The predominant emotion here, I think, is one of great sadness. The city is never going to be the same.

By the end of our time here, saying goodbye, Lynn and I were clinging together, crying. It was a horrible thing that happened, this hurricane, but something good came out of it. We got to spend time with a near-and-dear family.

I talked to an Episcopal priest who said everyone's lost something. We're all in grief together. To try to compare one loss with another is not a useful activity.

How do you get parents to pay for their child to come study in a city that was so badly damaged?

You could see the high-water mark on the side of the house. Anne Marie went to look at it and came back to the car in tears.

Booze makes you stupid and like it. It makes you fall around and not care. And eventually, stupid is the only way you know how to be. Cocaine makes you feel important, that life matters, that you matter. That the music is better than it really is. That every conversation
is profound and that all pretenses have been stripped away. Ecstasy makes you dance all night and love your friends so much, in a way that you've never been able to tell them about before. Acid makes you see pretty colours and makes things breathe. But Sadness, there is nothing like Sadness.