A different view
Finally got in my canoe and christened it yesterday and even though the sun was piping hot and it seemed like I was going to fry out there on the bayou – the water cooled the temp down considerably and a nice breeze blew as T and I paddled towards the lake. Ducklings followed mama ducks and adopted mama ducks, herons stood like statues on the banks, mullets jumped out of the water, and a nutria paddled furiously across the bayou. All in all it made me happy to be here and T mentioned that since Katrina it seemed like more people were out and about around the bayou these days. I told him it was likely that it was those displaced great white flight Lakeview people who were now living in our neighborhood and realizing how beautiful it is here along the bayou.
We pulled back up by the LaLa house and C and her husband S were having a picnic – and C was wearing a pink sundress and Lance, dog of mystery, was sitting like a guard dog beside them – they looked like a cutting photograph of Southern renaissance – we pulled the boat out and C said I was lucky to have my house right there and I said “yes” – but a big sigh was inside of me because it is so daunting.
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
– Bertrand Russell
June 9th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
All of a sudden Lakeview people are thrown in with the great white flight, even though it is a part of the City. Hell, from what I have seen from houses along the bayou, you might as well call yourself part of the great white flight.
June 9th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Guess I always think of Lakeview as people who “escaped” the city and want to live in an all white neighborhood and those in MidCity as those who embrace diversity – if you look at the houses directly on the bayou you would be right in saying it is white washed but on any given street that runs perpendicular there is diversity – I don’t think you would find this diversity ANYWHERE in Lakeview and to be perfectly honest I guess I have a knee jerk to this whole thing because when I was 22 years old and going to purchase my first home I looked at a house in Lakeview and was told by the owner as long as you are not a “nigger or a Jew” I’ll sell it to you. That comment rankled on many levels – the bigotry and the fact that I am a Jew colored my opinion – so to speak – about people who live there. But that is a broad generality and I’m sure people in Lakeview today would not mind if Jews and Blacks came to live as their neighbors – right?