High Anxiety

CNN and The Weather Channel have been getting a lot of my business since Friday. As Hurricane Gustav approaches Louisiana I am in full hurricane-obsession mode: staying up until the wee hours of the morning hoping for some new news on the storm and watching the news as often as I can throughout the day.

Mom evacuated to McComb in Southwest Mississippi to my sister Kim's house, which is no more than an hour and a half north of New Orleans. When Katrina hit three years ago, McComb was without electricity for two weeks. If that happens again, Kim says they'll all drive up to north Mississippi and stay with Dad.

When we were in New Orleans on our trip down to Mississippi and Louisiana last summer, we drove through some of the Lakeshore neighborhoods. There remained so much damage even then. It's hard to imagine another big hit just three years later. Here is one of the photos we took last year. It's one I'd posted back in June 2007. You can see just how high the water got in this home.