Thanks to my brothers

Hosting visitors is among the most important duties of current residents of this city. New Orleans needs the money, and the love, of the rest of the world.

On a personal level, showing my friends and family this place affirms the decision to move here and live here and to work in recovery. And it reinvigorates my hope and spirit to continue to help the people of this town get back to a stable way of life - amazing how staying out until 4am can actually recharge one’s batteries. It seems that our spiritual self needs as much care as our physical self in an uphill journey like recovery, and there is no city that serves its own citizen’s souls like this one. In fact, that may be the only reason New Orleans has survived its tumultuous and plague-plagued history to this point. I hope the city can continue to help her citizens heal.

I don’t really know what message is going out to the Outside World at this point about the recovery of the Gulf Coast, but the impression I get from those who visit is that whatever the message is, it’s quiet. This is not alarming, rather to be expected really. We are a full two years and five months on at this point, and we all know that Americans don’t have the attention span to stick with us down here for this long. It’s 2008 for Pete’s sake, and Pete is busy with the mortgage crisis and deciding which candidate is most ‘electable’ (what a terrible way to decide on a president).

As all the ‘experts’ say, 2008 will be a critical year for recovery. Just like every other year will be until 2025. But perhaps the silver lining is that the organizations that are supposed to be making the biggest impact are finally getting the wheels turning (even if the wheels are still square-ish). The Louisana Road Home program has only issued funds to less than one third of applicants, but many of those were in the last 3 months. The program I currently work for (which I won’t mention, as I don’t want to lose my job) has just made some excellent changes to get assistance to clients more quickly – the changes we’ve been asking for since the spring of 2006. This progress is painfully slow for residents, but when we are talking about the immovable mountains of bureaucracy and government, this timeline is not terribly surprising.

My two brothers were here this past weekend, and this was a big deal. Being the caboose of the family, this was the first time I was able to host them at my place. I was proud to be able to have them eat at my table, and to show them around this town because they are my older brothers and because this is New Orleans and I live here now. The visit was too short, but we got to see some of the wonder and some of the despair of this place. I can’t speak to what they got from the trip, but as the host, I was so thankful that they were here. We stayed out late, we ate rich food and then rich dessert and then drank rich drinks, we heard music, and then more music, and we walked the streets. They helped remind me again of the passion of this city, and they helped recharge my soul for the marathon that it is to help rebuild New Orleans.

muchas gracias mis hermanos