Louisiana at last

Here we are in Louisiana. As you are probably aware, this has always been one of my favorites places. I love the food. I love the people. I love the craziness and strife. When they complain about their crazy politicians, there never seems to be a good guy in the crowd. Or at least a good guy who stays a good guy. Even the bad guys get off a good zinger or two from time to time.

Two years ago. hurricane season erupted around here with a hearty vengeance. The summer of Katrina and Rita will not be forgotten for long. Children will remember and tell the stories of this summer when they are old men and women. People will mark their lives and close a chapter with the summer of the hurricanes. How people think about history and the world will be balanced around the fulcrum of Katrina and Rita.

Prior to Katrina, my wife defined her life, in some sense, by the episodes that fell before Camille came to bear on the coastline of Mississippi and Louisiana in the 60's and what came afterward. Her family measured their lives partly by thinking about what happened that summer. The universal of weather became a personal experience.

Now, even we, who were way off the map as far as being tucked safely east of all the damage and disaster of Katrina, think of our lives as signposted by Katrina. It is personal and feels like part of our lives.

But yesterday, we drove down I-12 and found the exit and everything seemed similar and familiar and part of our lives, as we drove down the county road and found our way to Char-lou's to eat shrimp po-boys and drink beer and listen the rhythms of the voices around us. This is a visceral part of my wife's life and now part of mine as well.

People reading this blog may feel the change in the feel of the writing. And this substantially because I started this last night before the marker of midnight rolled around and left me asleep in bed and this blog unfinished in my mind. And I am trying to find an end to this so I can go on to other things. I need to get to the end of this thing, as usual.

This morning, and by this morning, I mean the morning of the twentysixth, I began my day in Montgomery, Alabama. Now, it is two in the morning on the morning of the 27th. I hope that everything that Patti was trying to accomplish at the office was completed. I should be more tired than I am. I am looking forward to tomorrow and the city of New Orleans. I wish I had my own pillow. I actually wish I had Kate's pillow. It is one of my old pillow but a good one.

Well I have a signal here. That is good. I have an audience. No one seems to have a sense of the passing of time. We are all droning on past the end of the day and on into the next. This is the blog which never ends.........

I am going to stop now and get a shower and maybe eat some breakfast and get on with the act of living rather than stopping,sitting in this bed and trying to take notice of what is going on.