An Hour with Andrei Codrescu

from the leed center at the university of kansas k pierre presents an hour with andre codrescu i'm kate mcintyre romanian born andre codrescu is well known to npr listeners for his regular commentaries on all things considered he came to the united states in nineteen sixty six he now teaches at louisiana state university and divides his time between batteries and new ones although he is best known as a poet and essayist codrescu is also a novelist filmmaker translator editor and screenwriter he won a peabody award for a rhodes scholar a travel documentary about the united states he writes and edits exquisite corpse an online monthly review of books and ideas his latest book there were months when a more is a collection of twenty years of essays about his adopted hometown of refuse appearance of the presentation of haiti's health center for the humanities and now here is andre codrescu fakir

thank you for the lovely introduction to lowest going to survive my introductions going to do for the next year which is the kind of the new time increments i think in a year which was actually used to thinking five minutes and decades and i just think in a year it's been exactly a year since i am i hope the american changed everything in the new orleans and the thing for me is well one of those events will be probably ah is beginning that his leading man has nineteen years ago with a front lawn so i'm going to talk a little bit about that the city and the year that dana scully the scoby year in the past and how the images of flowers syria for of new orleans broadcast

of the national media contrast to really with healthier from the from the ground and i'll just try to give you a feeling of power of a color have really mediated and heavily medicated sitting eighty percent of our psychologists left town and everybody's crazy as having a mental breakdown right now suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome which shows up about eight months later nine months later you're neither sir when they need them the most are not there when the eye this storm came abu ala then there are the refugees are they don't like to be called refugees i realize that that's to me the word answer has said wait i like it because i'm a permanent refugee meaning kissinger actually professional exiles

so in the end there about i will our house on the stop completely completely arbitrary fashion to quote from some of the really which i found delicious suffolk to think about this and it is and even outrage of cause i doris the colossal scandal of being a genius permits us not to be stoned like dogs to starve to death in only be by the grace of god some of their value set that during the twentieth century referring to himself of course i'm ready for a dose of the number of conditions that they don't get very would build along very much in public conversation on the movie of gods and genius me you know new orleans has a genius and he has a genius of place and i constantly in massachusetts say what it is about new orleans that makes it what does the culture of new orleans because in description in most pedestrian description is just plain bad place

to work the genius is the genius of the locals is a kind of genius that has actually intervened of god or you know god's intercessor saints of various kinds to protect the city numerous times in the past and that this protection didn't always work and so experienced that climate is that the part of new orleans history hurricane war yellow fever and other kinds of epidemics but the difference between those historical calamities and the recent storm is that the expectations of modernity of army diego the reality is that the united states of america should have an immediate global solution to catastrophe and the problem and yes this view lead to all kinds of mistakes made mistakes that the raw moment of the college's historical past and i'll just illuminates some of those in order of gravity and then in that sketch a chronology of my own thoughts

about what happened in iraq and because of this the terrible mistakes want was an evacuation of the people of the city two was a confusion of authorities are still goes on three the politicizing of every decision and that the insertion of race politics including old civil rights agenda as into the process are for sure the blame game for the race for a global solution five thirty five other family failed city can ever conceived and six the invention of schemes for reinventing this city so to begin of the first on the completely evacuate the cities it is an instant when to bring it back is nearly impossible now sending the archaeologist says the end of that to the credit of some the armenians they never left the city quite a few friends of mine stays in the french quarter which didn't flood i'm in the french quarter uptown

actually were or many people stayed were green attitudes and start a functioning within days of calamity and there are a small percentage of the city that came to be known tosses the sliver by the river or the isle of denial this little buy that other us your original city of lawrence of those built next is a naturally step toward form of the mississippi river and dime but the isle of denial is also this place at the french court that an uptown were lame absence can spend the rest of their lives ignoring the vast wind of the studio album and the city is still seventy percent is destroyed now part of the storm was lawrence's brothers playing claims to fame and the crisis is greatest failure is is it's provincialism and the same culture that the guards itzhak accent somebody probably and is it is very back at it involves itself intensely in the neighborhood the

