No-No NOLA

Wave Goodbye

2007-08-24T08:44:00.000-05:00

I had hoped to keep the No-No-Nola blog going after my move, but the long commute and all the life changes are making it impossible. So au revoir, NOLA. God bless you.

Temporarily Out of Service

2007-08-08T09:05:00.001-05:00

I'm at the peak of getting ready to move, so I'm afraid both blogs will have to go on hiatus until August 20. Come back and visit then!

No Natural Disaster

2007-08-07T11:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, so the big Time Magazine cover story isn't very good timing as far as selling a house in New Orleans is concerned, but I knew from the first sentence of Michael Grunwald's lengthy piece that this one was going to be interesting.

"The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn't a natural disaster," Grunwald writes. "It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics."

My realtor was moaning and groaning about the story yesterday--it really IS bad for business.

But on the other hand, it's nice hearing some validation from somewhere outside NOLA that this was a monstrous, engineering-driven screw-up.

But it's still a great place to live, and I know of a nice uptown house for sale...

POD Cast

2007-08-06T08:52:00.001-05:00

So now I have this big honkin' 16-foot POD sitting on the street in front of my house, filled to the brim with stuff.

Big thanks to Dianne, Stella, Star, Lora, Debbie, JL, Dave, Nick and Noelle for working like the busiest POD Cast on the planet getting my and my mom's junk packed up and out of the way.

There's still tons of stuff left to do, not the least of which is meeting with the realtor this evening to sign contracts and get this puppy on the market finally.

But the busy weekend still held a few reminders of why I want to leave. Less than 72 hours after the POD was delivered, it was vandalized by a gang member(s) with spray paint. So I have some weird gang mark on the side of the POD in black paint. I'm sure the POD people will be thrilled. Thankfully, I got the POD insured.

And in the midst of the moving ambles up a guy from the 'hood, hustling me for money. I've never seen him before but he claims to be the brother of a guy who did possibly the worst job imaginable of putting up a new ceiling in one of my bedrooms a couple of years ago. Scary thing is, this guy knew which of the nine people milling around the house was me, and that I have two dogs. When I wasn't forthcoming with $$ he hauled out some expensive (as in $90 each) leather dog leashes, still wrapped and pricetags intact. I finally gave him $10 to get rid of him and kept the $180 worth of obviously-stolen dog leashes. The "hot merchandise" went into one of the POD boxes.

I will not miss the hustles and the vandals.

Ruminations Friday

2007-08-03T10:24:00.001-05:00

Haven't had one of these in a while.

From the "Here We Go Round in Circles" file--an appeals court has ruled that it was unconstitutional for the FBI to raid Dollar Bill Jefferson's congressional offices. How utterly predictable. More carte blanche for our "leaders," and I use the term loosely, to operate outside the law. Guess the cash can go back in the freezer now.

From the "Ain't It Ironical?" file. You just gotta love this town's sense of humor (and the fact that it still has one). There's a new ice cream in town, made, appropriately, by the New Orleans Ice Cream Co.. There are six flavors. My favorite? Chocolate City, of course--chocolate ice cream containing chunks of white chocolate. Think C-Ray should get a kickback from every sale?

From the "Isn't She Lovely?" file. There's now a 16-foot big, red-and-white, honkin' POD in front of my house taking up half the street. My neighbors love me, no doubt. Wait till I have hordes of friends and relations running in and out all day on Saturday loading all my junk into the thing. Yep, it's time to "stage the house" and send most of my belongings into storage. Sigh. Homeless again. I'm having a Katrina flashback.

From the "Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes" file. It has been a quiet July on the hurricane front (thankfully), so it's time for the NHC and Dr. William Gray to start adjusting their hurricane-prediction numbers. He still isn't admitting being as woefully wrong as he was last summer (thankfully again)--he has only reduced his prediction of named storms from 17 to 15. Guess he's expecting a big August and September.

Map This

2007-08-01T16:29:00.000-05:00

So, the NOPD might not quite have a handle on crime, but it does have a spiffy new interactive map on its website. Plug in your address, and you can see a 30-day graphic report of all crime in a one-mile radius of your place.

Here's my map, which I suppose is pretty gratifying in some ways. Sure, there were 140-something incidents but the vast majority were petty theft and auto theft. Reinforces that the neighborhood is fairly safe -- well, as safety goes in New Orleans. I could only find one "M for Murder" in the 'hood.

Option 3 in a Small, Small World

2007-07-31T09:54:00.001-05:00

You just have to appreciate good irony.

So here I am, about a week and a half away from my final day at work, when the phone rings and it's an old acquaintance I used to work with back seven or eight years ago. I had talked to her a couple of times since Katrina and, last I had heard, she was still living in Memphis.

So it was quite a shocker when after a moment of chitchat she said this was an official call--she is back in New Orleans working for the Road Home program and she has been assigned my case as a resolution adviser.

If you recall, after being rejected for Road Home funds I had returned a snippy note saying they had incorrectly assessed the damage to my house. Then I got a clueless follow-up call asking whether I planned to stay in New Orleans after getting my Road Home settlement. Since there was no settlement, I told them that no, I was moving to New Hampshire. At the time, I had no plans of moving.

So, now that I really AM moving--though not to New Hampshire--they are trying to resolve the case?

So, okay, they're sending me forms and now instead of Option 1 (staying in NOLA) or Option 2 (staying in LA), I really am taking Option 3 (getting the heck outta Dodge), which theoretically qualifies me for 40% of whatever the settlement might be.

And besides that, isn't the Road Home out of money and something like $4 billion in the hole? So what's 40% of nothing?

Home Again

2007-07-30T08:22:00.001-05:00

I drove back into town on Saturday after more than a week in Nashville on business, and as I crossed the westbound Twin Span, it hit me: this was probably the last time I'd be crossing into Orleans Parish as a resident.

It doesn't seem real yet, this business of leaving. I suspect at some point in about a month I'll suddenly look up and realize I'm living somewhere else and wonder, how did it all happen? Did i make the right decision? Am I leaving for the right reasons? Was I insane for turning down extra money to stay?

Of course, then I get my mail and see that my property tax appraisal has tripled since last year--tripled! And I get the estimate for auto insurance in my new place and it's $45 a month instead of $150 a month. So maybe it is the right thing after all.

Still, it doesn't seem real yet. Maybe when I finally get to the actual business of packing up and throwing out. At this stage, I'm still painting, and since I've been in some stage of home repair since Katrina almost two years ago, that just feels normal.

I'll Be Back

2007-07-19T22:32:00.000-05:00

(said in my best Ahh-nold voice)

No, I haven't flown the coop--I'll be around a few more weeks yet. But I'm on my way to the Great Green North (well, Nashville) for a business trip and will be out of NOLA for the next week. I'll try to blog from the road but may be sketchy. Keep checking back!

Ask the Doctor, and Say Au Revoir

2007-07-18T11:58:00.000-05:00

A young doctor, a native New Orleanian, published a letter in yesterday's Times Picayune making an urgent plea to our city leaders: "Give me a reason to stay here."

"Rational analysis of the pros and cons tells me we should leave New Orleans," he writes. "My heart tells me to stay.… I need leaders to give me good reasons why paying more and getting less is a worthwhile investment."

It was with a great sense of irony that I read this letter yesterday. I had just resigned from my job of 14 years at Tulane and, with a heavy heart, announced my own plans to leave this city that has owned my heart and soul for all these years.

By mid-August, I will be loving her from a distance. From the green and hilly surroundings of Auburn, Alabama, I will watch New Orleans with love, impatience and exasperation as she continues to struggle back to her feet. And I'll pray that enough people who are young enough, energetic enough and unencumbered enough will move here to take her into a new era that can appreciate her past while envisioning a prosperous future.

And if any of them wants to buy a nice little Victorian cottage uptown, just say the word.

I'll keep blogging through my move, and maybe afterward. I'll know when it's time to quit.

Only His Hairdresser Knows for Sure

2007-07-17T09:25:00.001-05:00

So, what did David Vitter do, and with whom? The Louisiana ultra-conservative congressman, whose association with the D.C. Madam was outed last week, finally made an appearance yesterday after a week in hiding.

He did a bad thing six years ago, he says, and his family has already put it behind them a long time ago. As for the allegations by the New Orleans Canal Street brothel crew, he says, it just isn't true.

Apparently, Vitter has been getting the media rock-star treatment, with them living outside his door, following his family to the car, etc.

And, I wonder, what is it they think he's going to say? Will he admit names, dates, what activities he likes to engage in with his extracurricular women?

TMI, I say.

He admits it; he was quite the hypocrite. Now, let's move on.

Ballet NOLA

2007-07-12T12:06:00.001-05:00

I guess C-Ray and his band of merrymakers downtown were jealous of all the attention David Vitter is getting in the media lately.

So what better way to get attention back on themselves than to let yet another murderer out of jail to walk the streets and kill again, and then blame it on the "missing witness" excuse?

That's just what DA Eddie Jordan's folks did--releasing the murderer of the five teens killed early last year in Central City because the only eyewitness was "missing" and couldn't be found. Outraged, Police Chief Warren Riley sent his detectives to find the missing witness, which they managed to do in about three hours. Which then sent C-Ray into an uncharacteristically harsh tirade against DA Jordan and hints that former DA Harry Connick Sr. might just have to step in and set things right.

And so they spin round and round, twirling to point yet another finger while the killers walk free and the crime rate soars. Just call it Ballet NOLA.

OK, I Was Wrong

2007-07-11T10:35:00.000-05:00

Apparently the good Mr. Vitter has a much more serious self-control problem than I'd given him credit for. Just ask the Canal Street Madam, who did a lengthy, out-of-control interview on WDSU last night.

As a thunderstorm brewed outside my windows, I watched in fascination the interview with former madam Jeanette Maier. The editors at WDSU were apparently fascinated too because there she was, just rambling on and on and on.

As she rambled, I thought, "Just hand the woman a shovel" because as she talked she dug Vitter into a deeper, more humiliating hole from which to slither out of. First, yes, he was a client. Well, he was a really nice man and loves his wife. (Oh boy, don't you bet the wife appreciates hearing that from a hooker!) And what a good politician he is. Oh, and he might have needed something other than sex, you know, maybe just a girl he could talk to.

Good grief. When the man's biggest advocate is a former madam who now supports herself selling soy candles and living in a single room, he's really got problems.

And then there's the Hustler connection. Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt claims that an investigator he hired to track the phone numbers of the D.C. Madam's little black book found evidence tracing a number to Vitter, and that the savvy Congressman ran to the AP to make his "confession" before Hustler could release the story.

Ironically, it was a similar Hustler hustle that drove Bob Livingston from Congress in 1999. He was suceeded by, you got it, Vitter.

Now, I personally have another theory. A while back, Hustler ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post offering a $1 million reward to anyone who could offer evidence linking a member of Congress to the D.C. Madam. And I'm thinking, who would turn in the conservative Vitter? What Democrat needs money really badly these days? What Louisianan would want attention diverted away from his own shenanigans?

Yep. I say that Dollar Bill Jefferson sold Vitter down the Hooker Highway for defense money. You heard it here first.

The David Vitter Saga

2007-07-10T08:12:00.000-05:00

My first thought at hearing Sen. David Vitter's apology for appearing in a Washington, D.C., madame's little black book was "Hoo boy, here we go again, another Louisiana political scandal."

My second thought was to wonder exactly what he did, and when, and did he apologize to his family back whenever it occurred, or is it still occurring, and did all the apologies only come after he was about to be "outed" in public?

My third thought, which has prevailed since the news broke, has been "what a relief." It's actually kind of a diversion from the droning, two years later, about Katrina this and Katrina that, and who's going to give money to whom, and whose fault was it that the levees broke, and why does the Road Home money not seem to be on the hot seat any more even though it still hasn't brought many home at all. You know, all that stuff.

It's not even the Dollar Bill sort of scandal, with bribery and payoffs and networks of corruption branching like a spider web into all the dark places between New Orleans and Washington.

It's just a little indiscretion, right?

Still, and this is my fourth thought, can't we just have a nice, clean politician for a change? Wasn't that who David Vitter was supposed to be?

Life in the Slow Lane

2007-07-09T08:43:00.001-05:00

Here in the endless summer of Superlative City, we're basking in the afterglow of making yet another Top Five list.

Of course, it isn't a national No. 1 like our current position as Murder Capital of the USA based on per-capita murder rates. I wonder, if you took out disquieted nations of the Middle East, if we might not be the World Leader in murder rates per capita? Certainly, we must strive for all superlatives.

So, it is with satisfaction that I was informed yesterday--by my minister, no less--that New Orleans has achieved yet another accolade: Among the Top Five Slowest-Growing Economies in the World. Not the U.S., mind you. The World.

This according to Fast Company magazine, which named the five slowest cities--urban centers that are going nowhere, or rated worst in economic growth. We aren't the worst. That would be Budapest, Hungary. We aren't No. 2, which would be St. Louis. We are the third worst, followed by Detroit and Havana, Cuba.

I, frankly, am shocked that St. Louis pulled ahead of us in the slow-growth sweepstakes. I can kind of understand Detroit--after all, Motor City is getting shut down by a combination of imports and lack of imagination. But St. Louis??

Still, our economic outlook is worse than every other urban area in the world except for two, so that's still something to provide bragging rights.

New Orleans: Proud to Call It Slow.

Happy Holidays

2007-07-02T21:18:00.000-05:00

I was temporary diverted from imagining possible expletive-laced exchanges with the crotch-grabbing, baggy-pants-wearing, Chee-Wee headed kid who threatened to shoot my dog yesterday with Police Chief Warren Riley's explanation of the seven murders that have occurred in the past three days.

It's all because it's the Fourth of July, he said.

Actually, no, it was the 29th and 30th of June and July 1, chief. Or perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps tatooed, gun-totin' thugs hold the Fourth of July in especially high esteem. It is the celebration of all the freedoms they enjoy--to bear arms, for example. So perhaps for the criminal element who don't have to do things like, say, work for a living, the entire week preceding and postdating the Fourth of July is reason for celebration.

So if the chief's theory holds true, this next weekend will again be a violent one. Then we can take a break till the next holiday.

Labor Day out of town, anyone?

This is N.O. and You Pay to Live Here

2007-06-28T08:20:00.001-05:00

"I could get cherries in San Diego for 99 cents," grumbled the man in front of me at Winn-Dixie on Tchoupitoulas.

The cashier barely blinked. "This is N.O., baby, and you got to pay if you want to live here," she said, noting that cherries weren't in stock but when they come in they'll be on sale for $1.99.

"Ain't that the truth. Yes, indeed," the man said softly, looking around as if expecting to see cashiers popping up left and right, ready to take our money for the privilege of living here.

