From Scout:

Mr. Clio of World Class New Orleans isn’t complaining but thinks people in the rest of the country ought to know and I agree. So here is a recent post from him….

I ordered a book from Amazon today. When my order confirmation page popped up, it contained this statement:

Estimated ship date for this item: August 9, 2006

Your order is being sent to an area recently affected by Hurricane Katrina. We estimate that delivery of your shipment may be delayed up to 10 days or more. Click here for more information.

There are a couple of problems here.

1. Yes, we Orleanians were affected by Hurricane Katrina. However, we were devastated by the human-negligence-created levee breaks. I wish Amazon and other vendors would include THAT in their statements.

2. It’s almost a year since the levee breaks and rescue failures, and we are still encountering these kinds of small but significant reminders that we’re not a full part of Western-style civilization.

I ain’t whining. I don’t care if that book takes three weeks to get here.

I just want people elsewhere to know that things they don’t even think about or notice are really big deals here.

We are days away from the one year anniversary of the great man-made deluge and life in NOLA is still hard, very hard. The simple things we take for granted are a big deal there. And then there are the really big deals like planning to rebuild a city still lying in ruins. I do wonder if people realize just how difficult life is in New Orleans?