Samedi

Bite de'heads off nibble de'tiny feets!~New Orleans Daily Photo

Landrieu slams New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin in new book~Shenanigans

Karl Rove and Katrina
~John McQuaid

Survivors, Workers Look Back on Myanmar Cyclone~NPR
Editilla rememberizes~How lucky we are to have our stories to tell, hard as they come and hard as they fall.
But, in order to have stories, we must have the tellers, the survivors, the witnesses. We survive to tell as
Burma does not, opposite sides of the same coin.
Karl Rove had every intention of holding back aid to Louisiana in order to shift the political landscape.
Of that your witness, Editilla, is absolutely convinced. Karl Rove had every intention of letting enough of us die to advance their neocoward, Machiavelli'wannabe, Limbaudian, McRhetorical syllodomists agenda.
In short, our lives were inconsequential in their larger game. Karl Rove was playing a game of Fasces with our lives. Surely he obviously envies the Butchers of Burma their efficient grip on Irreality & Total Power.
Burma has Monsoon season now too.
This will do much to finish their job, advance their final solution, wash away further evidence of the Junta's crimes against humanity, much like another hurricane here would do through the 17th Street Canal Leak. Speaking of which, Tim Ruppert, have you or any of your Corpatriots, or anyone else, checked on those
"Little Wet Spots" lately?

Rebuilding Jewish Life in New Orleans~"You'd think that when you're hit with a major disaster it would knock you flat and you wouldn't have the strength to get up again. But what this community has said is, we're not accepting that. We think we're important, and we have a future, and we intend to go to some significant place, and we'll do whatever it takes to get there."~Michael Weil, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans

New Orleans group that raised money for city defending itself
~Editilla reposts this from yesterday's Ladder, because it is bouncing all over the internet--almost as much as the blog'a'boo wit'dat Beotch Karly Rove, and with as much rightists' vitriol. Without contacting them on this story,
here is my experience with one friend of New Orleans.
Last year on a sorta different matter of the distinction of
the Federal Flood of New Orleans as a man'made disaster rather than a natural one, I had the opportunity to correspond with one of the board members for this group. I found them open, accessible, honest and resilient to my, errrah, blunt (to put it nicely) 3700'word prognosis of their article in the Chicago Tribune, which I felt had misdirected the cause of the flooding of New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina and away from the murderous lying dogs who built the failed levees:
the US Army Corps of Engineers. Infamous manners,
Gentle'rillas are aware of my tact on a few Corps Issues:
-death to Fascists, Pedophiles and the Corps of Engineers.
So, after quite a few long emails back and fourth, I have no doubts as to that particular author's love and soul commitment to Nola. They got it with me.
As I know they regularly climb this Ladder, I wish to give FONO a Hat Tip to say that these people have earned my respect and support here in this issue with the Big Party.
They deserve a hand for the work they have done for this city. The Jackals of Apocalypse NO await any chance to pounce upon our city and drag her into their slime, as they are doing now with this erroneous press release.
So, if you have the time at least check these folks out,
and if yaz like 'em, let 'em know we care, eh?
When one of us takes a hit we all take it--or NOT!

New Orleans schools chief chips away at big issues
~Editilla ticks and rolls a glass eye~
Interesting choice of words there: "chips away".
Difficult decisions about reopening, rebuilding or demolishing storm-damaged schools also have evoked emotional responses from neighborhood groups. Who amongst'yaz begs ta'diffa here, eh?

Obama's Record on New Orleans
~The American Condition

Aid for Katrina’s Disabled Homeless Population Could Be Cut~Facing South

Grants not going to renters

FEMA Park Closures Test Recovery Promise

Hammes to manage development of New Orleans hospital

State Gears Up Shelter Plans For Upcoming Storm Season

Coralville Reservoir could top spillway, flood Iowa City by Tuesday
~Gage Readings: Iowa River below Coralville damn
WAVICS Satellite view->
WAVICS
~Wave-Current-Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana
USGS
~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings

Guaranteed to leak~Florida just can't seem to catch a fair break in its long-running effort to be treated as an equal partner with Georgia and Alabama in a long-sought tri-state water agreement affecting the Apalachicola- Chattahoochee-Flint river system.

Emeril suspected in Paul Prudhomme shooting
~The New Orleans Levee

Kim Vermillion in New Orleans

~Frank Borzellieri reveals for the first time that so many of the bizarre, supposedly supernatural occurrences on Dark Shadows actually have their basis in scientific reality.