And "yes, indeed," I thought, having realized yesterday that resignation has set in. I actually whooped aloud at my lowest Entergy bill since Katrina, then stopped abruptly as I realized it was STILL more than $300/month for heating and cooling 1,400 square feet. And still $75 a month more than pre-Katrina.

But you have to laugh, right? And I'll again quote the Tracey Grammer/Dave Carter song: "Just another grinning prisoner of Happytown."

Keep smiling.

Trash Bag City

2007-06-25T08:52:00.001-05:00

The senior pastor at my church sends out an e-mail letter every week, and this past week's had a raw honesty to it that was very moving. In services yesterday, he sort of apologized for it--in part because someone on his staff had inadvertently sent it to the Times-Pic and they ran it yesterday. His apology was that it was sort of downhearted in a way that he doesn't like to be. But aren't we all a bit downhearted on some days in this city?

An interesting part of the article was his reference to a friend who had a trash-related meltdown in a fast-food drive-thru lane, which, strangely, had to be the same person referred to in a recent Chris Rose rant about trash (sorry, the nola.com links aren't working today). The friend tried to yell some sense of shame into a woman throwing her Popeye's bag and napkins onto the ground in the parking lot.

I don't know where this is all going, really, except that a lot of the people here are thoughtless and don't care, and there's no respect for property or pride of place. And that was true before Katrina, and, sadly, it's true now. I thought about it as I picked up some yahoo's Rallyburger wrapper from my front yard and two textbooks from the street in front of my house--some kid must have really been sick of the American Revolution. I added them to the two McDonald's cups already in my trashcan that I'd picked up a few days ago. One of my neighbors, bless him, spends a half hour every morning picking up every stray piece of trash in a two or three-block radius.

And when we all have so much to do just to keep up with our own crap, it gets pretty old having to take care of someone else's.

Beggar's Banquet

2007-06-21T08:34:00.000-05:00

At first glance the two stories don't seem to have much in common.

The first, an Associated Press account of the appearance of New Orleanians before the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, asking for help with our out-of-control violent crime.

The second, about a charity auction held by Global Green USA, one of the items being a piano signed by Fats Domino, the proceeds of which would go toward rebuilding New Orleans.

But they have a disturbing thing in common: apathy.

You see, no one bid on the Fats Domino piano, which would have been a shoo-in seller even a year ago.

And only three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee even showed up for the New Orleans hearing. Apparently, whatever Mary Landrieu and David Vitter had to say was less important than a golf game or whatever truant senators do with their time when they're supposed to be working.

Talk about being dissed. But can you blame them, really? They're tired of hearing the same song and dance for the past two years. They're tired of seeing New Orleans with its hand out. You don't hear Biloxi begging, or Bay St. Louis. They're tired of Katrina. They're tired of us.

We're pretty darned tired of it, too. We're tired of begging and sounding pathetic and having the rest of the world "cluck cluck" down their noses at our neediness and apparent lack of ability to take care of ourselves. They want to know why we can't follow the American way, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and getting to work repairing our lives. The truth is, a lot of us have done exactly that. But we can't fix the infrastructures and the systems, and so we continue to beg.

And when the murder rate climbs 100% in the past year and we can't recruit cops to work here and what cops we do have depend on handouts and donations to have the port-a-potties in their FEMA trailer headquarters emptied...well, what are we to do?

I have no answers for this one.

Let Us Entertain You

2007-06-20T09:02:00.000-05:00

OMG. Here is the trailer for the new Fox drama about post-Katrina New Orleans. It made me tear up. I don't think that's the reaction they're going for and I'm sure it will be entertaining for the rest of the world and I know New Orleans needs the revenue filming this here will bring, but I don't think I'm ready for it. What do you think?

Thou Shalt Not Honk

2007-06-20T08:23:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you've heard about it--it's all over the news. The Vatican has despaired of saving souls and the like and has turned its considerable brainpower to the urgent topic of courteous driving, issuing its Ten Commandments for motorists.

Somehow, I can't imagine these commandments--which include such things as "Thou Shalt Not Kill" (didn't they copy that from someplace?) and "The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm" (huh?) simply will not play here in Road Rage City.

So, herewith are the Vatican't Rules for Road Engagement, NOLA Version 1.0:

1. Thou shalt not kill unless one's vehicle is traveling at high speeds past one's target.
2. The road shall for you be a means of escape from Harry Lee's posse into the safe and lawless confines of Orleans.
3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence are for pansies. It's all about you.
4. When approaching a pothole the size of a small Third-World country, speed up and veer your vehicle into the path of traffic approaching in the opposite direction——it's very beneficial for honing one's reflexes.
5. Cars shall for you be an expression of power and domination, and the most effective means you have of releasing pent-up Katrina rage.
6. Remember to always turn your CD player to its highest setting so everyone whose home you pass can enjoy the latest hiphop tunes along with you.
7. Remember the long months when New Orleans had no red lights and drive accordingly—and remember: yellow means speed up.
8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so they can undergo the liberating experience of revenge.
9. When attempting to assault another driver, be sure said driver does not have a weapon bigger than yours.
10. One-way streets are only for tourists.

See you out there on the streets!

The Road Where?

2007-06-19T08:22:00.000-05:00

The phone call was surreal, one of those where you hang up and say "huh?"

It was from a young woman who was a representative of the Louisiana Road ~~to Nowhere~~ Home program, saying that I had not indicated on my returned form how I intended to spend my award--whether I'd be staying in New Orleans, selling my home but staying in Louisiana, or leaving the state altogether.

There was a long silence on my end as I mentally went through my Road ~~block~~ Home experience--applied, interviewed, inspected, had assessment messed up by highly paid Road ~~Rage~~ Home executives, denied any award, sent award letter back with indignant note that they had screwed up, never heard anything else.

"Well," I said politely, "I was not awarded any money so I didn't really think my plans were of any concern to the ~~long and winding~~ Road Home program."

"We have to have the form completed," she said stoically.

"Okay," I said. "In that case, I plan to take my large cash settlement from the generous folks at Road ~~to ruin~~ Home, fix the rest of the hurricane damage on my house, sell it and move to New Hampshire." Might I note that my voice was dripping with sarcasm here?

Not that it mattered.

"Okay, thank you--I'll fill out your form," said Miss Sincerity, probably thinking New Hampshire was a bedroom community in St. Bernard.

Is it? And do I have to live there?

Electile Dysfunction

2007-06-18T08:09:00.000-05:00

It was an innocent-looking piece of mail, one of those slim little squares that you have to peel the perforated ends off to open.

Inside was a simple message: Shame on me for registering to vote in both Louisiana and Florida! Louisiana, fine and upstanding ethical haven that it is, doesn't tolerate such behavior! Unless I present proof, in person, within 30 days that I have canceled my voter registration in Florida, then I will be dropped unceremoniously from the voter rolls in Louisiana and will be bodily barred from voting in any election in this state!

Actually, it wasn't that polite.

Now, here is the point where I should note that I have never registered to vote in Florida, have never lived in Florida and, in fact, have not set foot in the state of Florida since November of 2001. And that I have been registered to vote in Louisiana, and have lived in Louisiana, for the past 14 years.

How, then, I asked myself, can I possibly present proof that I have withdrawn my voter registration from Florida? The answer, of course, is that I cannot. There was no option to check a box called "You've made a mistake" or "Louisiana is run by morons."

But then it came to me. Maybe I have been blackballed because I--gasp--didn't vote for Ray Nagin after Katrina and didn't vote for Kathleen Blanco even before Katrina so I have been labeled a -- gasp -- Republican! Which isn't true, by the way.

Or maybe it's because of this blog, which is probably read by about 2 people per day, one of whom works in the voter registration office.

Or maybe it's just that this state is run by morons.

Hitch Up Your Drawers

2007-06-14T12:22:00.000-05:00

As we used to say back in Alabama.

I know there are murderous youths, malicious political rumors and mayoral shenanigans to talk about, but I can't get past the story out of Decambre, La., a small town over in the Hurricane Rita zone that has taken the unprecedented step of creating a city ordinance banning saggy pants.

Yep, caught outside in your hiphop wear, showing an alarming amount of plaid undies and clutching your crotch to keep said hiphop pants from falling down, and you're in a heapa trouble. To the tune of six months in jail and a $500 fine.

Good heavens. Three-quarters of Orleans Parish would be in jail.

Now that I think about it, this could be the answer to our crime problem. We don't have to wait for our criminals to actually KILL someone, or for witnesses to step forward--because obviously that ain't happening. They could just be jailed for baggy drawers and we'd be done with it.

I'm calling Warren Riley right now. I'm onto something here.

The Very Model of a Modern Inspector General

2007-06-13T09:41:00.001-05:00

There's a new "sheriff" in town--well, not literally, of course--in the form of Robert Cerasoli, a Massachusetts "watchdog" who is supposed to be in charge of making sure everything in NOLA is above reproach from an ethical standpoint--no graft or corruption.

Good luck with that.

His title is "Inspector General," which is actually a title that occurs in the US Departments of State, Defense and Transportation, among others, but when applied to New Orleans brings up images of the spoofy 1949 musical of the same name starring Danny Kaye.

In the movie, an illiterate stooge (Kaye) in a traveling medicine show wanders into a strange town and is mistaken for an "inspector general" by the corrupt town officials, so they start trying to kill him. In the process, he does a lot of singing and dancing.

I expect we'll see some shuffling and squawking from the new NOLA Inspector General before too long, as well.

Another "foot in mouth" watch is on. The poor man doesn't know what he's walked into.

Ruminations Friday

2007-06-08T08:24:00.001-05:00

Yes, it's that time again, to dispose of all the bookmarks, post-its and other blog ideas for the week that never came to fruition.

• Remember Monica Lewinsky and her association with a famous Bill? Apparently our own Dollar Bill Jefferson does--shortly after all the hoo-ha about the freezer and the cash and the Nigerians and the bribery hit the airwaves he hired Monica's PR flack to do damage control. Sorry, no cigar. (get it? clinton? lewinsky? cigar? oh, never mind.)

• From the "Another One Bites the Dust" column, Sav-a-Center and A&P are pulling out of Louisiana. At least it's not just Orleans Parish. Still, that leaves only a couple of Winn-Dixies and a seriously pricey Whole Foods for the whole Parish grocery needs. Oh, and a few mom-and-pop stores like Zara's and Langensteins--also seriously pricey. I keep hearing that a Robert's Fresh Market is going to open along the Carrollton corridor somewhere. Hope so.

• Speaking of Dollar Bill, what are the chances he'll be ousted from the House? Looking better every day. And who might be hanging around the wings, waiting to fill his seat? Why, I say that would be none other than C. Ray Nagin. Which then begs the question: who would be mayor? Would Mitch Landrieu try again since he has said he wouldn't run for governor? How about Oliver Thomas--is it his time at last? Interesting food for thought.

Coming Back to Be Brave

2007-06-07T08:28:00.000-05:00

I started reading the big story in today's New York Times with a bit of irritation. It's all about New Orleanians--very, very affluent New Orleanians--who have bought "evacuation houses" in other parts of the Southeast so they'll have a home to go to when the the next big "IT" occurs.

All fine and dandy if you're Joann Clevenger and have plenty of bucks to spare on an antique-filled cottage in a small town on high ground in Mississippi.

But the story really ended up being about something else--about how this place gets in your blood so that you're willing to do whatever you need to do in order to keep living here with some sort of peace of mind. And it's about how while most people are planning vacations and road trips, we're figuring out evacuation routes, and where we'll stay if we have to stay somewhere for, heaven forbid, another two-month absence. What we'll take with us in case everything we don't take isn't here when we come back.

Granted, buying an "evacuation house" isn't something most of us would be able to do, should we even be so inclined. But it makes sense. And the fact that people are even thinking this way, the article points out--and rightly so--is that our two-month or more evacuation in 2005 made even the most loyal-diehard-NOLA fan realize there's another world out there that isn't like here, but isn't bad, either.

Joann Clevenger, who owns the Upperline Restaurant, now spends many weekends at her evacuation home, appreciating the difference. And what she says makes sense: “We go there to refresh ourselves, so that we can come back here and be brave.”

All But Forgotten

2007-06-06T13:32:00.000-05:00

So, I've been out galavanting around the Southeast the past four days, and have met quite a few new people. Till now, hearing I'm from New Orleans, the invariable responses have included:

How did you make out?
So, how are things really going down there?
Aren't you afraid to live there?
So, is your mayor really as nutso as he sounds?

Or some variation of those things, to which the answers are pretty well considering, as bad as you've heard and worse, sometimes, and absolutely yes.

Not this time. Nothing. No reference to "IT" at all, and I realized later that, gee, that's what it's like in the real world, I guess. Either that, or the people I met were all extremely self-absorbed.

Which, come to think of it, could be the case, since before "IT" occurred the mention of New Orleans usually elicited some kind of response even if it was hearing from Brother Charlie in my old hometown that NOLA surely has to be the repository of all that's evil in the world.

And, yeah, well, what else is new?

Dollar Bill! The house of cards is tumbling down. How could they ever have let that happen while I was out of town? More on $$$Bill$$$ later, gator.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Water

2007-06-01T08:48:00.001-05:00

It's June 1 again, and we all know what that means. Yup, hurricane season is upon us and there's something stirring in the Gulf.

Last summer, La Niña -- or was it El Niño -- cooked up a quiet summer. The summer of no storms. I want another, please.

I suspect I won't get one. I keep hearing a refrain from that old familiar "we're gonna have to evacuate this summer" blues. Not that we'll get a hit. Not that we'll even have a really close call, or that levees will fail, or anything catastrophic. Just that it will be uncertain enough that we'll have to go through that whole "Should I Stay or Should I Go" dance, and I don't just mean the old song by the Clash.

And just when I'm thinking, yeah, I'll probably hang out here for a Cat 1 storm and maybe even a Cat 2 and definitely leave for a Cat 3, here comes the doomsday Seattle Times, of all things, saying we aren't ready for another Katrina.

And, yeah, I know we're not ready and the floodgates are questionable and there's supposedly some creepage and leakage in the Lower Nine and we're rapidly filling with water even from heavy rain because the drains are a mess and, worst of all, C-Ray is still mayor, but what the heck do reporters from Seattle know about hurricanes, anyway?

I always did like that song by the Clash.

State of the Patient

2007-05-31T08:17:00.000-05:00

New Orleans Mayor C-Ray Nagin gave his first post-Katrina "State of the City" address last night, and it was a strange mixture of braggadocio, denial, finger-pointing, and posturing--all while portraying New Orleans as a patient who has been on life support but is now stable. An interesting analogy given the state of local health care.

Bragging points? We have trash service--woo hoo! The French Quarter smells "lemony fresh"--his words, not mine. We have a new pothole filler that arrived yesterday. We graduated some police cadets.

