Trendy But Casual

Autumn, New Orleans, November 2009

Hurricane Ida is on her way, curling up through the Gulf after terrorizing central American and the Yucatan peninsula. She’s breaking up now into a tropical storm, but that still means a lot of water and wind, especially along the coast. It’s gray outside, but there’s no rain yet. The Tulane flag hung over the porch railings by our peppy neighbors flaps back and forth. T. Middy has lifted all our plants off their stands, and taken his rain boots to work. As one of our friends said last night, at least when the electricity goes, it won’t be too hot.

The storm is passing to our east, so I don’t think the electricity will go this time. It’s very quiet outside: most schools are closed today, just in case. In Plaquemines Parish, it’s flooding already (storm surge), and some people are evacuating. Everyone’s selfishly hoping it’ll turn a little farther east, and hammer someone else.

I haven’t posted for a while, because I’ve been busy with the semester – including a fantastic visit last week from one of my literary heroes, Deborah Eisenberg, and a dinner with my screenwriting students and the writer/producer Eric Overmyer, veteran of The Wire, who’s creating a new HBO drama here with David Simon.

Also, I’ve been busy with lots of book promotion for Ruined – including four visits to local schools; two book groups (one at Octavia Books, and one at Barnes & Noble); a trip to the SIBA conference in Greenville, South Carolina; and book events here at Octavia and Maple Street, at the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, in Mississippi at Lemuria Books in Jackson and Square Books in Oxford, and at the Neighborhood Preservation Center in New York City. I have another event coming up this Saturday at the Catholic Library Association conference. And, of course, there was the great trip to Orlando to film a marketing video for Scholastic Book Fairs. Ruined will be sold in book fairs all over the country from January.

T. Middy – for those of you pining for news – is busy as well, working on the Dean’s Colloquium, and the Ellis Marsalis performance this Thursday (Dixon Hall, November 12). We go up to St Louis for his birthday/Thanksgiving later this month, and then to New Zealand for two weeks over Christmas. My sister sent me an email, saying: “Would you two like to cook Christmas dinner? No pressure.” (Um, sure.) Only four weeks of classes left.

I’ve been scribbling notes for various posts – at the Epcot Center in Disneyworld; at the Angola Prison Rodeo; at the gravesite of Robert Johnson just outside Greenwood Mississippi. My bizarre autumn. Today, for the first time, and thanks to a tropical storm, it almost feels like fall.

New Orleans, August, Hot

On week days, when I’m alone in the house, I turn off the air conditioning – to save money, to see how long I can stand it. By four, my head starts to feel swaddled with cotton wool. I’m sleepy. I stick to things. Sometimes, clammy and oppressed, I feel almost feverish.

It’s overcast outside most afternoons: in the month since I’ve been back from the UK, there’s been two or maybe three days without a thunderstorm. On Monday it rained almost all day – the soggy shoulder of a tropical depression pushing up into the Florida panhandle. I lie in the bedroom, the coolest room in the house, and think of ways to describe the heat. Every day is sweltering. Outside the heat is a thicket, almost visible: we wade through its dense swamp in dreamy slow-motion.

If I could write my first novel, Queen of Beauty, over again, there’d be much more about the heat in New Orleans. The heat and the rain and the smell of things here. I was talking about this today with Susan Larson, the books editor of the Times-Picayune; she was interviewing me about my YA novel, Ruined. I would include more heat, more smells, and more lizards, I told her. In August, the lizards are the only fast-moving creatures in this place. At the moment the ones I see are bark-skinned and tiny, darting across sidewalks, disappearing into bushes.

TM has had various face-offs with lizards in the house in summers past, involving absurd hallway chases and daring Tupperware entrapments. Lizards particularly like the Venetian blinds in our south-facing back room, which is oven-like for six months of the year. They lie, lizard-legs dangling, on the dusty slats.

