Why Do You Live Where You Do?

Today’s post at LitPark got me thinking. Susan Henderson, the gracious host of LitPark interviewed author Amy Wilentz about her new book, I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen: Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger. Amy lived in Jerusalem where peace on the streets is an oxymoron, and also in New York City during 9/11. As an author of two books and a journalist who’s written for The Nation, The New Republic, Newsday, Time, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, Amy considers her recent move to California a foreign assignment. I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen is a memoir informed by Amy’s search for safety and renewal after 9/11, yet dosed with California history and contemporary political reporting. I have not read Amy’s book yet, but the premise intrigued me beyond the surface. [Click the LitPark link to read more about Susan and Amy.]

While in New Orleans and the Katrina-devastated Mississippi bayou areas last summer, I heard several residents say how the media and other insensitive souls often asked them questions like, “why do you live here when you know it’s a hurricane zone,” or other less kind phrasings. Living in Southern California we hear such comments as, “Why do you live there with all of the [choose one] crime, heat, traffic, crowds, cost of living, liberalism, bad schools, earthquakes.”

Because it’s home. My father’s ashes are spread across the Pacific, my mother and sister lay side-by-side in the ground only fifteen miles from me. Because my children have roots in the same valley where mine have flourished. Because we like it here.

Being entirely fair to my husby, he stays here because of me. He’s a Carolina boy, raised on grits, fatback, and collard greens. The Marine Corps brought him here twenty-five years ago, he met me, and except for our three year tour in Iwakuni, Japan, we’ve lived here since. Given the chance he’d move back to North Carolina as quick as you can say suet.

A trend among retired California homeowners who sit on million dollar real estate they bought 30 years ago for the price of a Toyota today, is to sell out and buy into a community for active senior adults. They can buy a nice place with their house cash, invest the balance, and live off their retirement investments. Last Monday I was talking with a couple of my friends in that position: Gal One is selling her Orange County goldmine and moving to a retirement community in the desert and is trying to convince Gal Two to join her there. Finally Gal Two says, “Why should I sell the place that I love and move to a place where I don’t want to live?”

Why indeed? In light of Gal Two’s remark and then reading about Amy’s move to California to be rejuvenated made me wonder. Why do you live where you do? What took you there and what keeps you there?

Click the comment link below to tell us your story.

Remembering 9/11

It's midnight in New York City. It's time to remember.

I could write something to commemorate the fallen, to memorialize the tragedy. But someone I know already has. Read Bella Voce and leave a comment there.

A Daughter Grows Into Herself

My daughter returned to college this week. She’s a sophomore at a University of California campus only a half-hour drive from our home. Despite the nearby proximity, we decided last year it would be good for her to live on campus, not only because it’s more convenient, but because of the transitional value of life in a dorm.

She left for college as a political science major and came home as an English major. In between the change in her major she flirted with the sciences, having taken an oceanography class to satisfy her core requirements. The theory of continental drift fascinated her. She saw the whole of creation through the evolution of the earth. Yet she did not move into the sciences because the arts and humanities wooed her back through her first university level English class. Everything her teachers have been saying throughout her educational experience came into focus through this class.

Have I mentioned that she’s a scholar? A recipient of the university’s Chancellor’s Scholarship, among a list of other scholarships won during high school, my daughter craves knowledge. Not just trivia that makes good party chat, but the deep truths of how things work, why they work as they do, what happens when things break. She loves a research challenge and finding new ways to present time-honored truths. She has found an avenue of adventure in writing.

Had I tried to mold her into my own hopes for her she would have been a music major. I’ve been told by music teachers that perfect pitch does not exist, but near-perfect pitch does. She has it. Her soprano is clear and crisp, without shrill. When she plays piano and sings “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge, I get chills. All summer long she played selections from Phantom of the Opera while I worked. The house is silent now, the piano will collect dust again.

Her tennis coach thought she could have been ranked had we put her in competitive tennis early on. She picked up the game as a freshman in high school and smoked through lessons, burned up the court with her speed, but often defeated herself in the head play. Steve Kronseder, the tennis pro who took her under his wing, was an English major himself and did as much for her tennis game as he did her scholarship. I watched during lessons when he’d smash balls at her and then toss over questions about Beowulf, Chaucer, or Shakespeare. He’s the one who instilled in her the value that college is not a place to go to prepare for a job, but to explore knowledge.

