Super Real

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This photo is from Jacmel, Haiti, which once upon a time must have been one of the loveliest places on the planet... now, like the rest of Haiti, one of the most desolate. Especially after four hurricanes in a row recently, and the season is not over yet. This photo appeared in a handbound collection of photos from the trip to Haiti, of which only one copy exists. The caption was " Super Real "

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The mention of hurricanes got me thinking of a piece written not so long ago, a re-make of the Band song "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", so with all due respect to Robby Robertson and his bandmates, I submit this to posterity, if you can conjure up the tune from memory, feel free to hum along :

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The Night She Blew New Orleans Down

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Virgil Caine’s the name, and I lived near Pontchartrain
Until Katrina came, with her wind and waves and rain
Twas the summer of two thousand and five
We were on our roofs, just barely alive
By September first we were almost gone
It was a time I’ll remember oh so long…..
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The night she blew New Orleans down
And the levees were breaking
The night she blew New Orleans down
And all the people were praying
Aaahhh let it blow on by, ooohhh just leave us alive...
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Back with my wife on Canal Street, when one day she told me to hush
Virgil quick come see, I’ll be damned there goes George W Bush
Now I don’t like burying friends
And I can’t see where this misery ends
He’s got what he needs and he leaves us to rot
Good Lord why’s it so god-awful hot
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(Chorus)
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Like my father before me, I played in a Zydeco band
Like my brother above me, who drowned in Dixieland
He was just eighteen, poor and black
But Katrina laid him on his back
I swear by the mud that’s in these streets
We will build New Orleans back, she ain’t been beat
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(Chorus)
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