The once great city of New Orleans has been sitting like a ghost
town for more than a week, resembling an abandoned movie set of
giant proportions.
“It is better to light a candle
than to curse the darkness.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
The once great city of New Orleans has been sitting like a ghost town for more than a week, resembling an abandoned movie set of giant proportions.
“We have had no supplies from the outside – no food, no water, no electricity-absolutely nothing has come in so far,” Joshua Clark said earlier this week. He is the founder of the Light of New Orleans Publishing Company and decided to stay in the city he loves in spite of the hurricane. He described how he and six friends have banded together to survive in the brutal aftermath.
“We’ve been eating well,” Clark says from his apartment near Jackson Square. “We’ve actually been throwing food away.” Neighbors have let them know where their food supplies of canned goods, pasta, rice, etc., are stored. “Go in through the back and get what you need. There’s a spare key under the angel statue in the backyard,” former neighbors have told those who have elected to stay.
The seven friends have joined forces to not only survive, but to thrive under what might seem like impossible conditions. They are using a swimming pool in an abandoned home’s backyard for bathing, and they have figured out how to drain 40-gallon water heater tanks for safe water.
“We BBQ every night,” Clark says, “There’s more than we can eat. We share it with whoever we can; we pass it out to policemen and firemen. …” For awhile, they also had fresh produce every day. A produce stand owner opened up his place and began giving it away daily.
“We’ve thought about writing a book of hurricane recipes when this is all over,” Clark says. He has been working to document the individual stories of survivors, with the idea of telling the city’s story in a future book he will publish about New Orleans. All proceeds will go to benefit survivors.
Clark has been constantly looking for ways to help those around him. One morning he and his friends got up, turned some red shirts inside out to look like uniforms, and went to work. They began cleaning the debris from one city block of New Orleans.
Other people came by and saw Clark and his crew at work and felt inspired to begin cleaning up themselves. “That’s what we have to do,” Clark says. “Begin cleaning one block at a time.”
This week, San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales agreed to begin accepting the first of 100 evacuees from the storm-damaged areas; they are expected to begin arriving in our county today or Friday to begin the long process of rebuilding their lives.
They will need a lot from us in terms of not only basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter, but in terms of hope, help with post traumatic stress, and ways to make a living in the future. How do you start life over again when you’ve lost so much?
As the hurricane evacuees come to live in our county, may we be as resourceful and as inspiring as Josh Clark and his friends in New Orleans.
One person strikes a match and, however small that light may appear, the darkness gives way. Just as Joshua Clark is truly the “Light of New Orleans,” may we be the light for our fellow Americans as they come here looking to us for help and hope.
Kat Teraji’s column appears every Thursday
in the Take 2 section of the Dispatch. You can
contact her at ka****@ve*****.net.
