Well, it seems at the moment that we've survived Gustav. Early reports indicate that we probably had 3-5 feet of water under our house (which is about 8 feet up on stilts), so, perhaps no serious harm done. We'll know more later today when some of our friends still in Bay St. Louis check back in with us. It's been interesting to watch all of the news reports and coverage.

This storm we spent in Grand Bay, Ala., with Heather's folks, and never once lost power. Yesterday was a constant wall-to-wall Gustav story ... today, mostly back to business as usual.

I'm glad. I'm happy that there isn't nearly as much to say as there was after Katrina. True, I've got some serious, unpleasant work ahead of me, cleaning out my shop/studio under the house ... and true, my lawn mower, bicycles, BBQ grill, and various hand tools (and possibly the water heater) will need to be replaced, but, that's small potatoes compared to last time.

So this morning I was watching some news shows (trying to see if I could go back home ... I can't) and saw some coverage of the Republican National Convention. First off let me say, I'm somewhat politically agnostic ... I'm sure there's some perfect system out there, I just don't know what it is, and this year I'm really having a hard time deciding which Ivy-League Educated Millionaire will best represent me and my interests ... but my point was about the Republicans.

The reporter for this segment was making a great deal out of John McCain's comments about cutting back on the ceremonies, and only doing those things which were absolutely necessary at the convention. The reporter then went on to show footage of the lavish parties, flowing drinks, and live bands at the parties last night. As they shone their camera's lights on embarrassed looking congressmen, senators, and other Republicans they asked, "Don't you feel any qualms or have any problems about attending a party like this while this disaster is going on? Is this party one of McCain's 'absolute necessities'?"

That's when I thought, "YES!! It is absolutely NECESSARY!!!"

As a proud former resident of New Orleans, let me assure you that if the evacuation had not been so dire or urgent, New Orleanians WOULD HAVE BEEN partying exactly the same way! (Wherever they were, I'm sure they were partying as best they could!) Even those of us on the Mississippi Gulf Coast would party as well. (Even I threw a Hurricane Party/Art Show the day before evacuating!)

How does it help those of us in harm's way for those people to stay home and feel bad? It doesn't.

That's also when I thought about all of the caterers, florists, bartenders, waiters, and especially MUSICIANS. For everybody WORKING at these parties, they were absolutely a necessity.

As some of you might know, I'm a musician. My wife is a musician. My father, sister and brothers are all musicians. Our friends are musicians, waiters, bartenders, florists and caterers.

The organizers of these parties (Republicans) made it possible for all of these artists and service workers to survive and pay their rents, and buy groceries, and do what they do for a living.

After 9/11, many people felt guilty about celebrating anything, or doing anything that might seem ... inappropriate. No one had any Christmas parties that year, and Mardi Gras was extremely subdued ... But these are the times of the year when musicians and waiters and all the rest make much of their money for the year.

I know many musicians who couldn't make house payments that year, and many who had to scale back on many of the necessities of daily life.

So I say to the reporters, let these Republicans have their parties. As I shovel mud out of my shop, I will hold them no ill will.

If New Orleans and the Whole Gulf Coast stand for ANYTHING, I think it would be the idea that you will always have care, strife and trouble, so find your fun when you can. I know that my friends on the Coast understand that just because we partied last night, that doesn't mean we won't help you rebuild your house tonight.

And we really hate to see a good party spoiled by something as trivial as a hurricane.

Steve and I are wondering whether his art show this Saturday evening will go on. Should he hang the show? Should I buy the hors d'oeuvres? Will anyone come, or will they all be packing and/or leaving? Should we reschedule it?

We haven't needed to evacuate since Katrina. A few times, we've thought we would need to leave, but fickle weather patterns kept us in place. Not until Gustav have we seriously begun to hold our collective breath and pack our collective belongings.

Evacuations before Katrina were usually made with reasonable concern and mild anxiety. Now, tensions are running high and many folks can't help but fear the worst. Odds are against another Katrina, we know this. But we're watching for the slightest tremor in the forecast track.

On Wednesday we became nervous. People began asking each other, "Are you leaving? Where are you going? When are you going?" Hurried phone calls to hotels revealed that Vicksburg was already booked up and the closest available room was in Philadelphia, Miss. Rumors that Jim Cantore had checked into a hotel in Biloxi lightened the mood momentarily. (Cantore is the Storm Stud; the Hurricane Hunk; the guy we don't want anywhere near us.)

We are guessing when evacuations might be ordered — earlier, this time? One friend says he will not wait. He and his family had to swim out of their house last time, and won't do that again. Another friend is worried about her corn fields, which she lost in Katrina, and her racehorse, which is in Breaux Bridge, and will have to be moved as well. My father phoned to check on our plans, and mentioned that he will be moving his boats, trailers, tractors and tools to a relative's property north of the interstate. This will be no small feat. Evacuation is a lot of work when you have time to plan for it correctly.

Personally, I am wondering what to take this time. I've just recently begun to feel reasonably equipped for everyday living, having reacquired the sundries of a household over the past three years. Oh well, that's just stuff. Losing those things is a hassle, but isn't horrible. Again we gather the pictures and personal mementos. We are taking many of our musical instruments to higher ground north of the interstate. They can't all go with us, but we can at least give them a fighting chance. I am puzzling over how to evacuate our new cat, which is an outdoor cat and doesn't get along with our elderly indoor cats. We can't just leave her. So I will hopefully be able to buy a new cat carrier and I pray that all three will fit in our car and that the little darlings won't harass each other on our way to wherever we go. What we do with them when we get there, I will think about later.

When I was born, Hurricane Camille had happened three years previously, almost to the day. I grew up hearing mention of Camille from time to time, but not a whole lot. I heard about it when I noticed a stain on my grandparent's paneling (the waterline), when I inquired about steps leading to nowhere (former front stoops) and whenever a storm was heading this way (how would it compare to Camille?; how much water there was in Camille). My aunt Theresa composed the dedication for a sign erected in Waveland to commemorate the 1969 storm. Beyond that, life went on. Camille was just part of local history.

As so often happens, I grew a bit older and gained a more personal perspective of the local timeline. Now three years have passed since Katrina, and it remains very much a part of coastal consciousness. I am amazed, though, to hear newcomers say things like, "Oh, yes, I heard stories about that storm" as if it's a historic event. Of course, it is an historic event. I know that. But it doesn't seem that way, because we are still feeling its effects.

There has indeed been change and progress since the storm, although it can be difficult to notice when you live it from day to day. Last week I saw a video made by volunteers from Florida who not only came to help, but who gifted our schools with pre-filled book bag for all our students. The video showed images of our communities not long after the storm. It reminded me that much debris has been cleared, many standing houses have been mudded out and repaired and most people don't continue to look shell-shocked. The amount of construction around here is impressive when compared with pictures of vacant lots. Speaking of that, congratulations to the Hancock County Water and Sewer Board on its brand-new building!

Despite all this, our coastal communities are still in recovery. Many individuals have rebuilt or repaired. My life, for instance, is relatively normal. Many more people are still working on it. But the towns and cities are dealing with money woes, government offices housed in Quonset huts or trailers, condemned buildings, fragile economies and future storm readiness. In Bay St. Louis and Waveland, we have businesses that have opened or reopened since the storm. Some are surviving, some are struggling, and some have had to close due to a flagging economy or high insurance costs.

Most of the FEMA trailer parks have closed. Wonderful that we're putting all that behind us, some might say. However, many former residents of those parks have nowhere to live. It isn't that they don't want to work or be responsible citizens. There are some cases like that, of course, just as there are anywhere. But there are those who work and do their best to support their families, those who were renters before the storm or who just didn't have insurance. The problem now is that there are very few places to rent. And, as advertised, simple economics drives up rent prices on those few places that are available beyond the reach of low wage-earners. I recently spoke with a working mother who is desperately looking for a place to live. She and her children were moved to a hotel out of a FEMA trailer, and now have 60 days to find a place to rent. I'm not sure what will happen to them.

Not long after Katrina, I wondered when the time would come that local news would not have some mention of the storm. It hasn't happened yet. Every single day there are headlines about insurance, FEMA, Katrina cottages, building codes, repairs or new city plans. I suppose it's just part of who we are as a coastal community now. This "recovery" has a broader scope and meaning than anything I could have imagined. The good thing, and the thing that keeps many folks here, is the support that continues between and among people. Dealing with the aftermath of Katrina is something we all understand, and it is why we celebrate with each other when businesses are reopened or houses are rebuilt, why we loan each other things that were lost and not yet re-acquired, and why we allow for some continuing PTSD symptoms from each other. It is why we laugh together at every opportunity, why we hug more often and why we help each other get on with things.

Before the storm, we counted ourselves lucky to live on Mollere Drive, known far and wide as the prettiest street in Waveland, Miss. My husband had retired from a D.C. job and we moved here in 2000. We had just finished a five year renovation of our entire home and thought everything perfect. We had added a covered patio complete with a hot tub and John finally had the workshop he had longed for. Then Hurricane Katrina hit and we lost everything.

After the hurricane we sent my mom, who lived with us, to stay with my brother near Seattle. We had friends who urged us to relocate, but for John and me it was an easy decision to stay in Waveland and rebuild. This is where we chose to retire and spend the rest of our lives and the hurricane did not change that. One of the many reasons was that in the five years we had been here, we had formed fast friendships with so many people. We love being within walking distance of the beach, we love the slow pace of life and we enjoy being a part of a lively and diverse arts community.

However, not everyone was able to make that decision. The hurricane tore apart more than our town and the houses on our street; it destroyed the fabric of our community. Many of our neighbors who evacuated to other parts of the country have remained there for one reason or another -- jobs, schools, health care. We still miss them.

John and my niece, Barbara, spent four months sorting through the layers and layers of debris on our property, salvaging what they could of ours and our neighbors. Finally, we signed the forms to bulldoze and clear our property. Much like pioneers, we looked at the land, walked it off and laid tree branches and pieces of wood to mark off where we wanted the various rooms in our new house. We decided on a different floor plan; one without hallways, with bedrooms opening off a large central open space. We built this house with our kids and grandkids in mind. As the plan evolved we sent copies for Mom and the kids to see.

The exterior is raised Acadian style as evidenced by the pitch of the roof and the spacious porches which stretch across both the front and back. Underneath are the elevator shaft, parking and John's workshop. Following the FEMA guidelines we built up 8 feet, bringing us to 23 feet above sea level.

John spent hours and hours researching building materials. Our goal was not to build bigger but better. We decided on a SIP (structural insulated panel) system for strength and energy efficiency. John acted as general contractor and we contracted with our then son-in-law to build the house. Along the way, John bartered lumber that he had salvaged after the storm for plumbing services and we engaged another friend to do the electrical. Labor was in short supply.

