The Home That Is New Orleans: Listening to Douglas Brinkley on NPR’s Fresh Air (September 16, 2005), I found three interrelated points worth mulling over. (BTW, Brinkley is a professor at UNO, not Tulane as the NPR site claims.)
Firstly, Brinkley is “very disappointed in the response of the federal, state and local governments …” This goes without saying, but for a New Orleanian to charge his immediate government with inadequacy (and continually) is surprising and refreshing. It makes me wonder how many wish the city to return to the way it was as opposed to a pragmatic rebuilding, which in effect will engender a “new city.”
Additionally, this is not the time for partisan bickering and placing blame. Is there ever, however, a bad time for accountability, specifically in terms of the failure of the levee system, law and order following the hurricane and the ongoing plight of our city’s poorest? I fear, though, that this exercise in The Acceptance Of Responsibility will delay and not effect the needful changes which are water-tight levees, letting super-low-lying parts of New Orleans back to nature, rehabilitating our businesses and schools, and rebuilding with parity.
On to the next point: Will New Orleans be the same? This is somewhat answered in another of Brinkley’s statements: “Historic New Orleans will be back in business … side neighborhoods by levees are devastated … afraid of prefab townhouses … start looking like suburbia instead of rich, subtropical Afro-Caribbean center which I love so much.”
There is no way to reproduce two or so centuries of cultural development in a few years, but reconstruction of some sort must happen. My hope is that HRI stays involved in putting up new homes with some character. New need not necessarily mean boxy, sterile and devoid of charm. Again, who will live in these places, prefab or not? Who are we rebuilding for? As Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser states, “New Orleans has too many people in relation to the size of its economy. The intent should be to help poor people, not poor places.” The rest of this Businessweek article provides insight into the ramifications of the new New Orleans.
In the end, politics and economics notwithstanding, the beauty of New Orleans is her mysterious allure. Well, it’s not really a mystery: There is no place like this in America. As we age as a nation, it is our responsibility to preserve our roots and keep them intact for American posterity. This is identity and character, and I don’t mean just putting up buildings to resemble what was there previously. What I refer to is preserving a place where the twin goddesses that truly represent the American spirit – rich living and spiritual abandon – can live and thrive. New Orleans makes us passionate and interesting as a people, a race, a civilization.
In the words of Brinkley, a resident of New Orleans since 1992, “What an identity I have to New Orleans. I can go other places, I know people, but I’m haunted, I’m driven back to New Orleans. I realize that’s what home is, it’s a place you love so much, your attachments are so deeply rooted to the landscape. It’s not a simple matter of being pragmatic and going elsewhere.”
—
A Quarter In Houston?: Tomorrow marks my first day as a working girl in Houston for the remainder of the year (and just that, I hope). While my heart remains in that beautiful city 350 miles to the east, my body and mind (and paying job) must go on here. In other words, I’m being pragmatic and going somewhere else temporarily. At least, I have the good luck of having somewhere to go. Am I emotionally prepared for it? A few months is miniscule in the face of an entire human lifetime, a journey of a thousand storms and sunny days. On this conspicuously bumpy ride, I remember these wise words, “There’s no stopping the future.”
