I'm completely overwhelmed with tiredness and excitement and momentousness, I'm just going to - for now - share a comment I sent Margi in response to an earlier post:

"That's the one thing [crying] I actually didn't do all last night - I screamed, I jumped up and down, I hugged a couple strangers, high fived a whole bunch of people, took a million photos, ran around like a crazy person, clapped my hands randomly and did a bit of dancing... but then this morning, walking home by myself, still in my campaign sweatshirt, i pass this woman at a crossing. she's on the phone but she catches my eye and gives me a thumbs up. and that was it. i literally stopped in my tracks at broadway and 125th with tears pouring down my cheeks. what a day. for the epic motherf***ing win."

And some more photos:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2391397&l=67465&id=831023

oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god. President Obama! YEEESS!

The caffeine/adrenaline combo that helped me survive getting up at 5.30am dissipated with a bang at about 11 - by which time the Harlem 4 Obama headquarters were swarming and no major polling issues had arisen in the area, so I headed home for a nap. I just woke up and I'm going to be taking a break from election fever for a few hours to go and catch up with some of the kids I taught last year, but I'm sure I'll have PLENTY to say once we start watching the results coverage tonight!

I'm surprised by how many people from all over the world there are volunteering here. I was a bit unsure about how people would react to me being here but there's a woman who drove down from Canada last night, and a French guy who's part of the leadership in this office somehow. He has a huge Obama sign above the handlebars of his bicycle, I'm not totally sure how he can even see!

The Japanese news crew is still here and about half an hour ago they started filming, which involved the entire crew running into the office at breakneck speed over and over again. You'd have thought Obama himself was making a speech in here or something, they were practically falling over themselves.

I just ran out to grab a diet coke and ended up stuck in a queue at the store behind a Republican Poll Clerk. She was incredibly rude and abrupt but I'm not going to explicitly draw any kind of correlation to her party affiliation for that!

The place is overrun with reporters looking for things to report on but so far - knock on wood - there's nothing much to say except so far so good! we've got crews from france and japan who were clearly expecting there to be drama. But then I think everyone was!

Our campaign director Chet has had about two hours sleep apparently. He just went from sending someone to check on a polling station that is apparently not wheelchair accessible, to fixing the toilet.

8am. Technically, halfway through my shift, but apparently we are now "the crew" for the day. We're checking poll locations and confirming registrations for people who don't have that information, and noting down where poll monitors are and any issues they report. There's only one phone line!

Someone just came in complaining that the ballot paper was confusing. Unfortunately in New York State it always has been - you basically have to tick off a series of rows rather than just one. If you're voting democrat it's Column A all the way down, and that's what all the campaign literature says, but people are confused by the fact that Obama's name appears in several of the rows.

Still, so far, no major problems have been reported.

The voter registration lookup website is down... whoop de doo.

It's 7.15am and I've been at the Harlem for Obama headquarters since a little before 6... it's pretty chaotic right now as the wife of their communications systems guy got hit by a car on saturday (while organising a campaign trip to Pennsylvania) so we're still figuring out how to work without him. I was expecting to be out helping get mobility impaired people to the polls but it looks like we're going to be here at least for a while.

The atmosphere in the air is electric! When I was walking here at 5.45 this morning there were already people gathering at polling stations - I ran home about an hour later to get my laptop and by then there were lines starting to snake out.

And it's a beautiful day, and so far the talking heads on the TV in the corner (at a slight slant because it's on a chair...) are giving us good news. Stay tuned!

Things in Louisiana are looking better. Gustav's heading west of New Orleans, and has been downgraded to category 2 (Katrina was a 3) with no significant increase in strength predicted. There will be surges but right now they are expected to be within the range that New Orleans flood walls can handle. Reports from the French Quarter are of little more than badly windy weather - tree branches, ripped signs, nothing worse. The whole thing is a media circus, so of course you know all of this :)

It's such a relief, and I'm not sure how sheepish I feel about freaking out. Partly, of course, because it's not over yet. And partly because I think every precaution was warranted. The issue is always going to be the false alarm weakening the impact of the next warning, but right now, especially with the rebuilding process from Katrina is still going on, I think it's worth being extra careful.