rituals and mutual aid and carnival societies was also the impediments to what is variously called now restoring the building were bringing back new orleans those unsettled at oracle first gave a quick dorsal number of agents the worst of which was to set the new orbit urbanist and foremost authors division which is actually taking a very powerful serve but about half the people who once lived in new orleans there is no nuance to bring back when the people left your answer to arms with them so the first that he's that all the bother to scold after the deluge and it out about the refugees but i didn't think of it is that you think that it is still be good but it says there will be a little bit of more on several refugees move into your communities here are some of the changes in food will get better in the past ten years thanks to asian latin flavor is brought in by the

immigrants american food improved markedly disability instead of canned music you'll have the real i think club so much for men's three performers to make it come alive it lets start working now to remove the tide vessels that forbids figured i should just not subtle about laurence speaks fluent in many american cities get it to his ventures open to open up to you in public places and tell you stories you remember that once upon a time before television police to say hello to strangers and tell stories several times a year they will be festivals and put a simple remind you richly that it's ok to be alive and you don't have to work like a dog without enjoying this lifetime that'll be new coffee houses bars and the community centers you what you will hopefully forget to be a couch potato sure you might become a butterfly instead but all take a living human drug over a fully electronic pixel vampire many people shared their televisions that you know though speaking of

shooting the gun business of boomers that is doing right now there is a follow up to this as all other businesses will boom as well as skilled many letters from iran's poor and just don't expect them to finish anything on time the real estate market is booming already there follows several assassination of the real estate market is booming already schools will be filled to capacity and there will be a need for more teachers for more teachers to also be more jobs for doctors nurses firemen policemen and criminals you'll experience an overnight growth in self esteem as sol refugee poets and writers would begin to use your city is a source of material you also experienced an equal plane jumping personally view what they found you a longer experience any faith in government if you still haven't of refugees would teach you how to be self reliant the band and then you can depend on a comedian live without any faith in the government the bonds around the country now be sucked out of our first bush and his cronies

analyst by us officials and bureaucrats wasting of money in washington you'll be preaching to the choir you'll be renewed by the intelligence of the whole culture just like you're renewed by the effigies of europe after the second world war and the downside you will start smoking again speaking of reaction of allies today though the cell phones of the new center it's because i was looking on the state from the restaurant went on about is using their cell phones and so on let em in the required talking to them some people are opening them in the nose what is the old city that gesture either follow up to these and you know i'll be glad to follow it up in old question indie and in the question period as well but said there to business most of all of these things of that or the beginning of a flower tragedy i became amplifies things

like what does that illicit markets in nuance i mean now and who's the building this is and so once i will try to do to come around to that the confusion of our parties in doing it after the storm was extraordinary our mayor didn't did not have the authority to share any of the homeowners to the ruins were even dares the government couldn't sit the national level female failed miserably that's a story that just debuted probably i heard inside and so happen to have a good you know more on the picture from from the media by the army corps of engineers whose levees failed us panicked homeland security couldn't figure out what the category we fit into in the beginning the president promised money a grandstanding and their of the year in the french quarter and the generator

lights shortly after the storm some of you may be a member of this memorable image and then half a little while later put the whole matter behind him in the state of the union address when he didn't even mention new orleans since then he's been to know it's about fourteen times who's going to be there tomorrow and it's a day now this is isn't actually clarifies anything to the city the only solution that the part of the feds and disappear them immediately was the military solution and then in the motorized confident a war everything becomes war and there's nothing outside more than it is another violently part of that is sharply after the levees broke the bush administration or tough new orleans because it's not part of america it's merely part of becoming american empire the president preferred to us is not part of the world says we're not part of our country but part of the world look like iraq has to be secured by armies after doing nothing in the critical days after

katrina the government's response was to send us troops would the city emptied of its inhabitants the armies of the us marshals around guns at the ready waiting along charts for insurgents my dad breaking for baby food and toilet paper is to us on the entire clinton also just a little scratching around an already looked at wal mart today's lady so and i mean a new orleans city prides itself on its lack of corporate information that's one of the things stand and did their residents of that area fox long been hard to keep that walmart out of neurons so you know the defense of wal mart was similar one i never really sang get it informs every like there are more there are more helicopters overhead know that in the present tense because that's when i wrote that that's what the polls the case there are more helicopters overhead than people in the city now area of the sea of the pentagon

