Jackson Miller went with the family to Jazzfest last weekend.

I have not been back to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. It was pretty sad to see how much destruction was still visible. Once we made it across Lake Ponchatrain it was much worse. The foundations without houses, the houses without occupants, the spray paint on the houses from the rescue effort. It was all very sad.

We got to the train station just as it started to get dark. The hotel was only 10 or so blocks from the train station, but my recollection was that those were not the safest 10 blocks in New Orleans. The thing is, it is hard to pile into a cab as a family of 8 with luggage. So we did what anyone would never do, we walked.

Scout went to a wedding a couple of weeks back to the Crescent City as well.

I look just over to my right and reality sets in and it sets in very very hard. Here I am staying in a hotel on the edge of the French Quarter, getting ready to go celebrate a marriage at a very swanky wedding and getting ready to enjoy a city that has become near and dear to the heart of most every blue-blooded American and to my immediate right underneath an overpass are literally hundreds of tents, sleeping bags, recliners, couches and cardboard boxes containing individuals and entire families displaced by the hurricane. And my heart aches because it’s not over. It’s really not over. Moms, dads, kids and grandparents are living under the interstate and occasionally going out with cups, asking for money. But, really, how good is a dollar going to do? Even a hundred dollars? A thousand dollars? It won’t buy a home.