Driving back home from North Alabama Tuesday, I stopped for a rest in Picayune, Mississippi, and read the Biloxi newspaper. As with our paper, it was saturated with Katrina news. A charitable eatery called “God’s Katrina Kitchen” was being shut down by one of the towns on the Mississippi coast.

Ever since the dark days following Hurricane Katrina, the good people manning this food ministry have been doling out free meals to construction workers and volunteers and storm victims. They’ve even relocated a couple of times, and are allowing the homeless to sleep on their premises. That’s what caused the problem, evidently, for the townspeople say crime is following the kitchen and it’s now time to shut the ministry down. When the town council voted to do just that, some applauded and others wept.

That is a microcosm of life in these Gulf cities these days. The same event is often good news and bad news.

Monday’s Times-Picayune announced that the federal government has shelled out over $1 billion in levee repairs in the New Orleans area. But that free ride is coming to a halt, the paper says. Barring action from Congress, we’re approaching the time when local governments will have to fund one-third or more of levee construction costs.

Same paper, same front page: “People still open wallets for New Orleans.” Even though private giving to disaster aid dipped sharply from $7.4 billion in 2005 to only $1.2 in 2006, much of the money given to hurricane relief is still finding its way to this area. Here are some instances.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans (that would be the Catholics, Mom) took in $20.1 million in disaster relief money in 2005, then $39.1 in 2006. Loyola and Tulane universities are reporting sharp increases in ’06 giving over ’05. And so on.

What the article does not point out is that the hurricane hit New Orleans at the end of August of ’05 and thus all charitable giving for disaster relief arriving that year was received only from September through December. In 2006, we were still in a critical situation, so the money continued to flow in. All the Bush-Clinton-Katrina gifts were received in ’06. The big downturn, no doubt, will show up in the 2007 contributions.

We’re looking for schoolteachers down here. The Tuesday Times-Picayune reports that the Recovery School District is spending $400,000 in a nationwide program of recruitment to help fill vacancies in the local school system. How many vacancies? No one actually knows. Educational leaders say they know of 70 vacancies at the moment, but 500 is expected to be the eventual number since 6,000 additional students are expected to enroll this fall. Anyone interested is invited to check out www.whyyouteach.org.

The city’s 100th murder came at the exact half-way point in the year Sunday night when a 65-year-old man was found shot to death alongside his former residence. Police have no clues as to circumstances or motive.

The West End section of New Orleans is that area bordering Lake Pontchartrain near the 17th Street Canal. It’s the western beginning of Lakeshore Drive and the western edge of the 1920s-1930s project in which a seawall was built 3500 feet into the lake and sand pumped behind it in order to create a clear shoreline and an exclusive residential area. At the edge of Lakeshore Drive, near where Fitzgerald’s Restaurant used to stand and where Joe’s Crab Shack flourished until the storm shut it down, stood a small lighthouse which we are told dates back to the 1890s. For decades, it was a Coast Guard station and one of our church members at FBC Kenner was in charge of the unit assigned there. Anyway, Hurricane Katrina fairly well demolished the lighthouse and it has lain there like a corpse in the water ever since.

A group of citizens who make up the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation and whose efforts have resulted in cleaning up the waters of this great body, have received permission to raise funds to rebuild that lighthouse. The Coast Guard apparently has no further use for the facility and is giving the Foundation a lease on the property. Plans call for raising several million dollars to shore up the property, level the foundation, build a better foundation, and rebuild the lighthouse–along with a gift shop, of course; gotta have a gift shop.

Meanwhile, Landry’s Seafood Restaurant has restored the Joe’s Crab Shack building and signs indicate they’re now in operation. We stopped by for lunch one day, only to be told that they’re open only for dinner. I thought about suggesting they re-letter their signs which announce, “Now Open,” since they’re not. But decided not to nitpick. We’re glad they’re there.

Matt Sarconi of New Orleans has an idea which looks good on paper. In a letter to the editor, he writes, “I have been volunteering around New Orleans to help rebuild homes and neighborhoods destroyed by Katrina. Like me, the vast majority of the workers at these work sites are from other parts of the country. But as I bike to and from the work sites, I pass scores of young men and women, hanging out on the streets, seemingly with plenty of time on their hands.”

He continues, “New Orleans is a city that desperately needs volunteer manpower, and yet it also has a large reservoir of available citizens who might be able to develop new skills and apply them toward future jobs by helping at these work sites. It doesn’t appear to me that there’s much effort to draw these entities together. But if ever there were two groups that could truly help each other, it would be the volunteer rebuilders and the young, underemployed people who call New Orleans home.”

William Noe had a system. He would show up at your door and offer to repair your damaged home at a huge discount, then take the money given him as a down payment and disappear. Now a judge has ordered Noe to spend 8 years in prison after he pled guilty to contractor fraud. Or, if Noe would rather, he may have what’s behind Door No. 2. That plan would allow Noe to pay his victims $20,000 by August 8 and thereafter pay them $2,000 per month until the entire $53,949 has been repaid. Fail to do that, and he heads to prison for 8 years. Sounds like a deal to me.

Uh, judge, I’d suggest someone monitor the way Mr. Noe raises that $20,000. He may be out in the community offering to repair people’s houses and asking for a little up-front money.

The district attorney’s office reports it has received 2,000 complaints of possible contractor fraud and has prosecuted 45 individuals.

Life goes on here in New Orleans.

The second anniversary of Katrina comes on Wednesday, August 29. We’ll have an interdenominational prayer and worship service at 7 pm that evening at the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, 5290 Canal Boulevard. Pastor David Crosby has just announced that Will Graham, a North Carolina pastor and the grandson of Dr. Billy Graham, has agreed to be the featured speaker.

All our churches are urged to bring their congregations. Friends elsewhere are invited to join us.