer and barbeque supplies. Instead, people were making plans to evacuate their families and pets, move their boats or find a hotel in Baton Rouge or Houston. This time, when the smokers stepped outside, they sipped their wine and glanced around anxiously, as though a mugger might be lurking in the meticulously groomed bushes nearby.

People debated whether or not this storm would wrap up to a full Category Five. They wondered if it was worth the effort to board up their hunting camps in Mississippi and decided that would be a waste of time in the face of a Category Four or Five storm. In the face of a monster, the camps surely would be destroyed, boarded-up windows and all.

Some folks wanted to move their valuables upstairs before they evacuated their homes. Others left the reception long before the refreshments were gone, so they could start packing. A few decided that loading up the RV was a good idea, so they could salvage a larger supply of belongings, have comfortable traveling accommodations for family and pets, and have a place to stay in the event of hotel shortages.

These were sensible people. But they were also the lucky people -- people fortunate enough to have jobs and cars, credit cards and cell phones, and the materials and resources they needed to get out of town.

These people were not among the 100,000 New Orleanians with no job, no car, and no way out.

The next morning, we got up early, helped Mom pack, and headed out of town . As we drove toward Baton Rouge along the suspended highway over the swamps surrounding New Orleans, my mother worried aloud about the car-less citizens of the city she has always called home.

My mother is a snap at in-your-head arithmetic. She said, "20% of the people in New Orleans don't have a car. That's about 100,000 people. You can only fit 40 or 50 people on a bus, so you'd need...let's see...2000? Maybe 2500 busses? And that's just to get people out of town. You also need more busses, to get them to the busses that would take them out of town. So you'd need twice as many busses --busses going back and forth from the neighborhoods to evacuation centers, and busses leaving town. People would be getting off one bus and getting on another. I don't think we have that many busses in the public transportation system, do you? Maybe if we used the school busses, too? But then who would drive all the busses? You'd have to get the National Guard to do that, because the bus drivers would have to take care of their own families, and you'd also need to have the handicapped busses going around door to door for the elderly, and the handicapped, and sick people who can't walk to the bus stops ..."

As my little silver VW Golf plugged along through the westbound traffic, Mom ticked off logistical considerations on her fingertips and mapped out a sensible evacuation plan for the car-less citizens of New Orleans, all 100,000 of them.

"...and we have all these military bases that are closed. They have houses, gymnasiums, barracks, things like that. Why can't we use those? President Bush could snap his fingers and open up those old Army bases. If they started bussing people out right now, they wouldn't have to worry about people being trapped in the city if the levee breaks like it did in Hurricane Betsy..."

Being a car-less senior citizen herself, my Mom has had a great deal more experience with these issues than FEMA or the Bush administration, and, in fact, was working out a sensible and do-able plan for the evacuation of car-less New Orleanians 48 hours before Katrina hit and three days before the Bush administration even realized that there were, indeed, 100,000 people in one place in the United States of America, the most prosperous nation on Earth, with no car to get out of town, no money or credit to rent a car, no money for a hotel and no way to get themselves and their families to safety.

Mom, of course, was right -- as Moms almost always are. She could have run an efficient evacuation right there in the backseat of my car if FEMA had given her a cell phone and a notepad and the authority to give people the go-ahead. I would nominate Mom for the new head of FEMA, but I know she wouldn't get the job, no matter how much common sense she has. She would be ruled out for being a Democrat.

While Mom planned the human evacuation, I worried about the animal evacuation. I knew that many people were evacuating with their pets. I could see pet carriers in the cars and SUVs headed west, and the occasional horse trailer bouncing along behind a heavily-loaded pickup. But I also knew that a large number of evacuees were treating this like another "hurricane drill," and had left their pets locked in their homes with three or four days' worth of food and water, fully expecting to return home to their homes and their pets, fully expecting that New Orleans would, once again, be spared by a last-minute tease of meteorological capricousness. Many people left their pets in a place they thought would be safe, expecting to return home after a few days, certain they would pat their dog on the head while they barbecued, drank beer and watched the first game of the LSU football season.

I knew there were countless animals with no owners at all, pathetic street dogs and feral cats surviving out of Dumpsters like they do on an ordinary day, with no idea they might soon be struggling for their lives if the storm surge crested the levees -- or broke them.

We drove to Baton Rouge, a four-hour drive which normally takes 90 minutes. Those who evacuated later in the day on Saturday, and those who delayed until Sunday, faced much longer drives to get to safety.

We got Mom settled onto the sofa-bed and got her things unpacked. I scurried around outside, securing things that might blow away in the 70-mph winds we expected as far west as Baton Rouge. I rounded up candles and flashlights and filled the ice chest, and we went about the business of Hunkering Down, parked in front of the Weather Channel and CNN. Mom kept her fingers busy with her rosary, I kept my fingers busy knitting my latest shawl, and Dave kept his fingers busy stroking the cats as we watched Katrina roll in from the Gulf, watched the Mississippi Gulf Coast get wiped off the map and watched the levees break in New Orleans.

It wasn't long before I set the shawl aside. I simply could not knit.

We listened to Katrina roar for the rest of the day, slamming us with winds near hurricane force over 100 miles from the eye of the storm, toppling trees and ripping down power lines. A neighbor's 90-foot water oak fell in the backyard, just missing their house.

New Orleans filled with water.

The ones who could not get out, people and animals, fled to the rooftops and to the Superdome. We watched the horrors, and watched some people get rescued. Then the power went out.

The wind died down to turbulent gusts. We had something to eat, and then ventured over to a friend's house where the power was still on.

Along with Mitch and Jane and their own evacuated relatives, we Hunkered Down in front of the TV and watched New Orleans drown.

Mambocat