The details I promised...New Orleans

After spending almost a month "on the road", I am finally home, at the desk and ready to type. I have promised details on how the big Librarian conference went in New Orleans...here they are.

• My hotel, and those of everyone I talked to, had all the things hotels have, except adequate staff. This is a refrain.

• There were three weddings while I was there. The vacation destination type weddings where everyone flew there and had the wedding in the hotel and then went wild in the French Quarter. I gather that folks who were going to go to Vegas are going to New Orleans right now.
  

• The downtown area was clean, sparcely populated and safe. I walked most everywhere I went. Yes, some places were boarded up and every place had a help wanted sign.
  

• I heard that the employers in New Orleans called up everyone they knew to come work for the weekend, because there simply aren't enough workers. I'm not a gambler but the casino in town had their own medical clinic, since I understand that some medical care has been difficult to get. I am not sure but they may have drwan employees from other chain casinos. On that note...the concierge at my hotel didn't seem to know the city very well, my suspicion was that she was borrowed from another chain hotel.
  

• I heard harrowing stories from shopkeepers and hotel people. And sad stories about families living in different cities that used to live side-by-side.
  
• A publisher fellow I met got a bellhop to find him a reliable taxi driver to take him on a tour of the ninth ward and other places hurt badly by the storm. He is a very ummm...self-assured sort of person (?) and he was shaken. Said it was worse than anything he'd ever seen. Others who went on a swamp tour saw a lot of the destruction, and of course those who went out and worked at the libraries did too.
  
• The shops have some very funny t-shirts with messages about the hurricane and the aftermath. But my favorite was a t-shirt hanging in the window of one of those shops that said "Librarians do it by the book" and then underneath "American Librarian Conference, New Orleans 2006". We have this conference every year. No one ever makes us a t-shirt. Gratitude was evident everywhere you went. A woman I met was hugged by a hotel worker!
  
• I understand there was a demonstration outside Cafe du Monde where the protesters basically conveyed that we were only seeing the parts that are fixed. Which we knew. We are librarians after all.
  

I hope that my comments about the great time I had, did not diminish the catastrophe in New Orleans and the gulf area. My goal was really to tell you that if you were hesitant to visit you shouldn't be. They could use your help.