More News from Baton Rouge

UPDATE: An email from a professor/administrator at LSU.

UPDATE: It's not about Baton Rouge specifically, but you MUST READ this post by Miss Alli at This Is Not Over. Exactly, yes, perfect, precisely, eloquently put. Please read it now. Via a comment at blackfeminism.org.

Last night I received another update from Baton Rouge (here's the first). Brief excerpts removed to protect my friend's privacy:

Well, things have sort of gotten back to normal here (I use the term loosely). BR has doubled in size and roads the grocery stores can't keep up with the demand. I had a choice of lemons or cucumbers in the produce section yesterday. But classes did resume today. Everybody tried to pretend that the largest field hospital ever wasn't in the assembly center and that there weren't bodies filling the makeshift morgue in the gym. No one mentions the many missing students who filled the desks 2 weeks ago, but rather try to welcome the 1200 new students from NO schools who are now at LSU. It's weird trying to go on as if the devastation didn't happen.

On another note, I learned yesterday just how much the people from BR and NO dislike one another. The people from NO think BR is a small conservative town with little to offer and bars that close at 2 am instead of staying open 24/7. The BR folks see those from NO as bohemians from a dirty city and were not in the least surprised by the violence that took place last week. For most locals here, NO is a place to visit and wash off as soon as you leave. As the living situation isn't likely to change anytime soon, the tension is sure to increase.

My houseguests took off for San Diego today and plan to fly back here when people are allowed back in NO. Both lost their homes and have no intention of returning to Louisiana to live.

[. . .]

Thanks to all of you for your warm wishes. With I-10 pretty much destroyed from Mississippi east, looks like I'll make it back to [a state in the east] for the holidays at the earliest. And phone service is still pretty crazy, so I'll return those calls when I can get a line out.