For 19 long months, John and I lived in a trailer while we planned and built our home. There were countless delays, frustrations with the insurance company and astonishment as the cost of rebuilding kept going up. I could write a book about the endless paperwork involved in insurance claims and applying for grants. Looking back, I do not know how we did it. I've got to admit it was hard but we survived by making a pact not to be angry or depressed at the same time. We had to be strong for each other.

We were able to get another trailer and Mom came home. She kept us fed and did the wash, which allowed us more time to work on the house. All the kids helped when they could – even the grandkids. Brett, Sanjana, and Raj strung telephone and computer cable in the attic while Amy and Andy helped with the porch railings. The grandkids blessed the house with hundreds of hand–drawn crosses on the studs before the sheetrock went in.

We were the first on our street to rebuild and during the process, our neighbors would come by to watch, ask questions and offer help. The process of rebuilding was a rewarding and unique experience. We have all grown closer as we have shared ideas and sources for building materials, fixtures and appliances. We know each other's homes inside and out.

My job was picking out the windows, doors, cabinets, wall finishes, trim work, tile, flooring and wall colors. John sanded doors he'd salvaged, built shelves, installed sinks and toilets, toiled ceaselessly in every possible way.

We began work on the house in July 2006 and we moved in as soon as we had a bedroom, a working toilet and sink, which was in early March 2007. Workers continued for another few weeks while John and Barbara finished the four giant beams they had salvaged. The 23-foot beams are suspended in the large central open area with light fixtures and fans hanging from them. The interior of the house is very contemporary and spare in contrast to the old house, which had been filled with antiques and an extensive art collection.

This summer, three of our grandchildren, Raj, Anna and Meera, spent a week visiting, going crabbing, playing at the beach going sailing for the first time and checking out books at the Waveland Library. At the end of the week, they decided to hold a talent show featuring magic, art and karate. On their own initiative, they printed tickets and a program inviting neighbors and family. They also
served banana bread and pudding cups they made themselves. At the end of the show they announced that all donations would go to a local charity. Including their unspent allowance, they collected $33.00, which they donated to the rebuilding of the Waveland Library, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Today, there are five houses on our street and we celebrate each one. Collectively, we've bought a tiller. For not only do we have to rebuild our homes, we also have to rebuild our yards – something else we took for granted. Starting from scratch, we've added truck loads of fill, then sod and now trees and shrubs. When we planted twenty crepe myrtle trees along our property line, our next door neighbors offered to split the costs. One of the empty lots has become the Mollere Drive Community Garden and, next spring our street will be on the Spring Pilgrimage.

Rebuilding encompasses not only houses and yards but our street infrastructure as well. New water, sewer and gas lines have been installed and, after months of dirt roads, our street has been paved. Each home boasts a sewer bladder in the front yard, but they will be removed when we are tied into the new sewer system. The mayor and department heads have held numerous public meetings to keep citizens informed of the infrastructure projects and our alderman sends out monthly newsletters.

John continues to be the spokesperson and leader for our street. He salvaged our "Christmas Card Lane" signs in the storm debris and saved them. When the City decided to bring back the Christmas parade, our street was added to the parade route. It may seem like a small step, but it was a huge step in our recovery. "Christmas Card Lane" is a 30 year old tradition around here.

When the Waveland Community Coalition handed out awards this spring for Best Neighborhood, John and Mom accepted the award on behalf of our neighbors on Mollere Drive.

House by house, street by street, Waveland is coming back to life.

This year the trees have made a comeback.

For the past several years, lots of things have looked like a haunted house here on the coast. Dead, twisted trees, bare branches, bark all painted in silvery grays. But this year the vegetation looks thicker and lusher.

It took me a while to notice. I spent most of the summer trying to figure out why our above-ground pool was staying so cold. (Poor Heather could hardly stand to get in it!) Then I realized that all of the trees on the lot next door had leaves on them, and the sun wasn't hitting the pool until about noon. The trees were so green that even a colorblind person like me could tell.

Life is a funny thing, and sometimes something can stay bottled up inside for years before bursting back out in a showy display.

My life has been that way lately.

A long time ago, before Heather and I moved to New Orleans, I was an artist ... or at least I liked to think that I was. It was a longtime running joke of my life that if art didn't pan out I could always fall back on something practical like music! The problem was that I didn't really enjoy many aspects of the "art world". I'm no businessman, I'll be the first to admit, and much of surviving as an artist involves having to deal with business: searching for galleries, keeping press releases updated, haggling with customers over prices, and taking commissions that one didn't really want to do, just to pay bills. So I quit. I really haven't painted, created, or shown anything since we left Mobile (the occasional coloring sheet or mask not withstanding).

But, like many bodily functions, the artistic nature cannot always be ignored. (For instance, you can decide that you're never going to exhale again, but sooner or later it's going to come out.)

Recently Heather and I took a trip up to Memphis. We drove along Highway 61, ate barbeque, listened to the blues the whole way (in addition to performing them with Vince Johnson and the Plantation All-Stars on Beale Street), saw a lot of beautiful parts of the great state of Mississippi, and came back reborn. Well at least, I did. Like I said, I really hadn't picked up a paint brush since I left Mobile.

While living in the trailer, I just didn't feel inspired to make any art, nor did I have room.

I know that lots of artists in this area have found artistic inspiration in the storm, and the ensuing debris.

I am not one of them.

Instead, I found myself inspired by the South as I know it, and how it's been my whole life: hot and humid, dripping with kudzu and Spanish moss, hot boiled peanuts eaten out a paper bag on twisty back roads, Civil War battlefield memorials, odd roadside attractions, and music that has inspired the whole world -- not the bomb crater leftovers of a monster storm.

So, when we got back, I found myself painting.

Not in the California sense of "I FOUND myself" while painting. No, more of a gentler "Hey, Look at that, I'm holding a brush and seem to be painting again! How'd that happen?"

What started as one simple blue guitar painted quickly and hastily on a scrap of broken board from my dock (not storm debris, but destroyed by me when I cut down a small dead tree which was taller than I had realized) turned into two, and then two more different ones, and then one idea led to another and another and another and ,before I knew it, I had turned my last days of summer into LOTS of new paintings.

While describing this outpouring of artwork to our bass player Jesse Loya at a gig one night, I made a simple remark: "I need to have y'all and some other friends over to have a look at what I've been working on." To which he responded, "Why don't you just bring them to the Hall and we'll have a show!"

The only word I can think of to describe my friend Jesse is "dynamo." In addition to repairing his own house, his wife Kerrie's clothing shop Jet Set and countless other contracting jobs in the area, Jesse has also completely refurbished the historic 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis (Not to mention playing gigs with our band Heather and the Monkey King. Honestly, I don't know when the man sleeps!)

The 100 Men Hall was started as an African American Social Aid and Pleasure Club (at least, that's what they're called in New Orleans). One hundred men got together to pool their money to do nice things for the community, and to have a good time while doing it. This hall was essentially their clubhouse, meeting room and dancehall. During the '40s and '50s the hall was an active stop on the "Chitlins" circuit, and played host to a number of prominent jazz and blues stars. Over the years, it fell into disrepair before being heavily damaged in Katrina.

I find it humbling, amazing and very fitting that my new artworks, inspired by the land, music and culture of Mississippi, are going to be displayed in a Mississippi dancehall, whose rafters are still ringing with the music and cheers from the very folks that did the inspiring.

And so, this year, instead of marking the anniversary of the storm, I'll be joining the rest of the arts community in Bay Saint Louis in celebrating the anniversary of the day after the storm. It's going to be a big party, both in the 100 Men Hall, and all around Main Street and the train depot in Bay St. Louis. Remember, here in Mississippi, if you know about a party, that means you're invited, so y'all are all invited. Come on by if you can make it. Unless, of course, there's another storm out in the Gulf. Then y'all might want to stay home, and we might want to come see you.

When I was asked to write this diary for the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I took the time to go back and read my other diaries through the first two years. I was amazed at what has been accomplished since then.

I am now in a new house and have been since December 2006. It is a joy to be blessed as I am with this new home, and just about everything inside is new. I have never had a dishwasher or a garbage disposal, but now I do. I don't even mind getting out in the heat we have been having and cutting the grass. It is a pleasure to have grass to cut. I have a utility room with a real washer and dryer (not the stackable kind), and a small freezer. I have been so blessed that I had the hundreds of volunteers from Lagniappe Church come and build my house for me. And I am blessed that Bill LeBlanc, my next door neighbor, gave of his time and work to draw up my plans, to assist the volunteers and me in making this house a reality.
 
We still have no grocery store here in Bay St. Louis or Waveland. Yes, we can now cross the beautiful new bridge that opened May 17, 2007, and drive 30 minutes to grocery stores in Long Beach or farther to Gulfport. Or we can drive up to Diamondhead, about 20 minutes away, and go to their grocery store. But we still do not have one ourselves. We do appreciate the hard work that Ray Cox, manager at Wal-Mart, has done to assure that we have the things we need. They have been such wonderful corporate citizens and continue to be. Little convenience and meat markets have popped up and they are also wonderful. But, somehow, it just isn't the same as having a real grocery store here.
 
The devastation here is still around. Now you see lots that were wiped clean by Katrina all grown up with weeds. People are coming back, but not as fast as we would like them to come back. The insurance issue is still very raw. Some people, especially on the beach, cannot even get insurance, and if they do it is at an astronomical price. State Farm has announced that they will not write any insurance for those living within 2,500 feet of the water. So what are people supposed to do? If you are reading this from outside Mississippi, please let your congressional representatives know how important the all-peril insurance bill is. This insurance will be included with the National Flood Program. The insurance companies don't want the bill to pass, because it will affect their bottom line, while just this week I heard they are making billions in profits.
 
Finally, please do not forget us. We still need help here. Many people do not have the wherewithal to rebuild their homes. Many have now received the Katrina cottages. They are really cute and a lot better than the FEMA trailer I lived in for 14 months. But many still live in FEMA trailers and want to rebuild. Prices for building materials are sky high and contractor fraud is rampant. 
 
Progress is slow, very slow. The beach road from the bridge to Washington Street is only temporary and the bid has not been let to build the new beach road, along with the seawall. Many old buildings are gone, never to return. This is hard for those of us who were born here and have been here all our lives. The landmarks are gone. But we are ready for a new town. Its coming is just very slow and seems to be dragging.
 
As I have said before, we are a strong and resilient people. We will make it through this, but it will take years. When Hurricane Camille hit here in 1969, it took about seven years to get back. This time, it will take us 10 to 15 years.
 
So, please remember us. Come volunteer. And pray for us.   

