The 9th

I wish the 9th ward had a different name, one that was more than just a number. With what I had heard of the place on the news, it didn't sound worthy of a name. A rough place, a poor place, which never should have been built below sea level like that. Maybe. I know too little to enter an argument about engineering and city planning. But I know enough to say that there was a community there, once upon a time. There were some beautiful homes placed there that sit below the levees in the lower 9th and look up at the hulking ships that drift by in the Industrial Canal. The media has a way of dehumanizing tragedy. To go there and to see is to realize that people lived their lives there, people went to church and the library and school there. It is not just some governmental mistake, it is a home.
I ashamedly realize that I never considered this place to be a neighborhood someone might love and miss. I can't speak to the problems it had before the storm, but a lot of people counted it as home and there is no substitute for home. There are sections with homes and churches and large, wise oak trees. And now there are sections where just the trees are left. For some reason I had never imagined I would find any beauty there, but I did.
Maybe the beauty is what makes me angry. The water was only deemed safe to drink in the lower-9th ward in mid-October, 13 months after the storm. In late-November only a handful of FEMA trailers had been set up in the area. The people of that community deserved a faster response. Many have been placed in FEMA parks on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, over 45 minutes from their homes, and certainly many more are living in different cities.

Painfully aware that I would not have visited this neighborhood had tragedy not struck, I found no peace while I was there. But maybe if I can help others be aware of what happened there and what still needs to be done I can help in some small way to bring peace to those who lived there. New Orleans still needs help.

Here's a story in the Times-Picayune from 12/18/06: http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1166423922163400.xml&coll=1