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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (108123)	9/4/2005 11:33:03 AM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

At the same time that I post whatever articles I feel like posting here, as you know I encourage others to do the same. The articles posted here certainly don't all agree with my personal views, including some of the articles I post myself. I think posting articles and editorials is an interesting way to stimulate discussion, so I'm happy that you posted one as well. Why can't you source it, however? It really has no validity unless it can be determined who wrote it. I have no idea whether any of it is accurate or not, or how you can determine that it is as valid as what Maureen Dowd or Molly Ivins have said without knowing who wrote it. That makes no sense to me. When you say "the likes" of Maureen Dowd or Molly Ivins, you seem to be making a moral judgment based on their political views. However, their writings are full of specifics about this situation. Can you refute those specifics? If not, then you are simply casting aspersions, in my opinion. Having said that, there is plenty of blame to go around for what happened on the Gulf Coast. I specifically hold Bush responsible for the general lack of leadership he showed, the long period of time it took for the federal government to respond adequately, making lousy political appointments, diluting the effectiveness of FEMA by redirecting it to the terrorism crisis and demoting its importance by taking away Cabinet level leadership and representation, his lack of sensitivity in talking about how much fun he had partying as a young man while being interviewed about the hurricane, his aggressive warmongering which not only has created more, not less terrorism but spread our troops too thin to quickly protect American cities, the funds that have been cut during his administration from programs that maintained the levees and other protections to the Gulf Coast, and all the other accurate, specific charges that have been made in the articles I posted (you might want to reread the Molly Ivins piece, because they are all there).

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (108123)	9/4/2005 5:51:32 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? By ANNE RICE Published: September 4, 2005 La Jolla, Calif. WHAT do people really know about New Orleans? Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land? The first literary magazine ever published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets and writers who brought together their work in three issues of a little book called L'Album Littéraire. That was in the 1840's, and by that time the city had a prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors, businessmen, property owners, skilled laborers in all fields. Thousands of slaves lived on their own in the city, too, making a living at various jobs, and sending home a few dollars to their owners in the country at the end of the month. This is not to diminish the horror of the slave market in the middle of the famous St. Louis Hotel, or the injustice of the slave labor on plantations from one end of the state to the other. It is merely to say that it was never all "have or have not" in this strange and beautiful city. Later in the 19th century, as the Irish immigrants poured in by the thousands, filling the holds of ships that had emptied their cargoes of cotton in Liverpool, and as the German and Italian immigrants soon followed, a vital and complex culture emerged. Huge churches went up to serve the great faith of the city's European-born Catholics; convents and schools and orphanages were built for the newly arrived and the struggling; the city expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods of large, graceful houses, or areas of more humble cottages, even the smallest of which, with their floor-length shutters and deep-pitched roofs, possessed an undeniable Caribbean charm. Through this all, black culture never declined in Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans became home to blacks in a way, perhaps, that few other American cities have ever been. Dillard University and Xavier University became two of the most outstanding black colleges in America; and once the battles of desegregation had been won, black New Orleanians entered all levels of life, building a visible middle class that is absent in far too many Western and Northern American cities to this day. The influence of blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New Orleans for work who nicknamed the city "the Big Easy" because it was a place where they could always find a job. But it's not fair to the nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man's music, or the music of the oppressed. Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy. Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs. And so New Orleans prospered, slowly, unevenly, but surely - home to Protestants and Catholics, including the Irish parading through the old neighborhood on St. Patrick's Day as they hand out cabbages and potatoes and onions to the eager crowds; including the Italians, with their lavish St. Joseph's altars spread out with cakes and cookies in homes and restaurants and churches every March; including the uptown traditionalists who seek to preserve the peace and beauty of the Garden District; including the Germans with their clubs and traditions; including the black population playing an ever increasing role in the city's civic affairs. 1 2 Next Page > nytimes.com