Annual event where New Iberia's own version of the traditional groundhog, PierreC. Shaddeaux, a native nutria, emerges to predict weather the weather for the next six weeks…etiher a long or short spring depending on if Pierre sees his shaddeaux or not.
It is the South Louisiana equivalent to the Groundhog Day celebration that originated in Punxsutawney, Pa., where groundhog Punxsutawney Phil peaks out of his hole to determine if there will be an early spring or six more weeks of winter weather.
Shadeaux, the Cajun groundhog, or nutria, is more in tune with Louisiana's subtropical climate than Punxsutawney Phil, and can more accurately predict the weather for this region.
When Shadeaux comes out of his new, Acadian-style home built by Earl Patton, and sees his shadow, then Teche Area residents need to brace for a quick end to the spring and the advent of a hot, humid summer. However, if he doesn't see the shadow, it's good news, meaning a longer spring season.
The Krewe of Chewbacchus is a Carnival Krewe for the most revelrous of Star Wars Freaks, Trekkies, Whovians, Mega-Geeks, Circuit Benders, Cryptozooligists, UFO Conspiracy Theorists, and all the rest of Super Nerdom.
We are Bacchanalian Revelry + Sci Fi = BacchanALIENS.
We have several awesome events planned including: a Sci Fi Fashion Show "Set Your Phasers to Stunning", Sci Fi movie nights at the Big Top, art bike pub crawls and parades, and workshops and open studio sessions on everything from building homemade flying saucers to circuit bending experimental musical instruments.
In this, our first year, will be rolling as our very own full-on parade complete with our own brass bands, royalty, floats, throws, and theme. King Chewbacchus himself will lead our krewe and ride on Eyegore the Royal Rickshaw. We are building a fleet of Flying Saucers, a Bar2D2 float, a giant BacchanALIEN puppet and a Boozebot 4200 puppet, experimental X-Wing Art Bicycles, and much much more...
Zulu throws coconuts, Muses throw shoes, the Krewe of Chewbacchus throws wicked cool homemade bandoleros and towels!
Chewbacchus will depart from the Big Top Gallery (1638 Clio Street) at 6:00pm on Bacchus Sunday (March 6, 2011) and march along a TOP SECRET route through the streets of New Orleans bestowing the blessing of our "Sacred Drunken Wookie" to the masses. We will eventually loop back around to the Big Top and throw down at the Chewbacchanal to fill our bellies with delicacies from the Admiral Snackbar. Prepare to rock out with Space Girl Burlesque, Brass Bands blasting Sci Fi theme songs, Giant Pyro-technic Puppetry, the Mad Scientist Rock n Roll musical stylings of the infamous and amazing C.O.G., and all sorts of other madness into the wee hours of Lundi Gras.
We need your support to help pull of this amazing undertaking. Your generosity will help us to build the floats, puppets, and parade props, pay the bands, and purchase the permits.
You are already a space cadet so you might as well make it official and join AND/OR support the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus.
For more info please visit www.razzamatazproductions.com
The same Ed Blakely who enjoyed touring Katrina's devastation on a bike but never did a fucking thing about the recovery.
The same Ed Blakely who inspired this excerpt from an article in 2007 from CNN dot com money
The man behind the rebuilding effort On the eighth floor of the rundown, 1950s-era New Orleans City Hall, at the end of a long corridor, is an office with no number. Beside the doorpost, taped over whatever sign was there before, is a single sheet of 8½-by-11-inch photocopy paper that reads, "Office of Recovery Management."
This is the redoubt of Edward J. Blakely, Mayor Nagin's point man for rebuilding New Orleans. Blakely, 69, is a longtime professor of urban planning and an expert on disaster recovery. He coordinated the relief efforts in Oakland after the 1989 earthquake, and Nagin hired him to craft and implement one plan that would decide where the city would and wouldn't rebuild.
Blakely inherited more than 50 plans that had been drafted by numerous consultants and community groups, and in March he presented his blueprint for spending $1.1 billion over five years on 17 "targeted areas." He promised fast results, predicting "cranes in the sky by September."
Blakely fancies himself a man of action. He leads reporters on Saturday-morning bike rides through blighted and recovering neighborhoods, both to show citizens that the mayor's office is paying attention to their plight and to familiarize himself better with New Orleans. He arrived Jan. 8 of this year, "the day of the Battle of New Orleans, a providential omen," he tells me. In his spare time he is developing a residential real estate project near Riverside, Calif.
On his desk sits a plaque that reads, footprints in history aren't made sitting down. For all his biking and planning, however, Blakely has yet to spend any money.
