Posted on 08/30/2005 3:53:30 PM PDT by Dont Mention the War
On the southern fringe of New Orleans' City Park there is a live oak with a branch that dips low, goes briefly underground, and comes up the other side still thriving.
It's ancient and gnarled, this tree, and filtered sunglight slants through its crown at dusk. It's a sublime thing.
When we talk about these majestic items that dot New Orleans' landscape we say, "is," but we may mean, "was." The reports are still scattered, the news from the ground still incomplete, but Hurricane Katrina may have annihilated New Orleans.
It looks bad to everyone. "It's impossible for us to say how many structures can be salvaged," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said late Tuesday. But can the birthplace of jazz truly be wiped from the face of the earth?
New Orleans may yet surprise. Too often the city is written off as a whiskey nirvana, where one guzzles Pimms cups at Napoleon House in the French Quarter at night, and eggs and grits at the Camellia Grill in the Riverbend at sunrise.
In truth, however, New Orleans is as sublime as it is Rabelaisian. For example - and this is a thing few tourists know - the French Quarter, home of Bourbon Street and jazz and possessor of a global reputation for parties, is in fact a National Park. Now and then, through the spokes of a horse-drawn carriage taking honeymooners up Royal Street, one can spot the distinctive, "Smokey," hat of a park ranger telling a more earnest visitor some genuine history.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
"Why is it up here in the northlands when we talk about oak trees we just say oak trees but in the south oak is usually preceeded by the word 'live?'"
Your oaks are not the same as OUR oaks - they're BETTER.
All right, all right, just kidding there - "live" oaks are called that because their leaves don't drop in the fall - the look "live" all year round.
At what level of total taxation might that not be hyperbolic? At the current 40-45% it's accurate.
Cities become cities because free-market capital creates them for the natural (and sometimes transitory) advantage they present (think Boom Town).
If we rebuild cities using public funds (for sympathetic reasons) how isn't that unlike the "Central Planning" of the Marxists?
YES New Orleans'll survive. This is America, and we do not give up to the opinions of the mainstream media. America will unite behind the people of New Orleans. Together we will help those in need and want. This isn't the America of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton who will wait to see what FEMA does. This is the America of pitching in and getting started.
Yes.
('Scuse me, Mom.)
HELL yes New Orleans will survive.
(I have not served. My tagline honors my son and my cousin.)
Which are a darn sight better than the Massachusettes trio: Kerry, Kennedy, and Frank.<<
Ick, what you said!
DK
The taxman already takes 52% off the top of my raw income at all levels of government and after the various bureaucracies take their cut. Granted, I live in California, but that is about five times what could remotely be considered 'reasonable'. The last thing I need is another greedy palm...
New Orleans, Mobile, Gulfport, Pensacola, San Francisco, Tokyo, etc. are not going to relocate. Even the Quad Cities didn't relocate.
How very Socialist of you.
Man, that was a rosy picture you just painted... /sarcasm
Smaller scale example is Hilo, Ha, after the tsunami in the 50's..they moved the whole town 5 miles inland...from the pics of NO I've seen..there is nothign to repair..everything has to be torn down and rebult from scratch..so don't do it in the same area..it could be a fantastic opportunity..
Yuppers...
A smart small town above-sea-level-suburb might look at this as a prime opportunity to turn lemons into smooth-cool lemonade.
I'm thinking business relocation services (maybe no taxes for the transitional year?)
All right, all right, just kidding there - "live" oaks are called that because their leaves don't drop in the fall - the look "live" all year round.
All oak trees keep their leaves down there or only the "live" ones?
"All oak trees keep their leaves down there or only the 'live' ones?"
Our red oaks shed in the fall - live oak is another oak type altogether.
The national champion live oak can be seen here:
http://www.championtrees.org/champions/oaktexaslive.htm
You couldn't be more wrong. There may be a few insensitive jerks who will try to stimulate that debate, but the good sense and generousity of the American public will rebuild NO using both public and private funding. They will also want Mobile, Gulfport, Biloxi, etc., rebuilt.
I'm impressed!
Or relocate it further up the Mississippi, say like just south of Baton Rouge.
How about just letting the Mississippi go down the Atchafallya Basin like it occasionally used to before they built the levies to keep in going to N.O. Then drain Lake Pontchartrain and every thing will be hunky dory.
That is no more drastic than your suggestion. Or why not do what they are going to do: Strengthen the levies and increase the pumping capacity.
Don't be so sure. First of all... NOLA is the only city of the list almost completely BELOW sea level.
And secondly, the rebuilding loans will need to be insured, and I think that shareholders will force logic to prevail.
A farmer down the road from me got hit by lightening last week and his barn burned to the ground. Care to dig into your wallet and send $1,000 to help rebuild it?
Last year a dam broke on the river and flooded out a half dozen families. The feds didn't come running over with blank checks. How about opening your wallet and writing a check? After all, their family economies are just as important as the economies of the people in New Orleans.
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