Wanderers Still

Thomas Jefferson was basically an agrarian socialist, Thomas Paine thought religion was for idiots, and Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, and Eisenhower would all be anathema to the modern Republican Party. Can we stop pretending otherwise?

Today Miss T., owner of the JuJu Bag Cafe in Gentilly, gave us a wonderful history lesson on free people of color after the Louisiana Purchase. Though for me, her real lesson came from the story of the JuJu Bag and what Miss T. went through during The Storm.

“I had to get a city ordinance passed so I could build a fence high enough so people here couldn’t see the destruction around them.”

Miss T., a former professor at Southern University, came back to Gentilly after visiting a dying friend in New York, only to find she was the only person left on her block. Her home, three blocks from the JuJu Bag, took on 9 ft. of water (despite being elevated 4 ft. already) and many of her elderly neighbors were killed in the floodwaters.

Miss T. and her partner Phyllis purchased the house that would become the JuJu Bag so Phyllis would have somewhere to ply her trade as a master barber larger than the dimensions of a FEMA trailer. They intended to use one side as a barber shop and the other as a bookstore, but as someone said to Miss T., “Who in the hell has time to read?”

With the reputation of “the only place open in Gentilly” about six months after Katrina, the JuJu Bag quickly became a meeting hall/community center/coffee shop/music hall. But deep down, what it really turned into was a labor of love.

Today is a day that all the marketing in the world tells us we’re either supposed to show our love for others or for ourselves by buying things. By making grand statements that may or may not mean what they say. But what I really reflected on today was the true power of love, the power that rebuilt an entire city.

Because that’s what drove it all, really. New Orleans continues to be rebuilt by love. The love of home and the bonds of love that brought families back to what really was total devastation. The love of oneself and one’s community that made crowds stand up and say, “We won’t let it die.” The love of strangers for people they’ve never met that brought those strangers down here and caused them to give and give and give - without a second thought.

It was not mere charity, nor stubbornness, nor pride that brought this place to where it stands now. It was love and its labors, like the JuJu Bag, that did it.

But looking at this violence breaking out on our streets, it’s going to take a lot more love and a whole lot more labor to build the city we all want for each other.

So many here deride the tourist. The walkers of Bourbon Street, the drinkers of Hand Grenades, Spring Breakers, Mardi Gras Dayers, the Jazz Fest crowds, the ‘Bama fans. They don’t know our city, our love - they only want it for the sexy, easy exterior. A Big Easy one-week stand.

But, I thought, maybe we should envy the tourist. Their love is a simple, uncomplicated one. They come here, enjoy themselves, and get to part ways with it - telling those at home how they “love that city.” And they do, as much as love means for them.

They get off easy. The tourists’ love requires none of the grief, heartache, fear, unease, anger or confusion that ours does. Hardly does a tourist see a man gunned down in front of them and never are they forced to walk home through certain danger. They don’t live with the fear that they might murder #28 this month. Tourists have a whole police force looking out for them.

And less seriously, tourists don’t live with how small this place really is and how interconnected we all really are. They don’t go to Frenchman Street only to run into an ex-lover they parted with poorly, or an old friend they let fall by the wayside. Tourists know no one, form no attachments, and leave none the wiser.

But then I think, I’m something of a tourist. My home lies far from here and I can go back when I please. Or I can move on to somewhere else. Despite the tendrils this city snaked around me, I can come and go at any time. My pain is self-inflicted and others before me have answered the call of a distant home. But do I want to be a tourist - or do I take the high-risk, high-reward path of Calling New Orleans Home?