Living in Baton Rouge, Living in the South, and Lent

I cut and pasted this link in the summer of 2017. It was a year after it was written. It was written just after the Alton Sterling shooting. Go read the Wikipedia article, then read the "everythingisfinehere" post. I'll wait.

It’s not getting worse. It’s been there all along.

I spent a lot of years in Connecticut. For many of those years while I lived in Bridgeport, I worked in the suburbs - first Wilton, then Hamden. Both of them are pretty white. My kids went to school where they were in the minority (but not, as in this article, THE minority). I saw some of the issues outlined here. In the North they are often masked by artificial political divisions ... the City/Town line between Bridgeport and Trumbull, for instance.

Now go back and look again at the map. Can you find Florida Boulevard? It is amazing to me how graphically prominent it is. I will also note, that when I drive North/South in the city (or the reverse), I inevitably spend at least a full minute, and often more, waiting to cross Florida Boulevard. There is only one intersection that I regularly use where that does not happen ... it is the T-intersection at River Road and Florida where Florida Boulevard begins. Let me also note that I have driven from that intersection, along Florida Boulevard to Airline Highway without having to stop for a single traffic signal! The road is not only a geographical marker, but an actual physical divide.

Finally let me note. When I first moved to Baton Rouge, I stayed in the same Congressional District as when I lived in New Orleans. It is an amazingly gerrymandered district, drawn to maximize the number of black voters. Look at the map here. I moved south in Baton Rouge, a few miles, and am suddenly in a different district! (Actually, at my old place, it was 0.75 miles to work, and work was in a different district!)

The two most poignant quotes, which resonate most with me, are these:

1. "I had no idea the eye opening experience we had unwittingly signed up for when we agreed to move to Baton Rouge."
2. "I never thought I’d see a city this segregated in my lifetime."

 Part of what I am (finally) beginning to realize is the incredible life of privilege which I have lived.

My challenge to myself this Lenten season is: What am I going to do about that?

Reflections on a flood event

It has been an interesting couple of days. I don't think I have ever been in the middle of a "national natural disaster" before. Yes, there have been the snow storms ... but nothing like this.

One's perspective of the disaster (from inside) is often shaped by where you physically are. Baton Rouge as a city, and East Baton Rouge as a parish, are physically very large...much larger than the communities of the north and northeast with which I am most familiar. The parish is 470 square miles.

Historically, as in much of South Louisiana, the older parts of the city/settlement are on the higher ground. It is true in New Orleans, it is true in Baton Rouge.

We had been getting pretty regular rain for the past couple weeks. Daily showers/thunderstorms with a half-inch of rain or so. Not drenching, most of the time, but sometimes there were some pretty strong, but short, downpours. Thursday night to Friday was different. It was hard, steady rain over an extended period of time. This meant that Friday morning, there was a lot of water around, even in the older parts of the city. There was ponding, and drains that simply could not handle the volume. That happens. But, it kept raining. And raining, and raining.

Just for the record, the weather almanac in the Sunday paper (the only print one I buy) says that we have had 20.76 inches of rain this month (normal is 2.51) and since January 1, we have had 64.95 inches (normal is 38.57).

As the intensity of the storm lessened, the older parts of the city drained. It was not bad near where I live, and in downtown. The further out parts, however were beginning to see the accumulated run off. That is the flooding (as I believe) that we are seeing now.

I drove through some of the more eastern parts of the city today. (For me, that is east of Airline Highway.) There were places that had some water yesterday, that now had a lot of water. The Florida bridge of the water by Sharp Road was not quite flooded over, but a couple miles further the road *was* closed from flooding. I drove through some neighborhoods, trying to get around, and was unsuccessful. What those neighborhoods had in common was age - or lack thereof. Most seemed to be built in the 70s or more recently. They were part of the urban sprawl. Big houses, with big lawns, with spaces between them, and often a median down the street with trees. Yet at the same time, some of the drainage ditches closer in, had barely more water than normal for this time of year.

Those are some random thoughts. I have spent time over the past few days keeping the library's LibGuide on disasters up to date. There have been challenges in finding information on the web sites where you would normally expect to find them (Red Cross shelters, for instance). Some of that will become work to be done after the dust settles (? is that a bad metaphor?).