angele [email] said at 9:29 PM 08-30-2008: Was going to stay. Most of my Marigny neighbors are staying. But I had several family members call me hysterical: "You're going to get murdered by scary, carjacking, thieves f'd up on drugs!!!" So it's not really the gigantic storm that's coming, it's the insane zombie movie scenario that plays out that media coverage of Katrina ignited into the imaginations of susceptible Americans. I'm not saying that terrible things didn't happen after Katrina, or that bad people who do bad things don't run the streets here. But, we don't have to assume that all people who stay behind are either predators or prey. That's a terribly unhelpful way to visualize people who may need serious help if the federal levees fail us again.
kara [email] said at 1:08 PM 09-01-2008: The place where I got the worst zombie movie scenario account was here:
http://www.killoggs.com/log/responses/2596189
angelel said at 4:03 PM 09-02-2008: That post was one of many accounts that horrified me to my core. I didn't even have to live through the insanity to be pushed over the cliff. Just perpetually (and obsessively) hearing and reading Katrina aftermath stories propelled me into a deeply dazed, disconnected state that required lots of time and drugs to climb out of.
I think the point I was drunkenly trying to make was that perceptions help or hurt a situation. As far as I know (and I could be wrong), scavenging, violence, and roving marauders don't automatically ensue after every disaster. I'm not going into the reasons why they did after Katrina...
I recall talking to a friend who watches Fox News a few days after Katrina. She gleefully mentioned that the National Guard was finally rolling into New Orleans to restore order. Her daddy (a powerful Republican rich guy) had mentioned that off the record, the soldiers were going to shoot indiscriminately at people out past curfew... Another friend confirmed that this pretty much was happening. Given the image that was being broadcasted, which was along the lines of "these people don't deserve help because they are all black, poor, and too stupid to leave", many so-called decent folks were joyed at this kind of news. Bodies were supposedly dumped into the river. I'm sure Bevis was well aware that he could have been one of those bodies.
I have tons of neighbors that stayed behind this time around. Maybe they were foolish to stay, but they are neither predators nor prey - much to the media's discontent.
I'm staying here with my cousin and her husband is the banker for the ad rep people for the weather channel. They got so excited about Gustav approaching New Orleans because sales finally approached projection for this point in hurricane season. They're still holding out hope that another will come towards Miami then enter the gulf toward Houston. Or that another one will come up the East Coast and threaten a bunch of cities that way.
Sorry for the disjointed response. I will end it now.
kara [email] said at 9:18 PM 09-02-2008: i'm glad everythings ok!
I definitely wasnt trying to refute your point or anything.. I just happen to think about that post all the time.
this event inspired me to finally check out "rising tide: the great mississippi flood of 1927" from the library
andrew [email] said at 10:31 PM 09-02-2008: Actually I'm kind of glad a storm came and went and it wasn't such a big deal. I'm getting tired of thinking that every person I know who's been killed, or killed themselves, or done something dumb had something to do with a stupid hurricane. I mean honestly there is a lot more to it than that. I think growing up in a poor school, seeing people in poverty, I don't really find the novelty in violence that seems so fascinating to people who don't where it comes from. If I see a fight, or especially somebody with a gun, you're not going to catch me hanging around in that particular area. And I do not have any tattoos either. I don't need any of that foolishness.
katie [email] said at 3:06 AM 08-31-2008: I've been following, just as the national media wants me to. And I've been scared. It's fucking scary, to think that it's all over. But that's exactly the reality - it may not be Gustav or Hanna or even this year, but it's gonna happen. That place, that culture we all know and love and hold dear, it's gone. It's terrifying to me, to think that a city so integral to our history as a nation can just be unequivocally destroyed - wiped off the map - as a culture, a city beyond its strategic importance as a jumping-off point for oil refineries.
Oh, me. Killoggs is so not the place for this. I feel compelled to launch into a diatribe. ( Yeah, OK, granted, that part is Killoggian enough).
It's just such a waste of history. Such a waste of priorities.
I understand, this might not be The One. But I think everyone here understands that The One is coming; it's totally inevitable; the place we hold dear as a cultural bazaar is doomed to sink into the sea, and there are many thousands of people who make their homes in the very path of the storm that seeks to doom the entire culture.
I lament that my husband, my children, my family will never see the utter beauty and weirdness that was New Orleans. I lament that all they will ever know of it is Mickey Mouse's French Quarter Adventure.
It might not be Gustav, and it might not be Hanna, but it's coming, and there's no structural preparation to preserve what really defines New Orleans. Katrina cleaned it out pretty good, as they say, but there were a few scattered remnants that were slowly building their way back, and it's all for naught. It pretty much always was.
brandon [email] said at 3:18 AM 08-31-2008: Hey Killoggians. Are you in a bind? Are you in the Crescent. CALL A MOTHERFUCKER UP. You can come tomorrow and help me move things. I give you: beds to sleep in, cable, I give you: SANCTUARY
milky [email] said at 5:07 PM 08-31-2008: At home. Not wasting the money to get stuck in traffic...if it hits here, and I absolutely have to bunker down, I get to tag along with my pop and other city employees to the auditorium.
I just saw people doing the satellite feeds a few blocks away from CNN and Fox. I laughed. I think there are only two trucks here anyway.
My bet is on Houma. Then I go join the first responders because that's the beat I work, Houma and surrounding.