staged a military exercise using new orleans as a model insurgent iraqi city jets flew overhead battleships came up the mississippi and helicopter gunships lowered the french quarter in the ninth ward would with loudspeakers broadcasting a message stay in your houses we're friends of the iraqi people today the ninth ward are still on the law there and the measure america's our friend we have always jokingly refer to your own to spy for the third world a foreign country in the us with the normal rights lawyer america it that allows associates us most love us love about music and food and music and food that came from the depths of poverty and sorrow the slaves sank spirituals to lift themselves upfront payment to get god's ear new orleans jazz osborne warehouses another means of alleviating pain this musical the stories of the poor who had no way out of new orleans except for jesus of jane norton said other arts brought here by

spanish and french columnists by pirates and renegades by writers from other geographies of pain and by caribbean pagans consequently your answers the most diverse picture arts in the whole of our equipment much muslim states' lawsuit a costly just for the same reason your answers catholic kagan poor and bohemian the music is devil's music in this cesspool of sin in white evangelical america new orleans is synonymous with southern and more the female website is directing people to donate money to pat robertson's operation blessing if it is the third recommended charity and the female is to the first of the red cross and other story amazing story which only a few days ago the good reverend decision doesn't only a few days ago that would never endorse calling for the assassination of an as oscar as the in hugo chavez the administration put as much distance between the man of god delivered most of the christian evangelical vote to george bush as he could and i

concluded rather coyly of the time i sure as hell we live now hope there's nothing political about this it was a thrilling a moment in new orleans as calamitous past many questions i never asked her answer because the people never left and by never leaving they exercised authority of the locusts in and use the genius of the place to meet and mass and physically threatened urban destruction by by commercial interest and they could always get in and have a bias because proximity is a kind of authority and long distance authorities nothing which is why several armies of the night the state's wandered aimlessly accounts in an empty post katrina new orleans looking for an enemy and now today almost of the shooting at each other getting the new mexican national guard and that was actually part of a real love in a close situation because it was in

the park to vacuum doing immediately after and now spent all four after the storm and the answer to the questions raised by the confusion of the parties hasn't been clearly posed in and never answered any adjustment to create enough to become intelligible to the citizens and to this day of course you realize is that mayor nagin because he's a colorful law local figure but said the guy doesn't have a clue really a boy if he does he certainly is making an effort not to ally himself with any plan for political section of the city and that's a kind of activism to be an affectionate active non involvement is so that is a we'll kind of patchwork crime in o'hare isn't going on in the city from individuals i'm another point that i made is that the insertion of race politics including also writes agendas in the process of the blame game was successfully by mayor nagin to

his election then that is now becoming amplified by the spike lee documentary a new hampshire some of you have seen this on television the city has a black majority that suffered from a variety of bills before the storm and it is of course to that storm hit the poor and black neighborhood it's very hard but at the same time the storm was an equal opportunity destroyer that hit the block em like the nation for andy and the more affluent subcommittees like the lake erie and this calamity like many others including our major wars in the last century could have been another opportunity to shine light on the whole slew of economic and social problems of an american underclass that's now divided by various politicians of every stripe have always been using base to divide people of common interests but they have been hugely successful for quite a while now it's probably since ronald reagan presidency and this is a bigger one that was to discover the

pothole of blowing snakes tripoli like norman says the members bottles actually they have names you know emilio the always have names but the disability is the paper can see that there's a combination of a purse or frustrations on the part of politicians many of whom lost their constituents and that in fact nominated to the city council some extraordinary moment there and there are and there are a great many unexplored the remnants of unfulfilled justice issues since the civil rights iran all of this constantly making in the taking of new orleans from the politicians it's potent juju and a lot of slang got the truth is that everybody in the city is that is suffering in egypt as a race issue it is once it's just historically us but for the moment it's not useful for to anyone thinks that divide let's hear some more pictures from the moments each

