And, boy, does the oak pollen in this town make me want to crawl into a Benadryl-filled plastic bubble. On 3000-sneeze days like this, I wish my mother had raised me in a barn instead of hosing our house down with Lysol everyday (OCD, OCD!). Work in Houston was alright and French Quarter Festival was FABULOUS, what with Kermit getting married, Amanda’s CD release party and the Arabi Wrecking Krewe Allstars and Bonerama closing out the weekend. Pictures are in the works.
My last post at First Draft was largely a response to those who tell us to pick up and move because we “built below sea level” and that we are a bunch of whiny babies who feel we’re owed. While explaining the usual – New Orleans wasn’t built but expanded below sea level and Katrina veered east of here – I think I was possessed by that spirit that occasionally touches us and we start to speak in other-worldly preacher tongue. For my post ended with this:
“Ergo, America, we are owed. We are owed for the thousands dead, the tens of thousands more left homeless and pain-filled more than a year and half later, our broken economy and our back-breaking struggle towards a shred of normality. We are owed for the breach of trust that we placed in the hands of a contractarian government, one that let us down repeatedly before and after the storm and flood. We are owed for what the Corps admitted to us. We are owed until the Corps gives us what they promised and still fail to deliver. For as long as we are tax-paying Americans who produce a quarter of the nation“s domestic oil supply and a fifth of its natural gas, you come to our city to enjoy its sights, music and cuisine, you neglect to stand up and protest for us as we would for you and we are a part of this union, we are bloody owed.”
Feel free to print out all or part of the post, add to it and hand it to the misinformed and naysayers. Now I go blow my nose and hope to goodness I don’t sneeze again today.
Sweetie?
There is something missing from your great statement: Our devastation, in many ways, is due to the Corps allowing tens of thousands of miles of service canals for the oil and gas industry to tap into the resources that SE LA possesses for the benefit of the Nation and their shareholders. Such actions removed much of our Natural protections from tropical storms.”
Otherwise, you are right on target, as always.
Namaste!
Welcome back. (cough)
The oak pollen hasn’t been kind to me, either. (hack, hack)
Nor has the sudden drop in temperature. (coughing fit)
Where’s a hermetically sealed fumigating tent when ya need one? I need it to seal myself in from all this CRAP in the air. (wheeze)
If I find more than one, I’ll let ya know… (throat clearing, cough)
1 800 STFU LOL? Hilarious. I dialed in to say that post was on point. I got asked the same line of ‘why rebuild below sea level’ questioning back in Georgia – St Simons Island, Georgia. Like folks who build $750K homes some -20 inches- above sea level have so much room to talk.