Like, oh everyone, I've been glued to the Hurricane Katrina coverage. Amazed at the utter incompetence and stupidity of the federal government (and you know it's gotta be bad if I'm saying I'm amazed), strangely turned on by the lawlessness, shocked at the disintegration of people, sad because I'll never see New Orleans now. It's dead--there's no infrastructure, the city proper is 80% flooded, and from the fire and chemicals and heavens know what else it's a gigantic Superfund site now. It seems as though people have started to stop and say, "Whoa. In retrospect, this is so not the place for a major city!" Pump it out, run skeletons in to take care of the oil and gas refineries and the barges, let Baton Rouge become a boomtown.
I'm in mourning not for the people or the architecture or the food. It's the larger loss of a giant piece of American culture, that richness of the coastal South. Lucinda Williams is looking for the road to Slidell. Julie Smith has let Skip and Talba lose--where did they go? Not Houston. No more seductions of straight-laced Yankee girls a la "The Big Easy." Nanci Griffith singing about how she needs a year down in New Orleans and the roses. There's a huge hole where all that's left to remember it is stories, pictures and songs and the idea of a city that has not much going for it, but by golly it is happy to have you come and stay a spell in its fairyland.
It's very odd to think about Hurricane Katrina so thoroughly wiping that out leaving nothing its place, not even hope and promise. America's usually got that in spades--not today, and I think no more.
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