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Updated 3:28 a.m.

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AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Irwin Thompson

Mark Smith of the French Quarter Jackson Square Band carries his tuba near downtown New Orleans as the National Guard brings in equipment Friday, Sept. 2, 2005.

Updated 2.24 a.m.

The New Orleans 'dome may be empty but nola.com's Nola View blog is full of messages from people who still need to be rescued from homes they didn't abandon.

I'm grateful to bloggers linking here, among them Jeneane Sessum, Shelley Powers, Doc Searls, Mike Golby, Tom Matrullo, Steve Hug, Liz Donovan, Kaye Trammell, Richard Blumberg and Alan Fraser, each of whom is worth a visit.

9:43 p.m.
Garden District horror novelist Anne Rice writes an op-ed in the NYT from LaJolla, Calif.: Do you know what it means to lose New Orleans?

...But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.

8:26 p.m.
Streaming on the Web: WWOZ In Exile. The volunteer, listener supported roots radio station is being hosted by WFMU in Hoboken, N.J. Powerful, clear "semi-automated" streams with live breaks in RealAudio, mp3 and Windows Media Audio formats.

David Friedman, WWOZ's general manager, is in a motel room in Arkansas, talking with WFMU by phone at times. The paid staff is scattered but all safe; they don't know about the jazz and heritage music station's 350 volunteers. And they have no idea about their equipment and music collection, but the music is still playing.

Great stuff. Blues, jazz, straightahead honky-tonk rock. (Later: Haunting zydeco fiddle. Wish I knew who it was.)

6:31 p.m.

AP
Evacuees line up in front of computers looking for word of loved ones on the floor of Houston's Astrodome today.

Earlier post: An opportunity to help turn lives around:

Technology For All, a Houston nonprofit, was coordinating with authorities to set up a center in the Astrodome with 40 desktop computers loaded with Internet connections and office productivity software.

That link goes to Technology for All's blog, which explains what they're doing.

5:45 p.m.
Del.icio.us is a group bookmark/favorites list. That link, the front door, is the realtime live feed of links people are pointing out to each other. It's a hodgepodge, but you can search for specific "tags" -- keywords -- to filter the stories and sites people are contributing to the stream.

Here's the realtime neworleans tag feed (Note that New Orleans is compressed to neworleans; if you want to search other tags, make them one word.)

Leading right now as I randomly load it: What It Means to Miss New Orleans

Here's what's leading for a search on "missing": Katrina | The News is NowPublic.com

What bloggers are posting: Mark Cuban's IceRocket blog search engine is picking up things that Technorati isn't. Here's BlogPulse's results for a New Orleans search; it looks political.

I'm going to take a break with my family.

3:14 p.m. MSNBC: La. hires former FEMA director as 'liaison' to FEMA. MSNBC TV is reporting this. Basically, former President Clinton's FEMA director will be taking over the direction of the government's efforts.

Background: Chicago Tribune: Slow response bewilders former FEMA official

I cannot believe this is happening in America. When I was young, the grownups took over in disasters, with serious government officials on TV and radio with plans, supplies and instructions, progress reports and reassurance.

CNN reports that Al Gore has landed in New Orleans with a American Airlines plane to evacuate 130 critically ill people to Tennessee.

If you've come here from a headline link, New Orleans/Katrina links continue below this item at the main page.

What does gas cost in your neighborhood? I just drove a loop of the Pawtucket end of Providence's east side writing down gas prices. It took just a few minutes to catch all eight gas stations from North Main Street (between McDonalds/Whole Foods/Boston Market at the old University Heights) up Olney to Hope Street at the East Side Y, and north on Hope to the Pawtucket line.

Prices are for regular, premium and super, respectively.

Hess (at the North Main Street entrance road) is lowest at $3.14, 3.24. 3.34.

All four Shell stations, three on North Main, one ) are at $3.15, 3.25, 3.37.

Citgo (on Hope at the Pawtucket line; it's Venezuelan oil) is $3.24, 3.34, 3.45.

The Cumberland Farms just over the Hope Street line into Pawtucket, regular was $3.43 this morning. Cumberland Farms' prices had dropped to $3.35, 3.48 and 3.76 at both locations (there's one at Hope and Rochambeau) by 1:40 p.m.

You can report price-gouging to the Dept. of Energy at this Gas Price Watch Reporting Form

Please use the comments to report gas prices you've seen. They'll be posted immediately. (If you're reading this on the main page, click the word "comments" at the end of this item. You can be anonymous.)

More price reporting here, although they seem to go out of date quickly:

At GasBuddy.com:

Providence Gas Prices
Rhode Island Gas prices

New Orleans links continue at the main page. If it's easier to remember, projo.com/shenews gets you there, too. Blogging from home, I'm trying to pack lot into the one latest headline that will appear on the projo.com homepage, so please forgive the clunky mixing of local and global topics here.