May 2007 Archives

Even though I'm having one of my rare "glass half full" weeks, despite the mayor's non-speech last night, this post on American Zombie rings true. I urge everybody to read the whole thing, especially people from other parts of the world:

New Orleans is sinking in a cesspool of inaction and incompetence...I'm just wondering how long we can swim. Right now it's the small businesses going down, but when the towering hotels on Canal go dorment...we're all gonna have to come to Jesus.

My frustration with our current state has drained me. There is so much awry, I don't even know where to start....corruption, chronyism, incompetence, apathy, lack of communication, lack of vision....all of this most vividly reflected in our mayor. We've marched on City Hall, we've formed alliances, we've blogged our asses off....and every time we turn around we get hit with one more scandal, one more set back ,one more blow to our very survival. But still we fight...and still we believe.

In a previous post I equated my feelings to that of a turtle pulling it's head back in it's shell.....the problems of my own city have overwhelmed me and I feel like cowering and hiding from issues on a national level. After reading the comments to that post and having time to reflect on what I was trying to express, I think I have a better understanding of what I was trying to say:

It's not just New Orleans that is dying...I think it's America in general. We are just the cynosure of the descent...the most photogenic example.

I just finished reading Jed Horne's Breach of Faith.

This is probably the first overall look at Katrina that I've read, other than maybe Cooper & Bloch's Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security (which was primarily focused on the federal government's response to the disaster so is not really so general).

Breach of Faith is strongest when it relates personal anecdotes, when it really digs into the real-life calculus that goes into deciding whether to evacuate or not, and how the storm and resulting flood affected rich and poor equally, though in different ways.

The book ends in the spring of 2006, so already much of the recovery narrative seems somewhat dated. He talks about the mayoral election but does not discuss the outcome; regardless, Nagin's performance is not given a pass. Horne holds out his harshest criticism for the Feds, obviously, but not in the detail that Cooper and Bloch do. And for some perplexing reason, it seems Horne has a wee crush on Governor Blanco; she comes across as a politically shrewd tower of strength who is merely misunderstood by the media...clearly a year's worth of Road Home headlines would have sucked the wind out of that angle if Horne could have seen into the future a little.

There's also a lot of fawning over Ivor van Heerden and Bob Bea, two characters whose reliability and motives are still open issues, in my view.

It's a worthy read simply for the stories of regular people, though. I was enthralled during those chapters, less so for the later material about floodwall forensics, Bea, Ivor, and the Corps, which regular followers of the issue in the paper and on blogs will find a little redundant and shallow.

(One complaint which others might find minor, but which I found highly distracting: he consistently fails to capitalize things like "coast guard", "army corps", etc., even though he is clearly talking about THE Coast Guard and THE Army Corps of Engineers. Drove me up a wall, it did. Also misspelled a few street names. Arggggg.)

Lost in all the disappointment about the Democrats' caving to Bush on the Iraq supplemental is a bit of fantastic news, which may mean nothing to Democrats anywhere else but which to residents of the Gulf Coast is a great victory.

Up until now, the White House has insisted that Bush will veto any legislation that contains a waiver of the Stafford Act requirement that state and local governments match Federal disaster relief moneys to the tune of 10%. The 10% match has been waived 32 times since 1985, including at least once by the Bush administration after 9/11.

We don't have the money here to match the 10%, so desperately-needed federal funding has been held up for months. We needed that waiver to survive, Bush didn't want to give it to us, but he wanted his war more and now he has signed the waiver into law along with the Iraq funding bill.

Happy day.

We own a house on Willow as of Friday. Soon to be stocked with several million batteries and bottles of water and tins of tuna.

...TROPICAL WAVES...

A LOW AMPLITUDE TROPICAL WAVE HAS BEEN INTRODUCED OFF THE W
AFRICAN COAST ALONG 16W FROM 3N TO 10N...MOVING WEST ABOUT 15
KNOTS. SCATTERED MODERATE TO STRONG CONVECTION COVERS THE AREA
WITHIN TWO DEGREES EITHER SIDE OF THE WAVE AXIS.

La la la la la! I can't hear you!

Nothing is just satire.

[via AmericaBlog]

This morning, Hillary Clinton let go what sounds like a pretty withering blast at the American response to Katrina, and makes it sound like it will be a central tenet in her 2008 platform.

As of tonight, AP had picked up the story, but neither CNN nor MSNBC had even mentioned it either on the front page or in their politics sections. Although the "Wild boar runs loose in City Park" link on CNN at first seemed like it might have something to do with Hillary, alas it was a week-old story about pigs.

