Op-Ed Contributor
Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?
La Jolla, Calif.
WHAT do people really know about New Orleans?
Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?
(Here are a few more excerpts before I give a link to the complete article)
- Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy.
- Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs.
- I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance.
Here's a link to the complete Anne Rice article
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(P2) Political
Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn: "Say, y'all, this may be a great photo op, But could somebody tell me if the round part goes on the left or the right side"?
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(P3) Poetical
The Flood
Robert Frost
Blood has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.
We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;
But power of blood itself releases blood.
It goes by might of being such a flood
Held high at so unnatural a level.
It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.
weapons of war and implements of peace
Are but the points at which it finds release.
And now it is once more the tidal wave
Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.
(1928)
Please Post Your Comment Here on anything that's struck you.
You can sign in either as "blogger" or"other." If "other,"
please also include your name with your text.
While I'd prefer that you put your comment on the blog, I'll also
include my email address which is edcoletti@sbcglobal.net
2 comments:
From First Mother Barbara Bush on the Katrina refugees in Houston:
"Almost everyone I've talked to says, 'We're going to move to Houston.' What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this is working very well for them.'"
Chiara
Indeed. She might as well have said "Let them eat barbecue." The apple sure doesn't fall very far from the tree, does it?
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