The Strange Blessing
September 2, 2007
I just finished listening to Rachel Baudier read from her journal for the "This I Believe" series. A moving piece about the "blessings" of Katrina. Listen/read it here. (click on highlighted text for the link).
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New Orleans has always been a sort of fantasy place. I remember childhood visits, boarding the Sunset Limited in New Iberia, staying at the Roosvelt Hotel, sitting in the window and watching the electric signs on Canal St. come on. Katrina let us see that under the fantasy was a tough cruel world. I wonder how it felt for our waiter at Galatrois, the black lady who made up our hotel room,the porter on the train, the red cap who hauled our luggage and hailed us a cab. They lived in one city and worked in another although the cities were one and the same. I talk to people in St. Martinville who called me Mr. Ed as long as I can remember. Their kids now successful Doctors, Lawyers who live in Atlanta or Houston how do they bridge that gap. They take their kids to one of Tony Goula's cabins where they grew up. A shotgun house of rough sawed cypres with no bathroom, no electricity and a wood cistern to provide water. The walls insulated with four inches of flour and water pasted magazines or newspaper they brought from the white folks house.
The kids will probably never truly bridge the gap. Boy! I sure can go off. I guess these gaps exist everywhere. I spent a lot of time on Okinawa. I know about the Typhoon of Steel, Easter Sunday 1945. I know of places where that many men American and Japanese died. There is no memorial there only a bright and shiny Mc Dolalds. Ed
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