Guilty.
Posted on 08/28/2007 9:51:44 PM PDT by LdSentinal
Last summer I was the poster girl for New Orleans . My picture ran in the Sunday paper with the headline Generation K. I smiled, flanked by hot pink oleander and golden hibiscus.
In the interview I praised the city for its social warmth and tropical elegance. I declared my goal to tell stories about its stumbling, slow recovery. I'd quit bussing tables at an Uptown bistro so I could report full time.
I've reported for this network and others on crime, housing, insurance and tourism. But unlike most reporters who fly in for a few weeks at a time, I've LIVED here. So, when I go to the drug store, and chat with the drug store clerk ...she recognizes me. Last year on Labor Day she was crying. In the past, she'd have thrown the family picnic. Her house flooded to the roof. Some of her family died; the rest, left. No more family, no more picnics. Then there's the family I met at the mechanic. They were waiting for an oil change. They were part of the crowd at the Superdome after the flood. A bus took them to Arkansas. That's where they live now. They had a cooler of andouille sausage to bring back. No more hot dogs in the gumbo!
I've taken fierce pride in being a local. When I travel I'm a junky for talk about the city. Someone will ask "So, how is it down there?" I launch into a litany. There are busted traffic lights, leaky sewer lines, mountains of debris, the skyrocketing murder rate, miles of desolation, and the levees still aren't fixed. But you should come, I say. It's like a battered beauty queen. Hard to look at, and messed up even more on the inside, but still so regal and charming. This is where the listener I've taken hostage turns away slowly to engage someone less insane.
They don't understand that I'm in love. I talk to friends about New Orleans like a dysfunctional romance. I gush over it one day, then call up bawling and heartbroken the next. Why can't it change? Stop being self-destructive and violent? It has so much potential.
Recently, my blinders started to come off. It was building for awhile. My friend Helen Hill was murdered in her home;other friends have been mugged. We don't go out much any more...
But then there was this hot Friday night last month. I went on the perfect date with New Orleans . Saw live, local music, danced with friends on the stage, then headed home through my neighborhood of craftsman cottages and angel trumpet trees.
A block from my door, I was attacked from behind by a stranger. I escaped, with the help of my roommate. The case is moving forward, so I can't say much more than that.
Now I'm a jilted lover of the city. I'm angry and confused. Which is the real New Orleans? The one that's violent and desperate? Or the one that coos softly, and caresses me? The answer, of course, is both.
I just hauled my things out of New Orleans in a big truck. I am still in love with the city, but it's hard to trust it. Maybe we'll both heal, and the relationship will rekindle. I don't know what - or how long - that might take.
Poor kid.
She sounds like she suffers from Battered Wife Syndrome.
Except it was an abusive city that was doing the betaing.
I’m glad she is getting out of that situation.
She might consider buying a gun to defend herself.
jas3
Guilty.
Stupid woman. Stupid, stupid, stupid woman.
Face it, Eve, baby. The love of your life, New Orleans, always has been and always will be a cesspool.
You've just been lucky that what happened to you hadn't happened sooner. Get out with your life while you still can.
N.O. has no potential to be anything other than what she is. N.O. is filled with people who are convinced that they are perfectly entitled to be ignorant, unproductive and hateful. I say this as someone who has loved N.O. in spite of her copious faults for thirty years.
Bush didn't do this. These people were always there and now they're in charge. The cure would be an honest city and state government and a professional and incorrupt police force. In Nawlins. I jest.
New headline:
Gov’t Tries to Build City Below Sea Level; Residents Abandon
I disagree...
from Hunter speech:
Today, $116 billion has been appropriated to remedy the effects of Katrina. The rebuilding effort includes: $17 billion for housing and community development; $8.4 billion for levees and flood control; $10 billion for Small Business Administration loans; and, $3.5 billion for highways and bridges.
Would be cheaper to raze Nawlins and let the bayou claim it back...
The fact it's now 2 yrs since the levees broke...and most of the city is still in shambles. Is this Bush's fault? No Way...
Yes, it’s a shame, there were few muggings and murders before Katrina...
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I was in Nawlins shortly before Katrina. It was about the same as this girl described before the hurricane, and I never care to go back.
Welcome to a democrat utopia city.
Wife and myself were there just before Christmas of 1995. We couldn’t wait to get back home. It seemed to us that basically was a town where they all got drunk, stayed drunk, and it smelled like a Septic with the lid off. No such fond memories of N.O. as the young lady wrote of.
Can't we all just get along? Mother Blanco and school bus Nagin know what's best for you. Drink the Kool-Aid and stop complaining!
I was in New Orleans last summer for the ALA conference and it was great—but I’ve heard that since then the vermin have been returning home and the place is returning to its depravity.
I remember taking my parents on a tour of the French Quarter. It's sort of like driving through the worst slum of any big city in America, only worse. There were winos passed out in the street, hookers, drug dealers, and garbage was strewn about everywhere. The smell was overwhelming, and it was 10:00 in the morning. Why anybody would choose to live there is beyond me. There are other swamps in America that at least give you a fighting chance for survival.
Wrong answer. The gentle one is a figment of her imagination. It's the one she wants to be true.
Reality has smacked another liberal upside the head.
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