Mercredi

Mustard-Whiskey-Glazed Ham
~Serious Eats

Judge authorizes class action suit for New Orleans school employees fired after Katrina

Terrebonne Parish School Board's plan gathers dust
~Robert Zullo

Edwin Edwards Still Kicking Louisiana In The Butt
~Jeff Crouere

New Orleans Faces "The Nation"
~Harry Shearer
~"It's holiday time and we probably all want to be thinking about something other than bloodshed and disaster. But the editors at The Nation feel otherwise. In the January 5 issue, they've run a long investigative piece on perhaps a dozen unsolved shootings of African-American men in the largely-white New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers Point in the days after the event shorthanded as Katrina. It's a lengthy, painstaking piece of work.
And, just like the work of much of the mainstream media about the disaster in New Orleans three-plus years ago, it lies."

St. Henry’s to hold Christmas Eve service, despite closing
~Michael Luke, WWL

OSHA probes complaint at Exxon Baton Rouge refinery

In just months, Cuba back from storms ~David Adams

Iowa Small Businesses Still Want $200 Million for Flood Recovery

Ike victims caught in a new whirlwind~Purva Patel
~Homeowners struggle to deal with limits on their flood policies and local rules requiring them to pay more to rebuild up to code.

Kansas Levee system under review~Very few engineering firms are willing to do the certification work FEMA requires, which often results in cities paying out sums similar to what Osawatomie paid to have their own levees certified.
“I can’t be for certain, but my suspicion would be that many engineering firms are probably not comfortable putting their insurance and licenses on the line to certify a structure they did not design to begin with,” Osawatomie City Manager Bret Glendening said. Glendening added that many of the levees in the U.S. were built by the Corps of Engineers, then turned over to cities like Osawatomie to maintain.
Please click and enter zip code.

Wash. state finds 30 dangerous illegal dams ~Shannon Dininny

Exquisite Corps awards $900M in energy-saving contracts

Swiss Re Estimates That Over 238,000 People Were Killed by Catastrophes in 2008, Insured Losses Soar to $50 Billion

Update: Pagan ritual celebrates Rudolph's demise~Citizen K

Point and Place:
William Eggleston's Vibrant Spaces~Barry Schwabsky
Untitled, circa 1975, Eggleston Artistic Trust/Cheim & Read, NYC

"Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it's just about impossible to follow up with words. They don't have anything to do with each other...Art, or what we call that, you can love it and appreciate it, but you can't really talk about it.
Doesn't make any sense."~Bill Eggleston,

Special thanks~Muse-ings

Possibly 4th Street:
Bonerama Christmas Special
~Rob Trucks