New Orleans on the edges
I’ve told many people that you could come visit New Orleans and not see a trace of the Great Government Levee Failure of 2005 or you can see it appear through every nook and cranny – just depends on how you are looking. I took the truck in for repairs on Bienville this morning, taking the dogs with me so that I could walk them back home. I walked down Bienville, crossing Carrollton on my way back to Jeff Davis and the bayou. This area used to have working warehouses and a hospital and now it has empty lots, boarded up houses, and vacant large patches of land where once stood a Ford dealership, a Chinese restaurant, and warehouses a plenty. Half were razed by the storm, by the economy, by neglect. Victory Developer came in and bought most of what is there and planned an urban mall – OH MY GOD is how the neighborhood reacted, not only Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) but more like NO WAY IN HELL. And thankfully there were enough people thinking after the storm to stop this sort of nonsense from ruining our neighborhood.
But ruin is a funny word, as I walked home among the ruins, I couldn’t help but wonder what is the alternative – this? I stumbled upon a handwritten sign nailed to tree that said, “Even our most profound losses are survivable” – Ted Kennedy Jr. Sometimes in the pause, the emptiness or ruin, thoughts fill the interstitial spaces instead of development, progress, or the vast money making machine. Sometimes ruin happens and that’s okay.