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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

Enlightening Fun

There's a "Who Dat" Quiz on NOLA dot com that will make you laugh
and teaches locals and outsiders alike the facts about the people
and geography of this area.

I got a 92, not bad for a transplanted yankee.

here's the link. Have fun

You have to be here

In a tree in Lake Catherine, July 2007
click on photos for full-size versions

Too many times you just can't appreciate the scope of something unless you see it first hand. The Gulf Coast Post K is like that. Our daily intake of the headlines gives us just a tiny piece of the tragedies that befall our fellow man, a snippet of the breadth of the disaster.

Recently, a group of people gathered in Waveland to commemorate the second anniversary of Katrina's landfall there. Lawyer Trisha Miller from Indiana writes
at IndyStar dot com

For the anniversary, we gather on Katrina's vacant shores to bear witness to a continuing storm. A choir from Washington State leads us in "Amazing Grace." A Buddhist monk recites a meditation. A Catholic priest and female rabbi offer passages from Scripture, searching for words of hope among the wreckage.



The thousands upon thousands of volunteers across the country - no, the WORLD - who have ventured here to help clean up and rebuild have our endless appreciation. A catastrophe this size is not easily cleaned up, as evidenced the the ever present piles of debris that still dot the landscape.


Or the hundreds of thousands of dead trees - dead from saltwater intrusion - still standing as reminders of the strength of Mother Nature



Ms Miller continutes:


The promise of renewal is fading with each passing anniversary. As a nation, we must lend a voice and a hand to help end the suffering among families who survived the hurricane but cannot find a path homeward.
It is unconscionable that a teenage boy in Pascagoula must crawl into his front door because the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not issue his family a handicapped-accessible trailer. Or that a mother in D'Iberville, whose home was reduced to rubble in the storm, cannot rebuild or reunite her family until she resolves a dispute with FEMA over her right to emergency assistance. Or that the lethargic pace of state recovery assistance means that an eligible Mississippi homeowner may lose his home through foreclosure while awaiting a homeowner assistance grant.
These are but a few examples of a continuing storm that has besieged the Gulf Coast. The road home rests with all of us.


It's not that people are looking for a hand out. They're looking for a hand up.

Thank you, Ms Miller.

PKD

Depression is still running rampant in the Gulf Coast area

two years post Katrina as evidenced by this post over at metblogs.

The causes of PKD are numerous.

Daily murders

Self proclaimed " intellects " making themselves feel taller by dissing the city using unfounded facts and close-minded opinions

The local paper that can't seem to focus on the important things

Wacked out "leaders"

Politicians using this area to win hearts and votes
when we all know that whomever gets elected will probably put the restoration of this area down low on their list of priorities.

The Road Home

Dealing with cold-hearted insurance companies

The dark hearts of some people whose opinions of this area really hurt despite the fact that they are uneducated.

Things that haven't changed in two years


Ernie the attorney describes the fight to stay sane:
So every day I wake up, move slowly away from my bed and try to find the right frame of mind. Some days I catch the wave just right, and everything is pretty good. Some days I have trouble getting any kind of balance. But every day I try to start out by breathing slowly and peacefully. You'd think that, by now, it'd be easy but it's not. It's hard and it's boring and I hate it because my mind wanders and I can't keep my focus no matter how hard I try

Took the words right out of my mouth

On the outcome of the St. Rita's case, EJ echoes my thoughts....


I'm not happy or sad for the Manganos or for those who died and their families or for you and me, because this disaster and our actions during those tense, horrific days, like so much in life, can't be shoved into the black-or-white, right-vs.-wrong, guilty-or-innocent mentality that pervades our answer-seeking, justice-must-be-done culture. Many tragedies do not happen because people are greedy or evil or reckless but because tragedies happen. Shortsightedness, foolheartedness, and poor judgment are human nature; and they may be to blame, but do they a criminal make?

Life Since Katrina

The NY Times look at recovery from the storm after two years.
Features residents of New Orleans East, Lakeview, Gentilly, Garden District, West Bank and the French Quarter.

A must see

An emotionally stirring video from the Times Picayune featuring the paper's photographers' memories of working the aftermath of Katrina.

some quotes from the photographers

This can't be America....

Early on it became clear that this would be a political mess....

I can't do this another day, I've go to find a way out.

The trauma of the event - particualrly flying over the city - really got to me

The storm has taken a toll on everyone, we're still processing what it has done to us...it's a long road.

I listen to a police scanner all day and all I hear is "29s 29s 29s" - suicide - all day long...it's like an epidemic, but it's a quiet one...Katrina is still churning out her victims, 2 years later.

A New Chapter

Chapter 6 is ready to read at After the Deluge

Pass it on to others

Multimedia artist John Scott passed away at the age of 67 from pulmonary fibrosis .


A MacArthur fellow and a professor at Xavier University, his work was exhibited widely and he created large-scale public sculptures in Boston, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Atlanta, New Orleans and other cities.


Mr. Scott drove to Houston at 3:30 a.m. the day Katrina hit. His eight public-art works that dot the city, including a large, kinetic steel piece on the river survived the storm. "It has survived five or six hurricanes already," Mr. Scott said. "And it still looks the way it did when I made it." However, in a brazen act of post Katrina thievery we've all come to know, in December of 2006 thieves broke into an art studio in New Orleans and -- using a bolt cutter, hacksaw and hammer -- dismantled several of Mr. Scott's bronze sculptures, hauling the metal away.

The studio that Scott shared with artist Ron Bechet for 12 years was blasted by Katrina’s winds. Five feet of water flooded the ground floor studio, damaging innumerable works of art and ruining much of the heavy machinery used to make it.

A New Orleans native, Scott was born on a farm in Gentilly; his father was chauffeur to the owners, who used the farm to supply meat and produce for their restaurant, Kolb’s . When Scott was 7, his family moved to the Lower 9th Ward. His love of art may have started when his mother taught him to embroider. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in 1958 and began formal art studies.

Mr Scott was an unselfish artist and teacher. As a teacher, he only wanted for students to follow his tradition, of excellence.”

“He had a very famous admonition that all of us remember,” Xavier President Norman Francis said. “He didn’t want thanks. Just pass it on. Pass it on to others.”