A New Community

I ventured out of my office today and walked across campus, something I rarely do. What I found strengthened my desire to stay in New Orleans. First of all, it is a beautiful breezy, sunny day. Then I also saw a sign that says “Criminology has moved to ED 226,” with ED 266 crossed out and “Houston” written in; a group of Indian men playing a game of cricket; a sign for the UNO Greens announcing a showing of the film “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices”; and students of every race and ethnicity imaginable. There truly is no place like UNO right now.

In my composition class, we are discussing what kinds of communities New Orleans should be rebuilding, and the subject of who lives in these communities has inevitably come up, with most students saying they want to live around people just like them. We’ve been reading about “New Urbanism,” a design philosophy that stresses walkable, compact neighborhoods and diverse populations. The questions is, can you design the kind of “community” you want? Can you engineer diversity?

Universities do it, and with good reason. As I told them, I much prefer the diverse classrooms at UNO over the homogonous student body at the Big Ten university I was trained at. I love hearing from a student about how the Vietnamese community he grew up in that was destroyed by Katrina is being rebuilt; or how a student who lived in predominately white Chalmette went to school in the predominately African-American Ninth Ward; or a student of Middle Eastern descent who owns gas stations in black neighborhoods. This is part of what I love about my job and what I love about living in New Orleans.

After living in the white-flight suburb of Slidell for five years and yearning to go back to the comfortable but bland Midwest, I am quite happy now to be living in the heart of New Orleans, in an area called the Irish Channel, where Irish immigrant laborers settled around the turn of the last century and which is today characterized by a broad spectrum of incomes, races, and household types. Suddenly, I find we are living in precisely the kind of neighborhood the New Urbanists are trying (and often failing) to manufacture: it is traditional, diverse, walkable, and close-knit.

We moved into our new hosue last Friday, and within a couple of hours we had met five of our new neighbors. The whole five weeks we lived in Lakeview before the storm, we met only the two older sisters who lived next door. There the houses had alleys behind them and you drove up and parked your car and walked in the back door. We never had the chance to run into people, and many likely never even knew we were there. But here the houses are close together, everyone parks on the street (the homes were built before cars became the norm), and when you step out on your front porch you are immediately part of the neighborhood. People work in the little gardens in front of their stoops and hang out on their porches. It feels like Mayberry, but with a difference. There are gay and interracial couples as well as families with small kids. A block away are low-income apartments. The diversity of the neighborhood is typified by the kinds of shops on Magazine, a busy commercial street that runs through our neighborhood. Just one block away, nestled next to each other in the same building, are a tattoo parlor and a store that sells rare chandeliers. An A&P and a Walgreens sit next to a row of funky vintage clothing stores, coffee shops, and a wine bar.

I have never lived in a neighborhood or a city like this. And while I feel like I haven’t had a whole lot of agency in choosing where to live--we stayed in the region because we couldn’t find better jobs, and we chose this house because it was the best we could afford—I am happy with where we have landed. We fee like we are finally “home.” And there is even a sweet, affectionate kitty that looks a lot like a smaller, fluffier version of Jasper, who lives next door but makes frequent visits over to our yard and even inside the house.

Of course, we still have plenty of anxiety about the future of the city as hurricane season approaches. We are waiting for the next calamity to hit us. My husband and I have both had dreams about the house burning down. We will never again take our home and our community for granted. And we both feel as if we have finally found a home that we couldn’t stand to lose. I can sense us developing the kind of fierce attachment to place that is motivating so many New Orleanians to rescue their flooded neighborhoods. I think I finally know what is driving the passion to rebuild this city.

For Better or For Worse

Last night was one of those magical New Orleans evenings. A rocking Cajun band, couples swirling around the dance floor, the moon shining over the bayou, food and drink flowing freely, and a beautiful bride and groom who brought people from all over the country to share their love for each other and this city.

The ceremony took place on a wide pedestrian bridge that spans Bayou St. John near City Park and the New Orleans Museum of Art. My darling daughter was the flower girl and walked down the aisle, smiling and holding the hand of the ring bearer, a sweet little boy holding out his hand and announcing, “It’s raining.” (A few drops did not spoil the event, thankfully.) Her dress with blue flowers was a little too big and his pin-stripe suit was a little too small. They looked perfect together. And it was a miracle to me that they performed their job so beautifully, with a crowd of people on either side, standing and watching their every move. My shy little girl was beaming, and I had tears in my eyes.

Of course, she got a little restless during the ceremony, so my attention was a bit distracted. But it was a lovely tribute to the couple’s relationship and to the city’s recent hardships. The prayer included a plea for federal help, and a moment of silence was observed for those who lost their lives in the hurricane.

Beginning with that moment of silence, the evening got me thinking about so many people who are gone from New Orleans. In addition to the hundreds who died, thousands have moved away, most never to return. I have already mentioned our dear friends who have ended up in the D. C. area. But there are also many friends and colleagues who, it is becoming clear, will not come back. As I walk the halls of the Liberal Arts building on campus, I see the familiar names on office doors, and it is hard to believe they aren’t just sitting inside. From the outside of the building you even can see right through the windows into their offices, which look just as they left them back in August. In one, a book lays open, face-down on the desk, as if the owner will be right back to pick it up and start reading where she left off.

