Not so easy after all

Apparently things aren't so easy in the Big Easy these days. NYT - In Setback for New Orleans, Fed-Up Residents Give Up

After nearly a decade in the city of their dreams, Kasandra Larsen and her fiancé, Dylan Langlois, climbed into a rented moving truck on Marais Street last Sunday, pointed it toward New Hampshire, and said goodbye.

Not because of some great betrayal — they had, after all, come back after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina — but a series of escalating indignities: the attempted carjacking of a pregnant friend; the announced move to Nashville by Ms. Larsen’s employer; the human feces deposited on their roof by, they suspect, the contractors next door; the two burglaries in the space of a week; and, not least, the overnight wait for the police to respond.

The story does make it sound like things are pretty rough down there. The article also points out that a lot of the people leaving are well educated, higher paid citizen, while the recent influx is from a poorer demographic. Not exactly a recipe for success. I'm sure it will take many years (decades?) for the city to fully recover from the devastation it received from Katrina, but barring another complete flooding of the area, I'm sure it will eventually claw its way back. Southerners don't give up too easily. And of course there is always the irrational attachment factor

Ms. Brite said, “If a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don’t desert it just because it can kill you. There are some things more valuable than life.”