Sent: Monday, August 29, 2005 11:29 AM
Subject: Hurricane Katrina 

From: "Samantha Wilson"

Hi all - thanks so much for people who have thought of me during this Hurricane event.  It was something...I actually had been in Dallas this past Friday for a wedding and made the (unpopular) decision to return to New Orleans early Sunday morning to get my cat and a few other things that would be irreplaceable.  At that time, the predictions were quite frightening and I feared that if I didn't take my window to get those things, I would have been left with nothing. 

The eerie thing was returning to what was already becoming a Ghost Town as they had long been evacuating people and had recently called for a Mandatory Evacuation.  I had a string of good fortune that aided my (relatively late) evacuation...particularly finding an open gas station at 11am yesterday and being among the last few to get gas (that was a sad situation as people were starting to get desperate and offered $20 to cipher a gallon from my tank when it became evident that the pumps were closed after I pumped).  I also found a "back way" out of town and was not among the tens of thousands stranded on I-10 (the only major way out of town) for hours without movement. 

Not to say that I didn't have my share of traffic...I left at noon yesterday and averaged 10 miles an hour for the first 9 hours, which unfortunately did not put me out of the expected path.   Thankfully, traffic started to lessen and after a 2 hour nap in my car, Wiley (my cat) and I made it to Houston at 7am this morning....19 hours after I left New Orleans (usually a 6 hour drive between the two cities). 

It seems like now the worst-case scenario has NOT happened but that there will still be much to clean up.  I am hopeful that my 100-year-old house still has a roof and that any flooding damage will be reparable, but I will have to wait a few days before it is safe to return.  I am waiting this out in Houston with a friend and can be reached at this telephone number if need be.

Thanks for your thoughts....Warmly, Sami

Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 3:13 PM
Subject: UPDATE :)

From: "Samantha Wilson" 

http://www.nola.com/weblogs/nola/index.ssf/mtlogs/nola_nolaview/archives/2005_08.html#075160

Hi all - Here is the only information I have been able to find out about my apartment...if it’s accurate, it looks like the area around my house has not (yet) flooded!  The link is above but I have included the relative text below and bolded the text that pertains to my house!  Thank you for your continued concern and support...

If you do desire to help directly, please donate to the Red Cross Disaster Relief for the thousands who are not as lucky to have the blessings that I have with all of you :)

Neighborhood updates:

We're posting information on the conditions of New Orleans neighborhoods as fast as we can consolidate it, culling the Town Hall forums for posts. If you have new information, please continue to post it.

Users report that the area near West Jefferson Hospital is dry, as is the 1700 block of N. Turnbull and St. Edwards near Transcontinental.

Walnut Bend and the Algiers area are reported to be doing well, with clean water and gas service.

There are several reports that the Uptown area remains unflooded, particularly around Magazine and Jefferson and Mag. and Webster; Prytania and Napoleon. Similar reports re the Garden District.   I live right at Prytania and Napoleon in Uptown - YEA!

Baronne Street downtown is dry. Port Street in the Marigny was dry this morning.

Canal Blvd. around Harrison is underwater, but a user posts that the water does NOT seem to be rising at all, regardless of what the national media reports.

Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 9:47 AM
Subject: Calling all angels :)

From: "Samantha Wilson"

Hi all - I have been blessed with good fortune, wonderful family/friends and options that will see me through this catastrophe.  That is not the case for thousands in the city I have come to call home. 

Many of you have asked me how you can be helpful to me and while I appreciate the generosity offered to me directly I want to encourage help to go to those who are without the same safety net as I have.  So I offer this suggestion to anyone who is far way and wants to help, or if your church/school/office is collecting supplies and don’t know where to send them....Send them to me in Houston! 

I am here for the time being and have no definite plans so if I can be of service to get supplies from other parts of the US to shelters in and around Houston, then I will be so elated!  The superdome evacuees have started to arrive today and will continue to arrive for days/weeks.

If you want to use me as your distributor, please let me know what you are sending, about how much, when to expect it and any special requests for where it should go (kids, hospitals, shelters, and astrodome).  I can be reached at:

Samantha Wilson

c/o Mimi and Eric

Houston, TX

Many thanks for continued support and love...Sami

Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 1:18 PM
Subject: Update

From: "Samantha Wilson"

Hi all,

Many of you have emailed wondering what I was up to, so I thought i would send an update...

