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A lesson on the Wetlands

Hat tip to Varg

What will it take?

We Could Be Famous: Embarrassing Dysfunction in N.O. Criminal Justice System

Nagin

Chris Rose has written an article about the in-name-only mayor of New Orleans.


Here's a little taste
The truth is, I don't know what one man can do to fix the problems around here. And that's the rub; we never will know what it would have been like to have an effective leader who unified the community for a common goal and took our fight to those who screw us over, someone who said: This is all wrong.


Right after the storm there was so much hope about bringing the city back. More than 2 years later those hopes have vanished.

As Chris writes
.....we can pretty much rely on our mayor to say or do something of such enormous folly at least once a month that it has become routine and we have now come to accept it as part of the New Normal around here, that's just the way it is


Sad, so sad.

Highway 90

Hubby & I took our monthly tour down Highway 90 to assess its progress in recovering from Katrina.

In the small neighborhood of Venetian Isles there's a building boom, but you wouldn't know it by this section.
Venetian Isles Fire Department is still working without a building.

September 2007

September 2006

Katrina Cottage

There's a lot that appears to be used by FEMA as a storage place for used FEMA trailers. We spotted this Katrina Cottage sitting there. Seems like this will be the replacement for those problem-plagued FEMA travel trailers used by thousands of Katrina victims.

About a mile away from the FEMA site is a boardwalk for viewing a small section of Bayou Sauvage, a national wildlife refuge that runs parallel to Highway 90.


We hadn't stopped here for quite a while so we decided to check it out.

We found this "shrine" dedicated to someone nicknamed "Zeke the Alligator Savage". Very interesting.
It's heartening to see nature coming back. While this area was laid flat by the storm, you can see the progress it's making in these two shots


September 2007

March 2006
Over in Lake Catherine the rebuilding progress is finally in full swing. Camps and homes are being rebuilt using updated materials and processes.

This camp has a steel structure

This "camp" is about three times the size of my house!!!

Here the remnants of someone's home


At Chef Pass we saw this big old shrimp boat

The new Rigolets bridge is progressing nicely

Get away

dreams of Maine

Jena

the whole story

NOMA in the WSJ

NOMA in WSJ

an article in a recent issue of the Wall Street Jounal by Tom Freudenheim
is a pleasant read about the New Orleans Museum of Art , including its history and its surviving
Hurricane Katrina. An excerpt:

Disasters can tear people apart or bring them together. The initial shock of confronting today's New Orleans is not just about numbers -- deaths, homes destroyed, displaced lives -- but about the fact that two years after America's worst natural disaster people are still trying to pick themselves up and rebuild not just their physical surroundings but their still-fragile psyches. Disasters also remind people of essentials: what really matters in their lives. The New Orleans Museum of Art might well serve as an inspiration for those of our museums that have grown fat and self-satisfied, forgetting their missions of protecting the public patrimony and providing education, pleasure and even diversion for their visitors

These museum stalwarts soldier on because they understand that the art museum can bring added value to the injured lives of New Orleanians -- wound-salving that may be more critical for locals than for tourists. The traditional French Quarter, with its honky-tonk attractions, looks intact but feels sadly underpopulated. Reservations at the best restaurants are now easily available, so a convention visitor might even wonder what all the fuss about Katrina was about. The ability of a semitropical climate to make everything look lush and green is too happy a mask for what is actually a series of endless tragedies (optimists speak of "opportunities"). Even what's left of the Lower Ninth Ward is largely hidden by acres of profuse green weeds. The ghoulish may find that picturesque; those of us who are day-trippers end up feeling guilty about our obvious voyeurism.

Here's a link to the whole article.

A Pair of Scuzzbuckets

2 West Coast wackos - radio show hosts Lee Rodgers & Melanie Morgan - have this opinion of New Orleans


"I love New Orleans. ... I had some very happy times there," ....... "Save New Orleans? For what?" ..... "Now they got the
French Quarter up and running again. OK, fine. It's a theme park,
but that's what it's been for years anyway. The rest of it's a sewer."

Did you know that parts of New Orleans where some these silly
people are trying to rebuild houses are 14 feet below sea level
and sinking by another inch every year? And nothing has been done,
really, that would prevent another Katrina. Nothing. Now, where in
God's name is the logic about trying to rebuild a city in a location
like that? Let's do the logical thing: blame the French, who built it
there in the first place, just say it's another piece of French
stupidity, and move on. You know, keep the parts of New Orleans
that are above sea level, or at least closer to sea level, as a
theme park, which is really what it's been to a lot of people
for many years anyway. It's a theme park with booze
-- the French Quarter --"


Co-host Melanie Morgan responded by asserting:
"[T]hey're trying to fix the unfixable in the
rest of the city and in the mean time every politician
in the country is pandering, spending billions of dollars
and putting it in what? A rat hole."


Here's the link to the article.

Good News for a change

Katrina evacuee makes good

Daisy Angelety has made a life for herself in Gwinnett
County in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. She fled the storm
with nothing but now says she has everything.
She makes candy, cookies, cakes and pies and sells them at
the Suwanee Farmer's Market every Saturday.
Her goods are so popular, she's looking for a
place where she can set
up shop after the market ends next month.

Rebirth in Olde Towne

What was once the business of Slidell Cleaners
will soon become an art center.
After flooding in May 8, 1995, and recovering, 10 years later
Katrina came along and flooded them with 10 feet of water.
Now they will transform the destroyed business into the Olde
Towne Art Center, an art gallery to provide a place for an
artists' co-op to learn, to teach, and to sell what they create.

Follow-up plans will involve creating spaces upstairs for
artists to rent as studios and provide large class teaching
space.

The Olde Towne Art Center should be completed by the
beginning of November, 2007