New Orleans

Aw, man. I'm back to work for the fall semester, and starting to need this outlet again. And what's the first thing to write about but this... disaster. One of my colleagues, frustrated with his students' ignorance of the scale of the problem, saw a chance to shake them up with the question "Which was worse; 9/11 or Katrina?" It looks like this is becoming more and more a real question in terms of death toll. Somehow this one is shaking me harder than 9/11, though (Calvin's due date). I have more personal memory of New Orleans than New York: a 22nd birthday party by Jackson Square with some homeless guys, street musicians, and close college brothers. Hearing about the death of my best friend's father when I was in high school, while there on an adventure with my dad. A nostalgia-inducing night of anthropologists gone wild during the AAA meetings, making (I gather) a bit of a reputation for "the Texas crowd."
But I refuse to believe it's just me who is getting torn up by watching the news--it's not only personal. It is too painfully obvious how ready our society and the managers of our resources are to simply brush off the thousands of people who live on the edge of disaster every day. How many more times have New Orleanians been brushed off before there was a hurricane to put them on the front page? How often have we discounted these thousands ("people of the abyss" that racist socialist Jack London wrote about) just like the reporters did in the days following the hurricane, when the quick verdict was that NO had dodged the bullet? Or when the authorities say "Everybody out" and then dust off their hands while thousands, THOUSANDS have no car, or no gas, or no bus showing up at the depot?
In any case, this was not a natural disaster, though it involved nature. I was getting furious watching NBC the other night and their insistence on looping everything around to a narrative of hope. I still feel more anger and despair than hope. I know some people will hear of the "looters" and "hoodlums" and have a ready explanation of social pathology. I think I hear some dirty south rage, though, and I don't blame anybody who's feeling that.
Aw, man, and the big-selling tourist drink on Bourbon St. is the hurricane. That just ties up the tragedy of that grim joy you see in the Quarter. God, New Orleans.