It's Just Stuff, Right?
What was once considered a once-every-hundred-year event, namely a storm that could top the levees and flood New Orleans, is now, according to today’s paper, believed to be a once-every-25-years event. At least that’s what the experts are saying now about a Category 3 hurricane. Of course, Katrina, which was a Category 3, was not supposed to breach the levees, but it did because of their poor design and construction. Now the Army Corps of Engineers is recalculating not only how high the levees need to be, but they are also considering how frequently big storms will hit the area. Maybe it’s global warming, or maybe it’s what a hurricane specialist called a heightened period of hurricane activity in the Gulf, which is (only) supposed to last for another 15 to 20 years. But either way, the new odds suddenly look a lot higher.
The news in the paper hasn’t been real upbeat lately. There has been a lot of concern about how the levees are being fixed and whether the repairs will be sufficient for the next hurricane season, especially considering the system-wide deficiencies that have come to light. Everyone has been waiting on the new FEMA flood maps to see, basically, how low we have sunk since 1984 when the last maps were drawn. The release date for the maps has been pushed back quite a few times, and now we know why—the news is so much worse than anybody (except the scientists who study this stuff) thought. Now they won’t release the maps until Congress will guarantee about six billion dollars more (on top of the 3.9 billion, which was the total price tag to fix the levees just a few days ago) to make all of the levees high enough to keep this sinking region from flooding in a 100-year storm. If we can’t get the money, then all bets are off. We’ll all have to build our homes on mile-high stilts.
The good news out of all of this is that most of New Orleans (except the suburban sprawl in Eastern New Orleans, which was inundated by Katrina) is not affected by these new estimates. They are fixing the levees that broke last time and so, presumably, we’ll be okay. The worst news to me was the idea that another Katrina could occur within 25 years, and that estimates about hurricane activity in the Gulf keep getting more alarming. Before Katrina, our fears about being washed away were fairly vague. Now, however, they are real. It is no longer a remote possibility but part of our lived experience. That it could happen again seems everyday more and more likely. The unthinkable is just part of our lives now.
For some reason, I find myself more willing now to live with that threat. Maybe I’d rather face the devil I know, so to speak. He has shown himself and we know how to get out of his way if (and when) he comes again. But it is, of course, also unsettling to be building a new castle—with new stuff—on what is essentially sand.
Lately we have started accumulating new stuff in earnest. There are the new bookcases with glass doors and the antique French settee and two actual oil paintings. They were all purchased for a steal at a local consignment store, but they are special pieces. That’s what we have decided to buy now that we have the chance to start over. Before we had a house full of stuff that was tolerable but nothing special. You know how it happens. Over the years you pick up stuff as the need arises. It’s usually cheap and fits the immediate purpose. Before long it’s just taking up space. After a while you don’t even notice it much anymore. You look around one day and think, what is all this crap? And you move it out to the garage or give it to Goodwill or just live with it. That’s how we felt about most of our stuff that perished in the flood. We hardly even knew it was gone—except we didn’t have anyplace to sit down or put a drink or lay our heads. So now that we have the chance to start all over, we’d like to accumulate things that we actually choose, stuff that we want to have around us for the long haul. But what if there is no long haul? What if we’ve just bought a bunch of new things that this time we’ll actually miss?
All of this sounds pretty crazy, really—all of this stuff that we accumulate. It is just stuff. In the grand scheme of things, we kept telling ourselves after we lost it all, it really didn’t matter. So here we are now collecting more things to replace the old. I can be cavalier about it all. But I also have to think about all of the people who didn’t have insurance and who really can’t start the whole capitalist, materialist thing all over. Insurance is an amazing thing. It’s as expensive as hell here right now. But we couldn’t live here without it.
And I think about the minister I read about who was helping evacuees in Houston or Atlanta somewhere as they tried to put their lives back together. They had Red Cross debit cards and he lamented the fact that they were all going out to Walmart and coming home with a bunch of cheap stuff, buying new things, anything, just because they could. They didn’t really need all of the little gadgets and knick-knacks they were wasting their free money on. But maybe it’s built into our psyche to buy in times of distress. I ran into a friend at the consignment store that we have been frequently lately. “Isn’t this place great?” she said. “I love to come here. Buying new things is the only thing that makes me feel better these days.” It’s the silver lining to this tragedy that so many people from this area are experiencing. With insurance checks in the bank, it’s time to shop!
On a more serious note, though, it’s not just about stuff for us anymore. The other day during an afternoon with the kids at the zoo, a friend and I were talking about how much we love it here. I told her that this is the best house and neighborhood I have lived in since I was a kid. After years of wandering from Midwestern college towns to bland Southern suburbs, with too little income to purchase or furnish a place that I could really call “home,” we are now somewhere that we hope will be our home for a long time. She said she and her husband had always felt the same way about their home in Uptown, that this was it for them. But now it’s hard to say that because you don’t know how long it all will be here. We joked about how we hoped we could at least get a few more good years out of this place. I’d really hate to lose it all before we even had the chance to settle in and make some memories, to really feel at peace for a while after so much wandering and waiting for a place to call home.
