Fox News
by Adam Nossiter

09/07/05

You could live in a kind of dream-state in New Orleans, lulled into ignoring the crumbling houses you drove past, and their destitute inhabitants. In a city so beautifully green, so full of beguiling architecture, so appealingly laid-back, how easy it was. I've been there for nearly 15 years now, all the while participating in one of the city's great unspoken rituals: locking out the world of the other New Orleanians, those who were poor and more often than not black. ... Even before the storm, you were dimly aware that to ... awaken from the old New Orleans dream -- would be to go half-mad. Last week, all that changed. The reality of what New Orleans actually is, was thrown up in our faces: We couldn't turn away now, we couldn't deny that those fellow residents we'd never really known or understood had become refugees, milling and dazed or angry...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168635,00.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp