Storm and Stress

Chris Rose is doing some great writing for the New Orleans Times-Picayune on living through Katrina and the rebuilding. Here is his take on the situation one year from the storm. The waters have receded but the storm rages as politicians preen and pose, as insurance adjusters fight to keep hold of the premiums their customers have paid for 20 years, the oil companies working to ensure that their facilities are rebuilt, as nature fights to reclaim the land between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain.

There is much discussion of whether and where to rebuild. Can we rebuild a city so far below sea level. Why can't we replicate the Netherlands model? Is this government really trying to ignore the problem in order to reengineer the political landscape of the south's bluest city? Newt Gingrich, Himself, makes the case that the flood waters revealed this government's inability to govern.

We can argue inability or incompetence or ignorance or malfeasance. And still the people dig out the dank piles of their histories and try to make sense of the new reality that is rebuilding a life.