MOTHER NATURE

Consultant Monty Lunn, formerly of Elite, used to live in New Orleans. He e-mails:

"I'm glad you are having a good time, but it is absolutely killing me to not be in New Orleans while you are there! Ain't a good time a damn hard thing to kill? These people absolutely can will a cadaver to life, and I can't tell you how much we miss it. Must be kinda like your Yankees and forever grateful that you are reporting on things first hand so no one forgets too soon, which is one of my fears."

Mon replies: It's been exhilarating and exhausting, positive and depressing all at once.  I'm putting only my "outtakes" up on the blog... the actual story will be more about how everybody's doing etc.

The oldest cliche in travel reporting is to say a place is a "city of contrasts" -- but never has that been more true than here. Yesterday, we toured 9th Ward and Lakeview areas. It's hard to grasp, even when you are walking on the soil, that there are so many miles of devastation.

It occurred to me today that it took more than a year to clean up two skyscrapers in NYC -- how are they ever going to clean up miles and miles and miles of debris???

Everybody here tends to compare it to Berlin -- west v. east. I think that's a good analogy. One minute, you're in downtown which feels fairly intact, despite a lot of still-broken windows. Five minutes later, over a bridge, and you are in complete, utter, flat. Piles and piles and piles of broken wood. And so many houses sitting on top of cars it becomes a routine sight after 10 minutes. (click to enlarge photo)

My friend Richard Peck said something to me last week that has haunted and resonated with me -- "Stay vulnerable, Monica."  If anything is hitting me, it's that we are ALL vulnerable no matter how we fool ourselves to get thru everyday life.

This is not just about New Orleans, this is about the power of Mother Nature, and no one is immune: Not San Francisco, Florida, Oklahoma, Wyoming.  Water, wind, fire. As someone said yesterday at lunch: Mother Nature bats last.

Photo: Russ Curtis.