Not a good traveling companion

Received the following message on one of my listservs:

"i was in new orleans from sat - sun . . . my 8/29 sentencing in gulfport where i was to drive to on sun was, of course, cancelled - my local counsel just emailed me and told me his entire office was destroyed - my drive from downtown new orleansto the airport took 6 hours - bumper to bumper evacuation traffic - drive is typically 25 minutes - i got the last seat on the last flight out before the airport shut dowm . . . p.s. i had just moved to san francisco in aug '89 when the loma pietra earthquake struck in oct; at the mcc [Metropolitan Correctional Center] n.y. 1/2 mile from ground zero on 9/11 and in israel when the iraqis in the little remembered 2d gulf crisis were threatening to bomb with poison gas warhead scuds - note to all listmates :don't travel with me - alan"

It's that time of year again

The Chicago Humanities Festival has announced their fall program, and I am sitting here tearing my hair out trying to decide which programs to go to. First, I go through the program and highlight everything that sounds good. Then I cross off the ones that are on nights I have conflicts. After that, I see which ones overlap, or are at venues such that I can't make it from one to the next in time. That's when the agony begins. Wendy Doniger or Jan Morris? Or a program on what the fashionable traveler wore? Palladian houses or The Stranger in Opera? Lectures on food and Julia Child, or Edith Grossman on translation, or Latin Jazz, or women and the tango? (I need to be at least four people the afternoon of November 12th!) At least nothing conflicts with the closing lecture by Salman Rushdie or the closing concert of Handel's music.

Now I just have to get on the phone the absolute second tickets go on sale. Advance sale is available to members, and people buying tickets for four or more events. How could you not find at least four events to go to? And at $5 for most of them (and many free), it's the biggest bargain in town.

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I'm so sad. Ever since I first visited New Orleans, many years ago, it has been one of my favorite cities, ever, anywhere in the world. The history, the architecture, the people, the food, the music, the joie de vivre and laissez les bons temps roulez, it's always made me happy. And now it's gone. Oh, I know that much will be rebuilt, and I know I'll visit her again. But what will have happened to so many places I've known and loved? One of my favorite little museums, The Backstreet Cultural Museum, was in Treme, a section that had water to the rooftops, and it was a shoestring operation to begin with. I understand the Marigny is underwater, where one of my favorite bookshops is and where I stayed the first time I went to the Jazz and Heritage Festival. Will there even be a Jazz and Heritage Festival next year? Well, if there is, I'm going, if it's at all possible. I consider it my civic duty to get whatever tourist dollars I can back to the City That Care Forgot. (Just like I went to NYC a few months after 9/11.) I watch the news, and it hurts so bad.

(NOTE: the userpic was created by Natasha17 at BookCrossing.)