Hurricane Katrina: August 2008 Archives
Katrina Remembrance at Metairie Cemetery on Pontchartrain Boulevard
I didn't have time yesterday to write a "third anniversary" post. There's a bit going on in the city at the moment, and I'm not talking just about Hurricane Gustav, which is about to punch through Cuba and enter the Gulf of Mexico. That's because the New Orleans metro area is back to business. (Besides, I wrote down our story about evacuating and such last year.)
I was out of town for most of this past week, in Manhattan. I taught a 4-day class for Hitachi Data Systems, then took the 7:30am nonstop from LGA back home, just as I had planned before Gustav was something to factor into planning. Because I travel 2-4 weeks a month (read about what I teach, and you'll understand that I would have to travel to do it whether we got hurt by a storm three years ago or not), I follow and observe airport statistics and comings-and-goings. In spite of the general economic turndown and obscenely high fuel prices, flights to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) have been on the increase, and are slowly making their way back to pre-K numbers. That's a very good sign.
While evacuation is not something any of us want to contemplate, I did find the traffic jam caused by yesterday's noon exodus from downtown to be encouraging. The backed-up traffic on I-10W heading into Metairie meant there actually were people working when most companies took half the day off. Southern Decadence was in full swing last (Friday) night, and will continue again tonight, although the big parade for tomorrow was canceled.
All of this, combined with the fact that I was just too darn busy to do more than stop for a moment of silence at 9:38am at MSY (the official time of the 17th Street Canal floodwall breach that flooded most of Lakeview and MidCity), is a good thing. Keeping busy is a good way not to re-live trauma. Still, part of my agenda yesterday was to pick up my 14-year old at Brother Martin High School, where he's a freshman. That meant going into Gentilly, and that's still a sore point for me.
For all that the positive signs around the city are starting to out-balance the negatives, the neighborhood of Gentilly is one of the saddest of the negatives. People living in that once-thriving area now consider themselves "pioneers" in their own city. And like the pioneers and homesteaders of 19th century America, their lives are an interesting mix of primitive and civilized conditions. Old neighbors and new are pulling together, as people re-build and folks with a bit of the pioneer spirit move in.
Holy Cross School, on Paris Avenue in Gentilly
Holy Cross got caught a lot of flack when they made the decision last year to leave their historic Ninth Ward campus and build a new school in Gentilly. The low, one-story buildings you see in the right-hand background are portable classrooms; that's their school for boys in grades 5-12 at the moment. The order and the school's board negotiated a long-term lease for the land that used to be St. Frances Xavier Cabrini church and school, along with what used to be Redeemer-Seton High School as the site for the "new" Holy Cross. The demolition of Cabrini church was controversial, but the school won the day and the new facility is rising from the flooded area.
But as the school rises up, the neighborhood is left as religious "pioneers." As part of the Archdiocese of New Orleans' post-storm consolidation/reconstruction plan, Cabrini was a parish slated to be closed down. Combine that with St. Raphael's over on Elysian Fields still being a mess, the entire area has been merged with St. Leo the Great parish. Now, this isn't just catlick mumbo-jumbo here; churches are the anchors of a neighborhood. When you've got to drive miles to go to church instead of walking blocks, you've lost a piece of your community. Three years on, Gentilly is still missing a number of things that make a neighborhood, such as gas stations, convenience stores, coffee shops, and churches. Sure, folks in the area can get in the car and go to Lakeview, where retail is coming back faster, but that doesn't do anything for property values in Gentilly.
The Holy Cross development will hopefully spark some retail development along Paris Avenue, from Robert E. Lee Blvd. to Mirabeau Ave. Most of the students attending Holy Cross aren't from the neighborhood, so that means a lot of car-pooling soccer moms going back and forth. That's a potential retail base. The return of retail will encourage more people to "pioneer," turning this:
into this:
The problem is that rebuilding of the neighborhood is inconsistent. One block over from the above corner is this:
The complexities of Road Home, employment and school issues are only some of the reasons blocks of Gentilly have not been rebuilt. The best solution for the neighborhood now is to give up on the notion that things will go back to the way they were before the storm. Gentilly must hope that major developments like Holy Cross lead to general expansion. If the government contractors who populate the office complex across the street from the University of New Orleans (as well as UNO itself) continue to offer quality employment opportunities, the prospect of a 2-4 mile commute to work will attract new families to Gentilly. The jury is still out on the charter schools which have opened in Gentilly, but their success also contributes to the growth of the area's growth.
Pioneers are tough people. Gentilly just needs more of them.
Oh, and by the way, one of the reasons I was too busy yesterday to write a +3 post is because I went to Parkway Bakery with friends for lunch. After five days in Manhattan, I had hot sausage po-boy on the brain:
To everyone in Gustav's path: STAY SAFE!
Last week, Loki from Humid City took issue with a comment I made on Twitter about making fun of the Mayor of New Orleans, SeeRay Nagin. I put forth that it does no good to mock SeeRay, because he's past the point where any attempt at humiliation on our part would be effective. After yesterday's revelation that a city contractor tore down a house a Gentilly couple had purchased after the storm and were re-building, I've come to a different realization.
I was wrong, and Loki was right, SeeRay deserves all the scorn and humiliation we can heap on him between now and election day in 2009.
I would go a step further and submit that it's time that any member of the SeeRay gang (I hesitate to call them an “administration,” given that they're in such disarray) should receive the same scorn and humiliation given to the boss.
