Fragenfreude: Dancing on the Volcano

If the good people downstream from the Mississippi Morganza spillway who had been evacuated to see their farms and small towns being sacrificed for the safety of the big cities Baton Rouge and New Orleans, if those Louisiana citizens would take refuge in the Big Easy they would have been quite surprised. Here in "Nawlins" it was party time as usual. The red old time trolley operating 9' or so below the waterline is jammed, a freight train winds its way through downtown blowing its horn and the architects of the AIA convention worry about their continuing credits and hurry from seminar to seminar in the cavernous convention center right alongside the mighty river.

The barkers bark on Bourbon street, the girls wiggle their assets, a small marching band followed by party revelers squeeze through the gawking masses. Barges ply downstream a lot faster than upstream and the ferry crosses to Algiers a bit more loopy to account for the brown cross-current rich with timber flotsam poking out of the swift waters here and there. In Algiers long time resident Jack, 75 like some of his neighbors surveying the river on top of the levy looking down on the flooded assembly of shacks and picnic benches in front of the levy which constitute in dryer times some sort of village exhibit. A sign still claims it to be "open".

Still, even here where Katrina has flooded the historic small wood houses, as Jack reminisces, apparently glad to find in me somebody who listened to him with some level of attention most residents just tend their yard, talk in their beautiful porches or get a late cup of Joe in the local cafe. The yuppified firmer country store is now wifi enabled and tends to hippies and Yuppies and some folks who come here because there isn't much else to go to. It is 11am when the pub is just starting to air out the stale air from last night. The sky is bright blue, a stiff northerly breeze keeps the usual Gulf moisture away and makes New Orleans crisply feel rather like Portland, Maine.

The spillway evacuee turning tourist would find that his fellow citizens, New Orleans and tourist from around the world conduct business as usual, distracted neither by concern nor compassion.

Maybe he be best visit the Casino at the foot of Poytras Street, 200 from the river but without a view and try his luck against his better knowledge. He would likely lose again, but at least he would have a chance. Upstream his home and land get slowly swallowed by waters that the Corps of Engineers very deliberately directed there so that New Orleans can escape another catastrophe.