This poem was inspired by "When did the scrolls become home thread" and Katrina

Home Ambivalence

We are not wall shaped in our hearts,
we are porous where home begins
after all, we didn't pick this place
like ocean debris we just arrived
in the same surf, and stayed when the tide receded.

So when we are tossed together or crushed
when it looks like there's nothing left of us
we will still look toward home-
we will still be filled with love and yearn
for family to surround us, and help us bear the callous wind.

That was beautiful, Nanzar.

first, i want to say this is a really nice poem, and i agree in theory with it's sentiments--that we are first of people and not of a place. that being said, there is something about the particular place of New Orleans that transcends that notion. New Orleans--historically, geographically, ethnically--makes the people who are from there every bit as much as the people make that place. the very fact that the city been poised for this disaster as long as it's existed...it creates a very specific personality in a population. maybe Tam can help me here...it's hard to explain if you haven't experienced it.

i hear the civil engineers and other bureaucrats talk about whether it's even feasible or not to rebuild the city, and i laugh. tell that to someone with New Orleans in their blood and their soul, and see if they agree.

funny...i've written more here at the Scrolls about Katrina & New Orleans than i have about anything maybe ever. but i think it will be a long time before i can wax poetic about any of this...

quote:

i hear the civil engineers and other bureaucrats talk about whether it's even feasible or not to rebuild the city, and i laugh. tell that to someone with New Orleans in their blood and their soul, and see if they agree.

I spent some time researching the prospects for NO. I'm very sorry that you have to go through such loss. I suppose if it was the city I'm closest too, NYC, I would feel much the same.

I think this article form FOX News explains some of the complications:

Officials Mull Big Easy's Fate
Thursday, September 01, 2005
NEW ORLEANS — An astonishing phenomenon, the drowning of New Orleans (search), leads to a mind-boggling question: How to rebuild a city? Some are already considering the challenge.

Officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (search) estimate it will be weeks before all the water that flowed into the city through breached levees can be pumped back out. After that, it will take several years — and many billions of dollars — to rebuild homes, offices, streets and highways.

It is the decisions people make as they go through that process that will determine what New Orleans eventually becomes, disaster recovery experts said. From the major political battles over how to spend public funds to each family's deliberation over whether to return to a city where there's not much to go back to, the choices people make in the weeks and months ahead will determine the Big Easy's fate.

"It will reveal a lot about the power structure of New Orleans," said Lawrence Vale, a professor of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (search).

Federal, state and city government will need to make big investments in infrastructure — especially flood protection — to entice businesses back to the city and reassure insurers that nothing like this is going to happen again any time soon. They will also have to convince people that the city is a safe place to live.

The owners of single-family homes are usually the first to rebuild after a hurricane, said Walter Peacock, director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. But because fewer than 50 percent of New Orleans homeowners have flood insurance, many of them probably won't have financial resources to rebuild at all.

Condominiums and rental housing take longer to come back simply because they have more complicated insurance and financing issues to work out. That can make finding a place to live in the aftermath of a disaster extremely difficult for renters, especially poor ones. The flooding has wiped out many of the neighborhoods where low-income minorities live, making their situation especially tenuous as the city recovers.

"If you get reinvestment it probably isn't going to be targeted at those people," Peacock said. "That could be a major problem in New Orleans if that housing doesn't come back."

Because low-income housing in the Florida Keys has not been replaced after hurricanes, he said, the resort area's hotels and restaurants now have trouble finding enough employees. Many of them have to commute from Homestead, south of Miami.

Ironically, the destruction caused by Katrina gives New Orleans residents the opportunity to gird themselves against the next hurricane that pounds into their city. Even before Katrina hit, Louisiana was considering a stronger building code that would require more wind-resistant designs for roofs and walls. With the proper building materials and techniques, a house can usually survive a Category 5 storm intact, said Marc Levitan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Louisiana State University.

The new rules should be instituted as soon as possible, Levitan recommended, before people start to rebuild.

"It would be nice if we could make some recommendations and get them in place so we're not building the same thing that fell down last time," he said.

Katrina also gives the Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for flood control in New Orleans, the opportunity to modify the network of levees it uses to keep water out of the city. The structures that are currently in place are designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, but the Corps has been considering an upgrade for several years that could handle a Category 5 storm.

"I think there's a lot of opportunities for improving the levees," said Joannes J. Westerink, a civil engineer at the University of Notre Dame. "There are lots of ways of protecting the city."

They all cost money, of course. So for New Orleans and everyone who has a stake in it, the big question over the next few years will be how much to spend and what to spend it on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't what the right thing to do is in this terrible catastrophy going forward. But it seems without argument that the city we knew as New Orleans is gone and it is never coming back.

if New Orleans was only a city, that would be true. but it's a culture...an ethnicity unto itself almost. New Orleans will never die.

it's very hard not to be bitter right now so i cannot comment further, but thanks for trying to understand. i think...

