Kimberly, that was quite an ordeal you lived through. Living through something is WAY different than hearing about it from others. The people who actually live through something are the final authority and can offer the most accurate assessment.

I know what you mean about the smell. The smell of rottenness after Hurricane Andrew lingered intense over the city for months. It was the smell of massive piles of rotten carpeting, mildewed & soaked furniture, insulation and clothing along with twisted construction materials. Clothing had to be thrown out because it was full of glass insulation when closets were blown in. People made huge piles along the streets and the piles just rotted there for months waiting collection. The smell made me gag. Miami had to make an entire stinking mountain, literally, which we fondly called Mount Trashmore, out of the hurricane debris. New Orleans will be much, much worse because of the flood waters.

Honestly, when I had no home, (we lived in a tent at different campgrounds for 7 weeks), there was no object I owned that could have brought comfort to me. While homeless, a flood went through our storage unit and wiped out half our belongings, furniture, appliances, books etc. While cleaning up the unit, my daughter found her two American Girl dolls, stained and muddy. She cried. I disassembled the dolls and threw out the disgusting stuffing and washed the bodies in a motel sink. My daughter never did like those dolls again. To her, they were dead.

The one thing that did bring me comfort and hope was a box of homemade cookies my sister sent. We picked them up from the General Delivery Post Office where all the other homeless people who had no addresses can receive mail. As I sat on a motel bed and bit into a cookie, tears unexpectedly fell down my cheeks. I was tasting the taste of HOME. It was a HOME made cookie, made in someone's HOME. At that time, we had been with no home for 13 weeks. I was hopeful that some day, I too would be living in a home again and would taste the sweetness of a real roof overhead and a table in my kitchen.

Ok, this post was long. But the events in New Orleans are just too real to me. I feel for these people and pray that a new life for them will be better than the one they left behind.

Julia