What: A team of architects and urban designers will share the final draft of a blueprint for redefining nearly
6 miles of riverfront running from Jackson Ave. to Holy Cross.

When: Saturday, July 28, 2007, from 9:00 - 11:00 am (Q&A to follow at 11:30)

Where: Port of New Orleans headquarters
1350 Port of New Orleans Place, behind the Convention Center - access at Henderson Street

For more information please reference the website at www.neworiverfront.com.

I think it will be interesting to see what the plans are and, as a friend of mine pointed out, it is usually the denizens that are opposed to change in this city that show up to these things, so it would be neat to have some progress-minded folks in attendance if architecture is your bag. Unfortuantely I cannot attend, but if anyone does please report back!

Last night a friend who is renovating a house in Treme called to say the house had been robbed of its architectural pieces . . . again. The first time the bandits took the cornices right off the front of the house. He found them at the Bank and got them back. This time, thieves broke in and took everything of value, including his pocket doors. He took off work this morning to to go hunt down his stuff at the local salvage yards . . . so far no luck.

More Photos
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I was playing around on ZabaSearch. Ya know, looking up my own name and trying to see what I could find out and how much information is there compared to, say, Google. It’s kinda cool I guess, but there’s not really more info than Google. And actually, in my comparison of random other people I’ve known but haven’t seen in forever it didn’t provide anything striking. It did find more information than a general search on a friend of mine from high school who doesn’t seem to have discovered the internet yet and as such, has no online presence at all. Still in other cases, like my uncle, who I know reads this, the name is so common that you really can’t differentiate the results without significantly more information about the individual.

I’m sure you’re saying to yourself that this would all be very interesting if my television were broken or something but what’s the point? The point is, one of the other names I searched on revealed the following from an abstract of a dissertation:

“To assign collective responsibility is to say that a group is morally responsible for some significant harm. Collective responsibility may be non-distributive and apply only to the group considered as a whole. Alternatively, it may be distributive and shared, applying to each member of the group. A satisfactory account of collective responsibility in either form must overcome two prominent objections, first put forth by H.D. Lewis: (1) collectives are nothing more than the aggregation of their members; (2) collective responsibility ignores individual contributions to harm.”

**fair warning: long-ass post**
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Well, I got a call from someone at Richard’s Disposal this morning asking me if I ever got the item number for the stolen trash cart. You may remember my previous post. She gave me my three options again this morning:

• Wait for the city to fine me (which they started doing on June 1st)
• Buy a new one for $90
• Call the non-emergency number, file a police report, and let them replace it for free

She hung up on me after I used the words “strong arming me” and “Sophie’s Choice” noting that she didn’t have to put up with disrespect. So much for their multi-million dollar tracking system since they apparently couldn’t find it after assuring me they could. Again, though, I never saw the thing so I don’t really know if it was ever there. And you only get one free replacement and I’d hate to waste it. They assure me their process is flawless (unlike the tracking system). And they still can’t give me a good explanation of what happens if I get a new one and someone steals it as well - they defer to their tracking system which clearly doesn’t work.
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I am trying to get a new driver’s license and a transit pass for coming from the West Bank to the city. I went to the cityofno.com website, but they have a dead link for the Regional Transity Authority page, which has been very little help.

My two questions are:

1) Where can I purchase the paytoll pass? Are they currently selling them?
2) Where is the DMV on the Westbank? I think there is one somewhere off of DeGaulle? I am trying to kill two birds with one stone.

Though I don’t fully get all of it (I just got up and all the wheels aren’t turning yet), a line in today’s Jarvis DeBerry column really hit home to me this morning. The one toward the end, about those of us who choose to stay in New Orleans being an “all-volunteer army.” Man — ain’t DAT de truth.

