Making Sense Out of Nonsense

Making sense of nonsense: Life in the land of Ivan Many thanks for your prayers, emails, and phone calls to us about evacuating for Hurricane Ivan. Luckily, it became a great practice plan instead of the real thing. As Florida has been planning for weeks, due to their disastrous summer, those of us in New Orleans had a gathered nonchalance about the weather activities of our sister gulf state. It wasn’t until Sunday that the weather forecasters began making recommendations about finding “your evacuation kit.” Evacuation kit? Hurricane plan? Did it involve a snow shovel? How about using kitty litter on ice? Those are about the only weather-related tricks I know. (Carrying kitty litter in your trunk not only can be used for icy spin-outs but as additional weight for traction.) Where were those types of helpful hints in hurricane country? We maintained the same attitude as the natives until I discovered that they had been covertly making hotel arrangements over the weekend. On Monda...