Not New Orleans

I'm interning with an organization that has a chance to present to the city council a set of policy recommendations on energy, sustainable rebuilding and related issues. So I spent the day at a meeting of bright, progressive people who have lots of good ideas about how to make New Orleans better than it was before. You can get really excited about the possibilities and enthusiastic about sticking around and being a part of it. Then you can walk out the door into reality--the state of the city, the state of local politics--and plunge back into despair.

It's so hard to make the decision to leave New Orleans. That must seem crazy to outsiders. This town is a wreck, it's barely liveable, it's probably doomed. But there's no substitute for it.

I'm not the only one going around and around with this question. Everyone's talking about where else you could go. There are other cool cities, places that are better than here by any objective standard. Portland, Seattle, Austin are the ones that come up most often. Chicago or Minneapolis if you can take the landlocked cold. Somewhere in North Carolina. Somewhere out west, maybe Tucson? If you can't pry yourself out of south Louisiana, maybe Lafayette could be a viable alternative?

Yet I've heard at least a dozen people come to the conclusion that there isn't a satisfactory alternative in the United States. It's not that those other towns aren't great, but they aren't this. So maybe somewhere in Mexico, or Europe. Maybe Castro will kick and Cuba will open up and we'll all go to Havana.

Mr. M is an advocate for the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico, warm and beachy places where my American legal training would be relevant. The idea of San Juan, Puerto Rico appeals to me. Mr. M doesn't necessarily need a real city, but I do. And Puerto Rico is a mixed civil/common law jurisdiction just like Louisiana, so my preparation for the Louisiana bar would serve me well there. For that reason Tulane graduates are pretty well represented in the Puerto Rico bar. (In fact, Louisiana's law schools are the only ones in the states that teach civil law in any depth whatsoever, and knowing about civil law makes it easier to get a legal job outside of the United States. Easier, but not easy.)

But if I were really serious about Puerto Rico, I'd have to be working on reclaiming my Spanish right now. I'd be visiting to see if it's really what I want. I'd be thinking about how to get a job there without any past connections to the place. I'd be investigating whether I could do the kind of work I want there.

Instead, I found an environmental public interest firm that does exactly what I'd like to do. They focus on the Southeast, which is the region I think I'd probably choose to stay in if I don't run off to Puerto Rico or a foreign country. This firm seems to be pretty well-funded for a public interest entity--they actually pay their summer interns a reasonable salary. They have offices in some pretty nice towns. But not the towns I would choose. Not New Orleans.

Not New Orleans. That should be a plus, right? New Orleans is a wreck, a shithole, a disaster in progress. But it gets a hold on some of us. It's like being in love with someone impossible, no good for you, and everyone can see it will never work out, but you're in love and you think she's the only one in the world.