There's No Place Like New Orleans

Though it's my goal to share something new in this space at least twice a week, I haven’t written a thing here for nearly two weeks, during which it looked like the bottom was dropping out of a part of my personal life and entire homes were dropping out of the lives of a few hundred thousand people along the Gulf Coast. Between crying for myself and my non-Katrina-related troubles, and crying for the people who have lost everything to the Hurricane and its aftermath, it’s been hard for me to focus on art or culture or other writings fit for this space. I’ve written a great deal during this time, but it’s largely been in an effort to understand the unfathomable and wouldn’t make good reading for you. Fortunately, sometimes the deep end of life’s pool is more fathomable than we give it credit for, and I see a lot more hope for myself now, as well as for many of the people whose lives were upended two weeks ago. But I'm still angry and sad for what the people along the Gulf Coast have lost, and for the long slog they still face before their lives can be again rooted and secure.

I am so deeply saddened by the lives lost and the fear and suffering of so many thousands who made it through by the skin of their teeth. I worry especially for the children whose security and families were washed away, who have lost friends and the comfort of family nearby and all their toys, clothes, books, and the trappings of home that used to bring them a feeling of safety and belonging. I worry for them, for the years of fallout and fear and the holes in their lives that will be left because of this natural calamity, and the unnaturally slow response to it made by those in whom we all entrust our security.

The loss of so much of New Orleans’ history and beauty is inconceivable. What was lost in New Orleans is a huge and precious part of our history. Documents, photographs, artwork, craftwork, and historical artifacts and knowledge washed away during and after Katrina. Many years’ worth of data from long-term medical studies was destroyed. Of course, the loss of medical records, family heirlooms, snapshots, cars and vital records is more immediately important and crucial to the living, as it should be, but our world will be so much poorer in the long term for having lost so many beautiful, meaningful, or important links to our collective past.

I spent a wonderful week in New Orleans 15 years ago, and when, over the years, I’ve heard people speak only of the gritty, dirty, dangerous aspects of the city, and how they couldn’t find anything there to like but only ugliness to revile, I’ve had to shake my head in wonder. New Orleans was, and I think will be again, such a gloriously fascinating, beautiful, baroque, flawed, yet resilient city, unlike any other I’ve seen anywhere. It’s hard for me to imagine how it could fail to catch others’ fancy in at least some small way. The history of the city is enthralling; the mixture of African, Caribbean, Acadian, Spanish and Creole cultures and languages, among so many others, makes it so rich and vibrant, lively and surprising. The wonderful combinations of rhythm and passion and blues and joy spill out in the music, which itself spills out into Bourbon Street from the open doors of the bars. There are memories and stories about the frightening power of Marie Leveau’s voodoo magic, and we all know about the dangerously rich food and too-readily-available drink, swilled out of plastic cups day and night by tourists and locals weaving their way down the middle of the street. The wildly elaborate wrought iron filigree that floats above the streets of the French Quarter looks both fragile and eternal, and the facades of the elegant old homes in the Garden District are exquisite. I visited a grand plantation within an hour’s drive of the city, and floated on a bayou with a Cajun man whose lilting speech announced with each new alligator that floated by us and every bird that flew overhead, “Now, dese t’ings is edible.” Through openings between the trees along the swamp, we could see the New Orleans skyline, only about a half-hour’s drive from us, as we floated by tiny homes perched on stilts brushed by hanging Spanish moss. On another day, I floated around the bends in the mighty Mississippi on a paddleboat, which, clichéd though it may be, did indeed look and feel truly mighty, even on a calm autumn afternoon on a boat built for tourists like me. I ate hot beignets (which put even the freshest Krispy Kreme donuts completely to shame) and chicory coffee at the Café du Monde, and as I touched the actual, physical streetcar named Desire that was pulled from active duty and perched on a street corner, I got choked up thinking of Tennessee Williams walking those streets and soaking up the sad, decadent, shimmery, drunken, pathetic, beautiful aura of the city and spilling it into the story of Blanche DuBois and Stella and Stanley Kowalski.

Jackson Square felt so much more European than any American square I’ve ever stood in, and the shopkeepers of the French Quarter didn’t have the tourist-weary glaze to their eyes that such people do in other places. Southern graciousness, another cliché, did indeed feel real there; there was a warmth to interactions, even hellos shared by strangers in the street or in lobbies, that didn’t have the chill that such encounters bring in other places. The tradition of the lagniappe, a unexpected gift given out of a desire to please, was still strong. The desire of New Orleanians to please and give back a little extra something to a stranger reminded me of the way I was treated in Japan in 1980. I find real delight in receiving unexpected and gracious gestures from others for no real reason, and such kindnesses do engender warm feelings and happy memories.

I’m told by a native New Orleanian that when tourists cross Rampart Street, locals would as soon shoot the tourists as look at them, and sometimes do. I know that the amount of wanton ugliness and violence in New Orleans was extreme compared to other American cities long before Katrina hit. But somehow in my cautious, well-heeled tourist’s shoes, keeping to safer places or traveling with companions to iffier but fascinating places (like New Orleans’ famous cemeteries with their above-ground graves, jokingly referred to as “ovens”), and being able to stay in a B&B well within the Vieux Carré, I missed seeing most of the darker side of the city. I found more than enough beauty to make me fall for the place, and to see why locals love it so.

I’m not making light of the seediness of the city; that’s as famous an element of the place as Mardi Gras and the long-corrupt local police and politicos. I’m not saying it was a wonderland to live for the huge numbers of poor residents who lived there, underserved as they’ve been by an underfunded educational system that left them inadequately prepared for the world and unprotected from its harshest elements. I’m only saying that in my short time there I found so much to love and admire that I can only imagine how much love and how many memories those who have actually lived in New Orleans can feel, and how much they have lost.

Yesterday I heard a piece on National Public Radio about the Red Cross, and how it has become the default charity to which the vast majority of donors give after disasters. While it is a fine agency that has cleaned up its system of allocating funds after making some errors in judgment in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, it cannot do everything after a disaster. It helps to clothe and feed and shelter people in the aftermath of a disaster, but it’s really focused on immediate assistance. After September 11, 2001, the Red Cross received so many donations that it diverted some to other programs, which made a lot of people who donated specifically to help those affected by the attacks very upset and caused Red Cross leadership to change and the way it handles donations to alter to better serve the expectations of donors. NPR’s piece focused on the fact that many other agencies who help victims to get on with their lives after a crisis, such as helping children get medical attention or get back into to (like Mercy Corps and UNICEF), or aiding poor people in building new homes (like Habitat for Humanity), have not received the number of donations one might expect because people are so much more aware of the Red Cross than of other aid organizations. People are constantly bombarded with reminders to give to the Red Cross, and they feel good about the Red Cross's size and the respect it garners internationally, so that’s where most of the funds and attention go. I feel strongly about the alternative organizations mentioned above, and while my first donation went to the Red Cross, I have felt good spreading the support around to other organizations, too. I’m glad to know that the Red Cross will help people right away, and that groups like Mercy Corps, Habitat for Humanity, and UNICEF will help people later on down the line, when the initial attention and good will have passed but people’s needs to reestablish their lives are just as great.