Listener Essays

Like a jilted lover I've been pretending not to miss the city that threw me out so unceremoniously seven weeks ago. After all, New Orleans has always been the city that people loved to hate: corrupt politicians, decrepit schools, legendary potholes, a soaring murder rate. Well, you get the idea. And that was before Katrina. Now everything is coated with a chalky brown sludge and a putrid stench hangs in the humid air.

Who could blame me for not feeling a sense of relief? Who needs all of that decay and dysfunction? After all, I had fantasized before about leaving it all behind, starting a new life in the country. And here I am, despite my own lethargy, swept up by a category four hurricane and deposited in a rural paradise. I'm not kidding. In my new home in Ferriday Louisiana, which happens to be the birthplace of Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart, I watch the sun rise over the cypress trees in Lake St. John and set behind the cotton fields. Yes, you heard me, cotton fields. My  new place of employment, where I teach first grade, is located between a cotton field and a John Deere store. My students answer "Yes M'am" when I ask them if they did their homework and "No Ma'm" when I ask them if they  want to lose their recess. Although many of them are poor, they don't have that have that hard look that poor city kids have. Most of them still have the light  in their eyes that kids are supposed to have. Everyone says "hello" in the grocery store and waves when I pass on the highway. My colleagues couldn't be kinder, inquiring about my losses and genuinely offering their help. "I feel so lucky to be here," I answer, picturing the desolate streets and boarded  up buildings of my beloved city.

But it is at three in the morning that New Orleans creeps into my dreams to claim me. I find myself longing for Frenchman Street, where I could chose from sushi at Wasabi, chicken schwerma at Mona's, or crawfish enchiladas at Santa Fe. The charms of my city seduce me as I drive the country roads of the Mississippi delta and catch a rift of jazz on NPR. For the first time, I truly appreciate that the rich cultural gumbo that cooked up this timeless music is very much in jeopardy. Will the musical dynasties of Nevilles and Marsalises return to an abandoned broken city, or will they finally sell out to New York or L.A.? Will the restaurant next to Molly's on the Market on Decatur Street still boil crawfish in the giant pot in the window? Will the little Creole lady who makes pralines in her home kitchen still sell them from a wicker basket on Royal Street?

I guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder. I find myself longing for our Saturday mornings in New Orleans:  a trip to the farmers' market in the Warehouse District, a walk beneath the century old oak trees in Audubon Park, and cafe au lait at Croissant d'Or on Ursuline Street.

As I watch the sun set behind the cotton fields once again, I can't help but be  enticed by memories of the Crescent City. They beckon me home as night falls and my mind is freed from the distractions of the busy days that have almost become normal. And now I hear you calling me again, begging me to forgive you and come home. Remember the good times, you implore. Remember when we heard Gatemouth Brown and B.B. King back to back at the Jazz Fest, the time we caught the coconut at the Zulu Parade, all the times we danced to the Iguanas at the Mid City Lanes Rock'n Bowl.

I know I can't forget you, but can I ever trust you again? So many of my friends lost everything they owned- every wedding photo, baseball trophy, baby shoe, and antique mahogany dresser. Many of my friends will never return. They've followed jobs, and children, and dreams to higher ground. The problem is, I can't imagine life with out you. I know there are other fish in the sea, but I also know there is no other place on earth like New Orleans. Where else can you hear Afro-Caribbean Latin jazz on Tuesday night? Where else can you buy a Bloody Mary to go at 9:00  o'clock on Sunday Morning and stroll the cobblestone streets over the footsteps of Louie Armstrong, Jean Lafitte, Edgar Degas, and Tennessee Williams? I just want to sit in Jackson Square in the shadow of the St. Louis Cathedral and hear the calliope on the Mississippi River play "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans."

I can't pretend not to care anymore. In fact, I think we should lose that whole "City That Care Forgot" thing. We can't afford not to care anymore. Those of us who do must come back to make sure that we get it right this time. This is our chance to keep the charm and lose the dysfunction. Oh, the tourists won't know the difference. They only saw the neon lights of Bourbon Street and the flashy beads that were flung from Mardi Gras floats and French Quarter balconies, not the hopeless poverty that we kept in our housing projects and the now infamous Ninth Ward. Our corrupt politicians are famous the world over, but the tourists don't have to look in the eyes of the school children who have been robbed of an equal chance for an education and a decent place to attend school. I'm willing to give it another shot, but some things will have to change.

