Our New World

Although things are improving daily, it remains very hectic and very “different” around here. I have worked on an update entry here on and off for a few weeks, but usually get drawn away from it for more pressing priorties and the things of which I write continue to drastically change – as does all our community and environment. Seldom, if all, do I get a chance to read here – I will catch up when I can.

I did come across the article below, however, and I think this guy is dead-on and he touches on much of what I was trying to capture. Excuse the “cut and paste” but…this is how it is. Continued thanks to all here for your care and concern and assistance.

Phaedrus

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Our new world
By JR Ball , Executive Editor

“Twenty-four hours.

How does life do a 180 in 24 hours? Wake up in the morning and the only thing you give a damn about is your family, finances and tee times. Twenty-four hours later and you anguish in drop-jaw silence for people you’ve never met, watching New Orleans become the sister city of Atlantis.

Hell–on that last Sunday of life as we once knew it–was a customer service nightmare with a cell phone company. Twenty-four wind-blown hours later and a hurricane called Katrina unleashes her horrific fury on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, her levee-collapsing wake showing us all what hell is really like.

You heard the dire warnings. I heard them. But, really, did anyone truly believe the setting sun of Aug. 28 was the dawn of a cataclysm? We were wrong. The thing we all knew could happen but never thought would happen did happen–the walls protecting America’s most eclectic city gave way.

The waters of Lake Ponchartrain and the Mississippi River rose with the sun on Aug. 30, temporarily burying a city, but forever burying the arrogance that it could never happen to us.

Two laps by the little hand around the watch dial was all it took for our world to turn upside down.

Bitching about 57 minutes on hold to settle a billing error seems something worse than petty, when 24 hours later you’re watching the homes of loved ones and friends swamped by a flood of water, raw sewage and death.

A few years ago, some think-tank demographer studied population trends and concluded that within 20 years Baton Rouge would surpass New Orleans as the state’s top metropolitan area. Surprisingly the report generated little response, most dismissing it as nonsense.

What’s Third Street to Bourbon Street, BREC’s Zoo to the Audubon Zoo, Spanish Town to Uptown, choreographed lawnmowers to Rex, Juban’s to Commander’s Palace?

Turns out the demographer was wrong–it took just 24 hours.

Who knows how long, if ever, before New Orleans reclaims the top spot, but right now it’s behind Grand Isle and Zwolle.

No one has a clue how many people now reside in the Baton Rouge. Some say a million, others throw out numbers closer to 700,000. Only this is certain: Twenty-four hours before the term “Category Five” started causing Pavlovian trembles the population was 413,000–and falling.

Jerry Seinfeld coming to town was the only reason I gave the River Center a second thought. Now I can’t stop thinking about the 5,000 evacuees who call it home. Speaking of arenas, I remember the Maravich Assembly Center dungeon as a hot and smelly place where LSU’s basketball teams practiced when the main floor was occupied, not the morgue that it is today. Dunk house to death house in 24 gruesome hours.

Housing? Remember when no one could figure out who was going to buy the never-ending number of homes under construction? Now houses aren’t going up fast enough and price gouging is the new fear. There once was the equivalent of an empty Class A office tower on the lease and sublease market. Now we’re converting empty big boxes into office suites. Bubble to bonanza in 24 mandatory evacuation hours.

Catholic High was one school. Now it’s Catholic by day, Brother Martin by night. The commute from CCLA to downtown took 18 minutes, now it takes an hour-and-18 minutes.

Traffic flow has always been an adventure, what with our love of single entrance subdivisions, our hatred for street grids and DPW’s decision to allow I-10 to become Main Street. Planning sins magnified in a rewritten present where every road doubles as a parking lot.

A lack of traffic left many to wonder if Metro Airport was on a flight path to a thing of the past. It’s now the second busiest airport in America, its runways filled with rescue planes and helicopters.

Nothing in this town matters more than LSU football. Twenty-four hours of seeing the sick, injured and dying fill the Tigers’ dens, and football matters little.

What can change in 24 hours?

Squabbles with my wife, screaming toddlers and finding a way to pay both the mortgage and private school tuition was life’s biggest headache. Now I only care about hugging my family and telling them how much I love them.”

(JR Ball is executive editor of Business Report.)