Dear Friends As many of you probably know, we had to evacuate our home due to Hurricane Katrina. We drove for 18 hours before we found a hotel room available in Austin, Texas. The people here have been wonderful. AND SPECIAL THANKS TO LAMP dealer Kirby McDaniel of Movie Art of Austin it has helped to have someone here in Austin we can turn to. It has been a rather hectic and heart wrenching week, as Im sure you can understand.
You probably have seen all of the coverage about this disaster on the news. In fact, most of you are now probably experts in the layout of New Orleans, but Id like to explain a little of the situation. We live in Gretna, Louisiana, which is located on the westbank of the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish. Jefferson Parish sits to the west and south of New Orleans. The parish is divided by the Mississippi River, which bends eastward to form a crescent around the south of New Orleans (thus the nickname Crescent City). After the river passes New Orleans, it then turns back south and flows into the Gulf. Lake Pontchartrain forms the northern border of both New Orleans and the east bank side of Jefferson Parish. There is an elaborate system of levees and canals that keep the river and lake from flooding into the cities. The levees that broke were those that surrounded the lake thus, New Orleans and the eastern bank of Jefferson Parish were the areas affected. We live on the westbank side of the River (we are actually south of the River due to the curvature but still on the west bank side.) The RIVER levees would have to be breached in order for our area to get flooded. Thank God this did not happen. Our levees stood find. The eye of Hurricane Katrina passed about 10-15 miles east of us, but we were on the weak side of the storm. The westbank of Jefferson Parish didnt get the flood waters, but we did have a lot of wind damage. We had the opportunity to go home a couple of days ago to check on our house, get any needed paperwork and supplies, and then we were forced to leave again since there were no utilities available no electricity, gas or water. Officials are telling us that we cannot return for at least 2-4 weeks. We left Austin at 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning and did not return to our hotel in Austin until 3:00 a.m. on Wednesday. We were awake and on the road for 27 straight hours. When we returned on Wednesday we were exhausted. It took a whole day for us to recover. I cant explain how eerie it was to drive down the main street leading to our home. This normally bustling area of businesses and homes was like a ghost town. National Guardsmen were everywhere, patrolling with guns. Trees and power lines were down everywhere. I was shocked at how widespread the wind damage was. But after that first reaction, we began to realize that most of the damage was not that serious. All of the homes we passed were standing very few seemed to have any real structural damage. Most homes had some kind of roof damage. We also saw a lot of houses damaged by trees and tree limbs along with several smashed garages and cars. The first thing we noticed when we turned the corner of our street was that our house was standing and that there was a huge tree draped across the top. This is the third time we have had a tree damage our home. This time, it did a lot more damage. The force of the branch hitting the house caused a huge hole. Pieces of our roof were everywhere. We lost the drain pipes and the soffet and facia (please exclude the spelling) and pieces of the siding were gone. We had several areas of the first floor that had wet spots apparently we must have had some type of street flooding. The wooden tiles in our office are buckling evidence of water. Carpets and floors will have to be replaced. Because of the extensive roof damage, we did have leaking in the upstairs bedrooms. We will have to replace some mattresses, but nothing that cant be replaced was damaged. When we opened our back door we were shocked. Our back yard looked like a bomb had gone off. We have a large yard with a half dozen medium and large trees. All of the medium sized trees were pulled from their roots and are lying across the backyard, along with the fence that they took down when they fell. The two larger trees are still standing, but they are pretty much bare. All of their limbs are now in our backyard. One of these larger tree limbs hit the electrical and cable wires and literally ripped the electrical box and the cable box from the outside wall taking part of the wall with it. We literally have wires laying everywhere. Even though our house looks like a war zone, we were happy to see it standing. While we have a massive cleanup job and lots of work to do to get it livable again, things could have been so much worse. Looting was rampant in our area but our neighborhood appeared to be untouched. This may be due to the fact that some of the neighbors who stayed actually armed themselves and started riding up and down the neighborhoods. There was no police protection, so they provided it themselves. So heres where things stand now. We will be in Austin for probably at least two more weeks. When our officials allow us to return, we will not be able to go to our house because we will have to have our electrical box repaired BEFORE electricity can be turned on at our house. My daughter lives about six blocks from us in a new home they just built (its only 4 months old). While they sustained roof and siding damage, their house is livable. We are planning to stay with them while we oversee the repairs that we will need to make to our home before we can move back in. We are looking at about 2 months before we can return to our home. We are staying at a hotel in Austin that recently changed ownership and is currently being remodeled. At the time, there are no internet connections in the room. However, Ed spoke with the manager and he arranged for us to get a wireless bridge so that we can use the hotels internet. It is set up in our hotel room. We have two computers with us only one can be online at a time. Ed and I will be taking turns