New Orleans

I suppose this is a bit off topic, but I hope all MOJ readers will pray for, and financially support, those who are suffering because of the Katrina disaster.  If, as it increasingly appears, New Orleans as we have known it is gone, it is a tragedy for residents and their friends and loved ones, but also for the country, and for the Church.  New Orleans was -- though I persist in hoping it will remain -- a different place, in a culture, geography, and economy that (it seems to me) has been becoming more and more the same (not bad, just the same).  New Orleans is a reminder -- particularly if one scraped beneath the Bourbon Street stuff -- that not everything is Underground Atlanta, Universal Studios, the new Times Square, Tison's Corner, or Pier 49.  Grime, moss, mold . . . God bless it.

Rick