Greetings from N'awlins
Over the Memorial Day weekend we took a quick trip to New Orleans to attend a wedding. After my sick-free winter, I managed to spend the unofficial first weekend of summer battling a head cold. We were only there for two days, but managed to divide our time nicely between visiting family, tourism, drinking Hurricanes in the courtyard at Pat O'Briens, and napping.
While jaunting around the French Quarter, we came across an interesting boutique next to the French Market. Chi-wa-wa Ga-ga is the "small store for dinky dogs", jam-packed with accessories for your pocket pooch. They had minuscule t-shirts that said "Does this shirt make me look fat?" and "I hate Tinkerbell, that bitch has everything". Maybe I don't get out enough, but I thought they were funny...heh, heh.
In the French Quarter there seems to be solidarity among the shopkeepers about recovering from hurricane Katrina, and it's hard to spot damage separate from the occasional decrepitude of a historic area. However our host took us on a drive through the lower 9th ward, and there are just blocks and blocks of ravaged, vacant houses with the signature spray paint markings of the rescuers.
At the wedding we met someone who has been spending the last two years clearing out abandoned cars from the roadways and wrecked boats from the harbors. Apart from the extraordinary volume of material, the complexity of the task has been magnified by the vagaries of property and environmental law. It took some time to grant the government the right to remove all of these hulks, getting heavy machinery to the sites is often a tricky negotiation, and fuel and hazardous materials have to be properly removed before the junk can be cut up and hauled away. This is gonna take a while.
5 comments:
Hey: did Pappy get to go to N'awlins? Muzzer and Dad were there for 13 days in August of 05, they left with two foster cats on Sunday morning, and the Hurricane was so mad that it missed them that it made landfall almost 24 hours exactly after they left.
On a totally different note: We were watching Crufts dog show last night and there was a Pappy look alike "Basset Griffin Vendane (Grand)" See, we always knew he was rare. The fact that his legs are a bit longer than normal for the breed should not bother him, clearly it indicates his genetic superiority
Cute boutique, but they are definitely for certain types of dogs. Mum tried to dress me once and only once. She tried to put a t-shirt on Ozzy and he spent the whole evening turning circles trying to bite it off.
Gus,
Yes, it's best to miss big weather events-- glad you made it out of there, 'cause it wasn't purdy. The Basset Griffon Vendane does have some of the Pappy charm alright.
Nugget,
Pappy has always looked a bit sad the few times we've encumbered him with novelty dogwear.
What did the lower 9th ward smell like? My Human has said that after the big Missouri River flood in the early 1990's the area had a smell of rotten cheese combined with fermented plant material.
Turbo,
No smell, but the weather was pretty mild. They've been pretty methodically gutting houses and carting everything off in the months since Katrina. In Lakeside adjoining one of the backflow canals from the lake, the several feet of mud had all been carted off many moons ago. They've done what they can to remove debris without completely obliterating the houses.
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