K+2: My Heart Hurts

UPDATE: WORDPRESS ATE MY PICTURE. WTF?

I promised my faithful readers a final blog entry about my trip to Louisiana. It has taken me a couple of days to really gather my thoughts – a hard task when you’re coughing up a lung. Tonight, though, I thought I better write about it or I’ll never do it. Who knew all those years ago that my choice of research would end up being so depressing? Because I have to tell you … Louisiana depresses me. Not the whole state, mind you … just the areas that were so hard hit by Katrina.

The picture above was taken in September 2007, more than 2 years following Katrina. The house is in St. Bernard Parish, and it is surrounded by other little houses in the same shape. Closer to New Orleans and it’s more of the same. I drove around in a little neighborhood that seemed completely abandoned: quiet, no kids, most homes still trashed, weedy yards. The parish library is abandoned, but still smells like mildewm, mold, and damp books. I know this because the front window was removed and I stuck my head in the building to take a picture. An elementary school was demolished, but a lifejacket was still laying near the site. Has it been there since Katrina? It’s hard to tell. FEMA trailers were still there, completely with security guards to keep strangers away. Here and there, I saw signs for an upcoming local election. Even in this destruction, life still goes on, I suppose.

The Lower 9th Ward was equally bad. At first, I worried about driving around down there. Not so much about the violence — even though I was alone — but because I didn’t want to get a flat tire on my rental car. The roads were still rather nasty in places, plus with some of the ongoing construction, I thought that I might pick up a nail or something. I shouldn’t have worried. The Lower 9th was so still that it was eerie. I stopped my car to take a picture of an abandoned elementary school, its tilted sign still advertising the first day of school for the 2005 academic year. Complete quiet. I drove up the road a bit and stopped to take a picture of the Jackson Barracks. You know the place I’m talking about — the National Guard headquarters that flooded during Katrina. How can the rescuers rescue people if they need rescued themselves? And yet, the Jackson Barracks are being rebuilt in the same damned location. Granted — they will be stronger and higher – but, to me, it seems like people have not learned from their past mistakes. Are our memories really that short? Are we really that stupid?

I drove back into the neighbor next to the Barracks. For every home that’s under construction, at least 4 more were still abandoned. It’s a shame because some of those homes looked like they had been well-cared for in the past. The homes with the beautiful wrought iron bars, the homes with the lovely stained glass windows still intact. I suspect that many of these people had problems getting money from their insurance companies (no flood insurance) and most people are still waiting for their LRA settlements. How can we expect people to rebuild and resettle without a helping hand? Has our government really become so insensitive that it cares more about the rules and red tape than it does about its citizens, their families, and their communities? My heart hurts when I think about this … and I’m a pretty cynical person to begin with. [For the record, I'm not saying that all of the low lying areas should be rebuilt exactly the way it was before. That's only asking for trouble. But there must be some kind happy medium. There must be an acceptable solution out there somewhere - we're just not clever enough to have found it yet.]

It’s true that other parts of the city are in pretty good shape. Drive into the CBC or the Quarter and you’d be hard pressed to point out hurricane damange. But if you’re really observant, you’ll notice an uptick in the number of homes for sale. Drive to the lake front, park near the sea wall, and stick your feet in Lake Pontchartrain. Seems peaceful. Seems normal. But turn around and you’ll see the construction work on levees. Drive down Lakeshore Drive …. or rather, try to drive down Lakeshore Drive … and end up being diverted back to another road that’s under construction. Park at Two Tony’s and walk up to the temporary pumping station at the 17th Street Canal. You can tell that this is a city with scars. The question is: Will these scars augment this city’s quirky character or will these scars make her too tough to love?