Over the past year my daughter came home on weekends to do laundry, raid the pantry, see her local friends, and attend church with the family. When she went away in September of last year she was a girl excited to be out of the social cauldron called high school. She had no interest in joining a sorority, but made quick friends with her suite mates. The typical dorm hall dramas came and went and she often found herself the one doling out the psychic band-aids. It’s no wonder that this year she’s a Resident Advisor to a co-ed hall of 44 students.

She gave up her spring break last year to go on a service trip to Pass Christian, Mississippi, the gulf area most devastated by Katrina’s fury. She saved her money from her job at Starbucks to pay for the trip and came back a changed person. When we planned our summer vacation this year to include a week in New Orleans, she logged on with Habitat for Humanity and worked for three days in the brutal heat and humidity to build houses in the Ninth Ward area called Musician’s Village.

Only a few weeks ago she began a blog, Bella Voce. After 19 years of watching her attack and subdue anything she set her mind on I should not have been surprised at the depth of her writing. Yet I was. I’m glad I didn’t overbear my hopes on her in her early years with music. As talented as she is, I can see now that writing will be her destiny. She was born the spitting image of my husband; my genes seem to have been cancelled from her physical appearance. She’s blonde, I’m brunette; she’s blue-eyed, I’m hazel-eyed; she’s slender, I’m Reubenesque; she’s tall, I’m short. But as she gets older I see more of myself in her in different ways.

Elisabeth went away to college last fall as my daughter, but she came home as my friend. I’m missing my daughter, but I’ll always have my friend.

Do You Have Katrina Fatigue?

You may have heard the term “Katrina Fatigue.” Fatigue is a term used by the media to explain the indifference that creeps into the minds of the public when it is barraged with images, sound bytes, and sensationalist reporting that follows a catastrophe or prominent news event. You may have felt recurring Katrina fatigue as the one-year anniversary of the killer storm approached this week. If you’ve read my blog, you may have seen my on-location writing and photos from my trip to New Orleans this summer. But as I’ve watched the media coverage leading to the one-year anniversary of the storm’s landing, I’m haunted again at what happened to this glorious city.

Katrina Fatigue means something entirely different to those who live in the areas affected by Katrina. After a year of mourning, denial, and anger, there still isn’t resolution or acceptance for many Katrina victims. Katrina Fatigue hits them every day when they’re fighting with their insurance company over losses, hammering shingles and laying flooring, waiting for an “as is” sale on their water-ravaged house, listening to the occupants in the FEMA trailer next to them fighting over a drug deal and hoping they don’t pull out guns because those aluminum walls don’t stop bullets. While lights in the French Quarter are shining again, the shadow of Katrina is everywhere.

Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” spotlights the devastation of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, a cramped section of old, wood-frame houses, occupied primarily by working-class blacks whose heritage in the city goes back generations. Many of the houses in the Ninth Ward have been scoured up and reoccupied, but whole neighborhoods were dozed and are being rebuilt. The orange search and rescue signs painted on the fronts of the homes remain visible, like graffiti tributes to survival. Habitat for Humanity has a rebuilding project going in a Ninth Ward neighborhood called Musician’s Village. The homes are going up two and three at a time, but they’re built from volunteer labor by people of all color from around the world.

The often conspiratorialized 17th Street Levee break is blamed for much of the flooding that hit New Orleans, but east of that Levee is St. Bernard Parish, where that levee break just as hard. St. Bernard Parish, and other middle and upper class areas were also destroyed by hurricane winds, storm surge, or levee break flooding. Like those chronicled by Spike Lee, these were working class people, too; second and third generation New Orleans natives who’d saved and saved to buy a dream house in the suburbs. These residents still battle Katrina fatigue and many will never again occupy their dream home or get the insurance money to rebuild.

Moving east, we traveled to Mississippi, stopping in Pass Christian, the coastal hamlet which got the full fury of Katrina on August 29, 2005. Residents of Pass Christian and other devastated areas along the Mississippi coast are the forgotten cousins of Katrina’s victims. Even New Orleans residents expressed concern and great compassion when we told them we were headed out to Pass Christian. We visited with several couples in Pass Christian whose homes my daughter worked on in a service mission last April during her college spring break. Their homes are nearly rebuilt, but the reconstructing of their lives is far from over.

Katrina Fatigue is an easy term to use when we’re sitting in our air conditioned homes, drinking our designer water, and wearing new clothes from a pre-season rack at Macys. News fatigue hits from over-exposure and sensationalized media coverage. It focuses on incidents, rather than issues; personalities rather than persons, and victims, rather than victors. Katrina Fatigue is a cop-out term for over-stimulated and under-involved people. If you’re reading this, you are probably not one of them.

