Posted on 09/05/2005 5:49:57 AM PDT by kellynla
What is it about New Orleans? Why does it loom so large on the American psyche, take up such a huge chunk of our collective imagination?
It's not that big. Its population of 484,000 puts it at 31st among American cities. Its metropolitan area of 1.3 million is dwarfed by many others whose destruction at the hands of a natural disaster would certainly be mourned but not with the intensity of feeling that the nation is feeling now.
The breaches in the levees of New Orleans seemed to have landed a blow to our national solar plexus. There is the definite prospect that something uniquely American is gone forever.
"New Orleans certainly gets a hold on the imagination," says Noel Polk, an English professor at the University of Mississippi who grew up in the small town of Picayune, La. As a teenager, Polk sipped 7-UPs in French Quarter clubs, watching strippers dance to the music that the city invented.
"The New Orleans I knew has probably gone the way of Atlantis," Polk says. "And if it's gone, it will be hard to strike that magic again."
Polk is a student of William Faulkner, one of the many writers drawn to this city. "Faulkner was always fascinated with and enamored of Paris," he says. "New Orleans was as close as he could get to Paris without going there."
This was the city where Tennessee Williams rode an actual streetcar named Desire; where Walker Percy's moviegoer watched his films; where Anne Rice's vampires found their victims.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
From what I know of New Orleans thus far perhaps it needed drastic changes, certainly not ones that included death and accidental property destruction, but social and economic changes, nevertheless.
Aw, that's nice. Sniff.
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Bravo........! I lived there from 74 till 79 and every word you said is on the mark. But that being said, I loved the restaurants, shrimp and crawfish.
The bad, as has been noted, was much of the people, primarily the welfare class
A healthy community can tolerate some number of parasites, but once the number of parasites rises too high, the host dies
"I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one" - Rick, Casablanca
The Baltimnore Sun, bastion of drivel, does not get it. America is in shock because an American city has been destroyed. The fact that the city is degenerate and filthy is irrelevent.
I sure hope that title isn't true - we are seeing the "Big Easy's Style" all over the news.
I am offended by that comparison.
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