A generous soul

NBA star Chris Duhon continues to help in the aftermath in Katrina through a personal donation of $100,000 in his plans to construct basketball courts in New Orleans and his hometown of Slidell, La. A graduate of Salmen High in south Slidell, Duhon continues to look for ways to help the area recover.



From the above link
Through Duhon’s Stand Tall Foundation, he launched “Operation 21,” a project to refurbish 21 outside basketball courts in New Orleans and Slidell. The project will include five courts in Slidell and the remaining 16 courts in New Orleans, beginning in East New Orleans where Duhon participated in recreational programs such as basketball, football, track and baseball at an early age.

Duhon established a hurricane relief fund in 2005 shortly after Katrina. His efforts have raised more than $450,000 for the victims of Katrina and aided in the reconstruction of Slidell.

Diversion

I like to keep my posts in this blog related to Katrina recovery, but once in a while I feel like posting about things of personal interest. Music is one of
my favorite things in life.......especially blues.

I think in another life I was a resident of the Mississippi Delta area. It's in my blood. I can just feel it. There's something about the sound of Delta Blues that I love.

A few months ago, my husband purchased a CD/DVD Combo from Kenny Wayne Shepherd entitled 10 Days Out - Blues from the Backroads

You can see a trailer from the DVD here
(I can't for the life of me embed the youtube clip)


A well-written synopsis provided by Amazon-dot-com
This "back-to-the-roots" road-trip documentary CD/DVD from blues-rocking guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd can be viewed in two ways--it's either the culmination of a long-held desire to promote and play with some unheralded blues veterans before they pass away (as six had already done since the recording was made, 2½ years before its early 2007 release) or a way to regain the blues audience Shepherd all but alienated on his artistically and commercially disappointing 2004 hard-rock release, The Place You're In. Ultimately, it succeeds on both accounts. Regardless of the project's inspiration, the results by and large justify whatever the means might have been to get this show on the road--literally and figuratively. Shepherd hit the highway for a week and a half along with producer Jerry Harrison (ex-Talking Heads), a portable studio, and backup musicians including the rhythm section from Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble. He searched out blues artists both obscure (the late guitarist Etta Baker, who plays in her kitchen, is a highlight) and better known (Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and B.B. King) for a series of acoustic and electric jams, all of which feature Shepherd--who, to his credit, generally keeps his hot-dogging tendencies in check. A closing concert featuring members of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters' bands never quite generates the heat it should, but country bluesmen Cootie Stark, Neil Pattman, and harmonica ace Jerry "Boogie" McCain provide plenty of sparks. Shepherd seems sincere enough, but the real stars are the ageing musicians who have maintained their chops and intensity through a lifetime of performing music that clearly comes from the soul. --Hal Horowitz

In January of '09, Hubby & I are planning to take our first cruise in the Carribbean that is all about the blues. I can hardly wait!!!

Getting it

I am not a resident of New Orleans, but I love the city as if it were my home town.

Chris Rose , in his latest column explains one of the thousand reasons that the city is so loved by its inhabitants:


A place where the glass is neither half full nor half empty and, in fact, is not even a glass but a plastic cup, a trinket most likely made in China and of no monetary value whatsoever but it's got some words or a drawing on the side that remind you of something good, some perfect time and place, something vivid and specific, a night with strangers and friends, and that cup sits on your desk or your mantle alongside your most cherished possessions.

Craig Giesecke, over at Metroblogging explains the simple pleasures of New Orleans

My daughter's in town. During last night's light rain, we went for coffee at the Cafe du Monde and then for a sazerac over at Tujague's. In between, we walked around (deserted) Jackson Square and stuck our heads into the Cafe Pontalba. A rainy night is my favorite time in the French Quarter, for some reason, and we just walked around tallking and laughing and window-shopping. We did, basically, nothing. Our total expenses were less than $12. It was delightful.


Yeah, you right.

