NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 12)

It was on the airport shuttle the next day that I overheard a tourist conversing about his visit to Algiers Point and something about "gun-toting locals shooting people up."

Good grief, I thought. My Algiers Point?

Not Historic Algiers, a neighborhood of porch swings and fish frys, with its quaint small-town charm and orange-and-blue Gulf station right out of an old movie...a place where you can step back in time. Back home, I did some research and did a little more than shiver at what I found.

Algiers Point missed the destructive flooding that eighty percent of New Orleans endured after Katrina. Algiers Point suffered some wind and rain damage but for the most part survived unscathed. However, as the storm took hold and the levees gave way, the citizens of Algiers Point became aware of the mayhem across the Mississippi and battened down their hatches. What if mobs came here? What if those people raced down Canal Street, hopped on a ferry and came to our high, dry land and wanted our stuff? What if?

Algiers Point is a predominately white enclave. A predominately black population lives in the further reaches of Algiers. On September 1, 2005, three days after Katrina made landfall, a group of white townspeople formed a militia. They gathered shotguns, assault rifles, ammunition and formed a vigilante gang. It is so easy to step back in time in Historic Algiers.

In an article for The Nation titled "Katrina's Hidden Race War," journalist A.C. Thompson interviewed victims, witnesses and perpetrators of events that took place in Algiers Point.

According to Thompson, the renegades closed off streets using downed trees and pieces of lumber. They created makeshift motion detectors using aluminum cans and glass bottles to alert them to the thieves and marauders that would surely descend.

As one local put it, "On one side of Opelousas [Avenue] it's 'hood, on the other side it's suburbs. The two sides are totally opposite, like muddy and clean."

Another said, "I'm telling you, it was forty, fifty people at a time getting off these boats...hoodlums from the Lower Ninth Ward and that part of the city. I'm not a prejudiced individual, but you just know the outlaws who are up to no good. You can see it in their eyes."

On this evening, three young African-American men left their battered home in Algiers and walked toward the ferry terminal in hopes of getting to the other side and onto a bus. The National Guard had designated the Algiers Point ferry landing an official evacuation site.

Donnell Herrington didn't make the boat with his two friends because his body was filled with metallic buckshot. At least seven pellets were lodged in his neck and others in his legs, arms and back.

In an interview about that night, Vinnie Pervel, President of the Algiers Point Association, said, "We would yell, 'We're going to count to three and if you don't identify yourself, we're going to start shooting.'"

In a separate interview, Pervel said, "I'm not a racist. I'm a classist. I want to live around people who want the same things as me."

Who shot Donnell Harrington? We don't know. To date, police have investigated neither this event nor the shootings of ten other people in Algiers Point during that time period. Mr. Harrington did not die, but others did. Three and a half years after the event, no charges and no arrests had been made.

I found an online video about the shootings. A Danish team of filmmakers also interviewed the hunters. One fellow faces the camera and jubilantly declares, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it."

NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 11)

I had read of a ferry leaving every fifteen minutes from the base of Canal Street. Its destination: Algiers Point, a New Orleans neighborhood on the other side of the Mississippi.

Because it was described as yet another zone devoid of tourists, Algiers Point interested me. And since the ride was free, and since I like ferries almost as much as trains, this venture had my name written all over it.

I boarded the boat and took in panoramic views of the city. The engines gunned and we were off for the six-minute ride. To my right I noticed the steeple of the St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square. Church-builders believed a steeple must mark the highest point of a town because man should never rise above God. To my left I saw the skyscrapers of the Central Business District and noted: They forgot.

Upon landing, I climbed the elevated grassy levee surrounding Algiers Point and studied a harbor busy with industry. On the dirt pathway along the top of the levee, a girl jogged by and a man walked two dogs. They both expressed greetings. In fact, almost everyone I passed in New Orleans would nod and say "Hello" or "How ya doin'?" or "Nice to see ya" as if we were long-time acquaintances.

Very friendly bunch, I thought. Very friendly, indeed. I could live here.

Guideposts in Algiers Point informed me that I was in Historic Algiers and as I walked around the village I sensed that I was stepping back in time. On a corner, a 1930s-era gas station with a bright orange Gulf sign and blue trim, one pump and two picnic tables. Quaint and adorable, it looked like a movie set.