New Thrift Store on Bienville in Mid City NOLA
~Thrifting In Oblivion

SDSU students hold benefit for New Orleans



Sun takes can-do spirit to struggling New Orleans


Artist Reggie Ford and girlfriend Kerri Jones next to Reggie’s “Reflection of the City,” on display in the lobby of the New Orleans Hilton Riverfront.
Photo courtesy Pontchartrain Pete and Streetcar Art
~thank you-blogofneworleans.com

The Art of Patience
~Did We Survive Hurricane Katrina or Not

Alan Flatmann pastel workshop at Barnwell
~Trudeau on Shreveport

Cajun Meatloaf
~Experience New Orleans

SOFAB opens in New Orleans ~Aroma Cucina

Resilient Culinary Cultures:
Disaster, Innovation and Change in Foodscapes
The 21st Joint Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) and the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (AFHVS) ~June 4 - 8, Photo-Seeds of Change

trans•act 2008 Launches in Los Angeles and New Orleans ~Farmers Market Coalition
Y'all make sure to hit the Feret Street Mkt, Uptown at Feret and Napolean this Saturday (1st Sat of each month)...as well as downtown at the Crescent City Farmers Market~~and all you Chowhounds and Cucinatics and foodies about town please do let yer Hungry, Damn'near Salivatin Editeurillas know what y'all come up'wit...who'dat what'cookin?

Ned Sublette ~Garnette Cadogan ~T'n'T~Zentronix

He Still Loves New Orleans,
and Now He’s Mad

51~Toulouse Street

Vendredi

HA!!! NO ICE FOR YOU!
~Did We Survive Hurricane Katrina or Not

Judge: Miss. AG, trial lawyer Scruggs conspired

Katrina aid could get budget ax

Gulf Coast: Katrina Aide
~Gulf South Free Press

Oh, yeah, this just keeps getting better~Liptrap's Lament

Breaking: Senter tells Renfroe No Sanctions, Calls Policyholders Casualties ~slabbed
Apologies, for not hanging this one earlier! D'OH!

How Karl Rove played politics while people drowned~Salon
~T'n'T-First Draft

Obama won't be coming to New Orleans

Why Obama Can Win Louisiana ~CenLamar

2008 Democratic National Convention Delegate Event to Recognize the Spririt of New Orleans

Let's hear it for Jefferson family values~James Gill

Trailers in N.O. must go by July 1

St. Tammany set for another Katrina milestone
~Another milestone for recovery in St. Tammany Parish from Hurricane Katrina will be met by the end of the summer when all travel trailers must be gone from front yards or homes in residential areas.

Port of New Orleans Hotel Offers New Voluntourism Package

The Big Easy Spirit to Serve Voluntourism Getaway Package includes:

• Care Concierge – Once reservations are confirmed, the Care Concierge will provide recommendations via email on local volunteer organizations for guests who want to help
• Donation to Local Charity - $50 of package rate will be donated to Habitat for Humanity to help in the revitalization of the Big Easy
• Goodies for Do-Gooding – Guests will be armed with breakfast to help keep them fueled throughout the day
• Rates from $149 - $249

New Orleans Area MRGO Canal De-Authorized

Corps endorses plans for storm surge wall

Critics fault Army Corps designation of part of LA River

Army Corps to design W-14 Canal upgrades

WAVICS
~Wave-Current-Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana

USGS
~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings

New Orleans Emergency Connectivity Having Problems

New Orleans mayor, Ray "Baby Head, Chocolate Don, Candy Man, Mad Dog" Nagin leads delegation to S. Africa

Katrina evacuees lower native worker wages~The Witness Box

WMS student organizes fundraiser for New Orleans school

97 Quirky New Orleans Discoveries

Hey! I bet I can tell you where you Got Them Shoes?~Soles4Souls Inc. Donates 130,000 Shoes in Atlanta and New Orleans

How to Think Like a Surreal Cartoonist
Illustrator
Lynda Barry
has questions:
What is an image? Where is your imagination? What is an imaginary friend, and are there imaginary enemies? Can you have thoughts without language?
Barry grapples with these ideas and more in her new book of collages, What It Is.~Gumbo Groove

Ignatius and Me: or, My Love Affair with a Book~Bill Ross

Literary Homecoming ~blogofneworleans.com

June Festivals!!