Of the dozens of building contractors punished by the state of Mississippi for preying on victims of Hurricane Katrina, one stands out from the crowd of mostly small-time, fly-by-night operators: Call Henry, a Florida-based firm with hundreds of employees that each year earns tens of millions of dollars from contracts with the Department of Defense, NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The company boasts on its Web site about its rosy prospects for new federal business. But at the same time, it has closed up shop in the hurricane zone and is ignoring customers there who say that their homes are falling apart after Call Henry repaired or rebuilt them. The state Attorney General's Office is considering launching a criminal investigation against the firm. And the company is appealing a $10,000 fine that the Mississippi State Board of Contractors levied after finding that Call Henry exhibited "gross negligence or misconduct" in its contracting business.

"They shafted people right and left," said a sobbing Mary Bobbitt of Waveland, Miss., who hired Call Henry to fix her three-bedroom, one-bath ranch-style home after it was inundated by Katrina's deadly flood tide. "They came in from Florida thinking they could make a whole bunch of money and then they left. They just left us."

Click here to read complete story.

Donna Armstrong waves to President Bush's motorcade Wednesday in Bay St. Louis. Armstrong, who traveled over ten miles from Diamondhead to catch a glimpse of the president, said she was "tickled" by the sight. Image: J. Brecher / MSNBC.com

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. – President Bush's two-year anniversary visit to Katrina's Ground Zero may have been a carefully scripted photo opportunity designed to keep all but a hand-picked few far away from the nation's chief executive, but that didn't stop one of his biggest local fans from giving up a chunk of her day to catch a glimpse of her hero.

"How can people criticize him?" demanded Donna Armstrong of Diamondhead as she stood outside the church compound where Bush was meeting with local mayors and business leaders.

"He gave me a home," said Armstrong, referring to the FEMA trailer she and her family lived in for 18 months while mucking out and rebuilding their home, inundated by more than eight feet of seawater in Katrina's storm surge.

Armstrong was the only local who waited through Bush's entire hour-long stop at Our Lady of the Gulf Parish Center for his motorcade to leave because "I admire him so much."

There are more stories about what the federal government did wrong in the wake of the storm hereabouts than there are shrimp in the gulf, but Armstrong is not among those telling them. "I just don't get it," she said. "How many billions is enough?"

Most Hancock County's residents appeared unaware that the president was in town, which was just the way the Secret Service wanted it. Even local police officers said they had only been informed of their special details Wednesday morning.

The president's helicopter landed west of Waveland so his fast-moving motorcade could take him up Beach Boulevard, where he would have seen work under way to replace a few of the most expensive homes in the county.

Twenty-seven vehicles spirited Bush and his entourage into the church compound while federal agents and local police swarmed the area in patrol cars, a small helicopter, all-terrain vehicles on the beach and speedboats just offshore.

Local officers kept onlookers at least a block away from the event, held indoors to start and then outside in the lee of construction trailers.

While the casually dressed president cited all the progress that has been made since the hurricane came ashore here, with the rebuilt CSX railroad and Highway 90 vehicle bridges in the background, Armstrong held her vigil in the 90-degree heat and 60 percent humidity.

As the motorcade headed back toward Air Force One, she was rewarded with a wave from Bush himself.

"It was great. It was awesome. I was tickled."

WAVELAND, Miss. – In the place they consider heaven on Earth, Hancock County residents gathered in the hellish heat Wednesday morning to mark the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

"It is certainly a joy right now to be worried about sweating and not swimming," joked Brian McDonald, director of the Mississippi Office for Rebuilding and Renewal. Swimming – for their lives – was precisely what many of the 100 or so citizens who attended the ceremony at the beachfront Veterans' Memorial in Waveland were doing at that moment in 2005 as Katrina's flood surge rolled ashore.

The Waveland gathering was one of several events scheduled for Wednesday's anniversary, from sunrise church services, to an afternoon visit by President Bush and the first lady, to an evening Chamber of Commerce gala.

McDonald's bit of humor was fitting for the upbeat, homespun Waveland ceremony. Mayor Tommy Longo, who presided, heaped praise for recovery efforts on his fellow elected officials, the area's emergency workers, volunteers and the "strong, resilient, self-reliant, caring people" of Hancock County.

"The world saw a true Mississippi as it had never been seen before and it's because of each and every one of you," Longo told the sweat-stained crowd, suit jackets and sports coats long removed, as they gulped cans and bottles of water, fanned themselves with their programs and sought any bit of shade they could find on the barren bulkhead overlooking the Mississippi Gulf.

The ceremony featured prayers and readings from a trio of local pastors. The names of the 57 county residents who perished in the storm were read by Longo, Bay St. Louis Mayor Eddie Favre and county Board of Supervisors President Rocky Pullman. A wreath was placed in the gulf. A moment of silence was followed by the barely audible sounding, from far across town, of Waveland's restored emergency siren.

As the crowd joined in to sing "God Bless America," a score of colorful balloons was released to float gently out of view against the brilliant blue Mississippi sky and a passing cloud bank.

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- Life has hung Linda Addison out to dry like the torn and twisted pieces of fabric still snagged in the high branches of the oak trees here, two years after they were carried aloft by Katrina's howling winds.

In a 250-square-foot plain white box amid rows of identical FEMA trailers on a bare gravel lot on the western edge of this rebuilding town, Linda sits and quietly tells her story.

Listen carefully because Linda's pitiful predicament is shared in one way or another by thousands of hurricane refugees who are still living in FEMA trailers without the resources to regain the small shreds of independence they enjoyed before the storm. While a million volunteers and billions in grant money flow to many residents who owned property before the storm and the booming recovery economy blesses others with new fortunes, Linda and those like her are being left in the dust.

"It's a very sad situation," says Reilly Morse, an attorney with the Mississippi Center for Justice. "It's one of 17,000 or 18,000 tales of woe out there."

In the summer of 2005, Linda and her poodle Trixie were happily keeping house in a one-bedroom apartment a few miles away in neighboring Waveland. Her $643 monthly Social Security disability check was just enough for her to pay the $109 a month rent on her federally subsidized place, keep an old car running and indulge in her only vice: Coca-Cola.

By some standards, it wasn't much of a life, but it was hers. She could get to church when she wanted, take a few ceramics classes at the senior center and host grandson Dustin, 11, and granddaughter Hannah, 5, the children of her only child, on weekend visits from Gulfport. She could look forward instead of backward on three marriages that had twice left her a widow – the first time when she was just 22 -- and once a divorcee, and on a lifetime of toil in the retail sector in which "I sold everything but fast food and my body" before winding up disabled in 2002 at age 60 with spine, hip, thyroid and blood-pressure problems.

Then came Katrina. She fled to Bogalusa, La., with a neighbor and returned to find that water had filled her ground-floor unit to the rafters. "When we tried to open the door, honey, my couch was in front of the door, the refrigerator on its side," Linda recalls in her soft, lilting voice.

Looters add to storm's toll

The horror mounted. Within days, looters had taken everything of value from her apartment except "a few pictures and my Bibles." She found space to live in a tent in Clermont Harbor, west of town. Night after night, she struggled to sleep in the stifling summer air, kept awake by the screams of what she thought was a lost or injured cat. It was a woman, trapped in the debris, later rescued.

By March, Linda had found some stability, moving in with her only sibling, a younger brother, and his wife, in Oakridge, Tenn. One night as they watched television, her brother clutched his chest and died. "I'll never forget it," she says, choking with tears. "I held his little face up and his wife called 911. As far as we knew, he didn't have heart trouble." Jim Jones was 47.

When FEMA found her a trailer later in the spring of 2006, she moved back to Hancock County, which is where she now awaits word on permanent housing. There is no public or subsidized housing available, most of it destroyed by the storm, programs to replace it barely in the planning stages. Market-rate rentals are cruelly beyond her reach.

She has heard of several possibilities from FEMA representatives, all of them daunting. "What scares me is they're saying they're going to put us up at the end of Highway 603 in Picayune," she says. With gas as high as it is, she wonders how she could afford to drive back to see her doctor, whose office is across the street from the park she lives in now. Also, she hears that drugs, prostitution and other crime, problems where she lives now, are worse at the Picayune park.

Mainly, it's the uncertainty that plagues her. Its surroundings aside, the trailer, cool and comfortable on a hot August morning, with its handicapped entry ramp, is working out well for her and Trixie. But what's next? And when?

"Two people could call FEMA and ask five people the same question and they'd get 10 different answers," says Linda. "I'm really afraid of the next day. People talk about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I don't see the tunnel."

A FEMA representative took Addision's name from MSNBC.com and agreed to seek some answers about her case and the general fate of those like her, but did not call back. On the agency's Web site, a recent entry explains that FEMA will be handing off cases like Linda's to the Department of Housing and Urban Development as of Nov. 1.

'She's out of luck'

Attorney Morse fears some people will get lost in that shuffle. "She's out of luck. She's the lowest priority and every program that is out there is at least six to 12 months away," Morse says. "What's going to happen with these folks is anyone's guess. I don't think it's alarmist at all to say people could become homeless."

Local Habitat for Humanity Project Manager Wendy McDonald, who brought Linda's plight to MSNBC.com's attention, also has no solution. Linda's income is way too low to qualify her for the sweat-equity home-building program. "Even if I gave her a home, she could not afford the insurance," says McDonald, who was able to get a volunteer advocate working on Linda's behalf.

That advocate, Mick Quinlan, is looking at FEMA's "Mississippi Cottage" program, which places trailer occupants into more permanent housing for another two years, but the program selects participants at random.

Linda is a proud woman who is not going to dwell on just how poor she is, but you do the math: $643 a month is $148.38 a week, not even two-thirds of the federal minimum wage for a full-time worker and well below half the minimum wage in many states. It's $7,716 a year, hopelessly beneath the federal poverty level of $10,210 for a single person.

While you're at it, consider these price tags of irony that surround Linda as the recovery steams forward for others. Across the street, a liquor store sells bottles of wine that cost more than what she lives on for a week. Within a few hundred yards of where Linda's trailer sits, pleasure boats are being sold for well more than 10 times her annual income. A mile away as the crow flies, multimillion dollar mansions are rising, Phoenix-like, on Beach Boulevard.

And as appalling and sad as it is, you probably won't be surprised that, for Linda, it adds up to this: "Sometimes I wish I had stayed here for the storm and then it would all be over."

If you would like to help Linda Addison, checks made out to "Benefit of Linda Addison" may be mailed to Hancock Bank, 601 Highway 90, Bay St. Louis, Miss., 39520, or taken to any branch of the bank in person. Other offers of help may be made through the Bay St. Louis office of Habitat for Humanity at 228-467-9699.

WAVELAND, Miss. – It's still not hard to find houses ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, standing empty in overgrown yards with windows boarded up, shredded blue tarps flapping from their roofs, stark reminders of the deadly 2005 hurricane. And there are photographs everywhere of homes that were destroyed, their debris now trucked away to the landfill.

But out at the end of a one-lane road just northwest of town stands a house that Katrina built. There you will find Bob Fricke, 63, and his wife Mickie, 59, in the middle of the 38 acres where Bob was born and reared after his parents plunked down $1,500 and settled in 1942.

