Katrina
Update #85Katrina
Update #85…and I mean that in the spirit of the season — so if you aren't a "Christmas" type of person, please insert your favorite holiday greeting in there instead.
No, I haven't fallen off a cliff. I have actually had plenty to say, but absolutely no time to say it. The time I normally allocated to doing these updates has either been spent trying to figure out the new look and feel I want for the site, or with other, more pressing matters. To put it simply, I have been just flat out too busy to learn the skills I need to make the web site do what I want it to. Hopefully that will change after the holidays and our upcoming trip to Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
I have heard your pleas – either directly or from others: "When is Chuck going to do another update?" Well, guilt got the best of me. I simply could not allow Christmas come and go without making at least a feeble attempt to bring you up to date on what has been happening in and around the Big Easy. Our Christmas cards this year had a very common theme from many people: "we don't hear anything about how New Orleans is doing any more." OK - so here you go.
If you poke around a little, you may notice a different look to some pages, so you will start to see a little bit of what the site will look like when I am finished.
It is hard to wrap your brain around this: 16 months later, and so much of this city is still torn to pieces. Take a look at these pictures, both of which were taken within the last month:
These two pictures are representative of what much of the lower 9th ward still looks like. Some of it just got power for the first time since the storm earlier this month. The lack of money and resources has left almost every side street with potholes that can cause serious damage to your car if you aren't careful. Of the 20-some stop lights on St. Charles Avenue, only a handful are actually working properly.
Meanwhile, it was announced that Mississippi was going to get 280 million dollars in Federal Aid to build "Katrina Cottages," compared to $75million for Louisiana. This is despite the fact that they "only" had 61,000 homes destroyed by Katrina while Louisiana lost over 200,000 homes to both Katrina and Rita. Although FEMA insists that Mississippi had a more "competitive process;" that the projects Mississippi presented for funding were simply better. Better or not, that doesn't seem to be the appropriate solution to the problem. It does, however, reek of partisan politics since Mississippi is a republican-led state whose governor has close ties to the Bush administration.
Lousisana is not without blame, however. Louisiana is a little like a football team that keeps turning over the ball and getting penalized. A lot of the "yardage" it is losing can be attributed to its own inability to function in a manner conducive to recovery. Despite what might be the right thing to do, it is becoming increasingly apparent to the more enlightened (read:"smarter; more educated") population of the state (and the city of New Orleans in particular), that the majority of Louisiana's voters are not as enlightened (read: "stupid; less educated").
Perhaps one of the reasons I haven't posted in so long is simply because of anger and disgust at the ineptness of my fellow voters to effect change. Granted, Rep. William Jefferson has not been indicted, and he is, of course, innocent until being proven guilty. After all, getting filmed taking a bribe and finding $90,000 is totally above board right? Look - while it may be true that getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar doesn't prove you stole any cookies, do you really trust that person to be watching over the cookie jar? At the very least this guy can be accused (and proven guilty) of not trusting the FDIC with the $90K he was keeping in his freezer. While that in itself is not a crime, do you really want a person that doesn't trust the government participating in its running? What kind of message does that send to the rest of us: "withdraw all your money and buy really good freezers, folks - the banking system is about to collapse!"
After the citizens of New Orleans ignored the obvious benefits of electing someone whose sister is a senator during the mayoral election, I had high hopes that perhaps - especially with the recovery effort seeming to progress so slowly, that they would see the errors of their ways. Obviously not. At this point, I really can't blame anyone for not wanting to come back, or for pulling up stakes. Neither can I blame you when you wonder why your tax dollars should be supporting such a place. But read on, there are very good reasons to do so.
As I have so often mentioned, New Orleans recovery will happen on the backs of individuals who - with shear determination - will work to rebuild their lives. And that, friends, is exactly what is happening. Yes, you can still drive for mile after mile after mile of abandoned homes. But there are about twice as many people living in those abandoned areas now as just a few months ago, and the pace is picking up for repopulation of those areas. The New Orleans economy is vibrant due to the influx of insurance money to INDIVIDUALS who are spending that money on repairs, the materials for which produce tax revenue, and the labor for which employ thousands.
The "sliver by the river" is at 115% of its pre-storm population, and stores all over the area are reporting record sales this Christmas season. Magazine street yesterday was so crowded that many stores were forcing people to take numbers just to talk to a clerk, let alone check out! The amazing season the New Orleans Saints are having are bringing a welcome diversion to all those people who are spending every non-working moment rebuilding their lives, and the tourism industry appears to be well on its way to recovery - some people are predicting New Orleans may even have a record year economically in 2007 as more people choose New Orleans as their vacation destination and organizations book their conventions in the city. The first three months of 2007 will bring almost convention-related visitors to New Orleans, and this is in addition to the Mardi Gras crowds expected for next years Carnival.
