I am watching and reading the news, dumbfounded.

I lived in that city almost 30 years. I have been down Highway 90 well into Florida, and know what those ocean front cities are supposed to look like, the light, wonderful in the summer, the smell of the water, the feel of the sand.

O, my heart aches. I see places I lived under water. Places I walked to or along or shopped at shattered.

O my city, my home, where my heart has been in the 12 years of my wanderings away. I remember still the first time I rode into town, and remember why and how I left.

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? O God, yes.

I don't know what I will do yet, but I have to do something.