Amid about 40 dogs, a few cats, a dozen goats, several horses, assorted farm implements, three of his eight kids and a constantly varying number of his nine siblings, 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, the Frickes' new home has risen, a literal gift of the hurricane's flood tide.

The low-slung, green-metal-roofed house has been constructed largely of lumber milled from logs that were left lying all over Hancock County when Katrina's waters receded: pines that snapped at the ground in the hurricane's winds, limbs that fell from the giant oaks that dot the coast, cypress, black gum and a host of others.

"A lot of them were on our property," says Fricke. The rest he got simply for the asking wherever he spotted debris being cleared away.

Fricke says Kathleen Johnson of the Katrina Relief organization in Waveland was the first to suggest he try using the logs to build a new home after the house of his youth was washed away. Johnson hooked him up with a nearby sawyer, then lined him up to borrow one of a number of portable sawmills that various donors sent to the hurricane zone with the notion that the salvaged logs could be a boon to rebuilding efforts if they could be cut into useable boards.

A mill from the Middle East

The gasoline-powered, trailer-mounted mill Fricke has been using was donated by Saudi Arabia. Made in New York, it can handle logs up to 36 inches in diameter.

"I never ran a sawmill before, but you do what you gotta do," says Fricke, a retired phone company technician who stresses his gratitude for volunteers sent by Johnson to help him do about 10 or 15 percent of the actual construction.

With three of his kids building and rebuilding homes nearby, he laid out a 40-foot-square structure on the site of his parents' old home and went to work. The posts that hold the building up were purchased at the lumberyard, along with the joists and plywood for the floor, but Fricke milled most of the rest of the boards in the solid wood house himself.

The exposed rafters are peeled 22-foot cypress logs, about 6 inches in diameter at the ridge and tapering down to the eaves. Above the rafters is pine roof decking, left exposed to create a gorgeous ceiling. Studs are also pine, a full two by four inches. The exterior is pine that Fricke rough-milled and sent to a commercial mill to have it shaped into faux log siding. He has used oak for door trim and has a pile more of it that he may use for the floor in the master bedroom. Even the showers are built of wooden planks, covered with clear acrylic glass.

The result is a unique cabin of about 1,000 square feet with another 600 feet of covered porch. The rich grain of the various woods glows warmly from its simple coat of oil, creating a décor that would be more at home in the Sierra Nevada than in the middle of a Mississippi farm. But the house has plenty of charming Southern touches, too, like the crescent moon cut into one of the bathroom doors, denoting "the indoor outhouse."

The house is not entirely finished. The bulk of the construction took about a year, with Fricke finding that milling free logs for lumber is a good strategy for "when you've got more time than money." The big payoff is that he doesn't owe a nickel on the place.

A deeply religious man who quotes Scripture at will, Fricke scratches his head when friends tell him they're still waiting to see if they'll get grant money to rebuild. He applied for that, too, and hasn't heard anything since.

"I tell people all the time, just get going and God will meet you halfway."

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. – Leave it to an artist to come up with one of the most creative contributions to hurricane rebuilding efforts that we've seen in these parts.

Kat Fitzpatrick is doing her part to bring back the bees. Well aware of a current global reduction in honey bee populations, the cause of which has scientists baffled, Fitzpatrick also learned that Katrina had wiped out most hives in Hancock County.

Six months ago, when she noticed "only two" bees in a bountiful field of clover near her home in the Cedar Point area of Bay St. Louis, she decided to act. She bought three hives and had one populated with Italian bees and two with a Russian variety.

"We're all building community back here and the bees are part of the community," Fitzpatrick says of the insects, which are vital for the proper pollination of many crops and flowers.

But wait, there's more: a clever ulterior motive that springs from her artistic work.

For eight years, Fitzpatrick has used melted beeswax in her work, adding both an exquisitely smooth finish to her paintings and a diffusive layer over the paint. Keeping bees will give her a private supply of beeswax for her work.

"My primary interest is in their wax," she says.

But Fitzpatrick says she also has enjoyed learning as much as she can about their hives, systems of organization and keeping them healthy and happy.

"I've been trying to delight them by planting things they like" from lavender to begonias, she says.

I've put off writing something for the second anniversary of Katrina, because I don't quite know where to begin. We have a lovely home now and lovely neighbors. I've become accustomed to the idea of not living in my former neighborhood. At least when I'm busy I don't think about it as much. I think that has a lot to do with healing around here — if you can stay busy, it makes things so much easier. It gives you something to focus on.

Most everyone I know is in some stage of rebuilding. I feel like we are living in some house flipping or design show. It's funny to see this rural area embracing such modern trends. I never thought I'd hear my father use the term "cut in" when referring to painting. And I never thought he would have anything on his walls besides paneling! I never thought I'd hear my curmudgeonly uncle debating stains and finishes and chair rails. Stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, deep sinks, ceramic tiles, bi-level counters and bamboo floors are everywhere. But even with all the rebuilding, there are still so many places that haven't been dealt with yet.

        My grandparents' home in Pearlington was finally torn down two weeks ago. It has been sitting there all this time in quite a state of disarray, to say the least. It took probating of wills and scheduling and rescheduling of demolitions, and finally it is done. My MawMaw and Papa moved out of Logtown when NASA built the rocket testing facility in the 1960s and needed their community as a buffer zone. They rebuilt their house in Pearlington (My Papa was a carpenter who built houses and boats and even churches).

        Camille hit just a few years after that. I remember a stain on their walls about three or four feet up from Camille's floodwaters. Looking back, armed with my newfound awareness from Katrina, I realize that they didn't gut their house and redo it. It never occurred to me before. They just cleaned it out and went on with their lives.

        It gave me chills to walk on the slab last week, knowing that I was seeing something my grandparents saw when they were first building it. In the slab, I saw the end of their home, where they must have seen the beginning. I walked the perimeter, walked through the rooms and marveled at how things seem so much smaller without walls. I remembered having coffee and biscuits in the kitchen, shelling crabs in the dining room, snapping peas on the back porch. I remembered family get-togethers and dyeing Easter eggs and sleepovers with my cousin before early-morning camping trips. I remembered my grandmother's rocking chair, and where she kept all the photo albums, and the spot where my Papa was waked the night before his funeral. (It takes living away from here for a while before you realize that some people find it odd to be asked of a deceased person, "When are y'all waking him?") The night we sat up for Papa's wake was one of the last nights I ever spent in that house.

        I went into the house a couple of times after the storm, to help salvage a few things. It was a mess. My grandmother would have cried to see her house in that condition. We salvaged a rocking chair from the back porch that was miraculously in one piece (it's now on my back porch, cleaned and repaired and painted blue). I stood where their back porch was and looked out like I had so many times during 30-odd years. I pictured our rope swing, the artesian well, the old house out back that they had moved to make way for their own house, and Papa's shed. The old house and the shed had been torn down already. Now I looked at swamp grasses and vines reclaiming the land, and I felt like I was witnessing the end of a cycle.

I didn't want to leave

        I turned around and saw the slab again, and I didn't want to leave. Then I noticed something imprinted on the concrete. Bending down, I inspected it more closely and found that it was the impression of Papa's shoe. He always wore the same kind of tennis shoes, and the sole was unmistakable. I looked around, and saw the same imprint here and there all over the slab. How funny, I thought, that these footprints had been hidden all these years, and now that the house was deconstructed they were as visible as they had been during the construction process.

        I walked back over to my youngest sister's forthcoming house, located on the site of a house that was torn down after Katrina. My dad was removing chunks of concrete from her lot. He climbed down off the tractor and I told him what I had seen, and he said "I'll be durned." We chuckled about Papa's footprints a little bit, and he said he had thought it was strange that the demolition crew didn't just take the slab when they took the house. Then he said that if he were going to build a house on that land, he would probably save the slab to use as a shop.
I don't know what will happen in the ongoing adventures of that slab, but I'd like to think it might go on to become part of a new cycle.

WAVELAND, Miss. – Phil and Donna Fairchild wanted something other than cruises and bridge games for their golden years.

"When Phil retired three years ago, we thought there had to be a lot more to retirement than playing golf and living on the lake," says Donna.

They found it here -- living in a 30-foot trailer, working 12 to 15 hours a day, six and seven days a week for an entire year as Hurricane Katrina volunteers.

The Fairchilds, who are finally about to take some time off after running a large Methodist relief camp, are superstars among the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who have flocked here to help rebuild the Gulf Coast and earn the undying gratitude of a community that was brought to its knees by the deadly storm of Aug. 29, 2005.

Believe what you want about how the government responded after Katrina, but take this on faith: Without the millions of volunteer hours logged by the Fairchilds and others over the past two years the hurricane zone would not have come nearly as far as it has. And faith was exactly what brought the lion's share of these Samaritans here and keeps them coming -- motivated, organized and deployed by religious organizations.

"Faith-based organizations have just been unbelievable," says Waveland Mayor Tommy Longo, who promises that the names of all volunteer groups and sister cities will be read aloud at Wednesday's two-year Katrina anniversary observance in his city. "That in itself may take an hour, but I think it is almost as important now to read those as the names of the deceased because these people have done so much for us."

All told, according to the federal government's Corporation for National and Community Service, a little over 1 million civilian volunteers have donated their time and talents to Katrina relief efforts, a total of 14 million hours. In the last year alone, they have rebuilt or repaired nearly 10,000 homes, served meals to 1,800 people a month, built 59 playgrounds and started construction on more than 1,000 new homes.

Group has worked on 92 homes
In their time at Camp Gulfside, operated by the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the Fairchilds have focused on residential construction projects, overseeing the rehab of 82 homes and the construction of 10. The help is available for the asking to storm victims who are elderly, single parents, disabled or meet other criteria.

Phil, 64, retired after 30 years as a mechanical engineer at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., federal nuclear weapons plant, organized the camp's job board and directed constructions crews. Donna, 60, who previously worked as a medical-imaging technician, handled the camp's logistics.

The couple wound up here after testing the waters on a few previous Methodist trips specially designed to attract volunteers who could provide their own housing in the form of recreational vehicles. In February 2006, they worked on Katrina relief efforts in Dulac, La., passing through Hancock County on the way back to their home in Loudon, Tenn.

"We saw all the destruction and we just knew we had to come back," says Donna. As if on cue, they saw an appeal three months later for a volunteer couple to manage the Waveland camp. They applied and were accepted in August 2006. "We were down here a week later," their Tennessee residence locked up for a year in which they have only been home once.

Now, it's time for a vacation, and the Fairchilds will return to Tennessee to recharge their batteries and visit their three children and two grandchildren. After that, they have no doubts they'll return to the volunteer trail.

