Katrina Dreams

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast 11 years ago this morning.  Not a surprise, I suppose, that my subconscious hit me with some strange ones last night.   I slept fitfully, waking every 2 hours or so before drifting on to some morphed version of the same dream.

First was feeling endangered in my own home here in North Carolina, thinking a burglar was downstairs.  Upon poking my head out of my bedroom door to investigate, the power went out, and I woke in that fearful, jarring state that only nightmares can bring you to.

Next, I was in my “new home”, an old apartment in a mysterious, nocturnal version of NOLA’s wonderful Audubon Park.  Just out the window was a beautiful swamp, purplish in the nighttime lighting.  My roommate kept leaving the windows cracked, which left me feeling vulnerable to intruders yet again.  As I worked anxiously to close and lock the old, warped, wooden windows, my subconscious shifted again.

This time, I was on the Gulf Coast, in the little hamlet of Clermont Harbor, Mississippi.  It was a family vacation spot for decades, and was largely wiped off the map after Katrina.  I had bought a beautiful, newly-renovated cottage on a square on the waterfront (there are no squares on the Clermont Harbor waterfront, and any building there would have to be “newly renovated”, to say the least).  I was trying to convince my parents, who were both still with me courtesy the magic of dreams, that I had made a good decision.  It was the nicest little house on the coast, and it was a deal!  I could work on my writing and art!  I could start a sideline eco-tourism business, putting my marine biology degree to good use!  I frantically tried to print photos and documents that my father himself had accumulated, trying to show them what a wonderful place it was.

Shift again, to a darker place, as my father was dying.  In reality, my mother died of cancer as a Katrina evacuee in Shreveport, and my father died of Alzheimer’s 10 years later… though he had never really been the same since Katrina and Mom’s passing.  In the dream, he suddenly became weak, and died right in front of me as I was going through the documents.  Then, magically, he “awoke.”  But we knew it was a quirk that sometimes happened after someone would die (in dreams like this), and that he only had a few more minutes to be with us.  He was now more simple-minded, not very communicative, similar to how he eventually became in the real world.  But he tried to communicate to us what was important:  the memories of people and places.  We spent this time, as in the previous incarnation of this dream world, going through old photos.  But this time, it was to assure him that we would preserve the memories.  We comforted him as he was dying (a second time in the dream), setting his mind at ease  that we would hold close and not forget what was important to him.  In this way, his spirit would continue on.

Last night, on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I dreamt of vulnerability, water, loss, and remembrance.  I dreamt of NOLA and Clermont Harbor.  I dreamt of my mother and I dreamt of my father.

Not happy dreams, but not altogether sad either.  Dreams of memories, filtered through a surge of water and emotion.  Appropriate, I suppose.

The City That Care Remembered

The first post I ever made to this blog was about New Orleans, and Katrina, and the Saints.  Hey, they were about to win the Super Bowl!   As I sit here now, late on the eve of the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I’m listening to WWOZ, the best radio station on the planet (don't ask me, ask Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol).  And, sacrilegiously, I’m drinking an amber beer that is NOT Abita*, out of my K&B Drugs pint glass.  I'll probably also spend some time seeking out beignets or Popeye’s tomorrow.  I'm pretty sure there's a study published somewhere which found that NOLA ex-pats like myself put forth upwards of 30% of our daily energy expenditure in a constant attempt at recreating what we were taught was “normalcy.”

And of course, as I swelter to the languid grooves of Dr. John and Galactic, my thoughts are on New Orleans.  At the moment, I’m thinking of the night of August 29th, 2005, watching CNN’s coverage from my home just down the coast in Pensacola.  We had experienced twin catastrophes in the prior few months, in the form of two direct hits from Cat 3s (Ivan and Dennis), so my own experiences had left me almost numb to it all.  But I was quickly, painfully, made to feel again, and to realize that what was going on in New Orleans was to be unprecedented. 

