Message from my Mother

Jodhpur, India

Dear Family and Friends,

We have moved into our borrowed home, a beautiful loft apartment on the 16th floor of a downtown Houston building.

The cat and dog are living with Jeff in Austin, an amazingly dog-friendly town. Some lagniappe (New Orleans word for "a little something extra") is that Jeff reports the dog to be a chick magnet.

When we checked out of our Austin hotel, we had been billed $29 a night.

Lee received an e-mail from the scoutmaster of a Boy Scout troop sponsored by a Methodist church in Virginia. He had found the web site of Lee's troop
and said his Virginia troop wanted to offer their help in any way they could.

Jennifer's wonderful blog has been so helpful in giving us the news about the people and places that we love.

Dozens of people that we know, and many that we don't, have offered us a place to live.

Our nephew and youth pastor Michael said that next summer his youth group would like to come to New Orleans to help with rebuilding.

My sister has found me a really tempting project in Michigan, organizing children's books in a school library. (That is a delightful cluster of all my favorite words.)

Today Lee and I went to the Astrodome to see if we could do anything to help, and we were told that they already had more volunteers than they knew what to do with.

I am convinced that for every ugly, evil act that we have seen on television, there are a thousand more of kindness and generosity.

Love, Linda

YA YOU RITE! Call me crazy, but I wish I could dress up from head to toe in K&B purple. In India, I would not look the slightest bit out of place.

Southern Decadence marched through the streets of the French Quarter yesterday. It was only a krewe of about a dozen people, but they were second-lining with parasols. French Quarter residents camped out in their apartments threw Mardi Gras beads down to the paraders.

The city will survive.