La Fête de Marquette : 2008 Schedule~Muzzle of Bees

A week's worth of great music

Tip's~Free Fridays~ Paul Sanchez & The Rolling Road Band With special guests Matt Perrine, Eric Bolivar, Craig Klein, and Shamar Allen
~Saturday~"PotLuckCon's Benefit Concert for Sweet Home New Orleans" Bonerama and Joey & John from Calexico and Chris Stamey with Mitch Easter and A reunion of the Blues Magoos

For Jazz’s Avant-Garde, an Annual Gathering and a Little Competition

The Future Of Music?
Ha! They Wish!~2008 Pot Luck Audio Conference (PotLuckCon), June 7-8 at the Sheraton New Orleans.

Fierce Swing, Deep Grooves and Even a Little Singing
~Growing up in a jazz family in New Orleans, the trumpeter Nicholas Payton absorbed a host of lessons about melody, rhythm and the implicit arrangement between an artist and his audience.

Grayson Capps, fresh off his 'Songbones' tour, tonight at dba

Frank Zappa's son is keeping the focus on the music

Homecoming On Muddy Ground
~Jazzhouse Diaries

IT'S A TRAP! SCANDINAVIAN MUSIC JOURNAL~Check out a video of Swedish-born/New Orleans-based artist Theresa Andersson performing the song "Na na na" live with an array of loop pedals.

Jeudi

HOWLPOP~hey check out the online opposite machine ya'all you can pop those troubles in from anywhere now and read up on one myth involving the beginnings www.oppositemachine.com

Snake Oil~Greg Peters, The Independent Weekly

The Exorcist, Jindal, and The Oxford Review~Humid City

The Shameful Irony of McCain’s New Orleans Speech
~Greg Saunders

Somone Ask Him
~We Could Be Famous


Please go to You Tube and vote on this video Right Now
Dear all,
It's been 24 hours and we completed another very successful YouTube campaign. Our two new videos made it to the Home Page of YouTube in News & Politics!
Click here to see!
Our membership has also topped 20,000.
Click here to admire!
Thank you for your hard work and dedication in supporting the mission and goals of Levees.Org!
Sandy
--
Sandy Rosenthal
Founder and Executive Director, Levees.Org
www.levees.org
Editilla chin'schillas~forkin'hell yeah!!!
Go Levees.org!!!

Insurer must pay grocer $21M for Katrina damage
“It’s the biggest Katrina judgment in Louisiana or Mississippi that we know of,” said Philip Franco, who represented Robert’s Fresh Markets owner Marc Robert II against U. F. & C. Insurance Co.
Editilla ahems & amens~
This is where yer oh'so humble, frightened and increasingly desperate Editeurilla
"made our groceries", during what I euphemistically refer to as "The Troubles" that first week of the flood.
There were even children, "shopping" with their families, pushing little looted toy shopping carts through the 8 or so inches of water in the dark broad daylight, finally allowed to have all the candy they every wanted.
There were probably 300 people flowing all over in and out of the store at Elysian Fields and St. Claude. There were really scary guys trying to break into the safe and working over the ATM--but the other folks, "shoppers" were kinda "together" and trying to stay as cool as possible. Someone actually said "excuse me" when they bumped into me. People were helping little old ladies. The place was getting torn apart.
Legend had it that a departing evacuating manager deliberately left the security door open about an inch and unlocked. Legend had it that even the owners had said fuck it. The reality was that our dogs got food, we got water, my friends got their complicated mental medications, doctors got antibiotics and bandages, creeps got thrills...and the children got their candy.
It will evermore rank as one of the strangest goddamned scenes that I have ever witnessed...until of course we stepped outside into the bright hot fetid light of crucified New Orleans...then the scenario changed again and Kafka rolled over in his grave again and again,
over and over and over they all rolled...
Upon each of my many and regular trips back to New Orleans since The Troubles, I stand in front of that still closed grocery store, and I try to do the closest thing you will ever catch Editilla to praying.
Every single return to the city,
amidst no small amount of guilt
I thank Goddess that I can still give thanks.
I thank Robert's for leaving, if not the light on
--the door open!
I thank the people I know and the others seen keeping their shit together while so many others lost theirs.
I thank my former landlord and now friend for riding me and my dog Flora out of that maelstrom finally.
I thank my friends who have survived...
and those friends who have not.

