Exodus
I and my friends now join the hundreds of thousands of displaced New Orleanians searching for hospice across the country. I said goodbye to Judie Maxwell yesterday in Nashville, Tennessee where she will remain with her aunt and uncle, Jane and Bill Tucker. Our other evacuation companion and friend Shana Walton gave me a lift to Memphis before making her way back into Louisiana to retrieve her fifteen year-old daughter from whom she had been separated by the storm. I have remained in Memphis with my friend Alicia Triche and her friend Allison Wannemaker who has so hospitably provided us with refuge as we prepare to return to Alicia's home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Our intention is to first lend what hand we can to others from New Orleans there, who've had a harder escape from disaster than we have. Eventually however, we shall strike west by car planning to arrive in Portland, Oregon sometime in the next month. En route I hope to check in with fellow Anthropology ABDs Stacey Schwartzkopf and Adrienne Tremblay who have relocated to Stacey's hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. Interesting how so many of us "New Orleanians" have hometowns elsewhere in which to refuge ourselves. There was always a tension in the city between the affluent outsiders with options and the "true" New Orleans people who's sole place of lifelong residence was the city itself. This catastrophe has thrown those divisions into sharp and painful relief. Maybe this is an opportunity for us interlopers to give something back to the city and its native people, after all that we've received from them.