Snow!!!!

Photos submitted to the Times Pic and WWL Radio

Corruption: It's not just for Louisiana anymore

From the New York Times:
An official says that Gov. Rod Blagojevich has been arrested on charges related to the selection of the replacement for the Senate seat being vacated by Barack Obama.

I like Schroeder's reaction to this. Quite creative.

Early Christmas for Brock Elementary

Katrina damaged Brock Elementary in Slidell is once again alive with the sounds of kids and teachers.



The school principal, still remembers saying goodbye to her students the Friday afternoon before the storm, telling them she would see them the following Monday. On that Saturday, she and maintenance crew members did what they could to make the building storm-ready.

Within a few days, Katrina's storm surge poured about 6 feet of water into the school.


As the first public school in Slidell, Brock Elementary School was the oldest school in the parish still in use as a school when Hurricane Katrina devastated it.

I've been watching the progress of the rebuilding of this school. I snapped a

few pictures of it in February of this year. It's good to see that Brock Elementary will continue to be a place where kids can learn and grow for a long time to come.

Thanks to those who initiated this rebuilding: the Mayor of New Hyde Park, NY and the Principal of The Road School in the same town and all of those who worked to bring Brock back to life.

Besh at Rouses

Chef John Besh is making some of products available to the public exclusively through Rouse's Supermarkets.



From the St. Tammany News

A new line of vinaigrettes and sauces from Slidell native son and Food Network star, John Besh were introduced recently at the Thibodaux-based grocery store chain.

Owner of four highly acclaimed local restaurants, Besh introduced the products for at-home chefs wanting to reproduce the intense flavors used in his kitchens. The vinaigrettes draw inspiration from the region’s roots, with names like Pepper Jelly, Louisiana Sugar Cane Vinaigrette, Wild Flower Honey and Creole Mustard, as well as Spicy Young Garlic and Parmesan Caesar.



Also on the menu is Sour Mashed Steak Sauce, made with caramelized shallots, onions and garlic, along with a touch of vinegar, tomato and red pepper. Donnie McDowell, manager of the Gause Boulevard store in Slidell, said all of the products are selling very well.


Good idea for some stocking stuffers for my foodie daughter. Oh, and me too.

"Old" Twin Spans' future

Last April a proposal was submitted to use a 2,000 foot portion of the Katrina-damaged I10 Twin Spans to create an artificial reef and a fishing pier.


These satellite pictures show the location of the proposed fishing pier and artificial reefs alongside the new Twin Span bridge. (Courtesy Image)

From the St. Tammany News:
“The idea was received favorably by DOTD, so they’ve accepted our proposal to move forward,” said St. Tammany Parish spokesman Tom Beale. “Since completion of the new bridge is so far off, it gives us time to work on a design and to solidify which ideas and implementation tactics will work best.”



DOTD spokesman Brendan Rush said his department has approved the sale of 2,000 to 2,500 linear feet of the existing bridge to the parish, at a price of $17,100. The old bridge will continue to be used for traffic as construction of the new spans progresses.

A second proposal, submitted at the same time, supported the reuse of a portion of the existing bridge that must be torn down to make way for the new construction. The concrete from that section would be reused to build two artificial fishing reefs between the U.S. Highway 11 bridge and the new Twin Span. Beale could not confirm if that portion of the plan had been approved.

“It may be that once the fishing pier is under way, they’ll revisit the idea of the artificial reefs,” he said. “The projects go hand-in-hand, so we’d like to move forward on both of them.”

Something positive for a change

Found on the NYT website, this article tells of a meeting nearly three years ago between Nancy Epstein, the chief executive of Artistic Tile, in Secaucus New Jersey and Nancy Biberman, the president of the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit group known as Whedco.

From the article

Epstein offered to donate 120 tons of older and discontinued ceramic, concrete and porcelain tiles to Ms. Biberman for her 128 apartments. Unlike many commercial developers, Ms. Biberman did not need large quantities of similar tiles and could use Artistic’s variety of small lots.

After Whedco placed tiles in bathrooms, kitchens and common areas this summer, 60 tons — worth about $250,000 — remained unused. Much of it sat outside Artistic’s warehouse on pallets, some in open boxes that exposed ceramic moldings, finished crowns and tiles costing up to $30 each. Another load sat so long in a trailer nearby that its legs had sunk into the asphalt.

Serendipity ensued in the form of Paul Eisemann, who refurbishes brownstones in Brooklyn and who volunteers in New Orleans, where he teaches home-building skills. With the hurricane debris largely cleared and the frames and walls of new homes going up, Mr. Eisemann and community leaders in New Orleans turned to outfitting bathrooms, kitchens and other rooms.

Mr. Eisemann learned from Artistic that more tile — enough to fill at least four tractor-trailers — was sitting in Secaucus.

Mr. Eisemann contacted Mary Croom-Fontenot, executive director of All Congregations Together, an alliance of religious groups in New Orleans that has rebuilt 142 homes with volunteer labor and donations. Her group, along with Lowernine.org, another nonprofit group in New Orleans focused on rebuilding homes, was excited about the prospect of getting high-quality tile.

Rev. Scott Sammler-Michael, minister of the Accotink Unitarian Universalist Church in Burke, Va.,had taken some congregants to New Orleans to help in the rebuilding effort. His group offered $3,000 to pay for one tractor-trailer load of tile to be shipped to Louisiana. Before he could write a check, a New Jersey trucking company that did not want its name publicized agreed to haul the first load without charge. Two trailers picked up the tile in October.