Take the issue of housing demolitions, for example. This was supposed to have been settled by a consent decree agreed to by the city and various groups who sued SeeRay's gang in federal court, because the demo process was haphazard and did not afford homeowners anything in the way of due process.
It appears that obeying court orders wasn't something they taught in whatever Civics classes the SeeRay gang took, because Erica and Brian DeJan now have a pile of rubble on a lot where their house stood just last week.
What is amazing about the DeJan fiasco is that, while one group in SeeRay's gang issued the couple a building permit to repair the house, another group within the gang was ordering it torn down.
That's where humiliation comes into play. It's one thing to mock SeeRay—his political career is, for all practical purposes, over. His gang lieutenants, and the sergeants under them, however, anticipate employment under future mayors. SeeRay didn't order that the DeJan family home be torn down; a bureaucrat did.
Those bureaucrats are usually invisible to the world, and often immune from scrutiny. Take Michelle Krupa's description of her contact with those involved in home demolitions, for example:
(insert quote re city response here)
Can't comment, won't comment, don't know what to say even if she could comment. It's at this point that Krupa should have started a new line of questioning:, such as, “Where did you go to school?”
It's a classic New Orleans question. If you're a local, you know the question well. The proper answer is where you went to high school. Non-locals will answer with their university, when what they should say is “I grew up out of town.” Clearly the bureaucrat will realize that s/he is quickly becoming part of the story. Once armed with more information about the person's background, follow-ups can and will make them more and more uncomfortable. As they should be, when they've done something as heinous as destroy a family's home.
The underlings in the SeeRay gang have been able to run under the radar since the storm. The leader of the pack has been acting like he got hit on the head with a rock ever since 29-Aug-2005. SeeRay's crazy remarks, behavior, and expensive bar tabs at Metairie restaurants can and should be attributed to his erratic behavior; business decisions, such as when to tear down a building, should not. Those wo make those decisions should be dragged into the light of day and held accountable.
Another group who should be held accountable for the actions of the SeeRay gang is the gaggle of politician-types who endordsed SeeRay in 2005. You're a judge whose signs are now up as you run for a seat on a higher court, explain to us all why you thoguht this gang would shoot straight. You're a legislator, give us a similar explanation while you also vote the $$$ needed to fix what this gang has either stolen or what we'll have to pay out to settle the inevitable lawsuits.
I've long argued that we Democrats should make the Republics take ownership of George W. Bush and the criminal enterprise he leads. What's good for the goose, etc. It's time for local Democrats who supported SeeRay to stand up and fix their mistake.
I was wrong, and Loki was right, SeeRay deserves all the scorn and humiliation we can heap on him between now and election day in 2009.
I would go a step further and submit that it's time that any member of the SeeRay gang (I hesitate to call them an “administration,” given that they're in such disarray) should receive the same scorn and humiliation given to the boss.
Take the issue of housing demolitions, for example. This was supposed to have been settled by a consent decree agreed to by the city and various groups who sued SeeRay's gang in federal court, because the demo process was haphazard and did not afford homeowners anything in the way of due process.
It appears that obeying court orders wasn't something they taught in whatever Civics classes the SeeRay gang took, because Erica and Brian DeJan now have a pile of rubble on a lot where their house stood just last week.
What is amazing about the DeJan fiasco is that, while one group in SeeRay's gang issued the couple a building permit to repair the house, another group within the gang was ordering it torn down.
That's where humiliation comes into play. It's one thing to mock SeeRay—his political career is, for all practical purposes, over. His gang lieutenants, and the sergeants under them, however, anticipate employment under future mayors. SeeRay didn't order that the DeJan family home be torn down; a bureaucrat did.
Those bureaucrats are usually invisible to the world, and often immune from scrutiny. Take Michelle Krupa's description of her contact with those involved in home demolitions, for example:
(insert quote re city response here)
Can't comment, won't comment, don't know what to say even if she could comment. It's at this point that Krupa should have started a new line of questioning:, such as, “Where did you go to school?”
It's a classic New Orleans question. If you're a local, you know the question well. The proper answer is where you went to high school. Non-locals will answer with their university, when what they should say is “I grew up out of town.” Clearly the bureaucrat will realize that s/he is quickly becoming part of the story. Once armed with more information about the person's background, follow-ups can and will make them more and more uncomfortable. As they should be, when they've done something as heinous as destroy a family's home.
The underlings in the SeeRay gang have been able to run under the radar since the storm. The leader of the pack has been acting like he got hit on the head with a rock ever since 29-Aug-2005. SeeRay's crazy remarks, behavior, and expensive bar tabs at Metairie restaurants can and should be attributed to his erratic behavior; business decisions, such as when to tear down a building, should not. Those wo make those decisions should be dragged into the light of day and held accountable.
Another group who should be held accountable for the actions of the SeeRay gang is the gaggle of politician-types who endordsed SeeRay in 2005. You're a judge whose signs are now up as you run for a seat on a higher court, explain to us all why you thoguht this gang would shoot straight. You're a legislator, give us a similar explanation while you also vote the $$$ needed to fix what this gang has either stolen or what we'll have to pay out to settle the inevitable lawsuits.
I've long argued that we Democrats should make the Republics take ownership of George W. Bush and the criminal enterprise he leads. What's good for the goose, etc. It's time for local Democrats who supported SeeRay to stand up and fix their mistake.
Stumble It!
