I Love a Parade

This is the way it is in New Orleans. Like the people of the city, we needed desperately to have fun. In spite of everything...there is music. In spite of everything the band plays on...

I love a parade! Who doesn’t? There are homecoming parades, Thanksgiving parades, parades for the Fourth of July. But the parade I participating in recently was a jazz band parade in New Orleans.

New Orleans is known as the “birthplace of jazz” and jazz has become a traditional music suitable for almost every occasion there. There are jazz bands at weddings, conventions, parties, celebrations of all kinds -- even funeral processions.

The Storyville Stompers is a brass band that plays traditional New Orleans music, the kind that jazz and Dixieland are based on. They are known for their performances at Mardi Gras, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, The French Quarter Festival and numerous other national and international celebrations.

When they are around, everything else stops.

The band parades on foot through the streets of the city with a drum major leading as only a New Orleans drum major can, with a lively step and the waving parasol that that has become a legendry part of the New Orleans tradition.

When bands paraded in early times, children often followed behind, imitating the high-stepping, umbrella-twirling drum major. Soon a second line of paraders formed, a line following after the band and a tradition known as “second lining” was born.

Attendees at the recent National Society of Newspaper Columnists conference in New Orleans had to walk several blocks from the hotel to a meeting at the Aquarium. Why walk when you can dance? And so the conference planners hired a traditional jazz band and before we knew it, we were high stepping and second lining as if we had been doing it for a lifetime.

It is hard to stand still when the Stompers play. No one can avoid dancing along. When a band plays jazz New Orleans style, the only thing that matters is having a good time.

We came prepared. We brought kazoos to play and umbrellas to twirl. Here we were, a group of writers, nerds, and old folks, dancing through the streets of a city like a bunch of giddy kids.

Traffic stopped for us, tourists stopped for us, cameras flashed, and we boogied on. In New Orleans , they have grown accustomed to street performances and only smile, wave and applaud, wishing they could join in or maybe even dancing right along.

I twirled my umbrella and danced just like everyone else. After all, what good is life if you can’t have fun? We marched into the aquarium, past the fish and aquatic animals and into the room where our event was being held.

I don’t know if the creatures were accustomed to such festivities or not, but they seemed not to mind. It was hard to play my kazoo and twirl my umbrella at the same time. Maybe I’m one of those people who can’t walk and chew gum without forgetting to do one of them.

We all made it in spite of traffic, rough sidewalks, gawking tourists, flashing cameras, heat and humidity, and hysterical laughter. Now, if anyone should ever ask, I can say that I’ve been second lining in New Orleans .

I really doubt that it will ever come up, though. It never has before.

Life is short and the world is a small place. Someday I can say, “And then there was the time in New Orleans when I went second lining with the Storyville Stompers Brass Band.”

I’m sure when I tell about it, the grandkids will simply say “We’ve heard that story before, grandma. Tell us another one.”

Sadly, I am

“Are you okay?” my friend at work asks me.

Sadly, I am.

Sadly, because I can recover, I can go home, I can go back to my job, my family, my pets, my stuff – I have a life.

But the people in New Orleans don’t have any of these, at least not the ones whose homes were destroyed, those displaced by the storms. And even those who have gone back to “life after Katrina” carry scars. The wounds may heal, but the scars never will.

There is something wrong here.

It is just wrong that we can forget so easily. I’m beginning to feel that people in New Orleans are right when they say they have been forgotten. After all, it’s been three years. Maybe nobody does care anymore.

It is just too easy for us to slip back into life, go on, decide that the problem is overwhelming, or someone else’s problem.

This is an entire city, and generations, forever damaged. And we just go on about our life doing nothing?

If enough of us scream loud enough and keep on screaming, will we be heard?

If the country can turn its back on New Orleans, it can also turn its back on you and me.

We are so lucky, so blessed, that we’ve become complacent.

Were they foolish for living where nature could reclaim its own? Of course, but… the people in the Midwest live behind river levees, and on the New Madrid fault. People in California live on the San Andreas fault and pray the “Big One” never comes. People in Florida defy hurricanes every year.

We all live with the illusion that it won’t happen to us.

But it can.

And in New Orleans it did – the worst natural disaster to ever occur in an urban area.

Then I found a Bill for Gulf Coast Recovery was passed by the House and went to the Senate where it has rotted in a committee for over a year.

This bill could provide for the most urgent need – affordable housing – at an estimated cost of $2 per person.

I just don’t get it. There must be something wrong with me.

Why can’t we as a country renew our efforts to help the Gulf Coast? Surely, it is our moral and human responsibility.

I was there – I saw the remaining destruction with my own two eyes, heard the stories first hand. They are people just like me – with one exception, one horrible exception.

If the government will not act sufficiently to help the Gulf Coast recover, we must somehow act in unison to demand that justice is done.

What is needed was put very simply a long time ago, and it has never been said better since.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”