Nancy L.
 

I just want to express how important it has been to tune in to NPR twice daily during our city's crisis!  And thank you so very much for the Ronnie Virgets series....and Fred Kasten's jazz!  And Prairie Home Companion.  WWNO enriches my life every day.

I was unable to leave the city before the hurricane, and endured the blow with my neighbors, David and June Tureau, in the Bywater.  We live 1/2 block from the river, so we were high and dry, only wind damage.  I'm a 40 year plus resident of New Orleans....and NEVER have I not seen the La National Guard 24-48 hours after a storm, offering ice, water, checking to see if anyone needed medical help.  Because there was absolutely no police or military presence, we were afraid to drive into the French Quarter and across the Miss River Bridge.  It was toooo eerie....beautiful starry nights...with occasional gunfire near and far.  Then on Thursday there was a huge fiery explosion a few blocks away and we realized that even though we had food and water, and were in a locked compound, it could have gotten much worse with the neighborhood going up in flames!  We left the Friday after the Hurricane, rescued by some police from Ascension Parish sent by my Neighbor's family.  I didn't realize how much stress I was masking until they pulled up at the gate and told us to come with them.  I burst into tears of gratitude.  We were in sight of wharves and the U.S. Naval Reserve facility was close by on Poland Avenue with armed guards that offered no help to the community....now I'm wondering why people weren't encouraged to go to the wharves and be rescued to across the river!  And now I also found out there is an emergency facility in that building that has water, food, batteries, everything needed for a Disaster Assistance Center, but it was kept quiet and closed.  Growing up in New Orleans East, my parents had a truck stop at the junction of Hwy 90 & 11.  Because we were the highest spot for miles, we were the Civil Defense headquarters site....for every hurricane.  There was always immediate help, amphibious vehicles, local volunteer Civil Defense folks, La National Guard,  people that seemed to have a plan and able to carry it out efficiently in rescuing folks on Irish Bayou, Chef Menteur and the Rigolets.  Even after there were dozens of daily helicopters flying overhead after Hurricane Katrina....there was no one on the ground to talk to the Bywater residents, reassure them, tell them how to evacuate, just show a presence.  Very disturbing and disappointing.  Throughout my ordeal I had a small battery operated TV and I cannot express strongly enough how important it was that WWL TV stayed on 24 hours a day live, showing unedited footage from various neighborhoods and telling us what was going on.  I tried listening to WWL radio but the announcer was over dramatic and I couldn't bear to listen to him....but Mike Hoss on WWL TV should get an award.  Straight talk, non-alarmist, fabulous news coverage and reassuring talk that we  were not alone.

I am blessed, I was evacuated to Lafayette where I stayed with my daughter and her husband and my two grandchildren for SEVEN WEEKS....had to go to two weeks of physical therapy so I could walk without a cane!  There were so many New Orleanians in Lafayette!  And ex Gambit writer Scott Jordan is the editor of The Independent, an
alternative weekly there....so bylines by Gambit writers were appearing!  Lots of stories about New Orleans...LPB in Baton Rouge was broadcasting WWL TV news!  It was great!

I came back home as soon as was allowed, no water damage, some wind damage.  My cats were at home (friends had dropped off food 2 X week for them), and there were neighbors already cleaning up.  I love the Bywater neighborhood, and I love the multi cultural nature of our city.   I have an African American neighbor on one side, a Cajun from Ascension Parish on the other side (whose wife is from NYC), an older Italian couple across the street.

As the Special Events coordinator for Gambit's Big Easy Foundation, I have the honor and privilege to work with performing artists of all types from all over the city.  What creativity our city fosters!  As the Company Manager for the Louisiana Living History Project, I get to study and present the history of our city to visitors and locals each December when the Historic Characters appear in the French Quarter.  I could not WAIT to return....New Orleans is truly the northern capital of the Caribbean and the reason our food, music, architecture and love of life are so special is because we have roots in this cultural gumbo of French, Spanish, African, Native American, English and Acadian
traditions.  We are proud of our heritage, we enjoy living side by side with people of many colors, and we love our neighbors and neighborhoods.

