Back from New Orleans

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, but I was speaking and presenting a poster at a large meeting in New Orleans, and the hotel charged for Internet access. Indeed! I'm glad to be home in a place where the neighborhood sidewalks do not have to be powerwashed to remove the body fluids and beer residue. A place where I know people who can comprehend a value system that simply says "no" to self-destructive behavior, no matter how pleasurable at the time. I was so saddened by the city- outskirts in overt desolation and decay, bright downtown highlighted by a casino reeking of dead fish (from the ventilation ducts we passed every day going to the Convention Center), and package liquor stores on every corner. It had its good points- the convention center was huge; the hotels were ample; restaurants with good food were available for a variety of incomes; but the beads for sale in almost every store along with obscene T-shirts, the leering Mardi Gras figures, the 24-hour bars and streets full of lingerie-clad women, spoke of a city dedicated to the pursuit of the sensual, even to its own destruction. It has been the place to go to get drunk, get robbed, and get diseased since before my ancestors came to Tennessee, and as far as I can see it hasn't changed much. Sad, really, for a city so obviously proud of its cathedrals. If your belief in God does not result in intense relationship, complete with the tough personal change of which the submission in marriage is a pale shadow, what good is it? All your "plenary indulgences" for venerating an icon matter not one whit if you do not know the One for Whom the icon is a miserable substitution. And knowing Him is such joy that a drunken night on the town seems a horror rather than a pleasure by comparison. Even if it were above sea level and out of the hurricane zone, I could not live in that vile city. The city I'm in now is bad enough. Give me clean country air, a plot of ground to grow my food, a good cosy house, a small college professorship, and a small country church with a Bible-obsessed preacher on fire for God, and I will weep for joy after these city experiences.