may you live in interesting times
we live in interesting times.
i can't believe it's been three months. my city is still in ruins and most of my friends are still scattered around the country. i've been back at work for the last month now and it's been the closest thing to normal in my life, despite the fact that my office of 25 is currently an office of 5 with most of the rest of my office relocated to different parts of the state and a few others who were either let go or resigned in the wake of katrina.
i've been trying to avoid writing so much about katrina. it's hard. i like to pretend that things are normal or at least getting there. writing about it just reminds me of all the things that have changed and all the new struggles that have emerged for my friends, my family, my city. i still alternate between feelings of sorrow and anger. the entire city feels forgotten by the rest of the country. federal assistance has come to a stall. all we really want is three things: better (dutch) levees, housing, and assistance for the small mom and pop businesses that have been completely wiped out by the hurricane.
personally, i'm alright. my apartment complex has been shut down, but they anticipate reopening in early 2006. been staying at my mom's place for the last couple weeks, but they are never there. my family is ok. they've started a construction business and they're incredibly busy. my parents live in metairie, a suburb of new orleans and all of metairie is bustling with activity and rebuilding. my mom is doing much better now. after the hurricane, red cross found a tumor that she had to get emergency surgery to remove. coupled with the loss of her business, she was awful depressed for the first month and a half. i'd never seen her like that. there is nothing more depressing to my mother than sitting at home and resting. she can't take it. it makes her feel powerless, useless, worthless. she thrives on chaos and activity. she's happier when she's stressed out than she is when she's relaxed. and she has that now. if my mom was on drugs, she'd be on crazy pills and speed.
i have other friends in much tougher spots than me or my family. one of my closest friends here, mike, had just opened up a meat market in mid-city near the orleans parish courthouse and prison on tulane and broad. his entire neighborhood was completely wiped out. it's a ghost town now. same with the vietnamese neighborhood of versailles in eastern new orleans where he grew up. in sharp contrast to metairie, these areas are straight out of science fiction. there are no people, just weathered and tattered buildings, homes, businesses, hundreds of abandoned flooded cars and a pall of grey and brown dust that covers everything. streets are empty. it is a scene of nuclear apocalypse. no one here is rebuilding because they have been given no assurances from our government. in fact, these areas have been recommended for total demolition by the urban land institute which is assisting the city with reconstruction planning. mike is in a tough spot. his business is brand new, newly constructed only a year ago. i remember how excited he was for it when it was being built. all his hopes and dreams and sweat and blood went into it. his entire family helped him scrape up the downpayment for it, which amounted to almost half a million dollars. he borrowed another half million dollars from the bank. when he was building, his bank made him build his foundation five feet high, which is enormous. his building towers over everything else in the neighborhood. they said it would protect him from flooding. he still got two to three feet of water. the irony here is that he would have been better off getting the 8 feet of water and being totaled like the rest of the neighborhood got as his insurance is now claiming his business is salvageable and they will only pay to repair it. that does him no good. he would be not only the only business in that neighborhood, he would be the only person there within a mile. his place was a neighborhood market. but a neighborhood market without a neighborhood isn't much of a market. he has lost everything. and on top of it, he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt while having zero income stream. his family's brand new house that they had yet to move into, was completely destroyed. and like so many asian families, they had no insurance as they had paid for it in cash and did not plan on purchasing insurance until they moved in.
so many people are in such deep shit that they can't see over their heads anymore. our city's murder rate has dropped from the highest in the nation (twelve times higher than nyc and double the rate of number two detroit) to almost zero with only one murder since katrina. but our suicide rate has skyrocketed.
dear god, we need help. please send soon.
i can't believe it's been three months. my city is still in ruins and most of my friends are still scattered around the country. i've been back at work for the last month now and it's been the closest thing to normal in my life, despite the fact that my office of 25 is currently an office of 5 with most of the rest of my office relocated to different parts of the state and a few others who were either let go or resigned in the wake of katrina.
i've been trying to avoid writing so much about katrina. it's hard. i like to pretend that things are normal or at least getting there. writing about it just reminds me of all the things that have changed and all the new struggles that have emerged for my friends, my family, my city. i still alternate between feelings of sorrow and anger. the entire city feels forgotten by the rest of the country. federal assistance has come to a stall. all we really want is three things: better (dutch) levees, housing, and assistance for the small mom and pop businesses that have been completely wiped out by the hurricane.
personally, i'm alright. my apartment complex has been shut down, but they anticipate reopening in early 2006. been staying at my mom's place for the last couple weeks, but they are never there. my family is ok. they've started a construction business and they're incredibly busy. my parents live in metairie, a suburb of new orleans and all of metairie is bustling with activity and rebuilding. my mom is doing much better now. after the hurricane, red cross found a tumor that she had to get emergency surgery to remove. coupled with the loss of her business, she was awful depressed for the first month and a half. i'd never seen her like that. there is nothing more depressing to my mother than sitting at home and resting. she can't take it. it makes her feel powerless, useless, worthless. she thrives on chaos and activity. she's happier when she's stressed out than she is when she's relaxed. and she has that now. if my mom was on drugs, she'd be on crazy pills and speed.
i have other friends in much tougher spots than me or my family. one of my closest friends here, mike, had just opened up a meat market in mid-city near the orleans parish courthouse and prison on tulane and broad. his entire neighborhood was completely wiped out. it's a ghost town now. same with the vietnamese neighborhood of versailles in eastern new orleans where he grew up. in sharp contrast to metairie, these areas are straight out of science fiction. there are no people, just weathered and tattered buildings, homes, businesses, hundreds of abandoned flooded cars and a pall of grey and brown dust that covers everything. streets are empty. it is a scene of nuclear apocalypse. no one here is rebuilding because they have been given no assurances from our government. in fact, these areas have been recommended for total demolition by the urban land institute which is assisting the city with reconstruction planning. mike is in a tough spot. his business is brand new, newly constructed only a year ago. i remember how excited he was for it when it was being built. all his hopes and dreams and sweat and blood went into it. his entire family helped him scrape up the downpayment for it, which amounted to almost half a million dollars. he borrowed another half million dollars from the bank. when he was building, his bank made him build his foundation five feet high, which is enormous. his building towers over everything else in the neighborhood. they said it would protect him from flooding. he still got two to three feet of water. the irony here is that he would have been better off getting the 8 feet of water and being totaled like the rest of the neighborhood got as his insurance is now claiming his business is salvageable and they will only pay to repair it. that does him no good. he would be not only the only business in that neighborhood, he would be the only person there within a mile. his place was a neighborhood market. but a neighborhood market without a neighborhood isn't much of a market. he has lost everything. and on top of it, he owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt while having zero income stream. his family's brand new house that they had yet to move into, was completely destroyed. and like so many asian families, they had no insurance as they had paid for it in cash and did not plan on purchasing insurance until they moved in.
so many people are in such deep shit that they can't see over their heads anymore. our city's murder rate has dropped from the highest in the nation (twelve times higher than nyc and double the rate of number two detroit) to almost zero with only one murder since katrina. but our suicide rate has skyrocketed.
dear god, we need help. please send soon.