The City of New Orleans

I was in a Prison Cell in Amsterdam in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit the City of New Orleans and for my sins I believed that it was a sign from God. I am a little embarrassed to admit this now but in my heightened state, my mood persuaded me that the world was in for a rude awakening, an awakening that I had been forced to experience.  20 years previously I had been in the city and I arrived on a Greyhound Bus. What better way to announce the arrival of the Shark Fisherman than at 1001 Loyola Avenue. Ronnie Reagan was in the White House and Bush Senior a blip on the skyline. I remember being very angry with George Bush Junior in 2005 believing that many bodies were buried under the big W.   He had been President in 2001 when the Twin Towers were hit and now here we were again with not a 'man made' disaster but nature's wrath and he was to prove incompetent in his reaction to both events. They called Ronald Reagan a cowboy but there was no greater cowboy than George W who now struts around like a clown oblivious to the legacy that he has left the world. 

In 1985 I remember looking up in awe at the Superdome which was to house and home the dispossessed in 2005. It never crossed my 19 year old mind that I as a 39 year old would be sitting in a Prison Cell watching the same city drown. In my cell, I was especially drawn to the images of prisoners in orange jump suits standing in the roadways being guarded by armed police. I thought now is the time to take over.  A 'revolution' but it didn't happen but 2014/2015 and the revolution is happening on the streets of Ferguson and in the hearts and minds of American citizens. Centuries & decades of social injustice and oppression is now seeping out in violent ways and guns are the currency of control. It was the only place that I encountered the aftermath of a violent act in the States. Somebody had shot at a taxi driver and I saw the bullet hole in the wing mirror of the vehicle, moments after the attack.  The one overriding image from 1985 New Orleans is the sight of a large black man playing saxophone wonderfully in Bourbon Street with shoe boxes on his feet instead of shoes.