day has its own pictures bumper to bumper traffic to states along a frenzied mob in the dorm to prison rising water they're hungry pushing carts of the looted stores rooftops in the latest mass as the eye can see that's in a silent city this a virus that tribe stadiums filled with refugees helicopters of the dead on that city a ragged parade of decadent spitting defiance know this goes the story because i went back to the city for days but after the storm and said it does to weekend of the decadence parade of video well loved city event ends seven or eight people decided that they were going to hold the decadence parade and they're marching around just they hadn't taken a shower in a long time and i didn't have an eight thousand but they live they stay scared up some coconuts spuds and

them did the organizing of the parade the square this test because it's posted gay parade and he had to actually list stayed people who set in and he stated she's davis' to the culture and i got so instead of beads against a fake counterfeit money and there is many television cameras as marchers by the way has no head at molly's sublime dictators they haven't promised arms and became the world media headquarters a can of two live television cameras is morris's marchers a caf two lines of beads how sacking of the cadets who moderated three years ago i mean this is really i'm one impress people very much outside of new orleans think really hard job to be king of the coot issue for the date because the mobs demand your attention this super aides

had the set for the eighteenth century as a voice of gong and we would like something sometimes a difficult to set the top this character camille that was blowing it to the streets while my adoring crowd at meetings like bottles of whiskey listen it's a hard job but finding oh this wasn't in debt that's attracting behind locked doors to smoke its affection visible is another thing that anyone who went to the city in the days after the storm will never forget was the smell of dead bodies both animals and humans mock darkness sheet and eviscerate the pigeon two dogs five by hired executor per se of horrible stories rising like swamp fever from the foul mouth of the awards from exile now the business by the doj is true enough lot of the rumors circulating around the city at the time of the services to that at the mother of a friend of mine actually pay somebody issue their

dogs because people are being evacuated city with other parts of the law because some people stayed at home but says she actually on to them and then them in their eleventh day of hell we're all working in this bit of sorrow to unfreeze time in stripping away the sat low lying areas of your hands the stars of the flooding made of that is that new orleans is an island the northernmost islands of the caribbean island chain that begins in martinique and ends here the historic route for slaves almond sure they're mostly commodities that allowed for the development of new orleans have been joined in modern times by oil the low lying parts of the isle of denial was what the slaves and servants known long as the poor always lived during the historical climate is the poor have accounted never considered a very mediated never affected it also have a

prison system despite decades of progress ah you know what can they raise serious questions about the efficacy of their presentation the organic growth of new orleans neighborhoods took place in the media vacuum uncle certain of its products like jazz got out and headed uptown and downtown and all around the globe in the civil rights age your antecedents do for the cultural genius of its poorer and became a symbolic place for black culture but also a window into the complexity of race relations because the poor are not necessarily all black and the wealthy were not the wide and the races of your aunt or mixed and the people of color are divided allegiances no apparent once again the city's power structure it's a very complicated city say the simplistic way race politics the politicians are using to just just doesn't work then another just a you know momentum

flaw born born of the storm was this there was a big global solution that many people preserve that for bringing back new orleans sort of a current usage is now that the first phrase is bringing back new orleans and this this idea was this was the solution is true to do the following marvelous things to protect the city against a category five storm surge to restore the wetlands and to bring back the culture of new orleans ends up don't think that it didn't do the solution and many like it was to bring back immediately the poor people of new orleans because dissolution couldn't includes that the people who i was because many of them are just simply not welcome back are they left they obeyed it that all parties in the wreckage of the roar of activists from the city so everyone knows except the poor and that the us for either the city through this plant called bring back new orleans was preparing itself for reddit become smaller and surrender it profitably too utopian dreams of

culture of perfection and this culture will be created if this plan's overcome to do anything to that is a building like the us that'll be the culture originally produced by the poor people of new orleans to root for their suffering a culture that's already undergone several west katyusha patient actually before this distorted the new unique culture of the armistice a scorching guitars to a special language will have the added advantage of being unable to harm to listen anyway like a defense serpent a carnival ball a tiny bottles anywhere and the faking of new orleans culture began almost as soon as innovative about the packages but it always have a bite to it because the people my top ten to get a ton of very far the new unit culture of new orleans will have the problem less than a decade before katrina came to the aid of real estate developers your answers already undergoing a tourism and the real estate boom the tourism agencies or however careful to want to risk not to spoil their own way out of the french quarter restaurant part of