"God has done a work on me," says Donna, blond, energetic and far younger-looking than her age. "This experience has caused me to look at material things differently, when I think how we have struggled to come up with money to pay for a foundation when I have a rug on my floor at home that would more than cover it."

'This changes your outlook'
"I'm not a Bible thumper, but this changes your outlook," says Phil, whose head of white hair, full white beard and twinkling eyes give him the appearance of a skinny Santa. "The only real way most of us know to be obedient to God is to give back to others."

The departure of the Fairchilds raises the issue of the continuing need for relief and rebuilding help. All observers agree that there will be work for outside volunteers in the hurricane zone for a long time to come.

While the Corporation for National and Community Service says volunteer numbers actually increased from 550,000 in the first year after the storm to 600,000 in the second, Hancock County observers all are certain that numbers fell dramatically here.

"Far more volunteers came through the first year," says Kathleen Johnson, who organizes volunteers at Katrina Relief in Waveland. "It's definitely fallen off," agrees Mayor Longo.

Chris Bowers, who coordinates Katrina efforts for the Methodist group, says their first-year volunteer total of 25,000 fell by about half in the second year, leading to plans to shut two of the five camps current in operation by next spring. But he expected the decline and remains pleased by the number of volunteers who are still showing up.

Wendy McDonald, the local Habitat for Humanity program manager, is having trouble finding as many volunteers as she needs, as is Shannon Lennox at the Christian Life Center camp in Waveland.

Skilled volunteers in high demand
All of the organizations are especially eager to get volunteers with construction skills. "I need supervising carpenters," says Johnson. "I need electricians that can work alongside youths, plumbers that can work alongside youths. They get 10 times as much work done and the kids learn a skill set and when they come back, they are better prepared."

The Corporation for National and Community Service suggests that would-be volunteers who are looking to help in the Katrina zone start at www.volunteer.gov, which indexes a "comprehensive listing of volunteer opportunities in the gulf and across the nation."

Asked how she would persuade volunteers to come to the hurricane zone, Donna Fairchild says, "It's really been a blessing, it's been a ministry to us, we've seen miracles. I would guarantee this would not be your last mission."

"It has been an abundance," agrees Phil. "And abundance doesn't mean material things. It means how you feel when you get up in the morning."

"High on life, you could say," adds Donna.

WAVELAND, Miss. –- The owner of a radio station who was honored for his heroic efforts to keep the community informed during and after Hurricane Katrina says the tiny operation's future is less certain now than it was during the storm.

Brice Phillips, who runs the low-power, noncommercial station WQRZ at 103.5 on the FM dial, says he's running out of money to stay in business. His appeals for funding from FEMA and other agencies have not been successful.

Phillips seems confident he'll keep his station running, but says he has "no clue" how he'll pay the bills after spending the last $2,000 of a $16,000 prize he received from the federal Small Business Administration in 2006. The prize was attached to the SBA's Phoenix Award honoring him for "outstanding contributions to disaster recovery by a volunteer."

The award citation noted that as the hurricane approached, "Brice Phillips loaded his van with transmitters and extra antennas and relocated WQRZ radio to the county's emergency operations center. As the storm surge waters reached the building's second level, Phillips braved the elements and rigged his car batteries to power the station's broadcasting of search and rescue information."

Featured in an earlier Rising from Ruin piece, WQRZ was one of just four stations along the Gulf Coast that remained on the air during the storm and its aftermath, beacons of hope and information to many residents who were stranded for days without food, water or shelter.

Phillips, 41, has hardly left the emergency center since, logging 6,000 volunteer hours – that's 60 hours a week since the hurricane – to run the station, while also performing some public information duties for Hancock County and serving as an ad hoc technician on computer and telecom systems. The station, known throughout its 30-mile broadcast radius for an eclectic musical play list, does not feature as much original programming as it did at the height of the recovery efforts, but it still runs daily news and weather reports and a weekly "FEMA Facts" show.

Phillips gets by on $600 a month in disability payments for an adult attention deficit disorder. His own home in Waveland was destroyed by the storm, and he has so far been unable to replace it, living the past two years in FEMA trailers parked there and at the county center.

His chief concern is that when the county's lease on its emergency operations center runs out in the fall, WQRZ will have no place to go. He has rigged a secondary transmitter in a storm-battered eight-foot-square shed that remains on his property to avoid being without broadcast facilities should he have to leave the county center, based at an old school in Kiln.

Hancock County Emergency Operations Manager Brian "Hootie" Adam says he'll do everything in his power to maintain a home for the station. "In my opinion, wherever I go, WQRZ is going to go," Adam said. "I'm partial. This man stayed with me during the storm and anybody that's stood by me, I'm going to stand by him."

Adam said the county is trying to negotiate an extension on its lease of the Kiln school. Longer term, he needs $5 million or more to build a new emergency operations center. While county finance officials have tried relentlessly to find the funds from federal and state programs, so far they have only met dead ends. "Everyone else seems to be getting funded except emergency operation centers."

Adam and Phillips are hopeful that the recent rebroadcast of a public television piece on the WQRZ story will attract fresh support. If and when money allows, Phillips has big ideas about moving to a different location on the FM dial and boosting the station's signal.

Regardless, Phillips vows to keep the station running as long as he can out of his own pocket. "When the money runs out, I'll pay the phone bill and power bill and have $100 a month left. I'll be begging for food."

He scoffs at the idea that he would walk away from what has become his life's work.

"Come on! I survived Katrina and saved a lot of folks doing it."

NOTE: Information on supporting WQRZ is available on the station's Web site or by calling Phillips at 228-463-1035.

As we come up on the two-year anniversary of the storm, I find myself at a bit of a loss for words. It's not so much that I'm healed, or that anything is back to normal. I guess in a way, I am discovering what thousands of people with some dread medical condition have already realized for years: I don't want to let this tragedy define me.

Back in November I caught up my old friend Tim Stanton (the drummer for the band "the UGLISTICK"). Tim and I sort of lost touch after Heather and I moved to New Orleans some 6 years ago, and I finally managed to track him down (through a series of phone calls to mutual friends and a hawklike eye on the local entertainment listings). After the obligatory hugs and greetings that reuniting with a long lost friend requires came the inevitable questions of "How have you been?! What's been happening?!"

How have I been? ... What's been happening? ... Seemingly innocuous questions, but for those of us living through the reconstruction of the Coast, these two questions could take days to answer.

But, I believe I answered him something like this.

"You know, moved to New Orleans, made some connections, got some gigs, moved to Waveland, yadda, yadda, yadda, now I'm living in Bay St. Louis."

I yadda yadda'd over the entire time since the storm. The heartache, the shock, the loss, the grieving, the daily struggles, the lines at the Red Cross distribution points, the trials and tribulations of insurance adjusters and FEMA. The snafus of flood zones, elevations, blueprints, meetings, donation distribution, all of it ... yadda, yadda, yadda.

I think I've come to understand how someone can be a quiet Jewish man down the street who never talks about his childhood in World War II Germany (not that the situations are the same by any means). After a while, you don't want to let a tragedy define you. To be alive and function as a human you can't dwell on misfortune forever. Sometime the healing process happens whether you want it to or not.

I certainly wouldn't want to walk down the street 20 years from now and hear people say "That's Steve Harper. ... He lost his house in Katrina."

As far as anniversaries go, I'm much more excited by Heather's birthday we celebrated last week. I'm much more excited about a 20-year reunion with my band from college "The Aboriginals" that my friend Tim Stanton is putting together for me. I'm much more excited about my band "Heather and the Monkey King" and our tour dates in Europe next summer (on the anniversary of our tour dates in Spain from this year). Two years since the storm doesn't really mean that much, I guess.

The kids in my school are pretty much like kids now. I hear about it when they move into houses and out of their trailers. True, life here on the Coast is still far from normal. Heather and I seem to talk about whether we should stay or go nearly every week (and she says she thinks about it every day.). I certainly do understand the appeal of living someplace where destruction and hardship are not daily occurrences (but flooding, fires and tragedies of late have proven that no place on Earth is free from peril.) One never knows what the future holds.

However, I feel that no matter where we wind up, and no matter what happens to us in the future, we won't let tragedy define us.

P.S. As I was writing this piece, I got a phone call from my old friend John Leon, a musician from Austin Texas. I had lost touch with him before we moved to New Orleans. (In fact, Heather and I met at his wedding!) He, too, asked me to fill him in on the past years. ... Yadda, yadda, yadda.

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. – Eddie Favre is still wearing short pants.

Although the sweltering heat in this Gulf Coast town makes his attire a no-brainer in August, the five-term mayor has now worn shorts for 729 days in a row. Like black armbands and yellow ribbons elsewhere, the shorts are Favre's personal emblem of his commitment to keep working tirelessly until his community, which was caught in the deadly eye wall of Hurricane Katrina two years ago Wednesday, is "back."

Favre, 53, has never said exactly what he means by "back," and is still making up his mind whether it's a dollar-value of rebuilding, tax revenue or a certain post-storm population level. But in dozens of interviews leading up to the two-year anniversary of the most destructive hurricane in U.S. history, Favre and other Hancock County residents made it clear that they are more relaxed and pleased than ever about how far back they have come since the storm killed 55 of their family members and neighbors, washed away thousands of homes and businesses and dramatically changed life here.

"I really don't think at this point we could do things a whole lot faster," said the soft-spoken Favre, sitting in his second-floor corner office in the comparatively luxurious new City Hall that Bay St. Louis has fashioned in a complex on Highway 90 that it purchased from the local electric utility. "We've come a long ways."

That progress is reflected in the mood in Hancock County, which has shifted decisively. Gone are most doubts about how completely the coast will recover, replaced with confident musings about just how long it will be – three years, five, 10? – before the region surpasses what it was before the storm.

"I've been through it three times," said Councilman Jim Thriffiley, ticking off Hurricanes Betsy, Camille and Katrina on his fingers. "Any time you have a disaster, people come back bigger and better."

Similarly optimistic sentiments were voiced by local reporter Dwayne Bremer ("People are definitely upbeat.") , Habitat For Humanity project manager Wendy McDonald ("It's just different, healthier" than a year ago.) and insurance broker Dave Treutel ("How far we've come in two years is amazing.").

Bridge reopening lifted spirits
Many residents say the community's mood was lifted on May 17, when the largest lifeline to the east -- the rebuilt Highway 90 bridge over the Bay of St. Louis -- was opened. The span, which now stretches like a grazing reptile with its head in Harrison County and its tail in Hancock, drastically shortened a vital commute between Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis and immediately brought new business to Hancock County retailers.

A recent report from the Gulf Coast Business Council, titled "Two Years After Katrina," paints a downright rosy picture on many economic issues, noting that annual retail sales in the three-county coastal area have increased 61 percent since before the hurricane; employment has risen by 41,000 jobs statewide from pre-Katrina levels, despite a 70,000-job loss immediately after the storm; more than 30,000 post-Katrina building permits have been issued; and population has returned to 97.5 percent of the pre-storm level.