Yes indeed I am trying to understand.

Thanks also for the response to my poem. It was not, in the begining, intended to have so much of a connection with the people who have lost their homes in this current catastrophy. That just bubbled up when I began to think about what Argy said about feeling ambivalent about the scrolls. It made me wonder whether people often feel this way about home- you know- the love it/hate it syndrome. So that's really where it came from.

I don't really have much of a poetic feeling towards this disaster either. I'm stunned to the core really, and saddened by the ongoing hardships of the people there.

I am trying to get a handle on how this is different than 911. So far I have this:

911- It hurt my heart. So many dead so suddenly, families torn apart by loss, the city rocked to the foundations, the country- the world- reeling form that kind of hatred and cruelty.

Katrina- It hurts my belly, it hurts my eyes, it hurts everywhere. To think of the people suffering with no help in days. To think of the loss of an entire city, coastland, economy, peoples lives (if not life) gone in seconds. And it's got me angry too. I'm angry at the stupidity in the case of NO to continue to live and build in a city with the "big storm" always on the horizon. I don't blame the people because I know it's human nature. But it's just so sad. Not unlike the victims of the Tsnuami, who could have been warned if the PTB had made an effort to forsee the inevitable.

That's my rant for now. I would have started another thread, but I didn't know what to call it.

those stupid NO people who chose to live in a vulnerable place built and operate the largest seaport in the country. they refine a quarter of the gasoline this country consumes. and it represents the most culturally rich example of the melting pot this country is. 9-11 rocked my reality. i won't down-play it. but the loss of two buildings and 1000's of lives pales in comparison to the loss of an entire city and the devastation of an entire region. as what i call a near-native of New Orleans, i find your comments insensistive and uniformed. but that never stopped anyone, did it...

oh, and another big difference is the 9-11 victims received assistance immediately. i don't recall anyone dying in the streets of NYC for lack of water. you may be trying to understand, but you don't.

quote:

those stupid NO people who chose to live in a vulnerable place built and operate the largest seaport in the country. they refine a quarter of the gasoline this country consumes. and it represents the most culturally rich example of the melting pot this country is

I've looked into these things as well. As I said this is a true calamity. We needed that city and it's port and the oil industry that was there. It's just a shame that more thought wasn't put into the planing of these things.

It takes a disaster sometimes to put a better plan in place. Have you ever been to Europe? There are some lovely cities there now, well planed cities, that came up in Germany for instance, that would not be there if not for the bombing in WWII. If you look at the Netherlands you'll see they are also below sea level and they have had their share of destruction and death because of it. They don't try and rebuild where the water has breached though, they build more dikes and more cananls to move the water around the city.

Ahh... anyways, I think you have been finding my thoughts on this a handy punching bag for your frustrationa and pain. That's OK. I can take it. But Lets take it over to a rant thread in FC though because it really doesn't make sence to do it here.

XenaFairy3Thanks also for your response. I'm glad that you thought the poem was beautiful. I guess it made you feel closer to the poor people who have suffered so much. Sadly, a poem like this can not come close the real suffering that is going on. Poems that work usually have a universal and personal meaning that touches the heart. In this case (this poem that is) the meaning we can derive does little to defer the reality of the hardship.

quote:

Originally posted by Nanzar:
Ahh... anyways, I think you have been finding my thoughts on this a handy punching bag for your frustrationa and pain. That's OK. I can take it. But Lets take it over to a rant thread in FC though because it really doesn't make sence to do it here.

you just tell yourself whatever you have to to believe you're a good person, ok? i didn't randomly pick you to lash out at. i have responded to what you have posted and tried to make you understand something of which you have no comprehension. i'm done with you.

i'm not sure it's worth commenting here, but what the heck

new orleans was placed where it was long before i was born.. i'm sure for reasons that don't all completely exist still (so talk to the french)
but it's still a good place for a port for the US
yes the levees should be improved, but the army corp of engineers did the job they were ordered to do (so talk to your gov't)

if we're going to move major cities out of harm's way where should we start? miami? they were just asking for hurricane andrew i'm sure
and there are just too many earthquakes near san francisco

the cities in europe below sea level have been built on fill .. need more land? use more fill
i'm not sure when the last hurricane hit there to test how their canals and dikes hold up

truthfully i've never loved the n.o. many tourists think of
with bourbon street, partying, drinking, etc.
i love n.o. the city where i was born, where my family resides, with the history, architecture, waterways, animal life, awesome food, and some of the greatest people

I fully respect how personal this disater is to some folks who have ties to these areas. My heart goes out to you.

I feel terrible that more wasn't done, before during, and after, the storm, to protect people and even places. This is a monumental event in the history of the world. I watched the discussion on The News Hour tonight and it was raw and honest with feeling that the structure of society has crumbled. It is beyond my comprehension to understand the lasting effects but I feel I must begin to try. That is the only reason I am being honest about my feelings and observations.