Wonderful piece. While I was in college in Tuscaloosa during Katrina and witnessed a lot of the residual bad weather, I couldn't come close to imagining what it must have been like to not only be there during it, but after it as well. This terrible destruction of not just a city, but a way of life and a culture embedded in the power of music and art as a means of survival is really something I didn't fully appreciate until I watched that HBO show "Treme." It actually begins with a second line -- the first since the storm -- and features a scene very similar to yours, where a man returns for the first time after and stands mesmerized by a street musician playing for her food. He just never seemed to realized how good he had it just for the very fact that he was living some place good.
Anyway, great work. Thanks so much for sharing it with me!
I don't know, I guess maybe you either laugh about it or let it bother you, so I'll take the laughter, but I doubt I can really write much better than in that piece. Maybe a little, but not much.
nola holds a special place in my heart for a bunch of reason i won't go into. I was there a week before katrina, not knowing what layed ahead. I was living in perdido key right on the fl/al state line. a block off the bay I probably should have left. just went through 2 more and it still sucks. but watching nola afterward was devastating because of the damage that should never had occurred. watching the 9th district fill with water was gut wrenching. your pain is palpable in this writing. katrina destroyed so many more lives than those left dead. you saw it, it killed plenty of people who were left with open wounds no one else could see unless you had one too. unreal.
Wonderful piece. While I was in college in Tuscaloosa during Katrina and witnessed a lot of the residual bad weather, I couldn't come close to imagining what it must have been like to not only be there during it, but after it as well. This terrible destruction of not just a city, but a way of life and a culture embedded in the power of music and art as a means of survival is really something I didn't fully appreciate until I watched that HBO show "Treme." It actually begins with a second line -- the first since the storm -- and features a scene very similar to yours, where a man returns for the first time after and stands mesmerized by a street musician playing for her food. He just never seemed to realized how good he had it just for the very fact that he was living some place good.
Anyway, great work. Thanks so much for sharing it with me!
Fun fact: that post is ranked #73 out of 75 total posts I’ve done lol
How is that fun!
I don't know, I guess maybe you either laugh about it or let it bother you, so I'll take the laughter, but I doubt I can really write much better than in that piece. Maybe a little, but not much.
nola holds a special place in my heart for a bunch of reason i won't go into. I was there a week before katrina, not knowing what layed ahead. I was living in perdido key right on the fl/al state line. a block off the bay I probably should have left. just went through 2 more and it still sucks. but watching nola afterward was devastating because of the damage that should never had occurred. watching the 9th district fill with water was gut wrenching. your pain is palpable in this writing. katrina destroyed so many more lives than those left dead. you saw it, it killed plenty of people who were left with open wounds no one else could see unless you had one too. unreal.
This was so beautifully vivid I felt like I was there!