Equally unsurprising is the fact that the unrelenting First Draft is the only lefty-blog I read that mentions the story. The usually obsessed-with-every-minute-detail-of-the-primaries MyDD, AmericaBlog, DailyKOS, and Firedoglake are all responding with a unanimous "Katrina who?" Apparently major policy speeches aren't as much fun as polling data. Either that or a 10-point plan for fixing the rebuilding effort doesn't merit "major policy" status.

So, ya know, fuck the lefty blogosphere. Again. But keep an eye on Hillary. I want to know if she makes the same speech anywhere other than Dillard. Tell 'em in Iowa and California and Wisconsin and New York and I might start to believe you, baby.

Wake up at 3:30am. Drive to Mississippi. Prepare for battle:

Goalie Liam (CCHL #30) channels Jim Craig (USA #30):

56 seconds of fun. Five blocked shots (at 0:04, 0:08, 0:16, 0:20, 0:29). They ended up tying the game 2-2.

The coastal rivals Mississippi Beachdogs have cool uniforms:

Final game, lost 7-0, despite 32 saves(!) from the boy. Being a human wall can really wear a kid out:

Roller derby tonight. Good thing we have skates, or how would we keep up?

NPR is doing a three-part series on the current state of New Orleans schools. Part one from yesterday (which I haven't heard yet) is archived here. Part two ran today on Morning Edition and featured a "big guy with a bushy beard and a laid-back manner" (i.e., Dave Cash) who is also an aspiring teacher.

"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters." -- Jerry Falwell

Party at my house.

Bring porn.

[Belated food post. Currently in Austin pigging out on breakfast tacos and free chips and salsa.]

My take on Jazz Fest has always been simple, and I'm sure Alton Brown would agree.

I'm just here for the food.

For a lot of the performing acts, the Fest is actually about the worst possible venue for seeing them. It's too hot, it's too crowded, you're too far from the stage. I generally take the philosophy that I'm there to eat, and so getting food and then finding a comfortable place to eat it within range of music I like is my typical strategy. Granted, I'm not always attending the fest with somebody who agrees with me, so I don't always get to do it this way, but I try.

It's been fifteen years since my last jazz fest, and a lot has changed. I have wider tastes in food now. I'm allergic to shrimp now. I don't drink any more. And I live here again so I'm not as desperate to get my fill of the staple dishes like I was when I had to do the Fest as an ex-pat tourist.

Ms. H told me the other day: "preeze remember that some of your food stories are vicarious ones for me. so choose carefully preeze." So, what I chose:

Fried Fish Ferdinand: My first choice on the first day was a total bust. Shrimp in the sauce. So I could only smell it. Fried fish topped with a secret sauce with shrimp and (I think) crawfish. Does anybody have a recipe for the sauce? It looks vaguely meuniere-like....maybe butter, heavy cream, creole mustard, possibly Worcesterestersestersestershire?

Cuban sandwich: Right next to the Ferdinand booth, and I was desperately hungry, and I'd had really good Cuban sandwiches before, so I grabbed one. A minimal amount of ham and cheese pressed in bread. This was the worst thing I've ever eaten at the Fest. The only time I've ever chosen something truly bad. The bread was stale, the sandwich was dry and inedible, no mustard or pickles or anything. I threw it out. The T-P later listed this in their top 10 of the fest, so maybe I got a bad one.

Crawfish monica: Fusilli pasta and crawfish tails in a spectacular cream sauce. I ate three of 'em.

Pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo from Prejean's: This was always my favorite food at ACL, probably the only thing there that approximated the goodness of Jazz Fest food. A very tasty multi-critter dark Cajun-style gumbo.

Oysters rockefeller bisque: What you'd expect, oysters rockefeller in soup form. Was just OK. Once you've eaten the two or three oysters in your cup, you're basically left with spinach soup, which lacks any of the buttery breadcrumby goodness of the original dish.

Natchitoches meat pie: Basically a pot pie filled with garlicky oniony ground beef and pork. Veddy tasty.

Crawfish pie: A crawfish version of the Natchitoches meat pie. Was good, but I prefer the round open-faced kind like you get at Tee Eva's. Although finger food is always preferable to fork food when dining al festivo.

Crawfish bread: Different from the previous crawfish pie, this is a flaky pastry stuffed with crawfish in a cheesy sauce. It's damn good. I ate three.

Boiled crawfish: I have to have crawfish at least once every jazz fest. Usually I like to buy several pounds, a couple beers, and go sit on the ground in Congo Square. The crawfish at the fest are always tasty, but this year they were kind of small.

