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Vendaval -> "Of Oaks and Unspoken Angst" (4/30/2007 9:40:33 AM)
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"OF OAKS AND UNSPOKEN ANGST"
Posted: Monday, April 30 at 05:00 am CT
by Mike Stuckey
" BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. – If the trees could talk, they would tell us everything.
Silent, gnarled sentries, the live oaks of the Mississippi Gulf Coast have seen it all. Since well before they beckoned Spanish and French explorers with their massive limbs like welcoming arms, the oaks have been dutiful witnesses to the timeless cycle of birth and life and death. And hurricanes.
Of Hurricane Katrina, 20 months after she unleashed her fury, they have two stories to tell. One story is as plain as the leaves on their branches. Denuded by 120 mph winds, the oaks now bristle like happy Chia pets.
“Last summer, you saw no green,” says Bay St. Louis artist and businessman Mark Currier. “This year, look at the live oaks!”
As with the oaks, the outward signs of human recovery are visible all along the coast.
Locals are planning the biggest party they’ve ever thrown to mark the opening of the new $267 million, four-lane Highway 90 bridge between Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian to the east. The nearby CSX railroad bridge has been open for a year now and freight trains rumble daily through town.
While the occasional jolting juxtapositions of stairs to nowhere and toilets on slabs remain, the breathtaking piles of debris that clotted the landscape after the storm are gone. The cleanup efforts, subsidized by billions in government spending, are in their final days. "
http://risingfromruin.msnbc.com/2007/04/overview_story.html
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