And Happy New Year

It's a warm New Year's Day in New Orleans. About 83 degrees F (28 C) and humid. And in case the Katrina debris still lining the streets weren't enough evidence of global warming, tropical storm Zeta, the last named storm of 2005, is still spinning around the Atlantic as the new year rolls in. Happy New Year, everyone. Let's hope 2006 is less eventful, eh?

The Times Picayune was loaded with interesting items today. It seems that the city is repopulating faster than expected, with 30% of New Orleans population returned already, and overall the greater New Orleans population is about 70% of the preKatrina total. That's a loss of almost 400,000 people, but it bodes well for the rebuilding, with so many people staying in the area, if not in the city proper.

Another article from the newspaper will be of particular interest to our German friends. (Our "German families"? That's how I think of them, connected as we are through Moritz & Philipp.) The Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag newspaper chain in northern Germany, through an appeal to it readership, has raised over $150,000 in donations for New Orleans. This money will be spent to help Kingsley House, The Missouri Baptist Disaster Relief Fund, City Park, and needy individuals. It is yet another example of the help and kindness being extended to us by people from all over and in all situations.

Wherever we go, when we meet our neighbors and friends now returned home after the diaspora, we hear story after story of the kindness of strangers. People who knew nothing about us except that we were from New Orleans were quick to give or do anything they could to help.

There was a story in the paper several weeks ago about a group of African women who pooled their meager earnings to send a donation to the city to help the rebuilding. It is humbling to see how people have come to our assistance so many times and in so many ways.