First, some housekeeping issues. I have been having technical problems with Blog-City since some time last Tuesday and have not been able to access my blog, or any Blog-City sites from my home computer. The tech support folks have been very attentive and we have tried various tests and pings (thanks, Mayoress!) but I still can't reach my blog, or many of yours, from home. Hopefully, we will continue to try to fix the problem until we have done so. In the meantime, my commenting may be limited, as I have to come to the office to post or comment on other Blog-City sites. Fortunately, I am able to read your comments, because they are sent to me via email. I am not, however, able to respond to them (without coming back to the office). Also, I have a number of new links to add to my gutter, including a section for New Orleans blogs and sites. Those of you who are waiting for me to add you to my links, please know I appreciate your patience.
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Happy New Year and Katrina Musings
I celebrated the New Year quietly, and happily alone. I spent Friday night with friends at my neighborhood watering hole, and stayed later than usual, fueled by lively repartee, hearty laughter, and beer. It was great, but, come New Year’s Eve, when I had planned to jaunt up there late, for a traditional toast to the passage of time with the “regulars”, I succumbed instead to the call of the hot, homemade pea soup on the stove, to my current favorite store-bought honey bar-b-q chicken wings and a raging fire in the fireplace, watching the celebrations on TV. I bounced around some, flirting with ABC’s Dick Clark – Ryan Seacrest extravaganza, but settled on CNN, because they had so much variety, including (in no particular order) the “Drag Queen Drop” in Key West (hey, I didn’t name it), my own A-T-L’s Peach Drop, Times Square, Chicago’s Navy Pier, and, most importantly, the celebration in Jackson Square in New Orleans. Anderson Cooper hosted, and made, what stood out to me, as one really important remark. He said it angers him when he hears media folks talking about “Katrina fatigue” as if they had the right to do so, and that the only folks who had the right to claim “Katrina fatigue” are the good people of our Gulf Coast, toiling away in her aftermath.
This morning on ABC’s This Week, George Will was actually saying that we shouldn’t rebuild New Orleans, or build any major cities on the Gulf Coast at all, as if it’s not just the luck of the draw in any given year and the Gulf Coast is somehow more vulnerable to the vagaries of Nature than is the Pacific Coast or the Atlantic Coast. It may appear to be true, given the last two hurricane seasons, but, the fact is that there are lots of “when, not if” disaster scenarios waiting to happen in our fair land. By his logic, we shouldn’t have built St. Louis and San Francisco on faults or New York City on an island. Terry Moran, moderating in George Stephanopoulos' stead, reminded the panel that, regardless of where it’s located, New Orleans remains “our city” (and, by extension, our responsibility) and asks what and how much should be done. His question went unanswered, but Donna Brazille knowingly made it clear that NOLA “will be rebuilt, with or without federal assistance,” saying (and this is most certainly true), “they will rebuild it with their own hands.” The question is how well and how safely it will be done and the answer is unclear.
It’s going to happen. It’s already happening. Tulane and Loyola will start their spring semesters in the next weeks, with their campuses relatively intact. Their administrative personnel and their faculties have been coming back for weeks and months, families in tow, dealing with their own destroyed and damaged homes, many without basic services, and getting ready to receive students, who are beginning to arrive. Dillard, Xavier and UNO will begin their spring semesters with greater challenges, having sustained significant damage but determined to continue educating, remaining important vibrant parts of the community. Nothing can stop the folks from returning. It’s happening now, with or without the support of the federal government, with or without a consensus about how and when the city will be rebuilt, with or without adequate levees.
My son is lucky. His home and his university are safely in the “sliver by the river”. They sustained minimal damage and receive most services. They have power and cable and high-speed internet. Their mail is delivered and their trash is picked up (I think). He returned last Friday, to meet his friends who arrived from every corner of the country, determined to celebrate the arrival of 2006 in New Orleans. He’s a college student, a musician and a writer, and nothing could stop him from going back. This was his second trip back, and this time he will stay. Both times he came into the city at night, from the east, taking the single functioning span of I-10 across Lake Pontchartrain. He says that, on that drive, he can almost begin to understand how gigantic this is, because of the big, empty, chilling dark that stands for mile after empty mile, where the lights of Chalmette and New Orleans East used to lie, all darkness, from the lake to the city.
I don’t know whose job it is, whether it lies with the Mayor or the Governor or the Levee Board(s), or the Army Corps of Engineers or the President of the United States, but my son is there, now, his college experience transformed and his point of view perhaps forever changed, and I will ask, or yell, or shout from the rooftops until it is done, that whoever/whatever/whichever being or entity is supposed to be taking care of these levees and protecting the city of New Orleans and her citizens from the harm that could come from levee failure, whether by the vagaries of nature or the hands of evildoers, please see that it is done. Done now. Done right. Done.
I wish each and every one of you who take the time to read this blog a happy and healthy and prosperous New Year, but, most especially, my New Years hopes and prayers go out to those brave souls who have just begun the work of rebuilding New Orleans. May they be safe.
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