Waiting

Last summer, I tried to buy a house in New Orleans, but everything fell apart at the last minute. By that point, law school and the end of my employment were looming and I gave up. Now that seems like yet another way that I was lucky. The day after the deal fell through, I found that adorable rental house, with an option to buy in a year or so. It was perfect.

I still get email from the real estate agent I was working with, who is now back in New Orleans. Her house is in the Bywater, where they seem to have fewer utility services than uptown. That's also where A lives--he said they won't have home phone service until MARCH. They basically have to reinstall the entire infrastructure. But uptown is in better shape. The real estate agent mentioned that, although the CCs on the corner of Jefferson and Magazine is closed, somehow its wireless internet is still going strong. So all these people from across town gather outside its windows to access the internet and send email.

It's been a week since I did my mountain of paperwork for my internship and related background check. I was feeling paranoid because I hand't heard anything, and I started to wonder if I had amnesia about engaging in some traitorious subversive activity. But yesterday I got a phone call, asking me to fax over one more document. Was there a problem? I asked, trying not to sound too nervous. No, they were just getting around to reviewing my file. But when they want me to do something, I have to do it right that second. I think--I hope--everything should be finished today, and I will find out when and where I have to report for work.

Which gives me something new to worry about. I was looking at last year's cases, which they list online. About half the time they seem to be on what I would consider the right side, and half the time they're not. They're the EPA's legal defenders, and I think its fair to say that the EPA is, moderately speaking, not what it should be.

It's depressing. Politically and environmentally, what's happening in the wake of the hurricanes in Louisiana is depressing. Because nothing, NOTHING, that should be done is being done. For one thing, this should have been a huge national wakeup call about the rapid disappearance of the Louisiana coast and the many devastating consequences of that. But even now, no one is paying attention, and our last-minute opportunity is being squandered.

I pushed Mike Tidwell's Bayou Farewell last week. I have the pushy urge to send a copy to everyone I know. Could you read it as a favor to me, please? Here's something from the introduction, which was published in 2003 and probably writting in 2002 or earlier:

"A devastating chain reaction has resulted from the taming of the Mississippi, and now the entire coast is disappearing at breakneck speed, with an area equal to the size of Manhattan succumbing every ten months. It is, hands down, the fastest-disappearing landmass on earth, and New Orleans itself is at great risk of vanishing.

"What's being lost is an American treasure, a place as big as the Everglades and just as beautiful, where sky and marsh and wildlife converge, where millions of migratory birds thrive on wetlands that once served as muse to John James Audubon. This world, containing a staggering 25 percent of America's coastal wetlands, may be totally gone in the next few decades, taking with it a huge part of America's economy and a shield against hurricanes for two million citizens.

"Yet almost no one outside the affected area, outside lower Louisiana, knows what's happening here..."

By the way, that wasn't a typo: an area the size of Manhattan disappears every TEN MONTHS. If Massachusetts or California or just about any other state was losing landmass at that rate, it would cause a national uproar. But this is happening in poor, corrupt, fucked-up Louisiana, and no one gives a shit.

I can't stand it.