NEW YORK, May 25 — After much delay, through finals and not realizing Nick Kristof had already announced that he is taking a medical student from Washington University in St. Louis on his trip to Africa, and not me, here is my entry essay, written seven weeks ago, April 6. Enjoy, comment, be merry. —B.S.
New Orleans, my home for eight months now, scares America. It shouldn’t, but it does. The city is a mess, with its iconic streetcars seldom running, traffic signals out or missing, and potholes growing into craters, but it shouldn’t scare people.
Anderson Cooper and The New York Times love to announce in primetime and on page one that murders are up, long-time residents are staying away, and flooded neighborhoods remain devastated. Do-gooders and positivity abound, but America doesn’t notice, except during Mardi Gras.
As the second storm season after Hurricane Katrina approaches, America still wonders whether New Orleans will sink or swim, and many Americans are too scared to answer that question by visiting. They are Americans like my father, a worldly, if absent-minded, professor, who, when I call home nightly from NOLA, always has yet another sad story to share about this city. After endless bad news, I finally limited the nightly rehash by requiring him to share a positive story for every negative one. The flow has trickled to a slow drip.
Upon moving to the bayou, I expected to watch New Orleans rebound, but I’ve seen more change in myself, adjusting to a new normal that includes flooded, empty store fronts and drenching humidity. New Orleans is, appropriately, the City that Care Forgot. In observing it as I live here and share stories of its good, I’m hoping it won’t become the City that Americans Gave Up On.
The green light at Oak Street and Carrollton Avenue is out, but it doesn’t stop me from driving that route, the only way to the post office. Thugs murdered a member of the Hot Eight Brass Band days after Christmas, but it doesn’t keep me from grooving to NOLA’s notes. I came to New Orleans to learn the law — a long and laborious process — but I’m also here as the eyes of scared Americans, seeing it to show them it’s worth saving.
New Orleans frightens Americans so much they won’t visit now. They’re immobilized like a bitterly cold winter freezing Lake Erie. Africa shocks Americans into near-permanent paralysis, like Vonnegut’s illusory ice-nine. Hurricanes and murders are frightening. AIDS, malaria, and genocide are dazing, stunning, overwhelming.
A friend in Manhattan recently shared a dating debacle, whose critical character is African. Bobbi, a bubbly 20-something grad student met a seemingly nice, dinner-worthy, Wall-Street type, WST. After a couple dates, they were out again, strolling through the Village, when they passed an Ethiopian restaurant. WST nodded, acknowledging its presence to Bobbi. She replied enthusiastically, sharing her love for the cuisine and suggesting they eat there. WST scoffed, appalled.
“Ethiopian food!?” he retorted, his tone conveying his sense the concept was an oxymoron. “They don’t eat! They’re starving over there!” South Park’s Starvin’ Marvin apparently taught WST all he knew of Ethiopia.
Americans misperceive Africa, but only in part due to apathy and ignorance. To them — or, perhaps “us,” because while I care, I don’t yet “get it,” having never traveled there — Africa is apartheid and “Heart of Darkness.” Deserts, Darfur and Hollywood’s “Congo.” (“There are two countries named Congo? No way!”). It is a far-off fantasyland, veiled in dreams of the Nile and savannah-scapes, drowned out by nightmares of famine and genocide.
Journalists can’t make Americans care or “get it,” but if we don’t try, we’ve already failed. The Times tries and often succeeds, but its readership and perspective limit its reach. I’m ready to take a shot — to be an American who cares and gets it, and acts as the others’ eyes and ears, sharing some stories to shake their catatonic states and show them they can help, bit by bit — or, to borrow a title phrase from Anne Lamott, bird by bird.
Law school — the work, the competition, the distance from home — has humbled me, the institution’s process grinding me down systematically, as I struggle daily to restore myself. Africa, I know, will shatter me — not slowly and methodically, but haphazardly and unexpectedly, all at once. And I’ll rebuild myself, opening new eyes to share its stories with the world.
