A YEAR AGO

Baton Rouge is changed for good. The sleepy, quiet downtown and the local eateries are I am sure filled with many people now. A year ago we did Miss Teen USA there. The muggy heat and humidity from the mighty Mississippi river that flows ceaselessly just up and over the levi, added to my feeling of an odd comfort each evening as I walked along the bike path. It reminded me of Louisville, my hometown, a rivertown as well on the Ohio. Summers in the south make you long for winter. I breathe in the smell of the grasses and the trees. Something so familiar imprinted in my soul. August, hot, sticky hot from the humidity but oddly enough a cool breeze in the evenings. I alternated between the levi at sunset and then a hike/run around the lake at LSU. It is my quiet time after all the people from our crew and staff have arrived on the late flights from around the country.

In conversations I pickup on a dark forboding thought on different people's minds. Call it my deep intuition. It pops out in conversations with a local co-worker who tells me that basically if a big hurricane were to hit the area that Baton Rouge, being the main evacuation route for New Orleans would be screwed. Doing operations for the show I tune into the Weather Channel each morning. It gives me an idea as to what type of day I am going to have getting people in and out of the tiny airport that has only a dozen or so commercial flights.

On our last night in town we take the Aligator Bayou tour with the two daddies and mommie of Gucci the aligator. You might remember him. He made his network debut on our show and eyed all the Miss Teens. The owners of the place were very passionate about preserving the wetlands. There was a bill in the state legislature about giving the developers more opportunities to build, thereby further depleting the natural buffer against the storms off the gulf.

Two weeks after I left I made phone calls to all of my new friends. These local ladies insisted that I take a lunch on Sunday. These ladies who remind me of my southern manners taught to me by my Aunt Viola and my Aunt Ruth. I treasure them. The thought of them having to batten down the hatches and ride out a hurricane troubles me. To add to the stress, my Aunt and Uncle in Mississippi are only 30 miles inland and in a direct path with the eye of Katrina.

One year later I look back on the Katrina events as the beginning of my own personal year of transitions. The good news is that the ladies and their families are well. My Aunt and Uncle by a small miracle only had some roof damage to their house. For years they were right on the Gulf in Pascagoula.

Forever changed I feel we all are from what we collectively witnessed a year ago. And mother nature reclaims what is hers. In the comfort of the muggy heat of August I sensed it. It was that feeling that I needed to record in my senses all of what I was experiencing, because it would soon be changed forever.