Book List

Reading
Teacherman by Frank McCourt
The River is Wide by Pat Conroy
The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
Lying on my Side Table
The English Teacher's Companion by Jim Burke
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss
The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Beginnings: A Memoir by Horton Foote
Along the River Road: Past and Present on Louisana's Historic Byway by Mary Ann Sternberg
Digital Photography:Expert Techniques by Ken Milburn
Most Recently Read
I Am the Cheese
Crusader's Cross by James Lee Burke
Accordian Crimes by Annie Proulx
The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke
In the Pharroh's Army by Tobias Woolf
Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell (Audio Book)
Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg
The Age of Spirtual Machines by Ray Kurzweil
A Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff
The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester

Plot Against America by Phillip Roth
Old School by Tobias Wolff
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (redux)
I Am David
Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
Lake Wobegon - Summer 1956 by Garrison Keillor (Audio)
The Light In the Forest Conrad Richter
I Read It, But I don't Get It by Cris Tovani
White Doves at Morning by James Lee Burke
A River Runs Through It by Norman F. Maclean
Jolie Blon's Bounce by James Lee Burke (Audio)
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Audio)
More Recent
It's All Over But The Shouting by Rick Bragg
Ava's Man by Rick Bragg
Max Perkins:Editor of Genius by Scott Berg
Not As Recent
The Professor & the Madman
Before Women Had Wings by Connie Mae Fowler
Snapshot Poetics by Allen Ginsberg
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
The Stranger by Albert Camus
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
A Tidewater Morning: Three Tales From Youth by William Styron
Darkness Visible by William Styron
Cadillac Jukebox by James Lee Burke
Dirty Work by Larry Brown
Haunter of Ruins: The Photography of Clarence John Laughlin
Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen
Diane Arbus by Patricia Bosworth
Lancerlot by Walker Percy
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
The Thanotopsis Syndrone by Walker Percy

New Orleans Labor Day Plans

My friend Russell watering his flowers in
front of his home on Oak Street, New Orleans


My planner reminds me that this Saturday morning (Labor Day Weekend) we were to be New Orleans to spend some time with friends who live a block off of Carrollton Avenue. This visit would the first visit in a few years. By this time in the morning we would have left our hotel, the Courtyard in Meterie, and snaked our way through the neighborhoods of century old houses to our friend's house on Oak Street and a short walk to the Camilla Grill for a perfect breakfast. Of course all that has changed, for this Saturday morning, probably for many Saturday mornings, and well, perhaps for always.

My friends, were in that eighty percent who heeded the call for evacuation and had the where-for-all, as well as, the money and an automobile to get out of the soup bowl. They watched the cataclysm, as we did, from a distance, out of harms way. They were in Dallas staying with relatives when I spoke with them on Monday. Their house was not flooded given its location on "high-ground" in N.O.

Phone communication has been nearly impossible into the N.O. 504 phone exchange, but I managed to reach them this morning while I typed this post. They are doing just fine, glued to the TV dealing with the "not knowing". An email from their neighborhood association has brought some snippets of information: Oak street is not flooded. The Rite-Aid drugstore a block away on Carrollton was looted by looters who drove a fork-lift through the front door. The fork-lift is still stuck in the building.
The photo below was taken by Jeremy of N.O.

For more pictures from the flooded New Orleans neighborhoods click: SearingBlue at Flickr

My friend's concern was not for a lifetime possessions, perhaps stolen or looted, but a new Stetson hat he had recently bought in San Antonio (my friend likes his hats) and his beloved French horn (he is an devotee of classical music). When he lived here in DeFuniak Springs his first French horn was burglarized by a neighbor's wayward daughter and he worries about his horns fate in the hands of looters.

We will spend our weekend at home in the Florida Panhandle watching the saga of hope and despair coming from where we had planned to visit good friends, eat some good meals, and marvel at this 300 year-old gem that today, sits a derelict waiting for a rebirth from beneath the dark waters that have, albeit temporarily, brought this grand colossus of a city to a standstill.
God Bless the people touched by the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.