You can view more photos from my trip through the Gulf Coast in my website's photo gallery.

Experiments in viral marketing: bookstyle

I am participating in a blogging experiment hosted at dearauthor.com. To enter the contest, put up this blurb, image, and trackback and you are entered to win the following prize package.

• $200 Amazon gift certificate
• Signed copy of Slave to Sensation
• New Zealand goodies chosen by Singh
• ARC of Christine Feehan's October 31 release: Conspiracy Game

You can read about the experiment here and you can download the code that you need to participate here.

SLAVE TO SENSATION
Nalini Singh
Berkley / September 2006

Welcome to a future where emotion is a crime and powers of the mind clash brutally against those of the heart.

Sascha Duncan is one of the Psy, a psychic race that has cut off its emotions in an effort to prevent murderous insanity. Those who feel are punished by having their brains wiped clean, their personalities and memories destroyed.

Lucas Hunter is a Changeling, a shapeshifter who craves sensation, lives for touch. When their separate worlds collide in the serial murders of Changeling women, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities…or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation.

Read an excerpt here.

Nalini is one of my author sisters at the Knight Agency, and SLAVE TO SENSATION was the first book my agent, Nephele Tempest sold. See this post for more.

My short story took first prize at Backspace

The guessing game is over at Backspace. The winners of Short Story Contest #15 have been called out and sorted. I'm thrilled that my short story SKETCHES took first place.

Do you write stories with soundtracks playing in your mind? I do, and did with SKETCHES. Music is a huge motivator in my life and there are songs I've always thought would play out to amazing stories. "Me and Bobby McGee," by Kris Kristopherson, is one of them. I think the longing for a simple life and a steady love reach into the psyche of the common soul. I was in junior high when Janis Joplin belted this song in my bedroom for the first time and I've been haunted by it since.

The song opens with, "Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin' for a train, feeling near as faded as my jeans. Bobby thumbed a diesel down, right before it rained, took us all the way to New Orleans." That song played unrelentingly in my mind while I watched rain fall every single day we were in New Orleans last month. I began writing the story while on the road from New Orleans to North Carolina. Every little town we passed had a Waffle House. Every Waffle House had a diesel truck in the parking lot. Rather than telling a story of the past with the MC and his girl Bobby, I made it a story for today with yesterday in the rearview mirror. I named the MC Kris as a tribute to the balladmaster himself.

This is what EJ Knapp said about SKETCHES: "Exquisite story, exquisitely written. The pace, the tension, the description. Connected to, yet never dependent on, a long ago tune, one possible future beheld, another unfolding, damn but you made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, brought goosebumbs to my arms. An absolutely beautiful piece of work."

I have, in fact, fallen in love with the MC and the broken girl. I just might keep this trip to California going for several thousand miles.

If you're a member of Backspace, you can read SKETCHES in Short Story Contest #15. If you're not a member, you can join here , or you'll have to wait until it's in print elsewhere. I'll be sure to let you know when and where.

MySpace is YourSpace

As if a blog and a website were not enough, I have set up camp in the biggest circus in cyberspace. If you're a denizen of MySpace, why don't you stroll on over to my tent. You'll find me in the Arts & Literature alley: Carolyn's MySpace Place.

Tank Turns Two

Take a look at Tank, my seriously cute Jack Russell Terrier who turned two today. His daddy is Quest of JRS, a grand champion in Ireland and a Purina Dog Show challenger, but his mommy's the one with the real heart. She's April, the namesake of of Ape Pen Publishing.

Stories for Sale: $2 each

I created Ovations to celebrate the unfinished script of life and offer applause to those who live it. Today I have two stories in one. I belong to an online writer's group called Backspace. We are a community of kindred spirits, some having published more than 70 books and some--like me--still working toward the first book sale. On Tuesday, one of our resident writers revealed a crisis in his life, his transparency touched my heart and compelled me to respond. His name is EJ Knapp and I'd like you to read his story for yourself in his blog.

The second part of this story is how EJ's need galvanized our writer's community to help. He simply asked if there were any writers who could "donate" a short story or piece of prose that he could post on his website and "sell" for two dollars. The outpouring of support from our community of writers provided EJ with more than enough stories to sell. Reading the notes of support for EJ has filled my heart with respect, admiration, and total joy for each author who responded. I could list each author here, but truly the best way I can thank them is to ask each of you to visit EJ's blog and buy a story.

