Sherry Chandler » The more things change, the more they remain the same
The more things change, the more they remain the same
So say the cynical French.
I’ve been talking quite a bit about change the last several days: wiki, Google, “Don’t Look Back.” Cultural changes that I am too far behind to curve to pretend to understand or to be able to talk about except that I think they will change the way we view ownership of information and art. As Terry points out in her comment below, there is now an “amorphous reserved rights category of ‘technology not yet invented’” that may rob writers of their royalties. This is one thing that probably won’t change – the money boys are going to try to stay in control.
They will also change information and art, as Napster to iPod has changed music. I grew up when the dj was king, came of age with the LP and the concept album. Now it seems to me to be all randomization – one from here, one from there, hit the random button and see what happens. A sort of chaos of music.
So where am I going with this? It started with my drive home last night when I noticed that some of the big old derelict houses on Limestone Street south of Upper in Lexington are being turned into $150,000 condos. This reconstruction is probably part of UK President Lee Todd’s initiative to work with the Lexington-Fayette urban county government to revitalize the area of Lexington between downtown and the University. He has a program called “Live Where You Work.” The result has been development of lofts and condos and everything is getting spruced up – which is good, I wouldn’t want to see those historic old buildings lost – but I ask myself what kind of worker is going to be able to live here?
Urban renewal never works out for poor folk, seems like.
Speaking of the cynical French brings me to our biggest ongoing urban renewal project, our one city of French heritage. Some changes are forced upon us. How to restore New Orleans is a problem well beyond me. I get really confused, thinking about it, because I loved what is lost, but what is lost was flawed and who wants willfully to restore a flawed thing.
And I rather suspect that chaos will prevail here, too, that nobody will be able to control what happens and restore a nice orderly eqalitarian city. Things just don’t work that way. Especially not in the current atmosphere of cronyism and profiteering. But I also suspect that the poor will get a raw deal here. See, for example, this article in today’s NYTimes:
NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 16 - Charity Hospital, an institution that for nearly three centuries has been dedicated to treating the poorest and sickest here - the shot, stabbed, overdosed and uninsured - has been abandoned downtown since Hurricane Katrina. It is now at the center of a battle over whether it will continue that tradition, or become a more conventional hospital.
The state officials who manage Charity say Hurricane Katrina dealt this Huey Long-era landmark a deathblow and want it torn down. In its place, they say, they want to build a hospital with a “new mission,” one that treats both public and private patients and relies less on government money.
But doctors who work there sharply disagree with that plan. They say Louisiana officials are using the storm as an excuse to achieve the state’s long-sought goal of demolishing Charity, getting millions in federal dollars to build a new hospital, and then moving away from a promise that has long been made to the city’s poor.
“People want to use these disasters to get insurance money,” said Dr. James Moises, an emergency room physician at Charity who helped clean up the hospital after the storm. Louisiana officials, he said, “saw it as a great opportunity to get the federal government to pay for a new facility.”
For months now, officials have barred doctors from the building and forced them to practice in a tent field hospital, even though the doctors say the hospital is ready for use. The doctors say the makeshift arrangement is inadequate for the severe trauma cases the hospital specializes in treating.
As one of the two oldest hospitals in North America - it was founded in 1736, the same year as Bellevue Hospital in New York - Charity has from the beginning been a symbol of a social commitment to the poor, and its wards are empty at a moment when thousands of poor New Orleans residents are struggling to return home and fear that government has abandoned them. In many ways, the debate over its future parallels that of New Orleans itself, as it chooses whether to become a more middle-class city or to return to earlier traditions.
I’m not arguing right or wrong here. It’s obvious that New Orleans can’t be restored to exactly what it was. But I think we should be paying more attention. I read the other day that money to restore New Orleans may not be appropriated this year. And next year, there’s talk of DeLaying the start of Congress until the end of January because the GOP needs The Hammer. So it may be months before money is even appropriated.
A sort of chaos of government.
And while we’re at it, why isn’t anyone helping those earthquake victims in Pakistan?
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