Janus 2007

The Long Road Home

Hey, don't go nowhere! The rebirth's on its way. Hey, don't go nowhere! The rebirth's here to stay.

A rebirth of unprecedented proportion has taken hold of our community during the past sixteen months. Families displaced have decided to rebuild. Children long removed have elected to return. Neighborhoods are beginning to re-emerge. The entire community has adopted the attitude: We will come back. We can do better.

But the road home has proven difficult for many. Despite generous government grants, a bungling bureaucracy has dulled the promise of assistance, generating a growing sense of frustration. Still this snail's pace of progress has not dampened our spirit of renewal.

Numerous success stories helped to restore our faith and lift our spirits. In Baton Rouge, the purple and gold regained their national stature with an impressive Sugar Bowl victory. The Superdome, once a refuge for the hopeless, transformed into a temple of celebration when, on a magical Monday night, a team of new Saints arrive to re-energize the city. Their subsequent success became a point of pride in an otherwise difficult time. And, closer to home, we celebrated a group of athletic Lady Diamonds who brought the first ever national championship to the West Bank.

So we face the future with determination and optimism. When will things return to normal? What will the new normal look like? How will we deal with change? Only time will tell.

Ponder the possibilities tonight, as Janus invites you to sit back and enjoy a journey down "The Long Road Home" under the direction of the the lieutenants and The Captain.

Time Picayune article

Pat Garin photographs

Dickey family photo


Chad group photo

Pretend there are really cool images behind me.

Let's see. Last weekend Melissa and I went to see MidLake at the Republic on Friday. Little more indie rock than I am used to but I liked them well enough. Music like that usually takes time to grow on me. The venue was pretty nice with a lot of seemingly hip people and as always I just wanted a place to sit down. Then on Saturday we knocked out her last Oscar movie Letters from Iwo Jima. Haven't seen many war movies, much less war movies told from the other side so it's hard to compare to other movies I know. I started to care for the Japanese soldiers, which was a bit weird when I thought about it. Having played the Iwo Jima map in Battlefield 1942 it was interesting to see what actually went down on that island. Sunday was the Super Bowl and we had the Barattini's over. I hadn't seen the girls in a while and hanging out with them is always a good time.

The week before I was in San Antonio. I think that town is a lot more interesting than I gave it credit for. All I really knew was the Alamo, Riverwalk, and missions. Then I read somewhere that many people put it near the top of the list of unique cities in the US. It's hard to get a feel for a place when most of what you see is a hotel and the inside of a server room. Oh well, that's the way it goes. I did get to meet up with a guy for dinner that I knew from playing WoW. That was a bit odd, and kinda cool at the same time. I'm looking forward to getting to do this more often if the job takes me to the right places. Right now it seems they are intent on just sending me to Texas. Which is cool and all, but I've been to Texas. I kinda wanted to travel other places. Maybe I can work on getting opportunities in New Orleans and then I won't have to travel at all.

WoW-wise things are progressing. I played a good bit in SA since there isn't much else to do in a hotel room. I've fallen behind the guild on the level-curve but I've gotten some good instance runs in and have had fun questing with a group. It amazes me that the game continues to be fun seven months later. I've got some more pretty screenshots to post but I'm in a coffee shop right now and the pics are on the home computer, so I'll get to those later.