Further, the report says, property values have increased in line with national figures; foreclosures aren't nearly as bad as they are in the rest of the country; homeowners have received more than $1 billion in grants; the number of FEMA trailers being used to house residents has decreased from 43,000 to 16,000; the vast majority of storm debris -- 43 million cubic yards -- has been removed; and the casino industry is employing record numbers and generating record tax revenue.

Driving through Waveland and Bay St. Louis, there are now long stretches where a casual observer would have no notion of the wreckage that lay here 24 months ago.

"Once it has taken off, it has moved very, very well," Hancock Bank Chairman George Schloegel said of the recovery.

Municipal projects move forward
Favre and his counterpart in Hancock County's other incorporated city, Waveland Mayor Tommy Longo, say dozens of municipal projects are under way or soon to begin in their towns.

Favre said $100 million worth of infrastructure replacement and improvement is scheduled for Bay St. Louis.

Some $60 million worth of work already is under contract and much of it has started in Waveland, where Longo said most of the electrical and gas lines have been replaced, all drainage culverts completed and about a fourth of water and sewer lines placed back in service.

In near-triple digit heat, workers are placing tens of miles of new gas lines in Waveland. Pipe layer Chris Counts describes the effort.

Both mayors are pleased with the return of revenue to city coffers, with Longo saying that his town's biggest source of funds -- sales tax -- has returned to where it was before Katrina and Favre pegging Bay St. Louis' income -- heavily dependent on casino taxes -- at 85 to 90 percent of pre-storm levels.

"We're way ahead of where everybody thought we should be," said Longo.

The area's art scene, long a key part of life on the coast, is thriving. Two Bay St. Louis art-related businesses, Clay Creations and The Artists of 220 Main, will be honored by the Hancock County Chamber of Commerce this week for helping to set the recovery pace by reopening so quickly after the storm. A number of local artists and writers have been honored with fellowships, awards and grants for Katrina-related projects.

But nobody is saying that everything is a plate of pecan pie.

It's not all rosy
The Business Council report notes that despite the unprecedented federal aid earmarked for the Katrina zone -- a total of $116 billion -- well less than half of the FEMA funds committed to replacing infrastructure and public buildings have been disbursed. For students in the Bay St. Louis-Waveland School District, that means they'll continue to go to class in portable buildings that "are deteriorating as we speak," Superintendent Kim Stasny recently told a congressional delegation visiting the area.

Waveland, Bay St. Louis and Hancock County also have millions in storm-related debt that will have to be refinanced or paid off somehow in the next few years.

"What comes in goes out," said Longo. "We're still pretty much hand-to-mouth."

The flow of volunteers – instrumental in the recovery and rebuilding efforts -- is tapering off. Residential construction remains slow, and it remains unclear where the thousands of evacuees still housed by FEMA will live once the agency collects its travel trailers and ends rent subsidies.

"Half of Cedar Point is still vacant," Favre said, referring to a community in his town. "All along the beachfront is still vacant. That's a big concern because until we can get the people back home, we're not going to be what we are and where we need to be."

Longo has been perplexed by seemingly endless shifts in federal policies on everything from flood maps to tree-cutting. "Almost weekly, we get some strange edict from FEMA or Homeland Security," he said.

Environmentalists remain concerned that the haste to rebuild will lead to poor decisions about what is constructed where, especially when it comes to the region's fragile wetlands.

Jousting over land-use plans
And there is plenty of jousting over new land-use plans being developed by both the county and Bay St. Louis. The tussle highlights a clear split that existed before Katrina between residents who want to follow the advice of many national planning experts to preserve the region's historic, small-town flavor and those who are excited by prospects of extensive casino and resort development that could create what they call "Vegasippi."

The ugly battles over property insurance are still raging. Many homeowners and businesses are looking hopefully to a proposal by local Rep. Gene Taylor to add wind coverage to the federal flood insurance program as a step in the right direction, although its prospects in a mid-September House vote are far from certain. "It's a political hot potato," said Chris Roth of Hancock Insurance, but "it certainly has merit to it."

Those concerns will be set aside for a while on Wednesday, when the county comes together to remember the disaster. While residents struggled at this time last year to conjure an appropriate one-year observance, many folks say that there was little hesitation about what to do this year.

Two years to the minute that Katrina's waters began their awful rise, claiming most of their homes and businesses and far too many of their loved ones, the people of Hancock County will gather in the sticky morning heat at the Veterans Memorial at the foot of Coleman Avenue in Waveland.

Names will be read to honor not only the dead, but also the volunteers who have spent so many hours here. Elected officials, business leaders, pastors and priests will make remarks. Waveland's refurbished warning siren will sound. A wreath will be placed in the Gulf of Mexico.

And when everything is said and done, most will turn and go back to work, including Eddie Favre, who will still be wearing shorts.

Bay St. Louis mayor Eddie Favre has't worn long pants since Hurricane Katrina. He describes what the shorts mean for him and the community.

WEST PEARL RIVER, La. – Denny Holmberg is trying to get by with a little help from his friends: alligators, turtles, flying squirrels, bass and gar, wild boar and 29 different kinds of spiders, just to name a few. Oh, and don't forget a handful of kind-hearted humans.

Two years after Katrina swamped his once-thriving swamp tour business, Holmberg is still in a world of hurt. In a cruel encore to the hurricane's devastation, Holmberg was hit just after the storm by a recurrent brain tumor that had been in remission for a decade. Surgery and drugs have left him subject to frequent seizures, unable to run his business, down to his last few dollars and wondering how he'll pay for another operation.

"Eeeaaahhhh!" bellows Holmberg from his moss-draped compound on the banks of the Pearl River, where Highway 90 crosses it just west of the Mississippi state line. These days, a good Cajun yell – at once mournful and joyful -- sometimes comes easier than words for Holmberg and seems a fitting summation of his predicament.

Trim and handsome, Holmberg, 56, couldn't look more the part of a backwoods guide with his neat gray mustache and goatee, Indiana Jones hat and, hanging on a string around his neck, a 3-inch tooth from a 17-foot gator. He will not venture anywhere near the water without a life vest that he could inflate with the pull of a tab should he feel a seizure coming on.

"I love the swamp," says Holmberg. And the swamp loved him back for 25 years, providing a fine income from Mr. Denny's Voyageur Canoe Swamp Tours. With seven canoes and several guides, Holmberg's tours took as many as 150 visitors a day at $20 to $50 a head up the river's tiny tributaries. Powered only by paddles, the boats let their occupants slip quietly across thick carpets of salvinia grass and beneath towering cypress trees to get an up-close look at the amazing array of wildlife in the swamp.

But Katrina washed away Holmberg's modest riverside home and four of the seven 22-foot canoes that he designed and built himself, modeled on the Canadian fur-trading boats he paddled and raced as a youth in Minnesota. Then the tumor returned, leaving him unable to rebuild his home or business.

Since his last surgery, Holmberg has been living in a FEMA trailer on $700 a month in disability payments, mostly consumed by his prescriptions. His home was uninsured – "foolish enough to live on a river," he shrugs – and he got $9,000 in Katrina grant money, now almost gone.

"I'm in a dilemma," Holmberg says, which is just where Russ Vandercook found him in late June, packing his few remaining belongings into a couple of plywood crates for a move back to Minnesota, where his mother, brother and sister live.

Russ Vandercook, left, is helping Denny Holmberg re-establish his swamp tour business. Image: John Brecher / MSNBC.com

Vandercook, a building contractor, was looking for recreational outlets for the AmeriCorps crews he was working with on Katrina relief efforts. When he heard Holmberg's story, he decided to help get the swamp tour business going again as a way to help Holmberg raise enough money to rebuild his house, take care of his health needs and stay near his three kids, 20, 16 and 14, who still live in the area. Eventually, Vandercook hopes, the business will provide a living for him too.

For now, Vandercook, his wife, son and a couple of friends are guiding whatever tours they can book to raise money for Holmberg. Their efforts have been adopted by a Hancock County relief organization, which is publicizing the tours on its Web site, and Vandercook is promoting the business with new brochures and yellow pages listings.

Vandercook, 47, himself a recent transplant from Michigan, has developed a passion for the swamp and loves to pull canoes through the muddy water wearing camo pants with a foot-long combat knife strapped to his thigh.

And he has grown very fond of Holmberg, helping him sort through his medical and financial issues and deal with the seizures that come at least several times a week and sometimes once a day. One of Vandercook's biggest goals is to see Holmberg, who studied biology, lead tours again.

"You get out here with Denny and it's just like going back to school," he says. "He's a very knowledgeable man. We just wish it wasn't stuck in his head right now."

They gave it a test run of sorts recently.

"He said he'd never get back in the boat because of the seizures," Vandercook says, "but we took the middle seat out and put some cushions in and put him down in there and took him out in the swamp."

The voyage was a success, Holmberg said, unleashing another "Eeeaaahhhh!" for emphasis.

NOTE: Mr. Denny's Voyageur Swamp Tours can be reached at 985-643-4839.

Ferns hang on the porch of Mary Perkins' new home. Photo courtesy of Mary Perkins

As I sit here thinking about the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I am watching Hurricane Dean moving toward the Yucatan and Mexico. But it could have been here that Dean decided to visit. And we are sure glad he didn't, because we are not quite ready for another one yet.

So, how are things after two years? Well, some things are much better. Two lanes of our bridge opened in May, and it was a very emotional experience. There was a special program at the foot of the bridge on our side, then dignitaries went to the top of the bridge and tied a ribbon symbolically joining the two cities together. Then we had a celebration at the Bay-Waveland Yacht Club. More than 5,000 people attended, drank beer, ate food and visited the more than 150 booths showing local wares. Since the opening, I am now able to travel to Long Beach to the Winn-Dixie Grocery Store in 20 minutes, instead of the 45 it used to take. For me, it boosted my attitude a little more.

I am currently serving on the Hancock County Comprehensive Plan advisory board and the Bay St. Louis Historic Preservation Commission. I am dedicated to assuring that Bay St. Louis can retain some of the few historic buildings left and preserve our heritage.

The library system, http://www.hancocklibraries.info, is also moving right along. We have received two trailers from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to use as temporary libraries in Waveland and Pearlington. We have also received enough funding to rebuild the Waveland Library and should be breaking ground in the next couple months.

WANTED: Anyone who wants to come to Bay St. Louis and open a grocery store. We still only have Wal-Mart and need a real grocery store. The Chamber of Commerce has a $740,000 interest free, 10-year loan for anyone who might be interested in expanding their horizons and coming here to help us out by opening a grocery store. There are more than 11,000 vehicles crossing the Bay bridge every day now, and we know the business is here. So, go out on a limb and expand your business to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi!!