For one thing, he's not certain he'll be able to find the billion dollars. He intends to get about a quarter of the money from a municipal general obligation bond passed before the storm, though it isn't legally clear whether that money can be spent on hurricane recovery.
He intends to use $117 million of federal housing money from the state, and he also hopes to float a so-called "blight bond," using condemned properties as collateral for borrowing an additional $300 million. The state may be able to supply the balance.
Blakely lately has begun to acknowledge that there'll be no cranes in the sky by September. (Locals cluck that only a newcomer would have promised construction projects during the heart of hurricane season.)
The delay and the uncertainty over funding highlight an unfortunate fact: Blakely, too, has only so much power. He explains that some traffic lights in the eastern section of town are administered by the city and others by the state. The board that runs the sewage and water system is a separate entity over which he has little control. So despite the existence of a workable plan that generally is supported by residents, Blakely is in a holding pattern.
"It takes time to build things," he says. "They don't appear overnight. It also takes a certain process to put things in order." New Orleanians I talk to admire Blakely's intellect and his ability to look at the situation dispassionately. It's impossible, however, to overlook the contradiction between his professed love of action and his calm, measured approach to what in many areas remains a crisis situation.
From a great blog covering the "it's still here" oil crisis, Disenfranchised Citizen, an excerpt from his post entitled "As Problems Persist in the Gulf, Listening ain't Hearing": Oil residue from the BP spill is still being hauled off by the truckload each day from the beaches of the barrier islands off the Mississippi Gulf coast. In another part of the Gulf set to reopen for fishing on Feb 2nd, a shrimpers’ nets are coming out of the water covered in oil. Florida Fishermen are dealing with the anxiety of knowing fish populations collapsed after the Exxon Valdez disaster. A flotilla of Wildlife and Fisheries boats sped into Bay Jimmy at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico in Plaquemines Parish, passing flocks of white pelicans, some still coated in oil. On Blood Beach, Mississippi, billions of baby clam and oyster shells washed up on shore. In the coastal areas of St. Bernard Parish, more than 8 months after the oil spill, their industry has come to a standstill; a fisherman adds there’s not much seafood to sell. At Grand Isle, LA, Louisiana Bucket Brigade’s environmental monitor Peter Brabeck said oil is rolling in on the beaches of the state park and nearby. “I’ve been here many times and I’ve never seen it looking like this,” Brabeck said of the oil mixing in with the beach sands, turning it black.
“A disaster. A catastrophe. Whatever you want to call it. Worst than Katrina,” said fisherman Emile Serigne.
Please go to the link above and read the whole post. It's sobering.
BAY JIMMY, La. -- A flotilla of Wildlife and Fisheries boats sped into Bay Jimmy at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico in Plaquemines Parish, passing flocks of white pelicans, some still coated in oil.
"We've got four white ones that's got oil we've been trying to catch for the last couple of days," said Wildlife & Fisheries agent Mark Castille.
Agents say miles of southeast Louisiana shoreline has large patches of grass that are dead, everything coated by black oil.
But when he saw no cleanup crews present, Plequemines Parish President Billy Nungesser was infuriated.
"This is the biggest coverup in the history of America," fumed Nungesser. "We got a plan, you signed off on it. Yeah, we begging for help."
"Look at the consistency of this oil oozing out of the marsh here," said Robert Barham.
Wildlife & Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham used his gloved hand to easily expose the still liquid oil just below the surface, worrying it will spread.
"Any oil that is still here will go into new areas," Barham said. "And kill them."
Barham said it is will be a continuing process until someone comes to clean it up.
A Coast Guard spokesman said cleanup crews are still experimenting to find the best marsh cleanup method.
But Coast Guard statements that the cleanup is a priority made Nungesser explode.
"No one is walking away," said U.S. Coast Guard Commander Dan Lauer. "Clearly these are high priorities, but there are different phases in different areas accordingly."
"Oh, it's a priority, look at it," was Nungesser's angry response. "What is it eight and a half months later? Thanks God we're not out here asking for ammo to defend this country. And this is a priority? Their priorities are wrong. They're hoping we go away, we get tired."
"For Parish President Nungesser to make that statement, and even Secretary Barham, they've been a part, they're as trustees," Lauer said in response.
But the concern for the head of Wildlife and Fisheries and the Plaquemines Parish President is making sure that areas with the thick, peanut butter style oil still present are not just ignored.
"This marsh is dead, this marsh is going in the sea," said Barham.
Nungesser added: "And as the water comes in, we get a little thunderstorm comes in tonight, and takes this oil, those ponds you see far inland will have oil in it."
