French Quarter Holdouts Create 'Tribes' to Survive

From the AP via AOL:

In the absence of information and outside assistance, groups of rich and poor banded together in the French Quarter, forming "tribes'' and dividing up the labor.

As some went down to the river to do the wash, others remained behind to protect property. In a bar, a bartender put near-perfect stitches into the torn ear of a robbery victim.

While mold and contagion grew in the muck that engulfed most of the city, something else sprouted in this most decadent of American neighborhoods - humanity.

"Some people became animals,'' Vasilioas Tryphonas said Sunday morning as he sipped a hot beer in Johnny White's Sports Bar on Bourbon Street. "We became more civilized.''

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Becky, who still uses AOL even though I dropped it last year, read this and said, "Oh my god. It's just like Debbie was telling me." Indeed, as this story, and Becky's conversation with her pal in Bywater (see post below) reveal, there are still many, many people inside New Orleans, and they are doing what they have to do in order to survive. This is as uplifting as the stories of raping and killing are depressing. The human spirit prevails.

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