Denial? No mention of soaring crime except that we have to be a safe city and he's "committed" to that--and, by the way, let's all give a round of applause for Chief Warren Riley and the terrific job he's doing (never mind the seven people murdered in the last four days). No mention of the droves of people leaving the city for greener pastures--just the 10,000 people who allegedly came back to the city this year so far. No mention of the dismal public school system; just that we're committed to our kids.

Finger pointing? Oh boy,lots of this. It's the governor's fault, it's the Road Home Program's fault (which leads back to the governor). It's President Bush's fault. He went through a whole litany: "It's not our fault that the levees breached that the federal government built. It's not our fault that we were stranded and left. It's not our fault that the Road Home program has issued only 12 percent of the grants after almost two years. It's not our fault that our water system is leaking today. It's not our fault."

And if that sounds like the unscripted prose of a preacher or a man running for office, it is--C-Ray's only time of the evening venturing away from his teleprompter. "New Orleans is coming back whether they want us to or not. And if they don't like it, they can just deal with it."

Who might "they" be? The feds? The state? The white people? The rich people? The people who didn't vote for Nagin?

It sounded--particularly the many and pointed jabs at Kathleen Blanco and the state government--like a man on a mission. Or a man on a campaign stump.

The rumors have been escalating in recent weeks about Ray Nagin's interest in running for governor. We know he's been building a "war chest," but not what office he had his eyes on.

So I watched last night's speech with it in the back of my mind--was he positioning himself for a run at governor? It sure sounded like it. I can't imagine he'd have a snowball's chance of winning, but then again I didn't think he'd have a snowball's chance of being re-elected mayor.

On the bright side, it would offer many more blogging opportunities to have that mouth running loose in Baton Rouge.

Signs of Progress

2007-05-30T08:35:00.000-05:00

It's kind of sad when a sign of progress is demolition, but there you have it.

Finally, on the sad intersection of St. Charles and Napoleon, the boarded-up Rite-Aid--which didn't even flood during IT but never reopened anyway, is coming down.

This leaves only one derelict building on this busy corner, speaking of Al Copeland. Do not -- DO NOT -- eat at any of this man's restaurants until he does something about the two never-flooded eyesores on St. Charles Avenue. All his restaurants outside Orleans Parish have reopened except the newly rebuilt Elmwood restaurant, which opens shortly. He has not only abandoned Orleans Parish but has made no effort to tear down or clean up his ratty buildings.

Okay, off that soapbox now.

Next target: the intersection of St. Charles and Louisiana, where three of four corners remain boarded up with the rotting-down Bultmann Funeral Home, the closed-down deli Fortissimo, and the gas station formerly known as Exxon. Only the big Rite Aid is open.

Another Grinning Prisoner of Happytown*

2007-05-29T08:36:00.001-05:00

I had suspected this for a while, but it was confirmed yesterday: New Orleans has turned a corner. We've moved from whatever stage of grief it is that takes you from anguish to anger. Or maybe it's just that we have exchanged all the evacuation tales and "where were you whens" and "when did you come backs" and have finally moved on.

Take my day at the Sears Automotive Center on Vets yesterday. I arrived at 8 a.m., not knowing they were even open, much less that they open at 7:15 because not only are their hours not posted but they don't answer their phones.

This is a new fact of life in Happytown. There are no people to answer the phones.

But it seemed pretty empty so I was shocked to hear that my tires and battery were a) going to cost over $700 and b) would take five hours to do.

These are new facts of life in Happytown. Everything is really, really, really expensive and no one is in a hurry. Of course it is arguable that no one in New Orleans has EVER been in a hurry but, really, this is Metairie.

Another new fact of life in Happytown. It has always been hard to get things done in Orleans Parish but now it's even harder. Yes, I could have gotten my car done in NOLA, but after being charged $58 to screw in two brake lights at Uptown Imports last month...well, let's say Metairie became a better option.

So I putter around Clearview Mall for a while but, really, if you aren't in shopping mode there's only so long that Bed Bath and Beyond can keep you entertained, and I finished a novel hanging out in the food court, so back I went to sit in the automotive center waiting area and start the inevitable exchanging of stories with the patrons there.

Not one evacuation story. Not one. The closest was from the woman (who'd been there six hours), who had her tires balanced there shortly after IT happened, and then had to take the car to Baton Rouge to have the tires balanced again because it was done improperly in Metairie.

Another new fact of life in Happytown: Everything works better somewhere else. Except I think that was true before IT as well.

Then it was off to take my Senior Adult shopping at Dillard's--because Macy's never reopened in the metro area after It--and had a cellphone-talkin' Metry Mama blowing her horn at us because the Senior Adult was getting out of the car too slowly.

I wanted a paint gun or at least a few eggs to lob on her tank of a vehicle.

Another new fact of life in Happytown. We're all just grinning prisoners of the shining city.

**With thanks to the song "Happytown" by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, my current song for New Orleans: "Am I a missioner, a faith or grace or visioner, another grinning prisoner of Happytown...Here in the shining city, here in the endless summer, here in the cave of wonder #92. We chase the shadows of the chosen and the few, but it's alright with me if it's alright with you..."

Silence of the Lambs

2007-05-28T06:50:00.000-05:00

No, it isn't a film about fava beans and a fine chianti, but Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme has done a five-part series on New Orleans survivors that airs this week on the Tavis Smiley show--check your airtimes. It's 10 p.m. here in New Orleans on WYES, channel 12.

Sadly, all the New Orleans survivors appear to live in the Lower Ninth Ward, so I guess what the folks trying to bring back Broadmoor, Mid City, Lakeview and St. Bernard are doing is something other than survive.

But this preview from the New York Times sounds like it moves way beyond the same, sad immediate-aftermath footage and talks about life today.

Check it out.

Ruminations Friday

2007-05-25T10:21:00.000-05:00

* Since when is Memorial Day such a huge holiday? I'm the only person in my office today. It's lonely. And a little creepy.

* My friend Stella over in my clean evacuation city of Montgomery, Alabama, got an unsolicited invite yesterday to a New Orleans conference on construction in Our Town, featuring C-Ray and our buffoonista recovery chief Ed Blakely. Now, can you actually think of two better folks to sell the city on people doing new construction here? I can hear it now: C-Ray will talk about animated colorful outerwear, and Blakely will alternate between telling the prospective investors what buffoons we all are and then saying he didn't mean it--he just isn't feeling well. Makes ME want to live here, yeah, baby.

* I'm spending a lot of time these days tending to hurricane business--specifically, backing up computer files in advance of any pending evacuations. And I realize I've spent WAY too much money at Audible.com and iTunes. I'm at backup CD #90 and still have a long way to go. Sheesh. But I do have every episode of "Lost" ever made stashed away on mp4s, and you gotta make sure those go with you in an evacuation, right?

Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleag?

2007-05-24T08:32:00.001-05:00

Huh?

So you're driving in from Slidell or points east on the I-10, headed to the city, and you come to the Industrial Canal high-rise. Do you veer off onto Louisa Street, or continue on to New Orleag?

Yep, big old green interstate sign with the city name misspelled. This story became a story when state representative Austin Badon spotted the sign and had a proverbial hissy fit--so much so that the normally snail-paced highway department had someone out within hours to fix it.

My first reaction was, "Great. People elsewhere already think we're whiny and pathetic and greedy. Now we can make them think we're whiny and pathetic and greedy and ignorant." Which, of course, probably isn't that far off the mark since we're all still living here, but that's another blog for another day. And, obviously, the sign is one of those layered affairs and the "ns" of "New Orleans" fell off, exposing a "g" underneath.

But here's the real kicker, and a real sign of ignorance or, as I prefer to think of it, post-traumatic stress: the sign has apparently been that way since Katrina. Almost two years.

How many times have I driven by it and never even noticed that it said "New Orleag?" And is it a sign of recovery that someone finally NOTICED the sign, and didn't have so many other, bigger problems on his or her mind that there was nothing else to think about than spelling?

Playing Catchup

2007-05-23T07:11:00.000-05:00

So, what's been in the news lately that I've missed? And such good news it is!

•• New hurricane season forecasts. What a surprise--a more active season and, wait, this is a new one. There's a new twist to the annual predictions of dire hurricane peril this year--the probability chart. Let's see. 21% chance that Terrebone Parish will suffer a direct hit this year; LaFourche, 17.5%; Plaquemines, 14.8%, St. Charles, 13.3%, St. Bernard, 13%, Orleans, 12.3%, St. John the Baptist, 11.4%, St. Tammany, 10.3%. And I have to ask: so, what the heck are we supposed to do with that information?

•• Entergy New Orleans and Entergy Louisiana have been overcharging their customers. Duh. Apparently they charge us higher rates than their customers in Arkansas, so they're going to give us a refund which, by the estimates I've heard, could run $3 or $4. Whoopee! Let's have a party! That'll make my levelized $345 a month Entergy bill go down a lot easier.

•• PETA wants LSU to not replace the dearly departed Mike the Tiger because tigers don't like to be locked in cages and screamed at by 100,000 raving drunks every Saturday. No. Really?

•• "K-Ville," a new drama featuring an NOPD officer who stayed during Katrina coping with life on the mean streets of New Orleans post-K. Starts airing on Fox, probably this fall and is being filmed here in the City That the DA Forgot.

•• And as if we need a bit more crime news, this from the Times-Pic tells the whole story in two sentences.
Sentence One: Violent crime was up a total of 107 percent compared with the same period last year, according to the NOPD.
Sentence Two: The NOPD did not return repeated requests for comment on the statistics.

What more can I say?

Editorializing

2007-05-20T16:48:00.000-05:00

It was an interesting weekend in the Big Wheezy, as the pollen flying through the air was joined by much public opinion on the federal government and its response to, well, you know.

It's ironic that this little old "City That Forgot to Care" has somehow become such a magnet for political commentary. Ask John Edwards. Ask Hilary Clinton.

Or just take a peek at a few moments from Tulane University's commencement ceremony on Saturday.

Tulane president Scott Cowen: "Make your voices heard wherever you go, especially in Washington, D.C., where even today our federal government has not delivered on the promises made to this great city."

Student speaker Nadja Tilstra: "We have always been told we had the ability to change the world. But we have had the unique opportunity to live in a world that has changed us.…We didn't see the spirit of this city till that spirit was in jeopardy."

And from the familiar voice of Saturday's commencement speaker, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams:

"You (graduates) were failed by grownups at every level of government. … After Katrina, any innocence we had about our society was washed away. … You've learned far more here than you intended to."

The students were honored left and right for their willingness to return to Tulane and New Orleans after missing half their junior year while everything was shut down following the levee failures.

At one point, Williams asked every graduating student to stand who had volunteered time to rebuilding New Orleans in the past 20 months. Every one of them stood.

It was a pretty darn cool moment.

Crazy Like a Fox

2007-05-17T08:24:00.000-05:00

If you recall, last week I was entertained by the discovery of a pack of wild boars in City Park.

So of course I was immediately captivated by this video report on WDSU last night about the family of red foxes who've taken up residence in a business park on the West Bank.

Now, these little guys are CUTE. They are being trapped and removed from the business park--not, I suspect, because of the owner's fear of them biting someone but because all the employees are running outside to watch the baby foxes cavorting in the grass.

Wish they'd come to my house, where they'd blend in with my wild-child Irish Terrier, Shane. She'd "terrierize" them, but I do have a weakness for redheads.

I Should Live Where?

2007-05-15T08:46:00.000-05:00

Home & Garden TV has a new quiz: You Should Live Here. You go through a series of 9 questions and, depending on your answers, the site will tell you where to find your dream community.

As an adult, I have lived in Smalltown, Alabama; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Champaign, Illinois; Houston, Texas; San Diego, California; and New Orleans, Louisiana. Imagine my surprise to find that my "dream community" is in Burlington, Vermont. I mean, who knew?

I did feel the questions didn't really reflect any options that would allow you to have New Orleans pop up as your dream city, so here's my version of the quiz.

1. Our lives don't revolve around the 9-5. What do you enjoy doing after work?
a. rat baiting
b. drinking to oblivion
c. caulking
d. listening to an entire book on tape while sitting on the Causeway
e. touring disaster areas

2. Which sounds do you most enjoy?
a. jackhammers
b. dead silence
c. garbage trucks
d. jazz
e. gunshots

3. What would be the ultimate view from your living room window?
a. gangs of "yoots" slouching down the street
b. the happy scampering of rats across the powerlines
c. overgrown derelict houses
d. majestic live oaks dripping buckmoth caterpillars
e. the SDT garbage truck picking up trash

4. You go out to dinner at a favorite restaurant. What do you order?
a. Ersters
b. Swimps
c. french fry po-boy
d. ice cream sno-blitz with condensed milk
e. alligator sausage and shrimp cheesecake

5. It's time to put down roots. Your new hometown definitely has to have:
a. skyrocketing living expenses
b. failing school system
c. teeth-jarring roads
d. unaffordable insurance rates
e. the ever-present danger of sudden death by cataclysmic natural diaster
f. inept leadership

6. My dream job would be:
a. taco stand proprietor
b. $20-an-hour fast-food worker
c. construction czar
d. mayoral head-polisher
e. Cynthia Hedge-Morrell's parole officer

7. Saturday's right around the corner. What's on your agenda?
a. long, leisurely stroll around Home Depot
b. revising evacuation plans
c. going to a festival--any festival
d. long, leisurely stroll around the Harahan Wal-Mart (allow 1.5 hours for checkout)
e. collecting bullets from roof

8. How would you like to get to work?
a. two hours by Causeway
b. two hours by Twin Spans
c. one hour by the GNO
d. one-point-five hours by the Huey Long
e. work?

9. What's your most prized possession?
a. autographed copy of Chris Rose book
b. evacuation map
c. orbital sander
d. super-deluxe box of D-con
e. Harry Lee's cell number on speed-dial

And there you have it. No matter what you pick, this is the city for you!

Rock'n'Bowl Rejuvenation

2007-05-14T09:06:00.000-05:00

I always liked the seedy old Carrollton Shopping Center. I spent many hours combing through Thrift City looking for treasures that, unlike the other thrift stores in town, never developed a pretentious air of a "collectibles shop" (hear that, Salvation Army?). And I always thought Bangkok Thai was the best Thai in town, and I enjoyed many a plate of calimari followed by Pad Thai over the years.

And, of course, there was always Rock'n'Bowl, which even if I didn't go very often was always cool to have around.

Post-K, the shopping center has sat empty except for Rock'n'Bowl, which reopened pretty early by virtue of its second-floor and non-flooded location. But the restaurant never reopened, and Thrift City never came back, although there was a little Chinese joint on the corner where the rental furniture place once stood.

So it was great to see a big $5 million renovation of the shopping center get started last week. There will be 10 retail spaces (plus R&B, of course), and Bangkok Thai is looking positive as a comeback. It's all supposed to be open by Christmas--stay tuned.