The heat won’t break for more than a month – maybe in two months’ time, maybe a little sooner. We were married in New Orleans nine years ago, at the very end of September. Knowing this place a little better now, we would never dream of arranging a wedding (a black-tie wedding, in fact) for such a volatile time of year. It’s the heart of hurricane season, the end of September. The heat is usually still ferocious and unrelenting. Last night, I met up with a few people for birthday drinks, and my friend Russell Desmond was talking about business over the summer – he owns Arcadian Books, in the French Quarter. People forget, he says, that September is still the summer here. It’s another hot, stifling month that has to be endured – survived – between the European tourists and the fall conventions.

Sometimes it’s Christmas here, and we’re still waiting for the fall.

Last night T. Middy got to indulge in a rare public rant on one of his favorite topics: the weather coverage of WDSU, otherwise known as Channel Six, the NBC local affiliate. We’ve lived here for five years, and TM continues to be outraged by the weather coverage. (Don’t ask why we don’t just watch another local affiliate: wherever we live, we watch NBC. We miss you, Sue Simmons.)

The WDSU empire has established an outpost on Channel 108, which is known as WDSU Weather-Plus News and Traffic. When TM has tired of being aggrieved at my various crimes – finishing all the wine, eating all the cashews, watching yet another past-season marathon of America’s Next Top Model – he likes to turn to 108 and complain that it’s never New Orleans weather.

Here is a transcript of a recent diatribe on this topic.

TM: No matter when I tune in, it’s Houma. Then Mandeville, then Hammond. You say it’s in alphabetical order, but, baby girl, look – it’s HOUMA, MANDEVILLE, AND THEN HAMMOND.

[Turns to another station, then switches back.]

TM: Now it’s THIBODAUX, GRAND ISLE, AND GULFPORT. And what’s on right now? GRETNA.

 [Turns to another station, then switches back.]

TM: And then it’s mostly commercials for WDSU.

[Lower-level grumbling while distracted by Tropical Storm Watch in the Gulf of Mexico.]

TM: So now it’s New Orleans. They’re saying thunderstorms at noon tomorrow. Let’s check back tomorrow, shall we? Let’s see what they say then!

[Turns to another station for quite a while, then switches back.]

TM: Just to see what’s happening, let’s turn to 108. THIBODAUX, GRAND ISLE, AND GULFPORT! This is the New Orleans metropolitan area! Why don’t they show New Orleans? They could at least show Metairie.

[Swearing and muttering.]

TM: And you know, I bet a lot of these forecasts are the same. Because it’s a ****ing tiny area!

[Turns to another station, then switches back.]

TM: Slidell. What’s next? HOUMA, MANDEVILLE, HAMMOND.

[The next day: I’m in another room]

TM: Ha! GRETNA!

Actually, I don’t know why he needs to watch the weather. It’s the same every day: mid 90s, with a chance of thunderstorms. I’ll be here, waiting for the sky to darken and for the heat in the house to simmer and thicken. Until my head aches, and my hair curls, and it’s time to turn on the air again and finish off all the wine.

New book

Last year, when I was holed up in the little flat on Albert Park in Auckland (courtesy of the very generous Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship), I worked on four big projects. One of them is published this week.

This is my YA novel, and it's published here in the US by Scholastic/Point. It's already selling on Amazon in various countries, as well as on other sites and in numerous US independent book stores like the great Lemuria in Jackson, MS. If there's a teenager in your life interested in a mystery involving ghosts, curses, murders, carnival/Mardi Gras parades, yellow fever, voodoo, New Orleans (especially the Garden District and Treme), Haiti, cemeteries, Roman society, high school shenanigans, or any of the above, please consider buying this for him or her. I'd like to crack the top 100,000 on Amazon!

