N.O.: Day Three

Not sure how coherent last night's entry was, so to recap: Yesterday (Wednesday), Rinna and I were out all day with an attorney at different parishes. Mary, a 28-year-old attorney who graduated from Loyola, took us to an interview with a client in Plaquemines, which is an awesome name, and then across the Mississippi on the ferry to St. Bernard's Parish, where the Katrina swept over the flat, low-lying lands at a height of 6 feet or more. Mary used to work in the legal aid office in St. Bernard's, but the office was flooded and there were no immediate plans to rebuild. She drove us by the old office and pointed out the law books lying in front of the building, rotting into a pulpy mass.

St. Bernard's Parish is a white, working-class community, separated from the parish of Orleans (consisting of New Orleans) by the Mississippi. (Lousiana calls counties "parishes.") It looks totally different from New Orleans -- almost rural. But it, like N.O., exhibits few signs of rebuilding. Buildings are empty, fallen, lying where they crumbled.

We had lunch in a huge tent set up by the hippies. Some organization from California had set up a well-run food center with hot, almost gourmet meals, and we stood in line with folks from around the parish. There was a woman from Acupuncture Without Borders (I kid you not) there, blowing a sea conch (I kid you not) to get everyone's attention. The cooks danced in, singing the menu. And a random fiddler strolled around the tables of tie-dyed, dreadlocked kids sitting next to construction workers spattered in paint. A man next to us drew his neighbor's portrait in pencils.

After lunch, we went across the street to the parking lot of the Walmart, which was not open. There, a number of large tents had been set up by church organizations and FEMA. We went into the FEMA tent, where Blackwatch, the hired hands in Iraq, manned the doors -- large, muscled young men in khaki uniforms with the Blackwatch patches on their shoulders and menacing handguns at their hips. They joked with us in that hey-little-lady way, teasing me and Rinna about being law students. One of them handed us a tasteless joke about Chuck Norris, which included: "Chuck Norris only masturbates to Chuck Norris." I'm not sure what the point was.

Rinna and I mostly sat and listened to Mary counsel the 8 or 9 people who came up to our table. A couple people wanted things notarized, like a transfer of title to a car. Some were there for insurance reasons -- a popular refrain in N.O. these days is this: "My roof blew off, so my insurance company will cover that because it's wind damage. But they won't cover the water damage, because they say it's flood damage (which isn't covered in most plans -- you need a separate insurance package). But if the roof blew off, and the stuff inside got damaged, isn't that part of wind damage?"

After a couple hours in the FEMA tent, Mary drove us through the most heavily devastated area of N.O. -- the lower 9th ward. This was a poor, black neighborhood that was decimated because a barge -- and no one knows why it was still in the river at that point -- was blown through the levee just where the lower 9th lies. I can't even speak to the extent of damage. Houses on top of cars. A Mack truck on its side, with a white couch dangling off the top. Whole houses literally in the middle of the street, shoved by the rushing water off their foundations. Once in a while, there was a structure still standing, usually a brick house. Everything else was in varying states of collapse.

Rinna and I thanked Mary for taking us through the area. No problem, she said, and then: "I think it's really important to bear witness to this. So please go back and write your Congressmen that we need a lot of help down here."

Today Rinna and I were in the office all day with Evan, while Matt was out at a Disaster Recovery Center near where we are staying in Uptown. It's at a JCC. I wrote letters and called clients. Betsy took us out to the same great Indian restaurant, Nirvana, that the four of us had gone to last night on her recommendation.

After work, we headed home, picked up our host, and ate at Juan's Flying Burrito, which has the best nachos I have ever eaten. Really. I only had a couple bites because I haven't been feeling well, but the chips were the un-greasiest chips I've ever eaten, the cheese and beans were perfectly melted, and the sour cream and jalapenos were perfect. Damn!

Since I wasn't feeling well, I volunteered to be the designated driver, much to Matt and Evan's delight, since they've been sharing the driving duties. After dinner, we went to a neighborhood bar that our host knew of, where the proprietor, a fat woman by the name of Miss May, apparently will take you out by the ear if she hears you cuss. The drinks were a dollar each and the boys drank up while chatting with a barfly whose mumblings we couldn't really make out, except for the parts when he was lecturing about pheromones and ladies of leisure.

After dropping our host off at home, we eventually headed over to the Bywater neighborhood, a slightly run-down, warehouse-y area of N.O., with the expectation of hearing Kermit Ruffin, who is a legend trumpeter in these parts. He plays on Thursday nights at Vaughan's, a neighborhood bar with what turned out to be the perfect mix of the merchant marine (a fat, white-bearded fellow), possible hookers, and us, the volunteers. Matt's roommate is volunteering with Common Ground, along with three other Crimson kids, and so we met up with them and other Common Ground volunteers. Kermit wasn't there that night -- the rumor was that he was playing in Russia, or South America, or the Caribbean -- and I wasn't feeling well, so I sat quietly with Rinna and Evan while the others mingled and drank. Despite the non-alcoholic tint of my evening, it was a very cool bar and a very cool night.