Debate This

2007-05-11T08:42:00.000-05:00

So, if you're Barack OClinton and you're getting ready for the first televised debate of the 2008 Presidential race, where would you want it to be?

Why, you'd want it in the biggest symbol of failure for the Bush administration, of course.

Oh, but wait--Baghdad might be too dangerous. Next in line?

Yep, New Orleans.

New Orleans--or, more specifically, the Women of the Storm group along with Tulane, Loyola, Xavier and Dillard universities--have filed an application to host one of the debates, along with 18 other sites.

I can't imagine any place in America where the Dems would rather be. Question is, will the Republicans be willing to set foot here, in this bastion of failed policy and angry Democrats, failed social programs and crime? I think they'd rather go to the next-nearest site, the University of Mississippi and their friend Gov. Haley Barbour.

But we'll see.

The Race is On

2007-05-10T08:18:00.000-05:00

Start counting. Today is Day 2.

What are we counting? Well, we're going to see how long it takes new Recovery School District superintendent Paul Vallas, the savior of the Philly school system, to start sputtering out invectives against his new city and state.

It's become great people-watching here in post-K NOLA, as well-meaning do-gooders are drafted in to "fix things" and "make a difference." They come in full of optimism and great ideas, full of energy and dreams of giving this Great Underachiever of a city the boost it needs to finally be all it can be.

I maintain a sinking fear that we already ARE all we can be, but don't tell Mr. Vallas that, because for now it's great fun to watch him come in and, still two months from officially taking office, begin to launch summer programs and make plans, as this Times-Pic story shows.

There were a couple of telltale quotes in this story that tell me Mr. Vallas is going to be frustrated earlier rather than later.

First this:
"I've always been able to move at an accelerated pace," Vallas said. "There're some early benchmarks that you're going to be able to use to ... judge whether or not we're going to be able to move as aggressively as we'd like."

Wait, excuse me while I recover from the Diet Coke I just choked on.

And this:
Vallas, who stuttered as a child but overcame the speech impediment by age 5 or 6, quipped that he will probably have to slow down his rapid-fire, at time rambling manner of speaking to adapt to the more leisurely culture of New Orleans. "I don't say that to be condescending," he said. " I don't want people to think that I'm overly caffeinated," he said motioning to the coffee.

Plus, Mr. Vallas has a reputation for being impatient.

Woo-hoo! I predict 30 days won't pass before he's talking to the New York Times and calling New Orleanians "buffoons" like our side-stepping, apologizing Recovery Czar.

Not that there's not a lot of buffoonishness around here but that's beside the point.

So, the count is on, Mr. Vallas. The clock is ticking. Fix those schools and prove me wrong.

Good News, Bad News

2007-05-09T08:11:00.000-05:00

Here's the good news: New Orleans is in the top 5 appreciating real estate markets in the country for 2007. So existing houses here continue to increase in value faster than in all but three other cities in the US--Albuquerque, NM; McAllen, Texas; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

Here's the bad news: Last year we were #1; this year we're #4.

What that tells someone like me, who has contemplated--and still is contemplating--selling my home here in New Orleans, is that the post-Katrina house-sale boom is slowing down. There are more homes on the market, and they aren't selling as fast or for as much money.

Take my neighbor, who we'll call Mr. T. Mr. T has one big fine house that he put on the market to sell himself about three or four months ago for about $800,000 (and if you want to know if I'm the poorest kid on the block, the answer is "oh my, yes"). Nobody showed interest in Mr. T's house so he had it listed with a realtor. Still no interest. Now he's dropped the price to $685,000. Mr. T is in a different position than many here--he's not leaving the city. In fact, he's a contractor who bought the house a year before Katrina to renovate and, I suspect, flip. Just his tough luck that he waited a tad too long before putting it on the post-K market.

Anyway, it makes the consideration of a house sale a bit more urgent. I just can't seem to get off the fence.

So Many Topics, So Little Time

2007-05-08T07:59:00.000-05:00

There's so much to write about today, where should I begin?

Perhaps with the capture of 10 wild boars--so far--in City Park? I mean, in the middle of a ~~manicured park~~ tangled parklike formerly flooded wilderness in a ~~major American city~~ shrinking little town? What must the ~~golfers and joggers~~ criminals think? Wait--what's that sound I hear? Ah, banjos. We're starting the pig-squealing scene from "Deliverance." And it seems kind of appropriate for Our Town.

Or maybe we should talk about the latest ~~travesty~~ report from our old levee ~~alarmist tramps~~ experts Bob Bea and Ivor van Heerden that the Army Corps ~~jerry-rig~~ repairs of the levees aren't even up to Katrina strength and, in fact, are seeping brackish water in the vicinity of the Lower Ninth Ward. So we head into yet another hurricane season ever ~~ready to run at the first drop of rain~~ cautiously optimistic.

Or I could instead talk about the letter I got yesterday from a ~~vulture~~ real estate agent in Natchez, Mississippi, saying they welcome their ~~suckers~~ friends from New Orleans to come there and ~~lead a boring existence~~ live and they'd be happy to ~~gouge~~ assist me with my real estate needs. Actually, from their sample listings, seeing what I can get in Port Gibson, Mississippi (antebellum mansion) for the same value as my $250,000 ~~dilapidated shack~~ charming cottage in Uptown, it might not be such a bad idea.

Wonder if they have wild boars in Port Gibson?

Flashback

2007-05-07T08:35:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you think something is over and you've moved past it. Then some event or image or sound or smell strikes your senses and you realize maybe you haven't moved on as much as you thought.

All weekend I saw images of Greenburg, Kansas, where an F5 tornado wiped out the entire little town of 1,500 last week. People walk among rubble in a daze, looking at what's left of their lives. Search-and-rescue teams comb the ruins, marking X's on doors whose homes have been searched.

I found myself not thinking of Katrina at all, originally, but wondered why all the tornado images were hitting me so hard. At first I thought maybe it was a flashback to 1974 when a similar tornado ripped through the similar tiny town of Guin, Alabama, killing more than 20 people and leaving the town in ruins. I remember my dad leaving the house before the weather even cleared, driving to try and find my aunt who lived there and see if she was okay. (She was.)

But when I saw the X on the house, I realized my tears weren't for Greenburg entirely, and certainly weren't from my own experience as a kid. It was like looking at New Orleans all over again after the hurricane and the flood.

Can you tell the difference in the photos above? The left side was taken a couple of days ago in Kansas; the right was taken by a friend from a helicopter over New Orleans about 9 months after Katrina.

It's the kind of images that haunt you for a while. Obviously, a long while.

The Mashup

2007-05-03T12:51:00.000-05:00

I don't know how in the world I missed this--apparently I'm slipping--but a friend pointed me to it on New Yorker writer Dan Baum's excellent New Orleans Journal. Click on the audio, and it's none other than Ray Nagin, speaking to a group of city recovery workers in late March, and it's such classic Ray. Which is to say, it can only leave you saying, "Huh?"

Baum's analysis was spot-on, saying it sounded like a DJ Mashup between the Bible story of Joseph and his coat of many colors and the animated mops in "Fantasia."

Who knew that when the amazing technicolor dream coat went into the pit, it was self-propelled and apparently without the need of Joseph's body to inhabit it? Who knew that when people threw rocks and stones at the coat, it managed to get itself up and walk out of the "ditch?"

Man, they really made some cool stuff back in Biblical times. I always thought manna and the burning bush were cool. Who knew about the walking coat of many colors?

Armed Madhouse

2007-05-01T08:13:00.000-05:00

Not much time to carp and whine today, but for a good source of carping and whining, take a look at this post from the People's Voice blog. Author Greg Palast, who wrote the book "Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild," updated and re-released this week, has an interesting story of being arrested for filming in a FEMA trailer camp--I'm sorry, that would be "evacuation city"--outside New Orleans. He also talks with LSU hurricane guru Ivor van Heerden about who knew what--and when--about the levee breeches. Interesting stuff--check it out.

Master Fiddlers

2007-04-30T07:11:00.000-05:00

I should be writing about the government's squandering of almost $1 million in foreign offers of cash, medicine and other aid in the hours and days immediately following Katrina but, frankly, I'm just too ticked off to comment coherently about it.

I mean, just when I think the level of federal bureaucratic idiocy has reached its zenith, something happens to make me realize there's really no limit to how negligent, arrogant and/or dysfunctional -- pick one, two or all three -- our federal response to any kind of major disaster is. If they can't send the marines in to shoot it, they can't respond at all. Oh, wait. I forgot. They couldn't even send the marines to our aid.

Maybe the paranoiacs are right and "They" really were out to wipe out a significant portion of poor black people and never mind everyone else who was ruined in the process.

I wonder what sort of lovely duet Michael Chertoff and George Bush and their supporting symphony were playing on their fiddles as New Orleans burned?

Oh well, I guess I wrote about it anyway. I had been planning to write about hearing gunshots as I ate an early dinner on Friday, followed by the wail of police and ambulance sirens and the news that on the 17th week of 2007, New Orleans had experienced its 62nd murder a few blocks away in broad daylight.

My song of the day is by Eric Burden and the Animals. Can you guess the title?

Ruminations Friday

2007-04-27T08:18:00.000-05:00

In the first "Ruminations Friday" since returning from hiatus, here's what's on my mind this week.

• According to restaurant guru Tom Fitzmorris, 810 restaurants are now open in the greater metro area--one MORE than before Katrina. Do we have our priorities straight, or what? The rebounding of the restaurant scene is the brightest spot in the recovery landscape, by far. I guess the "one" extra is last weekend's reopening -- FINALLY -- of the Camellia Grill. Haven't been back yet but I hear the only thing different is that it's cleaner.

• This will be a busy weekend in the Tale of Two Cities. City #1 will be hosting the first weekend of JazzFest, and there will be flowing drink and piles of Crawfish Monica and good vibes all over town -- at least in City #1. In City #2, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and all their merry band of divisive agitators will be leading what they hope will be a massive march through the Lower Ninth Ward, protesting the Road Home program and the lack of aid to renters. Actually there's the Tale of the Third City. In City #3, people of Lakeview, Gentilly, Mid-City and St. Bernard will continue quietly working to rebuild their homes and lives without a shrill sense of entitlement.

• I know the above statement sounds horrible but I just don't understand why renters still are demanding rental assistance almost two years past The Event. FEMA is still paying rent on many former NOLenians, at least through next March, and this weekend's Rainbow/SCLC rally is protesting lack of aid to renters. I assume they are protesting the lack of rental units available. Fine and dandy, but I doubt when the rental units open up they will be free. At what point do people try to start paying their own way? Is it any wonder people around the country are tired of hearing about New Orleans, when all they see is shrill, strident people with their hands out wanting more more more? Speaking from a "middle class and sinking" standpoint, I am reaching the point where it's getting too expensive for me to live here. At that point, I don't anticipate anyone handing me free money to make up the difference between my salary and my living costs. I'll simply have to move to a cheaper city.

• WWL has a new poll saying 60% of Orleans Parish residents are contemplating doing just that--leaving, if things don't improve within the next five years. It's an interesting poll, and worth a visit to wwltv.com. My favorite stat from the poll is approval ratings of politicians. I was not surprised that Ray Nagin has an 80% disapproval rating; I WAS surprised that 16% of OP residents thought he was doing a good job. I'm not sure what city they live in. Perhaps there's a City #4, made up of Ray, his buddies, and a pack of ostriches.

We Are the World

2007-04-26T09:40:00.000-05:00

How strange and sad it was to see footage of Baton Rouge native, SUNO grad and American Idol judge Randy Jackson touring the blight of New Orleans on Idol's "Idol Gives Back" benefit show last night. I held up pretty well through the obligatory "can you believe it still looks like this after almost two years" spiel, but then lost it pretty much when "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" started up and we saw children playing in the mean streets near their FEMA trailers. I swear I can't hear that song anymore. It hurts too much.

Then we went to other poster children for need--African orphans, Appalachian illiterates, Los Angeles latchkey kids. All starving, of course.

But yo dawg, Randy. We're glad you came home.

An Inconvenient Truth

2007-04-25T08:15:00.000-05:00

I had the opportunity a few weeks ago during my blog hiatus to meet environmental activist and author Bill McKibben. At a book-signing after his presentation to my conference group, I had him sign my copy of his latest book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Community and the Durable Future. The whole book is based on the idea that "more" is no longer necessarily "better," and the economy of "more" is killing our planet and killing our spirits under piles of stuff.

But what he signed in my book was interesting: "To (me), who knows firsthand about the dangers of global warming and the spirit of community."

And I realized for the first time that, for many people, the hurricanes of 2005--and in particular Katrina, have been a wakeup call. New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have become the poster children for global warming activists.

It was a bit of synchronicity for me, because I had recently finished reading--okay, about a year behind the times--Michael Pollan's amazing book The Omnivore's Dilemma, which had sparked a keen interest in sustainable agriculture and eating local to combine with an already growing interest in functional foods.

So just call me granola girl these days. And, in the meantime, Al Gore will be in New Orleans on May 1, speaking in a free presentation of "An Inconvenient Truth" at Tulane University's McAlister Auditorium.

Peace. Out.

Take a Walk, Ray

2007-04-23T09:05:00.000-05:00

Just when I thought Our Mayor was being awfully quiet, perhaps taking a dose of his won "get to work and shut up" advice to Ed Blakely, he's done it again.

Could anyone possibly be a worse ambassador for New Orleans than Ray Nagin?

This time his target is Philadelphia, whose brotherly love is probably feeling pretty soured right now. After a trip to Philly to look at their successful program of rehabbing blighted neighborhoods into thriving, functioning parts of town, C-Ray came back to note how much cleaner New Orleans is and what a dirty city Philly is.

Then, of course, we have the old, familiar C-Ray Apology dance.

Sigh.

Besides being rude, I have a hard time imagining the comments are true. Okay, we have spiffy twice-weekly trash pickup like the rest of the world now. But clean? C-Ray needs to take a walk. Any walk.

On another note, had my first trip back to Mandina's since they reopened. The layout has changed a bit, but they managed to salvage the old bar. Besides being cleaner than in days of old (hey, maybe Ray was talking about Mandina's), it was still Mandina's, full of post-church hordes of old mid-city ladies doing lunch. Fun!

Season's Greetings!

2007-04-20T08:14:00.000-05:00

Most people have four weather seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter) and a number of holiday seasons (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.).

But we in New Orleans are fortunate enough to have a number of critter seasons as well, and we're in the middle of one right now.

No, it's not termite-swarming season. That starts in about a month, during which time all exterior -- and, if you're smart, most interior -- lights must be doused in order to prevent the huge hordes of madly swarming termites looking for new homes to visit yours.

