Down on the Bayou

Camden, Maine

A Bayou is a relatively small, sluggish waterway through lowlands or swamps, generally with a slow, almost imperceptible current flow. There is a finger of land, bayou and swamp that extends about 125 miles south of New Orleans out into the Gulf of Mexico.

The people that live in this area tend to be fishermen or work in the oil industry offshore. There is a tribe of Native Americans here that adopted a strange form of French when they retreated into these swamps. They've never been recognized by the U.S. Government. They number about 750 and the island they use for an ancestral burial ground is now threatened by an oil slick.

I went down a year after Katrina to take pictures and see if there was any volunteer work I could do. They were too disorganized to need my help. The ancestors are all dead, of course but the birds, fish and dolphins were doing OK until recently. The GNP of the area is about two trillion a year. Possibly half of that could be lost because of the BP oil spill. The effects could be worse if shipping up the Mississippi river is interrupted because of oil slicks that ships might drag upriver. President Obama picked the wrong day in April to endorse offshore drilling.

We had a flock (?) of ravens in the campground last night. I've seen single ravens exhibit high intelligence, but ravens in groups are a little like people in groups...very stupid.

I put bread out on the picnic table and a flock of ravens waddled over, shrieking loudly. One raven took a single piece of bread and the other ravens all attacked him to get the single piece, leaving the table covered with bread.

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.


Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the
Farmer's Corn --
Men eat of it and die.

Emily Dickinson

It's raining hard here today. We're on the way to New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. I'm trying hard to drink up my New York wine to avoid the customs duty going into Canada.

Roadside Relics

Port Sulfur, Louisiana – December 8, 2006

It's crisp and clear here where we are camped on the Tchefuncie River in St. Tammany Parish, which flows into Lake Pontchatrain. Big cypress trees line the banks and grow out in the river shallows. The big lake has a 25 mile long arrow-straight causeway leading south to New Orleans, where the levees broke.

Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move
- Led Zeppelin

Katrina rolled over the Louisiana bayous 100 miles southeast of New Orleans on the way to smash the Mississippi coast. There wasn’t much on the news about this area and I wanted to see and document what happened.



We drive though New Orleans, past the convention center, and 80 miles down the peninsula toward the Gulf. There appear to be very few repairable structures. Large shrimp boats ended up in fields. FEMA trailers are everywhere. Katrina came though this area at full strength. The refineries and heliports that carry workers to the rigs are about the only things that are repaired.



At the very end of the peninsula a sad collection of broken music boxes, a porcelain Santa, and various small figures are placed on a seawall. A boy’s bicycle and an upside-down SUV are in the rubbish near the seawall.


We drive back to New Orleans and have dinner in the French Quarter. This is Friday night so we want to try the mango daiquiris. The businesses in the quarter are back, but the tourists don’t yet know that the city is open for business. We were the only diners in the restaurant we chose.

Living in Infamy Forever

New Orleans - December 7, 2006

December 7th...another one of those days that will live in infamy forever...or at least for a little while.


We spent yesterday in New Orleans, checking out the disaster and the recovery efforts. We had lunch in the French Quarter in a garden courtyard. I had jambalaya and shared a salad with Mrs. Phred. The French Quarter shows little sign of the Katrina disaster. It’s on relatively high ground and was not flooded. There is no obvious wind damage.

The French style 2nd and 3rd floor balconies are decorated for both Christmas and for the Mardi Gras coming up in February.


The business district is a little worse for the experience. The trolley cars are not running yet and there is an occasional small business, obviously smashed and looted, that remains shuttered. Soaked drywall is still being replaced in other ground floor businesses.


In the suburbs, the extent of the devastation is mind-numbing. There are literally hundreds of miles of homes on the beach that are simply gone...washed away... and untold square miles of damaged and destroyed homes and businesses in the sprawling New Orleans suburbs. FEMA trailers are parked everywhere next to damaged and destroyed houses and the countryside is dotted with clusters of FEMA trailers in formerly vacant fields.


This makes me think of Japan in late 1945. I have my own thoughts about the causes of the relatively slow pace of recovery and other thoughts about the public policy of providing insurance for mansions built on the edge of the ocean.

If your house is destroyed or damaged, why not just rebuild like the Japanese?

- First, you need to wait to see what government assistance, if any, will be provided. So get in line.
- Second, if you have insurance, you need to wait and negotiate a settlement amount with them. So get in line.
-Third, you probably don’t have any money or a job and the government didn't help and the insurance didn't pay.

What a spectacle. Fifteen months and very little rebuilding or even refuse removal are evident. Even a superpower needs competent leadership to get things done. They don’t make them like Franklin D. Roosevelt anymore.

Storm Surge

Biloxi, Mississippi – December 6, 2006

Biloxi is on the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles east of New Orleans.

I’ve volunteered online to work this winter in the recovery effort in three different places. No takers yet.


The beach in Biloxi stretches to infinity in both directions. The land slopes up very gently at the waters edge. Katrina generated a 30 foot storm surge which scrubbed away almost all the structures along the beach for several blocks inland.


Life has returned to normal a few blocks inland from the Gulf. The only visible sign of Katrina is that all the roofs appear to have brand new shingles and many houses and businesses appear freshly painted.

The beach is another story. There are a few building steel frames standing with no walls or roofs, but for the most part it’s just mile after mile of building foundations. Many signs offer beach front property at bargain rates. Major bridges were demolished and are still not rebuilt.

The oak trees have taken on a strange appearance. All the leaves and small branches were stripped off. The new growth is very thick and close to the stubby trunks and limbs that were left by the 140 mph winds.

Very little reconstruction has taken place along the beach strip. The exception to that rule are the beach casinos which appear fully restored.


They found another body in a New Orleans attic last week. That brought the official body count to 1,697. The government's sad response to the disaster brought the realization that the first limit of power is competent leadership.