A couple days ago we passed the “100 days after Katrina” mark. The public mood in New Orleans is grim. Despair and despondency are setting in. People realize that initial post-Katrina “rebuilding-New-Orleans-bigger-and-better” promises of public officials, only gave people hope in the short term (“Durchhalteparolen” we say in German). Three months after Katrina everyone realizes that in the intermediate and long term future nothing will happen quickly, not only because New Orleans and Baton Rouge politicians are dithering in presenting a master plan for rebuilding, but also because President Bush so far has shamefully failed to deliver on what he promised. Norman Francis, the President of Xavier University and chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, summarized the pace of recovery best: New Orleans “is going to come back, but it will come back in increments. The one that we knew and loved is not going to come back tomorrow.”

The nation is showing a bad case of “Katrina fatigue”-- and the world at large of disaster fatigue. (Next to 3 major hurricanes hitting the U.S. this fall and three wreaking destruction in Central America, earthquakes have delivered death and destruction in Pakistan and Iran, and typhoons now flood India. The world has indeed experienced much more than its usual share of major disasters.) The New York Times editorialized on December 11 “Death of an American City”, concluding that if President Bush and Congress won’t deliver the aid needed to secure New Orleans from future hurricanes and rebuild the city: “We must tell them [New Orleansians] America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.”

Pulitzer prize winning Walt Handelsman, my favorite cartoonist, formerly of the New Orleans Times Picayune, now with Newsday, sums up the public mood in New Orleans bitingly and brilliantly in a recent edition of the Times Picayune: in the first frame two people in front of a ruined city note “…Bush Says America’s reputation is at stake and he won’t cut and run…”; in the second frame a dejected looking family with their ruined city in the background says: “…Yeah, but he’s talking about Iraq…” This is exactly how many people in New Orleans feel these days. Senator Mary Landrieu recently charged that her fellow members of Congress prefer going on investigative trips to Baghdad rather than come to New Orleans to see the utter destruction and misery of this city for themselves. Katrina refugees recently bought a 10,000 dollar ad in the Washington newspaper Roll Call to remind Congress – as it is heading into its ill-deserved holiday recess – that tens of thousands of storm victims are still living “like refugees in our own country” and are waiting for Congress “to spearhead the rebuilding of our flood protection, and reclaim one of the nation’s most important cities from ruin.”

How can it be that billions of dollars are being spent on the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan (300 billion plus and counting) and another multi-billion dollar tax cut passed for the rich in this country, while Congress seems to be keep their purse strings very tight when it comes to rebuilding the levies and begin the huge coastal restoration projects that could protect New Orleans from future storms (projected at some $32 billion or 1.2% of this year’s 2.6 trillion in federal spending)? Of the 67 billion appropriated for Gulf Coast recovery, apparently only 20 billion have been spent so far, much of it in debris removal and FEMA helping individuals with cash and temporary housing.

FEMA continues to be the major scapegoat in post-Katrina recovery, not only because of lack of preparedness and disaster-novice Michael Brown’s utter failure right after the storm, but because of continued bureaucratic red tape in housing people and getting sufficient trailers to the Gulf Coast (now that winter is coming) to house people for the medium term future. 38,440 families live in trailers and mobile homes now. On December 11 the Times Picayune reports that 889 FEMA trailers have been occupied in Arkansas while 10,000 still await delivery, parked in Texarkana and, ironically, in Hope. Everybody has FEMA stories to tell and now it appears as if a flood of suits will be filed against FEMA. Not surprisingly, on the stinking refrigerators still filling many a debris-ladden street in New Orleans, Michael Brown is the favorite butt of impromptu refrigerator artists: “Do no open. Michael Brown and Pres. Bush inside …. Send to White House, Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Next to the contractors, the lawyers will profit most from a post-Katrina boom -- in rebuilding houses and infrastructure and in suing the miserly insurance companies and the city’s engineering community (private and Corps of Engineers) that utterly failed to even provide safe hurricane level-3 levies.

Some of the professionals most needed in town would be mental health experts. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control found out in a survey that almost half of the population in New Orleans would need some psychological help to cope with the effects of the Katrina disaster on their own lives, and a quarter of the city’s population is experiencing serious psychological stress and badly needs help. The most disconcerting news these days -- and clearest indication of how desperate the city is becoming now that the holiday season nears -- is that one hears more stories about a growing number of suicides – including people one knows. Our kids’ former pediatrician in New Orleans committed suicide. The mood is as black as large swaths of town still without electricity at night, especially those areas hardest hit (eastern New Orleans, 9th ward, Gentilly and Lakeview). No gas and electricity -- no rebuilding activity!