What we're currently enjoying is Buckmoth Caterpillar Season. If you aren't lucky enough to live in a place with lots of oak trees where these critters like to live, let me tell you about them. They're big--about the size of a finger--and are covered with poisonous spikes. Even the slightest touch will cause you, the toucher, to have your affected body part puff up like a blowfish, turn red, and burn for hours. Some years, they are so bad that people walking down the sidewalks carry umbrellas because, yes, they fall out of the trees on your head and, believe me, this is not something you want to experience. My eldest furchild, Irish Terrier Shane, stepped on one last year and I thought she was dying. I know she stepped on it because I grabbed her up as she cried and latched onto the darned thing myself. I also cried. We cried together. It was a bonding moment.

Buckmoth caterpillars do provide a great source of entertainment, however, as they are very noisy and colorful when stepped on. There's an audible POP and then orange goop oozes out of their bodies while bright neon green seeps out of their heads. I believe my personal-best buckmoth-stomping record is 10 squishes in 30 seconds.

Great exercise, too!

Jindal vs Malakar

2007-04-19T08:37:00.000-05:00

Let's play "Elect a Governor." Apparently, it's a job no self-respecting Democrat would want. Maw-maw has decided not to run for a second term, wisely figuring out that she would quickly be hoisted on the petard known as Road Home.

John Breaux has decided it isn't worth his trouble, wisely figuring out that since he didn't care enough about the state to actually LIVE here, the rest of us miserable masochists who remain probably wouldn't vote for him.

Mitch Landrieu has decided he'd rather be lieutenant governor and dabble with the tourism industry than be regularly raked over the coals by constituents and dissed by the president.

So, who's left, other than a couple of low-profile Dem candidates who obviously don't know any better?

I nominate Sanjaya. For several reasons.

First, it eliminates the race card; both Bobby Jindal and Sanjaya Malakar will make black and white bigots equally dissatisfied.

Second, we're used to weak-voiced leaders who make juvenile statements that will haunt them in perpetuity, so Sanjaya would certainly get the New Orleans vote.

Third, even if there's a hurricane we could look forward to seeing Sanjaya sport a different hairstyle during each press conference--though he, like C-Ray, might need to do a quick shampoo on Air Force One if the president comes to town.

Fourth, Sanjaya has learned to take the abuse heaped on him by Simon Cowell, so screaming displaced residents shouldn't phase him.

And finally, we're used to seeing our governor cry, and Sanjaya can cry AND SING at the same time. Not on key, mind you, but still.

So, Sanjaya, there IS life after American Idol.

Boomtown

2007-04-18T08:14:00.000-05:00

It's the price you pay for living here these days, I guess--a few hours' lost sleep.

I woke the first time at 4 a.m., to the sound of toenails clicking on hardwood floors as my dogs Shane and Tanker paced restlessly around my room. That usually means a thunderstorm but I heard a hard rain and thought how much it was needed--maybe I can get by a few more days without watering the plants.

An hour or so later, BOOM! A short, powerful blast echoed through the drizzly dark, jolting me awake, heart hammering.

Was it thunder? No, there was no storm, just steady rain.

My zombied-out brain began searching for sources of the window-rattling, teeth-jarring sound. One single boom and then nothing.

And where did my mind go first, but the levees, and the huge boom residents say they heard in the Lower Ninth when the barge crashed through the levee and water started pouring in. (And, no, it wasn't bombed by evil white people.) And I remembered reading John Barry's "Rising Tide" during my six-week evacuation and the talk about the weakest point in the river levee in the city was at the foot of Louisiana Avenue, about six blocks from me. Twenty minutes later, I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to peek out the curtains to see if there was water in the streets, black and rising. But there wasn't.

As I lay awake waiting for the sound of rushing waters, my Resident Senior Adult, who only moved to New Orleans a few months before Katrina and has known only the sorry state of affairs here since, believed it was a shotgun blast and, once convincing herself that she had not, in fact, been shot, was lying awake waiting for the sirens to start. They did not, and who knows what it was.

But it's where our minds went that's so telling.

Guns and water. It's what we are now.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

2007-04-17T09:04:00.000-05:00

No, not the Road Home administrators. My other favorite target of scorn and derision: insurance companies.

Before Katrina, my homeowners insurance cost me $197 a month. I thought that ridiculously high considering I live in a teeny tiny little house that always seems on the verge of tumbling to the ground.

When my first renewal came up after Katrina, my monthly cost shot up to $265 a month, an increase of about 37%. Sheesh.

Now I have my new rates for this year, and another 20%, up to $320 a month (plus $100 a month for flood insurance and another $100 or so for property tax).

I won't bore you with all the math, but let's just say my mortgage, insurance and tax now takes up 74% of my take-home pay. Add in skyrocketing utility costs, and my living costs minus food for the month equals 96% of my take-home pay. The other 4% has to cover food, gasoline and any social activities.

Oh, wait. I have no social activities any more. Why, you ask?

Well, you do the math, and thank you, Traveler's.

REDRUM

2007-04-16T08:08:00.000-05:00

I'm back. OK, if you never saw "The Shining," the headline and first sentence make no sense. But both seem appropriate here.

So, what have I missed this past month while I galavanted around the country, worked my butt off at my suddenly-distressingly-stressful job, celebrated my redheaded furkid's eighth birthday, and otherwise enjoyed the life of a nonblogger?

Here were the things I almost broke out of my blogging hiatus to write about:

--C-Ray's latest symptom of foot-in-mouth disease. Wouldn't you think he'd have choked on that big ole foot by now? And why is he raising all this money for his "war chest?" What's he going to run for, and who would vote for him? Oh, right. The buffoons and the shi'ites (or would that be the sunnis?). Never mind.

--And it's obviously contagious, as Ed Blakley has discovered. As soon as I figure out exactly WHO he was calling buffoons I might muster up the energy to get upset about it. Unless, of course, he's talking about our elected officials or those who voted for them, which I am proudly not one of. And why castigate the guy for telling the truth, in that case?

--Cynthia Hedge Morrell, our blue-light-flashin', pedal-to-the-medal, cussin', hardass city councilwoman, whose response to the state police officer who pulled her over doing 100 mph on the I-10 with her blue lights flashing was: Do you know who the )(*& I am? Yeah, lady, you're a buffoon.

So, admit it, you've missed my ranting and raving, haven't you?

P.S. If you really don't get the headline to this entry, read it backwards or, as the kid in "The Shining" does, write it on a mirror and read its reflection. New Orleans is the REDRUM capital these days.

On Hiatus

2007-03-17T07:24:00.000-05:00

Life has taken over my blogging life. Check back with me later--I hope to begin re-posting mid-April.

R.I.P.

2007-03-14T09:23:00.000-05:00

The garage that flooded and molded and rotted is gone. And thanks to the amazing team of kids from North Carolina who gave up their spring break to do dirty work in New Orleans' recovery efforts. More than 600 volunteers are being coordinated this week by First Baptist New Orleans alone--multiply that by all other coordinating agencies here and you'll see that even if our leaders are inept and our government is tired of dealing with us, the American people--and particularly the people of faith--continue to serve.

Thank you.

We're No. 1--Again

2007-03-13T08:10:00.000-05:00

Here's the story America is reading over its morning coffee: New Orleans is the murder capital of the U.S. Is anyone surprised?

What's surprising to me is that someone finally had the guts to look at the real numbers, wipe aside the smoke and mirrors our city officials have been floating around, and say it. New Orleans' murder rate is the highest per capita--by far--in the country, and according to Tulane demographer Mark VanLandingham, that's even allowing that the city might have as many as 210,000 residents now, a number 20,000 above the official census estimate of 190k.

Worse, the murder rate has escalated since Katrina. Numbers for 2006 showed a 68% increase over 2004.

So far, the only responses I've seen from Police Chief Riley is 1) he's tired of talking about numbers, and 2) he's rolling out a new initiative to have the NOPD focus on violent crimes and not worry about the petty criminals.

We all might as well put signs on the fronts of our houses that say: Rob Me!

I don't know what the answer is. But it's time to acknowledge the severity of the problem and move on from there.

The Art of Miss Ellen

2007-03-12T12:58:00.000-05:00

It was one of those nice, NOLA-type things: the selling off of an eccentric woman's paintings along a block of city street, the proceeds going to animal rescue.

But if you're familiar with the story of Times-Pic columnist Chris Rose's neighbor, it was a lot more.

The woman was Ellen Montgomery, who came to the public's attention, sadly, after she died. This 85-year-old was mugged outside a department store at Elmwood last fall. The muggers knocked her down, breaking her hip. The surgery for the hip led to a fatal heart attack, and the robbery charges were changed to murder....which didn't really matter, because the criminals were never caught.

"Miss Ellen" was a prolific, self-taught painter, and in her Uptown home were thousands of paintings--in the days immediately after Katrina she collected other people's strewn-about roofing slates to paint on. She didn't evacuate because of her 30-plus cats. Miss Ellen survived Katrina just fine; it's the post-K culture of violence that killed her.

On Saturday, her paintings were spread in all their colorful abundance along a long city block on Camp Street, where people alerted by Friday's Chris Rose column came to pay their respects, buy a few paintings and, in the process, put some money toward vet bills for Miss Ellen's cats and to Animal Rescue of New Orleans.

It was a great thing. Here's one of the three pieces of Miss Ellen's that I bought.

White Coat Jitters

2007-03-09T07:12:00.000-06:00

I was all ready to wax poetic on the shenanigans of the LSU women's basketball coach (I mean, really, does the word "self control" mean anything?) or the fact that some actor from "The Sopranos" is going to make the world's biggest bowl of pasta in the Quarter this weekend, with basketball-sized meatballs. You know--New Orleans-type stories.

Then this, which greeted me over breakfast. There are no hospital beds available in the metro area. Okay, let me repeat that: there are ZERO hospital beds available in the area. They're all full of sick people already.

Do you know how scary that is in general, and how especially scary that is when you have an 81-year-plus senior living with you? I expected this kind of situation when I returned in October 2005 after Katrina. I did not expect it 18 months later and, I'm telling you, it scares the heck out of me.

How many more victims of this cursed flood will we have before it's all over?

Blogger Blues

2007-03-08T12:06:00.000-06:00

Sorry I've been absent on this blog the last few days. It's not that New Orleans has been uneventful. Let's see, what's happened....

--I'm still trying to put that darn shed together (see below). I'm going to have to resort to calling a male friend for help, and I can't tell you how badly I hate that!

--Our mayor's latest gaffe: telling a reporter that the city's claim for damages from the Army Corps of Engineers was padded with "all kinds of stuff." So, Ray, ya think they're gonna take a closer look at it now? It's like cheating on your taxes but attaching a note to the IRS that you need to be audited. Duh.

--Speaking of the Corps, they're backing off the 2010 shore-up-the-levee-system deadline, saying the only way they can meet the deadline is to substitute some of the stronger, armored levees with flood gates. Their proposal leaves St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans East particularly vulnerable from the good old MRGO. Junior Rodriguez is not a happy camper.

The other reason I've been absent is the insane takeoff of my other blog, Waisted in the Wasteland, which got a nod from the folks at Google as a "Blog of Note" and sent my page hits soaring. Who knew?

Macho Girl?

2007-03-05T12:25:00.000-06:00

When I first bought a century-old home here in New Orleans, I quickly learned there was a whole new vocabulary involved in home ownership. Take sills, for example. I needed some. How could I so badly need something I didn't know existed? But I quickly learned about sills, piers and the virtues of crown molding. Eventually, I learned about gutters, soffits, downspout placement and flashing. Who knew flashing didn't involve nudity and sporting events?

Finally, after about a decade, I knew it all. I was set. No new vocabulary words or skill-sets for me.

Then a little old hurricane blew through and now I'm learning my skill sets are not at all adequate.

First, I have spent more time in Lowe's and Home Depot in the last 18 months than should really be necessary for a middle-aged woman. But one does need a new 8-foot fiberglass ladder if one is going to be painting rooms with 12-foot ceilings so what else is a girl to do?

But Saturday's experience left me feeling inadequate. First, I was sold a storage shed at Lowe's by a chipper, nerdy looking guy who assured me that yes, I, a middle-aged, nerdy looking woman could--by my very own self--do the construction of said shed in under two hours. He wouldn't lie to my face and, besides, he was a nerdy-looking guy and if he thought it was easy, then it had to be true.

Then, and this should have given me an inkling that all was not as it seemed, the nerdy guy and his short coworker assured me that, yes, of course the unbuilt thing would fit in the back of my SUV--only to be told that, after I paid for the thing and pulled the truck around back--they thought I had a "real SUV, not a toy SUV." Excuse me, buddy, just whose manhood are you questioning? I felt so inadequate. My little Nissan XTerra was too small to hold a storage shed. I puttered on home in my toy truck with the storage shed tied to the roof.

After many more than two hours of unpacking, nailing and cursing--not necessarily in that order, do I have a storage shed? Well, I have a square thing with a floor, four very shaky walls and...well, nothing else yet. Eventually it might have doors and a roof but I promise nothing.

I was meant to be independently wealthy--which is what you have to be to afford a contractor in NOLA these days. I was meant to have a big manly SUV. I was meant to...Oh, never mind. I have a storage shed to build and a new vocabulary to learn.

The Road Home Continues

2007-03-01T07:16:00.000-06:00

And it continues all along River Road the past few days.

The vast numbers of people lined up in their cars, waiting to turn in the paperwork signifying that they're going to be a plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers speaks more to the anger that still simmers beneath the laid-back facade of this city than any real hope of getting money from the government.

I mean, the money from the Road Home program has flowed so smoothly, hasn't it?

But it's the Corps, not Katrina, that New Orleanians blame for this city's woes. For shoddy engineering on the levees, for poor upkeep, for gambling that we'd never take a hit to really test the shortcuts.

And people know it. The Corps has even admitted it.

And so we begin the dance again--or "they," not "we," because the Road Home mess has taken all the dance out of me, personally--an interminable wait for some sort of reparation for wrongs done and lives turned upside down.

Meanwhile, after being told my own storm damage wasn't sufficient for the Road Home to share any of its ample funds with me, I get a call yesterday from a home valuator in Baton Rouge, asking questions about my house so the Road Home program could better evaluate my claim. When told I had already been denied any grant money, he seemed clueless and proceeded to ask me questions about numbers of rooms and square footage.

Oh, heck, why not? Maybe I'll dance a little longer after all.

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

2007-02-28T07:38:00.000-06:00

If it wasn't so laughable, it would be almost...laughable.

First, National Basketball Association players union president Billy Hunter says yesterday that the NBA All Star Weekend shouldn't be held in New Orleans next spring because he doesn't think our police can handle the crowds, which grew so rowdy and violent at this year's event in Las Vegas that more than 400 people were arrested.

We do have a smaller police force than Vegas, but I mean, really, think about it. Crowd control experience: Vegas or New Orleans? The NOPD handles way more every year with Mardi Gras than the Vegas PD does chasing drunken conventioneers down Casino Row on a given weekend. It's absurd.

