From the Mail Bag\r\n\r\nPatricia\'s birthday is tomorrow & I guess we\'re going to have to find a way to celebrate after all. I mean, for better or worse, the day of her birth brought some joy into my life.\r\nja Leonard, 8-29\r\n\r\nWe got it bad. We\'re in Memphis. Our neighborhood is probably under water. Our house might not be standing. Patricia\'s school might be the one we heard had been destroyed. We\'d just gone into her studio to make sure a particular photograph was off the floor. Our lives have been changed, \"changed utterly,\" as Yeats put it\r\n\r\n\"a terrible beauty is born\" liz jardine 8-29\r\n\r\nThe city is 80% under water. Our town, across a very large lake, is also under water. We had just bought a house in April. It is also possibly under water. It might have been reduced to a foundation slab. We don\'t know and won\'t for a few days, probably. Take care. Thank you for keeping in touch gbemi tijani, 8-29\r\n\r\npatricia and i are in memphis. we have a hotel room scored for us by the college where one of her students is studying now, & an offer of space (including for our dogs and birds) from another friend. we think we\'ll probably stay near the Delta region until martial law is lifted in slidell. patricia\'s brother is head of emergency preparation in slidell & i hope we can get in touch with him soon. our house is in one of the worst hit neighborhoods. I was thinking about the little house on Jourdan and my dear friend Kathleen... we\'re using wifi at a coffeeshop here.\r\n\r\nRed Roof Inn rocks. they let us bring in our dogs & parakeets!\r\n\r\nKathleen Krause & Helen Shoh, 8-30\r\n\r\n\r\nThe green party might want to address higher levees, less development... oh, you know the score, our whole town was built on what used to be wetland, used to be lagoon, used to be water. now water wants it all back.\r\nRomi Elnagar, 8-30\r\n\r\nsafe in Memphis, but I fear our new-boughten house in under water or smashed to flinders.\r\n\r\nthe storm they said could happen has happened, and please let there NOT be another one next week.\r\n\r\nalbinas prizgintas et multi alia, 8-30\r\n\r\nAny word from Celia? \r\n\r\nI secured the last of your books and the cd containing it. \r\n\r\nNo matter what happens to the physical city, the spirit that created the second line is eternal. It\'ll never die. \r\nIt will be back. \r\n\r\nJohn Sinclair 9-1\r\n\r\nwe\'ll be ok even if our house is totaled. I wasn\'t ready to let go yet. We\'d only been there four months.\r\n\r\nSo if we end up in Sleepy Hollow...man so sad to think you can\'t return to the city that forgot to care...\r\n\r\nJohn Radonovich 9-1\r\n\r\nwith no New O across the lake, there is little attractive in St. Tam, even for Patricia, who has spent most of her life there.\r\nCarrington MacDuffie 9-2\r\n\r\nas refugees we\'re not doing too badly. Darlene Fife, 9-2\r\n\r\nyou are a joy. don\'t forget that.\r\n\r\ndon\'t lose touch. tracy melsheimer, 9-2