I started Back Of Town. So, I love Treme, but simultaneously harbor a small fear that New Orleans and its post-Katrina history will henceforth be viewed solely through the lens of the show. My mind goes back and forth: The story must be told. It’s just a television show. The story is told very well in this television show for the most part. New Orleans is New Orleans, however. She was, is, and will be long away from the Treme treatment. An important point, that I consider from time to time and warrants further discussion, but not why I came here today.
This last episode from early 2007 brought back a lot of happy and painful memories. In the Treme Time Scale, between last week’s episode and tonight’s, I had traveled from a relatively calm and safe New Orleans to New York City and returned to the news that Dinerral Shavers and Helen Hill had been murdered and were we going to march on City Hall?
New Orleans City Hall | New Orleans, LA January 2007
Early 2007 was such a blur. I remember blogging away furiously while switching assignments at work. And I remember this mask because I made and wore it for Mardi Gras 2007. Its theme: Crime & Recovery a.k.a. Babies With Guns (and booze and women. Yeah, babes with babes. It wasn’t referred to as the Triple Entendre mask for nothing.). Also reminds me that I need to unpack it to make sure it made it across the country alright.
A baby killed Dinerral Shavers while really out to get Dick’s step-baby. (Not only do these children shoot each other to settle beefs, they have no fraking aim. It’s gangster-movie-comical if not for the awful consequences.) And the city did nothing, NOTHING about it. This I will never forgive. I often think of an alternate history of New Orleans in which Ray Nagin lost the 2006 mayoral election. Apparently, so does James Gill.
For various reasons, I’ve been re-reading the posts from those days. I venture a guess that a number of us are.
The Morganza Spillway has been opened to protect Baton Rouge and New Orleans from the Mississippi River potentially overflowing its carefully-carved banks in these cities. According to Tim, this does not keep New Orleans river levels from subsiding, but stabilizes the flow rate downstream from the spillway. “Operation of [the] spillway and floodway will keep [river] stage from going above 17 [feet] at [the] Carrollton [gage].”
The US Army Corps of Engineers designed the spillway to be opened “when the flow of the Mississippi at Red River Landing, Louisiana, is greater than 1,500,000 cu ft/s (42,000 m3/s) and rising.” With 125 bays, that’s 12,000 cfs per bay. As of this writing, one Morganza bay is open. More from Tim: “The spillways operate to maintain 1.5 million cfs flow at Baton Rouge and 1.25 million cfs at New Orleans. Doing the math, 0.25 M cfs flows out [of the] Bonnet Carre [spillway].”
WWLTV New Orleans reports that the spillway may be open for several weeks.
Where do people get off thinking the world will come to an end, they will be pneumatic-tubed to Heaven and all will be answered in their lifetimes? Then again, why not? What’s so special about any other coming time in Earth history that it cannot happen next week?
At any rate, I’m seriously tempted to stage a scene in this ‘hood that involves “vehicles left behind.” There is an East Asian church around the way. Wouldn’t it be funny if a whole bunch of empty cars with doors open suddenly filled its parking lot, the pastor showed up and I ran towards him screaming, “We non-whites were left behind! Nooooo!”
Guess only I think about these things. And find them amusing.
Two relatively young New Orleanians I knew slipped, fell, and died. As they lived alone, both of their bodies were not discovered for days. One in the Marigny, the other Uptown. One last month, one this month. Death can happen to anyone at any time. Numbers all around me are being called, just ask. But, unlike my in-laws or grandmother, for instance, who saw their deaths coming for a long while, these people died without warning.
I, too, could get hit by a car tomorrow. No, wait, that has happened twice and I lived. I could fall off a cliff. Nope, that’s happened too, and I made it. At any rate, something could happen that wipes me out. Tomorrow. Today. Right now. But, what if I die in my sleep at the age of 85? What will my life have meant between now and then?
Derek Miller died the other day. I didn’t know him, but his most graceful message of life and death is going around the internet. We should all feel so lucky and thankful when we pass on.
… It turns out that no one can imagine what’s really coming in our lives. We can plan, and do what we enjoy, but we can’t expect our plans to work out. Some of them might, while most probably won’t. Inventions and ideas will appear, and events will occur, that we could never foresee. That’s neither bad nor good, but it is real.
I think and hope that’s what my daughters can take from my disease and death. And that my wonderful, amazing wife Airdrie can see too. Not that they could die any day, but that they should pursue what they enjoy, and what stimulates their minds, as much as possible so they can be ready for opportunities, as well as not disappointed when things go sideways, as they inevitably do.