The streets were quiet but for a slight breeze riffling through branches and the chirping of birds. Porch swings. Baby toys scattered inside fenced yards. Sweet.

A large white banner advertised a Knights of Columbus Fish Fry and Crawfish Boil. Fun and so neighborly.

Two huge billboards heralded tours of Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World, where "Every Day is Mardi Gras!" Poking around warehouses of parade floats sounded super-fun, but when I got there I found the entrance bolted shut. A piece of paper with a handwritten scrawl curled in the wind. I flattened the notice with my hand and read that Mardi Gras World had moved to the Convention Center.

Wow, a whole world moved across the river to the Convention Center. Hope they have more food and water than the Katrina evacuees received, which is to say: none.

Disappointed, I moved on from Mardi Gras World and found myself face-to-face with a bronze plaque. "Algiers, established in 1719....Originally called the 'King's Plantation,' it was first used as the location for...a holding area for the newly arrived African slaves." A bucolic countryside where chained men and women were cleaned up before being sold at auction in the French Quarter.

Though the sun shone, I shivered, and read on.

Algiers Point became a hub of shipbuilding, dry docks and rail yards. Kevin Herridge, President of the Algiers Historical Society, and Vinnie Pervel, President of the Algiers Point Association, have their names engraved on the sign along with this claim: The charm and architecture of old Algiers is New Orleans' "hidden jewel."

Mmmm-hmmm.

NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 10)

I stood on the scruffy edge of railway tracks and let the cars of the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad send a rumble through my body. I like the greasy smell of trains. I like that the engineer waved to me from the red cabin of his car and I waved back. I would like to rock asleep in a berth closed in by pleated curtains, and in the morning watch golden flatlands speed by outside the window. To eat a meal in a dining car at a table set with crisp linens, and to see the water swaying in my goblet.

I would like all of that, but today I could only pretend, because today I'd step over these tracks and make my way toward the Warehouse District, up Magazine Street, into the Garden District, back through the quiet end of the Quarter, across Esplanade Ridge and into Faubourg Marigny (Faw-berg Mari-knee). And then I'd board a ferry and cross the muddy Mississippi to Algiers Point (Pernt).

The stroll would take me five hours, send me through eons of history and rumble me deeper than those train cars, but I didn't know any of that as I ventured forth only to be sideswiped by the grumble of my stomach.

On Magazine Street, an area known for antiques, art, quirky restaurants and boutiques, I found Surrey's Cafe and Juice Bar: small, hippy-dippy and crowded with locals. Great, I'd managed to duck the tourist crowd. I neither wished to wait 15 minutes for a table nor did I need one. I was happy to sit at the three-seat bar, where I ordered a cup of chicory coffee, a fluffy baked biscuit, grits with a hint of garlic, two poached eggs and sliced tomatoes. The healthiest meal I'd eaten in days.

In the Garden District I wandered through an above-ground cemetery. The gray and white stones are a familiar landscape in this city. On the disaster tour we heard ghoulish stories of the powerful flood dislodging some 1,200 tombs and sending them far from their peaceful settings. Some bodies remained encased in their concrete vaults and then traveled up to 33 miles, landing in trees or swamps. Some caskets cranked open and the remains, no longer at rest, were sent on a long swim. Officials then had the task of gathering and identifying the newly dead, the newly-buried dead and the historic dead. Nice job.

The Garden District was first settled by Americans arriving in New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The grand mansions of the Garden District have a distinctly different architecture from the green, pink and yellow Creole cottages of the Quarter. The homes of the Garden District rise over wide verandas, where dogs slumber in the shade of camellia and magnolia trees.

In contrast, French Quarter balconies framed in wrought iron sit high above the narrow streets, providing an outdoor space perfect for watching Mardi Gras parades.

I ambled up and down the quiet streets of the Garden District. The homes, a mix of gingerbread Victorians, Greek revivals, Italianate and pretty shotgun cottages, are predominately painted white. They were constructed when white paint was invented. The metaphor is not lost on me.