If you need more persuasion, here's the starred review from Publishers Weekly:

"With this haunting love letter to New Orleans, Morris makes her YA debut, telling the story of 15-year-old Rebecca Brown, a proud New Yorker sent to live with a family friend while her father travels overseas. Ostracized as an outsider, Rebecca struggles to fit in and cope with her new surroundings. When she befriends Lisette, a ghost who has haunted the cemetery ever since her mysterious death 155 years earlier, Rebecca is drawn into an eerie story of betrayal, loss, old curses and family secrets. As Mardi Gras approaches, so does the culmination of something dark and angry that has been brewing for decades. This moody tale thoroughly embraces the rich history, occult lore and complex issues of race, ethnicity, class and culture that have defined New Orleans for centuries, turning the city into a character in its own right. Rather than shy away from the shameful or tragic moments of the past, Morris uses them to capture the city's essence. From Mardi Gras rituals to voodoo spells, Hurricane Katrina to jazz, this is a story that could only be told in New Orleans."

Note: I just checked on Amazon, and I've already cracked the top 25K - maybe I should aim higher (or lower)? Say, top 10K?

New Orleans, late July

Good things about being back in New Orleans: the blueberries from Pass Christian, MS, which are juicy and delicious. The crepe myrtles in bloom – white and lavender and mauve – sprinkling fallen petals over car roofs and sidewalks. The prospect of going swimming this weekend in Metairie, where our friend Becky has a real pool, or around the corner, where Sarah has installed something inflatable and possibly illegal in her back yard. The students are still away for the summer, so it’s nice and peaceful, apart from the times when the McMain summer drum camp starts rehearsing under the trees … but even that’s not bad, because it reminds me of parade season. (I always miss the endless schoolyard band sessions after Mardi Gras is over.) The fruit cart guy is set up on Napoleon: he always has ripe avocados. Lots of restaurants and bars have specials on right now, because it’s such a quiet time of year.

Annoying things. Hmmm. Yesterday lunchtime, a Cox Communications worker was tinkering with the lamppost outside. Next thing, our cable access is gone. A technician is due to come around this morning, in the approved two-hour window, but this has involved SIX calls so far – one to book the appointment, and the other five to confirm it. One last night, four today. Cox: please stop calling me and JUST COME AND FIX OUR CABLE.

This morning I called the doctor to make an appointment for T. Middy, who managed to get a touch of the old swine flu just before he left the UK. He’s feeling a bit better, but his ears have been blocked for ten days, and he may need antibiotics . No doctor at our local medical clinic can see him until mid-August. That is, almost a month away. I’m so glad we don’t have the evil “socialized medicine” in this country, with its long waiting lists! He’s calling the hospital now to see if he can get an appointment with a specialist. This will cost more – it’ll cost us more, and it’ll cost our insurance more – but what else can he do? Make a doctor’s appointment for a month hence and hope he’s still sick?

At Whole Foods, looking through their lunch salads – which manage to be dispiriting, mundane, and over-priced – and buying ingredients to make pizza, I was told that they will not be stocking pancetta again until the fall, because “nobody buys it in the summer.” I’ve never found pancetta anywhere else in the city. If any NOLA-based reader knows where I can buy this grotesquely unseasonal item, please email me.

The day I was home last week, in between getting back from the UK and flying to New York, a tremendous thunder storm flooded the streets and knocked out power along much of Magazine Street. I picked up TM and his office wife, Trina, so we could go and get some lunch, but everywhere was closed because the power was gone. We ended up at Crabby Jack’s on Jefferson Highway – crossing parish lines to get a delicious shrimp po boy! We would have driven to Houma if necessary: we were hungry.

The traffic lights were out at numerous intersections on St Charles and Magazine long after power had been restored to the neighborhood, which reminded me of the #1 most annoying thing about being back in New Orleans: the drivers. So many of them were speeding through four-way intersections –with no functioning traffic lights – without slowing down, let alone stopping. I understand that it’s impossible for drivers here to ever use indicators, because they need to steer AND make calls and send text messages, and that red lights/stop signs are perceived as an affront to our constitutional right to drive wherever it is we’re going without inconvenient pauses, but still. It makes every journey an adventure, I guess.