working offline and online as things are needed. As for LAMP, it has been operating as usual since weve been down. A few days ago, our transaction log became full and visitors couldnt get into the data base. This happens on a regular basis. It takes a quick phone call to our server and the log is emptied. Unfortunately, we have had a hard time getting to computers so we were not able to monitor the system like normal. As soon as we saw the jam, we called and the matter was cleared up. Other than that, LAMP has continued like nothing happened. In fact, our stats for the past week are still running above average. Now that we are back on line, Ed and I have a tremendous amount of catching up to do. We have been bogged down with a lot of phone calls and paperwork associated with the hurricane. Most of these have been done so we will now get back to concentrating on LAMP. Please be patient though. We will try to start inputting and putting new things on the site as soon as we can, but we have a lot of administrative details that we also have to tend to. And remember, we have two computers but only one is on line. Ed has been working for some time on an article entitled Record Sales List (http://www.learnaboutmovieposters.com/newsite/INDEX/ARTICLES/RecordSales.asp), which lists all documented sales from $5,000 and up. It is currently over 1,000 titles and growing. Ed plans to put it on line today. You can get to the article by going to the LAMP home page. At least this will show our visitors that WE ARE BACK and WE ARE WORKING. The people here in Austin have been great. We did have one incident here at the hotel. The back window of our van was broken and two items were stolen. One was my sons guitar amp. He worked all last summer to pay for it. The second and this is the real heartbreaker they stole a bag that I had that contained all our home movies. The tapes were of our kids birthday parties; gym meets; baseball games; family vacations 20+ years of memories. Im still angry and hurt that someone would do this to us but Ed keeps reminding me that the family is safe and we will make new memories. But Id still like to get my hands on the SOBs who took them. And while Im venting the people at MCI communications are horrible! My daughter and her family left a day earlier to go stay with my son-in-laws relatives in Atlanta. By the time we made the decision to leave, we were told to go west. My daughter was concerned and asked that I check in with her when we arrived somewhere since we didnt even have a destination when we left. I made two telephone calls to Atlanta using the hotel telephone and charging it to Paypal MCI charged our card $99.00 for TWO PHONE CALLS. When we called their office and questioned the call they told us it would take weeks before they would investigate it. We explained that we were evacuees and that we were living off this card. They were extremely rude especially the supervisor named Val. This woman was heartless. She told us too bad but theres nothing she could do. Of course I plan to take this up with Paypal but please, give us a break. This is just another thing we have to deal with. So if anyone is considering doing business with MCI in the future DONT. This is the most heartless and cruel company I have ever had the distaste to deal with no sympathy, no respect, no help. Theyre nothing but leeches. VENT OVER . All in all, this has been a heart-wrenching experience. It is heartbreaking for me to see what is happening to New Orleans. I was born there; went to school there; went to college there; met Ed there in the French Quarter; married there; had my children there. Ed and I bought our first movie poster there in the French Market a half sheet of Gidget. We were dating at the time. We saw it at the flea market and when I told him that was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up, he bought it for me. And that was the beginning of our movie poster passion. But rest assured WE WILL COME BACK. When Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans on September 9, 1965 (I was 2 months shy of my 13th birthday), levees broke and flooded many of the same areas that are flooded today. To this date, Betsy had been our big one the eye passed directly over us but it was just a Category 3. We went for weeks without power and many people said the same things being said today will New Orleans ever recover. History shows that it came back stronger. Thats when newer levee systems were installed and city officials started looking at how to prevent this in the future. Unfortunately, their short-sightedness was that they built the levees to withstand another Cat 3 storm they never took into consideration anything worse. I think they just never imagined that it could be any worse. We are an odd lot and we just dont give up. I want to thank all of our MOPO friends for your thoughts, prayers and support. We want to particularly thank LAMP dealers Sue Heim of Hollywood Poster Frames and Bruce Hershenson of emovieposter for their initiative in trying to provide us with assistance. You will never realize just how much that helped on so many levels. Things looked really bleak there for a little while and our LAMP dealers and MOPO friends came through for us. We will forever be appreciative. We know we have a monumental task in front of us but we are grateful that our family is safe and we have a home. Many of our friends and neighbors were not so lucky. My sister lives in St. Bernard Parish she has lost everything. Of course, she will be living with us so she knows she has family. Many things have come out lately in the media some of it just so wrong. These people dont have a clue but yet they make bold statements like theyre experts. I plan to write an article about my feelings about this whole incident. Living here for 51 years has made me more of an expert than these news guys. Theyre simply after a story. As soon as I get my thoughts together, I will let you know in case you would like to hear someone from withins opinion. Again we want to thank everyone for their kindness and support. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.
