finally

yes, it's been a while. not much art making going on here lately. but lots of living. many of you have inquired how we did with the storms so here's a better late than never update:

gustav got us pretty bad here in houma. lot of wind damage. tree limbs, roofs etc.
i was lucky personally - just had a lot of tree limbs down. mess. a few shingles missing. nothing major. i evacuated and was gone for a week, and was even lucky enuf to have someone go to my house and clean out my fridge and freezer so i didn't have to go home to that mess and stink.
i did pack my van full of quilts and assorted art when i left, because i really believed my house would flood. i am not far from the intracoastal waterway and the predictions are that a rita sized storm surge would create flooding from here to thibodaux - about 17 miles away. not a good thing. luckily, it didn't.

the area in general sustained a lot of damage. there are blue roofs everywhere and the tree damage is appalling. my old neighborhood got hit really hard. lots of little tornadic bursts go thru so you'll see pockets of really severe damage here and there. the sight of 100 year old live oak trees, snapped, still turns my stomach.

i have not taken many photos. too close for comfort? deja vu all over again? images seared into my brain making the need for documenting them pretty useless? probably a little bit of all of the above.

then we got ike. which i watched blow thru from inside the local docinthebox as the gustav crud i had even before i left town flared up again a few days after returning home. as a little aside, i spent the week i was evacuated with little to no voice. i am guessing my fellow evacuees were grateful for that fact..;-) so ike passed in a blur of fever, and antibiotics. it flooded the usual areas below the intracoastal , and frankly, got too close for comfort here as well. i do know many people whose homes flooded for the second time. or more. my heart goes out to them.

i was out of town a couple of weekends ago and it was SO nice to be somewhere with no mess and destruction. didn't realize how stressful it was till i was driving home. as i got closer to home, i could feel the knot in my gut rising.

i haven't gotten back to making art yet, and i swore i was done with hurricane art but i think gustav and ike have convinced me otherwise. it's just a matter of getting the
time to get back to it...


the worst part is this just added to the constant chipping away of our coastline.the gulf is encroaching . it's just a matter of time.