One Man’s Lazy is Another’s Man’s Peace
by
New Orleanians are notoriously late showing up, if they show up at all, because by and large they don’t keep calendars. Calendars are tools for managing the future, and in New Orleans the future does not exist. . . .
As for money, New Orleanians like it well enough, but not so they’d bend their lives out of shape to get some. They have more time than money, and that’s how they like it. Ambition isn’t a virtue in the lowlands between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. . . . To the extent American’s strive to make their tomorrows brighter than today, New Orleanians really want nothing more than for everything to stay the same.
~ Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans, Dan Baum
In a new ranking by Businessweek.com based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Louisiana claims the top spot as the country’s laziest state. To be clear, by “lazy” we do not mean lacking work ethic or engagement. Rather, it is a measure of leisure time spent doing sedentary activities compared with activities that require more physical effort, such as exercising and even working.
~ Businessweek.com
When I read Dan Baum’s introduction to Nine Lives, a portion of which is quoted above, I was both offended and complimented. We don’t keep calendars? News to me. Everyone I know has one (or more) and uses it. But I think he’s right that we don’t chase the dollar the way others in America do and that we cherish our time more than other Americans.
Then I read the BusinessWeek article and had the same reaction: We are honest, hard workers but enjoy our relaxation.
But seems I am in the minority. Most NOLA folks (at least on twitter) take great offense to the BusinessWeek piece. While at the same time, they applaud Baum’s description. I still take issue with both.
Here’s why.
We here in Louisiana, not just New Orleans, ARE hard workers. I myself have worked into the wee hours of the morning, and countless weekends, as a student and as a lawyer. I missed Jazz Fest for the first 30-some odd years of my life because it fell during exams and I was devoted to studying.
In the work force, I have NEVER had issues with NOLA folks not, well, working. At least not any more so than folks in other states (with the exception of the week during last year’s Super Bowl). We take our work very personally. We may not WANT to move up the corporate ladder, say, from administrative assistant to president of the company, but don’t let that suggest that we don’t take great pride in our work.
The BusinessWeek article admits it does not mean our work ethic is poor. So this bit of defensiveness about our work is against Baum’s perception of us. “Notoriously late, if they show up at all.” WHAT? My best friend in high school had perfect attendance for her entire academic career–and that means neither absent nor late ONCE in 12 years of schooling. And that’s not atypical. Many of us, me included, had years of perfect attendance. I don’t know where Baum’s characters worked, but every job I’ve had, many of them hourly paying, would routinely fire people for incessant tardiness or absenteeism.
Now, let’s shift to the bigger issue of RELAXATION. BusinessWeek ranks us at the bottom of the “Active” category. I have to question this. Really, what I question are the questions they asked in the study. For example, did they ask: How many miles do you walk per week? OR How many parades do you march in each year?
See, we here in Louisiana, we relax in ways that are simply foreign to our brethren in the rest of this great country. Mardi Gras is the best example. You in, say, Nebraska assume Mardi Gras is a day, or maybe a week long. But in fact, its preparation takes all year. Some parades require their riders to build their own floats. So, each weekend for many months, the riders go down to a warehouse where the bones of the float are and literally BUILD the float. They design, cut wood, mix plaster of Paris, sculpt, shape, paint, and otherwise make their float. Were those folks asked about these long, numerous weekends? Are the non-riders asked about the time they spend building, painting their child’s ladders? Or the countless creations we’ve made to have the ice chest on wheels while at the same time being able to be stood upon when the parade rolls by?
But it goes beyond Mardi Gras. Let’s take the next most epitomized Louisiana past-time, the seafood boil. Those silly reporters. They check this off as Four Hours of Sitting, Eating and Drinking. But do they take into consideration the HOURS, nay, DAYS of preparation that goes into a boil? We are proud to traipse all over the State to track down one key ingredient. Or travel to EVERY grocery story and go up and down (on foot, mind you) every aisle for the precise seasonings. We gather the borrowed boiling pots and burners; we cut countless veggies; we lug copious levels of ice to ice chests to cool beers. Were THESE activities asked of in this study?
Louisianians treat food as a contact sport. We celebrate it and worship it; we use it to worship; we use it through worship. And consequently we spend a lot of time in the kitchen, whether indoors or out, preparing food in celebration. Celebration of a hard week in the office; celebration of Bonnie not becoming a hurricane and worsening the oil spill disaster; celebration of the baptism of a baby. And each of these requires countless hours of standing, walking, moving.