And then there's almost-Native Son Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq doesn't think the NBA All-Star Game should be in New Orleans either--not because he's afraid the violent basketball fans will go out of control.

No, Shaq is concerned about the flooding. Maybe no electricity--is that back on yet? How about drinking water?

You see, Shaq says he saw Spike Lee's "When the Levee Broke," about the days following Hurricane Katrina. And because Shaq saw it recently, he thinks it was filmed recently.

"I'm not sure if the city of New Orleans is ready for something like that," said O'Neal, who played at LSU. "I would rather see it come to Miami or even New York. I don't know what New Orleans' situation is, but from watching the Spike Lee special ...it doesn't look like it's ready for something like that."

Sigh.

Since I heard those comments on the news last night, I keep singing the old Randy Newmnan song in my head, specifically the line that says, "College men from LSU, went in dumb, come out dumb too." Sorry, LSU.

What Fresh Hell?

2007-02-27T08:22:00.000-06:00

One should always quote Dorothy Parker whenever possible, and believe me, today it's possible to say with all honesty:

What fresh hell is this?

If blogger's photo function was working and I could upload my photo, you would say, why, it's a rat. A common, plain old rattus norvegicus, a rodent, a Norway Rat, which makes him sound way too exotic for some nasty critter that rode into the New World with his spouse on the Mayflower and began to populate our pristine environment. And whose ancestors are flourishing in New Orleans because of all the post-Katrina blighted housing sitting around all parts of the city.

And now, one of his ancestors is in my dining room, where he sat under a chair in the corner, placidly watching me eat breakfast. Well, placidly until I screamed like a banshee and scared the heck out of him and sent him scurrying underneath the daybed. And he wasn't nearly as scared as I was.

I ventured back into the room long enough to shove a box of D-Con under the daybed, and stuck a few in kitchen cabinets just for good measure. Only to find he had been noshing on the bag of dog food near said day bed.

And speaking of dogs, what the heck good is a terrier if she can't even acknowledge the presence of a rat in her house?

So to my terrier, I quote not Dorothy Parker but Donald Trump: "Shane, you're fired!"

Ruminations Friday

2007-02-23T12:28:00.000-06:00

As life interferes with blogging, and in no particular order...

• Why oh why is former mayor Marc Morial sticking his freckled nose into the Danziger Bridge case? Hmmmm. Could it be that it would take the focus off investigations into federal corruption charges against his administration? Ya think?

• I almost choked on my Celsius caffeine-hyped water when I heard Ray Nagin say that the city should take over administration of the Road Home Program from the governor and the fraud-paranoid foot-draggers at ICF. Because the city is run so efficiently, you know. On the other hand, could the city possibly do any worse than ICF? We do have lovely trash service these days, after all.

• Speaking of ICF, it was delightful to see U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chairwoman of the subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, absolutely SKEWER the sputtering, seemingly clueless head of ICF during yesterday's five-hour hearing about the slowness of New Orleans' recovery. If you could bottle Ms. Waters' disdain I'd buy some. Priceless.

• Can we have Mardi Gras again now, please?

The Big Stinky

2007-02-22T09:41:00.000-06:00

Interesting story in today's New York Times about the hearings over public housing starting today in Washington--namely, whether or not the four big public housing communities slated for demolition should be rehabbed rather than demolished, even though rehabbing the aging, crumbling structures would be more expensive than tearing them down and starting over.

But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about trash, and how the local media folks have been practically wetting their pants and groveling at the feet of Sidney Torres IV, owner of the new waste management contractor for the French Quarter.

Don't get me wrong--it's wonderful that Torres' company, SDT, is doing such a bang-up job of keeping the streets clean.

How many of you can, without a moment's thought, recall the distinctive air of vomit-urine-and-beer that permeates the Quarter on an early morning? Can I see a show of hands?

But, I mean really, what does it say about your city when the jaded local media get all ga-ga over trash pickup when there are drag queens dressed as Mawmaw Blanco dancing in the streets? It's kind of pathetic, don't you think? And yet, who of us who evacuated, didn't pause to admire the sheer cleanliness of our temporary cities? I swear, Montgomery, Alabama, is the cleanest city on Earth.

But they don't have mawmaw street dancing.

Satired

2007-02-21T12:18:00.000-06:00

Whew--Mardi Gras is over for another year. It doesn't feel right today, sitting indoors at a desk instead of lounging around on the neutral grounds watching the crowds. I haven't heard any official estimates, but my own Mardi Grasometer says this year was a big success. The crowds were at least a third larger than last year and while that meant fewer good throws for me, it's a good thing for the city.

There was less satire among the crowd this year. Of the costumed folks strolling along St. Charles, the governor, the Road Home and its administrating company ICF seemed to take the most heat, with a few obligatory nods toward C-Ray. Last year's stars--FEMA, the Army Corps, and Katrina herself--were pretty much gone. But I saw more Anna Nicole spoofs (Who da baby daddy?), some Marinello jabs, and more Saints than you could shake a stick at. Whatever the heck that means.

But the Krewes dished up the satire, and none better--as always--than Le Krewe D'Etat. Here are a few of their floats, with excerpts of official descriptions from the krewe newspaper (above), handed out during the parade. The theme? Krewe D'Etat TV in Dictavision.

Starring on KDTV were:
• Ameri-Con Idle, starring Ray Nagin: "Truly, the selection of this 'idle' American by the people showed that, sometimes, democracy can be taken too far...Ever since his divisive campaign, our rock-star mayor has been 'resting on his laurels'--not to mention his hind quarters--while the city rots."

• Dis Casa Vieja, starring our new Hispanic construction worker-citizens. "Hola amigos, estamos aqui, y estamos trabajando muy bien! We do it all: roofing, drywalling, painting and electrical work. Some people may not like us, but we feel we work harder than lots of New Orleanians."

• Murder He Wrote, starring Vince Marinello, charged with murdering his estranged wife in broad daylight while wearing a cheap mask, leaving behind a slew of evidence and a "to do" list at his FEMA trailer. "Criminal Genius he is not, as Vince Marinello left more clues than a blind man at a urinal and his alibi was as believable as his toupee...His fate is sealed tighter than Sheriff Lee's pants after a buffet."

• The Worst Wing, starring George W. Bush. "We see President Bush in his tower, seemingly insulated from the criticism and holding his course, but the discontented are getting restless. They are ascending their scaling ladders, all hoping to pull the castle down. Everyone from the Democrats and Katrina refugees to foreign dictators and fanatics from Iran...This series will definitely be cancelled in 2008."

• Blunder Woman, starring La. Gov. Kathleen Blanco. "Funny, she looked so much stronger in the comic strips--and on the campaign trail against her Ghandi-esque younger opponent four years ago. Now, it seems, she has blundered her way into one tragicomic episode after another--and her red, white and blue costume can't hide her sagging....fortunes...Now she's just another frumpy grandma who can't seem to find her own road home."

• I Wants to Be a Millionaire, starring Congressman William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson. "In this game show, there's only one contestant--'Dollar Bill' Jefferson--and he always wins! Maybe it's because he makes up the rules as he goes along, Ironically, he has been playing this 'game' for decades."

• Riley's Believe It or Not, starring Police Chief Warren Riley. "While murders bring the city to its bloodied knees, our beloved police superintendent reassures us that everything's fine and the situation is under control. We see on the float the bright colorful Riley World...In Riley's world, if you make it to the hospital before you die, we'll just call it battery or armed robbery. That'll keep the murder rate down."

• Car 54, Where Y'at? starring the NOPD. "In N'Awlins, who knows? Sightings of police cars are as rare as sightings of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster."

• America's Least Wanted, starring NOLA's criminals. "Proving that even the darkest of clouds has a silver lining, Katrina washed away some of our city's most entrenched liabilities--Criminals!...As long as that FEMA money keeps them firmly planted deep in the heart of Texas, one thing is certain: Houston, you have a problem."

• Light Court, starring Judge Charles Elloie. "In tonight's episode, which seems to be a frequent rerun, we see yet another felonious jailbird set free from his cage, thanks to the light-hearted (or is that light-headed?) judge. Meanwhile, where's the District Attorney?"

Thanks, Krewe D'Etat, for another fine year!

On Da Avenue

2007-02-20T15:57:00.000-06:00

Well, I'll have a bigger Mardi Gras report tomorrow but I wanted to upload some photos from today so far--it was a great time out on the avenue. A little cloudy but warmer and, so far, the rain's holding off. And thanks to my buddies, I now am the proud owner of a little Rex Boeuf Gras! And yep, the first photo is of moi.

Top of the Catches, Saturday

2007-02-18T07:39:00.000-06:00

My favorite catches from Saturday's parades...

Krewes to View

2007-02-16T08:54:00.000-06:00

I was e-mailing my friend Lauri in New York this morning and complaining about what a swivet I'm in over Mardi Gras. Specifically, whether or not it's really too cold to stand in the street for Krewe D'Etat tonight. But D'Etat is my favorite parade, the secret satirical theme is so barbed Arthur Hardy couldn’t say the words on TV, and it’s so darned cold I can’t stand the thought of being out there at night and I’d have to bundle up and can I catch beads wearing gloves and should I watch it nearest the house or walk down to my friend Lora’s where she might have her lawn chairs out, and then is it too cold to walk back home...

And, as Lauri pointed out, what a nice dilemma to have. And as Chris Rose pointed out this morning, everywhere else it's just another Friday night. And where else can you spend the next five solid days dressed in a ghoulish mask, wearing a fuzzy purple, green and gold hat, dancing around the streets with other kindred souls screaming for someone in a creepy mask to throw you some tawdry beads or--gasp--a CUP?

So in honor of the biggest five days of Mardi Gras, beginning today, here are some shots from last year's festivities, where Katrina was the guest of honor.

Flashback

2007-02-14T10:10:00.000-06:00

I tried to think of something meaningful to say about Monday night's tornadoes. You know, about how we've had enough. About how many people this will just push over the edge and cause to leave this place. About how many times I'll be thanking God for sparing me and mine...yet again. But it's said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some images taken by my friend Nick as he rode his bike around the Carrollton area on Tuesday morning. They look awfully Katrina-ish, don't they?

Stella's Journey

2007-02-13T12:18:00.000-06:00

Can't write much today--things are too hectic with all the tornado damage.

But the one fatality so far just broke my heart. Stella Chambers lived in a FEMA trailer in front of her flooded-out hull of a house in Gentilly. The tornado lifted the trailer and slammed it back down on Pauline Drive, killing her. Stella Chambers was 85.

I'll have more later, with photos.

You Gotta Love It

2007-02-12T09:34:00.000-06:00

Just as I'm really bummed about this whole town, there's a reason to love it again. First, I'm driving down South Broad yesterday when I get stopped at Tulane & Broad for a procession. No, not prisoners marching downtown--we don't lock 'em up, remember? No, it was the Krewe of Centurions' 20 floats rolling down Tulane Avenue toward Metairie. The theme? Under the Bigtop.

Now, it wasn't the same as being at a parade, of course--no 300 masked riders tossing goodies to the masses. But, still, it's kind of cool to sit at an intersection and watch 20 circus-themed floats--giant seals and bearded ladies and tigers--trundling slowly down the street.

Then, of course, there's Barkus--and if the sight of King Rockafella and Queen Biscuit (owned by Chris Rose) chowing down on lamb chops at Galatoire's can't bring a smile to your face, well, then, you're hopeless. Hail, Barkus!

Ruminations Friday

2007-02-09T09:35:00.000-06:00

Cleaning out the brain cells for the week....

* Does it surprise anyone that the mother who gave a gun to her 17-year-old son so he could exact revenge on another 17-year-old is not cooperating with the police? She's in jail and there seems to be some surprise that she isn't turning Junior in as well. Duh.

* I wonder if it is actually a requirement written into the employee handbook at Rite-Aid that employees should exhibit sullenness, rudeness and lack of helpfulness at all times? If so, the Rite-Aid employees from the Louisiana/St. Charles Avenue store should all get big bonuses 'cause they are right there, baby. That does not apply to most of the pharmacy employees, however, who should probably be fired for being friendly and helpful.

* So Paypal is taking donations via cell phone for New Orleans during Mardi Gras from their portable unit. Between plates of smoked sausage and beer on the neutral ground, is anyone going to remember to dial up Paypal and donate?

* Mardi Gras parades start in earnest tonight. Will my driveway be blocked this year? Will drunks pee on my fence? Will my parade spot be far enough removed from boobalicious Britney wannabes so I can actually get some beads? Will my pal the masseur from St. Rose be hanging in my favorite parade spot this year, and didn't I see his strange kinda bush-baby son auditioning for American Idol?

Ah, Mardi Gras.

A Mother's Advice

2007-02-08T12:06:00.000-06:00

My mom always had lots of advice. Still does, come to think of it.

When I was a kid, it was things like how I'd go further in life if I'd keep my room clean, and I should save my allowance for a rainy day instead of getting that new Rolling Stones LP whose lyrics I hoped she couldn't understand--yep, back in the days of vinyl. If I had a spat with a schoolmate I, for one thing, wouldn't have told her. But if I had told her, I imagine I'd get a lecture about turning the other cheek.

What she wouldn't have done is give me a knife to take to school like this mom did with her 9-year-old son on the Westbank.

Nor would she have given me a gun to take to school like this mom did with her 17-year-old son, Clarence. Clarence took the gun and shot another 17-year-old, who died. And wasn't Clarence's mama proud!

Well, we don't know that, because both Clarence and his mom are now on the run. And given the way things have gone lately, they are probably sitting in plain view in their own neighborhood, confident that even if they get arrested, they won't do time.

Welcome to our world.

Fightin' Good in the Neighborhood

2007-02-07T09:20:00.000-06:00

It could have happened anywhere, really. Or some devilish New Orleans dining mojo punishing people for their lack of culinary taste. But it was 2 p.m. on a busy Saturday afternoon at Elmwood, and we were eating a late lunch at Applebee's. Every seat was filled, and a line had formed out the door waiting to get in.

Now, what it says about the sad state of affairs in the New Orleans area when fine eating establishments in the Quarter are starving for customers and people are lined up around the building and waiting to get into bland-as-bread Applebee's, I just don't know. But I think it's bad, and I have no excuse.

But there we were, nonetheless, me and my dry-as-toast grilled chicken/portobello mushroom sandwich and my dining companion with a cheese-laden "quesadilla burger," when we were interrupted by the sound of breaking wood. Yes, wood. As in, smash-a-chair-over-the-head-of-the-guy-at-the-next-table wood. Had Bill Goldberg come for lunch at Applebee's, I wondered?

But no, just two guys who decided a table of nachos was no reason not to start an all-out brawl. As shirts ripped and wood splintered, hysterical girls screamed and people moved away from the fighters like pond water rippling from a tossed stone.

