WaltonUndercurrent
Beach Lover
This is a short editorial I did for New Orleans Magazine - It's not meant to stir the usual debates about the pros and cons of rebuilding New Orleans. I'm just posting it for those on the board that are from there for their interest.
Chapter 82: Katrina
The history of New Orleans spans nearly three hundred years, older than the state of Louisiana, older than the Confederacy, older than our nation. Through the course of its history, it?s been ravaged by floods, disease, wars and fires that have tested its inhabitants with great loss and great misery.
But after each trial, the generation of the difficult time persevered, rebuilding without great doubt or debate their homes, their businesses, and their lives. Thankfully, none of them ever said, ?the end,? and wrote the final chapter of the unique city?s long and colorful life.
Katrina is the title of the latest chapter in the life of New Orleans. It?s a chapter full of human pain and drama to match that of any generation that was in their time responsible for the city's fate. Once again, the life of the city was threatened, its future questioned, and once again a generation of New Orleanians will either choose to follow the determination of their tough and determined ancestors or write the final words in the city?s history and place it on the shelf next to the those of Machu Picchu, Pompeii and Angkor to fire the imaginations of future generations.
New Orleans and New Orleanians are survivors. They must be out of necessity. It?s the only way to explain how a city of several hundred thousand built upon the mud of the Mississippi in 1718 still sat in 2005 to be so endangered by the coming of a event that?s been as feared for generations as that of the anti-Christ.
New Orleans has never died, though Mother Nature, fires, politicians and disease have often tried. She?s suffered, she?s fallen down, seen heaven from afar, but for three hundred years, before the end of the count, she pulled herself up out of the dark Mississippi mud and continued to breathe.
Though much of the city still remains dark and quiet, there is something moving in the dark primordial sea - exciting signs of hope in a place that was once thought incapable of supporting life - faint whispers of re-birth. There's laughter in the Quarter. The calliopy player at the dock is pounding notes that are stirring forgotten memories of a distant time. There are lights beginning to burn in the night.
In three hundred years, when the ancestors of this generation who are refusing now to write an end to the story look back, they will marvel at the strength of the New Orleanians in Chapter 82, as we have marveled at those in earlier chapters. And they will celebrate the strength of those that kept the wonderful story going.
Chapter 82: Katrina
The history of New Orleans spans nearly three hundred years, older than the state of Louisiana, older than the Confederacy, older than our nation. Through the course of its history, it?s been ravaged by floods, disease, wars and fires that have tested its inhabitants with great loss and great misery.
But after each trial, the generation of the difficult time persevered, rebuilding without great doubt or debate their homes, their businesses, and their lives. Thankfully, none of them ever said, ?the end,? and wrote the final chapter of the unique city?s long and colorful life.
Katrina is the title of the latest chapter in the life of New Orleans. It?s a chapter full of human pain and drama to match that of any generation that was in their time responsible for the city's fate. Once again, the life of the city was threatened, its future questioned, and once again a generation of New Orleanians will either choose to follow the determination of their tough and determined ancestors or write the final words in the city?s history and place it on the shelf next to the those of Machu Picchu, Pompeii and Angkor to fire the imaginations of future generations.
New Orleans and New Orleanians are survivors. They must be out of necessity. It?s the only way to explain how a city of several hundred thousand built upon the mud of the Mississippi in 1718 still sat in 2005 to be so endangered by the coming of a event that?s been as feared for generations as that of the anti-Christ.
New Orleans has never died, though Mother Nature, fires, politicians and disease have often tried. She?s suffered, she?s fallen down, seen heaven from afar, but for three hundred years, before the end of the count, she pulled herself up out of the dark Mississippi mud and continued to breathe.
Though much of the city still remains dark and quiet, there is something moving in the dark primordial sea - exciting signs of hope in a place that was once thought incapable of supporting life - faint whispers of re-birth. There's laughter in the Quarter. The calliopy player at the dock is pounding notes that are stirring forgotten memories of a distant time. There are lights beginning to burn in the night.
In three hundred years, when the ancestors of this generation who are refusing now to write an end to the story look back, they will marvel at the strength of the New Orleanians in Chapter 82, as we have marveled at those in earlier chapters. And they will celebrate the strength of those that kept the wonderful story going.
