All of the following is gleaned from the Wednesday, March 15, 2006 edition of the Times-Picayune.

1. Front page: they’re cleaning out the flooded home of Fats Domino, everyone’s favorite rock and roll legend. He lived in a humble home in the tragic Lower 9th Ward that took in 10 feet of water, and lost all kinds of irreplacable treasures from the early days of his music. A team from the Louisiana State Museum combs through his home, trying to salvage anything they can.

2. The state of Louisiana is hiring a contractor to haul away the 350,000 automobiles that were both uninsured and ruined by Katrina’s floodwaters. A Georgia company came in with the lowest bid, some $61 million.

3. A headline announces “Suicide rates down after Katrina.” As surprising as that is, it could be because so many of our people are now living in other states. Perhaps Texas is experiencing a spike in their suicide numbers. At our Wednesday pastors meeting, someone said the suicide rate on the Mississippi Gulf Coast is up something like 900%.

4. According to the RAND Corporation, the population of New Orleans will not reach 50% of the pre-Katrina level until 2008. Our optimistic mayor had predicted New Orleans will reach 300,000 by the end of this year, a figure which evidently he snatched out of thin air. The RAND study calls for a total population of 272,000 by August 29, 2008.

5. A couple of weeks ago, some citizens announced their plans to run for the seven tax assessor jobs in New Orleans (right, seven!), and then, once elected, pool their salaries and hire a professional company to do the work, then work for legislative consolidation. They call themselves the “I Quit” party and intended to list themselves on the ballot as John “I.Q.” Citizen for easy identification. However, a civil district judge is ruling they cannot use such gimmickry on the ballot. The lawsuit has been brought by a lawyer whose relative is one of the assessors. File this under “Louisiana politics.”

6. Letters to the editor.

a. Stephanie Stangel of Houston asks, “Do you know what it means to dis New Orleans?” She writes that New Orleans evacuees in Houston have to put up with slanderous putdowns of their hometown all the time. “Why should we build another city of sin?” a Texan asked her. She tries to respond quietly and logically, telling all the things that make New Orleans wonderful. She ended her letter: “The sad fact is New Orleans is now under scrutiny, and it must convey to the rest of the nation that our historic transgressions will not become the blueprint of the future.”

b. Jim Lapeyre of New Orleans takes issue with Tuesday’s letter from a Bruce Smith who called Franklin Graham’s mercy “strained,” because of earlier statements Franklin made about the sin in New Orleans and wanting the city to be better than it was. Lapeyre says, “This is a strange judgment on a minister who comes bringing hundreds of volunteers and millions of dollars in unconditional aid to New Orleans. I’m curious to know what Smith thinks unstrained mercy looks like.”

7. Two editorials.

a. “Democracy by delay?” responds to accusations by the NAACP that the April 22 election of a mayor and city council in New Orleans is racist because the dispersal of citizens means the black voting strength has been diluted and many displaced residents will not be voting. The paper admits that the election conditions are less than ideal, but if the election was delayed until ideal conditions prevailed, it would never be held. “New Orleanians deserve the ability to choose their leaders in a timely fashion.”

b. “Clueless on the hill” refers to some congressional leaders who still don’t get it. Texas Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling has had nothing but ugly words after his visit to New Orleans. He blasted state and local leaders who, he said, want big federal handouts without taking any responsibility. He asked, “Those able-bodied individuals under 65, what are they doing to help themselves?” The paper answers: “The quick answer is just about everything. They’re back at work, restoring the economy. They’re gutting moldy, flood-damaged houses. They’re making call after call to insurance adjusters, banks and contractors.” And so forth. “And, after a long, exhausting day rebuilding every facet of their lives, they lie awake and wonder if Congress is going to abandon them.” Senator Bob Bennett who sits on the Appropriations Committee is another such clueless leader. Last week he questioned the wisdom of rebuilding “a place that the laws of physics say doesn’t make sense for people to live in.” The paper says, “Sen. Bennett’s poor grasp of physics isn’t important, but his shaky understanding of geography is. He hasn’t visited the storm-affected area, but surely he has seen a map. He ought to understand why the United States has a port city at the mouth of the Mississippi River.” The editorial concludes, “The job of recovery is hard enough without leaders in Washington working against it.”

8. Displaced citizen Endesha Juakali writes from Natchez in an op-ed piece, calling for the opening of public housing like the St. Bernard Housing Project where he was raised and “where I worked before the storm.” Poor people need housing, too, he asserts and no one can argue with that. My only contention, made I confess from the safety and relative security of the middle-class suburb of River Ridge, is that St. Bernard Housing Project was such a hotbed of crime and violence, drugs and misery, that I have prayed that it not be reopened. I have hoped and prayed that the people sentenced to live in that saddest of all sad neighborhoods and forced to evacuate by the hurricane might find good homes and safe streets and excellent schools in the Brookhaven, Mississippis and Montgomery, Alabamas of this nation.

I hope no one will think it anti-poor or racist of me if I continue to pray for that.