capacity and katrina i envy time the breached levees is the salt all those borders and literally a very real impediment to the creation of this cell utopian cultural nuance so nobody in their right mind in the city of new orleans swamp says he wants this to his berries back with of course all this happened is that set among the first people to come back to new orleans or gangs fighting for turf and there are a lot of empty houses that some of that is actually a center for low level armed insurgency going on in the city so you have people in your arms a lot of unknowns are not in their right mind i mean that's a fact now i'm one of them was a bomb because i mean we simply there are some economic opportunities now that they're just not for the faint of heart and certainly the criminals and the real estate's a serious

real estate adventures among the first to start protesting because i'm not in my mind i had my own global solution to this we jump i published of protests a little while ago which i still think would walk one bring back everyone that left new orleans in by each and every one of the macondo a house in the french quarter uptown the money that he might is already spent a land use famous for pell grants cash cards and who knows what else amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars is more than enough to make those purchases at current market places prices was not exactly for action may be assessed prices at the time and there'll be enough left over to buy every person in your car but you weren't because the new new orleans will be an entirely pedestrian city tutti turn the low lying areas of new orleans the flood plane if anyone wants to live they give them

consonants allow also lots of drilling sound like fun to try and the mississippi river three of them enables on and regulations allow any sort of business but especially my clubs in any house in the city league commissioner of numbers is five legalize drugs prostitution and whatever else will draw herrington run on inside a club they have an assistant system so the amsterdam six encourage jurors to expect the unexpected focus of a special division of the normal school for the imagination the new orleans america's cultural treasure maybe unesco world city to unsubsidized nationally and internationally any artist willing to work here any artist working in your own should be exempt from local and federal taxes seven declared new orleans that has permanent autonomous zones international city administered lightly

but every nation on their canal for the record tom civil rights recognized the diversity charges of new orleans and produce various works of gratitude to god for having protected us this long from the energy efficient country of the united states of america needless to say the blitz of these seriously but many of these point of being implemented as we speak so it's now one here is the one year anniversary of katrina and this is this is the first report there to it is the one year anniversary of farm local and national shame which was the response to katrina katrina was just a storm but what followed though so hideous that won the latest only shake our heads and vomit on july nine two thousand and six well into the american season theme aus advertising in the new orleans' newspaper for the following regional jobs chief of staff finance director an emergency management specialist i've to say this again because token believe the

july nine two thousand and six theme our national disaster relief agencies advertising and the biggest for the chief of staff finance detected an emergency management specialist this one accepting those jobs could be filled by the people going by go cubs and it wouldn't take but a few minutes the train and anybody knew or less of those jobs in on the chief of staff are some eye gouged angles golfing the finance director stills all the money and entities friends and emergency management specialist thousand about is a scam in the space of one year of commander in chief has evolved from a fly over disaster observer to profit the dispenser of cash the only thing wrong with invest billions that they're supposedly heading our way is that they may actually be handed out in the form of checks instead of being rolled down from helicopters so the grumbling mass is the muscles for them like a proper market

herding cash into the streets of in fact be a much more equitable of dispensing that the president and in the building after some of our politicians like congressman jefferson actually who feels found ninety thousand dollars in the freezer a fuse refrigerator so carter not actually that said because of the beethoven is refrigerator but it's a it's a it's a matinee that actually goes somewhere because one of the most vivid images of post storm new orleans with refrigerators that everybody took out of their houses and sat back into the streets and take shots with all the rotten meat inside and that these refrigerators which are just careless is waiting who will feel pretty quickly by graffiti artists who vote on them things like dick cheney <unk> opened a training site cantrell summary only was wonderful

