Thoughts At Week's End

I’ll break from my usual ponderous polemic format and rattle off a few different thoughts today.

FIRST, I’d like to say thanks to Flea for this recent post. Flea bravely broke ranks with the chronically whining doctors guild and publicly admitted that being a physician is a pretty good gig. I have to agree. Something in the makeup of doctors makes them complainers. I know that throughout my medical career I have tended not to keep company with doctors because I get tired of hearing about how awful it is to practice medicine.

Certainly medicine is a tough line of work. But it pays pretty well, and it has definite benefits. It is about as independent a line of work as you can find, which is what I like about it. Although many people try to suggest what you should do, no one tells you what to do. M.D. really does stand for my decision. I wish more docs would come out and say, “You know, I really am better off than most people.” It takes character to be thankful for things as they are, and not to be always, vainly, wishing for better.

SECOND, I am peeved at the recent recommendation by the Congressional committee that FEMA be disbanded. This strikes me as public posturing more than constructive reasoning. Replace FEMA with what? Apparently, another FEMA! This new organization would still be under the Department of Homeland Security. This was the problem in the first place: Homeland Security was sucking the life out of FEMA, diverting its funding to antiterrorism projects at the expense of disaster preparedness. If the new office remained under Homeland Security, why wouldn’t this happen again?

Further, what is the point in firing all the FEMA personnel? Disaster management does not sound to me like a common field of expertise. Chances are the government would be stuck with rehiring most of its old people to staff the new office, since there would be no one else around with similar experience and knowledge. As a victim of Hurricane Katrina, I can say that I would not look forward to a newly organized FEMA in which all the hires were made by the Bush administration. The saving grace of FEMA now is that there are still some holdovers from FEMA’s better days that could serve as a core for a more efficient organization. FEMA needs to be an independent organization, outside of the monstrous waste of money we call Homeland Security, and it needs to be staffed with career emergency management professionals, and not with political appointments.

THIRD, this weekend is the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, one of America’s truly great music festivals. I will be there on Sunday. The festival grounds consists of 10 different stages, each devoted to a different style of music. I usually wander from one to another, spending most of my time in the jazz tent, the Fais Do-Do stage (Cajun music), the New Orleans Jazz tent (Dixieland jazz), and the Gospel tent.

The Gospel tent may be the greatest place on earth. For hours and hours, traditional gospel choirs from all around the country, but especially from Louisiana and Mississippi, take turns delivering their best foot stomping stuff. In the Gospel tent, the crowd is part of the show. People stand on their chairs, dance down the aisles, join in singing the hymns and spirituals they know, and bring that old time religion with all its passionate feeling storming back. That place rocks.

Even if you can’t make it, if you go to the website for WWOZ, you can listen to live streamed broadcasts of the Festival all this weekend and next. It is great, great music.

Two recommendations: on Sunday, April 30, at 5 pm, the Meters will stage a reunion. The Meters are one of New Orleans’s all time greatest acts, and one of the best funk bands ever. This is one of their rare reappearances in New Orleans since they broke up in the 1977.

On Sunday, May 5, again at 5 pm, Fats Domino will close out the Festival. Fats is a legendary performer, and I know many, many people who have said that his Jazz Fest appearances are the best live performances they have ever seen. Fats Domino lived in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and lost everything he had in the flood. This is his first major appearance since the hurricane, so everyone is expecting something extra special.

FINALLY, I would like to announce a new member of my family. When I got home yesterday, the FedEx man brought me my long-awaited Gibson Les Paul. Solid body mahogany, inlaid rosewood fretboard, Burstbucker nickel-plated pickups. It is a little heavy, but the action is a dream. This is the easiest guitar to play that I have ever laid fingers on.

I lost my beloved Gibson Challenger in Hurricane Katrina, and have been looking to replace it ever since. I agonized for a long time between getting the Gibson or going for a Fender Stratocaster. The Stat is the prototypical blues guitar (it is Eric Clapton’s signature instrument), and since I am in Mississippi now, it seemed like an appealing option. But I went for Gibson because of its reputation for clean, jazzy sound, which is how I like my music.

I am still waiting for my Epiphone 30 watt amp to show up, and can’t wait to get the two together. Just spending an hour or two playing the Les Paul without an amp, I can already tell that it has an exceptionally clean, fat, and sweet sound.

All in all, yesterday was a very good day.

Election Day and the French Quarter Festival

This weekend was a busy one in New Orleans. We split our attention between two events, the Mayoral election and the annual French Quarter Festival in the Vieux Carre. Since I am not a resident of New Orleans and therefore can't vote, I diverted most of my attention to the latter.