2007 will have an expanded parade schedule, with almost all krewes that paraded before the storm on the schedule. The first parade to roll uptown, near our house, will be Oshun on Friday February 9th. In total there will be 28 parades coming down St. Charles Avenue, including – for the second year in a row – Endymion. Last year, Endymion paraded down St. Charles for the first time in its history and we were all sure that would not happen ever again. But the city still cannot provide adequate police and trash services for both its traditional mid-city route and the other parades that roll uptown, so Endymion (the largest Mardi Gras parade) will once again roll down St. Charles Avenue on Saturday February 17th. Now all of you that couldn't make it for this past Mardi Gras have an extra special reason to join us this year!
What a difference a year makes! I recently came across this article from December 22, 2005:
Christmas in New Orleans
By Fatima ShaikPicture Santa’s sled with a rolling kitchenette attached and you have some idea about the size of a FEMA trailer. I came across a yard of them when I got lost on the highway near Baton Rouge, where most of my family evacuated out of New Orleans.
The trailers are not the double-wides I imagined—but some are festooned with lights and an artificial Christmas tree outside the door as in a Bobbie Ann Mason short story. A FEMA trailer is more like a camper that you’d attach with a hitch to your four-wheeler when you want to get out of the city for the weekend. Tiny, but nonetheless a gift.
As the rest of the country, children and adults alike, envision Christmas with piles of presents from their favorite electronic and clothing stores, the people of the Katrina diaspora are waking up daily with thoughts of clean underwear, one comfortable chair and not being home for the holidays. But they are trying to make it.
In the town of Baker, the trailers sit row after incalculable row on a dusty field isolated from the sleepy community. Baker is a town where Main Street sits along the railroad tracks and leads from the interstate past the chemical plant and the playground to the church and two roads named Magnolia. An estimated 1,700 people live on the Baker plain. It is a good mile from any shopping or familiar community life. The FEMA park is named Renaissance Village, for the RVs as much as the hopes of their occupants.
Other evacuees stay in temporary apartments and pile into houses around Baton Rouge. One of my cousins hosted 70 people in her home in the days after the hurricane.
Now, life means close quarters, small irritations and long hugs with too many memories of home. Evacuees send e-mails to each other with Christmas poetry wistful for beignets, king cakes and burgers at Port of Call. People who lived for their front porches and pecan trees are getting used to seeing a clear, cold night sky.
Like children making their wish lists to Santa, the evacuees are hoping hard and wondering if they will ever regain shelter, sanity and a decent future.
The Christmas commerce that exists in the welcoming malls of the North is a harsh contrast to the stores and hotels of New Orleans, that were boarded up for protection and to keep out Katrina’s homeless. People joke about spending food stamps on Christmas candy or presents or seafood for gumbo, and the reasons not to hoard instant noodles and canned goods. The suddenly indigent now recognize the delicate balance between entitlement and nutrition.
The jokes these days are edgy. Once voting for governor was a choice between the Klansman and the Crook. (Vote for the Crook, my folks advised everyone.) Now, the joke is “Where’s Waldo?,” with bank officers and city and government officials hard to find.
Best friends and neighbors whose family connections extend for generations now meet fleetingly before traveling to jobs in one city or another. Relatives lose precious phone numbers and castigate themselves for doing everything wrong. Those who escaped Katrina have not escaped worry and longing.
Going home for the holidays are mostly the elderly and infirm. Their homecomings take place in downtown New Orleans at one of the three St. Louis cemeteries, which hold some of the city’s most permanent residents.
Still, the survivors talk openly to strangers in crowded meeting halls. People with dedication and sympathetic hearts are working and planning. As in New Orleans’ early days, crooks and futurists are finding commonalities in notions of a new frontier. Individuals are washing their houses by cup and spoon. They are teaching their children that kindness is sharing a bottle of water and self-sufficiency is keeping some.
When the nation emerges from its pile of gifts on Christmas morning and picks up the newspaper or moves to the television, will Americans still attend to the people of New Orleans? Or will Katrina’s poor folk move back toward the invisibility where they existed for so many years? The people of south Louisiana may accept their lot or maybe disappointments will fester. Let us hope that they bear no bitterness if America moves on.
In poor Louisiana, the community of Katrina survivors is looking for miracles. At this time of the year, they are finding a parallel to their tragedy and hardship from long ago: There was no room at the inn for the first Christmas and few places to rest their heads now for the people of New Orleans.
As I said above, things are progressing - but it is the individuals, not the politicians that are making the biggest difference. Streetcars are running on St. Charles again – but only from Canal St. to Lee Circle and back. The rest won't be operational until Spring of 2008! And, for so many, there is still "no room at the inn."
In closing, I offer what is perhaps the very best rendition of O Holy Night ever – by New Orleans musicians, as performed on NBC's Studio 60:
Music Only:
Video (complete scene):
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