Another friend of mine came to town last week and had a chance to poke around. He went to Tulane and has spent a lot of time in the city, frequently returning for Jazz Fest. I asked him by email what he thought of the situation in New Orleans. Here is his verbatim report:
I went by Tulane and had to sneak on campus. It is a giant construction
site, with an incredible number of workers. The front portion of campus (from Willow Street to St. Charles) looked pretty good. The back side toward Claiborne of course looked like it had at least partial flooding. I was really not encouraged about anything until I went to Cooter Brown’s and had a shrimp po-boy, cheese fries and an Abita. After that, I felt a little better. Got stuck at the airport until 10:00 pm and not much going on out there. I am glad I saw it, but left much more somber than I arrived. It is going to take a lot longer than people outside of New Orleans realize.
Yep. It is indeed going to be a long haul. This is the thing that scares me the most. Politicians, despite their constant exhortations about doing things ‘for our children,’ are not usually oriented to take the long term approach. Frankly, neither are their constituents. And that’s the biggest threat to New Orleans.
We can’t take a short term view. Well, we can, but it will mean the city will take longer to right itself and it will limit how much the city can improve –which, of course, will mostly hurt our children. Assuming that they decide to stay in New Orleans.
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