Welcome to my blog!
I created this as a way for me to (publicly) explore John Barry's book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. You can join me!
I haven't started the book yet, but I want to introduce myself and explain where I'm coming from.
I was born in New Orleans and grew up in St. Charles parish. I've evacuated for many storms--usually a great week of vacation early in the school year. I love the city and I know it will remain forever. I currently live in mid-city, New Orleans, blocks from Bayou St. John.
Katrina sucked, and there are some discernible reasons for why it happened, but finger-pointing is a sport in New Orleans nowadays. I will do my best to prevent this from becoming an angry blame journal. Instead, I want to reflect on Barry's assessment and compare his historical perspective to my own understanding of New Orleans today.
What is my perspective?
-Medical: I just finished med school, having started it right before the storm hit. It has given me the sometimes unwanted opportunity to witness firsthand the ongoing effects of the storm. In clinical work throughout the city, I have been confronted with the personal, subtle, dramatic face of suffering, rebuilding, poverty, racism, hope, and loss.
-Public Health: I have almost finished a master's in public health. This has more than anything affected my understanding of how/why disease and ill-health occur and what can/should we as a society do about it. There are definite, complex links between socioeconomic demographics and wellness. As a student of "International Health and Development", I know that the roots of wellness go even deeper, to international politics, transnational agribusiness, climate change, reproductive health, unsustainable resource use, economic development, information and communication technology, and history. "Wellness" is broadly defined: rather than absence of disease, it really means a person's (or community's) ability/capacity to secure the details of a happy, productive life. Often one person's wellness is produced by the sacrifice of many others'.
-Antiracist: I feel hesitant to throw that word out there, but it describes my understanding of the south, history, and development. I believe that race plays the central role in the American experience on many levels. Whereas racism often refers to personal behavior, the real issue is institutionalized inequity, which is pervasive and rooted in history. It pertains to where people live, who gets loans, who gets which jobs, who goes to which schools, who goes to jail, who benefits/loses with the status quo. This will definitely be a theme that I will return to as I read Barry's book.
-Local: like I said, I love New Orleans. I will be leaving it soon, temporarily, but I intend to return and continue to rebuild with my neighbors. I see it as never ending, where the process is more important than the end result, because we can always make things better for ourselves.
Here are some questions I hope to address as I read Rising Tide, based on some themes in Population/Environment/Development theory:
Sustainable Development—what is the best way to pursue development? Can we “develop” with environmental sustainability? Can we “develop” with social equity? How can we balance the needs of industry, citizenry, politicians, and consumers?
Political Ecology—who controls local resources? Who benefits from exploitation of those resources, and who is negatively affected from exploitation of those resources?
The River as a Complex Adaptive System—what are all of the components/players that make up “the Great River”? How can we (the people/entities that interact with the River) adapt to the uncertainty of the environment? How will we learn from the mistakes of the past?
