A day and a half--in the middle of a tour flogging a book and movie, that's all the schedule allowed me in the Crescent City. So, if these impressions strike locals as off-base, you have my excuse in advance.
Nonetheless, conversations and news stories lead one to an overall impression: there's a different mood in the city now, existential questions are being asked about its future by thoughtful people who a few months ago might have just assumed the place had one.
For one thing, there's this: the major writer of commercial insurance in New Orleans is pulling out.
That's bad, but this is worse, a quote from the state's insurance commissioner Jim Donelon:
"They cited the state of the rebuilding of our levee system as the primary reason for their decision," Donelon said.
He adds:
"I have lived in the New Orleans metropolitan area for 61 years, and I can personally vouch for the fact that the levee system is better and stronger than it ever has been, and is getting stronger as every day goes by," Donelon said.
Well, okay, but maybe the insurance company is the canary in the coal mine, warning us that--can this be possible?--the Corps of Engineers, the agency rebuilding the levee "system", is not to be trusted. We know the Administration will ignore this cue, as they've ignored the entirety of the tragedy, but maybe Speaker Pelosi could spare a moment, and a committee, to look into the Corps and its work.
The occasion for my return was a benefit screening of For Your Consideration, an evening at Canal Place Cinemas organized by New Orleans magazine and friends, and it proved once again that nobody knows how to throw a party like New Orleanians. A guy stood up at the end of the Q&A session and embarassed me in front of my fellow cast members by saying overly nice stuff about these posts, but the fact is, it's easy for me to continue loving New Orleans, since I get to leave and come back. The true heroics are shown by the people who are there every day, working against increasingly enormous odds to bring the city back.
Which gets me back to those conversations. They were mainly with media people, but the questions and the concerns seemed deeper and more profound than the ones I've heard on previous stays. There seems to be a cumulative impact of the national neglect, of the glacial pace of the so-called "Road Home" program--
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Only 28 homeowners have received checks so far from Louisiana's $7.5 billion hurricane housing aid program, but the private contractor running it assured Gov. Kathleen Blanco on Wednesday that it is dramatically picking up the pace.
ICF International Inc. officials said they will tell 10,000 homeowners by the end of the month what grants they are eligible to receive from the Road Home program.
More than 77,000 people have applied since the program kicked off in August, but fewer than 5,000 awards have been calculated, only about 2,500 letters have been sent out notifying people of the grants they can receive and only 28 people have received their grants, according to Road Home officials.--
and of the crushing lack of local leadership. The local community groups are still working their butts off to craft plans for their neighborhoods' future (go to www.fono.org for links to them), an outfit called AmericaSpeaks organized a large local meeting(and several out-of-town satellite meetings) on Saturday to gain local input into the next "real" "unified" New Orleans plan.
But...but... the Quarter is quieter than it normally is in the runup to Christmas, and store owners told my wife that the fall--anticipated through the long, slow summer for the resumption of convention business--did not jumpstart tourism. USA Today's front-page conflation of street crime and domestic violence to craft a weirdly frightening portrait of the city certainly won't help that project.
And yet, 30,000 Realtors came to town, had their convention, and I at least saw no reports of crime "taking hold" of them.
Maybe what we need, we Americans, is a large-scale public debate on whether or not we're going to rebuild New Orleans. If we decide not, then folks down there will know, as they seem to already, that they're on their own (a recent poll says 30% of current residents contemplate leaving within two years). If we decide yes, then Speaker Pelosi and whoever leads the Republicans while the President leads the Iraq retreat will have a mandate.
And yet, for all the existential angst that gripped at least a few of my friends, a major film is shooting right up the street from me, the restaurants are full and turning out the usual splendid fare, musicians are staying and playing, and so, though I didn't have time for my usual tour of the devastated areas, my personal experience was one of a warm, welcoming city just yearning to be whole again. But then, I had to--and was free to--leave.
UPDATE: I neglected to mention that two couples at the Thursday night screening were folks who had moved to New Orleans after the flooding.
There are believers still.