I thank those who have helped me and Flora (rest her soul) along to the point where I can thank especially the Nola Bloggers and the Rising Tide for giving me hope and direction in the work of this Ladder.
Still, I find it hard to not feel estranged by the wake of such deeply held grief, such Blessings of the Lost.
I reach a point in my approaches to The City...where I no longer understand her love, her longevity, her novelty.
The person you meet here clinging to this Ladder is not the person I didn't recognize that day we hit Robert's.
It would appear that oft'times gentle'rillas may be surprised to discover climbing this ladder, an animal, even a monster, more akin to the thing I became then.
We're working on that, but it is sad, ya'know?
I could not do a damn thing to save anyone's ass then,
my sense of inadequacy spread so thin as to seem surreal in its poignancy, very much like the Divine Comedy.
That first trip to "Make Groceries" is when my nightmares mated my daymares, the first of many labor pains which grew as time contracted towards some horrid event horizon and the water settled into the viscosity of death still'born.
It was that bad don't anyone ever forget it!
But now??? Read my creed.
Editilla Am Beotchwolf!
Whateva it forkin'takes!
Nevermore... Sinn Féin

WAVICS~Wave -Current -Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana

USGS~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings

Cyclonerita

Exquixotic Corps
~Everywhere you want to be!
~CA-U.S. Army Corps of Engineers confirms non-navigable status for most of L.A. River
~FL-Florida Loses Water Wars
~GA-A Sensible Decision
~KS-Army scientists, engineers prepare for hurricanes

Deep Freeze~Shira bat Sarah
~After criticism and due to financial reasons, FEMA will no longer bring in ice after a hurricane strikes. Instead, the job will now go to the Army Corps of Engineers.

House blasts FEMA, HUD

Congress Fumes Over FEMA Funds~Gulf South Free Press

FEMA says no to repair money
~HUD has no cash to fix public housing

Happy trailers to you~TP

Yes, Accredited Schools Would Be A Good Thing?
~Liprap's Lament-Holds da'Line

Short Fiction Writing Workshop at Alvar Branch on Saturday ~nolabrarian

Plugtastic!~The Chicory
- Varg-onaught will be slinging folk / outsider art crafted from salvaged wood around the New Orleans area this Saturday from noon until 5 p.m. at the Freret Market on Freret and Napoleon Avenue.

Chance to engage and learn from New Orleans
The Durban public is warmly invited to attend a public address by New Orleans Mayor, C. Ray Nagin, about his city’s experiences surviving Hurricane Katrina, to be held in the Durban City Hall on Tuesday 10 June at 11:30am, as part of an official visit to Durban by the mayor of New Orleans and his civic entourage.

Conference of black mayors: Obama's nomination 'historic' ~Watch: Conference Buzz

Spinning the Media
~The Independent Weekly

Company touts recovery sites

Get flood insurance, disaster chief urges
Given their ratio of payments to premiums, the insurance industry's absolute abandonment of honor on policy, why is it not better to just put that money in a jar under the dog house, perhaps a big dog's house?

Famed Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans to Be Reborn as a Waldorf=Astoria Collection®

Loss lingers: Mental health summit looks at issues

40 miles for Lupus

Research affiliate envisions towering Katrina memorial

True to its name, Greensburg rebuilds sustainably after tragedy

The $19 Billion Question

Two Kid Friendly Restaurants on Magazine ~MetBlogs

Dutchman~Courtesy of Tomato Bob--Yeah!

