January One

READ THIS FIRST: This is a very long post – over 3,000 words. It doesn’t have any pictures, except for one at the very end, and it doesn’t talk about knitting, unless you count the fact that I mention two yarn stores. This post is about emotions and opinions and I know that a lot of people don’t read knitting blogs for emotions and opinions. They read them for knitting and I completely understand and respect that. Tomorrow’s post will be all about knitting and yarn. But I was a writer long before I was a knitter or photographer. Writing is my blood and what I felt while I was visiting New Orleans needed to be written down. I’m extraordinarily lucky that there are many of you that keep coming back to read my blog and I’m full well taking advantage of that fact to share my feelings and opinions and my writings on New Orleans with you. I’m putting it out there. You can choose to read, or you can choose not to read. Read some of it. Read all of it. But I’m putting it out there. I thought about closing the comments for this post, but I’d like to hear your feelings about NOLA. Have you been there before? Have you been there since the Hurricane and subsequent flooding? Are you from there? I had never been before last weekend but I will be back. Mark my words, I WILL BE BACK. Thank you for your thoughtful, RESPECTFUL comments. I greatly appreciate your reading.

Cara Davis
September 12, 2006

We flew into Louis Armstrong Airport Thursday night after connecting in Chicago. On the second leg of the trip we watched a decent amount of the last two acts of Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke. It was awfully strange getting off the plane, tired and a bit disoriented as you always are landing in a new city, and recognizing everything. We had seen body after body lining the floor of the airport on TV – dead bodies, hurt bodies, misplaced bodies. We had heard about people begging to be put on planes out of the hell they had lived through only to end up with a one way ticket and no idea of their destination. The airport was quiet. And empty. But the pain echoed in the corridors. We saw the Jazz Greats mural on one side of the large waiting room, and on the other we found the haunting specter of Icarus, hanging over the room. It was quite scary.

Our ride to the airport was no less eerie, taking us along the highway in the dark, peering through the bus windows wondering what devastation was out there to behold. And then we passed by the Superdome. It was all I could do not to cry.

I have to admit I was reticent about going to New Orleans. I hate flying and I didn’t want to get on a plane. And the recent news coming out of NOLA hasn’t been the best – bullets, crime, the stagnation of rebuilding taking its toll on the people. But a part of me thought it was our responsibility to go. To be a WITNESS. And I’m so glad we went.

On Friday morning I woke up and looked forward to a morning on my own. Amanda had emailed me a list of yarn stores to check out and I figured I would start with the farthest from where I was staying. I called down to the concierge and asked her the best way to get to the Garden District Needlework Shop on Magazine Street. She told me I could take a cab, that would cost about $15 or I could take the #11 bus. I don’t know, but $15 seemed like a lot to me to go about 2 miles (probably the same as NYC) so I took the bus. This might not seem like a big deal to you, but for me it was HUGE. I’m not sure I’ve ever taken public transportation – by myself – in a strange city. But there I was waiting on the corner of Canal and Magazine for the #11. At every opportunity I tried to engage the people around me. I looked them in the eye and I smiled constantly. I was full of positive energy. This is NOT my usual demeanor. I’ve lived in the NYC area for nineteen years and I’ve perfected indifference – on the bus, the subway, at the post office. Wherever, whenever. But in New Orleans I felt like I wanted these people to know that I cared what happened to them. I wasn’t afraid of the badness that had touched them. They were real to me and I wanted to be real to them.

As I road the #11 down (up?) Magazine, I looked out the windows and once again was forced to imagine the suffering that went on behind closed doors. Had these homes been flooded? Were the houses empty waiting for their families to come home? Had children been separated from their parents? Everything seemed okay, if not a bit shabby and yet there was an emptiness to the streets. There were maybe six people on the bus with me and I was by far the only tourist. When I got off at the 2100 block of Magazine, I stood and looked around – not sure where I was and where I was going. I had forgotten the piece of paper with the address of the Garden District Needle Shop so I stopped into a store along Magazine. The concierge had told me that the neighborhood was one of an eclectic mix of shops – you could buy a Louis XVI chair at an antique store and then have it tattooed on your arm at the shop next door. The store I ended up sold lots of kitschy toys and clothes for kids and adults and I asked the young woman at the counter if she knew where the yarn store was – she told me it was across the street, but I felt like I needed to look around her store before I left.

I asked her if the neighborhood had flooded. She told me no, but that they had had some hurricane damage and that after the floods looters had come. I told her that I had seen the Spike Lee film before I left and she asked me what I thought of it. She, a white woman, told me she was nervous to see it because she had heard it was really very biased. I told her that I thought it was about as balanced as Spike could get – but that in the hands of someone like Michael Moore it could’ve been a lot worse. We talked some more about what had happened and how it had played out and she was the first white person, but not the last, to tell me that what happened in New Orleans was a class issue, not a race issue. It was about poverty, not the color of your skin.

