Reviving America's Atlantis

While 80 percent of New Orleans may be underwater at press time, and, as Allen G. Breed of the Associated Press so eloquently, and elegiacally, chronicles: "A once-vibrant city of 480,000 people, overtaken just days ago by floods, looting, rape and arson, was now an empty, sodden tomb," I have – to paraphrase Shakespeare – come to praise New Orleans, not to bury it.

Let others with stronger stomachs deal with the sordid politics of this horrific situation. Certainly from where I sit, it reeks!

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• It's Bush-Wah reading from an upside-down copy of "My Pet Goat" to kindergartners while the Twin Towers are being vaporized, all over again.

• Meanwhile, FEMA the Impotent (Official Motto: "Too Little, Too Late") is helmed by a hapless hack with not a whiff of national security expertise whose resume, which actually includes the Arabian Horse Ass-ociation, I kid you not, reads like an Onion parody.

• As the United Kingdom's typically cheeky Independent snickers, "The criticism is all the sharper because the president did nothing to alter his holiday schedule for 48 hours. Vice-President Dick Cheney remains on holiday in Wyoming. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, returned to Washington after being seen shopping for $7,000 shoes in Manhattan as New Orleans went under."

• Ouch! Shopping for $7,000 shoes! How's that for Condo-Leaser's pre-Labor Day solidarity with all her impoverished Af-Am brethren dying amid the hellish devastation of the Big Un-Easy? She's all heart.

• Hey, maybe you've read the purported military report on "weaponizing weather in wartime" – scary! – and wonder ... Was this apocalyptic catastrophe somehow engineered as a racist exercise in human sacrifice and an abomination testing the American public's reaction to the repugnant imposition of martial law?

• Wake up, people! Have you heard word one about the Peace Movement's Sept. 24 protest galvanized by Cindy Sheehan since Hurricane Katrina struck?

• In case you haven't noticed, apparently this hurricane provides another vile, creepy Bush-Wah administration adventure in sickeningly opportunistic cronyism. Guess what? Halliburton, and a former FEMA functionary, were just hired to do the clean-up. Surprise!

If all this, plus getting clobbered by skyrocketing gasoline prices, isn't sufficient to trigger massive citizen revolt, then clearly the majority of Americans is either moribund or over-medicated. But you knew that!

Enough!

Heartbreakingly, New Orleans always was one of my truly favorite cities, a litmus test for romance. I had been there five or six times in my life – to feast on the French Quarter's historic architecture, those unforgettable wrought-iron balconies, beignets and chicory-laced cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde, shrimp remoulade at Galatoire's, incredible jazz and blues on Basin Street, red beans and rice and oyster po'boys under the banana trees in Jackson Square, sipping Hurricane cocktails at Brennan's, sashaying down Bourbon Street, being spellbound by the legend of hairdresser-high priestess Marie Laveau at the Voodoo Museum – just as long as it wasn't Mardi Gras season when the streets were paved with, well, puke.

Three years ago, I took one of the last long-distance railway rides left in America – a picturesque 28-hour jaunt from Philadelphia to New Orleans on Amtrak's endangered "Crescent."

Once, a decade ago, I even flew to New Orleans for a night just to have dinner with a crush. I'll always remember hearing the blues musician known as Rooster, and wonder if he's still alive.

Alas, he's not on this latest list of surviving New Orleans performers, sent by Portland journalist, filmmaker, and music aficionado Tom D'Antoni: Theresa Andersson, Marcia Ball, Harold Battiste, Russell Batiste, Terrance Blanchard, Bonerama, John Boutt?, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Henry Butler, Jon Cleary, Davell Crawford, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Fats Domino, Snooks Eaglin (and family of 12, now homeless), Jack Fine (of the Palmetto Bug Stompers), Derrick Freeman, Galactic, Tim Green, John "Papa" Gros, Corey Harris, Leigh Harris, Corey Henry, The Iguanas, Kirk Joseph, Tim Laughlin (unconfirmed), Lil' Rascals Brass Band, Eric Lindell, Jason Marsalis, Irvin Mayfield, Tom McDermott (unconfirmed), The Neville Brothers, Charmaine Neville, Ivan Neville, Anders Osborne, Dave Pirner, George Porter Jr., The Radiators, Marcus Roberts, Coco Robicheaux, Kermit Ruffins, Mark Samuels (Pres., Basin Street Records), Ben Sandmel, Mem Shannon and the Membership, Brian Stoltz, Bill Summers, Irma Thomas, Allen Toussaint, Dr. Michael White.

Shame on U.S. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert for doubting NOLA deserves to be rebuilt. Listen up, dude: New Orleans will never die. Besides, environmental debacle or not, it's unthinkable this great American city won't somehow rise again. And, please, not as a food-oriented theme park in Texas, never!