And over the rooftops when the stars prickle the skies, London is sleeping and the Mississippi moon shines

I am grieving for New Orleans, my birthplace, which will never be the same again. As usual I have avoided photographs and television coverage, but I’m still shaken by what I have heard about this place I love. Eighty percent of the city underwater. The shape of the city reconfigured by the levees that didn’t hold. People kept out of their households for maybe a month or more. The hospital life support systems failed and patients being evacuated. The superdome without power. No air conditioning and no lights, and the bathrooms essentially non-functional for tens of thousands of people. Bodies left to decay while frantic search and rescue missions continue. Not to mention that Lake Pontchartrain’s waters, which are now covering New Orleans, have long been the sewage outflow for the city. How long before outbreaks of cholera? Dysentery? Not to mention the hard hit gulf cities of Gulfport and Biloxi in Mississippi, places that have basically been wiped off the map. So many people have now lost everything. I join the voices of so many others urging you to consider donating something (money, time or blood) to the Red Cross and their relief effort. It is needed.

It is a sad time and my heart is heavy.

I have had a number of strange dreams lately that I have failed to write down. In one I found a baby swimming in a bathtub. In another I had caught some kind of extinct fish, named something that started with “Aep”.