It’s another Friday night here in the Froggy Bottom Café, but the crowd is subdued, and rightly so; there’s only one thing on everyone’s mind tonight, the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Someone puts a quarter in the jukebox and a Louis Armstrong tune starts up:

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
And miss it each night and day
I know I’m not wrong… this feeling’s gettin’ stronger
The longer, I stay away
Miss them moss covered vines…the tall sugar pines
Where mockin’ birds used to sing
And I’d like to see that lazy Mississippi…hurryin’ into spring

The moonlight on the bayou…….a Creole tune…. that fills the air
I dream… about Magnolias in bloom……and I’m wishin’ I was there

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that’s where you left your heart
And there’s one thing more…I miss the one I care for
More than I miss New Orleans

(instrumental break)

The moonlight on the bayou…….a Creole tune…. that fills the air
I dream… about Magnolias in bloom……and I’m wishin’ I was there

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans
When that’s where you left your heart
And there’s one thing more…I miss the one I care for
More…..more than I miss…….New Orleans

Charlotte Porter, AP bureau chief for New Orleans, knows.

‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.  – Alfred Lord Tennyson

Some of us never got around to going to New Orleans.  Never quite enough money, or had to use the vacation this year to go see the in-laws in Kansas City, or grandma in Philly with Alzheimer’s.  And now it will never be as it was.  You tell me who has the more poignant heartache – someone who’s been there, or one who’s always wanted to go and never did?

I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken — and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived. –  Margaret Mitchell

Oh, they’ll rebuild something on the same spot and call it New Orleans – there’s too much money to be made in the tourist trade, and the place is the fifth busiest port in the world – bigger than New York.  Funny how you never find out these things until a time like this – like heroic tales about an old uncle from his days in WWII, that you never hear until his viewing…  Of course the site is terrible from a physical standpoint; it’s a foolish thing to do; it’s only asking for more heartache – but so is falling in love, and that’s why we’ll do it.  Call it a fatal flaw in the species, like a moth drawn to a flame…

From the New York Times:

“We’ll rebuild, of course,” Mr. Morial [former mayor of NO, now head of the Urban League] said. “But what made New Orleans is the polyglot, the tapestry, the mosaic, the gumbo. So the French Quarter gets most of the attention, but the Quarter feeds from the arteries of the neighborhoods.”
He paused and gasped again as the screen showed the flooded images from the low-income Ninth Ward: “Oh my God, oh my God. We’re looking at the worst natural disaster in American history.”
Left unspoken was the question not of how to rebuild the French Quarter, but how to rebuild the city of Stella, Blanche and Stanley, the city that to William Faulkner was “the labyrinthine mass of oleander and jasmine, lantana and mimosa,” a place one admirer said “could wreck your liver and poison your blood,” the city of the Italianate mansions of the Garden District and forlorn housing projects like the one named Desire – a place that gave America most of its music, much of its literature, a cracked mirror glimpse of American exotica and a fair piece of its soul.

If New Orleans is ever to be rebuilt, it’s not going to be just a matter of bricks and mortar.  It’s going to require a reinfusion of soul.  So this evening, instead of giving you a lot of lyrics or CD recommendations or snide chatter like I usually do, I’d like to ask anyone out there who has special memories of New Orleans to share them with us.  The sight, sound, smell, taste and feel of the place.  The heart and soul that we need to hang on to, not only to get through the difficult days immediately ahead, but also to document – who knows whom your words may touch – so that what’s rebuilt is more than a theme park with a saucy attitude, spicy gumbo, and one hell of a soundtrack.

Our thoughts and best wishes go out to those who don’t have the comfort of sitting in front of a keyboard this evening, whose worldly belongings are reduced to the clothes on their backs, who may not even have a bottle of potable water.  The images on TV are horrific, and there’s more horror, sadly, to come.  But let’s take a little time this evening, if you’re so inclined, to remember the best of what was, so that it’s not totally swept away.  Peace.