Last night was a reminder of our pre-Katrina lives because it brought together many old friends who have moved away, but all of them in the past year or so before the storm. I have often wondered what it must be like for those who got out before all hell broke loose. I know about ten people who happened to move on to greener pastures in the past two years. One of them told me she felt terribly guilty for leaving, a kind of survivor’s guilt. She had never planned to move away from New Orleans, but she had recently met a wonderful man and decided to join him in his home in Kentucky. Another colleague and his family decided to leave New Orleans because they didn’t want to raise their daughter here. They returned to the New Mexico desert, and he left academia. Certainly they have been thanking their lucky stars. Or do they credit their fortune to premonition?

Our friends who got married last night moved to Boston last Spring. Shortly after Katrina, they decided they would go ahead with their plans to get married back in New Orleans. Apparently, many were concerned about their choice. But they pulled it off beautifully, despite having to choose a new location as well as a new hotel when sites that were planning to re-open in time were not going to be ready. This was the first event since Katrina for the historical Pitot House, where the reception was held. It is a lovely Creole home with balconies, a front garden, and a large side-yard for the tent and tables and dance floor. It was a gorgeous evening, all captured by a photographer from the newspaper (who said he was more used to photographing dead people, a reference to his work during the aftermath of Katrina) and an artist who set up his easel and painted a large canvas with many of the evening’s elements: the bridge, the balconies, the moon, the bride’s long, flowing gown, even a little girl in a dress with a blue bow (our daughter).

Waiting in line for the bathroom, I heard one of the guests from California say that someone she told about her upcoming trip to New Orleans was shocked, as if she were making a trek into a war zone or a wasteland. I suppose this is the image much of the world still has of us. But everything last night contradicted such a picture. There was not a single reminder of the destruction. The fence had been repaired and the storm debris was long-gone. But underlying everything was this sense that what we were doing was momentous, not just for the couple but for the city as well. People from the surrounding neighborhoods came out to watch the ceremony on the bridge and the short second-line procession to the Pitot House. I’m sure they enjoyed the music emanating across the bayou, glad to see that another sign of life had returned. For now is again the time to celebrate and consecrate. A wedding is a beautiful beginning, and all of the New Orleanians there must have felt the promise it held for all for of us. For better or for worse, we are committing ourselves to this city. After years of flirting with New Orleans, I am finally ready to take the plunge.

A Successful Mardi Gras

A few weeks ago, when we had dinner with a colleague and his family, he said he sensed a kind of strange euphoria in post-Katrina New Orleans. My husband and I had no idea what he was talking about. We still felt only confusion and despair. Now I think I know what he meant. It is the energy that made us want to settle in New Orleans again and that was on display for the whole world over the past few days.

The euphoria (he could think of no better word to describe it) that my colleague was trying to explain to us was a feeling of community spirit. It is as if everyone has returned from exile and is happy to be home, as battered as it is. Even having to wait at the post office every afternoon for his mail, he said, has become a neighborly activity rather than a nuisance. People are connecting in new ways as we all are suffering the same inconveniences and heartaches. More than that, though, everyone is relieved to find that New Orleans is still alive. Every small sign of renewal (another fast food restaurant re-opens, a magazine arrives in the mail, a street is cleared of debris, a traffic light is hooked up) is a sign of hope that New Orleans is rising from the ashes. And that is exactly what Mardi Gras was this year, a sure sign that the city and its heritage will live on.

There was some attempt to stir up a controversy on the cable news shows about whether or not New Orleans should have parades this year. And there was a lot of hand-wringing in the Times-Picayune from locals who wanted to make sure the national media didn’t just focus on Bourbon Street and wanted to let the world know that our spirit will not die. And it seems that, at least partially, the story did get out, finally, that Mardi Gras is not all “Girls Gone Wild.” The wildness in the French Quarter is conducted almost entirely by tourists, not locals. People who live here congregate along St. Charles Ave. and build seats on top of ladders for their little ones and put up tents for their families. Sure, people get drunk and occasionally a little out of control, especially as the parades extend into the evenings. But if you go earlier in the day and find a spot near the front to hoist up your kid so she can wave to the passing floats and catch some beads, well, there’s nothing like it.

This year, the parades and parties all had a Katrina theme, whether overtly or subtly. Waterlines were visible on floats. The paucity of marching bands reminded everyone of the school kids dispersed throughout the country. And the t-shirts with “Save NOLA” or “Willy Nagin and the Chocolate Factory” were out in force. Yesterday, as the whole city seemed to be in costume, blue tarps (used to cover damaged roofs) were the material of choice for hats and even jackets and gowns. One of the most popular costumes was the blind levee inspector, complete with walking stick.

A friend of ours told us a couple of months ago that Mardi Gras would be a watershed moment for New Orleans. If a shooting happened during a parade, the national media would write its obituary. But if the tourists came and spent enough money and the coverage was positive, the city could be on its way to recovery. All indications are that it was a successful Mardi Gras. I know my daughter, in her ballerina costume and beads, thought it was.

For a while there it did seem as if we were all hanging on by a thread. But the momentum is building. Parts of the city are definitely lagging behind. However, if you go to Uptown, where we are buying our new house, you can almost forget there was a Katrina. It is a lovely part of the city, the heart of New Orleans now, and it is definitely still beating.

It is strange how we have lived in the area for six years but never really felt like New Orleanians until now. I wear my “Save NOLA” t-shirt proudly. And I am ready to embrace life in the city. There was so much about pre-Katrina New Orleans that made it difficult for us to commit to this city. But now that the slate has been wiped clean, so to speak, there is so much promise. We want to be part of what makes this a better city than it was. Suddenly we are optimists, after so many months of death and destruction. Spring truly is around the corner. (But so is hurricane season. Shhh.)