New Orleans: An American Fairy Tale

The Wall Street Journal wrote a nice article about New Orleans ("New Orleans: An American Fairy Tale") just this day in which the author describes New Orleans as "part Cinderella, part Brothers Grimm, the city has held its bones like no other." It's an apt description as is the remark that New Orleans is, "a sensory overload, the city makes no sense, and is all the better for it."


The point of the article, I think, is to give New Orleans an additional label, apart from the one that says it is the city where there is always some activity on going, all of it interesting. The new label adds New Orleans as the city of disaster, given the hurricane of 2005 and the recent oil spill off the Louisiana coast, some 75 Kl. from the city.


If interested, you can see what it says yourself. Note the five local representatives of the city at the bottom, people the writer feels typify the city. They give the names an brief descriptions of some of their favorite haunts in the city (One of them, Lafayette Cemetery No 1, was an originally an old German cemetery that still has the graves of my great grandfather, his wife and several of his children).http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882304575465932802855728.html?KEYWORDS=new+orleans


At any rate, perhaps you can see why New Orleans is, if troubled, a different sort of place from the rest, one that produces (for better and worse) people of distinctly different character and attitude. I see that when I travel. People from and in New Orleans (newcomers quickly adapt to the New Orleans mindset and start behaving like the natives) are more relaxed, friendly, informal and down to earth. What they lack is ambition, and self discipline.


I like Portland and the people here are very nice, but they are not the same as in New Orleans. In New Orleans, for example, while waiting in a physicians office to see a doctor the typical conversation between strangers might include from their high school backgrounds to their "momma's" to a personal family story. And there is instant trust between and the strangers. It's expected and rarely betrayed. In Portland and most other places there is no conversation among strangers, unless it's a polite nod or some perfunctory remark.


I think the heart and soul of New Orleans is its people, their mentality never changes and is predictably unpredictable. Most visitors to the city see that and begin behaving like New Orleans soon after arriving.