A thought on New Orleans

Last week, the name New Orleans conjured thoughts of fun, raucous music, delicious spicy seafood and cocktail glasses clinking amid laughter and dancing on a sultry candlelit night.

Now our most colorful city has drowned. No electricity, no water to drink. Broken gas lines send flames erupting from toxic floodwaters. Crazed mobs loot stores and shoot at relief helicopters. Hungry people fight over scraps of food. Bloated corpses float through the streets while desperate survivors huddle on rooftops in the steaming diseased stench, awaiting rescue. *

We will learn a lot about ourselves in the coming days of the Katrina crisis: who gives, who doesn't give, who places blame, who takes responsibility, and the absolute worst of all, those who try to use this horror for their gain, albeit financially by robbing and price gouging, or politically, effectively looting from the ample bitterness, to increase their selfish power.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid we will also learn never to say; “At least things can’t get any worse.”






*Paraphrasing from Peter Carlson’s great opening paragraph on Mayor Nagin in “The Washington Post.”