New Orleans
Yesterday I posted a link to Anne Rice's bit in the NY Times, which I felt was worth listening to if only to get a taste of what many in New Orleans are going through emotionally. I've not been entirely happy myself with the response to the disaster, but in my first post on Katrina I said that politics were to blame for the dithering. I didn�t assign blame to anyone specifically, and neither did Rice. She lashed out at all of us.
Brendon Loy on the other hand had been blogging Katrina and sounding the warning days before the hurricane hit. He continues to provide perhaps the most insightful coverage of the aftermath available. I highly recommend this equally passionate yet more reasoned take on the situation than Rice's. Loy is profiled in the NY Times Here
Michael Leeden has an article on the highly developed culture of death in New Orleans, of which Miss Rice is a prominent member. He compares NO to Venice, the other sunken city at the mercy of the water gods, and also to Naples (a city under threat of destruction by Vesuvius), which also has a highly developed death culture. It's a quick read and worth a look.
I've had my trip to New Orleans and it was everything that I expected. My primary goal was to get to the Voodoo Museum where I made an offering to a Loa. Also during my trip I stayed at an old haunted mansion on the banks of the Mississippi somewhere near Baton Rouge. New Orleans is an incredibly spiritual city, where life is intertwined with death and the 'other' world, and/or the afterworld you may say, in a very public way. It's a place I considered moving to at one point.
When the water recedes and dead are counted and the stories are told, we're going to hear amazing things. Just as the first response to 9/11 was 'we will rebuild,' so are my thoughts about New Orleans. In a country where we constantly try to outlaw danger, from safety tags on virtually every item for sale to the fatwa on cigarettes, New Orleans has been our spiritual safety valve for unsafe living and indulgence. A place to let our dark sides come out and play. New Orleans contains our 'shadow,' as the Jungians would say.The people who live there are special, if a little quirky, and deserve our prayers and help.
In the Times Rice said, " You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music." It's not that we 'want' those things, it's that we need those things. It's a vital part of who we are as a nation. New Orleans is a symbol of us every bit as important as New York, and deserving of the same effort and care.
