The Editor's Notes

The eight interviews in this special section of Callaloo are the second installment of more interviews to come on the past and continuing impact of Hurricane Katrina on the City of New Orleans. The 2006 autumn issue of Callaloo, entitled "American Tragedy: New Orleans Under Water," is our first focus on the storm and its aftermath. There we tried to present myriad voices in different forms recollecting experiences with and ruminating on the effects of Hurricane Katrina, as it shattered the private and public lives of people in New Orleans and its nearby communities. The voices in the current issue of Callaloo are limited to the interview and essay formats, through which informants speak of the impact of Hurricane Katrina from the angle of their professions. Although the informants speak from the landscapes of their daily responsibilities, their professions and the work they entail do not limit their views of the city, its people, and the circumstances in which its residents find themselves. On the contrary, their professions perhaps afford them a depth and a breadth that extend their perspectives far beyond the boundaries of occupations and arcane particularities. As the interviews (and the essay) that follow will demonstrate, our informants offer us broad and well-informed vistas on post-Katrina New Orleans.

In this number of Callaloo, there are narratives about how journalists collected news to report to the national media and stories about how the judicial system continued to function in spite of the hurricane and its subsequent flooding. As we received news reports during and after the storm, we probably never thought of the circumstances under which journalists work. In this special section of Callaloo, two journalists, who work for national news agencies, speak openly of their experiences. We know the consequences of the absence of news reporting in a large community imperiled by a catastrophic natural disaster, but we do not know what happens to Lady Justice if a city suddenly comes to naught? Two district court judges recollect how they kept their courts running, even in evacuated circumstances. Before Katrina, the academic standards of New Orleans' public schools were a national scandal that was occasionally reported on by the press. The hurricane did not help to improve the public school system or to abate the very emotional and personalized politics that drives it. In this issue of Callaloo, two university educators reflect on public school education and on higher education in the City of New Orleans. Like the public schools, the over taxed healthcare system of the city continues to decline. It is the city's system that the hurricane offered the least mercy. Healthcare in New Orleans today is a catastrophe; it cannot adequately serve its residents. The storm and its flooding destroyed most of the hospitals and clinics, and most of the physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, and clinical psychologists, along with a host of related professionals, have not returned to what were their homes and their jobs in New Orleans. Where, then, does one go for physical and mental health care in the city? That is one of the questions that loom over the interviews with the healthcare providers in this issue of the journal. No wonder that the city's funeral homes, too, are now over taxed, for an inordinate number of people die daily in post-Katrina New Orleans—and the national media are not reporting on this crisis. One wonders whether the news media have forgotten New Orleans.

Do the American people remember New Orleans? Has the State of Louisiana forgotten New Orleans? We cannot answer those questions, but we can tell you this: New Orleans is still an American tragedy, and we at Callaloo have not forgotten that it desperately needs the nation's help. That is the message we are trying to relay to our readers in this issue of Callaloo. And until the city is restored and its residents are able to return, find affordable housing and jobs, and, one by one, reestablish themselves as residents, we will continue to publish New Orleans voices in Callaloo—the people in their own words that tell us what the...