A great many businesses have come back and opened. We now have a Lowe's, a Home Depot, Kmart and many others. The main crisis here, other than rebuilding homes, is the insurance problem. People cannot get coverage on their homes because the premiums are outrageous or they think they are in a flood zone (FEMA will not publish the final Flood Advisory Elevations until next year). Businesses have seen as much as 640 percent increases in their premiums. U.S. Congressman Gene Taylor is now fighting for HR 3121, a bill that would provide multi-peril insurance sort of like flood insurance and for the whole country. So, everyone needs to let their U.S. representatives and senators that they are in favor of this bill should visit this Web site or Congressman Taylor's home page. With more than 53 percent of Americans living in coastal counties, this issue affects most Americans.

As for me personally, I have been in my house since December. I am still hanging pictures, rearranging closets and cabinets, but I am in. I have completed landscaping and am very pleased. The puppy dog, Pokie, and the cat, Freeway, are very happy and also settled in. Never in my life have I ever had a dishwasher, a garbage disposal and a utility room that has a washer and dryer (mine were the stackable kind). So these little things make a world of difference to me. And the backyard is fenced, It is just wonderful. I have included a photo, so you can see the ferns hanging on either side of the porch.

So, my last words to you would be - - please do not forget us. There are so many who still need help, who need volunteers to assist them in rebuilding their homes. We are a long way from being whole again. Yes, all these things help, but there is so much left to do. As you ride down the beach road, there are only 16 homes left. Sure, there are a few building back on the beach, but I hear their insurance premiums are like $28,000 a year.

So, thank you for all you have done, but do not forget us.

WAVELAND, Miss. -- The golden years were looking good for Theresa James, 82, mother of three, grandmother of five, great-grandmother of four, widow, last surviving child of nine and lifelong resident of the Gulf Coast.

Her big house in Clermont Harbor sold, leaving her with a tidy but sufficient monthly income rolling in. She was happily at home in a $585-a-month apartment on Third Street south of downtown Bay St. Louis.

There were a few ups and downs with her health and such, but she was at the peak of an artistic career, painting colorful oils of jazz funerals, shrimp boats and cotton fields. Then came Katrina. The hurricane took all of her belongings and landed her in a 150-square-foot FEMA trailer on a friend's newly vacant lot in Waveland.

Now this Toyota-driving, white-haired grand dame of the Hancock County Senior Center, sharp as a tack and sunny as an August afternoon in her native Galveston, is among tens of thousands of renters in the hurricane zone who lost their homes to the storm and whose prospects of finding new ones are generally far worse than residents who owned their homes.

VIDEO: Theresa James struggles with the lack of affordable rental housing in Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Miss., since Hurricane Katrina. She spends her days painting New Orleans-themed folk art. Click to watch her story. (David Friedman / MSNBC.com)

That's because while billions in federal dollars are being handed out to directly help rebuild single-family homes, almost none has been made available so far to replenish rental housing in the hurricane zone. In Hancock County 20 months after the storm, not a single nail has yet been pounded to replace any of the hundreds of multi-family subsidized and market-rate rental units that were lost to the hurricane.

As a result, thousands of renters remain in FEMA trailers or other temporary housing as they do elsewhere in Mississippi and Louisiana. To add insult to injury, rents are skyrocketing on the few units that have been renovated. Others, like Theresa James' apartment, are being turned into condominiums that their former tenants have no hopes of buying.

'The most powerless group'

"Rental Katrina victims are essentially the most powerless group of all in trying to fashion a recovery," says Reilly Morse, an attorney with Mississippi Center for Justice, which advocates for racial and economic justice along the coast. "They have to depend entirely on landowners and land developers to make something happen."

The loss was staggering. In a state where nearly 30 percent of the residents are renters, 72,116 renter-occupied units were damaged or destroyed by Katrina, according to Gov. Haley Barbour's office.

In Hancock County, where the pre-Katrina number of renters ranged from 20 percent in the county as a whole to more than 35 percent in Bay St. Louis, there are no precise figures on how much rental housing was lost. All 176 public housing units in Waveland and Bay St. Louis were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Hundreds of other apartment units were knocked out of commission either permanently or temporarily. An untold number of additional rental units were among the thousands of single-family homes that were destroyed.

Of the $5.5 billion in federal Community Development Block Grants that the state is handing out to spur post-Katrina rebuilding, a huge share has so far gone to homeowners. According to the state's latest figures, $869 million was distributed to 12,413 families in a first round of grants. Another 10,000 homeowners will receive funds in a second round that will also distribute hundreds of millions.

When it comes to rentals, however, just $100 million has so far been allocated from the grant pool. It is going to five public housing authorities along the Gulf Coast, including the agencies in Waveland and Bay St. Louis that have been combined since the storm.

But that money, less than 2 percent of the $5.5 billion in federal grants, falls short of the $111 million in losses suffered by the housing authorities. And it will likely be many months or years before construction on replacement public housing units actually gets under way. Precise timetables were unavailable from officials with the new Waveland-Bay St. Louis Housing Authority, who said they were too busy consolidating offices to meet with reporters.

Plan to bolster rental housing unveiled

In late April, Gov. Barbour announced a new plan to bolster rental housing in the hurricane zone. Some $263 million in forgivable loans would be offered to owners of rental properties with four units or less. At $30,000 a unit, the state expects 5,000 rental housing units could be built or repaired under the program, and rented to tenants who meet certain income limits. But the program has yet to win final approval and it remains unclear if and when it could start.

So far, private developers have not shown much interest in building new apartment complexes. Buz Olsen, who currently oversees the Bay St. Louis building department, says no permits have yet been issued in his city, although there have been some applications filed for tax-credit programs that could eventually see about 450 units built. Again, that could be years away.

In Waveland, one developer has begun site preparations for four units on Nicholson Avenue and another has gotten the green light to start work on a 100-unit complex at Waveland Avenue and Highway 90, said building official Otis Sharpe. Other than that, he has merely had "a lot of inquiries" about restoring a number of heavily damaged complexes along Waveland Avenue.

No permits have been issued in unincorporated areas. "It's all still on drawing table," said Hancock County building official Anthony Cuevas.

Demand far outstrips supply

The situation has created a rental market that's tighter than a Waffle House lobby on Sunday morning. Thousands of renters like Theresa James – who is on a waiting list for a Catholic-operated senior apartment and a Habitat for Humanity home -- are still waiting it out in FEMA trailers, according to Olsen.

Others, like welder Nathan Cranmer, 27, who grew up in Kiln and lost his $900-a-month rental home on St. Charles Street in Bay St. Louis in Katrina, bunked in shelters, trailers and with relatives while looking for affordable new digs to rent. A year after the storm, he found one place, but moved out in disgust after five months of living under a leaky roof. Just recently, he was delighted to find "a little bitty apartment" in Waveland for $700 a month.

The shortage "concerns everyone here" Olsen said. "We are a blue-collar community as well as an upscale community. We don't have that affordable side."

The lack of urgency and government support to restore rental housing does not surprise Morse of the Mississippi Center for Justice. "There's an inappropriate moral attitude about renters in some circles that isn't justified," he said. In Gulfport and Biloxi in neighboring Harrison County, he pointed out, even when new complexes have been approved through tax-credit financing schemes, they have been blocked by not-in-my-backyard neighbors who fear that "affordable housing" will bring social problems that slash property values.

"I do know that that's a problem," said Donna Sanford, disaster recovery director of the Mississippi Development Authority. She said the state has formed a team to work with local governments on some of the NIMBY issues. "I think we are doing a lot of things," she said, touting grant money spent on infrastructure that could also help foster construction of new rental housing.

In the meantime, Theresa James waits it out in her trailer, happy to have a roof over her head and her independence. FEMA recently extended the time period that Katrina victims can use the trailers rent-free and nobody expects tenants to be forced out of them any time soon.

James does her painting at the senior center in Bay St. Louis, so studio space is not an issue. But she's afraid to use the propane stove and there are some things that she has no room for in the trailer.

"I certainly do miss my recliner," she says.

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. – John Brennan and Daye Moynan have had enough. After struggling for 20 months to rebuild their business and their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the owners of a chic Old Town art mall are selling out and leaving the state.

While they were able to withstand the terrible damage the hurricane inflicted on their beloved Maggie May's gallery and their home in neighboring Waveland, Brennan and Moynan can't rise above its effect on their bottom line: a $10,000-a-year jump in the cost of insuring their business. They are not alone.

"A lot of folks still have that 'we are staying' energy," Brennan says, "but a lot of us are losing it." By this time next year, he and Moynan hope to have a new life – and a new Maggie May's – in Nashville, Tenn.

Brennan and Moynan are among thousands of business owners in the flood zone who have been stunned to learn, long after the storm, how soaring rates for commercial wind coverage translate into fine print on their own policies.

It's the latest reason that everyone in the flood zone loves to hate the insurance industry, which first earned the enmity of Gulf Coast residents by immediately declaring most damage from Katrina to be uncovered flood losses and refusing to pay. While the insurance industry continues to report record profits after the storm -- $64 billion in 2006 -- the non-payment issue remains the subject of a huge, tangled legal battle.

For most business owners, who are insured through a state pool, wind insurance rates are now about 2½ times what they paid before Katrina. With commercial rates already much higher than residential rates for similar structures (because there are four times as many homes insured by the pool as businesses, thus spreading the risk), the recovery of business districts all along the coast has been thrown into doubt.

In Old Town Bay St. Louis, for instance, while a number of businesses -- from attorneys to the local newspaper to a café and antique store -- have reopened, the vast majority have not. Several have opted for new digs miles away on Highway 90.

'Downtown' currently a single bar and grill

In Waveland, a lone bar and grill is the only business to reopen so far in a permanent building in the old downtown core on Coleman Avenue.

The situation had Bay St. Louis Mayor Eddie Favre shaking his head at a recent town council meeting as he noted how "very little" commercial construction has been started since the storm. "It all goes back to the insurance," he said. "They can't afford the increases."

But local insurance agent David Treutel, a member of the state's newly reorganized wind insurance pool, says things have actually gotten better recently for business owners, thanks to a reduction in wind rates. The state pool underwrites both residential and commercial policies for wind damage along the coast because so few commercial insurance companies will write new policies. After Hurricane Camille in 1969, the state allowed insurers to exclude wind to keep them covering other risks.

In addition to wind coverage, building and business owners must still carry standard insurance coverage for fire, vandalism, liability and other risks as required by their lenders. If their property is in a flood zone, they must also carry federal flood coverage.

The wind pool rates, which are the same in all coastal counties, took their first huge leap in October 2006, more than a year after the storm, going from $1,340 per $100,000 of coverage for a wood-frame commercial building to $4,935. Then last month, the state acted with federal help to reduce the commercial rate to $3,243 per $100,000, Treutel explained.

