This is a place for me to vent, ponder, and joke around about my life. We live halfway between New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Until August 29, 2005 I could drive 30 minutes and either be in a wonderful European style city, at the beach on the Gulf Coast, in the pine forest of South Louisiana, or in small town rural Mississippi. I love all of those places and all of them were ripped to pieces by Katrina. A great deal of these writings are about living in this area as we try to rebuild, recover and move through the grief. I am in my mid 40's, my husband is 50, my daughter is 14.5, son is 10 and my marriage is 20 years old. Those ages give the midlife, teenage and all boy stories. My husband is a Family Doc and I am a Pediatrician. We have practiced together for the past 18 years. I love, love, love my work and some of what is here are the things kids and parents tell me. I also share my joys and frustrations of being a pediatrician. I don't pretend to be a great or even good writer. This thing is a selfish endeavor, I need a place to talk and be able to pretend that someone is just listening. Thanks for coming by.



Last fall I wrote this to explain to myself why I stay in the New Orleans area.

A year later, I don't know if I still believe. I used to say that I wanted to work in a third world country and I used to say that I love my job so much that I would do it for free. Well, God must have heard me and decided to call my bluff.

Now I stay because I have a daughter in high school at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and she doesn't want to move. Now I stay because I have a husband who plays Dixieland Music and he doesn't want to move. Now I stay because I have a son who is dyslexic and is finally, finally reading and is in a loving, nuturing school.

But, if I wasn't married and if I didn't have kids....well...I just don't know.

I still believe, but just not as firmly.

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This I Believe

For 25 years of my 44 year old life I have lived either in New Orleans or in Slidell, 30 miles away from New Orleans north of Lake Pontchatrain. The first hurricane I remember is Betsy which was when I was five years old. My mother and I spent the night at a friend's home, still in Slidell, instead of in our mobile home because my father was out of town on a business trip. That is the only time I have ever evacuated for a storm.

Today, October 17, seven weeks after Hurricane Katrina I finally received in the mail my back issues of Time Magazine from all of September and October. Predictably, there was a major piece in one issue concerning who is to blame for the overwhelming failure of adequate and appropriate response to Hurricane Katrina. There is enough responsibility for this mess that all levels of government can share some blame, but what I found surprising is that in a poll 57% of the respondents blamed those citizens of the affected areas who remained in their homes and did not evacuate.

Why would anyone in their right mind choose to live in a bowl, below sea level in the hurricane belt? I have heard that this question has been posed by pundits, media, senators, the Speaker of the House, and many plain folk of this country and the world. The simple answer is that in the New Orleans area and the Mississippi Gulf coast, family is paramount. It is not at all unusual for neighbors to be blood related and a great majority of people who have chosen to make this area their homes have done so because of family ties, families of origin and families of choice. This is the area of the country where people say hello by saying "How's ya mama?". We are not stupid people who can not make a living anywhere else and have been forced to live in a risky area because of a lack of other options. We are intelligent, loving, generous, artistic, musical, spiritual, and fun loving people who also happen to be valuable contributing citizens of the United States. We have chosen to live in this bowl near the people we love, our immediate family and our community family. It helps that we have Mardi Gras, mild winters, gorgeous pine forests, jazz music, great food, and a unique culture but the primary reason we live here is family and the homeland security of living near those we love. If Jean Batiste, the Acadians, the freed slaves, the plantation owners, the French, and the Spanish had settled in North Dakota we would battle bitter winters instead of ferocious hurricanes in order to be with our loved ones.

We choose not to evacuate because we have taken steps to feel safe and secure in our home, no matter what storms, including hurricanes, may befall us.

Hurricanes, tropical storms, and thunderstorms with large amounts of rainfall are a part of life in Slidell and New Orleans and most of south Louisiana. Hurricanes are something for which my family has prepared, respected and occaisionally in the case of a category 4 or 5 storm feared, but we have never evacuated. In the past 16 years that I have lived in this area, I have been a pediatrician married to another physician and because of our responsibilities to our patients and to our community we have chosen to ride out the storms thus assuring that we are in town and available if and when we are needed. Our home is above the mandatory evacuation line and has never flooded. We have C and D batteries, bottled water, canned food, a swimming pool full of water that can be boiled for cooking, a Coleman stove with fuel, a propane grill with a 250 gallon propane tank, and for the past 10 years we have even owned a small generator that was bought to maintain refrigeration and keep all of my office vaccines cold. Because of these preparations, we have been able to assist other neighbors who stay, protect our home, and reopen our office within one or two days of a storm. Homeland security is not soley a government departmental responsibility and it is no different in the New Orleans area than it is all across the US and for that matter, the world.

