blacksundae

Well duh. But, more to the point, duh according to the 2008 Frommer’s Guide to New Orleans, which opines thusly:

Go, because everything in life is fragile and precarious, and we can take nothing for granted, and some day it really will all be gone. Go, because it’s not gone, not at all. Go, because the things you wanted — the beautiful architecture, the majestic oaks, the river wind, the quality of light that makes even the most mundane just a little bit magic — all remain. Go, because there are people there, and as long as they are, there will be music and food, and it will be some of the best of your life. Go, because perhaps you’ve wanted to help in any way you can, and now the best way you can is to help a historic city regain its economic feet. Go, because every brick in the French Quarter has a story to tell, and so does the damaged ground of the Ninth Ward, and you should bear witness. Go, because there is much to celebrate, and this is still the best place there is to do so.

The Frommer book also has a good introductory article on New Orleans. (Thanks to the branch manager at the Hubbell Library, who blogged this at the NOPL MySpace page.)

Mother Jones:

There is perhaps no more fitting backdrop for a production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot—whose main characters, Didi and Gogo, spend two acts waiting for a man who never arrives—than New Orleans, where some residents died waiting for rescue after Katrina struck and others still have yet to see their neighborhoods rebuilt.

Earlier this month, the Classical Theatre of Harlem, together with Creative Time, a New York-based art collective, wrapped up a two-week run of Beckett’s most renowned work with a final production in the Gentilly neighborhood. The play’s organizers had to turn people away the weekend before, when Didi and Gogo did their waiting in the still-decimated Lower Ninth Ward.

Read on. [via MeFi]

I didn’t know that Mr. Bill had a blog. He does, and it’s on the New Orleans Times-Picayune blog site. His recent “Space Station N.O. To Mission Control” post does an interesting blend of two popular arguments. The first is the nowadays-discredited “we put a man on the moon, surely we can ——” line; the second is that “we’re doing more to fix —— than we’re doing to fix New Orleans.” Interestingly, he a) doesn’t mention the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and b) doesn’t complain about dollar amounts, instead pointing up America’s “talent, intellect and ability” in fixing (other) problems.

Study bust[s] myth that New Orleans is sunken city

“Contrary to popular perceptions, half of New Orleans is at or above sea level.”

And Monkey Hill is not the highest ground in the city. This is according to Tulane and Xavier’s Center for Bioenvironmental Research and their LIDAR light imaging detection technology. The article discusses the need to prioritize land use, but also mentions that land height is “not the last word,” as seen after Katrina.

Georgia company planning to redevelop Mid-City area

A Georgia development company has been quietly working to assemble a vast swath of Mid-City, including the Lindy Boggs Medical Center, to create a nearly contiguous 20-acre site for 1.2 million square feet of retail space for national chains that until now have been unable to find a home inside the city.

File under love/hate. This would be the area bounded by Liuzza’s, Parkway Bakery, American Can and supermarket row on N. Carrollton. In the past I’ve dissed megadevelopments like this and the car traffic they cause, and wished people could walk through pleasant neighborhoods to shop at independent little stores and so on… but I find it significant that national-level investors are interested in this area that’s huffing and puffing to come back. According to one of the marketing people quoted in the Picayune article, “‘New Orleans has been on the radar (of national retailers) for a long time,’ and the storm has made land available.”

It took 6,000 years to build Louisiana’s coast.
It took 75 years to destroy it.
We have 10 years to save it.

Three-day series in the New Orleans Times-Picayune starts with today’s article. The animated graphic thing takes about seven minutes. Basically, land loss in southeast Louisiana is increasing exponentially. If it’s not reversed within ten years, it’ll be too late. Oh, and it’ll take more than the $14 billion figure we’ve been reading about.

Guardian Angels seek presence in N.O.

A contingent of Guardian Angels is in New Orleans because the group wants to train local civilians to form neighborhood patrols that will deter criminal activity as the city recovers from Hurricane Katrina.

I seem to recall they tried this in New Orleans about a generation ago. Not sure what became of that.

Your Right Hand Thief:

The biggest catastrophe in the history of the United States is omitted from the President’s State of the UNION speech, a mere 17 months after the widespread devastation, and nationally-televised human misery. Dwell on that fact for a second or two.

[...]

Now, Bush’s focus on AIDS in Africa is fine and dandy. He is right to be proud of some of these initiatives. But, I mean, my God, Bush has to talk about Africa to find an example of the American people’s kindness and self sacrifice? We need only look to Dikembe Mutumbo in order to see our country’s spirit of “strength and generosity”??

A year and a half ago this President promised “bold action” to confront the povery in the Gulf South, and promised that we would see one of the greatest reconstruction projects in world history. Nearly two thousand Americans perished in the flooding here, yet Bush uses his speech to talk about AIDS for the umpteenth time and to do an in-depth profile of the founder of Baby Einstein… Bush couldn’t make space for even a word about New Orleans or the hurricane-ravaged Gulf South. Not one word. We’re not even worth lying about, at this point.

So, on Thursday morning I pick up the SF Chronicle and see the following headline, front page, above the fold:

TSUNAMI STRIKES CRESCENT CITY

“Oh,” I think, “you gotta be fucking kidding!” Imagine my relief when the Crescent City in question turned out to be this one, not this one. I actually believed otherwise for a few moments, and was not all that surprised.

P.S. Holy cow! A post on blacksundae! Stop the presses! Actually, I was having trouble with the Wordpress installation on the old server, and couldn’t post at all, although for some reason my del.icio.us account could still post, as you can see below.

Note that the address for this blog is now blacksundae.shannonhubbell.com, although blacksundae.net still works.

• “Mister President, are you going to turn your back on me?” “No, ma’am,” Bush said, with a laugh and a pause. “Not again.”
• My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums.
• Here’s a blog by a girl with two vaginas. It’s called “Box Set.” No, really.