It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

She was reading an old CityBusiness this afternoon. She ran across this story in a side bar.

On March 2 New Single Assessor Errol Williams got stuck in the elevators at city hall. There were two numbers posted in the elevator car, along with an explicit notice not to call the Fire Department. He called both emergency numbers posted in the car, they were the engineer's office and the security guard. Guess what? Of course neither number answered. He then called a friend in the Civil Sheriff's office who called, guess who? The Fire Department, of course. When the Fire Department got him out, guess what they told him? "Don't pay any attention to what the City posted."

Seems like there ought to be a metaphor or a moral in that story somewhere. Possibly about the mighty being unable to overcome the institutional idiocy that infects everything in City Government.

I'm sure most readers have experienced similar dysfunction in public systems in New Orleans. The feeling sure seems familiar on any number of levels.

I wish Mitch a lot of luck, he's going to need it.

I'd rather be in a FEMA trailer in New Orleans than in a penthouse anywhere else

I found the title quote by Gralen Banks;

"I'd rather be in a FEMA trailer in New Orleans than in a penthouse anywhere else,"

in this NPR story I hadn't seen before (or forgot about) reading another NPR Story about Treme.

Echoes of Lafcadio Hearn;

"Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministraions so that it has become a study for archaeologists...but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio."

Odd that we now have a couple of from NOLA Blogger expats in Ohio.