The cable guy is here. He tells me they turned off the cable next door yesterday, but the incidents are completely unrelated: this is not the reason our cable disappeared at exactly the same time. Hmmm.

Once he’s gone, I need to take my life in my hands and go out for more blueberries from Pass Christian. You can buy them at Rouse’s. Unlike pancetta, they are seasonal.

New Orleans, March 6, 2009

It's a fine Friday morning here in New Orleans - blue skies, warm sun, the azaleas in bloom. In a lot of other places, this would be summer weather; here it's blissfully non-humid, which means spring. At nine I go to the Dean's Coffee on the porch of Cudd Hall. The Rob Kohler trio is playing, as they do the first Friday of every month. T. Middy divides his time between taking photographs of the band, for use in publicity material for Newcomb-Tulane College, and pointing to the "One Donut At a Time" sign. (Note: staff are the worst offenders.)

Back at the Department of English office, it's business as unusual. Barb has to take Arynne, our admin assistant, to the ER at Ochsner hospital, because Arynne has cut her hand open on a door. I sit at the student worker's desk, waiting for students to arrive. They need my photocopying code, and the colored paper I've pilfered. The department chair needs my cell phone number, for the Joan Didion itinerary; he wants to know if we have everything under control for the Billy Collins event - music, banners, print and radio ads, brochure mailings. We talk about the problems, like Admissions hogging all the prime banner spots. 

Four of the students in my Literary Event Management class wander in and out, picking up hundreds of labeled brochures to deliver to School of Liberal Arts faculty, as well as posters for Billy Collins and our Joan Didion Reading Series. These are going up around campus and all over town. We were also making copies of a few Collins poems, chosen by our Guerilla Poetry Committee of student poets: these will be scattered about the place too. My favorite is Vade Mecum:

"I want the scissors to be sharp/and the table to be perfectly level/ when you cut me out of my life/and paste me in that book you always carry."

One of the students criticizes the decision to name the venue (McAlister) without saying it's at Tulane. I say nothing: this is their idea, their deal. They're writing blog posts at our creative writing blog as well.

Some of the pieces of paper need to be guillotined in two. My pronunciation of the word "guillotine" is questioned. Apparently, every American says "gee-yo-teen" in the French manner. I don't believe this, whatever the student worker says.

I do a bit of guerilla (or should that be gair-ee-ya?) poetry-putting-up myself before retreating to office hours upstairs. Yesterday I was late for office hours and kept someone waiting. Today nobody wants to see me, which is just as well. I have to write comments on student interview reports, and read and file response notes. Although I've been in my new office for months, there are still no pictures on the wall, and too many stacks of paper on the floor. There are emails to answer, and nagging emails to send (because we need banners, and bookmarks, and catering, and ... etc).

Before Sunday I have to write a forty-minute lecture to deliver to prospective students and their parents, visiting campus for an Honors/Admissions weekend. I warned Admissions that I was not a seasoned lecture-giver, but they were not deterred. (Probably they were preoccupied with nabbing all the banner spots on campus.) I have to finish reading all of Claire Messud's books, because she's going to be visiting campus next week, and I'm interviewing her on Thursday night. Joe Klein is also speaking on campus next Wednesday, and the actress Elizabeth Garvie, who played Lizzie Bennet in the best Pride and Prejudice EVER, is coming next Friday. I will be out five nights next week, and also have three lunch events. All of this is Tulane-related.

Tonight we have people coming over, for the First Fridays salon chez Morris/Middy. Last month, at our inaugural event, some people complained that the conversation wasn't intellectual enough, and they'd expected more from a salon. Well ... as Gertrude Stein must have said, you have to work with what you've got. Maybe this afternoon I'll replace some of the dead plants on our porch. This is what Alice B. Toklas did, probably - that, and talk to the wives.

