New Orleans poets, writers and other creative types are bemoaning the loss of their manuscripts, drafts and decades’ worth of other unfinished works due to the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina.
Writes The Wall Street Journal: “Technology limited the literary toll because many writers backed up their works on central computer servers or emailed copies to friends and relatives. But other storm victims had only a home computer or notebooks. Now they’re wracking their brains to recall their lost words, paying firms to try to salvage text from waterlogged disks and taking greater precautions with post-Katrina compositions.”
We feel most bad for Kris Lackey, an English professor at the University of New Orleans, who tried to do the right thing, but fell one step short. The WSJ says Lackey “saved manuscripts four ways — paper, hard drive, diskettes and a flash drive — and boarded his home against the wind. But when he evacuated, he left his papers and computer equipment on tables and bookshelves, not nearly high enough to withstand the 11 feet of water that engulfed his house near the west breach in the London Avenue canal.”
Why didn’t he grab the flash drive?
Via Obscure Store
