Reflections of time in New Orleans

Llyod Sensat
Monday, March 10, 2008

  "Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has
been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministration
so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is
so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will
believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in
sackcloth and ashes, than to own the whole state of Ohio".

Lafcadio Hearn writing to a friend in Cincinnati in....

And I thought it was an evaluation of the current state of affairs under the Nagin administration!  Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) from 1877-1888, before he moved on to a new life and global fame as a chronicler of Japan, Hearn prowled the streets of New Orleans. In 10 years of writings for the New Orleans Daily Item & Times Democrat, Harper's Weekly, and Scribner's Magazine, he crystallized the way American's viewed New Orleans.  With his writings, he virtually invented New Orleans as a kind of alternative reality to the United States as a whole. Check out "Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lacadio Hearn. " edited by S. Frederick Starr. It is amazing that how much we think that we have changed here, we haven't changed at all.