Happy Mardi Gras

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Election Day, my first as a citizen. We’re going to our polling place, McMain High School, around seven AM. I’m nervous. There are many ways to vote in this country, and they all seem to involve equipment that breaks down. What if there are levers to pull, chads to hang, etc? What if I get confused at the last minute between Ralph Capitelli and Leon Cannizzaro, both of whom are running for DA? Should I vote Yes or No on the second of seventh amendments to the Louisiana constitution: may the state government require two additional days of notice before calling a special legislative session? (Not sure why our state representatives need a further two days’ notice, exactly, given that they already get five days notice, unless maybe they are on a cycling vacationing in El Paso and need time to pedal back.)

A side note: apparently Louisiana is #1 in the nation at coming up with constitutional amendments. Since its most recent iteration, in 1974, we’ve voted in 151 amendments.

Yesterday I got a call from the Obama/Biden local HQ. (We also got a call from Obama himself, but that was pre-recorded.) Can I volunteer some time on Tuesday? Yes I Can. So I’m on the four through seven PM shift, canvassing. T. Middy is worried this means knocking on doors in bad neighborhoods in the dark, being accused of European socialism and illegal alien status, etc, so he might try to finish work early and come with me. I’ll wear my Geauxbama T-shirt.

Meanwhile in New Orleans, life goes on as abnormal. Halloween on Friday brought its usual chaos and silliness. We crossed St Charles Avenue around nine-ish, on the way to the third of our three activities, and thought we’d stumbled on a convention of drunk prostitutes. But no! It was just dozens of students, dressed in skimpy, skin-tight “costumes”, waiting to catch the street car downtown.

Every night after school, the McMain band and majorettes are out in the field, rehearsing for parade season. These rehearsals involve a great deal of drumming, and sporadic marching around in ragged formation. The drumming is so loud it drowns out the TV, but they’re all sounding good, and the brass players seem less like distressed baby elephants this year, and more like actual musicians.

And last night, just as The Amazing Race was ending, our power disappeared: we sat around by candlelight for the next two hours. Ten thousand households lost power, according to today’s paper. The problem? A suicidal raccoon.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

New Orleans, counting down

I’ve been back in New Orleans for just over a week; this time next week I’ll be in Auckland again. Only a month left on my residency: I’ll miss it terribly. Especially as the Auckland City Council has acted, finally, and is promising to lock Bowen Lane at night.

It’s decidedly autumnal in NOLA, though no doubt it’s still much warmer than in other parts of the country. (In Iowa City, this was the week the Farmers’ Market closed until April.) Here it’s mild and sunny, almost chilly in the shade and at nights – not exactly mists and mellow fruitfulness, but better than wet-hot, as it’s been for months. Some of the big houses on State and St. Charles have insanely elaborate Halloween decorations: I’ll try and take some photos tomorrow, though many of them are lit to look their sinister best at night.

Halloween is a big deal here, and tends to go on all weekend. We have two party invitations for Friday night. As usual, we’ve left costume decisions until the last minute. One year in Iowa we dressed as Dead Currencies and Dead Languages; our second year there we decided to be less conceptual, and T. Middy went out dressed as Harry Potter, complete with lightning scar and messed-up glasses. At the Eastside Hy-Vee supermarket, where we were purchasing our usual vats of Yellow Tail, he was accosted by some drunk students: “Harry Potter, all right!” I was an Iowa cheerleader that night. I still have the little skirt, with IOWA in yellow letters across the back, but I think the pom-poms drowned in the flood.

This year I’m opting for semi-conceptual, and dressing as the Spectre of Marxism. Apparently, during my absence from the US, it has been revealed that Obama is not only a Muslim and an Arab who was really born in Kenya, not Hawaii; he’s also planning to impose collective ownership and other evil Marxist ways on us. (Oh, and he’s also the Anti-Christ.)