All that, plus a chocolate Dove bar, a snoball, two n/a beers, and lots and lots of water.

Wuz good.

...assuming he speaks English. The Midwest farmers who needed a federal bailout after corn prices dropped through the basement in 2005 because of a lack of export capability post-Katrina also get it. Chris Matthews most likely won't ever get it anyway simply because his career depends on wallowing in willful ignorance.

For anybody else who still needs convincing, take a good look at John Barry's step-by-step explanation of why coastal protection for New Orleans is critically important to the rest of the country.

Despite all this and President Bush's pledge from New Orleans in September 2005 that "we will do what it takes" to help people rebuild, a draft White House cuts its own recommendation of $2 billion for coastal restoration to $1 billion while calling for an increase in the state's contribution from the usual 35 percent to 50 percent. Generating benefits to the nation is what created the problem, and the nation needs to solve it. Put simply: Why should a cab driver in Pittsburgh or Tulsa pay to fix Louisiana's coast? Because he gets a stronger economy and lower energy costs from it, and because his benefits created the problem. The failure of Congress and the president to act aggressively to repair the coastline at the mouth of the Mississippi River could threaten the economic vitality of the nation. Louisiana, one of the poorest states, can no longer afford to underwrite benefits for the rest of the nation.

Thanks to Maitri for the link.

The remnants of Sub-Tropical Storm Andrea (which, despite what you may have read, is not dead yet), spin smoke from the Florida/Georgia fires in an arc around the Florida peninsula. Worth clicking through to the original size image.

[Image courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC]

Someone must have traduced New Orleans, for without having done anything wrong she was arrested one fine morning...

I'm all for descending upon Baton Rouge with bricks and petrol bombs. Who's with me?

Kick ass!

Tell everyone.

I was saving this until June 1, but since Andrea decided to crash the party early, what the hell.

On an unrelated note, did anybody else Uptown just hear something make a really loud BOOM?

A somewhat informative post from nola.com about the Corps efforts to remediate the flaws laid out in the National Geographic article from yesterday.

You start to wonder about the accuracy of the reporting, though, when even simple geography confounds author Mark Schleifstein. OK, so I realize that most T-P reporters' knowledge of the City drops off sharply if they get farther away from home base than, oh, say, Gentilly, but still.

Another project, to raise earthen levees along the Algiers Canal, which is part of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, also remains in progress, corps officials said. As a stop gap measure, the corps is building a temporary surge gate in the Company Canal, just north of Bayou Segnette State Park, where a section of levee wall was determined to be inadequate.

I'm trying to understand how the Algiers Canal, hyah, could possibly be aided at all by flood gates near Bayou Segnette park in Westwego, over hyah. Those must be some big-ass gates. Even Scuba Steve might have trouble closing them if it's really windy out.

Fuck Starbucks.

Seriously.

Cleanup in Greensburg, Kansas after the monster tornadoes crushed the place is being hampered by a lack of available National Guard equipment.

The rebuilding effort in tornado-ravaged Greensburg, Kansas, likely will be hampered because some much-needed equipment is in Iraq, said that state’s governor.

Governor Kathleen Sebelius said much of the National Guard equipment usually positioned around the state to respond to emergencies is gone. She said not having immediate access to things like tents, trucks and semitrailers will really handicap the rebuilding effort.

Welcome to the jungle, Kansas. Let me be the first to say that, no, you're not stupid for living there. That yes, you should rebuild. That yes, you should be getting Federal aid right now. And that Lord, I hope the help gets there faster than it's getting here.

[via Americablog]

National Geographic paints a damning portrait of the current state of flood control in the Greater New Orleans area:

During a recent inspection of the levee system with National Geographic Magazine, engineering professor Bob Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, found multiple weak spots. The most serious flaws turned up in the rebuilt levees along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ship channel, which broke in more than 20 places when Katrina's storm surge pounded it, leading to devastating flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish. Bea found several areas where rainstorms have already eroded the newly rebuilt levees, particularly where they consist of a core of sandy and muddy soils topped with a cap of Mississippi clay. "It's like icing on the top of angel food cake," Bea says. "These levees will not be here if you put a Katrina surge against them."