Mercredi

June 4, 2008
Blog Blast For Peace
~casa de Charlotte della luna

Watch: Army Corps Shows Off Upgraded Hurricane Protection
“You can’t out-engineer Mother Nature,” Army Corps of Engineers Col. Jeffery Bedey said. But the Corps said its giving it its best shot, particularly at the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet.
~Editilla can't sit stilla!~Wit'Apologies to
dear Charolette's Bloggin'Peace Blast:)
~Apparently Col. Bedey can't even "Out-Engineer" his way Onto the Engineering Certification List for the State of Louisiana.
Perchance one of you smart Nola Bloggers can go out and find this fellow's Engineering License Number or at the very least go check their work wherever they say they have worked. I went to the 17th Street Canal Leak and found out that they are lying like dead dogs about having done a single thing about it. Now this man Jeffery Bedey wears a hat and has rank. But does he have an engineering license in the State of Louisiana? Hello, Nameless Tim Ruppert? Do you or any of your fellow linkeys in the blog'0'sphere or over at the ASCE know this guy? He is not the person put fourth as head of that project a couple of weeks ago. That would have been Mike Park, Hurricane Protection System Program Manager for the Corps, or Kevin Wagner who has been demoted to "Corps Spokesman".
Mxz. Aguillera, today's spokes'piece, was just recently transferred here from Oregon. What does she know about Shine'Nola and Louisiana Flood Control, other than apparently, that Presidente Bush is doing a heck'of'a job? And by the way note how she mumbles at the end of her speil something about waiting for Congress, as if we all know it is always someone else, usually those silly politicians, or of late Mother Nature, who is in the way of their mandate--never the Exquixotic Corps, eh?
Who will be spokes'piece next week?
They learned this in their PR class: Keep saying something, anything--especially if it is bullshit, off'point, erroneous, misdirection slight'of'hand. But give the questioning public something. What this fellow says now contradicts what they have said earlier which contradicted what they had said before as to what they mean when they say "Closing MRGO". Unfortunately their ambiguity will cost more lives in the event of another catestrophic failure of their engineering works. I hate to be this way but they are lying through their forking teeth.
Is Jeffery Bedey an engineer or not? Has he ever actually built anything? And if not then WTF is he doing talking to We the Tax Payers about our safety from storm surge and flood control? Robert Bea has actually Built Things and signed his Name to the work. But still, one does not have to be an engineer to simply go and just look at where these liars say they are working. Everyone should check behind the Exquixotic Corps. Just go and see if they are doing what they say they are doing where they say they are doing it. And if, like Nameless Tim Ruppert, you are an alleged civil engineer, and past president of the Louisiana Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers<--who performed already discredited IPET report which misdirects and whitewashes the Corps culpability in those initilal levee failures if 8/29/05--then it is even more encumbent upon you to do so before publicly disparaging as "simply paid litigant consultants" Real Engineers who have Actually Built Things...like Robert Bea. The reason that a Judge will allow testimony by engineers like Robert Bea or experts like Raymond Seed or Robert Meade is because these people sign their names at the bottom of their work. The Corps of Engineers does not do this. The USGS will sign their name to their work. Any Real Engineer will sign their name to their work. That is why they achieve licensing. It matters. The US Army Corps of Engineers never persents us with anyone willing to sign their name at the bottom of their engineering work. Nay, they hide behind their "Project" like so many Nazis did at Nuremberg. They are just following orders. They have paid media spokes'peices for the general public, or seemingly "uninterested parties" to spread innuendo on the side in the blog'o'sphere, as Tim Ruppert attempted to do here in the comments section of this Ladder not 2 weeks ago. At first I thought I had unwittilngly offended a concerned Nola Blogger of the Rising Tide community, but then I discovered that he is a paid lackey of the Corps/ASCE, actually has a financial interest in smearing Robert Bea's 48 years of Real Engineering Expertise. Tim Ruppert's connection to RT ain't none of my silly ol'bidness, but...this creep did not attempt to email me privately to ask for a correction, as would be man'erly, but instead came out in public, on this blog, annonymously, like a cheap theif in the night. Why? Because he pays innuendo to da'corps.
I think this worth repeating that the Editillero hang Chicken Asses like Tim Ruppert out to dry in the light of day, because with the Exquixotic Corps we are not dealing with Real Engineers who actually build things but Project Engineers who build things with planned obsolesence, so they will have future Project Engineering work to repair their inevitable failures.
It is apparently The American Way. This is the way the have proven themselves to operate. That is why their structures fail all across the country. What the general public may not be aware of is their formidable Public Relations Machinery, of which smeaglies like Tim Ruppert are a part, albiet more like a jailhouse punk to his cell'daddy. This PR machinery is about answers, preferrably misdirecting ones or something that sounds like factual as: "Future Peer or Think Tank Reviews"-Mxz. Aguillera, the head of one of their "Levee Task Forces" for a multi-parish area. What? Think Tank Review? That sounds like a 70's glam'band. WTF is a Think Tank Review, Mxz. Aguillera? Will you hire Tim Ruppert, or his buddies at the ASCE to do you another "Peer Review" for $25,000,000 tax dollars? What? And all this while...
water is flowing, erroding under your levee "repairs" right now.
I saw it with my own lyin'eyes!

Corps talk to focus on Industrial Canal~The plan is included in the corps' "Individual Environmental Report 11, Tier 2, Borgne," which outlines environmental issues associated with the plan. Questions or comments concerning the plan can be addressed to Gib Owen? Who? You won't find him here but do find Gib here. Please check their mission statement. Dat'why they call it city business?

Despite corps delays, parish will begin building storm levees

WAVICS
~Wave -Current -Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana

USGS ~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings

Years After 9-11 and Katrina, Emergency Networks Still Inadequate

Task as Americans is to be ready for disasters~As the Atlantic hurricane season begins, Honoré, who was commanding general First Army and leader of Joint Task Force Katrina before retiring, offers his views on why the United States needs to develop a culture of preparedness for natural disasters.