When’s our flight? I’ll meet you at JFK.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Journalists Mostly Rise to the Challenge
NEW ORLEANS, April 19 — In this week of stark tragedy, growing, it seems, by the day, our journalists — several of them my friends and former colleagues — have risen to the challenge of painting the picture of the devastating Tech rampage. With the possible and debatable exception of NBC airing video from the killer — effectively giving him what he wanted — journalists have, I believe, used remarkably good judgment in reporting and sharing a remarkably difficult story.
In my journalism life, I've reported some tragic stories, but largely after the fact and well removed from the scene of the losses. These journalists are on the ground in one of the most intense tragedy stories in American history, trumped only in recent memory by 9/11, arguably. They've done a remarkable job to date, and I'm proud to say I've worked with them and to call them friends. They've kept Americans, myself inlcuded, in the loop and on the ground with them as we all struggle to understand and come to terms with Monday's shocking events.
A couple pieces of work particularly worth your time: Chico Harlan's Virginia Tech Journal for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07108/779020-84.stm and the on-the-ground reports from staff at The Chronicle of Higher Education, particularly Eric Hoover's second-day reports setting the scene on campus. The Chron is at http://chronicle.com and — with this content posted free of the normal subscription requirements.
In my journalism life, I've reported some tragic stories, but largely after the fact and well removed from the scene of the losses. These journalists are on the ground in one of the most intense tragedy stories in American history, trumped only in recent memory by 9/11, arguably. They've done a remarkable job to date, and I'm proud to say I've worked with them and to call them friends. They've kept Americans, myself inlcuded, in the loop and on the ground with them as we all struggle to understand and come to terms with Monday's shocking events.
A couple pieces of work particularly worth your time: Chico Harlan's Virginia Tech Journal for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07108/779020-84.stm and the on-the-ground reports from staff at The Chronicle of Higher Education, particularly Eric Hoover's second-day reports setting the scene on campus. The Chron is at http://chronicle.com and — with this content posted free of the normal subscription requirements.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Sadness Still Too Similar
NEW ORLEANS, April 17 — It took insidehighered.com to remind me of the obvious. The tragedy at Tech is all too close to home because it mirrors, in sheer number of fatalities if not in method to the madness, the Pan Am Flight 103 tragedy that took 35 Syracuse University students, my predecessors as Orangemen and Orangewomen, from life.
I'm shaken by the sad similarities. Tech will be recovering from this from now until forever. And it struck me today that the 19th anniversary of Pan Am 103 is approaching rapidly, which puts us closer to 20 and still remembering, recovering.
The insidehighered.com article is at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/17/syracuse.
I'm shaken by the sad similarities. Tech will be recovering from this from now until forever. And it struck me today that the 19th anniversary of Pan Am 103 is approaching rapidly, which puts us closer to 20 and still remembering, recovering.
The insidehighered.com article is at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/17/syracuse.
Too Familiar a Tragedy: Mass Shootings at Virginia Tech
NEW ORLEANS, April 16 — Eight years ago this week, an editorial board member from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle called me, seeking a young voice to comment on the Columbine High School tragedy in Littleton, Colo. My piece ran with others two days after the massacre, under the banner, "Rampage at a Colorado School."
Tonight, I'm sad to note, not much has changed but the date, the numbers, and the geography. CNN's site carries the banner, "STUDENTS SLAUGHTERED," and they were today at Virginia Tech. Thousands of miles from Littleton, 20 more killed than in that tragedy, and I find my old words ring too true.
As a newly minted 17-year-old budding journalist, I wrote, "As I watched the story unfold live on the cable news stations, the horror became increasingly evident to me." Tonight, with my 25th birthday tomorrow, the words carry more tragic weight. I've since left high school, finished college, worked, and started law school, but the tragedies of this week — in 1999 and 2007 — throw the fragility and trauma of life and death into sharp relief.
I can't help but wonder if there's something about this week that begets tragedy. Columbine, now Tech. Before them, Oklahoma City and Waco.
"I was struck by shock and utter disbelief," the 17-year-old me wrote. "A wave of numbness swept over me. As the hours progressed and information continued to be revealed, the numbness grew. Any tragedy of this magnitude is too close to home."
Today, the numbness and shock returned on hearing 27 shots ring out in a grainy video captured by cell phone. And my heart wrenches for the Virginia Tech community, and it wrenches again for academia, knowing it easily could have been here in New Orleans, or up at Columbia, or in Syraucse or Rochester.
