A Photo Essay
Larry L. Dill's
New Hope Journal
Personal Essays and Public Opinions since 1979
September, 2005
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September 8, 2005
The tragedy in New Orleans and the tragedy of 9/11 were both preventable in a country as rich as the United States. 9/11 was the direct result of an egregious foreign policy that, ironically, was not quite visible to the American people until our government’s insane invasion of Iraq two years later (it still seems to be invisible to many).
New Orleans was a natural disaster (or at least we think it was: global warming could have had something to do with it). But the US government’s and the local and state governments’ responses to Katrina are in many ways more indicative of the sad state of American social and political life than was 9/11.
New Orleans is viewed in the American psyche as either a place to get drunk during Mardi Gras or as the true birthplace of jazz-- America’s greatest contribution to modern art. A few years ago Deborah Gaddy and I enjoyed both the jazz and the food and the drink there (bar hopping in the Garden District) and shopping one of the finest millinery shops in the world in the heart of the French Quarter.
But logistically, New Orleans, sometime in the late twentieth century, surpassed New York to become the US’s leading seaport. All the network news reports notwithstanding, it became America’s busiest seaport not because of oil but because of scrap metal exports down the Mississippi river from the heartland. New Orleans became the bowels of American over-indulgence and the outsourcing of its industrial might.
The Dutch learned centuries ago how to live below sea level. New Orleans never did. America never did. Americans, from President Bush to the Mayor of New Orleans seem to think that divine intervention (or brute force) rather than public planning will see us through any little ole disaster that might befall us. People were defiant about 9/ll. But I think the destruction of the city of New Orleans might well go down in the history books as the first day of the decline and fall of the American Empire.
You know Greece is not a bad place to visit these days. And neither is Rome, or so I’ve heard from my first born daughter. It’s time for the US to take its place along side the ancient regimes of Europe as a “has-been” state for whom a fall from power might bring forth many great new human achievements and even greater social advances. It is hard to imagine how our US health care system, our social security system, even our education system could be much worse, given our GNP. In France, for example, America’s most hated ally, everyone, even foreigners (according to Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker), is entitled to free health care. In America, with no job and no health insurance and numbness in my right hand I spent over $3000 last year to find out that I had an easily and inexpensively correctable B12 deficiency.
This month’s New Hope Journal remains fixed on the basics: How does a man go out into the woods and build himself a house. It may seem irrelevant to you. But not to me. Deborah Gaddy has been keeping a photographic record of my quixotic adventure (19 photographs chosen for this essay) along with my commentary. If you have a low speed dial-up connection, welcome to my world. All things come to those who wait. I’ll be in New York for three weeks beginning September 17. I hope to have ready for the October issue a current work in progress on the history of French Culture. Not my normal line of work but hey, c’est la vie.
Stay in touch,
Larry L. Dill
The Building of Rockledge,
"Le Petit Salon de Roc"
A Photographic Essay by Deborah Gaddy with Commentary by Larry L. Dill
Go to Page One of Salon de Roc
Go to Page Two of Salon de Roc
Go to Page Three of Salon de Roc
Go to Page Four of Salon De Roc
Go to Zen of Personal Archetecture Part 1 (March 2004)
Go to Photo Essay Summer Camp At Rabbit Rock 2005
Go to Paris Blog
Go to August New Hope Journal
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Copyright 2005 by Larry L. Dill
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