The news in the paper hasn’t been real upbeat lately. There has been a lot of concern about how the levees are being fixed and whether the repairs will be sufficient for the next hurricane season, especially considering the system-wide deficiencies that have come to light. Everyone has been waiting on the new FEMA flood maps to see, basically, how low we have sunk since 1984 when the last maps were drawn. The release date for the maps has been pushed back quite a few times, and now we know why—the news is so much worse than anybody (except the scientists who study this stuff) thought. Now they won’t release the maps until Congress will guarantee about six billion dollars more (on top of the 3.9 billion, which was the total price tag to fix the levees just a few days ago) to make all of the levees high enough to keep this sinking region from flooding in a 100-year storm. If we can’t get the money, then all bets are off. We’ll all have to build our homes on mile-high stilts.
The good news out of all of this is that most of New Orleans (except the suburban sprawl in Eastern New Orleans, which was inundated by Katrina) is not affected by these new estimates. They are fixing the levees that broke last time and so, presumably, we’ll be okay. The worst news to me was the idea that another Katrina could occur within 25 years, and that estimates about hurricane activity in the Gulf keep getting more alarming. Before Katrina, our fears about being washed away were fairly vague. Now, however, they are real. It is no longer a remote possibility but part of our lived experience. That it could happen again seems everyday more and more likely. The unthinkable is just part of our lives now.
For some reason, I find myself more willing now to live with that threat. Maybe I’d rather face the devil I know, so to speak. He has shown himself and we know how to get out of his way if (and when) he comes again. But it is, of course, also unsettling to be building a new castle—with new stuff—on what is essentially sand.
Lately we have started accumulating new stuff in earnest. There are the new bookcases with glass doors and the antique French settee and two actual oil paintings. They were all purchased for a steal at a local consignment store, but they are special pieces. That’s what we have decided to buy now that we have the chance to start over. Before we had a house full of stuff that was tolerable but nothing special. You know how it happens. Over the years you pick up stuff as the need arises. It’s usually cheap and fits the immediate purpose. Before long it’s just taking up space. After a while you don’t even notice it much anymore. You look around one day and think, what is all this crap? And you move it out to the garage or give it to Goodwill or just live with it. That’s how we felt about most of our stuff that perished in the flood. We hardly even knew it was gone—except we didn’t have anyplace to sit down or put a drink or lay our heads. So now that we have the chance to start all over, we’d like to accumulate things that we actually choose, stuff that we want to have around us for the long haul. But what if there is no long haul? What if we’ve just bought a bunch of new things that this time we’ll actually miss?
All of this sounds pretty crazy, really—all of this stuff that we accumulate. It is just stuff. In the grand scheme of things, we kept telling ourselves after we lost it all, it really didn’t matter. So here we are now collecting more things to replace the old. I can be cavalier about it all. But I also have to think about all of the people who didn’t have insurance and who really can’t start the whole capitalist, materialist thing all over. Insurance is an amazing thing. It’s as expensive as hell here right now. But we couldn’t live here without it.
And I think about the minister I read about who was helping evacuees in Houston or Atlanta somewhere as they tried to put their lives back together. They had Red Cross debit cards and he lamented the fact that they were all going out to Walmart and coming home with a bunch of cheap stuff, buying new things, anything, just because they could. They didn’t really need all of the little gadgets and knick-knacks they were wasting their free money on. But maybe it’s built into our psyche to buy in times of distress. I ran into a friend at the consignment store that we have been frequently lately. “Isn’t this place great?” she said. “I love to come here. Buying new things is the only thing that makes me feel better these days.” It’s the silver lining to this tragedy that so many people from this area are experiencing. With insurance checks in the bank, it’s time to shop!
On a more serious note, though, it’s not just about stuff for us anymore. The other day during an afternoon with the kids at the zoo, a friend and I were talking about how much we love it here. I told her that this is the best house and neighborhood I have lived in since I was a kid. After years of wandering from Midwestern college towns to bland Southern suburbs, with too little income to purchase or furnish a place that I could really call “home,” we are now somewhere that we hope will be our home for a long time. She said she and her husband had always felt the same way about their home in Uptown, that this was it for them. But now it’s hard to say that because you don’t know how long it all will be here. We joked about how we hoped we could at least get a few more good years out of this place. I’d really hate to lose it all before we even had the chance to settle in and make some memories, to really feel at peace for a while after so much wandering and waiting for a place to call home.
posted by Scribbling Mama | 3:04 PM
1 Comments:
I just caught up with the March blogs. So much terrain you have experienced and detailed. In all of the uncertainty I am so relieved that you are finding the silver lining. Your last blog reminds me that although life is tenuous, it is also beautiful.
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