NOLA: Positive Perspectives

As promised last week; This from Lord David at Humid City: An Open Apology.

Yeah, ya heard it. I’m writing this for no other reason than to say I’m sorry. Please, allow me to explain….

…I know New Orleans has it’s myriad of problems, from an absentee Mayor and a small percentage of police who think they’re re-living Cool Hand Luke, with us as the Parchman Farmers, to the little things, like cell phones that don’t connect when the weather’s bad, or resetting the clocks after every little thunderstorm, and driving miles and miles, from grocery to grocery, trying to find some freakin parsley…

I recently read that 58% of Americans still don’t think New Orleans is worth rebuilding. What they don’t understand is that it’s too late for that now. It’s coming back anyway.

This afternoon, it rained while I was working outside. I rode my bike through a couple of blocks of drizzle, to Capt’n Sal’s on St. Claude Avenue, and spent about seven dollars on two pounds of freshly boiled crawfish.

That’s the price of lunch at Mickey D’s these days, by the way. Anyway, I peddled home, opened the sack, and put on the radio. Satchmo & John Boutte, taking turns on WWOZ. The strangers at Capt’n Sal’s had discussed the quality of the latest Crawfish, and they were right. Big this season, shells still soft to show their youth, and tastey as can be. The guys working across the street asked (axed?) where to get them and I gladly directed them. They turned their radio down to hear mine when Satchmo started to blow. It’s lunchtime in New Orleans. A sacred event, bringing together groups of different languages and walks of life, over food & jazz, the pleasure of a sultry rainy day and a break in the work of Fixing It All Again.

So yeah, it’s too late to think about rebuilding New Orleans. Sure there’s tons of work left to do, houses to build, schools to open, roads to fix, hospitals to be built.

But the foundation of this city is already poured…

The People. The Food. The Music. The Culture.

The rest is frosting, made of brick & mortar, wire & nails.

And then there's this from Metroblogging New Orleans: Is This Horse Dead Yet?

So, with all due respect to you folks outside New Orleans, I think y'all may be a little confused.

Thanks to the minuscule flame war that erupted after my anti-Chris Rose rant (made elsewhere), and thanks to a couple of emails I've recently received, it's clear that some folks think New Orleans is still wallowing in sorrow like a P-I-G hog. That's in part due to the fact that the media has moved on to cover presidential candidates and fashion week, meaning that images of the modern-day, new New Orleans have been fewer and further between in the national press

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, how many more times can we hear Anderson Cooper give the same field report about devastation and displacement? (I could watch it with the sound muted, but only 'cause he's so freakin' dreamy.) On the other hand, since you might not have seen us on the evening news, you might not know that many of us have gotten over it--the "it" being Katrina, the Corps, bureaucracy, political posturing, etc. Here's an excerpt from a response I sent to one of the email queries that pretty much sums up my feelings and those of my family, friends, and co-workers:

Nearly three years after Katrina, yes, it is VERY safe to assume that many of us are tired of hearing the victim narrative. No, things aren't fully back, but whatever: change is inevitable anywhere, the change in New Orleans was just accelerated. We've settled into the New Normal, and unlike that asshole Chris Rose, most of us aren't weeping into our beer every evening. In big ways and small, most of us have moved on, emotionally speaking. Those who haven't have moved on, geographically speaking.

Yes, we all hope that New Orleans will gradually become better than it was before the storm. (In certain ways, I think it already is.) Will it be perfect? Will it be utopia? I'm probably the wrong person to ask. To me, perfection has to exist in a bubble, and given the fact that everything is interconnected these days--informationally, electronically, meteorologically, and so on--that's pretty much impossible. But New Orleans will continue to be a hub, there will be people living here, there will be Mardi Gras, there will be crime, there will be inequality, and there will be an ease of life unknown in most of America.

Also, I don't think I'm the only one with these opinions. They're pretty well documented elsewhere. Very few people--except some of the hippies who moved here after the storm and don't know when to give it a rest--are still griping about storm-related stuff. Anyone who's still here has to have made peace with it in some way.

If you care to read the full posts at their own homes, just click on the links at the titles above.

And so it goes.
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