God, strippers and civil unrest

I was attracted to the two columns titled "God and Strippers" and "Civil Unrest." Chris Rose talked about a "return to normalcy" in both of these columns, but what struck me about them is that the signs of normalcy talked about were both negative aspects of life, so to speak: strippers and unrest within the community. Stripping for a living is widely regarded as a socially unacceptable way to make a living for women, and the sort of civil unrest described in Rose's column only sets the community back. In "Civil Unrest," the residents in the author's community were taking their smelly, dirty refrigerators and dumping them on the sidewalk after the cleaning crew had finally come through and straightened up the street. The other residents get angry, and some of them get revenge by bringing the fridges back to their respective owners and even blocking their driveways with them. At the end of the column on page 104, Rose says this:

                Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking: There are people in this town who lost everything. Their loved ones, their homes, their jobs, their pets, their precious photos and memories. And their refrigerators...You're thinking: You people didn't have the right to survive this storm...Maybe you're right...But consider this...Maybe this signals a return to normalcy, Maybe this is even a healthy sign of the human spirit.

I really liked this quote because it got me thinking. While I've been reading this book, I've been thinking that signs pointing toward normalcy for New Orleans would be the trash and debris being all gone, electricity starting to work again, people moving back. Those are signs of normalcy, but they don't encompass the human spirit. Humans have a nasty side too. Cleaning would've brought aesthetics back to New Orleans, but not the humanity. A combination of the good (people sweeping their front porches instead of cleaning crews pulling branches out of broken windows) and the ugly (fighting with one another over a smelly fridge) brings the humanity back.

In the other article, "God and Strippers," there is a similar quote on page 28. Rose says: "...a strip club opened up on Bourbon Street...and if that isn't one small step toward normalcy...then I don't know what is." Again, something that is considered in a negative light by society is bringing hope back to New Orleans and for the author. Debauchery and sin offer a signal of hope for the author, which is a kind of difficult image to comprehend, but I can chalk that down to frames. I was born and raised in New Hampshire, almost an entirely different world from New Orleans. There are no strip joints where I live. If one opened in my town, it would probably be a signal for despair, because I have been raised to stay away from places like those. It is a difficult image for me to comprehend that a strip joint can invoke that kind of hope in the author. 

These two examples of seemingly hopeless things causing hope to be instilled in the author is what drew me to both of them. Because I cannot experience something quite like this, it is interesting to think about.