To ready the tiles for shipping, three workers at Artistic’s distribution center spent three days repacking the first 47,600 pounds of tile. The tiles were sorted, crated and shrink-wrapped and filled a couple of dozen pallets. “We want to make sure it goes to a good place,” said Gerard Esmail, the operations manager of Artistic’s warehouse.

Mr. Eisemann and Mr. Cramer are now focused on making sure the remaining two-thirds of the tiles end up in New Orleans.

“It seems like it’s been a really long haul, making hundreds of phone calls and e-mails and putting details together,” Mr. Eisemann said. “But big dreams cost the same amount of money as small ones, so dream big.”



Thousands of thanks to these wonderful, caring people.

Finally....

1,195 days after Katrina:

From the A.P.:

Work begins on a 2-mile-long floodwall across canals that funneled Hurricane Katrina's storm surge into New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.

The Army Corps of Engineers scheduled groundbreaking today for the $695 million barrier across the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.

It's meant to keep storm surge out of the gulf outlet and the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, which runs into the Intracoastal Waterway.


graphic from the New York Times

During Katrina, the navigation canal carried storm surge into the 9th Ward, washing houses from their foundations. The gulf outlet is blamed for flooding in St. Bernard Parish and eastern New Orleans.



The corps calls it the largest design-build civil works project in its history.

The gulf outlet will be closed; wide gates will let shipping through the Intracoastal Waterway.

Preservation

Karen Gadbois at Squandered Heritage dot com posts about preservation in the light of "the powers that be" decision to build new LSU/VA hosptial over taking what's already in place and rehabilitating that.




These past months as the drone of process took place many of us knew that the day would come when the decision for the LSU/VA hospital would be made public. We knew the day was coming and we knew the endless processes and procedures that took place would have little to no impact on a decision that was made outside of the realm of public input. We were entertained, we were placated and we were lied to. But in the end those decisions were not ours to make for ourselves. The public realm, the private property and the fate of a neighborhood fell to those who will not show their faces, those who seek to make careers, not communities.

Mark over at Toulouse Street holds the opinion that quite a few in New Orleans share:


the announcement that our Betters have come to a decision on building a new hospital complex downtown. Rather than take the advice of the citizens to rehab the historic Charity complex (and some some loot to boot), or perhaps to take the idle ruin of old Lindy Boggs/Mercy Hospital in my own neighborhood of Mid-City, they will instead demolish an entire neighborhood of hundreds of homes in lower Mid-City to build their bio-science field of dreams.

One ignored side effect of this is that the area where I worked for the last year-and-a-half, the north side of the Central Business District, will remain mostly a ghost town of abandoned commercial buildings. All that is needed to complete the hair-brained scheme to convert downtown into some sort of condominium time-share hell is the other bright idea of our recovery leaders to move the civil district courts into the criminal justice complex down Tulane Avenue (adjacent to the new Hospital World), leaving the city’s commercial center a whistling ghost town.

The decision is wrong. Make your voice count and use the link below to
send a letter to the Governor, the Secretary of Health & Hospitals and the Secretary of Veterans affairs via the National Trust for Historic Places website

From their website

"The National Trust for Historic Preservation views this decision as a serious error, as better alternatives that would save the neighborhood around the hospital are available"


Sign the letter at this website and pass this on. It's important.

Kudos to St. Bernard Project

Liz McCartney, dedicated to helping survivors of Hurricane Katrina rebuild their homes, was named 2008 CNN Hero of the Year.



The St. Bernard Project has rebuilt the homes of more than 120 families for free. St. Bernard Parish was leveled after a 20 foot storm surge roared up the MRGO and flooded and destroyed nearly everything.

McCartney, who will receive $100,000 to continue her work, was selected from among the top 10 CNN Heroes after six weeks of online voting at CNN.com. More than 1 million votes were cast.

Here's the background on Liz and her partner Zack:

Scuzzbucket of the Week

Walter Block, who holds the economics chair at Loyola, delivered a lecture a couple of weeks ago at the namesake college in Baltimore on why women get paid a lot less than men and bump into a "glass ceiling."



His conclusion was that women are less productive.

During question time, someone asked why blacks get paid a lot less than whites.

The explanation was the same.

The way Block sees it, women's intellects cluster around the mean, while men dominate the high and the low ends of the spectrum. Thus, while women are much less likely to wind up in prison, an early grave or sleeping on the streets, they are also much less likely to win a Nobel Prize -- except for "wussy stuff like poetry" -- or rise to the top of a corporation.

The entire article can be read at the link above.

Fort Pike Update

I got an email recently from someone who is working on cleaning up historic Fort Pike.
The Fort reopened 2 and 1/2 years after Katrina but was closed again this past September as a result of the impacts of the 2008 hurricane season.

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike caused just as much damage to the Fort as the 2005 season. It is currently closed due to clean up efforts, but should reopen by the start of 2009 season.

Here are some recent pictures showing what Gustav and Ike did to the Fort.
click on pictures for larger versions






Note the marsh grass washed in from the storms.






Here is a photo of the old Rigolets Bridge



And here's a picture of its demolition





This is the bridge that replaced the old, narrow bridge.



The view from the top is very nice. That coming from someone that's afraid of heights. I'd love to be able to stop at the top and look around someday.