Nuked
Everywhere you go, everywhere you look, you can see the evidence of Katrina's passing. It seems like not a single structure was left untouched. Homes with entire walls and roofs missing, businesses with all their signs blown away. Trees down, or branches broken, laying across power lines, across roads, telephone poles broken, the ones that weren't destroyed are leaning precariously, ready to let gravity take over. Wires and cables strewn haphazardly in tangled messes, mangled debris in the trees. Almost every single home you pass by in our neighborhood has a huge pile of belongings out by the curb, wet carpet, broken dishes, destroyed sofas, refigerators and all sorts of other appliances. If the water didn't get it the wind did.
My mothers 100 year old family heirloom buffet with solid marble top, probably unsalvageable. Once belonged to my great grandmother.
The wall unit in the living room where my mom had all the old family photos and memorabilia stored and displayed, a lot of that stuff is now gone forever.
Some of the furniture that we hauled out into the backyard.
Almost everyone you see on the roads seems to be in some sort of a trance, they drive around listlessly, gazing off into the distance, wandering around like they have no place to go and nothing to do. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen, it's like mass sleepwalking, maybe a form of shell shock? Everything is changed, finding gas can be a chore, getting medicine at the very few drugstores that are open means waiting in line for long periods of time. Going shopping at the few places that are open involves standing in line just to get inside the door, with long lines already in place long before the opening hour. Once inside the shelves are mostly empty, and you can't buy much that needs refrigeration anyway. Your refrigerator is out by the curb.
Even the cell phone networks are totally screwed, you may have to try 10 times to get a call out and I have yet to be able to reach my voice mail since before the storm. All the radio stations are down that weren't part of the emergency broadcasting network and are off the air, the ones that are on, are broacasting local news only, the few local TV stations on the air are all broadcasting from studios in cities that were out of reach of Katrina. If you have cable you are very lucky, if you had satellite TV, good luck if the dish didn't get blown off your house or the receiver destroyed in the flood waters. The big thing right now is waiting, waiting, waiting for the insurance adjusters to finally make it to you, out of the million others that are doing the same thing, just to find out if you will receive enough money to recover a small shred of your formal life or any part of your sanity. The sheer amount of destruction is beyond imagination, mind boggling and overwhelming. What's even more insane is that we were some of the "lucky" ones, the gulf coast areas of Mississippi and Alabama and also many areas of New Orleans on the east bank of the river were hit even worse than us. I shudder to imagine what they are going thru right now!
This city is going to be fucked up for a long time to come and it will never be the same. Welcome to Third World America.
One thing that I wanted to mention was that I created this creepy, spooky looking template for the Halloween season, several weeks before the hurricane hit, including the line "City of Dread". Weird how that came true huh?
On a positive note, I had just completed a new template for a very dear friend right before the storm for Allie over at Cocktails with Allie and I didn't get to show it off!! Check it out!! Annnnnd, I just finished one yesterday for a new friend named Laurie over at Stranded in Suburbia. Very cool!! Check her out, I think she has spotted some yuppie terrorists in her very own neighborhood!! She also has another very cool blog over at LaurieParkinson.com
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!!
My mothers 100 year old family heirloom buffet with solid marble top, probably unsalvageable. Once belonged to my great grandmother.
The wall unit in the living room where my mom had all the old family photos and memorabilia stored and displayed, a lot of that stuff is now gone forever.
Some of the furniture that we hauled out into the backyard.
Almost everyone you see on the roads seems to be in some sort of a trance, they drive around listlessly, gazing off into the distance, wandering around like they have no place to go and nothing to do. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen, it's like mass sleepwalking, maybe a form of shell shock? Everything is changed, finding gas can be a chore, getting medicine at the very few drugstores that are open means waiting in line for long periods of time. Going shopping at the few places that are open involves standing in line just to get inside the door, with long lines already in place long before the opening hour. Once inside the shelves are mostly empty, and you can't buy much that needs refrigeration anyway. Your refrigerator is out by the curb.
Even the cell phone networks are totally screwed, you may have to try 10 times to get a call out and I have yet to be able to reach my voice mail since before the storm. All the radio stations are down that weren't part of the emergency broadcasting network and are off the air, the ones that are on, are broacasting local news only, the few local TV stations on the air are all broadcasting from studios in cities that were out of reach of Katrina. If you have cable you are very lucky, if you had satellite TV, good luck if the dish didn't get blown off your house or the receiver destroyed in the flood waters. The big thing right now is waiting, waiting, waiting for the insurance adjusters to finally make it to you, out of the million others that are doing the same thing, just to find out if you will receive enough money to recover a small shred of your formal life or any part of your sanity. The sheer amount of destruction is beyond imagination, mind boggling and overwhelming. What's even more insane is that we were some of the "lucky" ones, the gulf coast areas of Mississippi and Alabama and also many areas of New Orleans on the east bank of the river were hit even worse than us. I shudder to imagine what they are going thru right now!
This city is going to be fucked up for a long time to come and it will never be the same. Welcome to Third World America.
One thing that I wanted to mention was that I created this creepy, spooky looking template for the Halloween season, several weeks before the hurricane hit, including the line "City of Dread". Weird how that came true huh?
On a positive note, I had just completed a new template for a very dear friend right before the storm for Allie over at Cocktails with Allie and I didn't get to show it off!! Check it out!! Annnnnd, I just finished one yesterday for a new friend named Laurie over at Stranded in Suburbia. Very cool!! Check her out, I think she has spotted some yuppie terrorists in her very own neighborhood!! She also has another very cool blog over at LaurieParkinson.com
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!!
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