Supposedly iTunes doesn't show song preferences, but my copy seemed to want me to ponder New Orleans tonight, playing "Lakes of Pontchartrain," "The City of New Orleans" and "Banks of the Pontchartrain" within minutes of each other.

I can't help but think the loss of New Orleans is going to be a defining moment for my generation. It's looking quite possible that this will play out as a Pompeii-class event, the simple loss of an entire city.

I don't _know_ New Orleans; I've never been there, and most of my ideas of the city come from folk music and video games and Tom Robbins. Like Maia said (now somewhat famously), "I never even got to see her!" But this was a city perhaps as sharply unique as any in the world. The Quarter, Mardi Gras, the voodoo: I don't know, of course, how the general perception of these things compared to the way they actually played out in the city, but I don't think anyone would ever question that New Orleans had personality, that this was a storied town, a cultural treasure.

And, of course, one wonders about global warming, and climate change, and whether this is just the first of many events like this to come in my lifetime. I'm not trying to directly pin Katrina on global warming—big storms happen, regardless, and New Orleans was vulnerable, relying on levees in the first place—but if the trend is going to move toward more weather of this scale, I fear that New Orleans will come to mark a turning point, when the world's coastal cities started to fall.

Note to self: figure out some way to see Venice in the next decade.