TheEvan

OH, HER SCHOOL IS THE LOVELY ACADEMY OF THE sACRED hEART ON HISTORIC ST. cHARLES aVE. (oops, cap lock) Check it out. Unfortunately, it was also looted. Sacred Heart

LindaZ, that neighborhood is prestigious English Turn. It fared well. sister in law arrived by plane yesterday. she's charged with establishing a business office here for her school. (We're scrambling to find her around 400 sq ft...know of anything, irisheyes?). Another evacuee from her school, the IT guy came by to deliver the server & other computer gear he rescued from the school. A school parent is apparently a honcho with DEA, and he got them an escort into the city. He has quite a story to tell. He has managed to rent a house here in BR and they have 13 people staying there. Yesterday's USA Today has a pic. on p2 of his granpa being rescued from the 2nd story of his Lakeview home He and Christine, both of whom literally lost everything, were energetically solving payroll, banking, communications & other problem. They were full of smiles & laughter & ideas. I can see it's their way of dealin with loss & the unknown.

Well, talking about it is needful for our mental health, I'm sure. If you'll listen, that will be a gift of great value. I'll go first. I can't stop listening to the radio. There are several stations broadcasting "all Katrina, all the time". Although the 'casts are originating from Baton Rouge, the personalities are mostly from New Orleans stations. The format is mostly call-in. 24 hours a day of calls. Some are first-hand accounts. Some are real heroes. Many are looking for assistance and information. But the most numerous of calls are from people looking for people. Family & friends mostly. Mostly the callers are hopeful. But you can somehow hear the dread. Nobody has acknowledged the dread concerning the missing. It's like a monkey on our backs and nobody's acknowledging his presence. "Hello, this is Olive Peters. I'm looking for my father Frank Peters. Last I heard he was riding out the storm. He stays at 1516 Almonaster. Could a rescuer go out and check on him please?" Call after call like this, around the clock. The pit in the tummy grows harder by the hour. I know I should turn it off, but I can't stop listening.

That looks like the right size for the work barge. T'aint gospel, but seems likely & resonable.

rascal, those are wild rumours. The original and biggest levee break was in Lakeview. The better neighborhoods were the most affected. Even more heavily flooded was the lower 9th Ward. Much of the rescue footage you saw was from there. It is a poor neighborhood, very poor. But it was filled from behind through St. Bernard Parish which was simply overwhelmed by the storm surge. It filled so high, water was flowing OUT of the 9th ward over the levee into the Industrial Canal. I could see this clearly on the TV footage. It took army corps another 5 days to figure out. Before, they were saying the Industrial Canal was breached and flooding the lower 9th Ward. I was scratching my head, clearly seeing the water flowing out of the neighborhood, not in. Yesterday, they reported that they broke open a section of that levee to let water out of that neighborhood (!) The conspiracy mongers will have a field day. There is precedent, though. In the fabled 1927 flood, America's biggest natural disaster, (you haven't heard muh of it because of anti-South bias in history books...really) New Orleans was saved from doomsday flooding by dynamiting the levees below the city in Plaquemines Parish. That decision was not made by federal, state, local, military or any other authority. It was made clanndestinely by a group of powerful bankers in the city. It saved the city, but the promises made to Plaquemines Parish farmers & residents to make them whole were lies. They never paid out a penny. After the flood, the current levee system on the Lower Miss River was constructed, largely by displaced poor blacks. It gave us lots of great blues music..."Levee Camp Moan" for one.

I haven't googled, LG, so maybe it has been reported, but certainly not widely. The initial break was in the 17th St. canal on the Orleans side. That is the break that did the vast majority of the flooding. At one point, there were whitecaps on the waves headed down Canal St. in the CBD. Anybody familiar with N.O. geography knows how amazing this is. The foot of Canal St. is about as far from the levee break that you can be. There has been a small work barge anchored in the 17th Street canal for the past few years. I've seen it many times. It was used in redoing the levee walls, which are quite new. The work was in conjunction with the building of a huge new pumping station at the interior end of the canal. This is what happened. The contractor was unable to get a crane in time to remove the barge from the canal before the storm. Apparently they were ordered to do so and were unable to comply. so the barge sat where anchored against the canal levee wall on the Orleans side of the canal. The storm caused the barge to batter the levee wall (which is metal set in concrete) for 6-8 hours of heavy storm. This either weakened the wall or caused a small breach. Problem is, the new pumping station pumps overheated and the canal began to fill up. The water pressure found the weakened section and breached it. By then it was obvious the doomsday scenario was underway and nobody could stop it. I'm wondering who this contractor is and what the principals are thinking. All this is according to Corps of Engineers man staying across the street. But I have seen that work barge hundreds of times. My sister in law lived a block and a half from the canal in Lakeview. Her house was adjacent to the original breach. I saw the barge when passing over the canal at the Bucktown bridge. It usually had a piledriver mounted on it, a familiar sight in New Orleans. When not working, it was, without fail, anchored to the Orleans wall of the canal. so personal observation does square with the story. And it makes sense and fits with the scetchy info we've heard in local and national media.

