Welcome to the Sidebar

I've added a couple of people to my sidebar.

The first is Tim who is a friend of Sleepybomb of The Wreckroom. Tim is in New Orleans and has some amazing stories about everyday life in New Orleans right now in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The second is Pete Townshend of The Who fame. I learned about his blog from Sleepybomb also.

Reading Sleepybomb and Tim's blogs made me realize that all post-hurricane disaster zones have several things in common:

• Months (Katrina) and weeks (Rita) after the storms, there are still as many tarped blue roofs as there are roofs without tarps.
• Huge piles of debris still line all the roadways.
• Small plastic signs line the streets all over town advertising roofers, mold removal, carpenters and flooring companies ,but you still can't get anyone to come to your house and repair anything.
• Help wanted signs can be seen at almost all of the restaurants and most of the retail stores. (I can understand this in New Orleans but where is the Beaumont workforce?)
• There is horrible traffic everywhere because some of the traffic signals are still not functional.
• Where the street lights still haven't been repaired, it's amazingly dark even in the middle of the city. I can't imagine what it was like right after the storm.
• There are long lines at restaurants and most restaurants still aren't serving their full menu.
• We have all learned to appreciate the little things like door-to-door mail service, traffic signals and street lights, grocery stores and gas stations.