I am proud of our efforts, small though they may be, when compared to the enormity of the recovery task ahead. The uniting bond we share is the simple desire to serve those so devastated by the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.

One of the things we wanted to do was to communicate the enormity of the task.

We're very close, and when he steps up for me like that, it's hard to tell him no.

New Orleans is, of course, our next thrust, and we're going to have to have to staff recovery efforts down there, but it'll be a different kind of recovery effort, ... We'll be supporting the EOC in Baton Rouge with temporary communications until the National Guard can get in.

But it will make it more problematic for the recovery efforts there.

It is precisely as though I were possessed by some other spirit when I enter on a new task of acting, as though something within me presses a switch and my own consciousness merges into some other, greater, more vital being.