Mayor Nagin gave the order to evacuate New Orleans. In doing so, he said that Gustav is going to be worse - much worse - than Katrina. It has a footprint that is more than double, and the surges it is expected to produce are two to three times taller than the flood defences on the West Bank, which will apparently become a "bathtub".

He said, if you don't get out, "you're on your own".

Now, he's not known for saying the right thing. For being completely transparent, or for responding appropriately to challenging situations. But there's one thing he knows he needs to not screw up, and that's the evacuation of New Orleans. I can't figure out whether that means he'd be over-inflating the risks to get everyone to actually go and go fast, or whether he would have wanted to speak more measuredly in order to avoid panic and chaos, and only used such strong language because of the genuine severity of the threat.

I'm as much worried about the process of evacuation as I am about the storm damage. Psychologically it's got to be incredibly challenging, especially the day after the 3rd anniversary. Logistically it's going to be pandemonium, and I hope there are no accidents, missing persons or delays. I have no concept of what the services for evacuees are going to be like. Two days ago, the Red Cross was already sending teams but the level of response was nowhere near what it eventually reached in September 2005 to deal with the outpouring of people - much, much too late. Finally, safety-wise, if there's looting again, I'm as much sad for the people losing their belongings as I am afraid that anyone who stays behind to either loot or prevent looting will be i very serious danger. And I'm worried that a lot of people will stay behind because they're afraid for their belongings - their quite possibly quite recently re-acquired belongings.

But I am worried about the storm damage too. I'm scared for the Lower 9th, where all that would be damaged is an amazing rebuild project rather than any existing homes, but it's become such a symbol of hope and collective engagement. I'm scared for the tiny coastal communities no one ever paid much attention to before, during or after the last storm, who are going to get pounded again. I'm scared for the entire community, even the ones who stay safe and dry, surviving the social and economic fallout of another storm. I'm scared for the cats and dogs at Animal Rescue, and all the others who aren't allowed onto evacuation buses or who run away because of the chaos. I'm worried about Rose, the old lady living alone in the rotting house who had hair past her waist because she forgot about cutting it since Katrina. I'm worried about Shine Productions, and the family on Hermes Street with the daughter called Ashley who wore a turquoise dress to prom (I gutted her bedroom and had to throw out all her mildewed photos). I'm worried about my friend Sidney who drove to New Orleans from LA after Katrina, organised a donation drive and a convoy of trucks, and never looked back. Relief Spark, her organisation, has hosted thousands of volunteers in the past three years, gutting houses, rebuilding, cleaning parks, helping at the animal shelter in with an ambitious environmental project. I'm worried about my friend Andi Hoffman, the founder of that project, Green Light, and his young family and his beautiful, colourful house with wonky floors near Tulane. I'm worried about Tulane, and about Stephanie, the teenage girl I met there who founded Youth of Catastrophe after her experience of surviving Katrina.

I have so much faith in the people I met in New Orleans, and in the spirit of service and volunteering that prompted the enormous response last time. I know that Katrina taught everyone many valuable lessons in handling a situation like this. But I can't even get my head around the idea of something twice as big.

It looks like Tropical Storm Gustav is gathering steam... It was downgraded from a Hurricane but it sounds like it's going back up again. The governor has activated the National Guard. Whether it's a false alarm or not, it's good that the administration is being more pro-active.

But, good god, if this does happen again...

I wrote a year ago that things were good, on balance. That there was progress, hope, innovation and transformation. Going back there in March confirmed that in my mind. But on an individual level, there are still a lot of people in very serious trouble. There are still a lot of people in temporary accommodation thousands of miles away. There are still neighborhoods of rotting, flood-damaged houses.

The past three years have been a lesson in human endurance and fortitude. But they've also been a living hell for so many people that I'm terrified of the emotional fallout from a second storm as much as anything else.

So yeah... pray, cross your fingers, light a candle, sing a song. Think strong, solid thoughts about those new flood barriers. Think happy, comforting thoughts for anyone who does get evacuated and gets to sit on a cot in a gym somewhere, wondering. Listen to some jazz. Put some chicory in your coffee. New Orleans, one way or the other, will eventually be OK. But let's hope it doesn't get handed another mountain to climb.

So, I think I might have realized that school is in fact the place for me... I was totally gutted by not getting in to NYU again and immediately discounted the idea both of applying elsewhere this year and re-applying there next year. I took it as some sort of sign.

