We've been here before with Katrina and Rita and Gustav and Issac. No one -besides us- are helping, and no one -besides us- cares.
The state's going to go to Trump so I guess he doesn't have any reason to address the floods. Hillary doesn't have any reason to come here-much less mention the water we're under-for the same reason. People didn't like it when Obama came to Houma for the Oil Spill, so I guess he'll just say a few words and ask us to watch how he's been working on his long drive.
At least the French Consulate in New Orleans released a heartfelt message.
Everyone has a cousin or friend in Baton Rouge or Gonzales or LaPlace. I have a guy with my exact name in Ascension Parish who ruined my credit score. So naturally we became friends but his mom lost everything (did he mean in the flood or with the credit score?). Such is Louisiana.
And then we look at Acadianna which is so far out of the media's radar that I have to go to Facebook to see a coworker's cousin paddling his pirogue in a trailer park around Ville-Platte.
Plus ça change. But then again Lake Charles didn't get too much of a mention during Rita, much less Erath.
We are the flyover of the flyover. The nameless rabble religious fanatic podunk that the rest of the country has written of as a third-world failed state with irreparable race struggles, class struggles, and people -they say among themselves- stupid enough to build their homes in a swamp.
Meanwhile Californians don't have trouble getting coverage for their natural disasters. Who would want to build a house in a desert? Much less on a fault line?
No, the rest of the country doesn't have to do a song-and-dance to get attention. Or riot. We have to either Mr. Bojangle (Look at us! Jazz! Zydeco! Mardi Gras! For the love of God send us nonperishable food!) or just flip cars and loot to get on the news.
Plus c'est le même chose. We are going to flood and flood again. And like 1927 when the then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover signed off on a New Orleans bigwig plan to dynamite the levees in St. Bernard Parish we are going to see the self-reliant, the humble, the tight knit communities of Louisiana passed over in silence by a country that sees us as too foreign and backwards to take air time away from Reality TV stars. Another failed venture to pull the troops out of and let the fanatics fight it out. The militant, not the meek, inherent the earth as always.
But, wow! What a bachelor party Davie had in NOLA, amirite?
Everyday we have to sober ourselves to the fact that we are headed to a Louisiana without its ecosystem both cultural and geographic. Isle Jean Charles will be gone by the time I reach my forties; most of the barrier islands will be gone. I have five people in my family who still speak French and they have ten to fifteen years left on them combined for a language that is already just a curiosity or a footnote on a tourist brochure. My grandchildren will miss the music, the language, that makes this crazy, dysfunctional place make a modicum of sense.
With each new deluge we loose more of ourselves. Every flood washes out journals and photographs and musical instruments and replaces them with lilly-white hipster kids from the suburbs of Toledo who love how cheap the rent is and love it down here because they feel they are in "like, an authentic culture that just gets me, you know?"
But complaining doesn't do anything.
I'm donating to these dudes. Post who you are donating to or where the Cajun Navy has you stationed.
This is an excellent article and so is the one before it. Great points made as well as information. A series of these in a magazine or Face book page or somewhere that gets a lot of attention would be great because most Louisiana people have no clue about these things. If everyone were more informed even about organizations to donate to, Louisiana may be able to get back on its feet. If your age people understood what was happening to the coastline like you explain it ( gone by age 40) as well as other people, and then knew of way sot help, they might do so. I cannot help but think of a mutual friend who currently works for the Governor. He would be very interested in someone your age doing something like this. Your concern for Louisiana, its people, the preservation of the french language, cultural traditions, coastline, and reputation are very obvious in your writings and such passion should be ignited among as many Louisiana residents as possible.
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