She posts here, Ted. Nobody is in Metairie. At least they're not supposed to be. They did open it Mon. Tue and today for residents to see their place, get insurance papers, etc. I'm guessing it'll be a few more weeks before they are allowed to live there. For the city, it'll be 3-6 months. It's more nuts here than people "outside" might realize. I have too many stories to tell. Now that I know how the original levee break happened, I'm curious to see if it ever gets reported.

There is a very big pet rescue effort underway as we speak. I like it.

Julie & hubbie live is Destrehan. They came out fine with no flooding I hear.

We're fine, though our lives have turned upside down. My sis-in-law lost her house we assume. It backs up to the 17th St. canal right where the original levee break was. She's moving in with us. We have others here as well. Like many others here. We're having a real estate rush here. It's crazy, crowded, feverish. Time to adjust. school starts back up today.

And that's the problem to begin with, isn't it goey? Trying to assemble a flawless theological system. Proceeding with the arrogance that one has the right belief system and then carefully lining up all the toy soldiers in the correct way. I find that assuming half of what I'm looking will remain a mystery to me takes the onus out of somehow needing to decipher every damned verse, phrase, concept, etc. Mr. Mike, you listening?

We'll be okay, and I just LOVE losing power for a week. :)-->

Now there'a fine looking pair. Makes me feel happy.

irisheyes, you're in Baton Rouge??? Feel free to PT me o email me. Evan

Thanks for the comment, irisheyes. But I still wish Mel Gibson would have included his version of this event, done up in the most macabre manner cinimetographically possible.

Since this has turned into a "God protecting His word" discussion, may I chime in with a different perspective? Perhaps it will even have some bearing on the topic. If one approaches the Bible from a textual accuracy, original languages, research-oriented perspective, these questions become nagging skeletons in the closet. For some the closet gets too full. Others, like Mike perhaps, have a huge closet and a great capacity for 'splaining them away according to some cherished notion to keep them in the closet. You're giving the skeleton a workout in the light of day. It amuses me to see the scripture wrestlers grapple with it. From a faith perspective, such wrestling becomes irrelevant. Making things "fit" becomes an exercise in self-gratification. Since leaving Way thought behind, I've received more life-changing insight by simply reading the Bible by faith as a spiritual experience...of communing with my God and having Him speak to me personally through the pages. Greeks know Greek quite well and it hasn't made them more spiritual. Bible scholars are no more holy than Joe Schmoe. It's a treadmill that goes nowhere.

Just trying to be helpful here, Allan. You are very far off the mark on goey. If I were him, I would, like him, efuse to dignify your incredible musings with a response. Me, I'm a Christian. Good enough for you? Geez. And I most definitely threw out the bathwater. Interestingly, THERE WAS NO BABY IN THERE.

Unfotunately, I seem to resemble Jack Fruit these days. Allan, I need not argue dispensationalism with you. I'll just say that I am a limited dispensationalist myself and I believe Jesus preexisted (as what/whom isn't altogether clear to me) and that he is certainly divine. I just don't buy that unorthodox, unwarranted and unhealthy form that Bullinger or Wierwille espoused. It does cut at the root of jesus' direct Lordship over our lives. The gospels don't apply directly to you? For that I am very very sorry.

Wierwille's "administrations thingy" is one of the biggest errors of his teaching system, effectively removing Jesus from His Lordship from those who fully walk out the implications.

Oh gag me with that Warhol Frankenstein. It was horrible. And I saw the dang thing in 3-D I was ducking falling entrails & such all night.

That passage has always conjured up images of "Night of the Living Dead" for me. Can you just imagine? :D-->

Bro Speed, lol!!!

I get your point, but I'd dispute one thing right off...the part about the "rightly divided word" as there is no such thing, biblically. The phrase itself is an incorrect interpretation. Sorry to nitpic but tis so.

At the risk of torturing a metaphor, our "fruit", by which I mean the fruits listed in Galatians 5, aren't there so much to decorate the tree. The fruit is there to provide sustenance and nourishment for others in need. Sure, I want peace, love joy to decorate my life. But I have it to provide for others. And you know what? It's in giving the sustenance that seeds are scattered and some actually grow up to be trees planted by the river.

Neat. I'd like all of the those gifts!