rough travel notes from New Orleans, 11/16/05
yesterday we drove through the flooded out carcass of New Orleans. Hundreds upon hundreds of houses, block after block, mile after mile, stand like molded mausoleums. The water line of black smudge traces itself across the entire world here, a filthy basin, the horrible realization that these homes have been soaked in a toxic basin. The doors are all ajar, swollen open, and you can look inside to their dark corners where the black mold climbs the walls, like a pox, breeding in the gutted shells of a hundred thousand homes. Lakeview, Gentilly, the Ninth Ward, Chalmette, the ruin is mind boggling. The Saturn bar, Hank's seafood, all of it, deserted, rotting, molding, unable to speak. It's voice is gone, gone somewhere else, with the people that once carried it's music through these streets in their own bodies and voices.
i took no pictures. lenore took few, i recall stopping for her to photo an upholstered armchair that had been tumped on it's side in front of a salt box house somewhere in Lake Vista close to UNO. The color of the world is ashen grit. It is forever Ash Wednesday here now.
We were overwhelmed and couldn't do much but witness from eyes that seemed way too small.
If we can afford to fight an unjust war in Iraq, we can afford to clean up the Gulf South and the city of New Orleans and provide food and shelter for our citizens who have lost everything.
posted by Kathryn @ 10:43 PM
2 Comments:
Amen! I couldn't have said it better. I told ya'll it was devasting, but until you see with your own eyes, it's hard to comprehend.
You are absolutely right, Margaret. It's like the Grand Canyon of Ruin--pictures and video simply cannot relate the scale of the devastation that has occured. You really have to stand at the edge of it yourself to begin to understand what has happened. And if you do this, if you put yourself there and really witness it, you cannot help but feel the need for overwhelming and immediate compassion for all who are impacted. Louisiana simply doesn't have the resources to deal with this scope of destruction. No single state government does. The help must come from outside the state and it should be organized by the National Government. People don't get it. They just don't understand how large of an area has been utterly exploded in ruin, just as if a nuclear bomb went off.
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