I don't have the answers, only some questions. Let's find the solutions together to grieve and grow from this tragedy with hope that we'll never bear another like it.
Tonight, we are all Hokies, and we are with y'all at Tech.
Tonight, I'm sad to note, not much has changed but the date, the numbers, and the geography. CNN's site carries the banner, "STUDENTS SLAUGHTERED," and they were today at Virginia Tech. Thousands of miles from Littleton, 20 more killed than in that tragedy, and I find my old words ring too true.
As a newly minted 17-year-old budding journalist, I wrote, "As I watched the story unfold live on the cable news stations, the horror became increasingly evident to me." Tonight, with my 25th birthday tomorrow, the words carry more tragic weight. I've since left high school, finished college, worked, and started law school, but the tragedies of this week — in 1999 and 2007 — throw the fragility and trauma of life and death into sharp relief.
I can't help but wonder if there's something about this week that begets tragedy. Columbine, now Tech. Before them, Oklahoma City and Waco.
"I was struck by shock and utter disbelief," the 17-year-old me wrote. "A wave of numbness swept over me. As the hours progressed and information continued to be revealed, the numbness grew. Any tragedy of this magnitude is too close to home."
Today, the numbness and shock returned on hearing 27 shots ring out in a grainy video captured by cell phone. And my heart wrenches for the Virginia Tech community, and it wrenches again for academia, knowing it easily could have been here in New Orleans, or up at Columbia, or in Syraucse or Rochester.
I don't have the answers, only some questions. Let's find the solutions together to grieve and grow from this tragedy with hope that we'll never bear another like it.
Tonight, we are all Hokies, and we are with y'all at Tech.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Come visit NOLA. You'll survive. I promise.
NEW ORLEANS, April 7 — PBS's American Experience episode on New Orleans, airing as I write this post, says NOLA was once in the top five list of must-visit cities for the American wealthy. Where is it now? Probably not high.
It's probably not high on your list either, I imagine, but it should be. I could laundry list the reasons why, the sights to see, the music to hear, the food to eat, but other bloggers will give you that in more luxurious detail.
Instead, I'll tell you why you aren't already here, and why I think you won't visit. I hope you'll prove me wrong.
So you're scared of being shot? (Scared of jazz and gumbo?) You don't want to see the devastation? (You should see it, but there's a lot of city that wasn't flooded.) You don't like swamp weather? (Get here fast then, it's 43 degrees and rainy right now; 70s and sunny next week; 90 and sweaty in a month.)
I'm torn on my experience in this city. New Orleans now is remarkable — more unique, historic, and important than ever. Law school in New Orleans, however, keeps me from most of the magic, most of the time. That said, I value the time I've had here, and if I stay or if I go, New Orleans holds a special place in my soul.
"For most of its history, New Orleans had a reputation of one of the most unsanitary cities in the country," PBS American Experience says. (It's cleaner now, I promise. There's a new garbage contractor — twice weekly pickups resumed this week for the first time since Katrina.)
It's probably not high on your list either, I imagine, but it should be. I could laundry list the reasons why, the sights to see, the music to hear, the food to eat, but other bloggers will give you that in more luxurious detail.
Instead, I'll tell you why you aren't already here, and why I think you won't visit. I hope you'll prove me wrong.
So you're scared of being shot? (Scared of jazz and gumbo?) You don't want to see the devastation? (You should see it, but there's a lot of city that wasn't flooded.) You don't like swamp weather? (Get here fast then, it's 43 degrees and rainy right now; 70s and sunny next week; 90 and sweaty in a month.)
I'm torn on my experience in this city. New Orleans now is remarkable — more unique, historic, and important than ever. Law school in New Orleans, however, keeps me from most of the magic, most of the time. That said, I value the time I've had here, and if I stay or if I go, New Orleans holds a special place in my soul.
"For most of its history, New Orleans had a reputation of one of the most unsanitary cities in the country," PBS American Experience says. (It's cleaner now, I promise. There's a new garbage contractor — twice weekly pickups resumed this week for the first time since Katrina.)
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