Friday Thoughts::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
The cafeteria at the VIC is a trip. The “old” morgue over at St Gabriel was fed by a displaced Caterer from New Orleans featuring three stunning meals a day, vegetarian entrees etc. The New facility hired local cooks and no matter what changes they make it comes out very down home in composition. Rice is with virtually every meal, lots of red beans and starches, sausage, chicken leg quarters (I have seen one chicken breast in two months here). The salads have been nice and fresh and recently they started making the salad dressings which I have enjoyed at lunch sometimes. I always liked institutional food, and this is not bad, but the people here that have to live on the facility and eat three meals a day here are just up in arms. Last night was steak night and apparently the rib-eyes were severely over cooked and not edible so there was considerable angst this morning. The food does tend to be overly salty, too fatty and oddly scheduled, so macaroni and cheese and shrimp etufe (however you spell that) over rice in the same meal. I presume the alternative of heading to Yousefs for pig lips and pork rinds is not an option either.
The coke machine has been resupplied and the person that loaded it AGAIN alternated red fanta with diet coke so it is a pot luck thing which you get. My office mate Charlie and I flip a coin to see who goes first. One of us always gets diet coke, the other a fanta..or.. if the coke comes first, then the other gets a diet dr pepper….we cannot discover who the jokester is that does that to diet coke.
Today is a big day, New Orleans posted the first of the demolition orders for condemned property. The first 127 properties to be razed were posted today, 199,873 to go.
Thank you all for your comments about my short story. The long toothed skull was real, part of a family apparently, or group of people with these long teeth from New Orleans. Hard not to have the volume of deceased people going through this place and not find something creepy to talk about. There are 125+/- still unidentified bodies here, with 70 of them not even tentatively identified. There remain something over 3,000 missing from the storm (the state touts 11,000 plus but that number is just crazy where it came from). The state wants FEMA/DMORT/whoever to go examine in detail the 400+ addresses where the public has reported last seeing individuals. These flooded places are such a mess, furniture floats everywhere and stacks to the ceiling, it is all covered by inches of goo and covered several inches thick with fungus and mold. The dead are all degraded and frankly are hard to distinguish from the other muck covered debris. The only way to search the places is to literally remove every thing stick by stick. Job for huge crews of people working very long days for a very long time. Many of the houses are unstable, and already condemned and dangerous to go into, you hate to kill someone else looking for someone dead. If your son or mom were in one of those places, would you leave that job to someone else or would you go and drag all that crap out into the yard and look for yourself? I wonder….
The coke machine has been resupplied and the person that loaded it AGAIN alternated red fanta with diet coke so it is a pot luck thing which you get. My office mate Charlie and I flip a coin to see who goes first. One of us always gets diet coke, the other a fanta..or.. if the coke comes first, then the other gets a diet dr pepper….we cannot discover who the jokester is that does that to diet coke.
Today is a big day, New Orleans posted the first of the demolition orders for condemned property. The first 127 properties to be razed were posted today, 199,873 to go.
Thank you all for your comments about my short story. The long toothed skull was real, part of a family apparently, or group of people with these long teeth from New Orleans. Hard not to have the volume of deceased people going through this place and not find something creepy to talk about. There are 125+/- still unidentified bodies here, with 70 of them not even tentatively identified. There remain something over 3,000 missing from the storm (the state touts 11,000 plus but that number is just crazy where it came from). The state wants FEMA/DMORT/whoever to go examine in detail the 400+ addresses where the public has reported last seeing individuals. These flooded places are such a mess, furniture floats everywhere and stacks to the ceiling, it is all covered by inches of goo and covered several inches thick with fungus and mold. The dead are all degraded and frankly are hard to distinguish from the other muck covered debris. The only way to search the places is to literally remove every thing stick by stick. Job for huge crews of people working very long days for a very long time. Many of the houses are unstable, and already condemned and dangerous to go into, you hate to kill someone else looking for someone dead. If your son or mom were in one of those places, would you leave that job to someone else or would you go and drag all that crap out into the yard and look for yourself? I wonder….
posted by Steve Morse- Adventures in Disasters at 6:31 AM
3 Comments:
It's a great question. I think that is why you are such a great writer. You pose questions that most people don't even consider.
If it was my son in there I would want him out of there. I wouldn't want someone's life to be in danger to get him though. I guess there are many jobs that put peoples life in danger all the time though. Right?
Keep up the great writing.
Trena
We're happy to hear what is going on in your world. To hear things from your point of view is always interesting and a learning experience. Keep writing!
You are a hard person to find. You look like you are doing well. Check your area51 email and call me. K
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