Missing New Orleans

The description of my fair city over these last post-Katrina months have left me with a mixture of sadness and hope.

It will never be the same, but maybe (just maybe!) it could be better. But my fear is that even if that turns out to be the case ... it'll be a long time coming. It may take years of really ugly growing pains to get there.

The New Orleans Times Picayune recently showed a map of proposed redevelopment. I opened up the file, eagerly, to see what exciting plans there were.

And I started to cry.

I don't really know how to explain this. The neighborhood I grew up in evolved into a frightening, dangerous neighborhood. I was afraid to walk (even in daylight). I feared for my parents' safety (was it two or three times their home was broken into?).

But as Marianne said, "It may have been a slum, but it was OUR slum."

To see, on a map, the neighborhood I grew up in, spent my childhood exploring, where I could walk to a movie theatre and knew the local pharmacist at the K&B and learned to sew at Cloth World and played at Kenilworth Park and "borrowed" the tennis courts at Georgetown ... to see on a map that the bulk of this neighborhood was being converted to green space ...

It broke my heart. Nevermind that the movie theatre turned into some kind of house of worship, that the A&P was long gone and the K&B bought out by Rite Aid, the park kind of scary, and Georgetown's gates locked. At least the *buildings* are there. Were. Are. I don't even know any more.

It finally hit me what redevelopment actually means. And it breaks my heart.

But none of this was the reason for my posting here today. As many of you reading this may not know, the mayor of NO gave a speech that people can't stop talking about. And not in a good way. So for those who need to see the real speech, go here.

But that wasn't the reason either. This is.

Chris Rose, who has provided some of the most heartfelt (yet funny) descriptions of the city throughout these dark months, countered with this. And this.

And if you like those columns, I recommend a read of his post-Katrina archive. It will make you laugh AND break your heart, all at the same time. Not to mention painting you a picture CNN will never let you see.