What was interesting was the reaction from the diners in the restaurant. Half of it was, I'd say, normal--much neck-craning and standing on chairs to see what was going on. The rest was a stampede for the exit, including a table of six women next to me who had just placed their drink orders. They practically bowled over the waitress, arriving with a tray full of bright red cocktails, one muttering "I don't want none of this."

And I admit that it did pop into my brain--that would be the brain resting inside my head sitting atop my craning neck--what if these guys had a gun? I mean, who doesn't have a gun these days, even in the Applebee's at Elmwood on a Saturday afternoon? But before long one of Harry Lee's men showed up, along with the EMTs, and order was restored. It was back to dining, but not nearly as dull.

*********

FOODIE ALERT FOR TULANE

If you're a foodie, or pretending to be one while you eat at places like Applebee's, check out the new online foodie haven, Hello DELICIOUS, which bills itself as representing "the next generation of foodies...We are a delectable and daring twist, with a forward-thinking approach, that the gourmet world has never seen before. A fusion of a fresh, inviting environment with our unique selection of products is just the beginning. We spot trends, and represent the latest and greatest in an accessible way."

If you buy something from the site in February, type in TULNOLA in the special offer code during checkout, and they'll donate 10% of their profits to Tulane University here in New Orleans. Co-owner Lilly Stein is a Tulane grad (and a "brandbabe/trend-spotter"). Check out some of the cool chocolate collections.

Road Block

2007-02-06T08:22:00.000-06:00

I felt a sense of dread as I saw it there in my mailbox. The infamous "yellow letter" from the Road Home Program had arrived. I pulled it gingerly from the mailbox and laid it on the table in the entry hall, walking past it a few times unopened before finally picking it up again.

The infamous yellow letter, you see, tells you what the Road Home administrators, in all their questionable wisdom, have decided as to how much your Katrina sob story is worth after they've dragged you through the dog and pony show of being photographed, fingerprinted, photographed again, inspected.

So I finally screw up the courage to open the letter. It's a thick sheaf of papers,actually. "Please read this letter carefully," it intones in bold type at the top of the page. "It provides important information about your assistance."

It continues.

"Dear YOUR FULL NAME HERE:
Thank you for the time and effort you spent applying to The Road Home homeowner assistance program. The Road Home...blah blah blah aren't we a great program...

"Based on the information you submitted, we regret to inform you that you do not qualify for a compensation grant..."

Well. Okay.

As it turns out, they calculate the awards not on how much total damage was done to your property, minus insurance and FEMA. That would be too logical, yes? Instead, they take the amount of work still to be done, then subtract the insurance and FEMA money you've already spent on repairs not included in the calculation, and take the difference. So i had $50,000 worth of damage. I've done $30,000 in repairs paid for with insurance and FEMA money and still have $20,000 worth of repairs needed. Instead of saying "Oh, she still needs $20,000 to finish her repairs," they said, "She still has $20,000 worth of repairs but she got $30,000 from insurance and FEMA so we won't give her anything."

Pretty screwed up, but I was not surprised, having been warned by my friend Raymond who ran into the same thing.

What they did offer was $30,000 to elevate my home. That would be the home that is already raised four feet and didn't flood after Katrina. Hmmm. Why the heck would I want to do that?

Strangely enough, my response was not anger or outrage or even resignation. It was a bizarre sense of relief. It's over. It's done. I'm in my home and that puts me ahead of so many who have no homes left. I'll repair what I can, and the rest can just stay as it is.

That will be for the next owner to decide. Because now I don't have to promise to stay here another three years.

Should I stay or should I go? It's a liberating sort of question.

Days of Innocence

2007-02-05T08:59:00.000-06:00

Since my office could scarce be messier had Katrina blown through here herself, I have begun a mission to gradually excavate my office space, a little at a time.

This morning, far underneath my desk, I came across a journal I was keeping back in 2002. Now, I love the idea of journals but have never been able to keep one going for more than a couple of months at a time.

But in early October of 2002, I was keeping this journal. Remember late summer and early fall of 2002? Do the names Isidore and Lili ring a bell?

First, came Isidore, which peaked as a Cat 3 hurricane, swiping across Jamaica, Cuba and Mexico before finally winding down and making landfall at Grand Isle on Sept. 26 and fizzling as it went over New Orleans.

"It was anticlimactic," I wrote. "My first brush with a 'real' storm was a bit of a bust." I had formed a huge caravan of people and pets and made reservations at a hotel in Meridian, Mississippi, but decided to stay. I was off work for three days, and my biggest complaint was that Tanker, my dog, tracked mud in and out the whole time.

A few days, later I began watching Hurricane Lili, which I nervously noted on October 2 was a Cat 4 and coming our way. Some of my coworkers had already evacuated, and I made plans with friends to take shelter locally at a church. At the 11th hour, the people I had planned to take shelter with decided to stay in their homes, so I sat at home alone watching Lili storm our way while out-of-town friends and relations freaked. "Lili is going to be one of the biggest storms ever to hit Louisiana," I wrote the day before it made landfall. "Why am I here alone? I feel abandoned."

Twelve hours before landfall near Intracoastal City, La., Lili fell apart, dropping from a Cat 4 to a weak Cat 1--surprising hurricane forecasters and causing me to write, "This house is pretty solid, and there are only a couple of limbs down. No big deal."

Those were the innocent days. I don't think any of us will be so blase about whether or not to evacuate again.

Ruminations Friday

2007-02-02T10:52:00.000-06:00

Clearing out the brain cells...

• The Road Home folks have set a new goal of issuing grants to 1,900 homeowners in the month of February. Even Kathleen Blanco sounds dubious that it will happen and, indeed, only a few hours later they said, well, maybe we can't do 1,900 because of Mardi Gras. Uh huh, and the dog ate my homework.

• Eddie Jordan is not pursuing the death penalty for the "Danziger 7" police officers accused of killing an alleged sniper a few days after Katrina. The "sniper" turned out to be a mentally challenged individual who may or may not have had a gun. What a travesty of justice if these officers are convicted. For the police perspective, check out the NOPD "underground" website. Ya think they don't have much use for Mr. Jordan?

• From today's headlines...Not only is the levee repair work in New Orleans woefully behind schedule, but now the president is taking $1.3 billion away from the city of New Orleans to pump into Jefferson Parish and the Westbank? Yeah, go ahead. Gamble with our lives again. It worked out so well for everyone last time. Or maybe it's because more taxpayers and fewer whiners live on the Westbank. Heck, I might save them first too.

• Are the crumbling public housing projects really historic properties? In that case, I have a historic crumbling shed in my back yard that needs some federal money pumped into it.

Yep, just another cynical day in the neighborhood.

Close to Home

2007-02-01T08:48:00.000-06:00

Tanker woke me up about 2 a.m. a couple of nights ago. He's my 75-pound rottweiler-chow mix, a muscular bundle of snarls (don't take his chewbone) and fear (thunder! oh no!). "Is it thundering?" I wondered groggily, struggling to extract myself from being pinned by a scared moose of a dog as he leapt onto my bed. I hadn't heard anything.

I went back to sleep.

Less than two blocks away, a man lay dead, riddled with bullet holes, bleeding out face-down on an abandoned Katrina-flooded lot near Delachaise and Dryades, bullet holes in his back, his chest, his arms. He was a young black man in his early 30s, in a black hoodie and camouflage pants spattered with white paint. He had no ID. He still doesn't. No ID, no witnesses, no motives.

A block away, at Daneel and Foucher, 11 spent shell casings lay on the street and bullet marks were found in, around and through a nearby home where other people lay sleeping but were unhurt.

They might have been unshot, but they weren't unhurt. We're all hurt. Something's gotta give.

Lost: No Reward Offered

2007-01-31T15:52:00.000-06:00

Found on Craig's List yesterday, and I can't think of any appropriate response. Until I quit laughing so hard, anyway!

Lost:
Black man with shiny head and foot in mouth. Owners are looking for him. Has been missing since April 22, 2006. Goes by "Ray" or "C-Ray". Last seen hiding behind podium at peace rally. Needs medication. To catch him, approach slowly with a mirror. He will become entranced by his reflection at which point you can gently collar him.

If you see him, please call (504) 658-4000.

The Army Corpse

2007-01-31T08:27:00.000-06:00

Forgive me if I sound a little jaded.

As last night's NBC Nightly News footage ran of a shoddily built Baghdad police facility that the Army Corps of Engineers oversaw--only to have to call in Iraqi contractors to fix it--all I could do was nod wearily.

No surprise from New Orleans, where levee design and construction by the "Army Corpse" has been the chief culprit in the post-Katrina flood disaster.

I'm sure there are many fine engineers in the Corps, but lest the rest of the country--if not the Iraqis--think "better them than me," look at this story from USA Today citing 146 levees across the U.S. that are in danger of failing--only two of them in Louisiana. Ironically, the report was issued by, you guessed it, the Army Corps of Engineers, who cite lack of maintenance as the problem, rather than Corps construction techniques.

Where have I heard that before?

Where are these levees? Well, the Corps isn't really saying--only identifying them by state but not specific location. I mean, if you knew it was the levee near you, you might force someone to do something to fix it. Better you just don't know till your swimming in a sea of your own possessions. So if you're living in California, where 42 levees are in danger of failing, you gotta wonder...is it the one near me? The other two states with bad levees in the double-digits were Arkansas and Oregon. All in all, 30 states have been targeted.

So get out your waders, all you who said New Orleans deserved to drown because we built on low ground protected by federally maintained levees. You could be next.

We're All That

2007-01-30T09:12:00.000-06:00

After all the neglect, suddenly New Orleans is the It Girl of American politics, a photo op of misery for the stumping presidential wannabes to rally round in indictment of the current administration, a yang to the yin of Iraq. Democrat and Republican alike, they come to stand on our heaps of garbage and talk about how government has failed the American people.

Yeah, yeah. Whatever.

Is it just me, or are you sick of rhetoric? I mean, I'm happy Barack Obama realizes that America is, indeed, in imminent danger of forgetting about New Orleans. I'm glad John Edwards stomped through the Ninth Ward and said he'd be a better president. I'm glad Joe Lieberman chastised recovery czar Donald Powell for the slow pace and his apparent lack of authority as he continued to insist that everything possible is being done.

And did Mayor Ray Nagin really think it was gonna help to tell Lieberman et al that the government's willingness to forget New Orleans was all about race and class? And, God help us, is that true?

But at the end of the day, the politicians will catch flights out of town, C-Ray will retreat to his lofty isolation, and we'll continue slowly down the road home.

New Orleans' Dilemma

2007-01-28T21:18:00.000-06:00

It's not a new dilemma--we've had it, to some degree, for about a year now. It's our Tale of Two Cities. It's the need to let people know things are okay now versus the need to let people know that, really, things are not okay now.

Monday marks 17 months since Katrina made landfall. At the 17-month mark, the 20% of the city that didn't flood is getting on with life. Tulane University is marching toward its second post-K commencement later this spring. The Uptown area, which depends heavily on Tulane and Loyola as its economic engines, seems to be thriving. The French Quarter is open for business, if not exactly busy. Downtown is bustling.

We need people to know that. Tulane's freshman class last fall was way down from its pre-K levels, and people are holding their breath that the new students will come this fall. Parents are afraid to send their kids here--the news is all bad. The TV footage shows 9th-Ward devastation that, to a parent in Minneapolis, is impossible to distinguish from the green, lively university campus his student would actually see. In the Quarter, businesses all over are in danger of failing for lack of customers. The venerable Antoine's is hurting for diners. Why? Because all the convention planners hear about is the murder rate, the slowness of recovery.

People will roll their eyes at the city's new marketing campaign but the parts of town that need the business that will fuel the rest of the city's recovery need it desperately.

And yet. And yet.

There's still the 80% of Orleans Parish that flooded. There's the Lower Ninth Ward, where blocks have been leveled, and houses that weren't leveled tilt precariously, waiting for a good breeze to cause collapse. In Lakeview, there are FEMA trailers in sparse areas, and a few have already rebuilt, but there's also block after block of gutted houses with "For Sale" signs posted by vaguely hopeful owners. There's Midcity, struggling back to its feet slowly but surely. There's Gentilly, where rows of trailers tell a story of hope, but how much is that hope dwindling as time goes on and promised relief lies tangled in a bureaucratic mess? There's Central City, where most of the following pictures were taken just on my short ride to church Sunday morning. I'm so used to seeing it all that I almost don't see it any more--only to have it clarified by a camera lens that makes me see it again and realize how little has changed.

That story needs to be told, too (and let's not even talk about St. Bernard and Plaquemines). These photos below are New Orleans now, on January 29, 2007. But the more the devastation is shown--how, in America, can this be the way a historic city is left to flounder? The more it is shown, the more the business and tourists and potential students stay away from the parts of the city that need to thrive in order to help the rest of the city survive.

What's the answer?

This house on Washington Avenue burned more than six months ago.

The ubiquitous FEMA trailers. They were supposed to be removed after 18 months but there's nowhere else for people to live.

The "Jack-o-Lantern" effect. One person rebuilds, but the neighboring houses are crumbling.

A Midcity supermarket--one of many businesses that won't return. And below, the houses, still marked with flood lines and National Guard search shorthand--the bottom quadrant of the X represents bodies found--speak for themselves.

On a White Horse

2007-01-26T08:21:00.000-06:00

Forget George Bush. The Feds we want are the FBI, who are going to ride in on their white horses and help police this mess of a city.

I've had a fondness for local FBI chief Jim Bernazzani ever since he called nocternal activity in the post-K French Quarter the Super Bowl of Prostitution. Mr. Mayor later stole the phrase and butchered it in a speech but it came from Jim Bernazzani first.

According to today's TP, the FBI is increasing its agents assigned to New Orleans in a Violent Gang Safe Streets Task Force, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives will double its agents as well. The ATF is also giving the hurricane-diminished NOPD with ballistics identification equipment.

At a time when the NOPD is losing on average 17 officers a month, this is sorely needed. And can you blame the police officers? Who would WANT to be a member of the NOPD here? The people distrust them, the DA's office is itchy to prosecute them (while criminals roam free), they have poor equipment--or none at all, and they are daily faced with teenage thugs with lots of firepower, no regard for human life, and no fear of the local revolving door criminal justice system. I sure wouldn't do their job for all the hip-hop in Gert Town.

Gert Town, Pigeon Town and Hollygrove are the areas of Central City that will be initially targeted by the new forces.

To borrow a phrase, Bless You Boys (and Girls). We want our city back.

Priorities? What Priorities?

2007-01-25T08:54:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I know, I know. There are more important things to talk about this (finally) sunny Thursday morning.

There's the new scheme the mayor has concocted to get some no- or low-interest loans into people's hands so they don't have to sit around for months waiting for the Road Home program to get around to them.