Another of our neighbors has decided she’s had enough. She’s got two offers on her small townhouse and will sell it. She’ll stay with a friend for a little while until she finds the right job offer and then she’ll hit the road for good. She ranted for a while last night as we stood under a streetlight, waving her arms and talking in a whisper much of the time about how she’s got no more patience with a variety of things — from an ex-boyfriend to rude people to the daily hassles of life in this city these days. She’s a woman with a lot to offer, being an experienced RN, and she was one of the very first back in the neighborhood after the storm. She has rebuilt her townhouse, which lost its roof and had to be gutted back to the studs. But everything has simply piled up and she’s had enough. She says she cried for one day and then she was over it.
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So the Senate leader wants an airing of the Vitter ’scandal’. What on earth for? Is it really such a shock that an evangelical Senator paid for sex? Who cares. (Maybe the people that voted for him based on his love of Jesus?) This is an old story we have already been so shocked by so many times before that we are no longer even surprised. Ho hum, another Senator lied about his ‘upright morals’. At least all he got busted for was soliciting hookers. The way I see it, this is something for his wife to worry about, not me. I am worried about the Senators that are embezzling funds, signing war contracts, and listening to our phone calls. The Senate leader wants to air the issue? Maybe he should watch some re-runs of court tv during the Anna Nicole ’scandal’ if he hasn’t had enough trash from the media filling his mind. I am sick of this shit for real.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Jack’s last post and my personal love lost for this city lately. I have to admit a certain apathy has overtaken me and that’s the reason I don’t post too often on here anymore. I was in Costa Rica for the last two weeks, which was pretty awesome, and upon returning last night I realized I was not excited to be coming home. Craig has written many times about that “it’s great to be back” feeling when returning here from trips, and this was the first time I haven’t felt that way. Usually I would grab a daiquiri on the way home from the airport and dive headfirst into an oyster poboy or something to celebrate being back, but not last night. Maybe I was just exhausted from a hellacious nineteen hours spent in various airports and airplanes, but when I think back on the vacation I don’t think there was a second where I wished I was back here. Not only that, but the reason I went on vacation in the first place was because I needed a serious break from New Orleans.

So now I am starting to analyze exactly why I’m feeling this way, to break down the problems and maybe that will help overcome them, I don’t know. But here’s what’s been on my mind.
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I know lots of folks have been taking secret and not-so-secret pleasure in watching the various twists and turns of the David Vitter situation. And last night he emerged from his self-imposed and temporary exile to again apologize. I’m sure he feels like a shitheel and all — particularly since he and his wife had thought they’d moved past it. But here it is again — all dredged up and thrown out there and whatnot. Life can suck, can’t it Dave?

I absolutely love seeing moralizing twits being hoisted high on their own namby-pamby potards for all to see. I was over in Florida for a while last week and noticed they actually have a Family Values license plate. I wanted to stop the car, knock on the driver’s window and ask, “whose family?” I wanted to rag on the guy about why he thinks his family values are better than someone else’s and to ask where in hell does it say he’s got a right to impose his on others? But I fought off the urge and, really, all I’d have been doing is doing to him what he’s doing to me — obnoxiously imposing my opinions and denegrating his. There’s been too damn much of that going on in this country over the past several years — so I figure it’s just best the high-minded cook in their own juices as I have in mine. Actually, the view from the gutter ain’t that bad.

Speaking of cooking, it’s good to see a local is going to take over the La Madeleine spot at Jackson Square. As much of a free-trader as I can be, I didn’t want Starbucks (or any other bigass national chain) to go in there.
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I’m not what anyone would consider to be a man full of conviction. I’m not passionate about everything. It actually takes a lot to get my attention. Not because I don’t notice things, but because I dismiss much of the world as being of no interest to me. I don’t make any effort to recycle. I don’t go to rallies to try and change the world. I don’t even like activists and feel they are naive idealists. Hell, I’ve only recently started to vote. Most anyone who knows me or even just reads what I write here would probably agree with those statements to some degree. Most people don’t have accurate self-knowledge so I have to assume the same is true of me.

I don’t mention these things so much as a self-serving existentialism - although that probably wouldn’t be out of character either. I mention it because for someone like me to become so disgusted and disenfranchised with the way this city, state and federal government is going takes a lot. But they’ve worn me down. I don’t mean to say that I’m all anti-American or anything. I just no longer want my taxes to finance the things the government is doing, I no longer want to participate in any of it, and mostly, I just don’t want to be associated with this place anymore. Not believing that things here can be changed by one, sad little man of no consequence with a penchant for profanity, it doesn’t leave a lot of decision making. So, in short, I’m outta here as soon as I can work out the details.
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