For my wife and me, the French Quarter Festival has long been one of the highlights of our calendar. Less well known and thus less crowded than its more famous cousin, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the French Quarter Fest is a local celebration of music and food (what else?) that takes place in some of the best weather of the year (mid-spring), in a lag period in the tourist season (between Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest). Most importantly, it is, in the best spirit of New Orleans, totally free.

During the FQF small stages are set up in the middle of the narrow streets throughout the Quarter. We spend the day wandering from stage to stage, taking in whatever we stumble across. In Jackson Square the bands are mostly blues acts, on Royal Street are the traditional and contemporary jazz performers. Woldenburg park on the riverfront is the home of the funk and rock scene. Near the old U.S. Mint is the Cajun and Zydeco stage. And if you look hard enough, just off Decatur Street near the French Market you can find classical chamber music.

The crowd was substantial but not overwhelming. On the balconies over the banquettes were a few scattered campaign signs -- otherwise, things looked so normal one would think this was a typical spring day and not the first election after Hurricane Katrina.

We started in Jackson Square, which was more about food than music. One stage for music, and about 20 tents with vendors from the best restaurants in the city. We had crawfish pies, mirlitons stuffed with shrimp and crabmeat, and finished it off with a mango and Southern Comfort  slush.

I had the sense that everyone knew we were lucky just to be here. In our wanderings from stage to stage we ran into a nurse my wife worked with at Touro Infirmary, a few old colleagues we both knew from various stages in my residency and career, and a good friend from my old territory in Chalmette. In soft voices we efficiently exchanged well-rehearsed storm stories.  (It is the new custom in this traditional city -- meet a friend, tell how you made out.) Some had stayed, some had left town, but that day everyone was missing the city as it was.

We strolled down to the 500 block of Royal Street and lingered  over the  rhythms of the Kathleen Lee Jazz All-Stars.  As I listened to Kathleen sing some of my favorite jazz standards, I thought about all the musicians and chefs taking part in this elegant festival, and how they were bringing New Orleans back, not by any heroic effort but by simply carrying on as before.

Since Katrina, New Orleans has sorely lacked the kind of leadership that would dramatically bring the city together. Instead, what we have had is something much less obvious and immeasurably more wonderful -- thousands of people simply picking up their crosses and carrying on. If New Orleans survives it will not be through the work of governors, presidents, or generals. The harvest of the new city is being sown even now by a thousand Kathleen Lees.

On the way home, as we drove down Magazine Street looking for a place for dinner I spotted an old beloved name -- Mona's. Mona's originated as Mid-City restaurant. First burned to the ground a few years ago, possibly by an arsonist, Mona's was rebuilt within the last year before being flooded with 5 feet of water after Katrina. Even as it rebuilt on its twice-destroyed original site, the owners of Mona's reopened on the high ground near the river and were up and running again. If there was ever a phoenix from the ashes, it was Mona's.

The original Mona's was about a mile from Charity Hospital. It had very creditable Lebanese food, and the cheap too, making it a favorite among residents from LSU Medical School. Rarely did I complete a month rotation during my training at Charity without at least one run to Mona's. Finding Mona's was like running into an old friend in a city where I thought I knew no one. Hummus has never been so good.

That night, having witnessed the recovery of the common folk, we watched the story of leadership as the mayoral returns came in. The race was remarkable for many reasons, not the least of which was the ease at which the city brought it off. Minority groups, including the NAACP and Jessie Jackson's coalition of the week, argued that the results would be skewed because most of the people who evacuated were black. Concerned that evacuated blacks would not be able to vote, these activist groups had been threatening for months that they would challenge the results if there was the slightest hint of imjustice in the outcome.

When the results came in, the naysayers slunk out of town without a whimper. The two candidates who qualified for the runoff, Ray Nagin and Mitch Landrieu, ran first and second in the predominantly black precincts, polling 65% and 25% respectively. Put another way, the African-Americans handpicked the two runoff candidates. There was simply no way the outcome could have been more favorable for the blacks of New Orleans.

Although they have decided the primary election, it is doubtful that black voters will decide the runoff. Landrieu and Nagin divided over 90% of the black vote between them. The white vote, however, splintered among 3 candidates. Since the black vote is already committed, it is the uncommitted vote in the white districts that is most likely to provide the swing vote the second time around.

The smart money is on Landrieu. In 2002 Nagin ran one of the most amazing campaigns in New Orleans history, taking 80% of the white vote and only a small fraction of the black. He was a black mayor elected mainly by whites. This weekend, Nagin polled about 3% of the white vote in the primary. It is hard to see why all his former supporters would go back to him in the runoff after passing on him in the primary.

