The President just delivered his address about the rebuilding of New Orleans and the gulf coast communities blow’d up by Katrina. He spoke from Jackson Square, which is about 400 feet away from where the official VM fiancee and I plan to get hitched next March.
Yeah, I’m using the present tense. We still plan to get married in the French Quarter in springtime.
My coworkers, family and friends have stared at me goggle-eyed when I’ve told them that we think everything’s going to go off as planned. Maybe they’ve been following the situation more disinterestedly, or just watching and reading different news-sources. They may also have fallen into the trap of reading too much into the present moment. Each day, the city’s been getting better news about the drainage, the pollution, the electricity, and more.
A week ago, you would’ve thought that we were on the verge of suffering a zombie plague. Now the mayor of New Orleans is talking about keeping the city crime-free and violence-free. Things change quickly during a disaster, and I’m betting that we’re going to see more rapid improvements (and, I hope, very few grisly discoveries).
We’ll be visiting her family down there a month from now, and I bet this very blog will tout a photo of your humble correspondent downing a Hand Grenade in the Quarter. And, sure, a beignet at Du Monde.
“There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans”? I’m glad the President and I see things eye-to-eye.
Update: The photographer we booked for the wedding just sent us an update from his first trip back into the city:
Saw Jax Brewery yesterday and even got out to walk around the back. As with the rest of the French Quarter I was very surprised how little damage. It was hard to even find a broken window anywhere in the Quarter and there was no flooding. I couldn’t really even tell if Jax had been looted. The media reports about looting downtown where VERY misleading. (even the Convention Center, that housed the thousands stranded for days seen on the news, didn’t have one single broken window!)
I would guess Jax Brewery will be open within weeks. It lifted my spirits to see the French Quarter and Garden District in such good shape.