I stayed up late, becoming progressively more horrified with each word of correspondent Jeanne Meserve’s emotional, heroic, report, live from the Lower Ninth Ward.  Only able to broadcast audio, she’s choking back tears, and fear, telling of crying and screaming voices... voices calling for help from attics as the waters rise, as she moves through the rooftops in the pitch black, in a small boat.

People were drowning.  People in the neighborhood I was born in.  People in Lakeview, too, the neighborhood my brother lived (and still lives) in.  People by the hundreds.  My people.

I knew then that this was going to be far worse than the spate of hurricanes we in Florida had endured during the prior year.  Worse than Andrew, whose effects in Louisiana I felt first-hand, and whose tremendous Cat 5 devastation I saw weeks later in South Florida.  Worse than Camille, whose 190 mph winds (Cat 6 if there could be one) and 23-foot surge wiped my family’s summer vacation paradise of Clermont Harbor, Mississippi, off the map.  Worse, even, than Betsy, whose surge gave me my very first memories, as traumatic experiences are wont to do.  I can still see the view out the window of the attic we had sought refuge in, onto floodwaters that had engulfed the neighborhood.  I can still remember falling, toddler feet not quite finding purchase on the attic steps, into those same waters, as they took up residence in my home.  Not very long before Alzheimer's would steal such memories from his mind for good, my father told me the story of how we were rescued by a kid in a boat, days after the storm, and taken to high ground at the local school.

Unfortunately, many, many, more first memories (and some last) would be made the night of August 29th, 2005.  And yes, Clermont Harbor was wiped off the map, again. 

Change is inevitable.  Trauma is often a part of it.  Both of them shape what we, and the world, move on to become.  And so catastrophic change has shaped – and is shaping -- what New Orleans will become.  It’s happened before:  from the hurricane in 1722, which spurred adoption of the grid pattern we still see in the Vieux Carré today, four years after the city’s founding, to great fires later that century, to yellow fever in the 1800s, to the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919. 

Perhaps a catastrophe was the only way possible to make real change in a city known, and proudly so, as the one that “care forgot.”  Some have said this change is for the worse, some have said it’s for the better.  I know that the loss of large segments of mostly poor and black NOLA residents has and will continue to negatively impact the culture of New Orleans.  But I also know that there has been a tremendous upsurge in appreciation and conservation of many elements of that same culture.  You can call it Disney-fication.  You can say gentrification has gone overboard.  And there are cases to be made on those points.  But one thing that has been consistently apparent in every one of my many visits back since the storm:  Care has remembered.  

Nothing stays the same, much as we would often like it to.  But now, in New Orleans, people have remembered how to care.  On every issue.  On every side of every issue.  From the upswing in public interest to the influx of young artists and entrepreneurs.  From breaking backs rebuilding homes and neighborhoods to breaking down the doors of public officials.  I love the city that I grew up in.  But this part of NOLA is not like the one I grew up in.  And that is good. 

Another thing on my mind tonight are, well, two things – rather, two groups of people:  the hundreds who lost their lives (in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast), and the countless thousands who have gone down, and continue to go down, to New Orleans to help rebuild.  From Brad Pitt and his Make It Right Foundation, to Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis’ Musician’s Village, to the barista who told me recently that she was about to go on her third trip with her church group to help with recovery. 

While looking through my Katrina-related photos to post for the anniversary, I found the one at the top of this page, which perfectly brings together those two groups of people.  It’s an installation called “Remembrances of Katrina”, by New Orleans artist Mitchell Gaudet.  It was on display some time ago as part of a Katrina-related exhibit at the Presbytere, the New Orleans history museum on Jackson Square.  The artist stated that he wanted visitors to feel as if they were “moving up and out from being underwater.” Each of the 1,600 bottles held a prayer for those who died (in New Orleans), and the glass hands honored the many who came from around the country, and world, to help.  To me, this embodied the yin and yang of Katrina, the very worst and very best of the human experience.  Despite all of the bad things Katrina wrought, it also brought – and continues to bring – some good.

They say we’re made by our experiences.  Perhaps as time goes on, the good from Katrina will start to outgrow the bad, as New Orleans and the Gulf Coast grow beyond this disaster, and become better than they ever were before.  Those there see it, in fits and starts.  It’s a process, for sure.  But it is happening.

Everyone from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast -- even those like me who weren’t living there at the time -- measures the world Pre-K and Post-K.  The question is:  will the Post-K era be better than the Pre-K one?  I hope, I believe, that it will be.

(*So sue me... I couldn’t find Abita Amber this week!  But I’m starting to think the Dos Equis gives me headaches.)

Never Forget: Hurricane Katrina, Five Years Ago Today

Five years ago today. I'll never forget hearing Jeanne Meserve's emotional report on CNN the night the storm hit, letting many people know for the first time just how bad things were. They were heroes, along with a handful of State Widlife and Fisheries personnel, local police, and firefighters, out there rescuing the few they could while thousands were stranded and hundreds drowned.

I'll never forget listening to my hometown drowned. And I'll never forgive the lack of federal response. These CNN reporters, and me, and anyone who was listening, knew then that many thousands were in immediate need of the most dire kind. They were DROWNING! I knew this. Anyone watching CNN knew this. (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/12/221834/305)

But apparently, Brownie, Chertoff, and yes Bush, were otherwise occupied. Can't blame them, right? They had TIVO. They could catch it later.

Yes, there was incompetence on the state and local level to a degree. Yes, they should have used their grant money and gotten radios that worked. Blah blah blah. But the newly written (after 9-11) National Response Plan explicitly provided for the Dept. of Homeland Security to take over all rescue and relief activity the moment they decided that it was an Incident of National Significance (triggering the Catastrophic Incident Annex to the plan), the moment it was clear that state and local authorities were swamped. I think we can all agree that state and local authorities were swamped. (http://www.firedupamerica.com/incident_of_national_significance (the link to the actual plan as written then no longer exists, as it's been re-written since; I thoroughly read it then and it DID say everything in this post).

So Bush stonewalling and trying to lay it on Blanco, saying she didn't formally request them to take over, trying to get her to sign over control of the LA National Guard: TOTAL BS! And I will go to my grave defending the evacuation (all other incompetence of Ray Nagin aside). It was much more efficient than FEMA predicted it ever could have been in a study done just a year earlier, and was the likely most thorough evacuation of a major city in the history of the United States.

The Republican-controlled congress at the time issued a report entitled "A Failure of Initiative" (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/katrina.html) that, as anyone who was paying attention at the time would have, concluded that Chertoff should have declared an Incident of National Significance days before -- the Saturday before the storm hit as a matter of fact. This was the day Katrina ramped up to Cat 3 and the projection shifted to hit NOLA as a Cat 4 or 5. This was the day that National Guard General Russell Honore is on record as saying they were ready to move out and deploy IN New Orleans. This was the morning I called my parents to make sure they were getting outta Dodge.

If those in charge, at the federal level, had been at all competent and paying attention, hundreds who drowned could very possibly have been saved. It would not have been up to a few local officials (who had also lost their homes), and news reporters, and scattered New Orleanians who could get to their boats, to save thousands. Tens of thousands would not have sunk into anarchy and despair as the city flooded throughout the subsequent days.

And I won't even bring in the poorly (and federally) designed levee system.

Along with all of the victims, my brothers home was being deluged, as well as those of many friends and relatives, and my mother was evacuated, never to return, from her beloved New Orleans.

I will never forget this, or forgive this.

But I am so proud of the renewed civic pride in New Orleans, and of the way my hometown is rebuilding. It's not what it was. Of course in some ways, it's worse. But in many ways, it's better. I would urge anyone who can to visit, spend time there, and realize what we as a country almost lost.

(photo from Wikimedia Commons: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/KatrinaNewOrleansFlooded.jpg)