Though in Orlando working in Walt Disney World at the time of the Hurricane, I never got the chance to return home to see family and friends as well as the devestation Katrina unleashed upon my beloved home town. Thanks to taking 9 days off from work, I traveled back home to be a part of the most important Mardi Gras celebration of our lifetime and to see first hand what can only be described as a gut wrenching and heart breaking dose of savage reality. My last apartment totally devestated by the rising waters was such a wake up call. The water lines...the notes of the SPCA on having found our cat Evengaline...sadly, without her kittens, who didn't make it out alive. My once beautiful back yard garden, displayed in it's full glory in it's own gallery here on my photo site called "Eddie's Garden", presents what the raging waters did to my little patch of heaven. Some of you who live in or know our city will see locations totally devoid of the well known and loved businesses and landmarks, particularly those of the West End, which are now nothing more than a memory and a painful reminder just how fragile life can be. Look well at the photographs. You will see a camera obscura, so to speak, venturing into the homes and lives uprooted by Katrina's wrath. A shattered home with a bedroom nearly intact complete with it's bed. Houses slidding over into streets and into large power poles. Open kitchens and dens where people lived and loved and have now lost. Amidst the rubble and debris I managed, as I always do, to also find a few whimsical as well as humorous moments sprinkled throughout my ventures. Instead of the pointing of fingers and sidesteping of responsibilities and guilt thereof, perhaps the politicians both local and national might get their acts together and be mature for a change. Repair, rebuild and give the city it's deserved respect back now! Time is wasting and the more time it takes, the more the loss of the city that care forgot will take on the entire country. As for Mayor Nagin's ridiculous outcry that New Orleans would once again be a "Chocolate City...it never was. New Orleans is a gumbo. In this gallery you will see many different walks of life's lives destroyed or totally obliterated. White. Black, Chinese. Vietnamese. Jewish. Irish. Italian. Hispanic. And so many more that it completely negates Nagin's very remaining in office at this time! Having lost a number of relatives to this awful catastrophe my blood now runs cold whenever I even see Nagin's face on billboards protesting the fact that he deserves another chance to ruining our fair city! This storm affected everyone across all racial, economic and religious lines. FEMA, Bush...Sad. Truly sad that these so called "People for the people" from local to national governments are allowed to continue the decay and despair that is taking it's toll on the remaining people trying to earn a living and rebuild on their own with so little help form those in power to assist further than they are at this time. Sad. Truly...sad....