Two candidates out of five ain’t bad. Arthur Morrell’s victory over Nick Varrecchio in the Clerk of Criminal District Court race really hurts, but Nagin winning doesn’t seem to bother me like I thought it would. Twenty six candidates for mayor in the primary and I didn’t like one, not one. On the other hand, Arnie Fielkow is on the City Council! Can you say “political capital,” kids?
This morning, a group of us helped our friends, Marilyn and Murv, clean out their badly-flooded home, three houses down from the London Avenue Canal breach in the beautiful Filmore neighborhood in Gentilly. It took ten of us more than two hours to gather and eject a house length’s worth of debris stacked five feet high. Not to mention that Marilyn and Murv have already spent time over the past nine months salvaging items and still have more work to do before they can place the house on the market!
[Photoset of the excavation.
Video interview of Marilyn by Simon Dorfman of PeopleOfNewOrleans.com.]
What Made A Former Home
Take this effort – the labor, the emotions, the memories and the exhaustion – and multiply it by thousands upon thousands of homes around the city and in surrounding parishes that suffered similar fates. Nine months after Katrina, we have so far to go. Can it be done? Will it be done? Does this round of government have the ability to lead us into the future I just described? Can this city come back and grow from there? Now what? This is the question on all of our minds as time flies and progress doesn’t with it. And, man oh man, do I ever want Bush, Cheney, every member of the federal government, Army Corps of Engineers and the local levee boards to spend one night in the ghost town that was once a proud and thriving row of lovely homes known as Mirabeau Avenue.
We’ll make it, if only in fits and starts and with a lot of the camaraderie and elbow grease I witnessed this morning. Slowly, painfully, and many Krispy Kreme crullers, jambalaya, Abitas and Soul Rebels CDs later, the light at the end of the tunnel will get closer.
Ray, you’re mayor again. Whatever you want, please ask and we’ll give it to you. But, you’ve got to ask and you’ve got to listen.
For what’s it worth, the city has friends in faraway places. Not that I want summer to go quickly, but I do rather wish it were July… can’t wait to get back down there.
Amazing pics, Maitri. Thanks for sharing that. You’re a good friend to help.