TM is digging out his dreadlocks wig and some selections from his vast wardrobe of All Blacks gear, and going as Tama Umaga, the AB’s former captain. That way, he says, his costume can be literal AND figurative. Because, according to one of our neighbors, who stopped by when Tom was attaching an Obama/Biden sticker to our car, if That One is elected, it will be a scary time. Not because Obama is black, he explained, but because he, the neighbor, is white. I can’t remember his logic exactly, maybe because he didn’t have any, but basically he thinks that when black people are in charge, item one on the list is taking revenge big-time on white people. Presumably by imposing Marxism, Islam, Tyler Perry movies, etc.

This neighbor is young, by the way, but not a Tulane student.

I’ve been swallowed up in too much Tulane business while I’ve been back, and I’m looking forward to getting back to my own work in Auckland. But first there’s the African Writers’ Symposium on Saturday, and the Sarah Lockwood/Billy Mohl wedding extravaganza, and the election. Early voting closed last night in Louisiana, and Sarah spent hours yesterday waiting in line to vote. Thousands of people here have already cast their votes. Louisiana is likely to stay Republican – because McCain is perceived as more sympathetic to squirrel hunters or the overweight or something – but there are other things at stake this election, i.e. the Senate and the House of Representatives. And, you know, the future of the world, but we’re driving ourselves crazy enough with anxiety as it is.

The storm passes

The messageboards on the WDSU and NOLA sites are packed with outraged people who don't live in New Orleans: they're annoyed that all the coverage focuses on the city, with scant mentions of other places. They want to know if and when they can go home. People from Algiers, just across the river, seem particularly angry. Algiers is always forgotten, apparently. There's some flooding in Plaquemines and Covington, from what I can gather, but the city's new pumps and patched-up levees worked, thank god. There are problems right now getting power back up, and fixing the sewers, so nobody is supposed to come back until Wednesday.

One bar/club owner in the Quarter is outraged because he was forced to close while Johnny White's on Bourbon Street was allowed to stay open.

We heard from our friend Becky that yesterday was a bad one up in Alexandria (and therefore, I guess, Marksville) - high winds and strong rain when they were lashed with Gustav's tail.

TM is planning to start the drive back on Friday and book somewhere to stay in Jackson, in case the traffic is really terrible again. Two million people have to get back to the coast.

New Orleans right now is still quiet, aside from the crews working to move downed trees and power lines. This from The New York Times:

"As the wind blew through the deserted streets, a group of bored police officers sat on rolling office chairs outside on Tchoupitoulas Street, watching a few of their colleagues “wind-surfing” down the long thoroughfare, one of them explained. Two officers would hold up opposite ends of a sheet and wait for the gusts to blow them down the traffic-less street on their rolling chairs."

EvacuLog: TM writes

As you know, T. Middy spent his weekend wrapping our belongings in plastic and fleeing Gustav by driving to St Louis. I've complained on this blog about the drive to St Louis before. The rest stops alongside the highway in Mississippi are highlights. (There are picnic tables! Sometimes even butterflies!) National Public Radio is good in Mississippi as well, in that you can always get a signal. We try to stop at Lemuria Books, one of the best book shops in the country, in Jackson, but often we can't spare the time. 

If we're breaking the journey, we usually stay at Super-8 motels. When we're really splashing out, we stay at a motel in Oxford, MS, where there's another great book store and good restaurants. There's also a Confederate memorial on the square that annoys TM anew every time we visit.

We moan about that hour driving through the boring NE corner of Arkansas. We debate whether to stop at the lackluster mini-outlet mall just across the Missouri state line; TM usually wins that one. (We don't stop.) We never stop at Lambert's, "the only home of throwed rolls," in Sikeston, MO, though I've been to the one in Foley, AL. If we have time, we eat at Cracker Barrel. If we don't have time, we eat at McDonald's or buy a sandwich at Subway: food choices are not great along I-55. The Christmas we got stuck in a winter storm, we ate all the leftover canapes from our party the night before while sitting in stopped traffic in Arkansas.

