More troubling than the folks at NOLA.com, though, are the people who comment on New Orleans stories found elsewhere on the web. This piece on CNN.com about the marsh fires generated some fairly representative remarks. For example:

When will the population of NOLA stop looking for someone else to constantly bail them out? When “are they going to do something about it”? When are you going to do something about it? If it is so terrible organize the thousands it’s effecting, give them some shovels and buckets and a ride out to the area. “They” are out of money!

and

The marsh is on fire, no one is doing anything about it. What are they supposed to do? You decided to live in a fish bowl in the middle of a swamp, and the rest of the country is supposed to feel sorry for you every time the wind blows the wrong way. You need to visit a different part of the country where you can actually take a deep breath and not smell swamp gas, you would be amazed.

Which it to be expected, I suppose. It’s easy for folks to criticize us “heathens” in New Orleanians when they think the finer things in life consist of Applebee’s and Calvinist work ethics.

But what’s shocking — I mean, holy-crap-what-the-hell shocking — is to hear Louisiana’s own elected officials making equally fucked-up statements. With FEMA working overtime in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene and a summer full of brutal storms that ravaged the Midwest and South, the agency is understandably running short on funds. But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has said that before Congress will allot any more dollars to FEMA, the allocation will have to be countered by spending cuts.

Is it surprising to hear a Republican legislator from Virginia with a rod up his ass make such a statement? No. It IS, however, entirely surprising that two representatives from South Louisiana are backing him up:

“We should establish priorities that allow us to help those impacted by disasters, and that also means we must eliminate federal funding for things that we can no longer afford to do, just as we did earlier this year in response to the Mississippi River flooding when we identified billions in wasteful government spending to offset the cost of that response.” — Representative Steve Scalise

and

“The need to provide for the recovery from this disaster does not alleviate us of our responsibility to cut federal spending and restore fiscal sanity in Washington.” — Representative Jeff Landry

Mother Nature has left people homeless, jobless, living in shelters, and legislators want to talk about line-items? Seriously: screw those guys.

Alternately, you could send them both a tersely written letter that suggests they stop rimming the Tea Party’s cup and remember the role that recovery dollars have played in their own districts the past six years. We’re dodging a bullet with the current tropical system, but it could’ve been much worse down here.

We are.

That’s not to say that everything’s as it was. That’s not to say that everyone has come home. And that’s certainly not to say that people, communities, and the city we call home haven’t been deeply, deeply scarred by a particularly forceful force of nature.

And yet, we don’t want to talk about it. I certainly don’t. None of my friends talk about it. My family doesn’t. In fact, the only time it comes up in conversation is when I’m out of town, and someone finds out that I’m from New Orleans — as happened while I was paying a visit to my birth mother, Callie, this past weekend.

(The scene: a restaurant in Ellerslie, Georgia, around 2pm on a sunny August afternoon. In addition to a solid meat-and-two-veg lunch, the restaurant sells a small selection of potted plants, and after we eat, Callie decides to purchase an angel’s trumpet. As she goes in to pay for it — a bargain at $5 — a woman of a certain age and bearing stops me.)

WOMAN: Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me what it is you’ve got there?

ME: Yes ma’am. This is an angel’s trumpet.

WOMAN: Do they grow very big?

ME: Well, they do where I’m from, but it may get too cold up here. They really prefer more tropical weather.

WOMAN: Do they, now? Are you from down in Florida, then?

ME: No ma’am, not quite. I’m from New Orleans.

WOMAN: Oh, I see. (WOMAN pauses, considers the fragrance of a flowering vine — which, I know for a fact, emits no scent at all. Then, in a lower voice.) So, tell me: do you think New Orleans will ever come back?

ME: (Trying to process what I’ve heard. It’s as if she just asked, “Do you think people will ever live in New York again, after September 11?”) I’m sorry?

WOMAN: I say, do you think New Orleans will ever come back?

ME: Well ma’am, in my opinion, much of New Orleans was back to normal six months after the storm.

WOMAN: Oh really?

ME: Yes ma’am. In fact, within a year, most of my friends and I weren’t talking about it ourselves.

WOMAN: Well gracious me, I had no idea. That is just so good to hear. (Another pause. Then, even lower.) You know, it seems to me that Katrina might’ve done y’all some good.

ME: Well, like any disaster, I suppose it had some upsides.

WOMAN: Cleaned up the city pretty well, is what I heard. Got rid of some things. You know, unwanted things.

ME: Oh. Well. I…

(WOMAN gives me a knowing wink, then ambles out toward the garden to peruse the potted herbs, calling playfully to the flock of chickens who roam the restaurant grounds.)

And that’s pretty much how it goes.

