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thebratqueenI have to admit that I'm reading some of the reports from NOLA with a bit of black humor. Like would the reporters please stop using North/South/East/West and tell me instead uptown/downtown/lakeside/riverside so I can actually know where in Hell things are happening? And did they double check to make sure the bodies in the water weren't dead before the hurricane? (Those aboveground tombs have spewed out bodies before, donchaknow.)
I'd feel bad about that but NOLA is a black humor capital. If the first Mardi Gras season after this doesn't have floats parodying the hurricane it's going to be very surprising. I mean this is a town where the storms will come but the bars stay open.
I said it elsewhere but it bears repeating: New Orleans will go on. This town is Buffy. It's already died twice. It's survived fires, floods, wars, Protestants, and Mardi Gras. Sure Katrina's currently taunting it and saying "Ohh, this mortal wound is all itchy." but New Orleans will get on its feet and will tell Katrina that what it wants is for Katrina to get out of its face.
And then it will party, because it is New Orleans and not a vampire slayer.
But a thing to understand is that this does hurt. The lake's levee breaking is serious bad trouble, and that's coming from a town where 5-8 feet of water on Saint Charles avenue is what they like to call "Tuesday." So if the town that can take canoes going down the trolley line is telling you that hey, they just might have a little too much moisture on their hands then you need to take that real God damned seriously.
And understand too that we are not talking about a rich people. Yes, Garden District, yes Trent Reznor and Anne Rice (though she's not there anymore). But New Orleans holds a staggering amount of poverty. The people who didn't evacuate are people who couldn't evacuate. They didn't have money enough to rent a car and get out of town. How likely do you think it is that they have money to rebuild what remains of their lives? That they have enough insurance to help out? That they have the connections and wherewithal to secure the most government aid?
And, let's be clear, anyone affected by 9/11 can tell you that what the government promises in aid and what it delivers are very often two vastly different figures.
Tourism is also one of the major industries. From the looks of things it's going to be weeks before they'll allow the people who lived there to just stand in the city. Longer still for life as normal to resume. You think there's going to be tons of tourists keeping their hotel reservations? Heck, you think they'd even be able to?
These are things that I want to stress because when you have a news media getting you hyped up for 60,000 deaths and total devestation within seconds of landfall it's very easy to look at what actually happened and think that it's not really that bad. You mean the water didn't flood up to 40 feet and dinosaurs didn't once again roam the land? Well pfft, that's nothing then!
Except not, which is why we can't abandon our little towns.
Now don't get me wrong, I know NOLA isn't the only place hit, and certainly not even the hardest place hit (eta: as of me writing this). I'm not trying to ignore the other cities that had the misfortune of not making themselves famous on Girls Gone Wild videos. But I've lived in NOLA, and she's my baby. I want to go down there and hug her so bad it hurts. I want to touch the buildings. I want to check the orphan's grave in Lafayette cemetery, and say hi to all my ghosts.
I can talk to you about NOLA because I've been there. But, hopefully, that'll give you some feeling of what it's like for everyone. If New Orleans has it bad imagine Slidell. Imagine Mobile, imagine Biloxi - you get the idea.
When 9/11 happened one of the first things that occured was that the entire country stood up and said that they would help. You have no idea what it felt like to be in the middle of trying to find out if friends and family made it out alive, of feeling the hole in your gut from seeing your sky broken, of total shock and incomprehension and suddenly finding out that people who didn't even know you had your back. There just aren't words.
So I'm putting it out there right now: Avengers gotta get with the assembly. We did it for 9/11, we did it for the Tsunami, now we're doing it for the South.
CNN's got this list of organizations where you can send money and volunteer. I'm sure there's others out there, and if people know please put them in the comments.
I know it's hard, I know a lot of us already stretched ourselves thin when the Tsunami hit. But, damn it, these towns are just too pretty to die.
Thanks.
I'd feel bad about that but NOLA is a black humor capital. If the first Mardi Gras season after this doesn't have floats parodying the hurricane it's going to be very surprising. I mean this is a town where the storms will come but the bars stay open.
I said it elsewhere but it bears repeating: New Orleans will go on. This town is Buffy. It's already died twice. It's survived fires, floods, wars, Protestants, and Mardi Gras. Sure Katrina's currently taunting it and saying "Ohh, this mortal wound is all itchy." but New Orleans will get on its feet and will tell Katrina that what it wants is for Katrina to get out of its face.
And then it will party, because it is New Orleans and not a vampire slayer.
But a thing to understand is that this does hurt. The lake's levee breaking is serious bad trouble, and that's coming from a town where 5-8 feet of water on Saint Charles avenue is what they like to call "Tuesday." So if the town that can take canoes going down the trolley line is telling you that hey, they just might have a little too much moisture on their hands then you need to take that real God damned seriously.
And understand too that we are not talking about a rich people. Yes, Garden District, yes Trent Reznor and Anne Rice (though she's not there anymore). But New Orleans holds a staggering amount of poverty. The people who didn't evacuate are people who couldn't evacuate. They didn't have money enough to rent a car and get out of town. How likely do you think it is that they have money to rebuild what remains of their lives? That they have enough insurance to help out? That they have the connections and wherewithal to secure the most government aid?
And, let's be clear, anyone affected by 9/11 can tell you that what the government promises in aid and what it delivers are very often two vastly different figures.
Tourism is also one of the major industries. From the looks of things it's going to be weeks before they'll allow the people who lived there to just stand in the city. Longer still for life as normal to resume. You think there's going to be tons of tourists keeping their hotel reservations? Heck, you think they'd even be able to?
These are things that I want to stress because when you have a news media getting you hyped up for 60,000 deaths and total devestation within seconds of landfall it's very easy to look at what actually happened and think that it's not really that bad. You mean the water didn't flood up to 40 feet and dinosaurs didn't once again roam the land? Well pfft, that's nothing then!
Except not, which is why we can't abandon our little towns.
Now don't get me wrong, I know NOLA isn't the only place hit, and certainly not even the hardest place hit (eta: as of me writing this). I'm not trying to ignore the other cities that had the misfortune of not making themselves famous on Girls Gone Wild videos. But I've lived in NOLA, and she's my baby. I want to go down there and hug her so bad it hurts. I want to touch the buildings. I want to check the orphan's grave in Lafayette cemetery, and say hi to all my ghosts.
I can talk to you about NOLA because I've been there. But, hopefully, that'll give you some feeling of what it's like for everyone. If New Orleans has it bad imagine Slidell. Imagine Mobile, imagine Biloxi - you get the idea.
When 9/11 happened one of the first things that occured was that the entire country stood up and said that they would help. You have no idea what it felt like to be in the middle of trying to find out if friends and family made it out alive, of feeling the hole in your gut from seeing your sky broken, of total shock and incomprehension and suddenly finding out that people who didn't even know you had your back. There just aren't words.
So I'm putting it out there right now: Avengers gotta get with the assembly. We did it for 9/11, we did it for the Tsunami, now we're doing it for the South.
CNN's got this list of organizations where you can send money and volunteer. I'm sure there's others out there, and if people know please put them in the comments.
I know it's hard, I know a lot of us already stretched ourselves thin when the Tsunami hit. But, damn it, these towns are just too pretty to die.
Thanks.
