I can’t begin to tell you how draining my trip to New Orleans was last week–draining in a good but complete way. I had exactly zero inspiration to pull out the keyboard this weekend and instead whittled my hours away in my LL Bean bathrobe and slippers, playing Lego Star Wars on the XBOX 360.

And I’ve been thinking about what to say about New Orleans, how it’s like a ghost town there. How the people living there have a little of that same spirit as former lovers still in a marriage long over where both of them are thinking of cheating if they haven’t already done it.

I could tell you about the great 80s cock rock band with the black lead singer who hit the high notes in White Snake’s Here I Go Again.

Or I could tell you about how I broke down in tears three times walking through the D-Day World War II museum. Once when I saw the helmet of a Marine who died from the bullet which blasted out a three inch hole in the helmet. The second time was when I saw a video of a young Japanese toddler found by Allied forces who was huddled underneath his dead parents, covered in blood and standing there with a blank look on his face like, “What’s next? What hell have I been born into?” And the third time was just a welling up in the eyes as I read the document that Truman sent to authorize the dropping of the first Atomic bomb.

I could tell you about all those things in more detail but instead I’ll tell you about the short walking tour I took of the upper 9th Ward, the neighborhood where my company had sent us to help build a neighborhood for local New Orleans musicians for Habitat for Humanity. My good friend and I snuck out and took a short walk which didn’t stray too far because I felt those mean streets start to lick its lips at the thirty-something Midwestern cracka ass crackas and the warning bells started going off which told me to get the fuck out of there or something bad was going to happen.

But before I did, we came across this house that had the door kicked in (see photo) We walked up on the porch and looked in–there was shit everywhere. No one had come back to claim any of it, it looked like. There were hats still hanging on the wall, clothes in piles, furniture which 500 days ago was all floating under water. There was even a stuffed panda bear lying innocent on a chair like it was waiting where its small-handed owner left it for safe keeping. I wondered why the child didn’t take it with them when they left (if they left!) or if they instead chose to take another toy more beloved than that poor panda.

As in so many other cases in life, it all comes down to priorities. Where are our priorities? What are our priorities in the War on Terror? To kill all Muslims who harbor negative sentiments about America? To mobilize a half-million man army who marches for war instead of for peace? And what does it mean to march for peace anyway? Isn’t peace a state of rest? Marching is the antithesis of peace, is it not?

What does it say about a country who was unable to allocate and mobilize internal resources for days after the biggest natural disaster in many of our lifetimes when the country immediately to our north had Mounties down there pulling bodies out of the water to safety 48 hours after the storm hit land?

What does it say about our country when the SPCA Human Society tagged a majority of stray animals in New Orleans and relocated them to Texas a week before the storm but old people lay dying and suffering while they relied on gang bangers to loot the local Wal-Marts to bring them food and fresh water but the mayor and the governor and the president sat back and played mouse trap, risk and battleship instead of stepping up to their civic duty?

I have never been so full of hope, so full of dread, so full of admiration at the human spirit to achieve greatness in times of tragedy and so pissed off at the incompetence of a system of government to perform the only function is has ever been charged with–the welfare of the common citizen.

There is going to be a hell of a recompense come due soon for the neglect and borderline crimes against humanity that this ineffectual government perpetrated on the citizens of New Orleans while thousands continue to do in a War supposedly meant to spread freedom.

Freedom for what? To do unaided while politicians from both sides of the aisle worry about poll numbers and reelection strategies? Remember the panda bear and remember your priorities.

Which would you grab first: the Declaration of Independence, the Bible, the rifle or the human hand reaching out to lift you out of the storm?

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