New Orleans R&B star begins posthumous mayoral bid - Yahoo! News

The cynics are moving into New Orleans. Well, they've probably been there are for a while.

I returned to New Orleans for a brief visit two weeks ago. The company conference I attended was downtown and mostly contained within the hotel or the nearby sections of the French Quarter. From there, you could almost think the city was fine.

Alex showed us the face behind the Mardi Gras masque, however. He took me and two work colleagues for a 2 1/2 hour tour of the city which left us all speechless after about 15 minutes. Less than 5 blocks from the French Quarter we took pictures next to a house that had floated off its foundation and settled on the owner's car. The house is still full of furniture and clothing, all befouled by the floodwaters. This was the less-damaged part of town.

A short drive later and we were in the most damaged part of town - the lower Ninth Ward. Somehow even the name of this section of New Orleans evokes images of tenements and squatter shacks to those of us outside the city. The reality is far more depressing. This was a low-income neighborhood of single-family homes, most of which were owned by their residents. This was the working poor - not those on public assistance. Not the destitute that we all like to pretend does not exist in this country. These were the folks who were getting by pretty well. (A shopkeeper in the French Market had earlier described how a person could get by pretty well in New Orleans on a couple of thousand dollars a month in income - unlike most major cities).

This neighborhood is gone. Not damaged, not empty. Gone. There are piles of rubble everywhere, much of which looks a little like houses. Close to the levee break there is little but the foundations upon which houses once sat. Think of a war-ravaged city that was then hit by a tactical nuclear weapon and you'll start to get the picture.

From this happy place, we went through into St. Bernard Parish where we saw miles & miles of ugly brown lines across the sides of empty houses (the high water mark). We peered inside of some of these homes, admiring the patterns of mold covering walls and ceilings. In most cases, couches and chairs seem arranged in the least appealing and functional manner possible - but then you realize that the layout was done by tidal effects within the home itself over a period of weeks.

The tour took us back into Orleans via Lake Terrace, Lake Vista (not that bad) and near Lakeview.

The good news is that work is being done, some people are back (there were FEMA trailers everywhere), and the overall attitude could have been much, much worse.

We took a bunch of pictures, so when I get copies, I will post them for posterity. Thanks again, Alex, for the tour and for opening our eyes.