I hope I don't annoy anyone with this. If you aren't interested hit "delete" now. This is an article written by my mom. I thought it was well written and gave a good picture of what's going on here.
My mom wrote this article. Hope y'all haven't gotten sick of this stuff but if you have hit "delete" now. My mom wrote this article for a newsletter and I thought it gave a really good picture of what we are going through. We've been flooded, we've been maligned by members of Congress, we've been ignored and dismissed by the President, we've been brushed off by the Treasury Secretary, and we've been trumped by the political clout of our neighboring states. We can't get paid for the oil we generate, our wetlands are shrinking at a rapid pace, and the Gulf is warming up for another hurricane season. Jobs are available, but child care isn't. Neither is housing. The State took over the New Orleans Public Schools because we couldn't get them open quickly enough. Now the State says they can't open them either. Trash pick-up appears to be run by a lottery system, but no one knows where you get a ticket. Fast food joints are paying top dollar but rents have gone over the top. Restaurants are open but menus are short. No housing plus no child care equals no workforce and that means yet another fried shrimp po-boy. (Okay. It could be worse!) Don't ask us for our address. We go blank. "You mean where my house is? or where my trailer is? or where I'm staying? on weekdays or weekends?" Trailers are "in!" Unfortunately, hook-ups are "out." My trailer was delivered to my front yard on December 2nd and finally hooked up last week. In the meantime, my daughter and her family moved into the second floor of their house, and I moved into their trailer. So I gave the trailer in my front yard to a nice couple down the block with an un-hooked-up trailer. If theirs gets hooked up, someone else will get lucky. It's called trailer-tagging, but don't tell FEMA! The rules say you're supposed to stay where you're put. FEMA is right up there on our "top ten hit list," along with the Army Corps of Engineers, the insurance industry, and the people who want to make New Orleans a "living museum." Public housing is "out." Mixed-income housing is "in." That means about two-thirds of the families that formerly relied on housing assistance to make ends meet now have to find somewhere else to live in a top-dollar housing market. Real estate developers are salivating, finally within reach of getting their hands on prime real estate formerly "squandered" on poor people of color. Professional planners are having a hay-day. We have plans coming from every direction with no connection, much like what we call "parallel play" in the world of early childhood. I keep wondering if the money we've lavished on planners could have been used to make a down payment on a new levee system. We've lost pretty much everything but our sense of humor, our unflagging resilience, and our determination to preserve this place! A few blocks from my house (which is close to where I'm "staying" in my trailer) there's a very large pothole, about two feet deep and eight feet wide even bigger than the one a few miles away that cost me about $500 to replace a tire and a rim. Anyway, this particular giant of a pothole inspired the landscaping inclinations of some witty neighbors. Now dubbed the Broadmoor (neighborhood) Migratory Bird Refuge and Wetlands Reclamation Project, the watery pothole, surrounded by bits of rye grass carefully installed on its levees, is home for a collection of pink plastic flamingos, some tiny living creatures, a toy boat, and a stuffed green turtle. There's also a guest book to sign and a cautionary sign about not feeding the wildlife. It's that sort of stuff that keeps us going! There's also the fact that we have developed a camaraderie that bonds us together. For one thing, none of us can remember squat! I get my phone number mixed up with my bank account number, and my driver's license number. When I tell the lady at the bank customer care line to hold while I look up the account number that I've had for twenty years, she laughs! "No one can remember anything anymore," she says. The nice young man who takes down my information for the housing assistance registry notes the pause when he asks for my phone number and says gently, "Take your time." The exchanging of nods and good-mornings as we pass along the sidewalk has escalated even for this City in which nodding and greeting has always been mandatory, but often perfunctory. When I came back into the City for the first time, with my son-in-law, there was no one here. You could hear the birds singing on St. Charles Avenue. There were no working traffic lights. The only other vehicles on the street were carrying troops from the National Guard. We waved at them and they waved at us. Every time we run into someone we haven't seen since before the storm, there's a reunion scene. Sometimes we forget that we've already seen each other since before the storm or at least we're not totally sure, so we have yet another reunion complete with hugs and kisses and "are you back?" and "how'd you make out?" and "how's your Mama doing?" Ask us why we stay here and we rise up with one answer four words: This is our home! Judy Watts, Agenda for Children 4/18/06 -- Rachel [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Have you told a friend today? http://bookcrossing.com/tellafriend Archives and email list settings: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BookCrossing Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BookCrossing/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
