[Leica] RE: PAW Week 3 Jeffrey---Nagin

[puff11 at comcast.net (Norm Aubin)]

 Greetings,

I'll echo Nicks apology to all in advance.  I too have learned that there is
no place on this list for political discourse, or at least a contrarian view
like mine.  BUT . . . 

I'm sad that New Orleans sank.  It is a loss of some historical and social
import.  However the truth is the city was as doomed as Pompeii was and L.A.
is, and no amount of human intervention will forestall nature indefinitely.
It is prideful and egotistical to believe that any man made structure is
more powerful than the worlds fury itself.  It is also shallow and
mean-spirited to gratuitously cast aspersions and blame to no helpful end.
Everyone involved at all levels of government and civil positions for
decades pooched it, as did many citizens on the street.  We are sadly
limited in our imaginations and memory when it comes to what the earth can
do to our man made structures, and incurably optimistic in our faith for a
good ending to events.

The only reason I can imagine for rebuilding a city that is doomed to be
submerged again, no matter what you do, is pride and vanity.  When this
experiment fails again, and it will someday, who will take blame for the
innocents and weak that are caught in it this time?

The question that has to be addressed in factual and not romantic terms is
that this disaster has re-asserted the fundamental fallacy of the concept.
Building a city, no matter how lovely and full of romantic history, in a
geographically unsound place, is an invitation for calamity.  People who
build their homes on cliff-sides have to buy insurance to do so, because
when the rains come, and they do, the homes wash away.  The first time this
happens I feel sorry for the folks, and hope they had enough insurance.  The
second time I look at them in pity.  What about San Andreas?  It's still
ticking away - just waiting.  What perceived obligation do we have in that
event and its aftermath, and by way of prevention, preparation and
reparation?  

We can learn from this lesson - we can build elsewhere and to better
purpose.  We can help those who have lost the stuff of life; their jobs,
homes and property.  Our moral obligation is to the people, not to the
edifices.  We should take the money that we would use to rebuild and instead
help educate and train those who have never had anything, or have lost
everything, to enable them to build for themselves.  Invest the rebuilding
money in people, not things.  If you can rebuild the social fabric, the
civil fabric will follow.

Take pictures - record the lessons, capture and evoke the poignancy of the
death of an old city, create the visual record for posterity, but don't
believe that the city can ever be rebuilt; it can't be.  The place is
permanently changed, altered, destroyed in part, and it can never be the
same.  A record of what happened and perhaps an opportunity to see it in
perspective will be a valuable obituary. Let go of what is past and make
room for what is to come.  Hopefully something new and better can arise, and
for those who choose to go there and build in that place - I wish you the
best - let me know how it turns out.  Take lots of good pictures, that will
also have great value.

End of soap box, looking for the cartridge box,

Best of light,
Norm


On 1/26/06 11:25 AM, "Lee England" <Engl6914@cableone.net> wrote:
> 
> > Normally a comment on how New Orleans would be chocolate 
> again would blow me
> > through the roof.  But in Nagin's case I pardon him because 
> I think he's
> > been the most effectual character in this whole 
> drama--similar to Guliani in

                    <SNIP>

>  It blows me
> > away that people are living in tents down here when last 
> week a $700 million
> > space probe launched last week toward Pluto (or one of 
> those planets).
> > 
> > Lee England
> > Natchez, Mississippi
> > USA

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