A City of Bad Grass

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing:

Strapping on a dust mask, she grabbed a shovel and with all her force, began pounding the deformed walls of her living room until they came off, falling to the floor like the rinds of a desiccated orange. She filled buckets with the broken drywall, which her son ferried outside. Bucket by bucket and week after passing week, she kept at it, resting occasionally on a stool, the only piece of furniture in her house to survive the flooding. Flanked by a worn statue of the Virgin Mary, hers is now one of the few houses that's been gutted in the city's most destroyed neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward.

Ask her to explain how a nonagenarian succeeded in doing what thousands of younger families have failed to do, Miss Barnes offers an analogy: "I'm like bad grass. Because it never dies. You gotta pull it up and even though you do, it still grows back. I don't care how hard something looks, I'm still going to try."

I want the bad grass to grow all over New Orleans. I want to see so much bad grass that I think it’s good. If Miss Barnes is like bad grass, I want to be bad grass too.

Because it never dies.

Yeah, you can pull up the bad grass. But it always grows back. It might not be the same bad grass as before. But it’s just as bad.

Because it never dies.

Some people like to pull up the bad grass and replace it with good grass. But I can tell the difference. I can feel the difference.

I feel out of place when I am surrounded by the good grass. The good grass takes too much effort to keep up. It’s high maintenance. It ain’t like the bad grass.

Because it never dies.

New Orleans is a city of bad grass. Because it never dies.

However, taking the word bad and making it good doesn’t solve all our problems. I wish it were that easy.

But, the title of the article with Miss Barnes, “Recovery remains slow year after Katrina,” gets it wrong. This ain’t no recovery mission. This is a rescue mission. New Orleans is still alive, baby.

Because it never dies.