Homeland security is just that, feeling secure in one's home.

The storm was not the scariest part of the past two months, it was the aftermath that has shook my core. I am adamantly anti-gun and yet with my only news source being WWL radio and word of mouth for almost two weeks, I heard sensational accounts of looting, rapes, murders, criminals crossing bridges to the northshore of Lake Pontchatrain, hospitals being looted and I condoned my husband's new practice of sleeping with a handgun under his pillow. My next door neighbor has a son-in-law who flies military helicopters in our area and had buzzed our homes more than once in the past to say "Hi" to his wife. I just knew that he would fly over and check on the neighborhood and so we painted a message that our family was OK on our roof on August 29 after the storm had passed. We waited to hear the helicopters. They never came. (To be more accurate, I did see helicopters when they were refueling in the air above my house one week after the storm). We had no idea of the devastation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast until the three days after the storm. I was standing in a line to enter Sam's and heard that the flooding in the area of my inlaws's home extended past the "safe" church in which they had chosen to ride out the storm. We drove to Mississippi not knowing if the church was still standing or if they were alive. We found them in that church with nothing left but the clothes on their back and had to leave them there for two more days because the church had hot food and running water, things that at that point were missing from my home.

Humans crave community. They are social animals that thrive on the interactions of family, care for their offspring for many, many years and show respect for the aged members of the community. Fearing for my safety in my home, fearing for the safety of my loved ones and feeling abandoned and alone temporarily destroyed my homeland security. The knowledge that our home is a haven from life's storms was lost in the aftermath of Katrina and not just for my family, but for most of New Orleanian families and the families all over the Gulf Coast. We did not lose just our possessions, we lost our daily connections with those we love.

But now, more time has passed and instead of greeting each other with "How's ya mama?", it is "How'd ya do?". And we actually care about the answer. It takes five times longer to go to the store, post office, bank etc and not just because of the newly horrendous traffice, but because we are all listening to each other's story and comforting each other in our grief. "How'd ya do?" is answered with such unbelievable comments as "Not too bad, I only have a tree through my roof, no flooding", "Not too bad, I only got one foot of water", or even "I lost everything, my whole family lost everything, but we are all alive and feel blessed for that". Yet, something profoundly sad has been lost and that is our community of family. Our families and communities are scattered all over the US now. Mimi can't watch the kids play ball because she is in Texas. Collette's sister is having her baby with just her husband by her side in Arkansas. Who will fry the turkey, make the oyster dressing, or bake the pecan pie at Thanksgiving and where will that dinner be? I believe that as people begin to answer these questions, the answer will lie in the rediscovery of that lost sense of homeland security.

New Orleanians lived in this bowl because of the security of community.

Louisianians come back to the area because we know that we will help each other cut out of our streets, gut our flooded homes, and house our family because of the security of our generosity. We are secure that the art and culture of the area will survive, just as it has in the past. We will again know the security of our spiritual lives. If the rest of the country can learn that we are more than Mardi Gras, more than a major port, or more than a source of oil they will begin to understand we had the homeland security craved by most citizens of the US. The people polled by TIME Magazine may learn that we are not to be blamed for not evacuating, but will instead understand that we could not leave our families and communities in their greatest time of need.

We are not any different from the people in this country who after the storm donated to Red Cross, worked shelters, took strangers into their homes and communities and we are proud to be part of such a generous country. Living in the bowl reminds us every hurricane season that possessions are just stuff and that those we love are more important than any house. Our hearts remember that every time we greet each other. I believe that the best legacy of Katrina will not be a strengthened Homeland Security department, a better run FEMA, better evacuation plans and execution of those plans, quicker response by those charged with recovery from disasters, (all of which are needed), but instead will be the true homeland security of all people greeting each other not with "What's up?" or even with a polite "Good morning", but instead asking and caring about the greeting of "How'd ya do?" and working toward to the time when all of us can again feel safe and secure in asking "How's ya mama?".