Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

oh no, not McBourbon St.

Wash Us Away
for release 09-03-05
Washington D.C.

by Lightning Rod


The first time I went to New Orleans, I intended to stay for three days. Three months later I finally tore myself away from my first infatuation with The Big Easy. When I arrived in the French Quarter in the early 1970's, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Music was everywhere and they served drinks all night long.

The women were friendly and I found that by the simple expedient of opening my flute case on Bourbon Street and playing for about fifteen minutes, that I could earn enough money for a steak dinner. I was in paradise.

I remember thinking that the residents of the French Quarter were probably crazy and stayed up all night because they lived ten feet below sea level. Something about altitude or barometric pressure must have a long-term effect on the human brain. If you have ever had two drinks at sea level and then gotten on an airplane and gone to 30,000 feet, you'll know what I mean. Once I was in Montego Bay at the airport waiting to fly to Miami. The plane was late so the kind folks at the airport served us complimentary rum cocktails for about two hours before the plane arrived. I was fine when I got on the plane but when we reached altitude I passed out because of the combined effects of the alcohol and the lessened atmospheric pressure. When the airplane descended to sea level, I was fine again.

It works just the opposite in New Orleans. It's below sea level. You can drink more.

But as we all have seen from the television reports in the last couple of days, things are not easy in the Big Easy right now. It boggles the mind to see an entire city swept by flood and destruction. But it would break my heart to see New Orleans bulldozed as Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives has suggested. That would be like razing the Library in Alexandria or pillaging the Louvre. New Orleans represents some of the richest cultural history that America possesses.

It's nothing new for cities to be built in hazardous locations. Pompeii and San Francisco come to mind and most of the cities in Florida. Nature is cruel at times but humans are suckers for cheap land and opportunity.

New Orleans was no accident. It sits at the mouth of the Mississippi River and is the natural embarkation point for the bounty of products from the heartland of America.

But tides shift in coastal areas. Now the port of New Orleans takes in exports from the rest of the world to be distributed to the bountiful markets in the heartland of America.

When New Orleans was established in 1718, it was built on the natural levees that were created on the high bank of the Mississippi at its last curve. That's why they called it the Crescent City. It wasn't below sea level then. It was built on the higher ground.

In the 1910's an engineer named A. Baldwin Wood devised a system of pumps and levees and canals that made it possible to develop the swampy low land between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain. This advance in technology set the stage for the recent disaster. It has long been anticipated that a breech in the levees would result in the kind of disaster that we are witnessing today in New Orleans. The scene is biblical.

First we had the deluge, and now we have the Exodus. We watch the busses file into Sodom to remove the refugees. Why it took five days to get a bottle of Perrier to these people is beyond me. Don't look back or you'll turn to a pillar of salt.

After five days the Federal government finally sends water to a city flooded with sewage with gasoline floating on top. And when the military finally arrives and they file into the Super Dome, they are not carrying cases of water, food, insulin and diapers, no, they are carrying guns. Oh well, I guess I can understand. After all, the president is visiting today. Despite the fact that we have spent billions since 9/11 in the name of Homeland Security, Katrina has demonstrated how utterly unprepared our nation is to handle major disaster.

The Poet's Eye gazes sadly at the pictures on CNN. I think of Preservation Hall and all those years of jazz and fashion and culture. I think of Louis Armstrong and Al Hirt, Pete Fountain and Dr. John, Fats Domino, Harry Connick Jr., the Marsalis family and the Neville Bros. New Orleans has given us some great music. We can't let this unique city die. That would be a tragedy. A bigger tragedy would be for the displaced residents to return to their formerly quaint city after the cleanup and find McBourbon St.


The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has
done
To this poor crackers land."

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
--Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927
to hear lrod version click here

Lightning Rod wrote: First we had the deluge, and now we have the Exodus. We watch the busses file into Sodom to remove the refugees. Why it took five days to get a bottle of Perrier to these people is beyond me. Don't look back or you'll turn to a pillar of salt.

Dallas' police chief was heard to predict 100,000 evacuees "before it's all said and done" to our home on the prairie. I want to wear a big button that says "Welcome to Dallas," but right now there's no call for volunteers at the Convention Center and Reunion Arena shelters, and they're turning volunteers away. We have about 25,000 evacuees right now. Our Commissioner of Education has reminded Texas ISDs that we are responsible for enrolling homeless children residing in our geographical areas - that may be my area of greatest need. In the meantime, me and the tall man have to content ourselves with monetary and goods donations.

We're all in this together, JMP

Best of luck to you, JMP. I don't know if the needs will reach as far as Phar Lepht. We are asunder with our own poverty here, but needs do need to precede. We're all in this together, you are so correct.

New Orleans, in paticular the french courter has always been a place of sanctuary for me. i've been visiting my grandparents and uncles and aunts in Baton Rouge wich is only like an hour and a half away. sometimes it gets a little uncomfortable there, the racism and in paticular the homophobia...New Orleans was always the place that i would go to get away from that and the plain croweded conflicted nature of the house in Baton Rouge, of course you never really value something untill its been sold. now in baton rouge i have no home, and New Orleans isn't visitable either....weird, maybe its natural bridge burning for me, me getting older and moving on with my own life, kind of sad that during a part of my life where i'm coming into my own, that back home, things seem to be deterierating fast.

should i donnate money, i've never been into donnating money as much as actually physically doing something.

Jenni,
Yes, in your position you will have ample opportunity to help I'm sure. The Dallas ISD is already so impossibly overloaded and corrupt. I can't imagine this being an easy stretch. I wonder how many kids will be landing on your doorstep?

Cec,

I wonder what would happen if the Rio Grande became a torrent? Those cardboard houses across the river would be washed to Eagle Pass pretty quickly.

K&D,
Yeah, New Orleans is ....er...was a treasure among our cities.
I'm sure you will find a way to help.

a brilliant piece of writing LRod, if they turn it into a big easy shoppin mall it might be the last straw, the "Man" better come to his senses real soon, time is runnin out........

Hopefully they don't turn the Big Easy into the Big Mac but you know it's up to people like us to make sure that doesn't happen. The residents of New Orleans won't be there to stand up for themselves or their city. Which means it's up to us who have been there and love it so much to stand for them when they're needed most. like, when their city is being rebuilt into strip malls and easy walk up mcdonalds stands. yikes.