The Line

Read this and weep.

Update: This morning (Sunday 3/30) NPR profiles a non-profit lender who fills in the gaps by having their officers walk the streets of New Orleans, seeking out small businesses and their owners personally. A study in contrast if there ever was one.

So I tried to write about New Orleans.

About what it was like to see azaleas blooming in March. About the rich muddy waters of the Mississippi, who “ain’t never gave us no trouble,” said one lifelong resident to me, as if the river is a quiet neighbor who keeps the grass cut. About the cabby who recommended a local’s restaurant so far out of the tourist center that it amazed the second cabby who picked me up there. And about the feeling, as tangible as breath, that emanates from the citizens who talk about Katrina– every last one. It took me until the flight home to realize why I felt like it was familiar to me. It is the exact feeling that comes from European family members when they speak of surviving World War Two.

I was nursing a seven month old baby and managing a toddler when Katrina hit in 2005. My sympathies were abstract, my mind elsewhere. My lip service didn’t do it then, and it doesn’t now.

So I gave up on writing about New Orleans. This came out instead.

It’s my first experiment with digital movie making, so any clumsiness, glaring errors or omissions are only mine. It is intended for a local audience– for example, the Blue Cross Arena is a local landmark. Most of the photos after the initial segment are ones I took myself.

There is no criticism implied in it of the good intent or expertise of Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod. In fact, Scott himself generously located and shared the music from “Do You Know 2.0″ for this project.

However, I also cannot deny that for me, the experience of New Orleans, and the questions it raised about the responsibility our society has to answer the basic needs of its people before anything else, do stand in stark ironic contrast to the juggernaut spread of “Do You Know?”.

I have seen “Do You Know?” four times in unrelated contexts in the past year and a half, one of them at the ASCD conference itself. And while the questions it asks about the technological proficiency of schools are useful ones, I also can’t help but pin them up in my mind against whole streets of storm-ravaged gutted homes, where schoolchildren no longer live.

Thus my choice to model the video after “Do You Know?” is deliberate.

Here is the original, for comparison.

Chris Lehmann is. Joe Henderson is. And after returning home from New Orleans, where the race divide draws blood in your mind, it is so sharp, and listening to this speech by Obama this morning: so am I. I cannot remember, in my near 20 years of political awareness, a speech that so moved me with its compassion, intelligence, and courage.

I’ll be writing more about New Orleans very soon. But for now, let this story lay out the ground for the stories I encountered there. Please: listen.

My father, fondly recalling sultry days spent strolling in New Orleans with my mom, tells me I am bound by law to have a sugar-bombed beignet and chicory coffee on Sunday morning at the Cafe Du Monde this weekend. I’ll be “live” guest blogging the ASCD Conference at their blog Inservice the rest of the time, attending sessions based on input from edubloggers Dy/Dan, Eduwonkette, Clay Burell, Ben Baxter, Tom Woodward,  Joe Henderson, and other kind folks. Currently up at Inservice is a brief interview and an old geeky picture –although you can’t even tell I’m eight months pregnant in it, can you? School cafeteria tables are very slimming. Unlike beignets.