On the other hand, in post-Katrina New Orleans, one sees surprising things.

The most memorable moment of election night, though, had nothing to do with the mayoral race. Oliver Thomas, candidate for a city councilman-at-large seat, won his election going way, with 39% of the vote (voters could choose two candidates, so he only needed 26% to win). There would be no runoff race for him, having qualified with a simple plurality.

Mr. Thomas was not enjoying his resounding victory. Instead, his face was darkened, tired, and he spoke of his win through tears. His brother had died the previous day, unexpectedly, of a massive heart attack.

I am not one who has much sympathy for politicians. But considering how much Mr. Thomas suffered in personal loss from Katrina, the agonizing eight months of public service he fought through since, and now this, it was impossible for me to watch his interview unmoved.

Mr. Thomas dedicated his victory to his brother's memory, but somehow I sensed that he would give the victory back if he could have his brother again.

We all wish we could have so many things back. But the only way out of this is to go forward with or without political leadership, one song at a time, like Kathleen Lee in the French Quarter.

The Government and Katrina Recovery

I have to give credit where credit is due: Slate has finally published an assessment of New Orleans which comes close to my own view. The writers of the article, Tyler Cowen and Daniel Rothschild, point out that the universities in the city have largely gotten back on their feet, even if the rest of the city has not. They argue that the reason the universities are up and running is that they are headed by decisive presidents and chancellors who made the necessary hard decisions to get things going again. For the rest of New Orleans, they posit, it has been business as usual.

Well, not quite. The Slate writers are both university professors, and I think their view is a little biased towards universities. While I agree with them that the city and state government have not done enough to get recovery underway, I disagree with their assessment that the recovery is limited only to universities.

There are many private enterprises that have done an admirable job of coming back, despite the lack of public leadership. Most notably is the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune, which just won two well-deserved Pulitzer prizes for covering Katrina. The Picayune’s facility on Howard Avenue was flooded out, and the paper published online for one week before restarting its print edition first in Houma and then with an affiliate paper in  Mobile, Alabama. Now they are back home and as good as ever.

Or how about Mardi Gras? The dozens of private carnival clubs were told over and over that Mardi Gras would be a disaster; there would be crime; the police couldn’t handle the crowd; there were not enough people to parade, ad nauseum. Mardi Gras was safer this year than it had ever been, hosted crowds in the tens of thousands, and there were no disasters, unless one considers one night of parades cancelled because of rain a disaster.

How about Entergy corporation? Entergy is the primary electricity provider in New Orleans. Seven months after the storm, Entergy has at least 95% of its old customers back on line. Although there have been a lot of people criticizing Entergy for its pace of repairs, in my humble opinion, considering the way the infrastructure in New Orleans was mangled, Entergy’s success has been remarkable. And just this week, Entergy has announced that it is bringing its corporate operations back to New Orleans after an eight month exile.

Then there are the restaurants of New Orleans. There were over 1,000 independent restaurants in New Orleans before Katrina, many of them famous the world over. Of those, 615 are now back in operation. I have been to a few of them, and believe me, the old quality is back. I had the best oysters of my life at Acme Oyster House 3 weeks ago. R & O’s in Bucktown is sublime as ever. On St. Patrick’s day I drank down two Pimm’s Cups and had a half a muffelatta at Napoleon House in the Quarter with my wife. And we have been to Café Du Monde more times than I can count.

Let’s not forget that the Port of New Orleans opened for business within 2 weeks of Katrina.

On September 30 (32 days after Katrina) I was cruising the internet (looking for a job!) at P.J.’s Coffee and Tea on Veteran’s Highway in Metairie.

And a special honor goes to Drago’s Restaurant, which never closed, and offered by some accounts as many as 10,000 free meals to hurricane victims in the days after the storm.

Most of the New Orleans legal community is back and in operation. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court is up and running.

This weekend is the French Quarter Festival, and next is the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, one of the largest outdoor music festivals in America. The Jazz Fest will be staged in Mid City, one of New Orleans’s hardest, hit areas. Both festivals are expected to be as good as ever.

Last weekend, the Mississippi River Bridge was closed briefly for the filming of the movie Déjà Vu. I guess that means the film industry is back.

The oil refineries between New Orleans and Baton Rouge are all up and running. And the offshore drilling is getting back up to pre-Katrina capacity.

What is fairest to say is that everything except the government is improving daily. The problem is not that the universities are better than the government. Everything I can name is better than the government.

New Orleans is being rescued by its citizens despite the government, rather than because of it. It is like a dying patient giving himself his medicine while the doctor naps at the bedside.