Here is TM's account of his weekend - Saturday packing and covering, Sunday driving - plus some pictures of our plastic-wrapped stuff. Our landlord only boarded up the other, more exposed side of the house, so TM wanted to protect our things from rain. This is where TM's superior gift-wrapping, packing, and general organizational skills come into play. I would have draped a few sheets, got distracted by my paper doll collection under the bed, then driven off in search of the little cat.

TM writes:

Saturday, August 30

6:30 am Wake up; try to fall back to sleep and can’t, despite getting only 5–6 hours of sleep. Work around the house a little bit; finish getting my stuff ready to pack into suitcases.

8:00 am Go out to CC’s and find it closed, chairs stacked on tables. Down the street they’re boarding up Café Luna. There’s a line down the sidewalk at PJ’s. I buy adhesive tape (which I had forgotten to buy when I bought the plastic at Lowe’s) at Clement’s Hardware; they seem to be doing a brisk business.

8:30 am Bored, agitated, depressed by television coverage on WDSU (Margaret Orr—“I don’t want to alarm anyone”; Dan Milhan to Hurricane Center guy—“Yes, tell me the worst case scenario for surges.”), I half-heartedly watch the Premier League pre-match show. Plus: two loads of laundry; carrying things up from basement; covering everything with plastic, taping.

10:15 am Check the television coverage: they expect Gustav to reach category 4 in the gulf before returning to category 3 before landfall; the track hasn’t changed much at all; now expected to be category 1 AFTER landfall well inland.

West Ham 2—Blackburn 1 at 65:14.

11:00 am Take garbage out; water plants. See guy next door (who had been putting on new wooden garage doors yesterday) and he says, “Looks like we’re in for it.” I say, “It looks like it’s going to happen.” “Something’s going to happen,” he says. This sort of inane conversation is probably happening all over the Gulf Coast.

West Ham 4—Blackburn 1 final score; now for the Newcastle—Arsenal match.

12:20 pm City Hall press conference for set for noon just now gets underway. Twenty-two buses have evacuated 2,200 so far. Nagin says, “I strongly, strongly urge you to evacuate. My message to tourists: It’s time to leave our city.” Will make call regarding mandatory evacuation at tonight’s 7:00 pm press conference. After Nagin speaks, City Councilwoman Jacqui Clarkson speaks, praises organization; then a priest delivers a message in Vietnamese; then someone speaks in Spanish.

Arsenal 2—Newcastle 0 at half; I’ve seen none of the match.

1:23 pm Still carrying things up from downstairs.

Arsenal 3—Newcastle 0 final score; maybe this still won’t be Newcastle’s year.

2:55 pm Call Moody family [in St Louis] to tell them I’ll see them sometime tomorrow.

Continue bringing everything up from basement; covering with plastic, taping; work all afternoon into the evening; have crab cake for dinner; clear out refrigerator and freezer; fill cooler and freezer bag with stuff to bring to St. Louis.

6:07 pm Get a call from Chris Powers, just checking up on us. Watch a little bit of Missouri—Illinois football game; looks like it will be high scoring.

11:00 pm Bring plants and plant stands inside. Everything—except for the sofa I’ll be sleeping on for a few hours—is covered with plastic. It looks like a profoundly untalented and possibly demented Christo has been let loose with plastic and the cheapest tape available for purchase. Despite the fact that I’m wired I’m sure I’ll be able to sleep for a little while—I’m exhausted, sweaty, and dirty. I set my alarm for 3:00 am.

Sunday, August 31

2:00 am Wake up and can’t get back to sleep, so I decide to shave and shower, finish putting things away here, and take off.

3:40 am Time to leave. The neighborhood is completely quiet, but I see cars streaming along on Claiborne Avenue. Only a few parked cars are in our neighborhood; I don’t know if the owners are still here (there are a few porch lights on here and there) or if they’ve just abandoned their cars, hoping that the worst won’t happen.

