I was one of those people that hardly left my television set at all after the levees broke last September. I could not seem to walk away even though all the news coverage did was show how powerless we all could be. One of the more amazing moments was Shephard Smith standing on I-10 yelling at the idiots back in the station at Fox News and telling them that no one was coming to help, that he was there, he saw what was happening and no one was coming to help. They kept trying to correct him, kept trying to get him to admit that he was in some obscure hard to reach place and that there had to be an excuse for all that pain and suffering and finally he just snapped and said he "I'm on I-10 right before exit ?? that takes you to what used to be Mississippi - it's not hard to get here!"

I pretty much fell in love with the man at that point.

I watched. For days and days I watched. And I didn't wonder why all of those people were black (sometimes white people are so stupid I can't stand it) and I didn't wonder why they hadn't left sooner, I got that - I understood that. What I was looking for though was some clue as how we got this way, how everything could be this bad. I wanted someone to tell me a concrete thing about how being less than rich (and let's be honest - those people on the rooftops weren't all poor, they just weren't rich) in America gets you a one-way ticket to hard times. I wanted someone to explain how everyone knew the levees were a ticking time bomb but money never made it to them, that money is a commodity for power in this country and has nothing to do with fixing things, with making them work, with setting things right.

I wanted someone to explain how America had never been anything more than an idealistic dream and reality was just greed and pain, endless degrees of greed and pain.

I wanted it to all go away.

And I did what I could. I hooked up with a church group in Baton Rouge and collected a ton of books and games for kids in the Southern University shelter, and that made me feel good. I donated to Noah's Wish to help all those poor left behind animals and that was a good thing too. But none of this was enough. So I jumped onboard right away when Chin Music Press decided to put together a book of essays on the city, and writing about the music and what it means to me seemed right, so did being part of an effort to raise some money for a local charity through presales of the book. And Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? is really selling well right now and that's a very good thing. I know that's a good thing.

But none of this was enough.

So now I'm writing about NOLA books for the Chin Music site, Voices of New Orleans. I'm trying to learn more about the city by reading books by the people who live there, the people who knew it better than anyone on television (and certainly better than those idiots, Hannity & Combs). I've tried to find books that most readers have not heard about but are vital to understanding the city, and thus to understanding just how it all went to hell in the days after Katrina.

That's why I'm writing about The Neighborhood Story Project books.

I have an interview up with Ashley Nelson at Voices, and we talked at length about her book in the five series project, The Combination. Ashley is from the 6th Ward and she loves her neighborhood, she loves New Orleans, but she lives in a place where the police can arrest you for sitting on someone's front porch, for being an invited guest to someone's front porch. They can stop you at any minute for standing on the corner talking to friends, for driving down the road, for being in the place where you live or worse, walking through a neighborhood where you don't live. They can stop you and question you and challenge you and arrest you and they will, everyday, they can and they will.

It's America where this happens, that America we saw on television.

And I know that there is crime and there are criminals and "we must keep the streets safe" but there has never been a moment in my life when I thought a police officer had the right to tell me to leave someplace - when anyone had the right to challenge my personal freedom. There has never been a moment and I hope there never will be. But it's not that way where Ashley lives and talking to her about that, learning about that, has been so amazing and so impressive and so awful that I don't quite know what to do with all this information; I don't know how to spread it beyond my life and into the lives of other people.

I don't know what to do with all of this new truth.

We all need to know what it is like to be not rich in New Orleans, to be Ashley Nelson (or Sam and Arlett Wylie or any of the rest of the young authors), to be one of those people trapped in front of the Convention Center begging for help - Begging in America for help.

We need to know.

And all I can do is find books and write about them. National charities are suspect now, politicians are so corrupt across the board that it isn't a matter of simply disagreeing with our govenment anymore, there's just an enormous national puzzle as to who any of these people are working in Washington and who they are workin for, because it's not us, it's certainly not us.

I keep finding my way closer and closer to some fundamental truth about being an American and what I see is not good, it's not proud or noble or great. And I feel so powerless to change that truth, so completely without any ability to make any part of this country better. I read books and I talk to people and then I write about what I learn and I hope that helps; I hope other people feel compelled then to read the same books and learn the same truths. But I feel all alone out here with my knowledge sometimes, I feel dreadfully alone.

The Sixth Ward in New Orleans is part of America; it seems like you should be treated with the same respect there as you are any place else in this country. But I don't see it happening, I certainly do not see it happening. And I'm so angry about that, I'm angry but I still don't know just what the hell I'm supposed to do.

Would somebody please tell me what I should do with all of this truth?