Did I submit a story? You betcha. I sent EJ a story called EXPERIENCED ONLY NEED APPLY. It's not posted just yet, but bookmark EJ's blog and check back. I'd love to hear what you think.

A Literary Gala, Southern-style

The next stop on our summer road trip was Madison, Georgia, where my literary agency was celebrating its 10th anniversary. The Knight Agency was founded by agent and author Deidre Knight in 1996 and through its cluster of 100-plus fiction and non-fiction authors has launched more than 600 books. The party was attended by two bus loads of authors--mostly women. My husby joined a few other husbands in the shadows to crow or commiserate the life of an author's spouse.

Deidre held the party at the offices of The Knight Agency in Madison in order to give her authors a look at the offices where the business of selling books takes place. The offices reside in an old craftsman cottage on a shady street in Madison, billed as the "town Sherman refused to burn" during his punishing push through Dixie. We were led through the offices and to the backyard where a party pavilion was set and lined with twinkle lights. Everyone had their fingers crossed during the drive into Madison, praying the rain that wet the highway on the way to the party wouldn't flood the gala in the town Sherman so admired.

Under the pavilion we found everything you'd expect at a Southern party, and more. Intelligent and witty conversation bubbled like the peach mimosas; a classical guitarist filled the air with a melodious sound-drop, and the food was right from a Southern Living cookbook. Most decadent was a sweets station where pecans and sugar were cooked onsite to praline perfection. There was as much buzz about the pralines as there was about books.

My agent, Nephele Tempest, paused with me for a photo before we entered the party. Nephele opened the Knight Agency's West Coast offices just over a year ago and has already gathered an impressive group of authors and has made several sales. She reigned queen of her cluster at the party, introducing me to my sister authors and sharing insights into what's coming up.

Later in the evening my husband and I joined Kristin Nelson, president of Nelson Literary Agency, at a table with a lovely couple who live next door to Deidre. I asked which of the two was the romance author, and got a good laugh. Turned out neither of them are authors, but both are avid readers.

My Homage to Margaret Mitchell

The first road trip we took with our kids they were four and two years old. We packed a potty chair, activity kits, juice boxes, and those kid-proof "My First Sony" walkmans. The kids whined and cranked a bit, but we made it from Laguna Hills, CA to Houston in three good days. Yesterday we drove from New Orleans to Atlanta--an easy six-hour-drive--and you'd think my 19 and 17-year-old offspring were kiddies again. They had snacks, sodas, iPods, and laptop PCs to watch movies, but they picked and snapped at each other like a couple of old married folk.

The Atlanta Marriott Marquis where we'd booked for the night was crawling with women in town for the Romance Writers of America annual conference. I stuck up a conversation with Suzanne Simmons, an author of 40-plus novels, in the executive lobby of the Marquis. She shared a bit of her writing journey with me and encouraged me to keep my klunky name--Carolyn Burns Bass--when I publish. I've always thought Burns Bass was an odd conjunction; Burns, a verb next to the noun Bass. My kids often tease me with variations such as Carolyn burns fish, Carolyn burns hamburgers, Carolyn burns everything (not true!). Thank you, Suzanne.

The highlight of our stay in Atlanta was my pilgrimmage to the Margaret Mitchell museum. I first read Gone With the Wind during the summer in between seventh and eighth grade, and have re-read it several times since. Margaret and her husband rented a tiny apartment in this gracious Peachtree Street Victorian charmer while she wrote GWTW. I walked through the house tour with eyes wide open and spirit sensitive to the muse that dwelt there as Margaret composed one of the greatest American novels of all time. Margaret didn't think much of her prose, as she had great heroes among authors. But history thinks otherwise, and I agree.

Look closely and you'll see me on the front porch sitting, rocking with the vibe of another era.

Evesdropping in New Orleans

Overheard between a vendor and a local in New Orlean's French Market, July 23, 2006:

Local: How's business?
Vendor: Shitty.
Local: Tourists not buying?
Vendor: It's all those volunteers.
Local: Why doesn't someone tell them we don't need volunteers gutting houses, we need a revolution.

French Quarter Gallery

The beat goes on in the French Quarter. Click below to view my photos of New Orleans French Quarter, July 2006.

French Quarter Gallery

Katrina Gallery

Click below to view my photos and commentary on the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina in New Orleans

Katrina in Mississippi

Dining Around New Orleans

The Crescent City is a haven for foodies. Although it’s renowned for Creole and Cajun, the two styles of cuisine it birthed, New Orleans has a wide array of international culinary choices. Hailing from Southern California where we have every kind of cuisine imaginable, we’ve decided to concentrate our dining on the foods that grew up here.