One of the biggest disruptions is undoubtedly the official dedication of the Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial, which is scheduled to begin on Sunday at 11am — almost exactly the time at which Irene will be giving D.C. her most powerful stink-eye. It looks as if the storm will be downgraded to a category 2 by then, but that’s more than enough to flood roadways, knock out power, and force cancellation of all outdoor events.

Which makes me wonder: are gays going to have the shoulder the blame for Irene alone? As you probably recall, asswipes like Reverend John Hagee blamed us for Katrina. Said Hagee to Terry Gross:

All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades.

Which is ridiculous for a couple of reasons — not least of which is that he makes the Southern Decadence parade sound super-secret, when in fact, it’s widely known as one of the biggest gay events in town, and possibly in the South. Ugh, that man is such a drama queen.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, right: wackjobs like Rabbi Yehuda Levin have already blamed this week’s East Coast earthquake on gays, claiming that god or G-D or yahweh or whatever you wanna call her has said in the Talmud that “You have shaken your male member in a place where it doesn’t belong. I too, will shake the earth.” But given the fact that Irene is set to interrupt the dedication of the nation’s largest and most visible civil rights memorial, are Levin, Hagee, and their ilk going to start blaming African Americans for the storm, too? Or maybe just LGBT African Americans? I’m happy to share the responsibility, I just need to know whom to invite to my debauched, hurricane invocation ceremony of witchcraft and sodomy. (Bring a covered dish, y’all.)

On a serious note, though: if you’re in the path of Hurricane Irene and want to evacuate, don’t do as I did and leave one of your pets behind. Yesterday my friend, Jimbo, send out some great advice and links about storm preparedness. Have a look:

If you have to evacuate, try to take your pets with you if possible. It may not always be safe to get back to your house to retrieve your pets following the disaster. A shelter for pets may be collocated near a shelter for people.

The best source of information for pet preparedness is from Ready.gov.

For animals other than your dog or cat, details about equine, amphibian, parrot, and other animal preparedness tips can be found at the American Veterinary Medical Association’s “Saving the Whole Family” publication (PDF document) located here.

For the backyard flock or small animal herd owner, try to have one or more collapsible wire dog crates or plastic dog crates ready for temporary indoor housing and/or evacuation of multiple fowl or small mammals like goats.

Local, state and Federal officials are working to ensure the safety of pets and companion animals who evacuate with their owners.

Public Shelters cannot always accommodate for pets to stay with people. Check in your local community for shelter locations that can accommodate pets.

If a pet shelter is located near a human shelter, pet owners may be allowed to visit and care for their pets during designated times.

The types of animals for which your community may provide emergency shelter may vary. Dogs, cats, and other household pets are most commonly accommodated, and some communities may make provisions for other kinds of animals, including horses and small livestock.

Pet owners should be prepared to provide the following information to pet shelter workers if possible: name; species and breed; sex; color; distinctive markings; age; microchip identification number; vaccination records; health conditions and required medication.

Other useful items to bring to a shelter are:

· a clear and current photo of you with your pet

· an extra collar, leash, and/or harness that fits

· favorite toys

· any medications and special diets for their pets

· information on feeding schedules, medical conditions, behavior problems, and the name and number of your veterinarian in case you have to foster or board your pets

· and if possible a pet carrier/kennel large enough for your pet to sleep in comfortably.

But I digress.

On August 19, 2009, Nagin stood for a photo op with Spongebob Squarepants and announced that Nickelodeon would be redeveloping Six Flags. But like a good souffle, the deal didn’t keep, and now the city is looking for a new partner to rescue the property.  If you’re the sort of person with a dream in your pocket and several million dollars in a Swiss bank account, you have until October 10 to submit your proposal.

My personal take? There are certain parts of New Orleans that are perfectly fine for habitation and others that should return to their natural state. There were some contentious discussions about which neighborhoods fit into those two categories after the storm, but I don’t think anyone would complain if Mitch Landrieu ripped Jazzland off the map and signed the deed over to Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge.

I’m not sure where I found this article about New Orleans’ rebuilding process — probably via Gambit or from my pal Tyler. But no matter: it’s a beautifully written piece. Here’s an excerpt:

Four years after Katrina, the rebuilding of New Orleans is not proceeding the way anyone envisioned, nor with the expected cast of characters. (If I may emphasize: Brad Pitt is the city’s most innovative and ambitious housing developer.) But it’s hard to say what people were expecting, given the magnitude of the disaster and the hopes raised in the weeks immediately following. Seventeen days after the storm, President George W. Bush stood in Jackson Square and promised: “We will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.”

