Tony Tye, Post-Gazette Kids on Wildberry Road in Fox Chapel run a lemonade stand to raise money for hurricane victims. From left, Taylor Dias, 8, Austin Henry, 9, and the Diebly triplets, Cameron, Morgan and William, all 10. Their sign reads "The money is going to New Orleans and other hurricane victims."

A dark day

From nola.com, Web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, yesterday:

11:41 a.m., Dave Gibbs: Seven people are trapped in the Gallery Row apartments at Julia and Magazine. They were attacked by an armed gang, who hijacked their truck and drove it through a locked gate in the parking garage. They are unable to leave the building due to the heavy presence of large, well-organized armed looters. They expect the building to be attacked at any moment. The trapped people are lightly armed (one shotgun and one pistol), but there are numerous entry points into the apartments. Please send help ASAP.

12:19 p.m., Mark Simpson: My co-worker's brother is one of seven doctors who have been left behind at Touro Hospital. He is in a panic -- the doctors have barricaded themselves on the seventh floor because armed gunmen are outside threatening them and demanding access to the roof so they can be rescued first. He is desperate. Someone needs to help these people NOW!

(The doctors later got out safely.)

12:20 p.m., Quan Vo: There are still over 300 Vietnamese people stranded in sewage water up to the necks in many areas at Mary Queen of Virgins Church. We've contacted the Coast Guard, Red Cross, news media, but no help has come. Versailles is so far on the eastern edge of New Orleans that by the time any helicopters come they're already filled and have to turn back towards the Superdome to drop people off. The water is still rising in that area. Many of the people are growing weak and sick from lack of food and water plus the heat. Some feel they won't make it for the next day. Please people!!! Do what you can to get these people to safe land.

Bike flight

Nola.com: "Steve Godfrey, president of Higher Flyers handbill distribution service in New Orleans is a bicycle advocate, community organizer and activist. He does not drive a car. His only means of escaping before the hurricane was his bicycle. He took off sometime Sunday morning and arrived in Baton Rouge Sunday night. For those of us who know him, we are not only overjoyed by his safe evacuation but are inspired by his courage, perseverance and can-do attitude. We need more like him."

'Will my students be alive?'

"Much of inner-city New Orleans is filled with low-income families with no transportation. These people didn't stay in the city, for the most part, because they were 'attached' to their homes. Most have little to attach to and no money or means to leave. Instead, many either rent one side of a shotgun double house or 'stay' in one of the city's five huge housing projects. And that's where I had to leave my students: on the second floor, in their neighbor's apartment in the Lafitte Housing Project.

"Dwight and Dwan, twin brothers who just turned 17, became my students at one of the lowest performing middle schools two years ago. Their stories were sad before Katrina and may be too intensely painful for the average parent or reader. But their reality was to call Children Services themselves last Friday when they came home to find their circumstances unlivable, once again. That day, they asked if they could live with me, but it wasn't possible Friday. We agreed to meet on Sunday and plan their future. Katrina made all that impossible when I evacuated Saturday night. We spoke several times trying to coordinate how to drop-off food, but officials issued a curfew by 7 Saturday night, making that impossible. I asked their neighbor to take them to the Superdome, but she said it was a bad experience two years earlier when they evacuated for a tropical storm and that they trusted God.

"We spoke at 4 Monday morning, and the storm hit at 5. We spoke a few hours later, and I haven't been able to reach them since. In a Houston hotel, I sit tortured in front of the TV hoping to see a shot of their building or a face. The news just reported that the Orleans Parish Schools would be closed for the next two to three months. What I want to know is... will my students be alive?"

Diana Boylston, nola.com.

New Orleans metro area

Help from Pittsburgh

From nola.com's forum for people who want to help flood victims:

"Our home welcomes a family w. children and pets who need to relocate from the wrath of Katrina. We're not rich but this single Mom and adult son will share our home in your time of loss. We are in the Pittsburgh suburbs close to shopping and medical centers. We will contact your family or friends to tell them you are safe. If you need transportation to get here, we'll find a way to get you here. You are in our prayers ... Rosie the Pickler!"

"We are planning to collect and send toys and supplies to those offering to bring victims of Katrina into their homes. We are doing this through our blog. If you are taking a family in and need things like toys, please send us more information: E-mail address is beentherestory@comcast.net. Our thoughts are with you. Emily and Cooper."

The posting came from Cooper Munroe of Fox Chapel, a freelance writer for the Post-Gazette, who does a blog with her friend Emily McKhann of Larchmont, N.Y. Cooper later told The Morning File: "We have three people donating already, but hundreds of folks from nola.com and other sites have stopped by looking for items. So there are people with immediate needs."

Hold the promise alive

James Adams, The Globe and Mail of Toronto: "Only New York can equal or surpass New Orleans in its hold on the collective imagination of both Americans and those outside the United States for whom the city is as much a state of mind and myth as a physical place. By a lot of 21st-century indexes, New Orleans was a metropolis in decline before Katrina. Its population has dropped by 6 per cent in the past 15 years, to roughly 470,000. Twenty per cent of that population is estimated to be living below the poverty line; per capita income is 55 per cent that of New York. But such yardsticks are almost beside the point when assessing the resonance the Crescent City has for the millions who have visited there and the tens of millions who have done so only through the music of Louis Armstrong, Dr. John, Fats Domino and Johnny Horton, the writings of William Faulkner, Robert Stone, Kate Chopin, Anne Rice and John Kennedy Toole, the recipes of Paul Prudhomme and such movies as 'Easy Rider,' 'Angel Heart,' 'The Big Easy,' 'Pretty Baby' and 'JFK' . . .

"Even if you're not a devotee of Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Harry Connick Jr. and the Marsalis brothers, Thelonious Monk and Jelly Roll Morton, jazz (as music, style and attitude) has insinuated its way into all forms of contemporary life. The trap kit that drummers as varied as Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, Tommy Lee of Motley Crue and jazz mainstay Roy Haynes play today reportedly had its origins in the brothels and bars of New Orleans. Space then as now was at a premium so a portable, multipart kit, played by a seated drummer, was devised to eliminate the overcrowding that happened when timpanists and bass drummers shared a room with a cornetist and piano player. New Orleans is down today, but if history offers any indication and consolation, the city will rise again. Not necessarily stronger or more vibrant, but rise it will. For those of us, meanwhile, who blessedly do not have to contend with the city's suffering, there's the sweet pleasure of Armstrong's rendition of 'Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans' to keep its charms and hold its promise alive."

We want to be in that number

From nola.com: "I hope that within a couple of weeks, when most of the water is gone and the real cleanup begins and N.O. has temporary power, that brass bands take to the streets and play loud and proudly and show the world that the spirit of the city lives on. I hope that all the cleanup crews and volunteers will take breaks to dance in the streets for a few minutes every couple of hours! I hope that somehow the greatest city in the world can turn total disaster into the greatest party the city has ever seen. It may not be the kinda party we're used to, but it would be the greatest one ever, and it would last 24-7 during the duration of the cleanup, leading up to a grand reopening of the city, which would lead to the party of all parties. The spirit of the greatest city in the world will not be destroyed!"