I'm living in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. The Third World, USA. It's 8 months post-Katrina. There is debris on the streets from people who have come back to gut their homes and try to start over. We are living in FEMA trailers. The toilets back up regularly, because the city drainage system is not working. It floods whenever it rains. They have a TRUCK located in the middle of the parish pumping the drains. ONE TRUCK. There are no supermarkets, no clothing stores. We have a HOME DEPOT which recently opened, various food trucks around town, a couple of restaurants, 3 or 4 gas stations, and about TEN bars. The bars were the first things to open. You see what the parish priorities are, huh? Open the bars for the working men. Get them taxes. Write them tickets. At 2:00 a.m. the deputies are stationed near the bars instead of on the streets stopping the looting. Looting is the most widespread crime here. I've been a victim, several times.

The filth around here is depressing. The smell sickening. We have to negotiate around piles of debris to drive down just about any side street. Some of us are still waiting for our FEMA trailers, and some of us have been given trailers but no keys to them. Some have trailers and keys, but no electricity. All of us are on edge, because we have been placed in limbo by our government and are not being given answers by our elected officials. The sheriff, Jack Stephens, is an asshole bully, and so are many of his deputies. I respect those few who wear their uniforms with honor.

Nothing seems to be getting done down here, and the Parish Council seems to be satisfied with "politics as usual" at a time when we need radical solutions and a sense of urgency. I don't know what will happen to us. Whatever happens, I know it will happen very slowly.

I'm researching my mother's family history for a book I am writing. It keeps me busy and gives me something to do when I'm not helping someone gut their house or search for something in the rubble. I try to go to the various meetings so that I can pass the information on to my family members, all homeowners who have relocated to higher ground. Their homes are sitting here eight months later just as they were after the storm, except without the 10-20 feet of water. They happen to live in the neighborhoods that sustained the most floodwaters, and have not been told definitively by our government whether they can rebuild or whether the government will raze their neighborhood and turn it into "greenspace". The waiting is making them anxious. They can't move on and get it behind them. There is no closure. Limbo is a bad place to live.

I don't know yet what the end of the story is. I don't know how long Eddie and I will be able to stay here. But we'll try. I want this place to come alive again. It's full of history, and it's one of the places my ancestors, Felipe Madriaga and Bridgett Nugent, lived back in the mid nineteenth century. Felipe was a fisherman, and I want the fishermen in this parish to come back, to do well, and preserve the peculiar culture of this area.

I hope I live to see that happen.