I’ve been trying for 19 months and I don’t think I’ve really have been able to get across the chaos, the fears, the hope, and the shock of seeing a world that you’ve looked upon for over 40 years wiped away in an 8 hour period.
But I believe that the citizens along the Mississippi Gulf Coast well meet this new sense of despondency with the same resiliency that they have shown these past 19 months. It is already starting. Yesterday, Smokin the Sound, after a year’s absence, came back. There were thousands watching the magnificent boats race. But even as I drove away after watching for a couple of hours, I noticed the hundreds more that were playing at the beach and in our parks.
It might seem strange to welcome heavy traffic once again. But I welcome it along Highway 90. For it means that people are coming back to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and are coming back to the beaches..... ..... The Mississippi Gulf Coast is still tattered but little by little those ragged edges are being replaced.
There are so many things that can bring on that sense of depression. I got it as I read comments to a post about New Orleans in Harry Shearer's blog ..... many of us regard N.O. more as a tourist attraction and novelty site than an actual functioning city. That and the fact that Louisiana is a southern state, a red state, a poor, uneducated state, a state with a history of unsophisticated political corruption, yet a state too stupid to vote Democrat even after a Republican administration subjected it to criminal negligence and public humiliation.
Do I know what I'm talking about? Absolutely not. I've never been to Utah, but I regard it as a [messed] up theocracy; and I've never visited Florida, but I have a low opinion of it because of the disproportionate influence its population of anti-Fidelistas has on the rest of the country, its number of executions, and because of Jeb Bush.
Dumb reasons, right? Well, in truth, my reasons for "hostility" toward N.O. are no less reasonable than people's reasons for not liking France (which I've visited) or Mexico (where I once lived), or not liking modern art (which I own).
EJ has found similar feelings here where he links to a blog that thinks like this:
While I can't imagine the personal devastation caused by Katrina, I wonder why other great cities have risen to the challenge of past natural disasters and New Orleans is still paralyzed?
What a fucktard.....not EJ, but this moron who calls itself Machiavelli (it wishes).
Just seeing Ray Nagin in the news brings me down.
Driving home from work brings me down some days.
But this little guy seems happy...even though he has to eat out of this nasty ditch every day on Hwy 90.
But spring is here, life is renewed and we forge forward. Looking forward but not ever forgetting what's behind us. What has happened has made us wiser, stronger, sometimes sadder, sometimes angry. But we survived.
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