I have seen such a tiny bit of the devastation in New Orleans, and it was overwhelming. As you travel east, you start noticing that even the cypress trees have no leaves. Then you see more and more fallen trees. Then there are piles of branches, paper, concrete, telephone poles. Then you get to the neighborhoods.

The cleaned-up neighborhoods have "blue roofs" (tarps). You see an occasional car parked in a driveway. Today I drove through St. Bernard Parish, and it is just the way it was when the water went down. There are tugboats stuck in buildings; there are cars at crazy angles on lawns. Roofs are gone, siding is gone, bricks have washed off the outside. Some houses have been cleaned out, and there are piles of trash in front of them. It is so sad to see someone's entire life reduced to an 8' x 8' pile of unidentifiable rubble.

For those who remember, it was the president of St. Bernard Parish whose mother called him every day saying "Son, are they coming to get me today?" until on the 4th day, she drowned.

There are some businesses open. Almost all the refineries are running. The Home Depots and hardware stores are mostly open. There are a lot of signs saying "Now open" and "Now hiring". The further west you go, the more businesses you see functioning pretty much as usual. I was told that until very recently, even McDonald's was closing at 4:00 P.M. They couldn't find anyone to work in the evenings. It is still very difficult to get help, because very few people have a place to live.

People have moved to Baton Rouge, to Mississippi, and to all the small towns in between. The traffic to New Orleans in the morning, and from New Orleans in the afternoon, is horrendous. It took me 2-1/2 hours to make what is normally a one hour drive. Because there are so few places open, everything is crowded.

I pass on this next part as it was told to me by several people, without comment. Most of the people in New Orleans seem to believe that Mary, almost always referred to in the stories I heard as the blessed Virgin, protected those who revere her. I have heard stories about neighborhoods in which the only houses left standing are those with a statue of Mary out front. Tulane and Loyola are virtually side by side. Tulane suffered enormous damage. Loyola, which was once a convent, still houses some Dominican sisters, and has a huge statue of Mary, had almost no damage. This part I saw with my own eyes: the crosses are still on top of the churches, even though there is rubble all around them. Virtually all the religious statues are still standing, even in the areas where tugboats were tossed around like toys.

Mayor Ray Nagin may have gone off the deep end, but this city and its people still need our help and our prayers.