Be Safe.

Hurricane Gustav is about 7 hours out from New Orleans. This is what it looks like now.
We took a brief bicycle ride, intending to wind through the Quarter for a few minutes before the winds started gusting. We came around the corner, from Chartres onto Dumaine, looking toward the River, and Lo, the sky hath opened in a deep whale maw! Dark slatey blue, iced with 10 progressively icier.looking layers until the top fastmovers, the fluff before the fissure, moved across space in soft, swift surety. Unstoppable DustBunnies of Doom.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has just issued a dusk to dawn curfew, emphatically reminding anyone considering for a moment looting anything from anywhere that if they are caught with (perceived) covetousness in their eyes, they will be hauled directly to Angola Prison.
Seriously.
Fuckin Angola.
The worst prison in the country.
So, y'know,
you a black man?
Stay the fuck outta the banquettes in the Quarter, darlin,
at least just until these fuckers with the big guns back off.
It's gonna be just as fuckin racist and violent as an episode of COPS.
People gonna end in Angola before they know what happened.

...Betcha theyn't too many white folks get hauled in.
Betcha a dolla.

That soapbox aside (T minus ? until total power loss), the people that are staying, here in the Quarter, folks all kinds of colors and dispositions, are makin eye contact and sayin hello and be safe. It's like we're all kinda takin notes on each other, lookin out for each other. Markin eyes and smiles and generosities. Keepin an eye out for where to pass along a little lagniappe, when the time comes.

I love it here.
I couldn't leave my heart,
now that it's finally found me.

Be safe,
have fun,
relax,
and enjoy the hell out of
Mama's hurricane show,
an event far more grandiose than anything we can imagine.