This is New Orleans, where all things are possible and those things vary ward to ward, parish to parish, and people to people.

NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 9)

Halfway through the Katrina disaster tour the bus pulled into Audubon Park for a rest stop. I joined my fellow tourists wandering into a concession area for hot dogs and ice cream. I pondered the menu and decided I wasn't all that hungry after witnessing some gruesome sights. Seeing wrecked homes and hearing the stories of wrecked lives was more than a little unsettling. I stepped outside into spring air and my cell phone rang.

I've been fired.

What? What do you mean?

They got an Oscar-winner to replace me.

What? How can they do this?

The producer said it wasn't personal because I hadn't done any work yet. He just couldn't turn down a big name when the opportunity presented itself.

The unspoken inkling had revealed itself. The breeze we felt was windy.

How will this affect us?

We were in April of 2009, in Year Two of a worldwide recession that showed no signs of abating. In this climate, showbiz also floundered. We had read regular accounts of film and TV crews sitting on their couches worrying how to pay mortgage or rent and health insurance. California was especially hard hit by thousands of home foreclosures, runaway production and a failed banking system.

Standing in a New Orleans park that afternoon and hearing my husband's depressed voice dispersed my logical thinking. I only wanted to be with him, hug him and reassure him. My other half was hurting and I was far away.

I lumbered back up the steps of the bus and knew that, as tragedies go, ours was small compared to the homes and lives lost outside my grimy bus window...but lost is lost.

I had one more day in New Orleans before I'd be on a plane and back home with my husband.

NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 8)

Former Senator Larry Craig, he of a certain bathroom stall incident at the Minneapolis airport, was one American disinclined to rebuild New Orleans.

"Louisiana and New Orleans are the most corrupt governments in our country and they always have been," Craig was quoted as saying in the McCall (Idaho) Star-News. "A rookie cop on the ground in New Orleans, they pay him or her $17,000 starting pay and then wink and say you better make the rest of it on the street."

"I'm not humorous when I suggest we should turn it back to what it was, a wetland," Craig told the Lewiston Tribune (Idaho), saying that some areas of the Gulf, including New Orleans' flooded Ninth Ward, should be abandoned.

As they say in the South: Mmmm-hmmm.

Was it not time to spend the FEMA money and repair the wetlands, the infrastructure and the living spaces of this city? Are we not: Linked.

Two men arrived at the finish line of the Ironman competition with a string of rope joining them hip-to-hip. They rode bikes, swam in Lake Pontchartrain (Ponch-a-train) and ran through the city for seventy miles: Linked.

After Katrina, in St. Bernard's Parish, people waited days for help in ungodly temperatures. They sat on rooftops under a blue, cloudless sky and in heat so intense it burned their mouths to breathe. In some locations the water rose up to twenty feet. Panicked deer hopped from rooftop to rooftop, snakes and stingrays swam by and wild Russian boars searched for dry land. The first help some folks received was from Canada. A Vancouver-based search-and-rescue team arrived to serve. The neighborhood is now known as "Little Canada": Linked.

I had jumbling thoughts in my head as I raced along a sidewalk and passed an older black man sitting on a doorway stoop, sipping from a can of beer in a brown paper sack.

Smile! he shouted to me.

Shocked, I did exactly that. I smiled big and laughed out loud.

That's what I'm talkin' 'bout, he quipped. And we were: Linked.

NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 7)

Funny how fast it can happen, when it happens: Change.

Sunday was killer hot but by Monday I was bundled up in two sweaters, a jacket and a scarf. Forget the Panama hat; it would have blown away. The temperature had plummeted twenty degrees to a daytime high of 62 degrees and a nighttime of 40.

One evening I took the St. Charles streetcar to Tulane (TOO-lane) University to see Joan Didion read from her work. I like Didion. I'm a fan of her sharp, concise writing.

After a long-winded intro by an English professor, Joan Didion entered center-stage through a set of heavy, dusty, old-fashioned curtains. The audience welcomed her with a standing ovation worthy of the petite rock star of the literary world she is. Didion ignored the applause and got right to the task at hand. She read from The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the sudden death of her husband at their dinner table.

