By S. FREDERICK STARR
Published: September 1, 2005
SITTING safely in Washington, I am watching harrowing footage shot from
helicopters above the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, submerged under 14 feet
of water when the Mississippi thundered through the breached levee at
the Industrial Canal and destroyed everything in its swirling waters.
....
| so the cons go marchin' in...
Bywater was a model of humane and organic urban revitalization. It even
acquired a motto, emblazoned on signs painted by a local artist: Be nice
or leave. Until Monday.
....
| and i will survive...
The culture of New Orleans has long since factored disasters and general
uncertainty into its economic and philosophical outlook. An
early-19th-century cholera epidemic killed one out of five New
Orleanians, the equivalent of 100,000 today. Even the gravediggers died,
forcing people to pile bodies at the cemetery gates. The first owner of
the Lombard Plantation was among those who succumbed. But his wife and
family stayed on, and some of their descendants, both white and black,
are still in New Orleans today, perhaps perched on their rooftop
awaiting rescue or huddling gratefully with friends out in Lafayette or
Breaux Bridge.
....
| end on a sunny note. con-style. rebuild.
I expect they, too, will return, and that life in New Orleans will go
on, with all its precariousness and sense of fragility and, yes, with
all its relish for the moment. That relish, by the way, which arose from
the constant awareness of precisely such disasters as we are
experiencing today, accounts for much of what gives the people of that
city their reckless abandon, their devil-may-care attitude, and their
zest for life. Rebuilding after Katrina will be just the next in a long
series of events in which that spirit has been manifested.
cont'd...
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/garden/01fred.html?ex=1126756800&en=a8adc1e4ba642d66&ei=5070