Residents must band together ~Lolis Eric Elie

Where Shall We Put The Pyramid? ~Toulouse Street

How do you "liveblog" something which has no life?
~Your Right Hand Thief

Liprap's Lament - The Line

It's Gonna Be Fine ~First Draft

THE WALL~Lord David in Humid City

Relatives of New Orleans Congressman Jefferson indicted

Obama, Clinton to headline National Conference of Black Mayors

Trailer occupant killed in stand-off with New Orleans police

Smuckers buys Folgers brand; plant to still make coffee

Sunday Brunch: Bourbon Vanilla French Toast ~Serious Eats

New Orleans DA Running For Judge

Judge delays ruling on rental property

UW-Madison students restore New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward bayou

Volunteers of America Organizes Army of 350 to Rebuild Parts of St. Bernard Parish
~Volunteers of America will dispatch an army of more than 350 volunteers to help rebuild parts of St. Bernard Parish that remain devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The day of service coincides with Volunteers of America's National Conference scheduled June 7-10 in New Orleans and is part of the organization's long- term commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast region.

First Anniversary Celebration
Toasts & Tails “HERE COMES SUMMER” Wine Tasting
~Canine Culture

Only in New Orleans: Cockroaches Creole-style

Rigdon Marine commits to New Orleans

China cordons off schools collapsed by quake

2 dead in Amtrak train's second collision in 1 day

Rodrigue Show Final Soiree
~Editilla met Rodrigue one day in the Marigny at the "dog park". None of his dogs looked like the Blue Dog.
However, he was very much the funny dog and another wonderful dog'park conversationalist who loves the city dearly. After that, I went and checked out his Louisiana paintings. Ya'jus gotta be there to get it, like they always say, and Rodrigue has gotten it.
When I looked at some of his paintings the imagery caused me to dream of that dog park, a bald green lot, with two trees beside the coffee'warehouse, where you can see the bags loading in from the trucks and you can feel it on your skin when they roast it up, where the people gather with their very best friends to drink in the shade and talk in the wind, where a flat bywater sunrise can find them, layin'down their entire lives.
I have seen a dog who looks just like the Blue Dog...or more like Blue Dog's iron'rail twin. Running beside his master through the city as he bicycles to and fro, Sidhartha stitched and sawed through traffic with all the grace and dexterity of a bike delivery rider from da'Verde Mart.

Exhibition at Cantor Center features masterpieces spared from Hurricane Katrina

‘Trouble The Water’ Award-Winning Katrina Documentary Shows At BAM Rose Cinemas (Sun 6/8)

Molten hot and scary as thunder

The songs were like mantras, and their incessant repetition and lack of dynamic variation lent them a kind of hypnotic power that was quite different from the other components of the standard R&B repertoire. Benny Spellman's Fortune Teller, John Lee Hooker's Dimples, Muddy Waters' Hoochie Coochie Man and Little Walter's My Babe were great numbers, coming on a hotline from R&B Central in New Orleans or Chicago. But they had elements of structural variety and decoration that seemed almost prissy.
The source of a Diddley song seemed to be somewhere deep within the earth, close to the molten core. The Diddley beat was a means of summoning thunder, and as such it seemed to hark back further than the recording studios of Chicago, further than the juke joints of the Mississippi delta - all the way back to the west African lands from which slaves had been transported, and to the music they made before their descendants got their hands on trumpets, pianos and electric guitars.

Just A Closer Walk With Thee
~How Long It Takes
~Editilla did this once, with the song "Since I Fell For You",
and have so far found around 10 different recorded versions.
Hat Tip as well to Home of the Groove.

Mardi

Editilla gotta tol'yaz...

This Is Da'Moment!!!

WAVICS
~Wave -Current -Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana
Editilla knows we are stuck on these satelite photographs of the Louisiana Coast. Please for now just bear wit'it. At their site you can hold the mouse down and move the pic/map all the way to the tip of South America if you want, or you can zoom into south La and follow the broken lung tissue from Grand Isle all the way to Galveston, Tx. One of my favs is to just follow the rivers, especially da'Big Muddy Mississip.
I grew up along that river, in the very antedeluvial bed of love and grief in the MS delta south of Memphis, and watched our Exquixotic Corps of Engineers lower our water table nearly 120 Feet, in just under 20 years, through incorrect and relentless dredging of creeks and bayous from the headwaters in the north to southward. Hence, they virtually created the massive flood control problems in the south delta that they are (of corps:) tasked by Congress to solve. This breed of machination I call Kafka-23...
~the delinquent Idiot Bastard Son of Catch-22.

