The Man In The Long Black Coat

The crickets are chirping and the water is high
there's a soft cotton dress on the line hanging dry
the window's wide open, the african trees
bent over backwards in a hurricane breeze

Somebody said, from the Bible he'd quote
There was dust on the man
In the long, black coat.

There's smoke on the water, it's been there since June
tree trunks uprooted in the high crescent moon
Feel the pulse and vibrations and a rumbling force
somebody's out there beating on a dead horse

The preacher was talking
there's a sermon he gave
he said, "Every man's conscience is vile and depraved
you cannot depend on it to be your guide
when it's you who must
keep it satisfied."


it ain't easy to swallow
it sticks in the throat
Gone with the man
in the long, black coat.... -Bob Dylan






I remember how it all started to unfold: The hurricane warning, 2 days before landfall; watching on the news the mass exodus of New Orleansians in the blazing heat. Cars on a sun-drenched highway, backed-up bumper-to-bumper for miles. There was a certain breathless excitement in the air, those of us who've never experienced anything like a class 4 hurricane all wondering what it would be like to live through one.

..Yes, wondering what it would be like experience a hurricane, but not wondering-- not even having cause to wonder (until much later, that is) -- what it would be like to experience the aftermath.

Watching that footage of those hundreds and hundreds of cars backed up on some Louisiana highway, it didn't seem possible that there were still 100,000 people in New Orleans. And as the reports started coming in that there were people staying, the nation shook their heads and clicked their tongues-- "it's their choice."

We were wrong.


There's no point debating the levees, the poor planning, the lack of public transportation, our country's incredible ignorance of the poorest classes of people and the options (or lack thereof) available to them. Everyone knows that our government completely and utterly failed. Even the worst of the raging "Repugnicans" don't try to defend the government's response to the worst instance of human suffering in the history of our country (except, of course, for the Trail of Tears.) As I said, we already know all this.

But knowing doesn't matter.

If one year ago, you were at home watching thirsty, hungry, desperate people begging for help, you owe it to your conscience and to them, to watch it again.

The people who suffered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are not refugees fleeing genocide in an unfamiliar land. They are not fighting a war in a distant country. That is why we feel so guilty. In other global crisis and events our nation is so often confused, unable to understand the intracies of a history and ideology not our own. But the victims of Katrina are Americans, speaking in what for many of us is a different but deeply familiar dialect that every American understood.

I've come to believe that intense feelings of guilt after surviving or witnessing a major trauma signify compassion and empathy, not indifference.

So feel your anger. Feel your guilt. Look. Watch. Witness. Listen.