Then three days ago - within about an hour of sorting out my new house - I found information about PhD studentships at the University of Kingston, in rights, conflict and mass violence (not the perpetration thereof...). I wanted it so instantly and keenly that it made me remember all the really good reasons I had for wanting to go back to school generally as opposed to just NYU specifically. Chief among them: the biggest challenge career-wise of being here as opposed to New York is that I've left my network behind. Through my professors at NYU, and subsequently through my various internships, I had all kinds of connections and open doors across the humanitarian sector and more broadly the international affairs world. Going back to school here would give me similar connections in the UK.

Also, I like school :)

(eloquent, I know. Yes, that would be a PhD I'm thinking about doing :))

A joyful picture for Margi - not daisies, but somehow, while less appropriate, even happier!

I have been so spoilt this week! Today was a great day to wrap it up - right before the daily dose of apocalyptic rain, Sidney and I, along with her BF and his adorable kid, went out to City Park. It's totally gorgeous. Sidney and I got our volunteer on and picked up a whole bunch of trash from around the lake to stop the many and varied ducks, geese and other waterfowl, not to mention the turtles and the fish, from eating it by accident. Toddling around with rubber gloves and trash attracted lots of lovely attention and I had some great conversations with parkgoers who came over to say thanks. This one lovely little old lady was walking with her granddaughter and she told me these lovely stories about the cat they rescued after the storm, and the 18 boys from a mennonite school in the midwest who gutted her house. So we wander around the gorgeous park, and then we do some visting proper in the botanical gardens, where the little boy gives this very detailed tour and runs around and has us putting on a play (on stage no less - there's an outdoor theater there) about dogs, frogs, bunnies and alligators which unfortunately involved lots of fratricide and cannibalism amongst the various animal families. And get this - there's a miniature railway in the gardens! Two, actually - there's a little train that runs all the way around city park, of the human-transporting variety, but then in one section of the botanical gardens there's a scale-model type train set with several different trains on different tracks, tunnels, bridges, and replicas of different Nawlins neighborhoods. It's amazing. I've no idea if it suffered any storm damage but one way or the other it's in great condition and a sight to behold. I could have stayed there all day but we *had* to go and play hide and seek and pretend to be pandas.

Then I got dropped off at home just as today's installment of HardCore Rain Lousiana got underway (I don't know if the photos will really represent, but apparently it was 2&1/2 inches in an hour! and copious thunder and lightning directly overhead). Once it stopped, within about twenty minutes it was like nothing had ever happened except for some of the deepest puddles, and I was able to head out in a strapless sundress and flip flops to get a pedicure, before walking into town along yet another scenic route for dinner at Rio Mar again (Sidney's boyfriend's seafood restaurant - he also has an argentinian steakhouse which sounds totally amazing).

It's definitely been a unique experience - both today and the whole week - and totally not what i expected at all, both in terms of the city and the situation and of my experience here as a "volunteer". I have done a lot of work - walking dogs, cleaning cats, calling green light applicants, compiling volunteer and donor contact information for relief spark, and today cleaning the park - but I also really feel that I've spent the week being spoilt rotten, driven around, fed, and shown things and people. I know that I'd be being too hard on myself if i blamed myself for failing to put in a full week of hard manual labor, but i think a bit more work and a bit less food and driving would have helped me feel like i contributed more.

This is by no means the end of this reflection, but for right now, I'm calling it a night :-)

Today has been a very good day. I'm all nice and clean, which always makes me feel really good, I had a lovely, healthy dinner al fresco (and a delicious, not at all healthy lunch - apparently the best barbecue in Nawlins, which I am perfectly prepared to believe *drool*), I bought myself a present with one of my birthday gift cards, and breakfast for tomorrow from the cutest shop ever (sucré again, i went there on wednesday), I have a big stack of dryer-warm clean clothes (which got cleaned mid afternoon today as a result of Pepe, the rescue dog we've been looking after all week, peeing on me, but clean clothes make me happy anyway, and besides, the peeing is clearly a sign that he now thinks i belong to him which is adorable), and I had a very accomplished afternoon. In less self-indulgent news, I also can now give a fairly simple opinion of the situation in New Orleans, and it's a positive one.

