[Recovery Pen has been a column about New Orleans life, from the vantage point of a transplanted northerner with a soft heart and an eye for detail.]

When I was a kid, my mom tried to cheer me up at the end of a fun weekend or family vacation with this old saying: all good things must come to an end. It wasn't much comfort then, and it's not much comfort now. "But why?" I'd ask her. "Why do good things have to end?"

She didn't have an answer for me, and I don't have an answer for you. My fellow bloggers have already said their goodbyes, and now it's my turn. As you've heard, our blog has been cancelled, obviously not because of our writing quality, but because our parent company wants to go in other directions. Bloggingneworleans, and its short-lived predecessor bloggingohio, were to be the vanguard of location-specific sites across the AOL network. But when Bloggingla and bloggingbrooklyn never manifested themselves, well, it didn't come as much of a surprise when we heard they were pulling the plug on us.

Personally, I can say that I received the news with a mixture of sadness and relief. Unlike my fellow bloggers, who plan to set up camp in new spots in the blogosphere, I am looking forward to the old-fashioned pursuit of writing a novel. It's something that I couldn't balance with my full-time job, healthy social life, activist pursuits, and weekly blog, but now I can fit it in. And I'm so grateful for this site which has forced me to sit my butt down and write on a semi-regular basis. Having this practice will help my novelist pursuits immensely.

And yet, and yet... As we recently passed the two-year Katrina anniversary, it saddened me to realize that the city still needs a Recovery Pen, because we're still recovering. And maybe we always will be, the way alcoholics call themselves "recovering" for years after they put down the bottle.

But some rays of light pierce through the thick haze of chaos hanging over our city. We're becoming greener, despite our best efforts to the contrary, with Brad Pitt commissioning Green Spaces down in the Lower 9th, a return to curbside recycling, a bike lane to be installed on St. Claude Avenue, and a long bike path planned for the new, improved City Park. As I write these words, I can feel fall in the air, which always means that the craziness of summer (and the murder rate) will be going down soon. The kids are back in our public schools, which have nowhere to go but up. Next month, we get to exercise our right to put new faces in the governor's mansion, in the state legislature, and on the New Orleans City Council. Thank God this is America, where we can keep electing people until one of those chuckleheads gets it right.

I'm sad that I won't have this forum to comment and read the commentary of my fellow bloggers as the city changes for the better (crossed fingers.) You won't hear our takes on the election outcomes, or on Voodoo Fest 2007. We won't be reporting from this year's Independent Book Fair (on Frenchman Street, Saturday, November 10) or from Thanksgiving opening day at the Fair Grounds Racetrack. You'll have to spend Christmas, and Mardi Gras, and Jazzfest without us. But before I get too sad, I should remind myself that I'll still be writing for www.nolafugees.com when I feel inspired, so please keep a bookmark there!

Let me close this blog by finishing my NOLA alphabet, a project I'd started without realizing I'd have a concrete deadline (today) to finish it. I've been dragging my feet on these last letters, but like all good things, even the alphabet has to end. So thanks for reading, my dear friends and New Orleans well-wishers! Keep coming, keep dreaming, keep believing in the best for our fair city!

W is for Water

Flood Day, September 11,1998. When the rain started, I was working in the English grad student office up at UNO. My fellow grad students were smart to skedaddle out of there. But I, having been raised in a place where people don't fuss about the weather, stayed put until I finished my work. Then I thought it smart to drive to Lakeview to meet friends for a birthday lunch. When I found a closed restaurant with a flooded parking lot and no friends in sight, I realized that maybe I should have gone home sooner.

I got on I-10 to get back to my uptown home, but the police had blocked it off and so I was forced to exit on St. Bernard Avenue. Never will I forget the terror of driving my low-riding Saturn coupe through deep floodwater in one of the worst parts of town. To soothe my frayed nerves, I turned onto Claiborne Avenue under the overpass, so that I could sit in standstill traffic with an ambulance stuck behind me. I don't know why the driver thought having the siren on would help him get through the traffic. No one could move. So we stayed stuck there, listening to the blaring siren echo against the concrete overpass.

Finally I had to abandon my car on the St. Charles neutral ground, right in front of Igor's bar, where I stayed for the rest of the day. The whole episode reinforced a New Orleans lesson that I'm still trying to un-learn: nothing is so terrifying that alcohol can't fix.

X is the Rescuer's Mark

Two years after Katrina, you can still spot Xs sprayed onto houses where the rescue teams came searching. Marked with the date of the search, the search team's code, and the number of living and dead, this letter lays bare the destruction. As much as we can try to gloss over what happened here, the Xs remind us most viscerally of the depth of this tragedy. I remember when they found a body in my neighborhood nine months after the storm. For all I know, they're still finding bodies in the Ninth Ward.

Y is for YURP

Last month, the Times-Pic did a cover story on the Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals that have flocked to New Orleans to be part of our "renaissance." Architects and educators, urban planners and doctors, these idealists are ready to sacrifice high salaries for the chance to make their mark on a city full of raw possibility. I'd like to send a big thank-you shout-out to all YURPs and URPs of all ages for investing in us. Hopefully our color and charm will keep you here while you realize that affecting change in such a stagnant place can be a bitch. But stick it out - we need you!

For anyone interested in the faces behind this movement, or anyone needing a date for this weekend, check out the new networking website aimed at this demographic: www.nolayurp.com.

Z is for Zapp's

Let me end this alphabet, and my blog, on a wonderfully spicy note. From Cajun Crawtator and Hotter n' Hot Jalapeno to Sour Cream and Creole Onion and Cajun Dill, Zapp's has a chip for all lips. They even offer a no-salt variety for the health-conscious out there. Not that I've tried that flavor, myself. For if I've learned anything from living and blogging in this city, it's that life goes down better with a little bit of spice!

If you want to catch up on the rest of the alphabet, click the letters below:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V