There's the outrage that Mawmaw Blanco is expressing over Michael Brown's recent comments that Karl Rove & Co. deliberately dragged their feet over sending help in the immediate aftermath of Katrina so they could take our democratic female governor and "rub her nose in it" that she had to ask them for help.

Or there's the whole flap about mean old Chicago fans making fun of Katrina victims during the playoff game last week.

But, really, I have my priorities straight. We want to know about Brad and Angelina's new house. So in the sake of public interest, I'll forego all those other stories and direct you to the London-based Hello Magazine, which has some Brangelinous photos of the new $1.92 million digs.

Off the Federal Radar

2007-01-24T07:21:00.000-06:00

The rebuilding (or lack thereof) of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast didn't make George W. Bush's State of the Union address last night as he outlined his priorities for the year--but should it have?

In last year's address, just five months after Katrina, it only rated 156 words--a few seconds.

I can't judge how Mississippi has done with rebuilding--I suspect better than us--but until Louisiana can find a way to use the billions in rebuilding monies the federal government has already given us, why in the world should they give us more?

Gov. Kathleen Blanco has seized upon former FEMA head Michael Brown's comments in the past few days to call for an investigation as to whether party politics caused a deliberate delay in the federal response to Louisiana's cries for help in the immediate aftermath of Katrina.

It is certainly worth investigating. But it's also convenient timing, as it gives the embattled governor a chance to divert the attention away from the dismal failures of the Road Home program, which took a year to set up and in the five months since it began taking applications, has doled out federal dollars to fewer than 200 people out of the approximately 100,000 who have applied. So about 98% of the money is still sitting in Washington earmarked for Louisiana while the governor squabbles with the company she's paying tens of millions to for administering the program, while the state accuses Ray Nagin of not applying for monies the city is eligible for, the mayor calls the state a pack of liars, the city council....well, what exactly are they doing?

I don't know about the days immediately following Katrina, but bureaucratic bumbling has certainly hampered rebuilding efforts.

And no amount of money thrown at us by the feds is going to fix that.

New Orleans, Not Iraq

2007-01-23T07:25:00.000-06:00

Not much time this morning--I'm heading off to spend the day sitting in a waiting room at Oschner Baptist...that still sounds weird, doesn't it....waiting for my senior to have shoulder surgery.

Meanwhile, check out this Associated Press story, where Virginia Sen. Jim Webb plans a rebuttal of tonight's State of the Union address from President Bush by pointing out that we're spending more and more in Iraq while one of our own cities languishes. Thank you, Mr. Webb.

Bless You, Boys

2007-01-22T08:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday's NFC Championship game wasn't pretty. It wasn't fun to watch and I'd feel pretty confident asserting that it wasn't fun to play, either--at least not most of it.

But what a cool thing that, even after the Saints' plane was delayed in Chicago and they didn't get back into New Orleans until 1 a.m., there were cheering fans standing in the rain to welcome home the heroes. Not the conquering heroes, but heroes nonetheless.

I'm not sure you can ever really express the diversion and hope the Saints provided New Orleans since trotting back into the Dome last fall. Saturday night's 10 p.m. WWL news broadcast probably illustrates it best. After 20 minutes of covering the Saints and fans in Chicago, they briefly mentioned an "oh, by the way, there were two murders today in New Orleans."

Now, we could go on for days about how inappropriate that was in so many ways, how misplaced the priorities, how jaded, etcetera etcetera etcetera. But, face it, we get to deal in death and misery and anger and disappointment and depression every day--why not grasp the chance to be happy about something, even if it's as fleeting a joy as a perennially losing football team ending a Cinderella season when it was most needed?

Who Dat? Dem's Fightin' Words

2007-01-19T08:42:00.000-06:00

You can't walk two feet around New Orleans these days without someone chirping "Who Dat" in your face, as in "Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?"

So, intrepid reporter that I am, I went in search of the origin of "Who Dat."

The Saints lay claim to the popular chant, but it appears to have started with the Cincinnati Bengals' popular chant, "Who Dey?" According to a Bengals fan site, it began in 1981 when the Bengals faced the Steelers, and they were on a tear when a fan began hollering "Who they think is going to beat them Bengals." Other fans would reply with "Noooo….body." It was said to have spun off a popular car commercial at the time ("Who's going to give you a better deal than Red Frazier? Nooooo…..body.")

Then the "Who Dey" chant was put on a 45 record by Cincinnati weatherman, with the following words:

From the banks of the Ohio comes that orange and black machine
They're the Cincinnati Bengals The finest ever seen
With stripes upon their helmets and fire in their eyes
They'll take the field they will not yield
They're strong and tough and wise
Who Dey.Who Dey, Who Dey think gonna beat them Bengals
Who Dey, Who Dey, Who Dey think gonna beat them Bengals
Who Dey, Who Dey, Who Dey think gonna beat them Bengals
Who Dey, Who Dey, Who Dey think gonna beat them Bengals

Well, it goes on (and on and on) but you get the picture.

According to the site, "New Orleans Saints fans want to lay claim" to "Who Dat" as the origin of "Who Dey," but claims "Who Dat" didn't make it to NOLA till 1983, in the Bum Phillips era, when fans picked up on the "Who Dey" chant and changed it to "Who Dat."

"The reason many believe it came from the Saints, was because their Who Dat chant was popular the 1987 season and the Bengals Who Dey chant was ringing loud in peoples ears during the Bengals Super Bowl season of 1988," the site says.

But actually, the site says, the Saints fans took the chant from LSU, who picked it up from the Bengals in 1982 when they went to the Orange Bowl the year after the Bengals played in the Super Bowl.

Got all that? The Saints stole it from LSU, who stole it from the Cincinnati Bengals.

Dem's fightin' words.

Mr. Inscrutable

2007-01-18T08:47:00.000-06:00

That would be Mr. Ed, the Road Home Inspector, who came over to look at my house yesterday with one hour's notice. Of course, I wasn't expecting that so I was unprepared. But we did the inside and outside walk-through, he tooks some photos, and the whole process took maybe 15-20 minutes.

Now we wait, an estimated 4-6 weeks, to see if the Powers That Be in Baton Rouge think I am eligible for any money.

Meanwhile, the numbers continue to climb: 99,000 applicants, 177 people who've actually received money. Oh, and highly paid "administrators"--now, 2. Yep, they've hired a firm to help market the Road Home program to African American and Asian citizens of New Orleans who might not have heard about the program but are eligible to apply. They are concerned that only 99,000 of the eligible 130,000 have applied. They are having Saints-watching parties in Atlanta and Houston and inviting displaced New Orleanians to get drunk, watch a little Deuce and hear a little spiel about the Road Home promises.

Glad all that federal money is getting used somewhere.

Ruminations, Again

2007-01-17T08:12:00.000-06:00

Haven't done this in a while. Just odds and ends. Think of it as a cyber-pensieve. (Alert! Harry Potter reference!)

-- Brad and Angelina have bought a $3.5 million, six-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath mansion in the French Quarter and want their kids to go to school here. Which begs the question...why? Okay, I know why they moved here--if you like a little eccentricity with your breakfast, this place does get under your skin. And I think, given "Brangelina's" high profile, it's a good thing for New Orleans. So where is this place they want their kids go to school? Can you say...Metairie Country Day, perhaps? I hope they keep 'em in Orleans Parish.

-- Juxtapose Brangelina's $3.5 million mansion against all the poor people trying to force their way back into ramshackle, unsafe, $25-a-month public housing projects a few miles away. And there you have New Orleans in a nutshell.

-- It's great that the Saints will be playing in the NFC Championship game in Chicago on Sunday, but has it occurred to local weatherpeople that a few people MIGHT want to hear the local weather during the week instead of only looking ahead to see there might be snow flurries in Chicago on Sunday?

-- A friend and I ran into a young couple at the Elmwood Petsmart last Saturday who had a new American Bulldog puppy they hadn't named yet. We suggested "Deuce"--and that was before we saw Deuce McAllister bulldoze his way across the goal line carrying two entire football teams on his back. Wonder if Deuce is housebroken yet?

Bad Joke Tuesday

2007-01-16T09:08:00.000-06:00

Because going from the Silence is Violence march to the Saints Big Win to the protest to reopen the housing projects is just too much of an emotional roller-coaster. Don't know where this originated but a friend e-mailed it to me this morning:

Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Riley visited a class in a local elementary school yesterday and the teacher suggested that they participate in the day's vocabulary lesson. "Today's word is tragedy, " said the mayor.

"Can anyone give an example of a tragedy?" asked the police chief.

One child raised her hand. "If a drug dealer was trying to shoot another drug dealer and hit my sister instead," the child offered.

"No," said the police chief, "that would be an accident. Anyone else?"

"How about if everyone quit visiting the city, my daddy lost his job and couldn't provide for me?" another child ventured.

"No," said the mayor, "although that would be a great loss. One more answer from Johnny in the back."

"Well," said Johnny, "if the mayor and police chief were shoved off the viewing platform during a Mardi Gras parade and killed when a float ran them over, THAT would be a tragedy!"

"Now that's correct," agreed the mayor and police chief. "And can you tell us why?"

"Of course," confirmed Johnny, "because it sure as hell wouldn't be a great loss, and I doubt very seriously if it would be an accident."

A Tale of Two Cities (or, Why Football Matters)

2007-01-14T07:45:00.000-06:00

I don't normally post on Sunday but I gotta, you know? And besides, tomorrow's MLK day and I'm off from work so why not post on Sunday instead of Monday.

A month ago, I thought, "football's nice but doesn't really matter." Heck, a week ago I thought, "Gee, it would be nice if the Saints won." But it was abstract. Last night, as I seesawed between elation, despair and heart failure, I realized it does matter. It matters alot, and why is that?

I have friends who are sports fanatics and I stress the word "fanatic." It's like an avocation, with beer.

But if you look at the 72-hour period in New Orleans between Thursday morning and Saturday night, you see why the Saints are so important.

This is a city divided. It's divided between black and white. It's divided between who flooded and who didn't. It's divided between who had insurance and who's waiting for the Road to Nowhere-Like-Home. It's divided between liberals and conservatives, and who -voted-for-whom. It's divided between thugs and taxpayer, between the DA's office and the NOPD, between Ray Nagin and his citizens, and between criminals and victims.

There's a lot of anger in this divisiveness, and it spilled into the streets 5,000 strong on Thursday when the people who have remained silent too long finally spoke out.

But last night, there was joy. Pure joy, with a little beer tossed in. And running around doing errands in New Orleans yesterday there was Saints black and gold everywhere--from a boa on an uptown lady having lunch, to a couple of black kids running down the sidewalk on Louisiana Avenue, to the young single mother and her son in Petsmart adoping a cat named Chip. There were no divisions--there was only the Saints.

And when they took the field last night in the Dome, it mattered. And for just a few hours, we were a city united. Don't you wish it could stay that way?

The Blame Game

2007-01-12T08:36:00.000-06:00

It would be easy to sit here and chuckle over Mayor Ray Nagin's obvious discomfort at yesterday's anti-murder march, as he sat there waiting to speak--only to be told he could have his own press conference if he had anything to say. It would also be easy to tell all the folks chewing him a new one that "you re-elected him--live with it."

But a very strange thing happened in my household yesterday as I watched TV coverage of the march.

I found myself feeling sorry for the guy. I mean, the mayor looked ready to burst into tears as he was told, in no uncertain terms, that he had failed us, that he had disappointed us, that he had let us down.

He didn't have the Revs. Jackson or Sharpton to pump him up and hold his hand. He was on his own, and looking hard-pressed to maintain his easygoing persona.

But really, folks, let's be fair. The mayor deserves to be railed for his lack of planning and playing to the masses. He deserves blame for not making the hard decisions that would have led to a more orderly and faster recovery. And, okay he did hire Warren Riley.

But Ray Nagin didn't elect "Rabid" Eddie Jordan--we did. And Ray Nagin didn't create this dysfunctional system of police vs. DA's office--it existed long before he was elected pre-Katrina. And Ray Nagin didn't create the crime problem. Remember the escalating crimes that led to the hiring of Richard Pennington as police chief back in the bad old days pre-Ray? And, finally, Ray Nagin didn't create the new network of criminals and drugs running the traffick between New Orleans and Houston--Katrina did.

But whether C-Ray shares much of the blame or not, it's all being laid at his feet now, and he has to respond. We'll see how he does it. Light-hearted jokes won't work in the face of murder.

The March

2007-01-11T07:22:00.000-06:00

Today's the "March on Crime," when citizens will take to the streets and march to City Hall. It's 11 a.m., and I hope they have a huge turnout. I say "they" because I'll be sitting in a doctor's office on Napoleon Avenue with an 81-year-old mother who has torn her rotator cuff sanding cabinets. That kind of thing happens in New Orleans these days.

It's kind of sad, though, that it took a young, activist white mother to be murdered before the people of the city really got up in arms over crime. As long as it's young thugs taking each other out, it's easy to ignore and think "doesn't affect me."

But the culture of fear affects us all, and if we disregard the life of a gun-toting teenager, aren't we as guilty as they are of disrespecting the value of a life?

The problem, though , is what to do about it. The current generation is probably beyond salvage in any meaningful social sense. But what can we do about the children growing up surrounded by violence, who idolize their older brothers (I say "brothers" because violence is overwhelmingly male)? How do we reverse the cycle of drugs and gangs and disregard for life? How do we make the "American Dream" real for these kids again?

More questions than answers.

Parenthood

2007-01-10T08:15:00.001-06:00

Was it just me, or did the mayor, DA, police chief and city council members look pretty well stumped as they made pronouncements yesterday about how we were going to get a handle on crime in New Orleans?

They're going to step up police patrols between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Uh, why wasn't that already being done?

NOPD Chief Riley is going to pull more officers off desk duty and put them on the streets. Good idea. Why did it take a public outcry to make that happen?

There's talk of hiring a "crime czar" to coordinate and oversee crime strategies--a police commissioner, in effect, to look at best practices from other cities. Didn't they all go trotting off to New York and Boston a year ago to look at best practices--with no results?

There's the proposal to install crime-surveillance cameras--25 per police district--at sites determined by the communities and NOPD. Great. At least you can have the shootings on film.

I shouldn't pooh-pooh these ideas because, goodness knows, it can't hurt. But in all the talks of increasing police presence and chiding the public for not coming forward as witnesses, I haven't heard a single comment addressed to the parents of the gun-toting teens who are holding our entire city hostage.

Excuse me, but don't you figure if your 15-year-old is out on the streets somewhere at 3 a.m., he's probably up to no good? Do you ever, pardon the pun, rifle through your kids' stuff to see if there are guns or drugs? Do you make your kids go to church? Participate in family activities? Account for himself in any way whatsoever? Do you ever even TALK to your kids in any meaningful way?

I propose arresting parents along with any offenders 18 and under. Maybe the threat of some jail time would create at least the illusion of responsible parenthood.