Comment by Sandy Rosenthal, Founder, Levees.Org
~Saying NO to living in fear
The levees in New Orleans, like dams, are designed and funded by the federal government. But, the citizens of New Orleans and the metro region are now living in fear because they cannot trust the levee protection that the federal government controls. They cannot trust it for visible reasons, like leaking levees, but also for intellectual reasons. The official levee investigation done after Katrina that is being used to rebuild and fortify New Orleans' levees is intensely controversial for three reasons.
~First, the official study called the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force was managed by the same organization - the US Army Corps of Engineers - that is responsible for flood protection's performance. That is the most basic conflict of interest.
~Second, two significant respected levee analysis teams, the Independent Levee Investigation Team and Team- Louisiana have yielded results that conflict with the IPET in five (5) of seven (7) of the major levee failure mechanisms.
~Third, two ethics panels - one led by retired Congressman Sherwood Boehlert R-NY - are currently underway to examine charges that the Corps of Engineers colluded with the American Society of Civil Engineers to hide the mistakes of the corps, to intimidate anyone who tried to intervene and to delay the results of the IPET until the publics' attention had turned elsewhere. The results of those panels are expected in July 2008.
The citizens in metro New Orleans deserve levees they can trust.
For this reason, the organization I founded, Levees.Org is urging Congress to pass Senate Bill 2826 which would authorize the 8/29 Investigation Act - a truly independent and truly comprehensive analysis of the flood protection failures during Hurricane Katrina.

~This week, we're doing a strong push to get our Louisiana lawmakers on board. And we're doing a member drive for more local citizen voices to make a big groundswell.
And we're getting our commercials on as many TV stations as we can.
Thank you for supporting of the goals and mission of Levees.org!

Please see: Ladder's extensive description of the 17th Street Leak!


Once again, Special Thanks~Georgianne Nienaber

USGS ~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings

Jindal talks about snow balls - McCain - running for V.P.~WWL

Slabbed Welcomes our World Wide Readers Interested in Finding Ward Buel
~~Around in the GO Zone in 60 Seconds: WQRZ, Beauvoir, Quick Take & Katrina Relief

Blackwater in New Orleans?
OpEdNews.com~Let's go back a little ways to a lecture by Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater and other mercenaries in New Orleans during Katrina. He mentions how a Blackwater employee bragged about wasting some black gang-bangers on an overpass. Or was he just confusing them with "Hajis" in Iraq?

New Orleans and China
-Not So Different~Harry Shearer
Editilla has long considered New Orleans and Burma opposite sides of the same coin, particularly since cyclone Nargis. I agree with Harry, but jus'sayin...

Myanmar or Burma?
Wikipedia debates

Clean 09
~World
Educational Congress for Laundering and Dry Cleaning
~The Clean Executive Committee met in New Orleans recently to observe personally that the city is ready for Clean ’09 scheduled for June 18-21, 2009.
La Pucelle d'Orléans meets Mr. Clean?

The Comiskey Park project in Mid-City vanishes, unfinished documentary nets tax credits~Susan Finch
~Comiskey Park Project Timeline

Louisiana, New Orleans Braces For Comedy Punch

McSame Visiting Louisiana This Week~CenLamar

What I love
--and left
~Beth Millbank

New Orleans Wine Bars
~Wine Goddess

Dispatch from New Orleans:
The sweet sound of power tools
~Ariane Wiltse

Patricia Nicholson Parker: Everyone Has a Vision
~all about Jazz

~At the Festival we will have three panel discussions: one called New Orleans: Culture, Crisis, and Community, another one on Jazz Factions and a third on Community and the Arts. This panel reflects our new initiative, the Rise Up Creative Music and Arts (RUCMA). The ideas behind all three panels are interconnected. The role that art plays in the healing of New Orleans: New Orleans is very visible to the world; what enormous problem it exemplifies, problems that afflict all our societies. That's what's compelling about it. It's not just a problem down in New Orleans. New Orleans brought up, for all of us, issues of culture and community and economics and racism, and the world's disregard for these things and how the needs of people of color, and the needs of the poor are not being handled effectively by our government. How do we function to overcome this and form a positive perspective? Here art is helping. Art helps transform us in real substantive ways. It is transforms neighborhoods and gives people hope. That's an example for everywhere. Not that it's not keenly important in New Orleans, but it's also keenly important in New York and anywhere else.

Rapp brings cool jazz to Weston

Gettin' funky with the Funky Meters

Lundi

Who can spot the cryptic rune? Of course it could be...
a Peace Symbol, depending on one's direction on da'road home...
(but yer oh'so humble Editilla kinda doubts it:)

The Elk-sedge usally lives in the fen,

growing in the water. It wounds severely,

staining with blood any man

who makes a grab at it.

