"It looks really good down there"

Scout Prime ("First Draft"), New Orleans Lower 9th Ward --One Year Later:

On my last day I had asked lb0313 if I really needed to post all the videos I took on this trip. Surely people must know how bad it is here I thought. Then something happened on the plane.

I hadn't spoken with the woman sitting next to me during the flight but when we landed in Chicago she asked if I lived in NOLA. I said no I'd been down there working. She said she had been in NOLA to drop her son off at Tulane for his first year. Then she said, 'It looks really good down there.'

I took a breath and asked if she had been to Lakeview or Gentilly or the Lower 9th or St. Bernard Parish. She said no. She had been in the CBD and the Quarter. I told her well it's pretty bad outside those areas. She asked why and I started to explain about the problems with insurance and the federal money not coming to people. She stopped me and said, 'No, No. Why aren't businesses coming back. I would think they'd be clamoring to invest there.'

I simply said, ' No one knows if the levees are safe for a hurricane or even a tropical storm so they don't want to invest only to have it all washed away again.'

She looked away and never said another thing. I think it hit her where she'd just left her son.

Via Avedon Carol ("The Sideshow").