Afternoon is fading in Maringouin and I did not get to Rising Tide, which must have been an adrenalin filled event since Hurricane Irene made landfall as a Category One storm in North Carolina this morning. I have written Eric Cantor:
Bayou Maringouin, LA. Today marks the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the Hurricane Katrina evacuees we were destined to host here and at points north and west over the next few months. Evacuees and refugees from Hurricane Rita would arrive a few weeks later. In honor of all those who suffered, and especially of those who died or suffered permanent losses as a result of these storms, I request that you do everything in your power to provide immediate and long term relief for all victims of Hurricane Irene, without a requirement to “pay it back” in the form of other budget cuts. Yours very truly.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Hi Z.
This hurricane Irene is giving me flashbacks to my honeymoon when my Ex and I were camped in a tent on the side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia near Richmond and a hurricane (I forget the name) came up the coast. The tent was in a slight depression which was dry at the time it was pitched but within an hour had three feet of water. I drove through a gully which was flooded with water to get out of the area.
Speaking of Hurricane Katrina, have you ever heard of the story about Magnaville? It was a sort of utopian Canadian commune for displaced by Hurricane Katrina New Orleans residents that was built near Simmsport, LA but had a lot of trouble from the locals over those “Grundrisse reading northern commies coming down here and taking over the area.” Here’s a link:
http://www.sustainableinnovations.biz/magnaville.html
My God. I’m glad you were that far inland (slower wind).
Thanks for reminding me of Magnaville! I had forgotten and I wonder how they are. “Grundrisse reading commies…”, ha, ha… people said that about Common Ground, too, but they really were the only people doing anything real in N.O. for the longest. (My God, it was such a disaster.)
http://www.commongroundrelief.org/
Here’s a good description of Ville Platte getting ready for Rita, which fell when they had 5,000 Katrina refugees in town: http://www.thenation.com/article/hurricane-gumbo
Looking for that, I discovered National Guard fired on Ville Platte residents during the more recent Gustav (I had my roof destroyed twice in a row in Fall 2008, by Gustav and then Ike):
http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2008/09/national_guard_exchange_gunfir.html
It is said they were protecting themselves from assault / robbery but I don’t know. Police and security types were acting pretty spooked down here in Maringouin and I didn’t feel safe with them around, it was as though they wanted some sort of mayhem to happen so they could fight, although that’s just my reaction.
9 PM and it’s still Category 1, now in Tidewater areas of VA.
I posted an update on Magnaville on my blog just now.
Very interesting post! It’s in NJ, still at Category 1, and apparently going on into NY that way. Bam.
In NY it was a tropical storm, at 65 mph.
I extended my post on Magnaville with some local material and also added some supplementary material on Fordlandia in Brazil which has a lot of similarities to Magnaville. A comparative cultural study of the two attempts at creating a utopian community by bring in an outside group into a different culture would be an interesting research paper for someone.