"Here Lies Vera...God Help Us!"

This is a spray painted inscription on a make shift grave at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street in my old neighborhood the "Irish Channel." This very diverse community is located one block from New Orlean's famed "Garden District" and a place my former partner Greg and I called home for ten years." Let me tell you a little bit about Vera. She was a widow who lived alone (like many women in the Irish Channel) and owned this property. The building occupying it destroyed by fire in 1998. You would often see Vera walking the block between Jackson Avenue and Phillip Street along Magazine. She attended services at St. Mary Assumption church and particpated in mass by bringing up "gifts" for the sacrament of Holy Communion. Yes, Vera lived here. She has a story like so many of the dead from this disaster.

Whether you are watching television or reading the newspaper, there is no escaping the barrage of "whys" and "whats." If you're Fox's Bill O' Reilly, the blame lies with the local government of Louisiana. According to O' Reilly, he has the evacuation plan for New Orleans when faced with a hurricane. He say's it makes no mention of a plan in the the event of a levee break. O' Reilly also states: "If you're going to rely on government, you're going to be disappointed." TIme to change the channel. I only watch Bill O' Reilly to remind me that I am actually among the living and in the real world.

If we are looking to blame, if we are looking for answers, maybe we need to take a hard look at our government. In Bill O' Reilly's warped sense of reality, we need to take care of ourselves. Ultimately, the citizens are responsible for not leaving. In what time in our nation's history have we seen our own dead left to decay in flood waters and streets? Some of these images are ghastly, like images of war, not a natural disaster. Sorry, Bill, but it's too late for our government to recuse itself for failing a people which in some area's had an average annual income of $7,500.00.

It's time that government on all levels admit that it failed and miserably so. Is that so wrong? The most important thing I've learned in the process of my own personal recovery is denial to admit a problem prevents the healing process. Admitting failure and that major mistakes were made will enable so many to begin that process. In the mean time Vera's final resting place is a street corner, but for others it face down in flood waters or bloated and decomposing atop a car or on the side of a street. Yes, this in the United States of America: "God help us, indeed!