So just because we don’t walk on treadmills to nowhere does NOT make us lazy; it makes us Louisianians. Maybe BusinessWeek needs to, em, work a little harder on its questionnaire.
High-Fives to you.
.-= saintseester´s last blog ..Play Dead =-.
I never thought about how much preparation goes into our relaxation.
Pontchartain Pete´s last [type] ..My Treme Post Part 1
Love this!
Don’tcha just hate that arrogance of the assumption that your experience is just like anywhere else in the country? I think an awful lot of Northerners feel like Southerners are lazy, when we’re just different. D and I just spent almost a week up in Philadelphia, where he’s from, and there were so many little snide comments about the south, our lifestyle, our willingness (or lack thereof) to drive all over creation to visit them during OUR weeklong “vacation” up there, when they’d just had 3 weeks vacation at a lake.
I think a lot of it is ignorant assumption. Or stereotyping.
Very nicely thought out; very nicely written.
With the oil disaster, I’m having that sinking post-Katrina feeling that south Louisiana and the rest of the country are speaking two completely different languages, trying to communicate across two completely separate sets of morés.
Good post. I blogged about this too. I just thought the article was poorly researched and written too quickly. Plus, it’s almost comical how wrong they get it. They’d do better to write about us as though we are a foreign country rather than Americans. At least then they’d approach us as different, rather than now, where they approach – expecting us to be the same as them.
Pistolette´s last [type] ..The Empathic Civilization snap Stay With Me Now
I’m put in mind of a comment I passed to a friend about Treme: “People in the rest of the country must think all we do is drink, smoke and party.” And he said, “Yeah and all I do is work all day then go home and renovate”.
People here are like people everywhere – we have normal lives, work normal jobs, cut the grass, clean the house, etc. in addition to celebrating Mardi Gras, crawfish boils and second lines.
Why is it so hard people to see/believe that? I think it’s partially because of the way we are portrayed on TV and in movies. I guess normal isn’t sexy.
Charlotte´s last [type] ..32 Days 2 Year 5- A Photographic Journey
Nice post, thank you.
Baum is a fop. I have never understood peoples’ infatuation with his bourgeois naivete. Furthermore, Business Week is worse than fop: it is Yankee. I understand perfectly the editorial motivation behind such a Business Rag tagging Louisiana thus, in the midst of yet another man-made disaster/attack on our people, to wit: the show ain’t over until the Fat Lady Of Justice Sings in Court. I find it dispiriting indeed to witness mass media wielded with such a thorough corporate saturation. News is not News anymore, it is PR Studies. Why vote for Congressional funding for such a lazy Katrina-handout state as Louisiana?
Less land means less States Rights. Bang. And, it is far cheaper to float it than truck it or pipe it. Sounds simple I know. But what do we see?
Charolette, I’m with you… but from everything I’ve ever seen “normal” in New Orleans IS sexy. The rest of the country has gone to Mall in a Hand Basket.
Like I said elsewhere they don’t get it and never will, because it is not in their best interest to get it. They are better than us and that is all they want to see.
SoMo´s last [type] ..Children Bill of Rights
I think some interesting thoughts that mesh with this whole deal were expressed by urban planner Andres Duany, who was active in the area post-K. This is from an article about his participation in a planning session on the Northshore.
Now, that’s still a little condescending and ignores the fact that our food, music, art and customs developed despite the majority of New Orleanians, throughout the city’s existence, engaged in some sort of day-to-day commercial toil (i.e., had jobs). But it’s still a valid point that highlights how strong the city’s connection with the Caribbean was. We can’t discount the role played by New Orleans’ contacts with the French colony of San Dominque in the early days of its existence, and by the thousands of colonists exiled to the city from there between 1803 and 1809.
Pete, Dan Baum makes reference to the Caribbean culture in his forward as well: “New Orleanians are hard to offend. Stop thinking of New Orleans as the worst-organized city in the United States, they often say. Start thinking of it as the best-organized city in the Caribbean.”
I still say that New Orleans, when compared to other AMERICAN cities, doesn’t fit on the scale. Try measuring us to European countries. I think we’d fall more in the norm there, where such “leisure” is perceived as having higher value and thus not considered as “non=working.” It’s not as if New Orleanians are known for being Coach Potatoes.
It’s not so bad that people in Louisiana like to take their time and enjoy life. Maybe some of the other states can learn from them.