New Orleanians embrace DYK

Rebuilding Together, the relief group we have been working with, was happy too, as they raised several hundred at the bar and will receive $970 from us. Including the $800 we raised in our pre-order campaign, we helped them raise between $2,000 and $2,500. But perhaps even more than the money, the feeling at the launch was what was important. Dar said it felt like a "homecoming" and others seemed ebullient. It was like they were recharging for the work ahead.

Press Street, the organization that connected us with Rebuilding Together and The Saturn Bar, would make Buddha blush with their selflessness. They deserve tons of credit. Our point-woman in this whole affair was Anne Gisleson, who helped us with everything as she also dealt with being seven months pregnant. In fact, her whole family inspired me. One of Anne's sisters helped us arrange all the food, another talked to me about relief organizations with the intensity and knowledge of someone who is making a difference, and the Dad of all these fine women took the day off from his law career to smoke four ducks – if you calculate his hourly rate times the four hours he spent cooking for us, that's some expensive duck!

I came out of the Saturn very positive about New Orleans. And that's saying a lot considering just hours before the reading, we toured the Lower Ninth. I felt sick looking at block after block of the festering devastation. Churches flattened, houses warped, bent and smashed, cars tossed here and there. And the chaos just inside the open front doors ... it's the most depressing thing I've ever seen and no photo quite captures it. So much work ahead. But no city — not even New York — can do what New Orleans does for the U.S. It's our safety valve, where steam from this repressed, uptight culture of ours can be blown off and where we learn to relax and enjoy life a little more. The city must be saved, and all of us need to pitch in.