My first day in New Orleans was my first day.

Thus, one can say I can reasonably claim to have some authenticity when I write and think -- and lament -- about my birthplace of long ago.

The act of evil which started at 3 a.m. on New Year’s Eve left 15 celebrants in the City That Care Forgot lost to their families and loved ones and many others horribly maimed in so many ways. I pray, as many of us do I’m sure, that God will comfort their souls and their families as they struggle to understand how an act of such unfathomable cruelty could take place in the greatest nation ever created by the mind of man. We are all part of that struggle and must face the fact that we will never know the full answer to that nightmarish question in this lifetime.

This collection of thoughts from the “mystic chords of memory” this aging mind still (thankfully!) possesses will voice the sadness and heartbreak one feels at seeing the slow death of the city of his birth and the city which has meant so much to him over the many years of his long life, a slow death so revoltingly revealed by the face of the city in the form of the public officials charged with protecting not only natives but visitors from all over the world in town for one of the biggest events of the year, the Sugar Bowl. The glaring, bumbling, sheer incompetence shown by the mayor, the pathetic Chief of Police, the “spokesperson” of the FBI who declared the driver of a truck loaded with explosives proudly flying an ISIS flag was not a terrorist, displayed to an incredulous world why so many consider NOLA, once the Queen City of America, to be a city beyond any hope of repair.

Here are a few random memories of this once-beautiful city from one who has lived there from time to time and whose law practice brought him there often over the years. I remember with love and fondness, in no particular order as New Orleans does not lend itself to orderly thinking, even in an ode of sadness:

Do I know what it means to miss the New Orleans of my memory? Yes, terribly.

Do I miss what New Orleans has become? I answer not in anger but in sadness: No.

I pray for its recovery. I wonder if it can.

Image: Roller Coaster Philosophy