The road to nowhere

Boothville-Venice High, built on 14 feet high stilts.

Today, the family and I went down Highway 23 to Venice, Louisiana. Actually, we went down 23 until the road didn't exist any more. This is the mouth of the Mississippi, where the might of New Orleans and Louisiana is based.

This is the end of Louisiana (note double entendre).

A friend of mine said there were 2 reasons to live there: either you work for the oil industry, or you fish. Otherwise, you get out. He also said that Port Sulphur, upriver a ways, was a nice enough place, but Venice was there for oil.

Whatever restaurants used to be around Venice are gone. Pretty much all of Venice and Buras are gone, with the exception of things related to oil and fishing. Plaquemines parish had a direct hit from Katrina.

Believe it or not, Plaquemines has some wonderful citrus groves. I saw grapefruits (Ray should check it out) and some beautiful oranges. We picked up a bag of oranges, and they're sweeter than anything in Florida.

Next weekend is the Plaquemines Parish orange festival. Check it out.

Enjoy Plaquemines while you can. In their quest to be gods, the Bush administration has decided that they will not request money to rebuild the levees in Plaquemines. In fact, the USACE has floated the idea of re-routing the Mississippi river, thus laying Plaquemines to fallow.

The current administration has decided that these people and their lands are not worth saving. Like I said this past summer, what's the difference between Louisiana and Hiroshima?

Japan rebuilt Hiroshima.

Comments

[Varg]

Funny you should post this as my fiance and I were planning on driving down that way in a couple of hours. I've been looking at the area in Google maps and was wanting to take 23 down to the bird foot delta. I suppose I should be prepared for a sobering day.

[judyb]

Thanks for the update. It's both sad and infuriating at the same time.

[Sophmom]

I've always wanted to go down there, but I guess I'd better hurry. When I clicked on the high school's link then clicked on the calendar link, it was May 2005. The scope of all the loss is impossible to comprehend.

[Ray]

I've been meaning to drive down there for a while.

What say? Blogger road trip to da ernge festival next week?

[Mike]

People shouldnt be living there anyway, the Mississippi ought to be allowed to flow its natural course, beach erosion is destroying the entire gulf coast because we're not allowing the natural processes to manifest themselves.

[Noorir]

I was browsing the web and I reiadng through an article from this sports writer named Mike Florio, I believe he covers football for Profootballtalk.com. He's trying to make the arguement for why Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll need to be penalized in some form, for what they did during their tenure at Usc. Personally I do not experience Reggie Bush need to be disciplined in any fashion whatsoever, as the college athlete that he was, I need to think that he merely did what he was told to perform, or offered the green light to accomplish, by his superiors. I experience that the brunt with the blame ought to be offered to Pete Carroll and also the athletic director. The ones that I sense most sorry for are Lane Kiffin plus the current roster of players. These poor guys are going to have suffer the full consequences for the actions of their predecessors. As for stripping away the Heisman award that Bush won, I think that's utter lunacy. He won that accolade, his on the field performance and being the very best athlete for that year.