This is going to be a completely unprecedented election, not just for New Orleans but for the entire country. I don't think anybody has a firm idea of who is going to participate.

African-American voters had solid turnout.

Voters are saying that they want someone capable of operating a government, someone who is steady at the helm. And considering the challenge to the city right now, I don't think that's a fact that should surprise anyone.

So many of them (blacks) are evacuated. So many who are back are not living where they used to. We were having trouble finding them on the phone.

This is the first opportunity that we've had in three decades to have a white mayor in a majority African American city.

Time and task were both disorienting, for if you were to remove everything from our lives that depends on electricity to function, homes and offices would become no more than the chambers and passages of limestone caves- simple shelter from wind and rain, far less useful than the first homes at Plymouth Plantation or a wigwam. No way to keep out cold, or heat, for long. No way to preserve food, or to cook it. The things that define us, quiet as rock outcrops - the dumb screens and dials, the senseless clicks of on/off switches- without their purpose, they lose the measure of their beauty and we are left alone in the dark with countless useless things.