The terms we, as long as it takes, and help turned out to be fairly elastic. The Federal Emergency Management Agency shuttered its long-term recovery office about six months later, after a squabble with the city over who would pay for the planning process. Since then, depending on whom you talk to, government at all levels has been passive and slow-moving at best, or belligerent and actively harmful at worst. Mayor Ray Nagin occasionally surfaces to advertise a big new scheme (a jazz park, a theater district), about which no one ever hears again. A new 20-year master plan and comprehensive zoning ordinance was being ironed out early this summer, but it remains subject to city-council approval. A post-Katrina master plan has been under discussion since before the floodwaters were pumped out.

In the absence of strong central leadership, the rebuilding has atomized into a series of independent neighborhood projects. And this has turned New Orleans—moist, hot, with a fecund substrate that seems to allow almost anything to propagate—into something of a petri dish for ideas about housing and urban life. An assortment of foundations, church groups, academics, corporate titans, Hollywood celebrities, young people with big ideas, and architects on a mission have been working independently to rebuild the city’s neighborhoods, all wholly unconcerned about the missing master plan. It’s at once exhilarating and frightening to behold.

“If you look at the way ants behave when they’re gathering food, it looks like the stupidest, most irrational thing you’ve ever seen—they’re zigzagging all over the place, they’re bumping into other ants. You think, ‘What a mess! This is never going to amount to anything,’” says Michael Mehaffy, the head of the Sustasis Foundation, which studies urban life and sustainability and has worked with neighborhood organizations here. “So it’s easy to look at New Orleans at the grassroots level and wonder, What’s going on here?’ But if you step back and look at the big picture, in fact it’s the most efficient pattern possible, because all those random activities actually create a very efficient sort of discovery process.”

–full article at TheAtlantic.com

America's most ignorant man

I haven’t been paying attention to the wonderful Mayor of New Orleans lately mainly because he has become irrelevant. No one pays attention to him locally because he is a buffoon. Actually he is the leader of the buffoon’s. Now that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been screwing things up, saying dumb things or attempting to hide his corrupted ways but I just haven’t had the energy to care for the last year.

My ears did perk up last week though when it was announced, 1 hour before he boarded a plane to Cuba, that he was going to Cuba, along with other politicians (all of them of the worthless variety of course) and other in the loop business people, to learn about Hurricane Evacuation techniques from the Communist regime in Cuba. You are reading that right. The Mayor of a major American city flew to Cuba to learn what a police state government does when a Hurricane approaches.

Well it seems that the Mayor of New Orleans learned more than any of us thought was possible. Or maybe he didn’t. In a statement to the Associated Press correspondent in Havana, the Mayor of New Orleans praised Cuban leaders for “knowing their citizens at a very very detailed level,block by block.” Really Mayor of New Orleans? Please tell me why you think that is the case. Is it because that government is so concerned about their safety? Or did you think it’s possible that the Cuban leadership knows so much about it’s citizens on a very detailed level because they keep those citizens on a tight leash and possibly watch every move they make or do not make?

This isn’t the first time that the Mayor of New Orleans has gone to a country with a history of repression. Last year the Mayor of New Orleans traveled to China and stated that he “didn’t see a communist country. There are Chinese people there making serious money.”

I am all for safety. I am all for people evacuating in the face of a hurricane approaching New Orleans. Evacuations in Cuba basically go this way. Get on the bus or you will be shot.  Seeing how this still is America Mr Mayor of New Orleans, I will pass on the “Cuban Evacuation Plan”, thank you very much.

If only the crime cameras had been focused on THIS guy

Jury selection started this past Monday in the civil trial that alleges the City of New Orleans Technology Office basically stole other companies ideas and then tried to sell them to other cities as their own technology. The guy to your left is former technology chief Greg Meffert. During the 2006 mayoral campaign, the radio station met a man named Grant Holcumb. This was maybe 5 months after Hurricane Katrina and the issue of interoperability in communications was a major issue and topic of discussion. Mr. Holcumb had developed a system that basically would have allowed all types of different communication systems to operate openly during times of emergency. I’m not attempting to re-hash old news, just point out that Mr. Holcumb basically accused Greg Meffert of squashing the program because the city had existing deals with Microsoft, which would not have benefited from the open system Mr Holcumb had developed.

Mayor Nagin has touted the current “crime camera” program over and over again as a way to assist the NOPD with not only getting a handle on crime in so-called hot spots throughout the city but also help the police and DA’s office solve crimes. The initial plan was for 1000 cameras throughout the city. Then it became 240 cameras at a proposed cost of 2.6 million. Which wasn’t the case. The IG’s office released a report that stated the city at that point had paid 6.6 million out for far less than 240 cameras. As we have found out recently as well, the cameras that have been installed rarely work because of networking and other issues. It is also my understanding that not one city owned crime camera has lead to a arrest of a suspected criminal of any kind. Privately owned surveillance cameras have given the police more leads than the city owned and installed for 6.6 million dollar cameras have.

