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Talk about unexpected consequences.
I doubt anyone looking at new coverage of the 2005 flood would have bet that applications to New Orleans colleges and universities would rise, but that’s exactly what’s happening.
Not only are applications up, they’re up dramatically.
More here: USA Today article
North America’s other fleur-de-lis city…I come here whenever I can…It’s five hours up the North Way by car.
I think New Orleaneans would feel very at home here…great food, lots of live music, very friendly people…sensual, inclusive, compassionate and all those good things…they know how to live.
New Orleans was actually founded by a Montrealer…and the one Montreal friend who came to visit me in New Orleans last winter loved it.
A typical Montreal event today…
Spain won a big soccer match and the Spanish residents of the city went wild and took over St. Lawrence which is a main thoroughfare for a spontaneous street party…no problem…the cops just rerouted traffic…
(Note to self: Gotta go to Spain. My cousin Frank who was in the merchant marine and has literally seen every port on the world, answered without hesitation when I asked him what was the best place he ever visited: “Spain!”)
I’m back in New York for the summer in search of New Orleans-like events.
The best one so far…the annual Mermaid Parade at Coney Island which just celebrated its 25th anniversary.
New Orleans has a lot more parades, but in Coney Island they can take their parade into the sea, which they did.
Lots of New Orleans influences here. Note “St. James Infirmary” being played as the brass band marches back to shore.
Shot with my $95 camera and my crash and bang edit system.
Just discovered this one on YouTube. It’s by someone called BrothaE. It’s called “Dreaming.”
Larry came to our benefit workshop last April for St. John’s Church #5 in the 7th Ward and then went with us to visit the various rebuilding projects they’re working on.
It was a pleasant surprise to discover that he’s the new president of NOREIA, the New Orleans Real Estate investment Association.
In my mind there need be no conflict between grass roots entrepreneurship and social justice. In fact, the two forces well-joined can create miraculous changes in material conditions.
Larry is developing a new model for harnessing ethical entrepreneurial energy to bring blighted homes back on the market in New Orleans, a city that needs this desperately. And if the model works in NOLA - and I’m sure it - it will work everywhere.
UC Berkeley Professor Ray Seed discusses what California can learn from New Orleans and how to prevent a similar catastrophe in California and the rest of the country.
This talk was delivered September 12, 2006. Astonishing for its detail so soon after the catastrophe. Astonishing for how few people have had access to this basic information nearly three years later.
“The most costly peace-time failure of an engineered system in North American history.”
“Much worse than most people realize…”
The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank uses electronic media to collect, preserve and present the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The University of New Orleans and George Mason’s Center for History and New Media created and maintain this online database in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and other institutions.
Click here for more: The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
“We demand that the government severely punish the killers who caused the collapse of the levees.
Please everyone sign the petition so we can find out the truth.”
The crowd grew more agitated. Some parents said local officials had known for years that the levees were unsafe but refused to take action. Others recalled that two hours passed before rescue workers showed up.
“The people responsible for this should be brought here and have a bullet put in their head.” Said a parent holding a photo of his 16 year old daughter.
New Orleans?
Actually, China. I substituted the word “levees” for “schools.”
This came from the front page of today’s New York Times. The topic is the anger of Chinese citizens against the government for knowingly allowing unsafe infrastructure that resulting in the death of thousands of people.
“Bullet in the head” for the people responsible? Rough justice in old China.
And imagine. They had to wait two whole hours for relief workers to show up.
This is not to minimize the horror and tragedy of what happened in China - and Burma. It is meant to show that even in countries overtly ruled by gun thugs, people have retained their common sense and sense of outrage, something apparently lost in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
Citizens take up burden of storm relief
“Andrew Jack reports from the capital on how help from individuals for the victims is in sharp contrast to the response from the ruling regime.
…Ordinary citizens are taking up the task of providing relief to the regions worst effected by the storm.
Resigned to the government’s inability to safeguard it’s own citizens, a disparate network of individuals, businesses, and religious groups are braving their own hardships to organize convoys of supplies, food and medicine to send to the delta.
…Private relief appeared to outnumber official aid operations.”
New Orleans and the Gulf Coast?
Yes.
But this happens to be a description that appeared in today’s’ Financial Times of the current state of affairs in Burma, a bottom-of-the-economic-barrel Third World country run by a group of power mad psychopaths.
What’s Washington’s excuse?
It’s a mystery - to the Times-Picayune at least - why police harassment of backstreet culture in New Orleans continues, and who is behind it and why.
First, in every city that I know, the mayor runs the police because it’s the mayor who appoints the police chief. One word from the mayor and the word would trickle down: leave the Indians and second lines alone, or if there is a reason for communicating, do it with the same respect you’d afford people attending the opera or symphony.
Treme seems to be the battleground now. It must have to do with real estate and the desire of the city to “gentrify” north of Rampart. Why they think it’s necessary to kill the culture of the Treme in the process - one of the most culturally significant places in North America (and the world) - is another great American mystery.
Destroy what’s great to replace it with…what exactly?
On my last night in New Orleans I went to see Indians ‘a comin’
I didn’t post this earlier because I learned later that night after also seeing Papa Mali that my mom had passed away.
Dorothy McCarthy - (October 1, 1923 - May 1, 2008)
Interestingly enough, my mom didn’t like New Orleans I had learned a few months earlier, but then again she never had a chance to really get to know it. She was in and out in just a few days and only saw the business district and just dipped into the Quarter.
The first time I visited New Orleans in 1990, I didn’t think much of it either. Like my mom, I was just there for a few days (I was on my way somewhere else) and had no idea how to get “into” the city.
I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about sharing New Orleans now. To know New Orleans is to love it and more needs to be done to let people know about the wonders here.
For example, of my four most hard-core jazz fan friends (and two of these guys are as seriously hard-core as any on earth with record collections in the thousands) none of them has ever been to New Orleans! There must be millions of people like this.
Anyway, off to Tipitina’s…
A good article about the challenges facing the Indians