No, I don't want everything to stay the same!  First Hurricane Protection, Second elected leaders with vision....as I watched the contraflow leaving New Orleans, and watched gasoline tankers refueling cars on the interstates leaving Galveston and Houston....it was cruelly funny that the south has never embraced and invested in mass transit. 
MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE MOVED EVERY DAY in Chicago, NY, Boston, D.C......duh!  If the states from Texas to Florida would insist on a modern light rail system, our region would boom for the next 100 years!   Give the contract to the Japanese!  Let's get busy joining the 21st Century.  And last, but certainly not least....get rid of the TRADITIONS that have given us such extreme poverty and a multi-generational under class.  Its called decent housing, decent wages, decent community services for health, child care and education.  I want New Orleans to be the best it can be and offer reasons for people that love this city to return and grow and thrive with us.  That means minimum wages that are a LIVING WAGE....the tourism industry needs to foster more training, better wages and higher levels of professionalism.

Its been 2 1/2 months since Hurricane Katrina....I am just now able to make and share this statement.  God bless our community.  May our leaders DEMAND Category 5 hurricane protection, DEMAND money to rebuild our schools and hospitals, DEMAND light rail systems that will encourage investment and assist in evacuation, let's clean up this city
and work side by side.  We will get the leadership we DEMAND, let's everyone get politically active and VOTE.

Come meet our Living History Historic Characters on weekends in the Quarter in December, And start working on your costume, I'll see you on Royal Street for Mardi Gras.

Gloria P

This I Believe

For 25 years of my 44 year old life I have lived either in New Orleans or in Slidell, 30 miles away from New Orleans north of Lake Pontchatrain. The first hurricane I remember is Betsy which was when I was five years old. My mother and I spent the night at a friend's home, still in Slidell, instead of in our mobile home because my father was out of town on a business trip. That is the only time I have ever evacuated for a storm.

Today, October 17, seven weeks after Hurricane Katrina I finally received in the mail my back issues of Time Magazine from all of September and October. Predictably, there was a major piece in one issue concerning who is to blame for the overwhelming failure of adequate and appropriate response to Hurricane Katrina. There is enough responsibility for this mess that all levels of government can share some blame, but what I found surprising is that in a poll 57% of the respondents blamed those citizens of the affected areas who remained in their homes and did not evacuate.

Why would anyone in their right mind choose to live in a bowl, below sea level in the hurricane belt? I have heard that this question has been posed by pundits, media, senators, the Speaker of the House, and many plain folk of this country and the world. The simple answer is that in the New Orleans area and the Mississippi Gulf coast, family is paramount. It is not at all unusual for neighbors to be blood related and a great majority of people who have chosen to make this area their homes have done so because of family ties, families of origin and families of choice. This is the area of the country where people say hello by saying "How's ya mama?". We are not stupid people who can not make a living anywhere else and have been forced to live in a risky area because of a lack of other options. We are intelligent, loving, generous, artistic, musical, spiritual, and fun loving people who also happen to be valuable contributing citizens of the United States. We have chosen to live in this bowl near the people we love, our immediate family and our community family. It helps that we have Mardi Gras, mild winters, gorgeous pine forests, jazz music, great food, and a unique culture but the primary reason we live here is family and the homeland security of living near those we love. If Jean Batiste, the Acadians, the freed slaves, the plantation owners, the French, and the Spanish had settled in North Dakota we would battle bitter winters instead of ferocious hurricanes in order to be with our loved ones.

We choose not to evacuate because we have taken steps to feel safe and secure in our home, no matter what storms, including hurricanes, may befall us.

Hurricanes, tropical storms, thunderstorms with large amounts of rainfall are a part of life in Slidell and New Orleans and most of south Louisiana. Hurricanes are something for which my family has prepared, respected and occaisionally in the case of a category 4 or 5 storm feared, but we have never evacuated. In the past 16 years that I have lived in this area, I have been a pediatrician married to another physician and because of our responsibilities to our patients and to our community we have chosen to ride out the storms thus assuring that we are in town and available if and when we are needed. Our home is above the mandatory evacuation line and has never flooded. We have C and D batteries, bottled water, canned food, a swimming pool full of water that can be boiled for cooking, a Coleman stove with fuel, a propane grill with a 250 gallon propane tank, and for the past 10 years we have even owned a small generator that was bought to maintain refrigeration and keep all of my office vaccines cold. Because of these preparations, we have been able to assist other neighbors who stay, protect our home, and reopen our office within one or two days of a storm. Homeland security is not soley a government departmental responsibility and it is no different in the New Orleans area than it is all across the US and for that matter, the world. Homeland security is just that, feeling secure in one's home.