New Orleans is OK, and is eventually, probably quite soon, going to be fine. I realised that when I finally got to see the Lower Ninth Ward today, which 18 months ago looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off and is now mostly grass as far as the eye can see (admittedly, it's overgown and full of weeds - more on that in a sec).

There is scandalous corruption at all levels of government, but whilst Newark, NJ, hasn't had to deal with a major natural disaster, I think they were in worse shape politically until the elections last year (which proves both that things in Nawlins could be worse, and that they stand an excellent chance of getting better).

There are individual cases of heartbreaking distress, but not all as a result of the hurricane, and every community unfortunately has such cases.

A tremendous amount of work remains to be done, but the current headline news both in terms of volunteer activity and homes awaiting repair/gutting/reconstruction/demolition is lawn-mowing - I can't find the articles online, but a free weekly paper called the Gambit has this completely adorable article about a 13-year old boy who gives up his saturday mornings to mow lawns in City Park (as part of a group called the Mow-Rons currently making headlines all over the place), and the Time-Picayune had a story in the last couple of days about homeowners being fined for not maintaining yards on their vacant houses (which is admittedly rubbish, because it's really hard and probably seems a bit futile to organise to have your lawn in NOLA mowed when you're in Texas and the reason you're there is 'cause your old house is in bits - but honestly, unmowed lawns and the effort it takes to get them mowed is a way better problem to have than toxic mold poisoning, homelessness, looting etc, all prevalant last time I was here).

And... I have it from reliable sources and my own observations that real estate prices both commercial and residential are back on par with before/other cities; there are both re-opened and brand new utterly fabulous bars, restaurants and shops all over the many wonderful neighborhoods in the city; there is national media attention being paid to both the ups and downsides of the situation; there are some truly fabulous nonprofits doing a range of really great things, with solid support from both donors and volunteers, and two good years of experience resulting in some highly effective organising and communication; there are heaps and heaps (highly scientific, i know) more kids coming back to school this week and next week than there were last summer, and the recovery school district is ready for them - they hired extra teachers ahead of time just in case, and had space ready to move into if the original allocation proved insufficient, which it did, but they were prepared and the fact that so many more families have come back is brilliant; everyday life is utterly normal, and even particularly pleasant for the wonderfulness of being in New Orleans where there are so many great places to eat, sights to see, musics to hear and moments to savour...

People don't pretend that the storm didn't happen. Local media coverage features and abundance of issues, including in the social and entertainments sections, both as substance and as illustration or comic asides. People are angry at the government's failings, sad about what was destroyed and the many lives lost, fearful of the long term economic, human and cultural impact (but not really, I don't get the impression, of another storm) - but they're moving on. Healing is well underway. Other things are just as important in everyone's lives. At this point, a lot of the recovery services here are pretty similar to social services offered (or at any rate, that should be offered) to other communities weakened for other, less dramatic and essentially unreported reasons all over the western world.

One really good, positive, position piece:
http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2007-08-28/cover_story5.php

This made me cry: http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/pageone/pdfs/2007/20070829_A01_metro.pdf

Next time I come back to New Orleans, it won't be because I feel like I have help to offer, some ability that doesn't exist here. It will be because I love this place, not for having survived the storm but for what it was before, and what it is now even though i can't tell what's new and what isn't, and because I've never been to Mardi Gras of Jazzfest and they both look like the most fun ever. I'll probably end up back at the Relief Spark office but that's because I have grown to really adore Sidney and hope to stay friends with her and see her both here and in New York. I will probably work on some fundraising for Green Light from New York, but like I said, I see them as being much more than a recovery project. I do continue to see coming here to spend money as a great way to support regeneration as well as a self indulgent trip to a lovely destination, but I feel that way about a bunch of places.

I feel like this would be a really good way to wrap up my NOLA story, but seeing as I do have another day here and that I have a lot of enthusiasm about being here I'm sure I will have more to say. I also want to share some photos, which won't be developed until I get back to New York. And I think I probably will keep blogging here for a while, about altogether different matters - I've got a lot to think about at the moment. That's yet another wonderful thing about New Orleans - it's given me a much-needed break for reflection, and something to focus my physical and mental energy on. So yeah, an altogether less altruistic visit than was originally intended - but I think that that's a really, really good thing. For me, and for New Orleans.