Sweet Return

The Mississippi Clarion Ledger has published an article
on resurrgence of satsuma crops in Plaquemines Parish.

Hurricane Katrina wiped out about half the satsuma trees in Plaquemines Parish, La., the tonguelike parish on the tip of southeast Louisiana where most of the Gulf Coast's satsuma crop originates.

Jimmy Boudreaux, a commercial vegetable specialist at the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge, said it has been a hard road back for satsuma growers.

Katrina ripped up the small citrus trees, and some acreage flooded with deadly salt water.

They were just beat up so bad, he said. "Of course, the crop was beat up the storm year, and the next year the trees had to recover."

Some growers devastated by the 2005 storm still have not gotten back into the business, he said.

They lost everything, so the orchard is the last thing on their minds, he said. "They lost their homes; they lost everything."

But for those satsuma farmers who managed to save a portion of their trees, this year is looking pretty good.

Immediately following the storm, growers rushed their surviving product to market, harvesting as much as possible from an early crop.

That year, the Louisiana satsuma crop was valued at $2.6 million in farm income, down only slightly from the 2004's crop value of $2.7 million.

Last year's harvest, hampered by dying trees and fewer growers, brought just $1.6 million.

We think we could maybe do one and a half or two times that this year, Boudreaux said.

Even if this year's crop is wildly larger than expected, it's still small by any standard.

By comparison, last year's Florida orange crop was valued at $1.5 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Through the entire state, Boudreaux said Louisiana only has 164 satsuma producers tending 316 acres of trees.


I haven't tasted the Plaquemines Parish satsumas yet, but had some Slidell version about a month
ago and they are wonderfully fresh and sweet!!!

Progress and Stagnation

On the Friday after turkey day, hubby & I travelled AWAY from the malls and took a drive down Hwy. 11 towards New Orleans to check out any progress that had taken place since our last trip in September. It was a picture perfect day and the traffic was light which made it an excellent time to "go lookin" around.

click on pictures to view full-size versions

We took a slow ride down Rats Nest Road, along Lake Pontchartrain.
>
Almost completely obliterated by the storm, this area is finally showing signs of progress,


but what really hits you is the shoreline


It contains the remains of what once were miles of docks jutting out into the lake.

From here you can see the progress on the new twinspans


From there we drove out to far eastern Slidell, towards one of my favorite places to drive, Lake Catherine . I always loved this ride because it is so beautifully serene out there, moreso since the storm because they too were completely razed by Katrina.

This area is seeing a long awaited building boom, but there is still debris pickup going on, as evidenced by these two pictures






This home has been in progress for about a year now and it looks almost complete. Quite a difference from the old, thrown together camps that used to be along Hwy. 90.



This place went up quite quickly.

I'm sure all of the raised houses are being constructed intelligently, as this one is being built



Sites like this burned out camp are becoming more and more rare in the Lake Catherine area.

As we passed Fort Pike we noticed to chartered busses from Germantown, Maryland full of what appeared to be students. They were cleaning up the Fort and cutting grass. Many thanks to them. I'm looking forward to the Fort's reopening.

As another sign of progress, we noticed that the work on the new Rigolets bridge is progressing.


It's heartening to see more progress than stagnation, but the area has a long way to go to get back to normal, whatever that is.

I DO know that it'll be a very long time before we don't see all of the dead trees along Hwy 90 in the East (look BEHIND the beautiful oak tree)

Need a laugh?

Get yourself over to The New Orleans Levee

an excerpt:

Instead of buying new bulletproof vests for police, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin is ordering that officers must instead wear the scandal-plagued “bombproof” city trash cans the administration quietly had been planning to throw away.

“This is leadership, man,” Nagin said during a news conference to announce his “gift” of what he dubbed “vest-cans” to the city’s police. “This is called wastin’ two birds with one idea. Now all the cops are safe, everybody can leave me alone, and we’re gonna save $450,000. C’mon, man. Am I good, or am I good? C’mon.”

