I Remember the Gumbo Krewe

I remember the gumbo krewe.

They brought pots of food up from Louisiana after the planes flew into the Twin Towers, because food is one way New Orleaneans show their love. There was a collection to purchase a firetruck for the first responders, and our hearts went out to them.

After 8/29, their hearts went out to us. A group of poets so esteemed it is nerve wracking even sending them an email came together this spring for a New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund benefit in New York.

In the last two years, the support has not stopped flowing back and forth between our two cities, and I commemorate their tragic anniversary today as they have honored ours.

Two coastal, vulnerable and culturally irreplacable cities. There is no learning curve on describing our loss to one another.

"We never felt more connected as a country," is Oprah's comment on her 9/11 Anniversary special. On 8/29, I never felt more disconnected as a person.

My husband's mother, up north for the first time in her life after two years without a permanent home, is heartbreaking to walk with through an antique store. It's a day of, "Maw had one of these." or "We lost this set at the bottom of the locker."

Just try not talking with a New Orleanean in a store. It's virtually impossible. She'll brightly wave a tapestry at a clerk and say, "I lost one of these in the city." For Miss Gloria, there is still only one city.

Oprah said she feels 9/11 should be a national holiday of remembering the tragic day that the country came together.

Not to get all Kid Rock and Tommy Lee at the Video Music Awards, but I feel that 8/29 should also eventually be officially recognized.

It's the day the country, for so many of us, split in two.

Follow Karen Dalton-Beninato on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kbeninato

Comments

[backhandpath]

Go Grrrl! Thank You So Much! Why don't we just start calling New York and New Orleans: Twin Sister Cities? We are starting to have that much in common. Music. Food. Culture. Rebirth. Reinvention.
Reformation.
Love & t'anks again
from the
back hand path

[luziannagirl]

KDB,

I remember the Gumbo Krewe, too. I was so proud of my state and my fellow Louisianians. That was so "us".

You know, New Orleans and New York had a lot in common even before their respective tragedies. It's more than just their strikingly similar accents. They've both had to struggle to keep from being abandoned by leaders who squander public resources on extending public infrastructure farther and farther out to exurban sprawl development, at the expense of urban cores that already have this infrastructure in place.

We've all heard people across the country express dismay and consternation over why the tens of thousands of NOLA residents trapped by floodwaters in the downtown evacuation centers hadn't simply gotten in their cars before the storm, and driven to safety out of the city! And you explain to them, "No, lots of them didn't even have cars, and they didn't necessarily not have cars because they were poor, but in New Orleans, you don't really need a car, a car just gets in the way"...and their eyes glaze over and you know you've lost them. "No car?" A foreign concept.

Maybe at some point, Americans will realize there's more to life than sitting in a car two hours a day, seven days a week, buying more and more junk, getting ever fatter and more depressed. At that point, maybe they'll realize the deep satisfaction of cooking a pot of gumbo all day long in your Mama's old black iron pot using her Mawmaw's recipe, cranking up the music and sitting on the porch while all the neighbors and relatives pass by off the banquette (a.k.a., "sidewalk") for a hot bowl and a cold beer and good story or two.

That is, if they can just get out of the checkout line at WalMart.

[doctorj2u]

Actually my moment of awakening came 3 weeks later when I got communications back after the storm. It was then that the country I thought existed and loved died.

[Beatitudes]

Yes, New Orleans had one day when the media simply repeating the same old story about the poor new Orleans, not pulling themselves up from their bootstraps, poor children of the storm, etc. And ignoring all the good that each individual, group, neighborhood, has done to rebuild New Orleans not because of, but despite the media portraying the citizens as living in a type of ghetto and the "powers that be" turning their backs and going on their on arrogant way. We endure, we will rebuild.
Lyn LeJeune
The Beatitudes Network- Rebuild the Public Libraries of New Orleans at www.beatitudesinneworleans.blogspot.com and you can even stop in at the blog for some Cajun recipes!

[Indiana]

Bravo to an uplifting post! I agree--the media have not provided enough upbeat news about the good that New Orleanians have been doing to rebuild and otherwise bring her back. It is heartwarming--the way New Orleanians sent the "Gumbo Krewe" and otherwise stood beside New Yorkers in grief over 9/11 and how New Yorkers have helped New Orleans in the aftermath of 8/29. The media won't pick this up, though.