The storm was not the scariest part of the past two months, it was the aftermath that has shook my core. I am adamantly anti-gun and yet with my only news source being WWL radio and word of mouth for almost two weeks, I heard sensational accounts of looting, rapes, murders, criminals crossing bridges to the northshore of Lake Pontchatrain, hospitals being looted and I condoned my husband's new practice of sleeping with a handgun under his pillow. My next door neighbor has a son-in-law who flies military helicopters in our area and had buzzed our homes more than once in the past to say "Hi" to his wife. I just knew that he would fly over and check on the neighborhood and so we painted a message that our family was OK on our roof on August 29 after the storm had passed. We waited to hear the helicopters. They never came. (To be more accurate, I did see helicopters when they were refueling in the air above my house one week after the storm). We had no idea of the devastation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast until the three days after the storm. I was standing in a line to enter Sam's and heard that the flooding in the area of my inlaws's home extended past the "safe" church in which they had chosen to ride out the storm. We drove to Mississippi not knowing if the church was still standing or if they were alive. We found them in that church with nothing left but the clothes on their back and had to leave them there for two more days because the church had hot food and running water, things that at that point were missing from my home.

Humans crave community. They are social animals that thrive on the interactions of family, care for their offspring for many, many years and show respect for the aged members of the community. Fearing for my safety in my home, fearing for the safety of my loved ones and feeling abandoned and alone temporarily destroyed my homeland security. The knowledge that our home is a haven from life's storms was lost in the aftermath of Katrina and not just for my family, but for most of New Orleanian families and the families all over the Gulf Coast. We did not lose just our possessions, we lost our daily connections with those we love.

But now, more time has passed and instead of greeting each other with "How's ya mama?", it is "How'd ya do?". And we actually care about the answer. It takes five times longer to go to the store, post office, bank etc and not just because of the newly horrendous traffice, but because we are all listening to each other's story and comforting each other in our grief. "How'd ya do?" is answered with such unbelievable comments as "Not too bad, I only have a tree through my roof, no flooding", "Not too bad, I only got one foot of water", or even "I lost everything, my whole family lost everything, but we are all alive and feel blessed for that". Yet, something profoundly sad has been lost and that is our community of family. Our families and communities are scattered all over the US now. Mimi can't watch the kids play ball because she is in Texas. Collette's sister is having her baby with just her husband by her side in Arkansas. Who will fry the turkey, make the oyster dressing, or bake the pecan pie at Thanksgiving and where will that dinner be? I believe that as people begin to answer these questions, the answer will lie in the rediscovery of that lost sense of homeland security.

New Orleanians lived in this bowl because of the security of community. Louisianians come back to the area because we know that we will help each other cut out of our streets, gut our flooded homes, and house our family because of the security of our generosity. We are secure that the art and culture of the area will survive, just as it has in the past. We will again know the security of our spiritual lives. If the rest of the country can learn that we are more than Mardi Gras, more than a major port, or more than a source of oil they will begin to understand we had the homeland security craved by most citizens of the US. The people polled by TIME Magazine may learn that we are not to be blamed for not evacuating, but will instead understand that we could not leave our families and communities in their greatest time of need.

We are not any different from the people in this country who after the storm donated to Red Cross, worked shelters, took strangers into their homes and communities and we are proud to be part of such a generous country. Living in the bowl reminds us every hurricane season that possessions are just stuff and that those we love are more important than any house. Our hearts remember that every time we greet each other. I believe that the best legacy of Katrina will not be a strengthened Homeland Security department, a better run FEMA, better evacuation plans and execution of those plans, quicker response by those charged with recovery from disasters, (all of which are needed), but instead will be the true homeland security of all people greeting each other not with "What's up?" or even with a polite "Good morning", but instead asking and caring about the greeting of "How'd ya do?" and working toward to the time when all of us can again feel safe and secure in asking "How's ya mama?".

Thanks for listening,
Sherry R.

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