Overheard

The city recently opened a "Welcome Home" center on the third floor of the main library. This is in addition to the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center which continues to operate on the first floor. Predictably much of the conversation one is privy to around the library is of the most depressing sort. By now, you know the themes. Lost everything... Couldn't get back... Lost my job... Rent is ridiculous... Don't know how or when I'll get any help.. etc. But it's a bit more raw because a lot of the people visiting the Welcome Home center and the DRC are only now making their way back to town. I remember what it was like having to come to terms with life back in Debrisville last year. Imagine making that adjustment now.. after a whole year has passed.. a year in which it is reasonable to have expected a great deal more progress to have been made. Needless to say, the atmosphere around the building is a tad sobering.

I was thinking about this yesterday when, walking in the French Quarter, I passed some men unloading a truck. One was saying to the other... and I'm sure you're heard this one before too, "I don't know why my taxes keep going here to rebuild these people's shit. These people need to get the fuck away from this water." I suppose I could have stopped and said something but since I lack Dambala's gift for conversational tact, the confrontation would only have been an unsatisfying confusion of swearing and violence... and I hadn't eaten yet so I wasn't in the mood for that.

Now consider these denizens of everyone's favorite city in Texas. I could stop and say something but I can't improve on what what da po'boy says here.

You know, I have seen a lot of Texas license plates driving around New Orleans, many of them on pick up trucks involved, in some way, in the rebuilding of our city. We appreciate it, but I don’t think they are here for a noble cause. The ones I talk to are here to make money.

I can’t get that out of my head. New Orleanians are in Texas being asked to go home when they have no home. Many who are receiving assitance didn’t have jobs or money before the storm, so they have no jobs or money now. Texans, who had a home in Texas, are in New Orleans, with a place to stay here, with a job, and making money. I don’t get that.

Can we come up with some kind of trade?

I will add this, however. It looks like we're starting to feel just how badly we've lost the battle of information here. Already having abandoned us, America is now well on the way toward fully accepting whatever myth helps it rationalize doing so. This has been a long year. I think there may be longer years ahead.