It's another one of my lazy-assed posts where I drop a bomb, swear I'll write more later and never get around to it.
The bomb? We're moving back.
Yeah, there. My visit last week (and the one we'll all be taking next week) ended up being formalities. In retrospect I think we were on our way back long before we started talking about returning.
So glad I finally got around to getting a Virginia drivers license and plates for my car.
Big Government failed and politics failed but the people rose up, giving us such an abundance of things to be thankful for that it boggles the mind. And the strange thing is that — outside of each of our own singular experiences (those who sheltered us, gave clothes or money or provided whatever needs were most urgent) — most of us don't even know who it is we're supposed to thank and what it is they did for us. But there are hundreds of thousands of them — no, millions! — who made sacrifices of time, money, travel, labor and spirit to help the people of south Louisiana and Mississippi get back on their feet and become some small semblance of what we once were and of what we will become again some day.
So today, Thanksgiving, just who do we thank? All those people. But how do we tell them, the soldiers and doctors and Common Grounders and church groups and corporate groups and school groups and animal rescuers and the uncountable and unknowable masses who came to our city to clean us up, dust us off, give us a meal and give us a hug before going back to their own homes forever changed, just like the folks in Gander will never be the same?
It's weird: I just feel like picking up the phone today and randomly dialing some small town somewhere and saying thank you for what you did for us because it's inevitable that they did something for us.
Maybe they took in evacuees or maybe the local elementary school collected a water jug of pennies or maybe a local corporation sent $5 million. It's hard to know who did what — like I said, this thing is so damn big — but I swear that it seems like everyone I meet every time I travel did something.
So when you look around this town, this region, and see the small steps we have taken on our long road to recovery, realize that there have been guardian angels at our side every step of the way. And since we'll never take stock of who they all were, really the best way to thank them is to succeed here, to become a city and region better than we were, a place strong enough, unified enough — and good enough — to take in 38 planes full of strangers when it's our turn to answer to the call of membership in the human race.
I may try and go see this. Heard about it while getting my NOLA fix listening to the WWOZ stream. Man, I am excited to go to Louisiana.
You say yer life's a bum deal
'N yer up against the wall…
Well, people, you ain't even got no
Deal at all
'Cause what they do
In Washington
They just takes care
of NUMBER ONE
An' NUMBER ONE ain't YOU
You ain't even NUMBER TWO
Don't Forget To Vote!