Scuzzbucket of the week

Former New Orleans Councilman Oliver Thomas

For renegging on his plea agreement, choosing not to be a "rat". Mr. Thomas, you are lower than a rat.

I'm not a citizen of NOLA, but I was hurt when I learned last August that Oliver was a part of a network of corruption occurring well before Katrina. New Orleans needs positive, honest leadership and learning that Oliver was a crook was a slap in the face. Kids don't need to see a "leader" refusing to "snitch". And now that he's backing out of his agreement, I'm just pissed off.

I'm hearing that judge Vance sentenced him to 37 months in federal prison. Not sure that this is enough.

More from NOLA bloggers' reactions:

Ashley Morris

Celcus

Varg

Degenerate Matter

Schroeder

Good Eats

For my birthday this year, I asked my husband to take me out to eat at La Provence Restaurant in Lacombe, Louisiana


Purchased by Slidell area native John Besh after the death of his mentor chef Chris Kerageorgiou, La Provence provided us with one of the most delicious meals of our lives.

The kitchen is run by Master French Chef Rene Bajeux.
From the above link,
Bajeux’s culinary philosophy of terroir cooking is classically French. Meaning “of the earth,” it describes dishes that reflect the area in which their ingredients are produced. Bajeux believes strongly that a chef should be connected to the foods he serves by using strictly local ingredients – very local, if not actually raised by the chef himself... In this, he is a kindred spirit of Chef John Besh, a longtime friend and colleague who shares a fierce devotion to the terroir approach.


That devotion is apparent in the new "farm" created in the back of the restaurant. Check out this spot at Youtube, where Besh explains how this biodynamic farm is run.



Our salads were served after we experienced the absolutely delicious pate with crusty bread. My daughter's salad was beets and greens with a hazelnut vinaigrette. My husband and I opted for the heirloom tomato salad with fresh Pontchartrain crabmeat. Next all three of us enjoyed the ricotta gnocchi in a crab sauce. Our main courses consisted of bouillabaisse for hubby, speckled trout with crabmeat for me (can you tell I love crab?> and a leg of lamb for my daughter. I have never tasted lamb so tender and lacking in that "wild" flavor.

I recommend this restaurant if you are looking for comfort food served meticulously in a very warm atmosphere. The waitstaff is friendly and extremely attentive, though not to the point of being annoying (like at Emerils).

The history of La Provence 2007 was written up in the epicurious blog of Bon Apetit magazine last spring

Post K Houses

For the past year or so we've seen a rebirth in the Bayou Liberty area and Northshore sections of Slidell. It's interesting to see the different structures growing out of land that was covered by downed pine trees and muck from the bottom of the lake and points beyond. Here are a few examples (click picture for full sized versions)


Bayou Liberty Road



Bayou Liberty Road


Bayou Liberty Road


A Round House on Lakeview (Rat's Nest) Road


Another Round House next to the first one!


Highway 11 (Northshore), Slidell


Highway 11 (Northshore), Slidell


Carr Drive, Slidell


Amid the new buildings stand gutted homes, seemingly begging for residents. Kinda sad

New Orleans Nightscapes

I love photography. So much so that I usually always have my digital camera with me, hoping for a shot. That's how I came across this one:


So last week, hubby & I were at the Covington Three Rivers Arts Festival (a glorified street fair) and we spotted a photographer who takes pictures of
New Orleans houses at night using the floodlight structures used in filming
movies. His pictures are incredible!!! He's been doing in since 2004 and has
pictures from after the storm that are beautifully tragic. He is an artist.

His gallery is here
If I could afford his work, I'd have it in a minute.

So if you are interested in New Orleans architecture, visit his website.

Levees.org video

The perpetually resourceful Greg Peters has taken the Levees dot org
video and saved it down to flash player. It may not be available in
Youtube anymore due to the COE's threat of a lawsuit, but it's still alive.

Thanks, Greg!

Mark Folse
oh-so-eloquently details the background story better than I ever could