5:18 am I’ve driven about eight miles in 1.5 hours. Stop and go traffic, mostly stop. One bottleneck on I-10, it turns out, was caused by five cars in a row stopped for some reason, forcing everyone in the left lane (me included) to drive around on median. Contraflow began a few miles ago, at 4:00 am. Traffic headed to Baton Rouge is directed onto (normally) eastbound lanes, and seems to be moving along a bit better than we are.

6:51 am Have turned onto I-55; over three hours since I’ve set out.

9:07 am Enter Mississippi. I’m traveling in what would normally be the southbound lanes. We seem to be moving better than those in the northbound lanes; I don’t know where that traffic has come from.

9:19 am Receive text message from [colleague] Sarah Lockwood [who’s in Texas], checking on Trina [Beck, another colleague] and me.

10:01 am I must revise my statement about our lanes moving better than the northbound lanes.

10:40 am Contraflow ends; we’re fed back over into northbound lanes. Jackson 62 miles.

11:13 am Bathroom break in Brookhaven; incredibly, I see James [McLaren, the dean of Tulane's undergraduate college] and one of his daughters in the shop while waiting on the amazingly long line for the rest room. Because of even longer lines at the pumps, I decide to not get gas now; Otto [our VW Jetta] still has plenty, despite the fact that it’s the worst kind of driving for fuel efficiency and I’ve had the A/C blasting the whole time.

12:45 pm I pass Lemuria Bookstore in Jackson; nine hours since departure. Because everyone always drives like an asshole here, it’s hard to tell whether they’re fleeing the apocalypse, or simply driving as usual.

3:02 pm In Grenada. Ate filet-o-fish and fries; the crispy chicken wraps aren’t available for purchase in Grenada, apparently. I text P, asking her if there’s a Starbucks in Mississippi.

3:07 pm I get a text message from P; no Starbucks until Missouri.

3:40 pm I’ve been on the road for 12 hours and I’m in Sardis, MS; Memphis 42 miles

4:17 pm Trina [who’s in Alabama] leaves voicemail message while I’m on a bathroom break; I return Trina’s voicemail; I think I’m in Batesville. I see a caravan of Humvees (National Guard, I guess) and a caravan of utility trucks, heading south.

4:59 pm I get a text message from Tulane saying that the reopening is delayed.

5:48 pm Missouri state line. I’ve driven more than 459 miles; I don’t know exactly how many miles because I didn’t reset the odometer when I set out and I can’t quite remember when I did. Another caravan of utility trucks passes, heading south.

A Starbucks sign around Cape Girardeau says Treat Yourself. And I do.

9:15 pm I’m sitting in my parent’s driveway. I’ve driven more than 679 miles and have been in the car, minus a few short breaks, for 17 hours and 35 minutes. During that time I’ve eaten two energy bars; a bag of nutty, spicy mix; a filet-o-fish and fries. I’ve drunk five bottles of water, a Red Bull; a small cup of McDonald’s coffee; a venti iced skim latte from Starbucks.

I’ve listened to the Allman Brothers Eat a Peach; one of the discs of the Led Zeppelin anthology; Acoustic Brazil; Robert Plant and Allison Krauss Raising Sand; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; the Clash London Calling; the Beatles Rubber Soul and Let It Be…Naked; the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street; Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde; Snow Patrol Eyes Open; lots of local radio (where I heard more than I needed to know about pet and human shelters being set up in the area); unavoidably, and by accident, Christian radio; and once I got close to St. Louis, KSHE-95, which I listened to obsessively when I was younger; I was reminded that you really can’t go home again.

By the way, if I'd been in the car, the evacuation soundtrack would have been quite different: Marcio Faraco and Bebel Gilberto on high rotation, with TM rebelling against one of my many "women/car" compilations some time around hour thirteen.