We choose the Cookin’ Cajun kitchen inside the Creole Delicacies gourmet store in the Riverwalk Mall for our first lunch. Chef instructor Saundra Green dishes us up some chicken and andoille sausage gumbo, red beans and rice, baked chicken, and Marti Gras salad. Cajun cooking just doesn’t get more real than this stick-to-your hips and thighs lunch. I sample the selections, but wind up with a huge plate of Marti Gras salad. Tara, who’s attending cooking school, and I try to figure out what the dressing is made of, but Saundra won’t give us a clue. She baits us by saying we have to come to a cooking class to get the recipe. Sold. I make a reservation for Thursday’s class.

Later that night a group of us from the ALEA conference head toward the French Quarter under the guidance of Tara, and discover Oliver’s Restaurant. Three generations of Arnaud Olivers run this charming Creole restaurant. I order the shrimp scampi, which I learn originated right here in the city of food. Tara, the most experimental of all of us orders the Rabbit. Now I must digress here because I’ve known Tara since she was ten. Let me tell you, this little girl was a picky eater. But then so were my two kids, Elisabeth and Jonathan. I discovered things they would eat heartily and would make them frequently. Tara loved my beef and bean burritos, so every time she was over for dinner I’d cook up some spicy ground beef, add the Rosarita refried beans, shredded cheddar jack, and roll it in a big flour tortilla. It became a standing joke that all I could cook was been and beef burritos. That Tara wound up in cooking school and is now ordering the Rabbit delights me as much as if she were my own daughter.

Wednesday night the ALEA attendees are treated to a night at The House of Blues. Our kids went out on their own for dinner and guess where they wound up? They call us from their booth in the dining room at the House of Blues to let us know the power’s out and the restaurant is dark and eerie. We’re bussed over in a drizzling rain, while lightning flashes through the dark clouds. We listen to the band do cover versions of classic R&B tunes before deciding the hors d’oeuvers are just not worth waiting in line for. We head down to the dining room and enjoy a good meal without waiting in line.

The next two nights we eat dinner in the hotel at ALEA vendor chow-downs. Hilton did well in feeding the crowd, but we’re happy when Saturday rolls around and we head down the road to Mulate’s for some Cajun cuisine. The food at Mulate’s is delish, but the atmosphere is better. A zydeco band is playing bayou music and several couples doing country swing on the dance floor. Before long a fine southern gentleman approaches our table and asks our 19-year-old daughter Elisabeth to dance. She accepts with a big California smile and he guides her to the square. She’s been country swing dancing with friends from college, so she picks up his lead and away they go.

Later he sits down with us and tells us his story. He says he’s so old he knew the Dead Sea when it was only sick. Actually, he’s 86, a New Orleans native and a Mulate’s fixture. He tells us about going through Camille in 1969 and Katrina in 2005 and hopes he never has to go through another hurricane.

French Quarter Still Lives

My daughter’s best friend since elementary school, who’s attending the Culinary Institute of New Orleans, has met us at the mall for a happy reunion. Tara’s been here since January and navigates around the city with a food compass. She knows all of the best restaurants, all of the good food markets, all of the culinary legends, and regales us with the history of Creole Cuisine and Cajun Cooking.

Tara leads us around the French Quarter, peppering our walk with spicy New Orleans legends and salting it with savory snippets of gossip. Downtown New Orleans and in particular the French Quarter was built on the highest ground in the area. When the levee broke, water from Lake Pontchartrain flowed into the downtown crescent as far as St. Charles Street, bypassing most of the French Quarter. It was the brutal arms of Katrina that tore boards from storefronts, punched out windows, and spewed water into the shops.

On the third day after the storm the sun came out. And so did the looters. With every law and emergency worker that didn't abandon post busy rescuing people, guarding merchandise was a low priority. Stores like Lisette Sutton's Creole Delicacies were stripped. In addition to such necessities as food and water; clothing, cosmetics and drugs, twentieth century pirates commandeered liquor and cigarettes, designer duds, jewelry, electronics, and anything they could barter for a buck. Not since the days of the infamous pirate Jean Lafitte has Pirates Alley seen more thievery.