Post-Katrina wind rates for residences have been held at a 92 percent increase, to $1,353 per $100,000, thanks to government subsidies, he said.

Small comfort for gallery owners

That is small comfort for Mark Currier, who with his wife, Jenise McCardell, runs Clay Creations in Old Town and owns a gallery there that is leased by an artists' cooperative

Mark Currier and Jenise McCardell (David Friedman / MSNBC.com)

"Come on," he says of the commercial rate increase. "The big thing is we're all excited that they did drop it down from being tripled, but it's still more than doubled."

Currier, who plans to remain in his current location, saw the annual insurance bill for his Main Street holdings -- which include his shop, the gallery, a photographer's studio and a couple of residences -- go from $7,000 to $25,000 before coming back down to $17,000. "It's a freaking mess," he says.

And more of a mess than Renee and Drew Boxx, Currier's new neighbors in Old Town, could take.

When Katrina struck, the couple and their four children lived in Cedar Point, an upscale neighborhood north of town. "We came home to a slab," Renee Boxx said. In need of a new place to live, as well as space from which to operate Drew's cabinet business and Renee's Funky Rose dress and gift shop, they bought a large home with commercial zoning next to Currier's place.

"We bought this house to open our businesses and live in it, thinking it was the wisest way to go financially," Renee Boxx said. "And then we received our insurance bill. It was $27,000. For a year." The wind coverage portion of that was about $18,000, including some contents coverage, Drew Boxx said. The couple shut down business operations in January from the new address and insured the building as living space only, dropping their premium for wind coverage to $3,500.

Saving big bucks by renting

Late last month, the Boxxes reopened both their businesses in a small strip mall on Highway 90. Despite the fact that they're paying rent for the new space and the wind pool rates that they would have been paying on the Old Town property have been reduced in the meantime, "We are $10,000 ahead by doing this," Renee Boxx said.

Another former downtown businessman, Jay MacAniff, owner of A OK home furnishings boutique, also chose to reopen on Highway 90, partly because rental space was available and partly because of insurance issues. Having received "almost nothing" from his policies for Katrina damage, MacAniff remains very bitter about an industry that he says "spent most of their money and time pointing fingers" after the hurricane instead of paying claims.

Treutel acknowledged that the insurance hit has been especially tough on small-business owners, speaking from personal experience. His own home and business were hit hard. With many of his clients not needing to insure their now bare lots, his revenue remains down. "It's real slow and it's rough," he said.

But he is encouraged by other features in the legislation that authorized the wind pool subsidies, which believes will spur insurance companies to return to the Gulf Coast, fostering competition that will force rates down. "I have no doubt, no doubt, that you're going to see this area boom and grow."

That better happen soon, says the departing Brennan. "We're still kind of a ghost town now, but wait until next year. You're going to see a lot more small businesses shuttered. … As far as all that empty land out there on Beach Boulevard, you can believe it's from insurance – either not receiving any money or not being able to afford to insure what they can rebuild."

Long term, Treutel says, "A final decision on properly insuring this country against catastrophic disasters is going to have to come on the federal level."

Hancock County's representatives in Congress, Sen. Trent Lott and Rep. Gene Taylor, agree. They're pushing legislation to end the federal antitrust exemption enjoyed by the insurance industry. Both lawmakers lost their homes to Katrina – Taylor was the Boxxes' neighbor in Cedar Point -- and joined legal action against their insurer.

Taylor, who has accused insurers of outright fraud in denying Katrina claims, summed up his anger toward the industry recently when a reporter asked him what he'd like to get from the Easter Bunny: "State Farm's head on a platter," he replied.

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. – If the trees could talk, they would tell us everything.

Silent, gnarled sentries, the live oaks of the Mississippi Gulf Coast have seen it all. Since well before they beckoned Spanish and French explorers with their massive limbs like welcoming arms, the oaks have been dutiful witnesses to the timeless cycle of birth and life and death. And hurricanes.

Of Hurricane Katrina, 20 months after she unleashed her fury, they have two stories to tell. One story is as plain as the leaves on their branches. Denuded by 120 mph winds, the oaks now bristle like happy Chia pets.

"Last summer, you saw no green," says Bay St. Louis artist and businessman Mark Currier. "This year, look at the live oaks!"

As with the oaks, the outward signs of human recovery are visible all along the coast.

Locals are planning the biggest party they've ever thrown to mark the opening of the new $267 million, four-lane Highway 90 bridge between Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian to the east. The nearby CSX railroad bridge has been open for a year now and freight trains rumble daily through town.

While the occasional jolting juxtapositions of stairs to nowhere and toilets on slabs remain, the breathtaking piles of debris that clotted the landscape after the storm are gone. The cleanup efforts, subsidized by billions in government spending, are in their final days.

Fast food and box stores

Between Waveland and Bay St. Louis, there are more flavors of fast food than you can shake a stick at and a healthy number of more refined eateries. There is still no stand-alone grocery store in either town, but the Wal-Mart in Waveland, forced into a circus tent after the storm, is back in its building and busting at the seams with everything from pineapples to patio furniture. Kmart has reopened, and a booming business in building materials is being done at a new Lowe's and Home Depot as well as several outlets that pre-date the storm.

Tax revenue from gambling also is helping the battered local economies, through the reopened Hollywood Casino in Bay St. Louis (formerly the Casino Magic) and a new 5,000-square-foot casino at Bayou Caddy, attracting thousands of gamblers and generating millions in new tax revenue.

Housing construction has been slow, but skeletons of wood and steel are more numerous than they were six months ago, with the largest efforts still coming from volunteer crews and the Habitat for Humanity program. Little has been done to replace the hundreds of rental units lost to the storm but plans for new projects are emerging in both the public and private sectors.

In Bay St. Louis, city employees have moved out of their temporary post-Katrina City Hall at the Old Depot and regrouped on Highway 90 in the former Coast Electric compound, also home to a new police station. Late last month, the City Council approved a $14 million contract to replace utility lines in the downtown area.

While still governing from a collection of portable buildings at Coleman and Central avenues, Waveland is forging ahead on big-bucks projects to rebuild utilities and restore the devastated civic center complex at the old Waveland School.

Scant activity in downtown cores

The downtown cores of both cities remain very light on business and commercial activity, a fact laid mostly to post-Katrina insurance issues.

The beaches are clean and the cries of gulls fill the air at sunrise while wading fishermen stalk the shallows. Soccer moms meet like they do everywhere to stroll and confer on the jogging path along Beach Boulevard. The warm spring temperatures are luring ever more sunbathers, picnickers and swimmers.

But the live oaks – and the people of the hurricane zone – have a second, inner story that can't be so easily seen and understood. As storms have battered the trees across the centuries, roots have shifted, trunks have twisted and limbs have curled in ways that are no longer apparent. Long after Betsy, Camille, Elena and Frederick, the oaks hew to the force of their winds and so too do the people.

It is no different in the aftermath of Katrina.

Just how it plays out is hard to divine. You cannot bisect hurricane survivors and look at a neat record of concentric rings for when and how they were wounded, healed and changed. But there are signs and there is talk, although most of it not on the record when a reporter is notebook-in-hand.

For some, it is a real sinking spell. Depression, drinking, drugging, marital discord, troubled teens -- they have seen much more of it all since the storm swept through. The situation is especially bleak in FEMA trailer parks, according to a recent study, with suicide and violence sadly common.

There is more suspicion about who has profited in the aftermath of Katrina, who is trying to pull a fast one. There is disgust with gouging landlords, agony over skyrocketing insurance rates and soaring utility bills. And there is constant distress over being forgotten by most of the nation and harshly judged by the rest of it.

Nobody 'has a fight left in them'

"I just think everyone is tired," says Michelle Allee, an artist who displays her work in a Bay St. Louis gallery. "I don't think anybody has a fight left in them."

In political affairs, tensions are flaring over a Bay St. Louis City Council redistricting plan and Mayor Eddie Favre's choice for a new police chief. Townsfolk mutter at each other under their breath at council meetings. In Waveland, Mayor Tommy Longo's citizen detractors nitpick virtually every city decision from their folding chairs at sessions that recall the old admonition against watching sausage being made.

What are the inner stories here, coursing like sap through lives that have been entwined forever? "These people have known each other all their lives," warns one transplanted county resident. "You don't know how much of this is Katrina and how much of it is who beat who up in the first grade."

And as old feuds and rivalries have been exacerbated by Katrina's fallout, some unlikely new alliances have been forged.

It is a time of great soul-searching along the coast. The frantic hand-to-mouth pace of immediate survival and initial recovery has slowed. There is time for reflection, time to look for slivers of meaning as carefully as if they were shards of a precious heirloom smashed by Katrina into the red Mississippi clay, but an heirloom that might be pieced back together.

Some are wondering why they stay. It is at the top of a long list of perplexing questions. Should I rebuild? Should I reopen my business? Where? Why was my house spared? Should I feel guilty? Am I crazy? Are we all crazy?

No Cliffs Notes for this test

Even the most introspective seekers can find themselves puzzling like freshmen lit majors over a Faulkner novel. But there are Cliffs Notes for "The Sound and the Fury." Not for this.

Just as we must wait to see when the leaves come back and then, wait much longer to see which direction the trunks will lean and the branches will grow, only the future will reveal how Katrina has changed these people, these towns, this coast.

Now, a new storm season is on the horizon, predicted to be "very active." Whether a major hurricane spins out of the Atlantic, across the gulf and slaps Mississippi is anybody's guess. But the possibility is on everybody's mind.

When the winds do come again, in a year or in 30, the live oaks will be here as they have always been. They will shudder, they will bend, they will crack, and they will let loose their leaves in the howling breath of a new legend whose name awaits on an alphabetized list.

Then the trees will grow anew, and more will be revealed.

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VIDEO: Bay High School freshmen Jonathan Daniels, Leann Cassibry and Will Chisholm talk about their thoughts and experiences 20 months after Hurricane Katrina. Click to watch. (David Friedman / msnbc.com)

Rebuilding a house. Moving out of town. Fighting with the insurance companies. Finding work. All life-changing things that many people have dealt with in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But what about the kids? They don't make those decisions, but they feel their impact.

So we asked a trio of Bay High School freshmen about their thoughts and experiences 20 months since the storm. What was the experience like? How has your town changed? Is school different now? And, of course, that timeless question asked of high-schoolers, what will you do next?

Click above to watch the video responses of Bay High freshmen Jonathan Daniels, Leann Cassibry and Will Chisholm.

I'm interested in the artifacts, the things left behind 20 months after Hurricane Katrina's destruction of many Bay St. Louis and Waveland homes.

Does a lone metal folding chair represent parties past or future? A fireplace – cozy winter afternoons remembered, or a future family's Christmas stockings? Is a solitary section of white picket fence guarding old secrets or opening for new beginnings?

Memories or hope? Both, I think.