I looked around the store desperate to spend some money before I left to go to the yarn shop, and ended up with a Desire New Orleans magnet. It wasn’t much, but they were very grateful that I had come.

Before I left the woman at the store told me about Vera, who had lived in the neighborhood and had been hit by a car when people were running out of town. Her body had been left to rot for many days, until finally the community came together to bury her where she had died. The grave is at the corner of Magazine and Jackson, where I stood and waited for the bus to go home.

The Garden District Needle Shop doesn’t look like much from the front door, but I was a bit shocked when I walked in to see how far back it went. It’s got something of a warehouse feel – white walls and low shelving in aisles on the floor. There were only a few people in the store – it was hard for me to tell who worked there and who was a customer. I wandered around, a silly smile plastered to my face and I listened as the women talked about coming home and the state of their houses and the damage and it was clear that what happened during Katrina is still VERY fresh a year later. People are just now coming back.

I browsed and browsed – determined to spend money – and after
I had found some Koigu I went up to the counter to buy it. The sales woman asked me if I had ever shopped there before. I told her this was the first time I had ever been to New Orleans. She asked me why I had come, and I told her, and then we talked about the storm and the flood. She lived close to the store, so had no flood damage, just a bit from the hurricane, but she pointed to another woman working in the store, she lost her house. I told them I had seen the Spike Lee movie (I don’t know why I kept bringing this up – because it was so fresh in my mind? I wanted to be controversial?) and the original clerk – who I think might have been the owner – told me that more white people died or had catastrophic injuries during the storm and floods than black people. Again I was told it was a class issue – not race. We talked a bit more and she thanked me for coming to visit. She told me to go home and tell people that there’s nothing dangerous about New Orleans. The only people being killed are young men trying to reestablish or establish their drug turfs. I told her I thought that if that’s what you were trying to do – it probably wasn’t safe for you anywhere.

I told her I was very happy to be in New Orleans and hoped to come back to visit soon.

I went out to catch the bus back to the hotel – I didn’t have a lot of time to walk around as I had to meet George fairly soon – but I tried to talk to people – ask for help. Where do I get the bus? Do you know when it comes? Just a little bit. It made me feel better. While I was on the bus there was a white man talking to two black women across the aisle. The man had a long bushy beard and seemed not to have many teeth and he had a cane. He was overweight and in the heat he seemed to be struggling a bit. I listened to him tell the women that he had walked twelve hours trying to get out of the storm? Flood? I’m not sure. But he said that when they picked him up they asked him where he was going and he told them Baton Rouge. I think it had taken him twelve hours to walk a fairly short distance. Whoever picked him up took him to a shelter.

All around the bus were signs about evacuating. Do you have a plan? they asked. Have you remembered your friends and family in that plan? MAKE A PLAN! Don’t wait to have a plan in place.

A man got on the bus and needed a quarter. I jumped up to offer him one – just a measly quarter – and he sat across from me and started to talking to me. “Hot enough for you?” I smiled and said yes – it was hot – and it had just started to get cool where I’m from. “Where are you from?” he asked. I said New Jersey and he asked if I lived in New Orleans now. I told him no. I was just visiting.

When he got off at the next stop I understood again that this wound is very very fresh. And then I thought about how a year had passed and how a year is really nothing in terms of time and that how even five years later I can still sit with friends and tell the story of what my 9/11 was like. And they can share with me and that for the people of New Orleans their 9/11 is ongoing and seemingly never ending.

When I got back to the hotel and met up with George, I was so absolutely PROUD of myself. Proud that I had taken the bus, proud that I had talked to people about what had happened. I felt like I had made a connection. Maybe pride isn’t the right word for how I felt. I was a little bit giddy about it. I think, really, that somehow, someway, on the #11 bus that Friday morning, I fell in love with New Orleans.

Later on that afternoon we took a walk to the French Quarter. We were wandering around aimlessly really with no destination in mind and I commented to George that the streets felt incredibly empty. It was Friday afternoon around 4:30 and we were walking on Chartres in the direction of Jackson Square. Completely by accident I came upon The Quarterstitch, one of the other yarn stores Amanda had told me about. We went in and I started looking around – the young woman behind the counter was listening to NPR and when she turned around she seemed surprised to see us. Once again, we talked for a bit while I shopped for yarn – was there flooding? Where did she live? Was she from New Orleans? In the middle of our talk George had left the store to take a phone call and suddenly he came running back in to get me. We had seen a band strolling around before, but they were too far away and turned a corner before we could catch them, but here they were again. I told the clerk I’d be right back – I still wanted the yarn (more Koigu) as I ran after the band. I caught the tail end of it – apparently it was a Second Line, often associated with a funeral – with maybe ten people dancing behind the small band, waving white handkerchiefs in their hands.

When I got back to the store I asked the sales clerk and another woman who had come in if the streets were normally as empty as they were. They told me that it was still summer, so things were pretty quiet, but that it was much more quiet than usual. Eerily quiet, the young woman said.

