Balanced reporting
I walked through City Park this morning, once more in awe of the beauty at my doorstep. I had been talking to someone that the need to feel restored by nature exists right outside my front door – a contemplative walk around the bayou, a stroll around the Big Lake in City Park, a longer walk through the cypress forests or abandoned golf course in the park, an urban walk to the French Quarter. One day the Lafitte Corridor will provide a Green Space connecting us to the French Quarter. All so lovely.
I’ve got my blinders on, my rose-colored glasses my mother handed off to me many years ago. But sometimes there needs to be a reality check, for this reason I began reading this blog, which has a different skew on the same city I am living in and today I read with mouth agape the List. It’s humbling to remember that no matter how many years between us and the Dark Ages we still seem to be pitiful about keeping mentally disturbed people from carrying guns. I watched with fascination last night as our President spoke to the people of Tucson, his cadence like a Southern preacher, his message encouraging everyone to figure this mess out and help us all move past the violence of having a very disturbed young man not get help when there were warning signs of instability (kicked out of community college), not buy a gun so easily (a semi automatic), not kill innocent people, children.
Meanwhile, it’s a desperate world here in New Orleans – a city that is not only still needs to heal from a federal disaster and tragedy, but decades of neglect.
January 13th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
This is actually the third list I’ve posted, and I think I will go back and do 2009 if my connection at the TP gets me the names. People come and leave memorials (search silence is violence on Toulouse Street and it will take you back to some of those posts and comments). I’m glad they have a place where in the annonimity of the Internet to say what they need to say. Those comments make all the bother of the work and the distress of just looking at it worthwhile.
January 14th, 2011 at 9:40 am
sort of a virtual Vietnam Memorial – list of names, gone, for no good reason.