Easy for some...
This will be a follow-up entry to Life is Good in the Big Easy ... and well, I discovered that life isn't that good for everyone. Actually it isn't that good for most people, I'd venture to say. Because in New Orleans -- and I don't want to pick on New Orleans for poverty because all of our cities have it -- there is a lot of land that still looks like the hurricane just hit. There are a lot of abandoned houses where neighbors don't even know where the people have gone.
I am sorry to say that I go caught up with my work in the Big Easy and then with more work at home, and I let the initial shock of what I saw saw sort of drain away. I regret that - I wish I'd caught my first impressions. Because the day I spent in the Ninth Ward was a time that changed me, like as if a connection was made in my mind, linking lots of things that were already there.
I think it was the stoops without the houses that got me. Have you ever seen a stoop without a house? It looks a lot like a gravestone. It looks lonely there, like a statue, a monument, a lost dog. It doesn't look right at all. I think there are a lot of ghosts in New Orleans.