Three years is a lifetime
This Friday will be three years since the Corp of Engineers failed to protect this city from a Category 5 hurricane and our president turned his back on a great American city. Since then, half of the population has returned with an army of volunteers still coming to the city to help rebuild the 200K + houses that were destroyed.
Three years and some people are still suffering from Post Traumatic Stress having lost everything they owned. Three years and some people say they will never return. Three years and god is the only one who knows what Mayor Nagin is doing for our city. Three years and the only news that gets published about New Orleans comes from the New York Times, who has never turned its back once on us despite the fact that most of what it prints leaves you believing New Orleans is moribund or dead.
Well, hey dear reader, I’ve been here those three years. I lost not a house, but life the way I knew it – a husband, friends, the companionship of a little boy – so much lost. But I’m standing here today in the house I built through thick and thin, I have hope, I donated to a bike corridor, I’m riding with a group of friends for the MS 150 ride to Mississippi again this year, I’ve been blessed to find love – someone not from here who decided New Orleans was the best home too – and hey, we are all still hopeful that this hurricane season will pass with nothing more than the rain that is coming down outside my window right now (a product of Fay).
We’re still here, world – we threw open our doors to welcome the world back in and little by little they are coming and seeing for themselves – New Orleans, Louisiana – is still one of the greatest cities in the world.