Since Wiley and I evacuated to Houston 11 days ago I have tried to fill my days (its amazing how much one's life can change in 11 days!).  After a couple of days volunteering in the Astrodome (which was wonderful renewal for me!), I spent Labor Day weekend with my cousin and her family in the beautiful city of Austin.  It was a much needed respite from CNN :) 

When I returned to Houston I was greeted with donation boxes from various places in response to my plea (even from a benevolent stranger in Connecticut!) so I have spent the last few days finding homes for those donations.  Then a 520 pound freight of donations made its way from wonderful families in STL!  Wow, that was a challenge but I have found homes for everything.  Some things were taken to churches that are opening up "stores" for people to gather much needed items to resurrect their lives.  Other donations are being used to help a Community Center who has vowed to "adopt" 45 families and get them into more permanent housing, jobs, and educational placements. 

Along with donations, I created a petition to request special consideration for the area around my home (called Uptown) which by many reports is dry and relatively unscathed.  At this time, I remain confident that my house is dry and intact.  It’s just a matter of what will remain when I am finally allowed in.  (If you are curious, feel free to check out the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/UPTOWN/petition.html).  If I can’t get back in time to recover my things, I will be ok...I have the important things (my cat, scrapbooks, and computer).  The rest I will slowly rebuild. 

I received word early after the flooding that my internship program was recommending relocation for the 4 interns.  So I began the search for a site and the needed funding to support my move.  It is with mixed sadness and excitement that I share the news that funding was secured for me to start at U of Southern Florida - Tampa.  This is a policy internship and one I ranked highly so I am quite happy to have this unique experience - my official start date is 9/21.

I cannot express coherently though, the sadness I feel at leaving NOLA and especially everyone I have grown to appreciate at Tulane.  I will definitely keep the city and its people close to my heart and continue to do what I can from Tampa (praying that I can also avoid another hurricane....).   

So that is my life in a nutshell :)  I am planning to drive to Tampa in the next week and will live "transiently" with some benevolent people who had extended their homes to me until I can get my bearings and secure a new home...I will let you know my contact information as that unfolds...for now, email and my cell remain the same!

Hugs, Sami

Sent:  Friday, September 16, 2005 21:29:06 -0500

Subject: View from the French Quarter

From: "Samantha Wilson"

It is this amazing spirit that I will miss most about NOLA...I thought you might be interested in a voice from the inside.

Editor's note: Joshua Clark, who never left the French Quarter, is writing a daily column, "Apocalypse N.O.," about the strange life inside the ghost town that is now New Orleans.

By Joshua Clark
Sept. 13, 2005 | NEW ORLEANS -- I wake up in a shallow pall of sweat and Deet, gasping for air in the darkness and heat, as a Black Hawk helicopter chops into the whine and whistle of the mosquitoes spiraling into my ears. I stay still and hope the mosquitoes will find their spot -- ankles, knees, nose, crotch, anywhere -- and get it over with, so I'll have a chance at some more sleep, the scarcest commodity now.

The radio tells us these things have been sucking disease out of floating corpses. Now they always seem intent on entering my ears to suck on the gray matter in my brain. And sure enough, after the thunder of the helicopter fades, there are the mosquitoes again, falling like bombs into my brain. This is dawn, New Orleans, post-Katrina. And I love it.

Still in swim trunks I haven't shed since Katrina started whispering through my windows 13 days ago now, I walk outside, the new sun tickling the roof of the slave quarters across the street, and step from the cobalt air into the turquoise swimming pool, hardly less wet, and lie at the
bottom until the itching from 100 fresh bites stops.

When I kick up to the surface, I whack my head on a 16-ounce can of Busch floating there, crack it open, take a long pull, stare across the surface at the other cans floating. Full bottles of Pinot Grigio are scattered along the bottom. It's the only way to keep them cool. All leftovers from my birthday the night before. As are the sleeping bodies strewn about the patio in this old courtyard in the center of the French Quarter. On the steps up to the main cottage a Miami Herald reporter sleeps in his own vomit. He spent the night with us to do a story on our little commune of French Quarter rats, and he wound up like many another tourist in the Big Easy. There are fewer of them now. All the more liquor for the rest of us.

"Us" is me, photographer Ellen Harris and eight acquaintances -- a mechanic, river boat captain, writer, film location scout, art shipper, framer, dishwasher, truck driver -- now tighter than family. We banded together, pooled our resources -- ungodly quantities of food and drink, ice, coolers, bikes, a couple scooters, candles, flashlights, water, batteries, charcoal, antibacterial hand wipes -- and brought them here to the corner of St. Peter and Burgundy deep into the center of the French Quarter.

