'My house. Mondays. 6:00'

My Real Katrina Anniversary

Crashing Vor at Daily Kos:

While your TV screens were choked with anniversary programming on August 29, for a lot of Orleanians, the date to commemorate, as the Times-Picayune's John Maginns pointed out, is October 1, when those of us outside the "sliver by the river" were permitted to come back to town to begin cleaning up our houses, neighborhoods and our lives. For those of us who live in 70119--the fairest zip code in the land--the date of return was set at October 5.

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Throughout October, we kept a simple, exhausting routine that started at sunup and went through until dark, when it was time to have the genny gassed up and the hatches battened down. In many ways, it was like the schedule humans have kept throughout our history. Then, late in the month, our QOL jumped dramatically in the space of a minute--Entergy turned on the lights. The first thing I did was fire up the big speakers and blast the neighborhood. Hendrix, Steve Earle, Odetta, Bob Marley, Dylan. I hadn't rocked a house like that in years.

The next day, GF and I got in the car and headed out to Metairie, the suburb where all of New Orleans shopped for a while, to pick up a double-burner electric hotplate (gas service took another month). The following Monday, we served red beans and rice for the neighborhood, the first such red bean Monday of what has turned out to be a year of them.

Red beans and rice has the traditional Monday supper in New Orleans for generations, mostly because Monday is the traditional day to do laundry and red beans can be left to simmer while you wash, dry, fold, etc. I have some friends who'd never eaten anything else on Monday night until they left their parents' houses at majority. It's a tradition I like, and have kept loosely when I could.

Since last year, it's one I've kept religiously, missing only two Mondays (a horrible oral surgery and a death in the family).

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I really wasn't snarking in my comment to UU VIEW's diary asking how we'd organize if the Bushistas blacked out the internet ("My house. Mondays. 6:00"). A regular neighborhood meal is a great organizing and informational tool.