Wet Bank Guide

I am doing nothing for New Orleans except the most basic things such as paying taxes and owning property and not leaving. I don't want to write, but I feel as if there is absolutely nothing I do want to dedicate my life to.

-- New Orleans novelist Poppy Z. Brite on her blog Dispatches from Tanganyika

It's been ten days between posts, and I'm not the only laggard. I think that once again everyone here in America's Most Medicated City shares her feelings. I know that the track of my own life here follows her's in part. I am doing nothing for New Orleans except living here.

I fear that with the fests of winter and spring behind us, hurricane season arrives like an ugly midsummer heat wave: a palpable change in the weather that oppresses everyone and stifiles all activity. If the reality of the humidity-laden and still air of a 105-heat index day were not enough, all of us have shouldered an 80 pound bag of worry to tote around. Unless relieved by the terror of evacuation, we will lift and carry those sacks of sullen every day for the next several months like the stevedores of old loading a ship on the river.

I have to remind myself that, faced with such a task in this climate, we should do what those dock workers would have done.

We should sing.

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// posted by Mark Folse @ 4:43 PM