Thoughts and prayers are going down to Louisiana, my home state, this weekend.  As many of you know, I was born in south Louisiana and I have a lot of relatives and friends down there who have evacuated or who are considering an evacuation.  Not to mention the fact that the town where my father was raised was wiped off the map in Hurricane Katrina.  Let me tell you, it was a sad thing when I went down there six months later to see Treadaway Lane in Port Sulphur bare without a house or human to be found, and to see my grandparents' old house moved about 50 feet from its original location - largely intact but of course a shell of itself.  I'm telling you, ghost towns are creepy even during the daytime.

All I can say is that another hurricane in the New Orleans area may very well bury that once great city and the metropolitan area for good.  We can only hope & pray it finds another place to go.  A lot of great people live down there, and they really don't deserve a repeat with Hurricane Gustav or Hanna for that matter.  We already lost enough treasures with Katrina, we don't need to lose more.  Bonus points for any of you who can identify one such treasure we lost in Katrina, who is pictured above.

Quite a bit can happen between now and Labor Day, so let's hope for the best.  Please keep folks down there in your thoughts.  And pray it affects as few people as possible.