indiana territory

SO WHAT IS HAPPENING IN NOLA?

First of all, that abbreviation or acronym - NOLA - drives me crazy in the way a gnat or mosquito can send you into a swatting mood. When the hurricane occurred, it seemed as if everyone was writing and/or saying NOLA. Two syllables; New Orleans is three. One more syllable. All right, I can see that it would be less typing and of use for weather professionals, but I think regular joes suddenly saying NOLA is too much.

Shoot, now I have forgotten what I was going to say about New Orleans. Thinking . . . thinking . . . ah, so what does it look like now? Does it smell down there? Is the Ninth Ward just one big rotten junk pile? Is New Orleans shrinking down to a tourist place and Tulane . . . and frankly why is Tulane making the students work in the city? Why doesn't the university just move and use student labor to help do so?

Can you guess that I think the idea of having a city on a shrinking Gulf landscape is not a great idea?

Some extra stuff: Here's a link from the Washington Post about rebuilding in New Orleans which includes this telling sentence - "But experts involved in the rebuilding believe that the helter-skelter return of residents to this low-lying metropolis may represent another potential disaster."

Then there is this paragraph:

"There are areas where it doesn't make any sense to rebuild -- they got 20 feet of water in Katrina," said Tom Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor who served on an Urban Land Institute panel for post-Katrina planning. "In those places, nature is talking to us, and we ought to be listening. I don't think we are."

posted by Jody @ 7:11 AM