Everyone Should've Left The City Five Weeks Ago
                                     by Marticia Glodgrass

It seems like every day, I hear more and more bad news from New Orleans, my old town that I used to live in until the husband and I bought a new apartment in Manhattan. Why the sudden move? Oh, gee, I don't know, maybe because a giant hurricane was coming?

Listen, former neighbors: it's not that hard to get together several thousand dollars, buy a plane ticket, and move somewhere else. I don't buy the "I'm too poor" excuse -- the government has minimum wage standards in effect for a reason! So if you don't have the money to move, I can only conclude that you don't work at all, and are therefore lazy and deserve what you got from the storm. That's right, I said it. I'm allowed to, because I actually had the planning and foresight to open up one of our lower-interest savings accounts and use the money to move. It's not brain surgery.

And it's not like we didn't have an advance warning. I remember select mandatory evacuations beginning at least five days and more likely several weeks before the hurricane hit. "Katrina's coming, folks," they said in January. "You should probably leave soon." Even if they didn't say that, has any of you poor slobs now stranded in gross rain water heard of weather predicting equipment? Seriously, if you're not monitoring the barometric pressure and Doppler radar on at least a semi-daily basis, I don't know what to tell you. For Pete's sake, do you rely on someone to turn your car on for you and sometimes even drive you places when you want to go out? Well, I do. Wait.

The point is, people who are now in trouble because they're getting their nice clothes and furniture all wet have no one to blame but themselves. It's not the hardest thing in the world to get into your helicopter and fly somewhere the hell else.

My Town Loves Me And Wouldn't Hurt Me
                                     by Jeremiah Lenford

"You really need to leave, sir," the policeman told me. "This water has dangerous chemicals and diseases in it." But I just smiled and kept rocking in my new underwater rocking chair. Me and old New Orleans have been through worse. My cable was out once for three whole days. That was almost as bad as this, if not worse.

New Orleans is my home. I know most folks don't understand that, because they don't have homes, but it's not all that easy to say goodbye to your home, even if the water surrounding your legs is starting to eat the skin off. I love this city, and I have lots of memories here. Standing on top of my counter, trying to not touch the rising water. Trying to turn on the TV but realizing I had no more electricity. Watching my boxes of pictures and memories float out the door. These are memories I hold dear to my heart, and if I were to leave New Orleans, they would escape from my brain, never to return.

They're saying now that there's going to be mandatory evacuations. I guess the idea of folks like me wanting to go down with the ship and later requiring taxpayer-funded hospital care and shelter doesn't sit well with some people. Well, let them whine, I say. They've sure as heck never experienced the joy of loving a town so much that you'll even stay after your arm was ripped off by looters to be used as a paddle, of loving a home so much that you'll settle down into your nice easy chair even while there's a dead fella who beat you to it. You know what? That's sad. I hope that someday they can move somewhere they really appreciate. Maybe they could even move down here. For whatever reason, I feel like there's more real estate vacancies than there used to be.

The policeman's coming back again, probably planning on trying to get me to ride one of their fancy choppers with warm food and clothes and medicine, but that's just not for me. That helicopter isn't part of my town like this house, or this soupy water that I'm floating in. Some people just put down roots, and my roots are here in New Orleans, not in some damn halfway house that doesn't even have a lick of authentic New Orleans Jazz Water to speak of.

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