Right about now, lapsed Gulf-Coast bloggers everywhere are finally getting around to posting.

It’s the 28th of August, of course, the day before what we’ve come to call “The Anniversary”.

Last year at this time, I was recounting my evacuation story on this very blog. Two years ago at this time, I was stuck in a seriously gnarly traffic jam. And today, I’m sitting at my desk reading about innovative architectural plans for the city, wondering what I’ll feel like doing tomorrow.

And I was thinking it might be good to go ahead and admit that I don’t stay in New Orleans just because I love it here, even though I do. I stay in New Orleans in part because I don’t think I could live with myself if I left.

It is a fairly silly feeling, but I can’t imagine I’m alone with it. Chris Rose first said it back in the Fall of ‘05, and repeated it on NPR yesterday morning: “The only thing worse than being in New Orleans…is not being in New Orleans.”

My Mr. and spent the first year and a half after the storm pretending to wring our hands over the New Orleans question. What we were really doing was waiting for someone to tell us we weren’t crazy to live here.

Part of that is because we can hardly believe we’re grown ups, and we are always waiting for people to tell us what to do. And part of it had to do with guilt over all the help we got from family and friends in 2005, and sort of a fool-me-twice-shame-on-me attitude about what we’d do if another storm came.

Eventually we realized we had to set all that aside, and make a call one way or another. And in the face of overwhelming evidence pointing in the opposite direction — bright, flashing arrows crying “GO THE OTHER WAY!” — it was completely obvious what we were going to do.

Posted by jackson on 28 Aug 2007
Filed Under: New Orleans | No Comments »