Petition to reenter unflooded areas of Uptown

To:  Mayor Ray Nagin and associated staff

Dear Mayor Nagin,

While we understand that much of New Orleans needs to remain vacant for health and safety reasons, we recognize that the Uptown area was spared much of the hurricane/flooding damage and thus we feel that it requires special consideration.

Specifically, we the undersigned, who are residents and business owners within the Uptown area, are asking for permission to be granted to return to this area.

Please consider at least temporary permission to allow us to retrieve our belongings and business papers. Later, we hope that this area may help to revitalize New Orleans. Thank you for the work you continue to do to restore this great city and thank you for considering our request…

http://www.petitiononline.com/UPTOWN/petition.html

Road Trip time aproaches

It looks like mshollie and I will be heading West after the weekend.

If Terrytown isn't yet open for business, we'll be Texas bound, probably going to Austin.

Of course from at least the Florida Panhandle west, we'll have to take an inland route well away from the coast.

If anyone has any info or suggestions on open routes and where gas can and can't be gotten, it would be much appreciated.

Even more appreciated, might there be some wonderful person somewhere between Florida and Texas who might be able to offer a night of crash space to a pair of refugees? I'd be happy to resipricate with crash space in New Orleans when such becomes possible again.

Personal Update, 8 Sept

Yesterday Ms. Hollie and I had lunch with my old friend Ms. A., who also evacuated to Jacksonville. A. has decided to stay here for the time being, already found some part-time work, and Hollie & I helped her move the first load of stuff into her new apartment. (She had left town with only 2 changes of clothes; the stuff was from Target.)

My dad had a pacemaker installed last night (he had heart valve repair last week). He's doing well. He may be out of the hospital in a couple days, and heading back home to south Florida maybe Monday. So our time here in Jacksonville will soon be over.

Tropical Storm Ophelia has been giving alternating bands of gloom and rain to Jacksonville. I promised Ms. Hollie a visit to the beach since we got all the way to Florida, but have not yet been able to fullfill that. If we don't have cooperative weather at a time we can jaunt over to the beach here in Jacksonville, we may visit a fellow refugee on the Florida Gulf coast for a day before heading further west. Or something, by gosh, we demand a bit of sunshine on the beach as a minimal silver lining to this refugee stuff.