Letter from Dooky Chase's Restaurant in New Orleans
Posted by Billy Shore on Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Tuesday, April 22 was a long day for legendary New Orleans restaurateur Leah Chase. The 85 year old chef rose at 4:00 a.m. to prepare two meals. The first was breakfast for President Bush, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in Louisiana for a North American Leaders Summit The second, at the same table of her private dining room, was dinner for Share Our Strength's Hinges of Hope delegation.
We began our trip at a community health clinic that sees 950 patients a month and has a caseload of 5200 regular patients. The director Dr. Karen DeSalvo explained how they "focus on the social determinants of health. If you don't take care of social and psychological needs, people will continue to have health problems." Trying to realign the incentives so doctors don't get paid based on how wick you are but rather how well you stay, She told us "I've never worked so hard in my life as during these past two months. Not in med school, not during internship or residency. But time is of the essence. There is a window of opportunity to decentralize health care so that people can access it in their neighborhoods. And there is a cliff in the other side."
The rest of the trip revisited some familiar sites. The Martin Luther King school which we helped to rehab during our Conference of Leaders, is now brightly and colorfully painted, spotless, with hundred of children in sharp looking uniforms, and the Samuel Green Charter School (with the Edible Schoolyard) of which Tony Racasner is principal.
It seems to be the educators who have been the most unstoppable of all, as if something about being responsible for children, the most vulnerable and voiceless of Katrina's victims, fuels their determination to not only rebuild, but to build better. There is still a lot of blame cast in various directions for the failure of the levees, the bureaucracy of The Road Home reimbursement program, the intransigence of the insurance companies, but there is an implicit recognition that at least the kids remain innocent.
Perhaps it is only with the perspective of 30 long months that what was once speculation begins to emerge more clearly as fact: New Orleans will come back, in spite of official recovery efforts as much as because of them. Our hotel and the French Quarter were bustling with convention attendees, the Green Market was busy, the airport crowded and the schools fully staffed.
It's all taken intolerably longer than decency should allow. Many communities remain decimated. There is still a great amount of work to be done. But at least we've learned that in the long run strong, vibrant culture wins out over even nature's fury. Compassion wins out over incompetence. Community triumphs over indifference.
May 13, 2008 | | Tags: disaster relief, dooky chase, education, hinges of hope, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans
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