N'Orluns Report

Dan Baum, writing in The New Yorker, gives an update on post-Katrina New Orleans. An excerpt:

Early this morning, in the pre-dawn gloom, I heard some odd bumping noises coming from the front of the house and I thought, Uh-oh. Twenty-three people have been murdered in New Orleans since the year began. People tell us to lock our car even if we’re leaving it for only a minute, not to walk home late at night from the French Quarter (about twelve blocks), and to make sure we’re carrying enough money to satisfy a mugger. This last admonition reminds me of being careful to eat dinner before going to fraternity parties when I was nineteen, so I would have something in my stomach in case I had to vomit.

In truth, our house is secure. It is probably a hundred or more years old—Mark, our landlord, has no idea. In front are two narrow windows that extend from the floor about ten feet high. (The ceiling is about two feet above that; our living room is essentially a cube.) Both windows are covered with full-length wooden shutters, as is the front door. From the outside, the house looks like it has three doors to choose from, like the set of “Let’s Make a Deal.” A burglar would have to get through the shutters, then the locked windows or door. We’re safe, I told myself, and went back to sleep.