art you know sober for it as do have now a pretty solid place in our house history the inhabitants of new orleans or foolish enough to come back to the city after being screwed in the myriad ways by that local state and federal governments have not taken refuge in mental illness i get a lot of my people talking to themselves as the cell phones these days i get them going out loud for huey long roosevelt and even stalin action and i really i see people said at that features a marshall plan on people's of the deeply into this third thing and second xanax speaking in tongues in all fairness the artist making progress in one area artistic material never have there been so many rich and the working metaphors taking place in order to provide artists with absurdities team up against the same people threatened to take away who belong to do to the

firefighting helicopters and the agency pointed to the city we're now in the middle of the bailouts but we were actually in the last week with arson fires that a jingle what the pressure that the bust the maines and the question is what would the long overdue to these truckers are names an awesome lineup of big in richmond virginia after being yanked out of new orleans have given them them for firms one five at the voodoo one of voodoo two didn't never got to destroy the local motel and the hostility went up in the blaze because according to the motel manager romantic rendezvous went awry a woman to get the love nest by lighting candles and breaking a pretty covering of a lamp in expectation for lovers of released from jail happily all the residents were able to flee their roots and escape on her unharmed but with a lovely metaphor for you a poet social observer

want to say the motel as the city of minority within be wrong and a lover sophie my in louisiana the motto manager of george w bush the people the state where arts whatever you know you can change the elements of the fabled land settlement or build so what has happened what also zappa of great interest in the city of new orleans in one year due to deflect an hour journal and on a national concert or one of those things was to media ends and snorts and that's a big story because in one year we've experienced village of images and for the first half of the year there was a kind of images another them and morphing into other kinds of service this was a little meditation on how we see as one year after about six months ago i went to st bernard

parish and my cameraman jason to get my own share of disaster photography for the documentary i am making which is different from the documentary everybody else made of his making every fifth person in new orleans now is making a documentary we're like amazon tribes whose families are said to consist of modify their children and one anthropologist so jason and i chose for our first outing of beach shrimp boat in st bernard parish that has carried several blocks inland by the storm surge before it slammed into a house and arrested there to provide the backdrop for the news i'm sure that you've seen on the lawn of their house it was a broken plastic surgeon that the shadow by the huge boats in the road the sunday school books and i bent out to examine monitors affairs gary this exercise book and the page was looking on it had written in a child's hand a

poll i love center like you do not since he got to me in iran to comb out loud since july even had this if i'm scheduled to hear how jason never close so nice to the to one in orange t shirts that said mabel is not the war coming toward me in the start up a conversation and they told me that they had houses and that state and that this is the first time that they'd come back from dallas after the storm i asked him how badly their houses fair and they told me that they had long and that houses yet they come to see the shrimp boat first because the things in the national news one of them said she was afraid to see what the man of the house where she raised her kids and her friend the tears in her eyes and i was in the middle of asking another question where one my interview said now there is a real celebrity issues are often will tell my can have it for anderson cooper

appeared suddenly with ease on camera mennonites by the shrimp boat anderson thought he might use the shrimp boat to anchor of the news next day so i ask him what you're signing autographs how he kept from being part of the story and major shrine costly film the whole thing and those are the last days of the photogenic disaster one more method when he pointed a camera i hit pay dirt on aug eighteen this is just a few days ago about a shy of both the sun adversity somebody burned down the shrimp boat and on the same time to one day apart two bulldozers to belong to a company that is building a monument to the victims of the ninth ward were stolen from the side his two crimes of both against the image and simple making in their psyche to relate to one year after katrina we are no longer photogenic the cameras focused now on narrow slices of rebuilding which is all that fits within the lines if you've been looking at the city four year

things look better most of the flood of cars parked on the neutral grounds and the freeway overpasses ago and there's not the billy in places visible to motorists there are trailers and other houses in the neighborhood if you were going to sort of life in his eyes and isolated spots in my view optimism but if you look at what's around these spots you feel differently instead sure there's a recovery going on but there's also a pervasive depression the media isn't equipped to do with both hope and despair it can only show until one story of the time the gray zone where we live now in new orleans is beyond hits its powers in your aunt's nothing is what it seems people believe things they don't say and say things that don't believe that the media outlet covering course also sinking our heavenly mediated and heavily medicated city is generating paradoxes not certainties about the time the shrimp