The next morning I woke up to sheets of rain falling outside the hotel window. My first thought was that the people here must hate when it rains. The children must be terrified.

Later on that day the rain had stopped and we took a tour of the city. Lunch was at Deanie’s Seafood in Metairie about two blocks from Lake Pontchartrain. From there we headed to the 17th Street Canal Levee, which was breached during Hurricane Katrina, and onto the neighborhood of Lakeview, which I think is in Jefferson Parish, right outside of New Orleans. Home after home was gutted and empty. Through the missing windows and doors you could see black walls leading out to the light at the other end of the house. Mattresses, chairs, refrigerators, insulation piled up in the front yard. And then there were the spray painted door markings left by the search and rescue crews. Every time a house was searched, the party spray painted an X on the front door or wall. The number at the 12:00 point of the X was the date the home was searched, at 9:00 the crew that did the searching, 3:00 any hazards in the house, and finally, at 6:00 the number of bodies discovered. Thankfully, I didn’t see any homes with number other than 0 at 6:00, but there are stories that the crews didn’t check well enough, or couldn’t check well enough and many people returned to their homes to find 0s on the door and bodies inside.

Those markings are chilling. I kept taking out my camera and I kept putting it away. I didn’t feel like I could take a picture of those doors. I don’t know if I felt like I couldn’t do it justice, or it wasn’t something I wanted evidence of – I don’t know. The memory of those doors will stay with me longer than any photograph ever could.

Along the streets of Lakeview we saw homes already rebuilt. We saw homes being cleaned out, FEMA trailers in the front yard, but most of all we saw the empty shells of homes. Where had the people gone? Were the families together? Safe? Secure?
Would they, COULD they come back?

From Lakeview we traveled back to New Orleans. Along the way were orange Xs and water lines as far as the eye could see. Some people have chosen to paint over the Xs and the water lines, but it seemed like most were keeping them there. A testament perhaps. Or maybe they just never came back. Occasionally, of the side of the highway, we’d come upon a large group of FEMA trailers. The modern day tent city.

As we got closer and closer to the French Quarter, the visible damage was less and less. But people are getting tired. From what we were told, in the months after Katrina – when the proverbial dust had settled – people were energized. They wanted their city back! They were willing to fight. But bureaucracy and politics and honestly, ineptness and ignorance, are taking their toll on the community. They are exhausted fighting for their homes. The one thing all people can agree on – whether they are black or white or rich or poor – is that the devastation in New Orleans was not caused by a natural disaster. It was MAN-MADE. The Army Corps of Engineers has taken responsibility for what happened to the Levees. For instance, the 17th Street Canal Levee – the flood wall was supposed to be built 17’ into the ground. It was built 10’ feet into the ground. From what I understand, the water didn’t just go over those walls – it went UNDER the walls – picking them up and splitting them into little pieces.

The people of New Orleans are angry. And rightly so. They’re angry at FEMA and they’re angry at the Army Corps of Engineers and they’re angry at their government – at EVERY level. Someone on our tour asked the guide whey they voted in Ray Nagin again if everyone hates him so much. He told us that he voted for Nagin because the other guy was saying the SAME EXACT THING. They felt that the devil they knew was better than the devil they didn’t.

I don’t know, honestly, where class stops being an issue and race takes over. In my limited experience there doesn’t seem to be that much difference. Maybe because of where I’ve lived – I don’t know. I also don’t know if there were more poor black people in New Orleans than there were white, but it would seem that way. And while the floodwaters didn’t discriminate, housing does and the poorer areas are lower and closer to the water. We didn’t go to the Ninth Ward – the tour buses aren’t allowed in anymore and I think many of the homes have been bulldozed anyway. The area of Lakeview we did go into was middle class – and I think predominantly white. Everyone lost something those tragic days in New Orleans. Everyone in this whole wide world lost something.

I’m sure some parts of New Orleans have survived relatively physically unscathed. We had beignets at Café Du Monde and they were fantastic. We ate Bananas Foster at Brennan’s and I can imagine it was as good as it ever was. Bourbon Street is as gross as I had heard. I ask those that have been there before – were the sex clubs lining the streets always so raunchy? I’m by no means a prude, but these clubs were really awful. Most of the street was like one big bar, but there was a really desperate seedy element as well. Was that always there? George was at the casino one night and he was told that the city is teeming with single men – the men that have come back to fix their homes while the family stays away – or men that have come looking for construction jobs. I found this really interesting – from a sociological perspective. How will the city change without the influence of women? (Of course, women are still there – but if the men out number the women by such a large margin, things are bound to change.)

Anyway. This has turned out to be far longer than I thought it would be but I felt like I needed to bear witness to what I saw and experienced. As I said early on, I fell in love with New Orleans. THIS New Orleans – battered and sad and overwhelmed and still standing. I have nothing else to compare it to, I know nothing of the character of the city before Katrina, but I left a piece of my heart there nonetheless.

Thank you for reading.

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