About this time every year, many of my friends and acquantainces and peers are either going or returning from vacation. About this time every year for about five years in a row, the missus and I would be not long returned from a senior class trip. Two of those years we went to New Orleans. The summer after our last senior class trip there, Foot Foot and I took our son Nicholas with us. The three of us had such a good time--and Foot Foot and I enjoyed our senior class trips there so much, too--that the missus and I decided to return to New Orleans every summer. That was in 2005, in June. In August of that year, Katrina hit. It hit our litte town pretty heavily, but the impact here was nothing compared to the devastation in New Orleans. We haven't been back.
We saw all the news reports, read all the articles and editorials, listened to all the griping from those who stayed and to all the griping from those who grew angry at all the griping from those who stayed. Blame passed back and forth, accusations of racism came from white and black/rich and poor, yet still people drowned, still people were left without means, without food, without a lifestyle. For varying reasons--lack of transportation, lack of funds, selfishness, greed, hubris--thousands of people stayed in New Orleans when Katrina hit, and many of these thousands died. The government (local, state, and federal) knew the levees wouldn't hold if a hurricane magnitude of Katrina hit the Gulf Coast near New Orleans, yet these thousands of people--for whatever reason--weren't evacuated. Some stayed willingly, would not have evacuated for any reason whatsoever (remember Camille, when people had hurricane parties--happened this time, too), but some...may they rest in peace.
Not all died, of course. Many who stayed survived, and many of those survivors were left jobless or homeless or both. With this increase in vagrancy came, of course, an increase in crime, in a city already known--yea, hailed--for its laissez faire attitude towards miscreants. Pundits and a few legislators even seriously considered leveling the city, calling it a wash, and starting over from scratch, building atop the rubble and the remains; and some even mentioned forgetting the city altogether, those few thousand remaining forced to leave and find work and home elsewhere.
Some did anyway. Many, though, scraped by best they could. The city's slowly recovering. As noted above, I haven't been back yet, though maybe in a couple of years, when my youngest is old enough to travel more than sixty miles without whining, Foot Foot and I will return. Maybe by then, the city will be as festive and gauche as it was the times I was there before. I hope so. Of all the cities I've visited, New Orleans has been my favorite.
The next two songs on my countdown are dedicated to The Big Easy. This first one was recorded by New Orleans' own Subdudes in May of 2005, three months before Katrina hit; it wasn't released (for obvious reasons) until January 2006. The song's a metaphor for leaving behind heartache and pain, but for me, "No Vacany" will always be inextricably linked to those left behind in the wake of Katrina. I can't hear the song and not think of the pictures and film/video footage of the effects the hurricane had upon the streets of New Orleans. It's supposed to be a hopeful song, but the singer's yearning tone, the somber instrumentation, and the empty spaces bluesman Keb Mo' leaves in the record leave me with images that aren't very hopeful. It makes me sad, a bit depressed, even though I know things will get better. There is (to paraphrase Ecclesiastes and Ben Harper) a reason to mourn.
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