Rolf Potts in New Orleans: A Visit to the Lower Ninth Ward

Crass as it might seem, Potts writes in his latest Yahoo! column, “disaster tourism” is a time-honored travel tradition. “Thomas Cook started taking British travelers on tours of American Civil War battlefields in 1865; a couple years later, Mark Twain and his cohorts famously toured the war-torn city of Sevastopol (where Twain chided his travel companions for carrying off armfuls of shrapnel as souvenirs),” Potts writes. And a lot of travelers are now heading to the Lower Ninth Ward, the district in New Orleans that took the brunt of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina last year.

Potts recently made the journey, too. “[I]n an era of global mass media and secondhand experience, a tourist foray into the flood zone promised something that has become increasingly rare: a travel experience that is vividly, irrevocably authentic,” he writes. “Hence, despite the ethical complexities behind such an activity, journeying into to the Lower Ninth Ward carried a tantalizing allure.”

©2009 World Hum, All Rights Reserved