Column insulted victims, unique city
I am quite disappointed in the newspaper's decision to publish Mona Charen's column, "Thinking with our emotions." It might as well have been titled, "They deserved it."
My husband and I are middle class, educated and live in South Elgin. Two years ago, we lost our New Orleans home, neighborhood and jobs thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers' faulty levee design and implementation.
It is true the city had its share of challenges, as most cities do, but we enjoyed a decade of living in our safe, middle-class neighborhood, visiting with friends on the porch, commuting to our downtown jobs via streetcar, bicycling along the bayou past historic homes, and being part of a unique culture you won't find anywhere else in the world.
We didn't have a single fast-food restaurant or big-box chain store in our neighborhood. We walked everywhere -- to the grocery store, park, museums, coffeehouses, mom 'n' pop businesses and sandwich shops.
Based on her judgment of New Orleans, it's clear Charen has never visited America's oldest city or if she has, she can somehow put a price tag on an entire culture threatened with extinction.
When I grew up in Roselle, I remember watching the farms disappear. Twenty years later, now living further west, development continues to swallow up farms and small towns.
New Orleans is thought of as a city, but it has the close-knit feel of a much smaller community, where everyone knows everyone, their parents and which high school they attended. This way of life has value and deserves support.
Ironically, the Fox Valley area recently suffered from severe flooding of the Fox River. Is the Daily Herald editorial staff not hypocritical for publishing Charen's column in the wake of stories about victims of the recent flooding of the Fox River and the people who helped them?
Your columnist, Burt Constable, even wrote about my brother and husband helping sandbag a neighbor's home in St. Charles. By publishing Charen's column, the editorial staff has insulted local flood victims, the people who helped them and New Orleanians who chose to start their lives over in the Greater Chicago area.
Julia Kamysz
South Elgin