Katrina: Five Years Later

Five years ago today the world changed for a lot of people.  I've written a lot about it and you can find some of it if you're interested by clicking on Katrina on my side bar.  For a nice wrap up of stuff about Katrina than and now go here and read.

Restoring Honor

Sometimes I'm really surprised by what Americans want to believe.  It seems we as a nation want to promote stupidity and hate.  I don't think everyone should agree with me, but at least listen to what these people say.  And ask yourselves how you can follow them.  Glen Beck had his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial today.  One of his speakers was a preacher that had this to say about Hurricane Katrina right after the storm struck:

"the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans" because the city hosted a gay pride parade" 

How can anyone hate that much?   For more about the rally go here.

Katrina: Five Years Later

Another article about Katrina Five Years Later can be read here.

Katrina: Five Years Later

Katrina: Five Years Later

You hear about how bad it was in the city, and I"m not saying that a lot of bad things didn't go on, but it was easier for the press to talk about how bad people were reacting to the storm.  Here's something that shows how good people were during the storm.

Five Years Later....

We're coming up on the anniversary of Katrina.  Five years since the storm wrecked its way through the Gulf Coast.  Honestly I wasn't thinking about it until I came back from visiting my Mom and turned the TV on.  Lots of talk about the storm.  Life here is divided into two parts since the storm:  Before Katrina and After Katrina.  You don't realize how often that comes up in conversations.  So over the next few days I'll be posting stuff about Katrina.  If you're tired of hearing about it or think that we should get over it and move on since it's been five years, just skip these posts.  But moving on is hard, I know people that are still working on their homes.  You can drive down I-10, and while it doesn't look like it once did, you can still see the effects of the storm.  My brother is still doing work on his house from the storm.  Here's a link to go read.

A Look Back At Katrina

I hope everyone can forgive me for a few posts indulging in my memories of Hurricane Katrina. A lot of people probably don't want to hear anymore whining about the storm, it was four years ago, right? But even though it was four years ago it still lives large in my memories and the memories of a lot of people. I couldn't let the day go by without talking about it. I might have went a little overboard, but the following posts are some of my thoughts now and some of the posts from the days of Katrina.

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Today with Katrina

From Nola.com and Katrina in the news four years later, go check it out here.

Some Good Moments From Katrina

That first year after Katrina there was a lot of talk if the city should have a Jazz Fest. Some felt it was too soon, that it would be sending a wrong message to the rest of the world. Thankfully those people weren't listened to and we had a Jazz Fest. We needed it. It was a Jazz Fest unlike any other. One of my favorite posts and one of my favorite shows was Springsteen at the Fest. Instead of linking to it I'm re-posting it here.

It's been almost a week since the end of last week's Jazz Fest. I'm sure most of you have heard about Springsteen's appearance at the Fest. In Springsteen lore there are tales of his legendary concerts: the appearance at Bottom Line where Jan Landau came up with the future of rock and roll quote, his first London show, and others. These are the shows that his fans talk and write about, the ones that every Springsteen fan wishes he had been present at. Now you can add another one to that list.

I've seen Springsteen a few times over the years and he always gives a good concert. He puts on a good show, he knows how to play to the crowd. He doesn't stint on his time, he puts it all out there for his fans to see. But no show by Springsteen that I've seen comes close to this show. In fact I'm trying real hard to think of any show that I've seen that can compare to this one.

I talked in a previous post about the importance of this Jazz Fest to the city of New Orleans. In this one concert Springsteen shows he understands what is important and delivers on it. I'm not a religious person and I have never gotten what such a person gets from going to church, until this show. This might be the closest I have come to finding my religion. I've always thought music was the closest I've come to following a religion and today I was in church.

Springsteen opened with a rocking version of "Mary, Don't You Weep" and continued with his versions of the songs off his newest cd "The Seeger Sessions." He added "What's A Poor Man To Do", a song originally wrote in 1929 after the crash of the banks that eventually lead to the Depression. He kept the first verse, but wrote his own second and third verses to fit the destruction and aftermath of Katrina. And he dedicated it to President Bystander.

But the most moving moment came during his own song, "City in Ruins." This song started with him alone on his guitar. As he sang the lyrics it was obvious that this song could have been written for New Orleans after Katrina. And than when the band kicked in with the chorus of "Rise UP!" Hands went in the air, waving back and forth. But many of these hands kept returning to faces, to wipe away the tears. I don't know if I've ever been moved to tears at a concert, but I found myself wiping my own eyes.

Springsteen ended with his version of "When the Saints Come Marching Home." He sang it almost as a hymn. It was one of the most beautiful versions of the song I have ever heard.

This concert went from joy to despair, from laughter to tears. Springsteen made the truth of the importance of the Jazz Fest on this day.

First Sight of Home After Katrina

This was what greeted me after Katrina. I had already been over my parents house and things were not that bad. Driving back towards my house I had to dodge around a lot of fallen trees, so I was getting kind of worried. And than I got home and saw this. It actually isn't quite as bad as it looks. The house was in good shape, no trees on it. Under all those limbs was a BBQ grill that I had forgotten to bring inside when I left. In the background behind the pile of limbs where you can see to the other homes there is supposed to be a wooden fence. The storm blew it down. You can see the gate in the front of the picture lying on the ground.

Thanksgiving After Katrina

Before Katrina my Mom and Dad lived in Picayune, a small town in Mississippi. I assumed that would be where they would live the rest of their days out. I think they thought so too. Even though my Mom owned twenty acres in Tennessee from her Dad's old farm, they were content where they were. Than Katrina came.

