Greetings, folks.
My son, who some of you know as
saintbryan, is a student in his second year at University of New Orleans, which just started classes a week ago. He did evacuate, making his way first to Baton Rouge, then ahead of Katrina to Nashville, then hopped a plane to Nevada where he is now with his father until next week.
Any of you who are watching this heartbreaking saga unfold would reasonably guess that he has no school to go back to, at least not this semester. Furthermore, the house he was sharing with friends and fellow students, in the Bywater district of the Ninth Ward just down river of the French Quarter, is no doubt flooded, if not gone.
So.... he's probably going to do an 11th hour transfer to OSU for the fall, if the university will accommodate him -- a slight issue with no access to records from UNO, which is completely shut down except for one
emergency site.
Much as I adore him, after living with his student cohorts having adventures and growing up fast in what must be one of the greatest cities for adventures in the world, coming home to live with his momma would be something of a drag. For both of us. Should we have no choice but to settle him back into the old home, we will, of course, thank our lucky stars that he's not sitting on a roof top in the middle of that toxic soup, fighting off floating clumps of fire ants and venomous snakes looking for dry ground. That said, if we can make the situation better by finding him another house of cohorts, this would be preferable.
I would be interested in hearing from anyone who is looking for a housemate or who knows of someone looking for a housemate. You can contact him directly, of course, but he is out of LJ range until Monday.
For those of you who don't know him, he's a Corvallis High School graduate, a bit of a non-conformist, a natural born mediator, something of a comedian, a cybergoth/industrial aficionado and has a very finely tuned sense of self-preservation and responsibility, illustrated by the fact that he was his New Orleanian household's designated 'evacuation coordinator' and had everyone out of there by Saturday afternoon before the mandatory evacuation order was called. If your house needs a pet disaster watchdog, he'd be perfect.
While he went to UNO as a film/mass communications major, he now intends to pursue studies that will lead toward a disaster management related career field. New Orleans tends to make people either incredibly insouciant or incredibly conscious of danger, decay and potential destruction. Really, he's a very good natured guy, but has become none-the-less acutely aware of danger, decay and potential destruction. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it may appear a titch out of place in this placid-seeming community. Nice guy, though.
Many thanks.
grateful
pissy