{"id":1091,"date":"2006-08-27T10:19:54","date_gmt":"2006-08-27T15:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cest-levee-or-once-more-unto-the-breach\/"},"modified":"2006-08-27T16:37:29","modified_gmt":"2006-08-27T21:37:29","slug":"cest-levee-or-once-more-unto-the-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cest-levee-or-once-more-unto-the-breach","title":{"rendered":"C’est Levee, or Once More Unto the Breach"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s whomping of the Gulf Coast. I’ve been down to New Orleans four times since then. I’ve tried to chronicle a little bit of the reconstruction, or at least my viewpoint on the progress.<\/p>\n

My perspective is limited, of course. Amy’s family lives about 25 miles from the city, so the people I see the most down there talk more about the after-effects, not their own property loss. We’ve made trips into the city each visit, but mainly in the central business district and the French Quarter. I haven’t gone through the lower Ninth Ward in any of my visits, but I also don’t visit the South Bronx when I go to New York.<\/p>\n

Or does the WTC site serve as a better analogy? Ray Nagin seemed to think so, when he contrasted NOLA’s rebuilding pace with the five-year span since the Twin Towers were knocked down<\/a>: “You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair.”<\/p>\n

It was a cheap shot, but Nagin’s a mentally unstable grandstander<\/a>, so that needs to be factored in. <\/p>\n

How does the city get rebuilt? Darned if I know. I wouldn’t exactly trust a “master plan” developed by the crooked politicos of Louisiana in concert with the ass-clowns in Washington, and the Army Corps of Engineers is already covering its ass<\/a> about the possibility of the current levees being unable to handle another major storm. I’m having enough trouble just trying to settle on a color for my home office, since the official VM wife objects pretty violently to the deep green currently in place.<\/p>\n

(Witold Rybczynski in Slate has a neat piece about how a new-urbanist project in Denver provides an example<\/a> of how to start putting together neighborhoods, but it all presupposes that the neighborhoods aren’t built in a locale that’s existentially flood-prone.)<\/p>\n

I’m having trouble coming up with anything to say that I haven’t gotten at already, so why don’t you, my dear readers, tell me what you make of New Orleans? A bunch of you came to visit in March for my wedding, but I want to hear from those of you who haven’t seen it, too. Tell me what you remember of the city, if you’ve been there before, what you thought if you’ve been there post-Katrina, and what you think of the ways and means of rebuilding a city that wasn’t in great shape before it’s cataclysm.<\/p>\n

(Update: I know it’s hard to believe, but Ray Nagin has more to say!<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s whomping of the Gulf Coast. I’ve been down to New Orleans four times since then. I’ve tried to chronicle a little bit of the reconstruction, or at least my viewpoint on the progress. My perspective is limited, of course. Amy’s family lives about 25 miles from the city, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “C’est Levee, or Once More Unto the Breach”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,18,19,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-orleans","category-politics-implicit","category-urban-issues","category-wedding"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-hB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":666,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/more-on-nola","url_meta":{"origin":1091,"position":0},"title":"More On NO,LA","author":"Gil","date":"September 2, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Great post by Vodkapundit about the city, its demise, and the inherent elements of New Orleans that are contributing to its destruction.After my one semester at Tulane, I thought New Orleans' motto should have been, \"A city where you can get away with murder, as long as it's not a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1839,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/happy-new-year-5","url_meta":{"origin":1091,"position":1},"title":"Happy New Year!","author":"Gil","date":"January 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Have a great 2008, dear readers! We'll be spending today recovering from Amy's dad's last holiday gift to us from our Louisiana visit last week: a headcold. Meanwhile, here are my two photosets from that trip: New Orleans and Oak Alley Plantation. Oh, and Amy wrote pretty extensively (with more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Orleans"","block_context":{"text":"New Orleans","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/new-orleans"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":770,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/travelin","url_meta":{"origin":1091,"position":2},"title":"YES,LA","author":"Gil","date":"December 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, dear readers, it's holiday time, so your Virtual Memoirist is bugging out. I just finished a 366-page issue of my magazine, and now the official VM fiancee and I are packing out bags so we can visit her family in Louisiana for a while. After last year's food poisoning\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Orleans"","block_context":{"text":"New Orleans","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/new-orleans"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1057,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bush-saves-new-orleans","url_meta":{"origin":1091,"position":3},"title":"Bush Saves New Orleans","author":"Gil","date":"July 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Last night, we had CMT's Hee Haw Weekend Marathon on while Amy worked up a dose of Emeril's spicy tomato glaze. My parents didn't watch Hee Haw much when I was a kid, although my dad developed an unhealthy attachment to Willie Nelson in the 1980s (unhealthy inasmuch as he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Orleans"","block_context":{"text":"New Orleans","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/new-orleans"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2455,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/new-orleans-beijing-same-difference","url_meta":{"origin":1091,"position":4},"title":"New Orleans, Beijing: Same Difference","author":"Gil","date":"September 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Nicolai Ouroussoff: still here, still batshit-crazy. He asks why, if China could make a major architectural statement out of Beijing, the U.S. won't do the same in . . . New Orleans. No, really. Somehow, he misses the points that Beijing is the capital of a burgeoning world power, while\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Orleans"","block_context":{"text":"New Orleans","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/new-orleans"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":779,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/new-orleans-pictures","url_meta":{"origin":1091,"position":5},"title":"New Orleans pictures","author":"Gil","date":"December 29, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I promised I'd post the New Orleans pix from last week, including the Katrina Ridge Christmas display, and here they are: Pictures from Katrina Ridge Pictures from the French Quarter Enjoy!","rel":"","context":"In "New Orleans"","block_context":{"text":"New Orleans","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/new-orleans"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}