The Mayor’s Technology office has been under fire frankly since the interoperability issue came to light. Focus on that office seemed to grow after then local Homeland Security director Col. Terry Ebert stated that he thought the system Mr Holcumb had developed would have worked during Hurricane Katrina and “helped save lives.” The Mayors office didn’t allow any more interviews from Col Ebert after that one. Shocking huh?

The civil suit is just the beginning with the Mayor’s Office of Technology. The Feds are all over that joint like white on rice. Trips paid for by companies receiving city contracts through that office, companies owned by the “Director’s” of the office doing business with basically the office and budgets they controlled. This is the tip of the iceberg with these folks and I would be willing to bet everything I own that some folks who worked or ran that particular city agency will end up in jail for a long time. If only the crime cameras had been working and recording the criminals who were charged with installing the crime camera network.

Rebuilding New Orleans is an ongoing effort and pitching into the concept-zone is the New Orleans Arcology Habitat or NOAH. Since the details on this structure are in-depth and plenty, lets plunge into them right away. NOAH proposes to be a habitat for 40,000 residents who can benefit from the planned residential units, school system, commercial, retail, hotels, casinos, parking, and public works facilities.

NOAH is based upon the following preliminary program outline.

1. Residential Units / Rental and Condominium; 20,000 units @ average 1100 Sq ft
2. Three Hotels; Average 200 rooms plus associated services
3. Time Share Units; 1500 units @ average 1100 sq ft
4. Three Casino Facilities
5. Commercial Space / Rental and Condominiums; 500,000 sq ft
6. Commercial Space / Retail; 500,000 sq ft
7. Parking Garage / within foundation; 8,000 cars
8. Cultural Facilities; 100,000 sq ft
9. Public Works; 50,000 sq ft / includes storage
10. District School System; 100,000 sq ft
11. District Administrative Office; 50,000 sq ft
12. District Health Care Facility; 20,000 sq ft

Estimated Total Square Footage : 30 million

Location/Site Specific: In reviewing all the options and possible sites for NOAH, the most logical location is on the Mississippi riverfront and adjacent to the Central Business District.

Oh: and it goes on.

Facing mounting opposition to the construction of a poultry exporting operation at the foot of the French Market, the Port of New Orleans is looking for a new home for New Orleans Cold Storage.Port administrators are asking tenants along the Mississippi River if they could make room on their property for the company, which the port fears will leave New Orleans without a new headquarters. New Orleans Cold Storage is the port’s second-largest customer.

“They’ve made it very clear that they’re going to continue to oppose this, and we’re going to see what the other alternatives are,” port spokesman Chris Bonura said of residents in the French Quarter, Marigny and Bywater. Signs emblazoned with the message ‘Poison Port’ can be seen posted throughout the neighborhoods.

There are no guarantees that the port will find another home for New Orleans Cold Storage, Bonura said, and the company may very well end up on the Gov. Nicholls Street and Esplanade Avenue wharves as planned.

But the fact that the port is even considering a new home for the company represents an aboutface for the agency, which just a few months ago said that the wharves near the French Quarter were the only option for New Orleans Cold Storage.

– NOLA.com

But really, who cares who ran the story first? We’re close, y’all! Not out of the woods, but, you know, cross those fingers.

Greetings and salutations!

I would like to let everyone know of our upcoming Permaculture Courses.

RiverSolar in cooperation with the Heritage Foundation is offering weekly courses in Permaculature and Design concepts. Core concepts will be provided in block format on Fridays from 12 – 2 PM beginning July 10, 2009 at the ArtEgg Building.

Students can choose to take one class or all leading to a Permaculture Design Certificate. Please contact Doris for enrollment information.

RiverSolar
riversolar@gmail.com
1001 So. Broad St. New Orleans, LA
504-729-8226

Which sounds great except for the part about the HERITAGE FOUNDATION.

Seriously: THE Heritage Foundation? The same ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation that worshiped at the feet of Ronald Reagan? The same war-mongering Heritage Foundation that pushed heavily for the invasion of Iraq (and, less successfully, Iran)? The same Heritage Foundation that looked at the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and found it a perfect example of the need for relaxed environmental regulations? That Heritage Foundation?

UPDATE: Of course it’s not that Heritage Foundation. As the friendly Alex just pointed out:

It’s actually the Heritage Foundation for Arts and Cultural Sustainability, which shares a space in the ArtEgg building, along with RiverSolar.

Which is great, but also a really unfortunate choice of names. Oh well: at least the world makes sense again.