My new neighbor called to see if I wanted to get dinner yesterday. He’s new here and he didn’t know the water out there was a bayou. I laughed. Anyway, he said he used to visit New Orleans when he was in law school in Baton Rouge but that it seems now everyone he comes in contact with seems to have been deeply affected by the storm. Well, most were deeply touched before the storm, but I agreed with him – we have been changed by Katrina. For the better or worse? I say the better. Life is not about living comfortably and around here a lot of people were not being stretched and now that they are, I believe it has made the interesting more interesting.
Anyway, after chatting a little, I asked him why the Homeland Security office was expanding its presence here and he said, in effect, if he told me, he might have to kill me. Well, he just really said that my being a reporter makes him think he should be careful what he says around me. Ah, duh, I would be careful what I say around me too.
I guess we need some homeland security since we’ve always been at risk down here – risk of forgetting we belong to this larger land mass and peoples and cultures and politics that seem so foreign to us – we shake our heads when we hear about the goings on outside of this isolated refuge.