Dies Irae


Pravda on the now more or less permanently exiled New Orleanians:

...in the accounts from people who left New Orleans after the storm, the missing or ruined physical landscape is barely half of it. Even more absent now is the human landscape -- the network of friends, relations and acquaintances that often, in New Orleans, helps compensate for fragmentary families and neighborhoods that can be dangerous. Life in the city takes place outside the home as much as inside; now, that would not be possible.

"It’s not New Orleans to me," said Ms. Shanklin, the retired bus driver in Terrebonne Parish. "And I find myself asking, Where are all the people? I see all the empty houses, and I knew once there was people in all those houses."

"Where are the people, you know? Where are the people?" Ms. Shanklin said. "It’s like somebody threw a bomb on it."

To his credit, Nossiter doesn't sugar-coat things--New Orleans can be a pretty rough city. But nonetheless it was home to literally hundreds of thousands of folks who were forced out, thanks to federal government neglect before AND after the flood. Contrast this with the steps they're now taking in attempting to forestall the home mortgage disaster that also occurred on their watch. Whether too little, or too late, at least they're doing something, unlike their response to the largest forced diaspora of American citizens since I'd guess either World War II (the internment camps) or the Civil War...