Even though the storm did very little damage to my parent's house, some shingles, a car port twisted into a pretzel, they even got power back within days of the storm, my Mom no longer felt safe here. She thought of the next storm. She wanted to move back home, to Tennessee, home even though she hadn't lived there in over forty years. So they sold their home within two months of Katrina and were preparing to move.

Thanksgiving found them homeless. They were out of their old home, but the new one wasn't ready yet, so they had no place to go. They stayed with me for the holiday. My brother came over and we had a nice Thanksgiving. The above picture is from that day, my Dad, my Mom and Buffy.

As I was searching back though my old posts about Katrina I came across this picture and a post similar to this one about that Thanksgiving. I really like this picture, this was before my Dad started to get sick again and they looked like they were so happy and had so many years still together.

Our Government's Attutidue During Katrina

This post was written during Katrina and I think pretty much sums up the mind set of the people in charge at the time. It's said that Katrina was when a majority of the public started seeing George W Bush in a new light and it wasn't a pleasant one.

Four Years Ago

Image by aja via Flickr

It was a Sunday four years and a day ago I posted this:

Well, I guess I've decided to leave. Katrina is a cat 5 hurricane now, with gusts of 180 mphs. So I don't think I want to be around when it hits New Orleans. I may not be online for a few days (or more, who knows?), depending where I end up. Gotta go pack up the car and get Buffy ready to move.

Than three days later I was able to post again.

Just a quick note, we're in Tennessee safe and dry. No internet connection where we're staying. I'm at the local library trying to find a way back into the city. I'll post more when I get a chance. Thanks for all the good thoughts.

Afterwards I went back and tried to write some of what happened along the way. My first post in my Katrina posts was here where I wrote about the day of leaving. This is the post I wrote about our trip back home. My first day home was recorded here.

Re-reading these posts was strange. Four years isn't long enough to forget, but it is long enough that you put a lot of those thoughts and fears away in a part of your mind that you hope you don't have to visit again. Visiting these posts brought up a lot of these feelings. A lot of it at the time was the not knowing. I mention in one of the posts that Oakwood Mall had been burned down, well, not completely true. Looters had broken into it and burned part of it, but the mall was still standing. But that was how our information went at that time, in bits and pieces, sometimes factual, sometimes fanciful. I remember the nights trying to sleep, no air conditioner and down here September is still part of summer as far as temperatures go. I also remember the eeire darkness and quiet. No electricity meant no street lamps, no lights from houses, everything was just black. No power mean no phones, no noise. When I first came home I was one of the few in the neighborhood so every noise was a revelation. Lying in bed at night brought thoughts of helplessness and fear. What if looters broke in, there was no one to call, there was no one around. It made you feel like you were completely alone.

Katrina didn't end when the waters finally receded from the city. I don't even live in the city but Katrina impacted my life. Katrina still really hasn't ended. Yes, the city has done a lot in recovering, but not enough. I know people that are still trying to finish their houses, get their lives in order. We had insurance companies that did all they could do to get out of paying, we had a government that flew over heard and looked down at us, we had sister cities in our own state that didn't want to have anything to do with people from New Orleans.

I know a lot of people outside the city, outside the state wonder what the big fuss is still four years after Katrina came aground. It wasn't just a big storm. It was that and more, the aftermath was worse in many ways. We're making our way back, but it's not always easy or as quick as we'd like.

(Personally I came through the storm fairly well off. Today I am not struggling to put my home or life back in shape from the storm, but I know many who are, so I feel the effects.)

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4 Years Ago Today

Mary Gauthier

I found this video while I was preparing my "Song of the Week" for my other site Voices to hear. Mary is from New Orleans and an acclaimed singer/songwriter. Her song "Mercy Now" is one of my favorites, but this song and video are pretty powerful.

The Music Scene In New Orleans Since Katrina

Rolling Stone.com has a really good article about the music scene here in New Orleans since Katrina. Go here to read it. The article was written by Alex Rawls, a local that writes for the New Orleans local free paper Offbeat.

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New Orleans Waltz

I found this song from Grayson Capps from his album of last year "Wail and Ride." Grayson moved from New Orleans after Katrina to Tennessee, Shannon McNally is in Mississippi now...so many of the city's musicians have left and not come back. I was reading an interview in Offbeat awhile back with Susan Cowsill and she as talking about deciding to move from New Orleans and I was actually feeling sick, another artist leaving, but by the end of the interview she had declared that her and her husband decided they couldn't leave the city.

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A Response to Dick Cheny During Katrina

From the pages of the aforementioned Oxford-American is the story behind the shouted out comment in the above video. I was always surprised that when President Bush finally showed up to tour the damaged areas caused by Katrina, or when Dick Cheney did, why someone didn't react angrily to them, after being ignored and forgotten by our government, why the press only ever shows people thanking them for their help, when they should have been asking where the help was. Maybe there was more, but the press didn't seem to care about the ones that didn't think things were going great. No one from the press even followed after Dr. Marble (the voice in the video) to ask why he did what he did.

New Oxford American

Every year I enthuse about the music issue of the Oxford-American, but that's the next issue to come out. This issue, the one that I just picked up at the newstand today, is subtitled "3 Years After-New Orleans and the Gulf Coast-In Their Own Words".

I'm still reading this issue, this is one of those issues of a magazine that I know I'm going to keep and go back years from now to read, but I can tell you now that it is amazing. The stories are about people the went through Katrina, people that went back to the city, why the city matters, stories that will make you stop and think, stories that will make you cry.

I can't recommend this issue highly enough, if you want to know even what a tiny bit of what if felt like to go through Katrina, to come back to the city, pick up this issue.

Three Years Ago

Three years ago we watched this storm:



Now almost three years to the day we have this storm tracking this path: