Initial Reactions from NOLA

Finally arrived in NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana) after a tortuous trip down from Providence which involved getting my bags lost and missing connections. Walk off plane and....WHAM! HUMIDITY. This simple desert dweller is coming up with clever solutions to cope which I shall share in future posts.

It seems that the city of New Orleans has rightly invested millions of dollars to restart the tourist economy, which makes up a huge percentage of city revenues. You can get off your plane, take the taxi to your hotel, explore the French Quarter/Canal Street, go back to your hotel, and return to the airport without ever knowing that Katrina happened. However, if you walk a single block outside of these areas, it becomes very noticeable. Many homes and businesses still have boarded up windows and doors. Empty lots on which homes used to stand seem like holes torn in the urban fabric. Many supermarkets remain shuttered with their attached asphalt deserts sprouting weeds. You can still see the haunting spray painted "X"s on front doors indicating date searched, numbers of survivors/corpses found, and if there were any pets.

It's a hard judgment call to make. How can you justify spending millions of dollars to replant massive palm trees in tourist areas when city roads are riddled with potholes and infrastructure is crumbling elsewhere. I suppose it comes down to the simple economic fact that one has to spend money in order to make it. It's a very fine line to walk between pampering the largely Caucasian tourists and leaving the largely Black residents of the Lower Ninth and other neighborhoods out in the cold (or heat and humidity as the case may be, but I digress).