A dear friend of mine, who split for Missouri the morning before the storm, told me where the keys were and gave her blessing to use the place, a complex of old quarters and houses. Its two greatest assets are the pools, for bathing, and the space of the brick courtyard, which beats being locked up indoors in our own apartment every night after 6 p.m., the curfew.

The 10 of us had prepared for the Doomsday -- New Orleans becoming Atlantis -- that so many books and ecologists had long said was coming. Yesterday on my birthday, I called friends and family from my apartment, still standing on the Mississippi River, just down St. Peter Street. It was the only land line I knew of that worked. The conversations were more or less the same:

Them: "Where are you?"

Me: "Here."

Them: "Where? Houston? Baton Rouge?"

Me: "No. At my place."

The response involved some sort of assessment of my sanity, and rantings about roaming hordes of pillagers and piles of corpses, and had I been shot or lit on fire and wasn't I at least under water?

You must understand it never occurred to me to leave. And now I've decided that when they do ram the gate open and drag me into a bus at the tip of an assault rifle, and send me off to Houston, I'll simply get out at the first rest stop and start walking back. That'll likely be Baton Rouge. And it's only a 15-hour walk.

This is home. Where else would I go? My family's cottage on Cape Cod would get boring fast. My mom's house in D.C. would get claustrophobic. What on earth would I do in those places but know what it means to miss New Orleans?

And what would I have in those places? Air-conditioning and gas? I've grown quite accustomed to life without them. And I suspect they'll be back long before I'm ready for them. Can you imagine what it's like to have no energy bills, no rent, no cellphone invoices, no health, car, life, whatever other kind of insurance, and no taxes? We can. And we're doing it like kings. And legally too -- so long as you ignore all that "forced evacuation" stuff by skulking through shadows and looking somehow official.

I have to tell you, there's a certain thrill to thriving among the ruins. Daily life as we knew it is gone. We see the elation in each other's faces, although we don't say anything about it. We share a wink and nod that will be our secret forever.

We are in not in denial of the immense tragedy that surrounds us. We saw the exodus of people dragging themselves, their belongings and their babies through the neighborhood on their way to the Superdome, only to be bused to Texas. The second day after the storm, I asked a man carrying a small plastic shopping bag if he was carrying his lunch. "Lunch? Shit," he said. "This's everything I got left in the world." We've seen dead bodies just blocks away, floating down the flooding streets like mannequins.

My company is Light of New Orleans Publishing. And so long as light shines here, so will we. Our first book was "French Quarter Fiction," a tribute to the vast literary talent this neighborhood has fostered, and will continue to foster. And while Katrina has screwed the release dates for our next three books, it's given me more material than I need for another. For the last two weeks I've tape-recorded the voices of those who remain here in all their tragedy and comedy. Coupled with my own adventures, it'll make
for one hell of a book, the proceeds of which will go to a relief fund. I'll be damned if I'm not going to at least try to create something from this destruction.

And now I fear I may be the only one left to do it. Some of our city's great writers have indeed returned after the storm to share its burden with the world. Others have been sent here from the world over, mostly squirreled away in guarded hotel high-rises or the suburbs. But I know of no one else from here who stayed here and who's still here.

Now our numbers are dwindling as residents, scared by big men with big guns and diseased water, scurry away along with the media. This place is now a ghost town, undergoing a strange restoration. Navajo scouts from Arizona remove fallen trees from Jackson Square. Police from every Louisiana parish and town, state troopers, Harbor Patrol, Border Patrol, National Guard,
Army, Special Forces, fire departments and emergency personnel from Oregon to New York funnel in bunch by bunch.

A couple of kids from the National Guard told us yesterday that the press had made this thing out to be like Hiroshima. The most action they see is standing in a line outside Harrah's Casino, waiting to squirt ketchup on cheeseburgers.
 

Unlike them, however, we have had no newspapers, no magazines, no nightly news, no Fox to find dark in it all, no Jon Stewart to find light in it all. We have not seen what you have seen. We see what's in front of our faces, what we can touch, nothing else. And I offer you this daily journal, so that you may see a bit of it too.

America's oldest bohemia is now taking a last gasp before reincarnation. Never has a place felt stranger. And never have I felt more at home.