boat bern than a month and the monument building machines were ripped off there was a picture in the newspaper of her young woman from los angeles playing songs on the guitar the st bernard residents waiting in line at the parish office the single super optimistic and the woman's and is still being used a disbelieving but there are also they beat the deadline for applied for the building permit socialists show they were happy one of the most unexpected things i did during the storm was to respond to an email by my friend jonathan who is deanna i'll either referred to new orleans all star closer and all of the members of the band the skies of the

united states and other note and said that we need the project to need some time some songs lyrics to give us something to come back to new orleans for so i ended up writing a few songs so i'm going to finish this limits two or three of these marauding to sing them he says lewis lived in the world delta city's this is a story about pants and under this is a tale of two cities that didn't speak each other's names before but the village was empty big and pretty the other poor probably how the artsy but that was before the deluge when the water has joined them and make new orleans and baton rouge not long before the waters rose one man only ever made the trip from new orleans to baton rouge us from the confederacy of dunces his name is ignatius and he said don't go there it's full of your calls

that is the fellas shake tower and that hicks had tests of these slicks they have all the power high and low don't you haven't voted no no no they have empty roads and big huge houses not hicksville baton rouge we've got us cactus and civilization outcast houses and bars are known in the nation but that was before the delusional at the fine civilization they welcomed us in baton rouge they didn't chase our orphans from the tower how are they let us cram their old car stay open why did have big huge houses they filled our scripts for tranquilizers they made us feel that one big confederacy of dunces they made new orleans and baton rouge after the damage and that is going to twice its size filters people are still there and those those set tranquilizers actually many people didn't have any prescriptions for them they just lined up at the windows of walgreens and they were giving them out again the animal's body

was thirteen our squirts poignant and can what to do a jungle to lead the world in this is said yesterday heard that came via a friend who took her who finally got the spectacle of neurons and took his guts out of the city hear the helicopters come over the gulf waters up to my attic windows and on stock he had with my goat i can see my neighbor in the hall on his roof has got to back seasons tom cat just across the rushing river is his sister she's cradling a baby in the rooster circling helicopters circling helicopters will take mead but not my goat lift me up from uk and floods but they won't take my neighbors' dogs are kept on his sister's baby is a booster helicopters overhead nation to the rescue take the people down the friends i'm not going without my goat he's not going without these bets baby won't leave without her rooster lord lord why don't i have an arc that's the helicopters

leading western nation to their rescue leaving us here in the dark there's also a tragic one but a smudge fire scored a backup songs of exile old a married man his girlfriend's oh their girlfriends of married men she's used and i'm in philly oh it kills me to be here with my wife's large family oh it feels good to be here with my taxes and the mood only kills me that it's monday and i'm watching bad tv i could be in new orleans listening to the rain just you and me just you and me oh that it was bad enough for the windows horrific i'm back in the state the world feeling silly is in houston i'm in philly baca rio grande from the big family everything seems way back then oh the married man's girlfriend so the girlfriend says married men i'm not to hugh lamle them the windows bad enough i have no home and your cell phone doesn't work there's another

amazing stories that nobody cell phones were nobodies a battery operated cell phones weren't enormous the only thing supporter of the plug in phones and so friends who are still in new orleans baton rouge kept calling on their landlines to ask us what we are seeing on cnn about nuance and they're going to two ends with so this despite such as told to say that whatever they are this also there's still moves me tough times land surface everybody came to the french quarter from all the neighborhood's informal the people left in the city because sound because some unarmed and there was no other there and these people are coming back and there's a feeling like people were literally in that woman's mother quarter

acquaintances the teach other friends they haven't seen friends that haven't seen each other in ages strangers meet strangers the bars are full the parking scarce housing house darling how's your life and human mentors hear churchgoers and your mother it's gone now i'm gone but he or she's fine mostly i seem to be alive it's dark or arm's length so i came to the corner there is nothing more years to live so i'm crashing in the court now i drove four hundred miles to be here it's the older heard the old ship by the quiet think of mississippi have pulled away from the usa in sept my anchor and a quarter right here in levels of the cafe i feel the dead their own commuting times best team right here inside in the coffee house and tried to think of what came next something always did some conspired to make money either supports a vegetarian something always came next eighteen twelfth nineteen fifty nineteen fifty six

