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.
I don't pay much attention to Katrina news, but I heard this number on the radio this morning and was stunned. Not to belabor the obvious, but isn't this an awful lot of money?
I'd like to know how much Marshall Plan assistance Germany received after WWII in present dollars. I am going to go way out on a limb and bet that it was not this much money, although the infrastructure and cities of the whole country were in rubble.
But you know, the rubble had hardly stopped smoldering when people were picking through it cleaning up fallen bricks to be reused. Next thing you know, a modern industrial country is up and humming again.
Those people in Germany have their faults -- including a lack of rhythm and soul -- but, by gosh, they have a work ethic.
“I talk to friends about New Orleans like a dysfunctional romance.”
As a former resident, I can tell you that she nails the analogy.
A reality slap in the face. It usually happens by the time you are 28 years old. Stay safe.
This romantic notion of city life is what feeds urban street crime.
My wife and I spent a week in NOLA back in the early 80 era. The only thing I remember about that city, was the drunks and hookers on the street at any and all hours of the day. I think there were more drunks and hookers there than in Vegas.
We got "lost" in the bad area of the city and had our doors locked the entire time. I finally got on a street that ran close to the Superdome and we got back close to the river. That was the last time I'll ever go to that city.
I seem to remember that the local farmers were unable to grow the poppies before we got there.
Worth repeating...over and over!
Welcome to a democrat utopia city.
She blames “the city” when she should look at who has run the place into the ground. Decades of corruption came home to roost as it was exposed by natural disaster. Hard hitting reporter, she is. Snicker.
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.
Perhaps you won’t ‘get it’ til you get yourself killed?
Sheesh.
I’ve seen this kind of behavior from liberals before, in Over the Rhine in Cincinnati. They make a big show of leading for ‘change’. Lasts about 18 months to two years.
Then...they get mugged, and realize ‘I could get my butt KILLED!’.
Its not a hurricane two years ago. Its not about ‘leading for change’.
Its just another story of a liberal that got mugged.
When i was in N.O. this summer we took a ghost tour and at the end of it, our guide told us “tell your friends to come. We’re dying down here.”
It’s sad. I have similar mixed feeings about the city as the author does. But i no longer tell my friends to go to N.O. I go every year and this year was by far the worst. My daughter, who loves going every year said she felt depressed there this time.
It really is dying. But it’s not our fault. It’s their fault they aren’t recovering. N.O. is a tourist town. If you can’t get your act together and stop the crime that is keeping people away, then your city will die. If you can’t get your act together and fix the levy that is scaring some people off, your city will die. I could go on and on.
Ah yes, a conservative is just a liberal who’s been mugged.
NO was a corrupt crime ridden cess pool long before Katrina.... all that’s different now is you can’t point to the glossy parts to cover up its problems.
Well if you pay taxes, you're paying whether you like it or not.
Ah yes, a conservative is just a liberal who’s been mugged.
In some cases, yes. Not mine.
I was a cop in NYC in the early seventies when the city was as dangerous as everyone thought it was. Walking around NOLA in 2005 felt just like NYC at its lowest.
____________________________________________
You're kidding, right?
Bwahahahaha...
Sorry.
She should be smart and stay away.
Yeah, Katrina was nature's way of removing New Orleans. We (the US taxpayer) has no business rebuilding it.
3 out of four family members here agree! 4th hasn't been there.
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