It’s all enough to turn me into a Reagan Republican. The problem is, you can’t find those people anymore. Small government, pro-small business, non-intrusive leadership? Forget about it.

Grand Round Vol. 2, No. 30

Grand rounds is up today at Fat Doctor.  I congratulate her on a fine effort. Her website remains one of my favorites, so check out some of her previous entries, too.

Easter 2005

Of all the major holidays, Easter treads the lightest. There is no Easter gift rush, no glut of Easter parties. The TV schedules are not crammed with Easter specials. The grocery stores see a mild uptick in sales of candy and hams, the long distance carriers a modest increase in business. But mostly, Easter simply rides in on the breath of Spring, lingers a few hours and rustles off into Summer.

And rightfully so. Easter is the most mystical of all Christian holidays; unlike its chief rival, Christmas, it is a celebration of an event that is embedded in true faith and theology. On Christmas, Jesus was born. No big deal; I was born too, and so were you. The Nativity story throws in its divine zinger – Mary was a virgin – but still, the essence of the holiday is a human birth, pure and simple. Not difficult to comprehend.

Easter, however, is the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. This event is not simply the return of a ghost, it is the claimed return of a dead man, body and soul. This fusion of divinity and humanity in the raised Corpus Christi exists nowhere else in the world’s major religions, and sets Christianity apart even from its closest cousins. Judaism and Islam, on the other hand, both claim great prophets, but prophets who are divinely inspired, not God Himself. And certainly not prophets that proclaim themselves to be conquerors of death.

This perhaps is the reason Easter has such weak roots in our secular culture, why it is not the economic and social beast that Christmas is. Easter is the embodiment of a phenomenon in Christianity sometimes referred to as the “trilemma” of C.S. Lewis (which I will paraphrase in a way that more suits my viewpoint than its original author's). Lewis argued that there are three elements to the Gospel story of Jesus. First, the Wise Jesus, who said many memorable things, things that even people with no faith can appreciate, such as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or “When someone strikes you, turn the other cheek,” or “Those who live by the sword die by the sword.” Then there is the Sacred Jesus, who preached love of God and the Lord’s Prayer. Sacred Jesus preached a reformed religion of love and intimacy with God. Sacred Jesus appeals to anyone with some faith in God.

The final element is the Divine Jesus. This is the Jesus who performed miracles, who flatly stated that he is God, and who died and rose from the dead. The Divine Jesus, according to the Trilemma, is the Jesus that only Christians can follow. Anyone can appreciate the philosophy of wise Jesus. Many with a small faith or a general belief in Monotheism can appreciate the Sacred Jesus, but the Divine Jesus, the Christ, is only for people who completely accept Christianity.

Since Easter is all about the Divine Jesus, there is simply no room for a secular Easter. Yes, it is true that we have the Easter Bunny, but the Easter Bunny is vague compared to the extensive mythology of Santa Claus. The Santa story is so specific, so palpable the we  know the name of his reindeer, know where he lives, his body mass index, and specifics about his clothing. Is the Easter Bunny so well drawn? And why are there so many Christmas carols, secular and non-secular, compared with the barest trace of Easter songs? It is because a birth story is easily translated into terms a secular society can understand, while a resurrection story is so ephemeral and rooted in theology that it escapes any attempt to crystallize it.

A good thing, too. Not everything in life needs to be commercialized.

All those who are Christians know what to do with Easter. But I would like to throw a pearl to those who feel they are standing on the outside. If you have problems getting your mind around the Resurrection story, consider that all religion, and even atheism, is an attempt to come to terms with the good and evil that coexists in the world. As there are many, many different people in the world, so it is likely that there would be many different ways to cope with life. I should be surprised if a single faith could ever hold the entire world for long. That would require that we all be alike! So on Easter, just as we consider the divisions with which we approach Jesus himself, we can pause to consider and honor all the ways people engage life. In biology, we call that diversity. We usually think of diversity as good.

I can’t imagine how hollow the world would be if we all found meaning in it the same way. I am thinking primarily of a world full of atheists, but it would also apply if everyone thought of the world the way I do, too.

The Resurrection is undoubtedly the most difficult concept to accept in the Christian faith. There are many who even profess themselves Christian who do not really completely accept it.

Today, accept your “coping belief” as it is. Do not worry if you accept the Sacred Jesus and cannot go further. Or if you had the Divine Jesus as your own and have lost him partly or completely. Or even if your coping belief is pure rationalism and rejects all faith.

If Jesus teaches us anything, it is that none of us are any better than anyone else. It is one thing to believe, and another to think ourselves better than others because they believe differently. We are all struggling. What foolishness makes anyone think he has broken ahead of the pack?