Ray in New Orleans

I sometimes have doubts that might be parallel to what you're feeling. When I have these doubts, the voice in my head generally says things along the lines of "Just who the hell am I to [fill in the blank]."

Granfalloon. Sorry. I call Granfalloon.

You know you know what it means far mare than many who were here and didn't feel the direct effects.

The people who stood by as spectators and used their time away as a vacation but now tell everybody how tough it was.

I have another high school friend who is Nth generation Y'at, born on Mardi Gras Day in the back seat of a taxi stuck in parade crowds, and she has told me that amongst her writer friends, that division was not implicit, it was explicit. Writers who had lived here only a few years treated her as a tourist because during the storm she was teaching at a university in another state. "Sorry, honey, but you weren't here for it, so you don't really know." I know it hurts her quite a bit.

Oh, fuck them and the horses they rode in on! Anyone who is a native New Orleanian shares the collective Jungian pain that is the storm, just like all the males at a movie share the collective gasp when a guy on the screen gets punched in the balls.

These people who try to divide us make me sick. It's one thing for you to feel "Bastonge guilt" as you describe it, it's another for these morons to tell someone they're now in a different caste because of it.

Just fuck them.

Yankee trust-fund babies who came to New Orleans to slum and score coke and who happened to be there during Katrina are not and never will be New Orleanians. End of story.

I wasn't "here" for the events of 8-29, either. We were in New York, and there was no thought, at that time, that we'd be moving back... until Dan's business in Brooklyn said the big-M word (merger) and he started looking around.

I'm damn grateful we got the chance to move back and we took it. I still kick myself to a certain extent that all we could do at that time was try to keep in touch with evacuated friends as best we could and impart information, via the internet, mostly, about missing jobs, about the state of people's homes, about other friends, to those same friends. That won't go away, either...

What also won't go away is the great opportunity I've had to meet and to read the words of folks such as yourselves. I'll always treasure that. You are one of the good ones, Ray, and, though that feeling you have doesn't really truly completely dissipate if you are a conscientious individual (which you ARE), to have somebody tell you, of all people, such tripe about "How dare you? You weren't there!" is such absolute crap. I wish there were other words in the English language to describe the magnitude of the absolute crap, but there it is.

What is most important is you are doing what these folks can only dream about. You are leaving them in the dust and trying to save this town in your way, while these folks are content to sit among the ashes imbibing their drink of choice and saying they knew the city when. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. The heat probably killed their horses anyway, so they're stuck. Idiots.

One day I'll talk about why I left New Orleans after Ivan and returned after Katrina, or rather, I'll write about it, because I talk about all the time. The culture shock of moving from Ann Arbor to New Orleans was nothing compared to the culture shock of moving back to Ann Arbor from New Orleans. Most recently I was talking about how I feel about Ann Arbor at Ann Arbor Is Overrated.

I was desperate to return to New Orleans already, when Katrina hit. Then it was almost impossible for me to do anything but watch. I moved back with $40.00 in my pocket on New Years Eve.

I never feel like I don't belong. I know I belong here because I know I can't survive anywhere else.

Well, I can survive, but life becomes a matter of survival in the face of chronic clinical depression. This time around I'll be more humble. If this city won't have me... But, she will, on her terms, which I'll abide.

Two years later, Mid-City breaks my heart like Detroit. The houses that burn. The houses that the city demolished in St. Phillip. The houses gutted of all their character. Homes destroyed are lives destroyed, families destroyed. They are charred tombs or anonymous unmarked graves. They remind me of the City of Detroit, Devil's Night with the hundreds of structure fires, and the urban decay that was funky in the 1980's until the land became so vacant and the homes so sparse that it was nothing but tragic.

It is all so familiar now that I can ride down Ulloa St over in the corner of Mid-City closes to Hollygrove and the burned houses cause me to look down at the asphalt, sickened. The structure fires are the triggers to recall the ruins of Detroit.

Remember that the gutting of the homes in the flooded neighborhoods was a political as it was practical. Although the city is making a point of demolishing our gutted and secured homes, we did manage to put an end to the discussion of shrinking the footprint, we managed to quell the New Urbanist re-imagining of our city, and force the city to deal with people not visions.

Across the street from me, on N Dorgenios St, is some palatial home that one day had a gaggle of Iowans in front of it. I spoke with them. They were Catholics down for a second visit to work on the recovery. They'd gutted the house a year before. I assured them that it was not a wasted effort, that the recovery was dragging, that a gutted and secured home is an important step in a long process. The house was still secured, so someone was still planning on coming back.

The house is cleaned and painted now. There are crews working on it every day.

even if you were here, it was impossible to be fully here.

The fact tat this entire City endured a body blow would mean that even if you were pulling babies off roofs you would have missed the folks in the dome, or the people in Gentilly, or Hollygrove and on and on.

The real difficult and tedious part of this recovery is the aftermath.

Last year this Church group from Minn. called me and asked me to find them a house to gut. I found them a house that the owner wanted to demolish cause he just didn't give a shit.

When I told the Minister he said "Oh we only want to help people who want to help themselves" My response was that is too easy. The real work is to help and ask no questions and expect no thanks, the task is the thanks.

Right here, right now, this is Bastogne, and you are here...

Ray, you're here now. Yes, the deaths and the boat rescues and the politicians bawling all happened on live TV in the days immediately after August 29. But in a very real way, that was just the prelude. Katrina set the stage; the show started after the water was pumped out. The people who came back and the people who are still here are the real heroes and defenders of New Orleans. Thanks for being here when we need you most.

Peace,

Tim