My fondness for the writing of John F. Burns is not a secret. But he is a foreign correspondent and doesn’t turn his typing to the cares at home.
Dan Barry seems to be our domestic Burns. He takes the same warm stare, the same courage at putting the obvious, but painful, things into print. And he isn’t afraid to note w/o apology that he is human, and present, at the story’s centerpoint. Here’s more of him:
In New Orleans as It Did in New York, X Marks the Pain
A disturbing question comes too quickly to the mind. Which was worse: the attacks of Sept. 11 or the attack of Hurricane Katrina?
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THE overwhelming loss of life, of course, and the crippling tolls to the economy, to the infrastructure, to the community’s sense of self. But more than that: the denial of that basic, sacred need to claim and bury the dead. Four years have passed, and 1,152 of the 2,749 victims of 9/11 have not been identified. Two weeks have passed, and who knows how many bodies still bob in dark waters.
Which is worse? Let the question go.
Just know that emergency telephone numbers and wrenching news updates trickle across the television screens here, just as they did then. That volunteers from across the country are here to help out, just as they did then. That people here vow to rebuild, just as we did then.
One night four years ago, a city sanitation worker started sweeping the debris of chaos from Church Street. And one afternoon this week, a shopkeeper on deserted Royal Street did the same.