We pass Café Du Monde, crowded with tourists and others sinking beignets into café latte. Jackson Square is powdered with pedestrians, bicyclists and the lovely horse and carriage charmers that lend romance to the French Quarter. Stores and restaurants are open, people are shopping, drinking, laughing. Life is all about us.

New Orleans T-Shirts Say Everything

T-Shirts for sale in New Orleans French Quarter July 2006:

• Make Levees Not War
• FEMA: The other four-letter word
• I survived Katrina and all I have is this stupid T-shirt
• Tourists go home, but leave your dollars
• Save New Orleans - Stop Global Warming
• Willy Nagin and the Chocolate Factory (cartoon of mayor Ray Nagin as Willy Wonka)
• Meet the Fockers (with faces of Ray Nagin and other Louisiana politicians)

Crescent City Awakening

I’m up with the sun this morning, and the first thing I do is throw back the drapes. I saw a glimmer of the Mississippi River last night, but this morning I’m stunned. The river cuts through the city like a Chinese dragon, sparkling with scales of sunlit current. Before me is a huge crescent of land, one of many that form in the arches of the giant dragon called The Mississippi.

I’ve been through New Orleans by way of Interstate 10. It was nearly 20 years ago, I was pregnant with my first child, and we were pedal to the metal to get to North Carolina to drop off our truck with my husband’s family before moving to Japan for our three-year tour. New Orleans was only a blur of bridges and a stop for lunch somewhere off the interstate. Waddling around the French Quarter with my big ole baby-bump just didn’t sound like fun. I’m sorry now that I don’t have that memory of what New Orleans looked like before Katrina.

So I’m anxious to get out of the hotel room and into the Crescent City. My husband has a full day of classes, so he takes off to join the rest of the pilots in a night vision goggles training session. Leaving my son still exercising his dreams, my daughter and I head across the hotel to the Riverwalk Mall. I’m saddened to see many of the shops still closed up; some completely vacant, others with signs promising to open soon. We stop into Creole Delicacies, a little gourmet shop and learn why New Orleans is considered the friendliest city in the country.

My son, 17, is with us now. He’s hungry and just a bit growly like teenage boys get when their belly is empty. At the back of the gourmet shop we discover a little dining room and a show kitchen. Although the tables are filled with a production line of gift basket preparation—Cajun spices, pralines, New Orleans memorabilia—the ladies working the basket assembly welcome us and offer us lunch. My son’s had his tongue set for a big ole burger, but the only thing on the menu here is baked Creole chicken, gumbo, red beans and rice, and Marti Gras salad. I ask the woman in the apron what she’d offer a grumbly teenage boy, she nods and tells me, “I know what you mean; I have a 17-year-old son.” So she heaps him up a giant sampler plate with half a chicken it. Jonathan eats, and eats, and eats some more, but not even Jonathan can finish.

We’re the only ones in the dining room, which we learn is really a classroom. Striking up a conversation with the woman in the apron, we learn her name is Saundra and she teaches Cajun and Creole cooking classes right there in the kitchen. She introduces us to Lisette, who owns the store, and before long the stories spill out.

Saundra lost her home and everything in it; trinkets, and trophies, treasures of a life born and raised in New Orleans. She still can’t talk about it without her eyes misting and her voice cracking. Lisette didn’t lose her home, but her mother did. Lisette, who along with her husband Dana, owns Creole Delicacies, lost their stores to looters. All of the Riverwalk stores were looted—all except the Christmas Store. Honor among thieves? Make your own conclusions in that.

Midnight in New Orleans

I didn't choose New Orleans as my vacation destination; it chose me. Or rather, the Airborne Law Enforcement Association selected the city for its annual convention and I'm along for the ride. My husband is a police pilot and this is his annual gig.

Travel, meetings, conventions, incentive trips are my business. So, how could I pass the opportunity to see New Orleans stretch forth its arms in its first season after Katrina.

We arrived late Monday night and jumped into a taxi around midnight. Our taxi didn't take us through the French Quarter, but straight down Canal Street and to the Hilton Riverside's front door. One of the first things I do upon entering a hotel room is open the curtains to check out the view. Even at midnight our room on the 20th floor didn't disappoint, though it only hinted at the spectacular sight that awaited.

As a travel marketing consultant, my trips are usually filled with appointments, planned activities, pre-arranged meals. This trip is a mix of business and pleasure, my family is with me, and I'm in a city I've never yet explored. I can't wait to see what tomorrow holds.

Fourth of July Under the Sun

Everyone loves a parade. I caught this lovely lass under a parasol at the Fourth of July parade in Ontario, California.