A Short Rumble of Thoughts About New Orleans During These Strange Times

It has always been dark times for New Orleans.

The land where the city birthed is a catch basin for all of the detritus and muck that spills off from the thousands of tributaries that flow into the Mississippi River. It’s no wonder the city attracts vagabonds, artists, miscreants, grifters and free spirits; people who find nowhere else to belong. But it has never been a safe place to live. Disease, weather, violence, war and corruption is the fulcrum upon which the balance of the city’s history teeters. It’s also joy, however that people find among the company of neighbors and outsiders from which art and tradition is made. This is the primordial soup for America of African, Italian, German, French, Irish, Spanish, Vietnamese, English cultures that coalesced and broke ground, often hating each other along the way.

This may not sound like a love letter to the city but it is. It’s a treasure despite its flaws and it won’t be around forever, a reality most of us are aware. Maybe we have 100 years left. Maybe 200 if we’re lucky but one day, New Orleans will be gone. It’ll be a legend of Atlantis and Sodom, uniquely and perfectly American.