WAVICS
~Wave -Current -Surge Information System for Coastal Louisiana

USGS
~Flood Stage Levels current 'real-time' guage readings

Storm recovery plans stalling in D.C.

In Louisiana, Inklings of a New (True) Champion of the Right!
~Adam Nossiter

Liprap's Lament - The Line
~A point-by-point critique of Jarvis DeBerry's latest column on school vouchers by Coozan Pat raises an important point about standardized testing:
In order to teach at a public school, I had to take a training course. I had to take certification classes. I've been around Master of Education classes and I took certification classes waay back at UGA for my first major. Every single one of these "how to be a teacher" programs stressed the idea that not every child learns in the same way. They all stressed that there will be students in my classes who are not on the same level. Every single class drilled into me that there was no "one size fits all" model in education. Every. Single. Class.

Hurricane Season Politics
~Your Right Hand Thief

Abandoned in New Orleans
~Caille Millner

Trailer removals from private sites proceed

Public Meeting with the Mayor of New Orleans in Durban...SA?
~Editilla eeerrrraaahhhs...um, somebody wanna give these folks a shout'out, heads'up, look'out, pooper'scooper?

New Orleans City Council Questions Nagin's 311 System

State of New Orleans, Nagin, and a "Little Wet Spot" in the Dike
~OpEd News~reposted in'lieu of new posting.
Editilla Schrillas~Today marks one week since I stuck my arm up to my elbow into the 17th Street Leak, which was one week after AP took a photograph of that leak, which was nearly 2 months since that very leak was reported in the Times Picayune, which was almost a month after that leak was reported to the Corps of Engineers. Don't tell me about "think'tank peer reviews".
The Corps might answer the phone but not any questions.
DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT IS UP
WITH THE 17TH STREET CANAL LEAK???

Victims of F.E.M.A. and The Army Corps of Engineers
~RejectSociety.com

First voter purge since Katrina gears up in St. Bernard Parish

New Orleans Downtown: The Creative Class?

Dispatch from New Orleans: History salvaged from the side of the road

Yuman helps New Orleans rebuild after Katrina
~"She just returned from a two-week volunteer service in New Orleans," said program director for the Boys and Girls Club, Edith Benavides. "She took vacation time and spent her own money to help rebuild homes on Musicians Row with Habitat for Humanity.
We're very proud of what she did."

Endings and Beginnings
~Kindness of Strangers

Year Three in Rebuilding New Orleans: Taking More Green Steps, One by One~ECOlocalizer

MuttShack Renews Its Katrina Promise at the Jefferson Parish Hurricane Summit
~MuttShack Animal Rescue

Who's in the Junta? The mysterious generals who run Burma~Slate

Draft plan: FEMA may use trailers in new disaster
In this Oct. 4, 2005 file photo, a train load of trailers headed for victims of Hurricane Katrina and Rita, moves through Muncie, Ind.
The government may house disaster victims in trailers again this hurricane season as a last resort, despite promises never to use them again because of safety hazards in trailers used after Hurrican Katrina. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
FEMA policies for the new hurricane season

Feds look for company to build border fence in South Texas

Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse - An Unsung Iraq War Hero
~Lang Report

New Orleans French Quarter residents place web cams to combat crime

Press Street releases GREEN ZONE NEW ORLEANS by New Orleans Poet Mark Yakich

~Chere'Yat, New Orleans Daily Photo!

New Orleans,Double IPA,Dale’s Pale Ale in California
~TheFullPint.com

Southern Food & Beverage Museum Opens at New Orleans’ Riverwalk Marketplace

New Orleans Report #1
~Vine and Grape

Branch of New Orleans' Camellia Grill to Open in Florida

Plenty of Horns~Antonio Vargas

Making a Killing~Nolaphile
~Proving once again that New Orleans’ pool of artistic talent runs deep, New Orleans writer and bartender, Bill Loehfelm was named the winner of the First Annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Loehfelm bested 5000 other manuscripts through a system of online voting in order to be named the winner. His prize includes a $25,000 book contract with Penguin Publishing, a host of electronic gadgets, and the thrill of never having to make a
Sex On the Beach again.

New Orleanian Wins Lambda Literary Award

Special Thanks~Georianne Nienaber
Editilla can't seem to get off of da'weepin highway...
...but sometimes it mo'betta dat'way anyway.


Bo Diddley dead at 79
H/T'n'T~Slimbolala


Recording Academy, P&E Wing at 2008 PotLuckCon in New Orleans

BB: Louis Armstrong, visual artist~Voices of New Orleans