Sometimes, it's hard to be sympathetic.
More than 100 villagers turned out for a community meeting to gauge residents' preferences for reconstruction - whether to rebuild in place, surrounded by dikes or levees; move to higher ground; or a combination of the two.
Mike Pettit, who remembers the floods of 1978 and 1993, said a dike would have to be built around the village's business district or it would lose its tax base.
OK, so we have 1978, 1993, 2007...is that the 'three-strike' rule?
...residents at Wednesday's meeting didn't want to pack up. Albert Zegiel, a baker who has lived here since 1989, worried Gays Mills would lose its "small-town flavor" if that happened.
Added Gay St. resident Susan Jarrett: Moving Gays Mills "would kill the soul of this city."
Usually the soul has intelligence.
Regarding New Orleans, from the Confederate Yankee:
In September of 2005, I interviewed a geologist who was the former Dean of his southern university's Coastal and Marine Studies program. His closing, unsolicited recommendation was that New Orleans "should be largely abandoned as a city."
New Orleans is doomed city, a geographical mistake destined to fall to geologic and hydraulic forces beyond our control. It is sad they we are too arrogant to concede this failed city to the sea, and seem destined to waste the billions of dollars that could be spent moving the inhabitants to higher ground.
Instead we seem intent on enticing back the poor and the destitute with promises of rebuilding what should not be rebuilt, just to put their lives in danger once more.
Some ex-NO residents have caught on:
Two years after Hurricane Katrina forced hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents to take refuge in cities across the nation, the number of survivors still flowing into the Milwaukee area has continued, even as national disaster relief aid has ended.
There are large numbers of people from NO all around the country. They're not happy about leaving their home, either--but at least they're smart enough to occupy the high ground.
Yes, the people from N.O. are moving to higher ground, but they are also bring their problems with them. Just ask the people in Houston and other towns- drugs, murders assualts, gangs. In addition, New Orleans is going down the crapper as well. If it was not for the oil and Burbon Street, they could shut New Orleans and no one would care.
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