Donate, donate, donate...

80% of that beautiful, vibrant, firey, passionate city... under water.

What else is there to say???

The Times-Picayune was only published electronically yesterday - the local stories are heartbreaking.

The only good thing is that the French Quarter is (at least so far) relatively untouched. I say this is good primarily because it's going to allow them, eventually, to rebuild via tourist money, because that's about all they are going to have left to them.

All around the lake is completely flooded. That means that the restaurant where my high school choir learned how to eat crawfish (and that's a story I'll have to tell here, later, when I have more time to write) is probably gone.

I guess this hits me harder, too, because I know I have blood relatives in St. Tammany Parish. I don't know who they are or anything about them, but my maternal grandmother was from there and I know there were still great-aunts and/or uncles in Slidell. Even though I don't know them, I have always wondered if that contributed to how home-like N'Awlins felt to me when I visited there. I even considered going to Tulane. Beautiful campus... at least it was...

You know, some sort of network of Mardi Gras parties to raise money for the relief efforts would be cool... I wonder how one would organize that?