Kelby and some others at Station 40 left last night for Baton Rouge in three fire trucks. They were delivering donated items for the Austin Food Bank. It’s about a 7 hour drive from Austin, and their plans were to drop off the supplies and turn around for home.

The phone rang this morning about 8:15; Kelby was calling to tell us he was back home and ready to go to bed. He said everything went very smooth — no problems getting through on roads and everything in BR was well marked and very organized. That was good to hear!

The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, was being interviewed on a news program last night. When asked if his SOS radio interview last week was what caught Washington’s attention, he said he didn’t know, but something did. He talked with President Bush and “GW” told him that the ball had been dropped in getting help to them, but that was going to be fixed! When asked if he (Mayor Nagin) agreed with a comment Jesse Jackson made while flying over a bridge full of survivors — that it looked like the hull of a slave ship — Nagin said he didn’t believe that the slow response was a racial issue, but it certainly could be a class issue — a class of very poor people not getting the help they needed sooner. He also felt that New Orleans was not gone — that it did have a future. Hopefully he is right and that these people who lost everything will have their city to go home to one day — a city rebuilt with compassion. Other cities hit by disaster in the years past were rebuilt — Galveston, Chicago, and San Francisco — and have thrived. Putting New Orleans back together may mean using a different “pattern” to make it a safer place and it may mean relocating it a bit to higher ground. Doubtfully it will be the Crescent City we once knew and were fond of visiting with all of the familiar sites and events — but, if it can be home again for those who had to leave, let’s do it.