She read of the fire she built in the living room that evening, of the Scotch she poured for him and the salad she tossed. She paused in her reading and then continued to relate their brief conversation and how she noticed John's hand raised in the air as his head slumped forward, and how she thought he was making a joke she didn't like. It was moving to hear the writing from her lips and in a voice that sounded both strong and exhausted.

She confirmed that as the book sat stacked in warehouses waiting for delivery, her 39-year-old daughter, Quintana, also died.

Walking the neighborhoods of New Orleans, listening to Joan Didion read and taking a disaster tour had me wondering how or if we are linked to each other.

I was struck by the irony of Vanessa Redgrave, having recently lost her own daughter, set to perform the play version of this work at St. John's Cathedral in New York in October of 2009. I thought of how courageous and compelled these women were to put their sorrow into their art, perhaps because there was nothing else to be done. And now, tragically, they had become: Linked.

The shrimpers of the Louisiana coast are known as able-bodied, independent people born of families long tied to fishing. The sea is what they know and they know it well. Today, in the swampland and bayous, white shrimp boats languished half-sunk and rotten, scattered like abandoned toys. I saw these boat carcasses from the window of a tour bus. I was on the Hurricane Katrina Tour. A journey that would take us through the neighborhoods of Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East, St. Bernard's Parish and the Ninth Ward. We'd see breached levees. We'd drive by devastated homes, public schools, shopping malls and restaurants. We'd see neighborhoods that had become virtual ghost towns.

The coastal wetlands are eroding at a rate of 16,000 to 20,000 acres every year. These same marshes provide natural protection from the damage of storm surges.

New Orleans' industries have a combined domestic economic impact of $140 billion every year. We eat the shrimp and oysters, our cars run on the oil, and we use the steel, rubber and coffee that arrive through New Orleans' ports. Nearly $4 billion of FEMA aid designated to help the region sat, unspent, three and a half years after Katrina.

NEW ORLEANS: April, 2009 (Part 6)

I didn't want to hang tight to the French Quarter and its tourist crowds. It was, of course, a positive advancement to have conventions, weddings and spring breakers returning to the city but these people tended to spend their time in this one location and I needed to get out. I carried a small notebook and wrote of the images I saw:

• A roster of names attached to the outer wall of an Episcopal church. Murder victims. The list specified: SHOT, STABBED, BEATEN.

• On the cement stoop of an apartment building a skinny pock-faced young woman with straggly red hair nodded, eyes shut, as if her veins had recently been fed. Standing over her, a skinny black man punched at intercom buttons. He held a leash attached to a small, caramel-colored puppy so desperate, maybe for food and water, that when it struggled to climb the top step, it crumpled in a heap.

• Middle-class neighborhoods where children rode bikes, parents went to work and lawns were mowed on Saturday afternoons were now filled with empty houses that had been waiting three and a half years and counting for insurance companies to pay up. In 2005, when Katrina and Rita swept through, these same companies raked in record-setting profits of $48 billion; in 2006, $68 billion.

• In the Ninth Ward an utter wreck of a house sat high on cement blocks, the result of initial work done by a contractor. The house was owned by a man who gave everything he had to the contractor. Said contractor left the project and disappeared with the money.

• Junked FEMA trailers filled with formaldehyde, a colorless gas known to cause burning eyes, wheezing, nosebleeds, and cancer.

• Many people in New Orleans will tell you the Katrina flooding was not a "natural disaster," but the failed work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Levee walls had been planted 17 feet deep when they should have been 72 feet deep. The walls collapsed like dominoes and the water came in. In some places it took four minutes to rise from ground to roof level. The number of bodies found was tabulated close to two thousand — but not all the bodies had been found.

• After weeks of draining, the houses were filled with rats and snakes. And then the mold. If you wanted to buy a house in Lakeview, or New Orleans East, or Gentilly, you had to be prepared to wear a Hazmat suit.

• Governor Bobby Jindal had decided to relocate adolescent mental health facilities to a new location forty miles away, across Lake Pontchartrain. Most of the patients' parents didn't have cars to visit their children and there was no public transportation to the facilities. The Governor saved the State of Louisiana $9 million in the move.

The other side of lovely.