While vital decisions will need to be made soon about what will happen to these parts of town, the politicians are engaging in the “blame game.” Washington’s Urban Land Institute has presented a bold plan which condemns most of these low-lying areas to be razed, set aside as parks and green spaces. Not unexpectedly, those people who want to return to their homes in these areas are shocked. The mayor tries to mediate and promises that no part of town will be abandoned. Meanwhile, all three levels of government are blaming each other ferociously for having failed to adequately respond to the Katrina disaster. The mayor blames the governor and Washington, the governor mainly Washington (and is piqued that the mayor blamed her right after the storm), and Washington blames Louisiana officials for being disorganized and corrupt. Governor Blanco just released thousands of pages of memos, letters and emails from the critical days of the storms and thereafter, presumably demonstrating that the feds did not send the buses and troops requested. The heavy burdens of post-Civil War Reconstruction -- and with the usual chips of Southern history on her shoulders -- Governor Blanco refused to grant the president the power to take over command of the Louisiana National Guard. Like Michael Brown and associates, Blanco and her staff seemed to be as much concerned about losing the P.R. battle (“we have worked too hard to lose the public relations battle”), than the substance of delivering help quickly into desperate New Orleans. When Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff called her on the day before the storm, her staff refused to wake her up from her Sunday afternoon nap. Maybe this is the perfect metaphor for the governmental response to the Katrina disaster on all levels – “caught napping.”

On December 3 the D-Day Museum opened up again, after the opening of the zoo and “Christmas in the Oaks” in City Park this past weekend, another ray of hope of rebuilding/reconstituting of key institutions defining public and civic life in the city.

The news about the future of education in New Orleans continues to be mixed – despair is setting in here too, but there are also actions that give hope. Over 100 of badly performing New Orleans public schools (now taken over by the state of Louisiana) are all shut; only one elementary school is open in the city (= one percent of public schools). The flagship public high school Ben Franklin will open in January as a charter school – turned into a charter school like many other public schools to restart while the dysfunctional elected School Board continues to be marred by their usual infighting and backbiting, usually divided along racial lines. Ben Franklin will open because the principal and teachers and parents took matters into their own hands (without asking the School Board) and cleaned up and rebuilt the first floor of their badly flooded school. They got enormous help from plenty of volunteers and also UNO.

The quiet determination of the University of New Orleans to be up and running as quickly as possible seems to be the best kept secret in town and has not been reported in the media here. UNO reopened classes on Oct. 11 on its satellite campus in Jefferson parish (1,000 students enrolled in regular classes and 7,000 in on-line classes); meanwhile the main Lakefront campus opened again early in December and so did the Library; intercession classes begin last week and the regular spring term on January 30, 2006. Apart from the 6-week post-Katrina hiatus, UNO was never closed! No faculty or staff have been laid off, if they registered and kept checking with the university in the course of this fall; if sufficient students come back in the spring, the hope is that none will have to be fired. UNO has 6,500 students already enrolled for the spring semester and needs 12,000 to even the budget (pending 22 million in federal relief money to come). With 12,000 enrollments and the federal aid, no faculty and staff positions will have to be cut. Two colleagues in the History Department retired a semester earlier than planned. But no stories of colleagues “abandoning the ship” and moving away have come to my attention yet, even though one would expect everyone pondering his/her options. Former Presidents Bush and Clinton were on the UNO Lakefront campus this week to announce the dispersals of some 90 million dollars from their “Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund” raised from private donations. 35 million will go to higher education, 1.5 million to UNO (most Gulf Coast area universities will receive support). Here too, it was individual initiative and private generosity that brings hope and relief to New Orleans.

Meanwhile, across town Tulane University has announced major retrenchments in academic and athletic programs. Nine athletic programs will be cut (predictably, not football). 230 faculty members will be laid off (65 on the uptown campus, the rest from the downtown medical school). President Cowan somewhat misleadingly called it the biggest “reinvention” of an American university in a century. Flooded Xavier University, so admirably led by Norman Francis for the past 38 years, is facing a repair bill of 35 million and was forced to terminate 89 faculty members (=36 percent). 2,800 of its 4,000 students enrolled in August have indicated they will return in January when the campus opens again. Both UNO and Xavier will set up trailer colonies on their campuses in January to house faculty and staff that lost their houses in Katrina. Many people are making enormous personal sacrifices to rebuild New Orleans, in higher education and elsewhere. These personal commitments will fuel the comeback, but we will continue to need the nation’s help as well to achieve full recovery.