Bea also found that decade-old gaps remain in the floodwalls lining the Orleans Avenue Canal, and hurricane-damaged sections of the walls along the London Avenue and 17th Street Canals have not been repaired or replaced. Even more troubling, water appears to be seeping under the stout new floodwall erected along the Industrial Canal to protect the Lower Ninth Ward. The new wall sits atop steel sheet piles driven 20 feet into the ground, but water from holes in the canal bed, excavated before Katrina or scoured by the storm, may be seeping under the barrier through permeable layers of sand and silt. Bea, who actually tasted the seepage to make sure it was brackish—a sign that it was coming from the canal—says the wall could fail in the next hurricane.

Go read the whole thing. The text is a relatively quick read, and the interactive graphics and videos are must-see TV. There are photographs of weaknesses and flaws in the 17th Street, Orleans, London, and MRGO levees and flood walls, and also Duncan Canal in Kenner and Harvey Canal. Video shows the MRGO levees already being eroded from simple rainstorms.

And video shows the seepage already happening in the Lower Ninth Ward. You've probably noticed, when taking visitors on tours of the damage, that the part of the Lower Nine near the levee breach always seems to be full of puddles, even when it hasn't rained in weeks. That water, according to Bea, is coming from the other side of the levees, traveling under the faulty levee repairs and seeping up in places such has where new utility poles have been installed since the storm.

Bea wouldn't live here, anywhere on the Westbank, St. Bernard, or any part of New Orleans near a flood canal. In other words, anywhere outside of the sliver.

Q: Despite all the improvements that have been made, is the city still likely to flood in the near future?

Bea: Yes! Without a doubt.

The Corps offers tepid rebuttalls in the T-P this morning, but as we all know, the Corps has very little credibility these days.

I missed the first weekend of the fest due to illness, and most of the second weekend due to just bunches o' shit, but today, after a morning tour of the state of our misery with my high school friend Eric and his lovely wife Pyper (they were suitably appalled), I finally got my Fest on in a proper manner.

We grabbed food and meandered around, saw a little of Allen Toussaint doing Allen Toussaint's "Working In a Coal Mine", and then headed over in the direction of the Jazz Tent since Eric wanted to see Branford and I thought an all-star Alvin Batiste spectacular sounded like fun. The preceding trumpeter Jeremy Davenport played a brilliant set which he said was dedicated to "the late great Alvin Batiste", and I thought, "the who? he's still alive, obviously, but did a relative of his die or something?"

Sadly, I was behind the times. Alvin Batiste died of a heart attack early this morning, just hours before his show. The loss is tremendous, and the Alvin Batiste show became instead a wake. They waived any rules about clogging the aisles and let half the festival cram into the tent to hear Alvin's son read an impassioned eulogy, and then Alvin's current and former students perform an overwhelmingly passionate performance. Branford Marsalis and Stephanie and Marlon Jordan were the ones I recognized. This one will go down in Jazz Fest history, and Mr. Bat, you will be missed.

Most of the rest of the fest we spent wandering from food to food and from shady spot to shady spot, just listening to whatever music was nearby wherever we happened to be comfortable, including Soul Rebels and Dottie Peoples.

The number of actual published authors I ran into outnumbered the local bloggers I saw by about, oh, two.

We checked out a little of Harry Connick's Closing of the Fest, where he performed Allen Toussaint's "Working In a Coal Mine". I love Harry in principle, and he seemed tickled about having the place of honor, but in that environment, in that spot, I want my Nevilles, dammit. Sigh.

Food post later. I need a shower and a nap.

Nancy Scola of MyDD turns in part two of her excellent three-part series about New Orleans since the storm.

13 years ago today, Cassidy poked her head out for the first time, looked around, and decided to stay.

One of my mother's first thoughts upon learning of her new granddaughter was "Her birthday is May 3rd. Just like the May 3rd flood."

May 3, 1978. At this very moment 29 years ago I was paddling a pirogue around a flooded Algiers with a bunch of other junior high delinquents. Da water never got into our house.

Sadly, this will be the first time in Cassidy's life that James Brown is not celebrating along with her.

A few high profile pieces in that part of the progressive blogosphere not based in New Orleans, doncha know.

Nancy Scola of MyDD pens the first of three comprehensive pieces about the state of things in New Orleans, and also is interviewed for about 20 minutes on the April 29 edition of MyDD Blog Talk Radio (her segment starts at about 13:00). Her writing is thoughtful and accurate; she gets it.

There is also a great piece on DailyKos written by ACORN volunteer coordinator Mary Rickard about last month's First Draft Krewe work day. The DK powers-that-be even deigned to elevate it to the status of a "rescued" diary, so apparently prog-blogger Katrina fatigue has taken the week off. Either that or we're the temporary beneficiaries of their Iraq fatigue. Either way, the coverage helps.