Hurricane Katrina

So the Big One finally hit the Big Easy.

Hurricane Katrina gave truth to the urban legend that always shrouded New Orleans in a sense of doom that somehow suited the slow, humid, swampy city I still call home.

I left New Orleans almost ten years ago to begin a process of higher education and careerism that can’t be had in the Big Easy where people sit around and watch the paint peel between sips of daiquiri.

But no amount of education can take away my memories of a place where the people really knew how to let "le bon temps roule" (Cajun for let “the good times roll” and the official motto for New Orleans). Only Katrina could do that, or at least try.

As I watch the news and choke back tears, I’m scanning all my photographs and remembering, trying so hard to remember, to write, what the city was to me and hoping beyond hope that one day it will be again.

But, whatever happens, the spirit of New Orleans will live on in the hearts and minds of people everywhere.