Two Years After KatrinaBy Alexander Wolff
Tuesday, 8/21/2007
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It's a world in which Alfred Lawless High, once the pride of the Lower Ninth Ward, stands like Pompeii Tech, neither razed nor rebuilt, just suspended in time by the lava flow of the floodwater. What became of the boy who wore helmet number 34, which as of a month ago still sat in locker 827? And that girls' basketball jersey moldering outside the gym -- is its owner piecing her life back together in Houston or Baton Rouge? On the blackboard of an English classroom, still: AUGUST 29, 2005, DO NOW: SIGN IN. WRITE A PARAGRAPH WITH THE FOLLOWING WORDS: SAINTS, PRESEASON, FOOTBALL, RUNNING BACK .
Do now: Sign in, indeed. You in? The federal government has been "in," all right -- indifferent and intransigent, almost criminally so. Much of the aid due the city is only just beginning to flow, while the engineering work and coastal management necessary to make New Orleans secure remain years and billions from completion. In the meantime local government has been "in" too -- incompetent and incorrigible by turns; the status of Lawless High is only one of many examples. Even the country at large seems to suffer from Katrina fatigue, moving smartly on while clinging to caricatured notions of what life in the city is like -- "Everything," says UNO athletic director Jim Miller, "from 'Gosh, shouldn't you be back to normal?' to 'You're still underwater, aren't you?'?"
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"Every time I look in the paper and see a young face, the next word is 'gunshot,'?" Gearing says. "It's a proven fact that those who participate in extracurricular activities graduate at a higher rate. Take a trumpet and give it to a kid, and that kid will graduate because he played in the band. Or we can
a jersey, and he'll graduate because he was on a team. A cheerleader, a majorette, a dancer -- those are the kids who make it. The kids who don't embrace those things are the ones we lose."
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Besides, sports tell us that the longer the odds, the greater the incumbency on us to defy them. Otherwise, why get in the game at all? More than a dozen years ago the president of Eritrea, which was suffering a horrible famine, gratefully accepted donations of sports equipment because even in the midst of misery those soccer balls served as the world's acknowledgment that his people were, as he put it, "more than just mouths to feed." Sports play their own life-affirming role for spectators too: In Sarajevo during the siege of 1992--96, thousands of residents gathered in gyms to watch basketball games even knowing that artillery in the hills girdling the city could take them out with one well-placed shell. It meant that much to them to see that their neighbors were still alive. Especially under extraordinary circumstances, sports offer something more than the IV drip of subsistence.
... There is much, much more, to this loooong article.
I was pretty upset with all the hoopla about the Saints 2006 season--as if football could be a cure-all to all the pain and suffering New Orleans experienced. However, this thoughtful article makes a case that sports really can be an indication of recovery, as well as a beacon of hope. When sports come back after a disaster--especially programs for youth--they can offer a diversion from the PTSD and whatever is going on in your family's FEMA trailer, relieving the stress and depression, even if its only for a few hours a week.
Anyway, this former long-term recovery worker found this article inspiring among all the Katrina anniversary articles I've read today.
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