nineteen sixty eight the main thing we're still live here in the old french quarter can you believe it's two thousand and five in the old french mother ship of course some of these analysis or so it's been nasty and okay i think this actually is the most solid for the mold and nuances that a big deal in some old is just the ski trip that escape the various kinds of modes that came from hell and i did various things and this is one part of the city being uninhabitable as long as it was because people couldn't come back the mall just a good stuff the mould song it was one of a kind the earliest map of the united states if us hanging it on the wall the mold at all the local police you know and his books the only copies of newton franklin delano in the shakespeare folio the mold at them like they were spending

look at this satisfy blooming mold stretching from florida florida like a fifties horror movie mold not to speak of that stack of cash i should've never kept it around not the zero left in the whole stack look at me i'm growing old i'm giving myself to the mold it's some kind of lesson that some kind of our story keep collecting papers things i knew that one day i'd be sorry i'm not wearing the mask i'm not wearing any gloves i feel stupid i feel cold and giving myself to the mold how lean and suicide the rolling land i should this old i should the sole only new orleans only new orleans how human suicidal a man of means says it actually came from until that intelligence is telling his story about how the mall they tease a rare copy of the rare map of their nervousness thank you the

pain that we're engaged and gallows humor and i refused to display the longer i mourn for what's happened to new orleans and to our country because of mornings i wonder if you do or whether we just heard tighten the noose around the neck of new orleans and push it out to see your speeches made me feel like i don't have anything i can do to

help anymore you put me in a state of inaction which i think is totally irresponsible well frankly i mean that's you know i mean that is set what there is this confusion i'm a department and awe when you live in the city of dance you have no choice if you're living there but to try and be an optimist than mouth the cliches of the building and so on and bringing back the city because even if you don't believe them you have to believe that you have to say that out loud there are people outside of new orleans don't understand the city who would do just put aside push it into the sea because they don't see why process them and why billions of tax also spent on to say and they're a heartless so i don't think you know i mean i love the city which is why i

think i can be somewhat sentiments with a us citizen the things you love you can also title like before pointing out the paradoxes and it says a paradoxical because you know i mean i'm not raising money and i mean that and their organizations all of this country including the red cross which raised money for the quote unquote the victims of katrina everybody gave you probably many of you didn't no this is very hard to know what happens to the money would it were and what exactly the benefits for and so to yale to call those things to a man in a mold them as not to denigrate this is the

painting start listening to your national radio during your pieces and i've been missing for for quite a long time and one things i think he represented from that area from the new orleans area was a perspective that it was okay to express poetry or express creativity almaty gets are the underlying message that it was okay to enjoy life and i think that's something that we've forgotten here in america i don't think i don't think it's a dance reporting from the area says anyway denigrating the area or denigrate in america so and he adds it's a call to to celebrate life or to something of that they do very much of business thank you plus sure that he

came out so that a median made for the most part can tell only you know a kind of story it's very difficult to tell a story that has complicated and has so many ailments that they're on the face of it you know americans for instance the fact that new orleans we do enjoy life and they have a different sense of time that is not the value that is they a well regarded in this ever efficient society we live in our time is divided response to smaller and smaller increments center and only is only valid see fit so it produces something makes money you know it's hard to know how to make up the value and this is where the question of what is known as a cultural it's constantly what is it because the ways in which we describe it things like leisure time and knowing how to route to linger over a meal or knowing how to you

know make poetry music out of misery all of those things don't seem extremely valuable to chew to last now in this world i mean that new orleans is a counter cultural significance to that american culture right now as being one of efficiency is not that meeting the mothers efficient the same time this is lawrence is also the impediment to moving forward now we have a paradox he's joining richard respect for fifty five thousand fans at the leed center at the university of kansas it was a presentation at katie's whole center for the humanities the recording engineer was chubby smith i'm kate mcintyre k pr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the

university of kansas