Mardi

Deja Vu All Over Again
~In this Aug. 31, 2005 file photo, a man pushes his bicycle through flood waters near the Superdome. ~AP Photo/Eric Gay.
~Editilla Clearabellas~ Who'dat Bell Toll'in?
After picking my jaw up off the floor we realized that the man in that picture is Not Us, but then again it was us. But at first, I really thought they had gotten me. I cannot adequately describe the weakness and trembling in my hands right now, even a couple of days after spotting this article and photo on the nets.
But I say again, that was not me, yet it was all of us.
Aside from an abiding suspicion of the current Corps Engineering for Risk, Editilla finds this worth going through again because (a) we can't help ourselves, and (b) we see a very disturbing new trend developing in media and blogs lately with the Katrina Shorthand Jive. I see people, even evacuated lucky locals, beginning to discount what I saw break down with the people in New Orleans after the levees failed. I shall call this new flood of spin'filtration "Neo'Kat Short Hand Jive!"
From Katrina Shorthand has grown Katrina Longhand.
And I will not have it. No one may Mythologize the Breakdown.
For example, this smart guy: disaster management scholar Joseph Trainor observed that “…people are not victims of disasters, they are survivors…People are adaptive and altruistic, mass rioting and mass looting are just disaster myths for the most part…”)
That is a God Damned Lie, not even at the level of a Truism, spoken by an academic elitist ensconced clueless in an Ivory Tower far from the Ground Zero of any real disaster.
I will not let that memory die, nor allow anyone to spin it as "just another Disaster Myth." I don't care Who'z Yer'Mominem.
Why? Why can I not let this go? Because I know what it means.
It means as much now, in our Glory and Victory, as no meaning could apply then, in our most ignoble Agony of Defeat.

I don't think the people in that photo actually knew at that time that the levees had failed. It was a rumor on the ground those first couple of days. Look at the water level and "quality". When I did make my way upstream by Thursday (Sept 1st) the 'water' was viscous at that level on me nearly 4 blocks away from the dome.
Still from that distance I could see the people out on the parapet there, having just hours before been released from being Locked up 2 Days in that Thunderdome...over 12,000 of them and only about 100 National Guard troops surrounded by the flood.
By Thursday, we were into the actual disaster, the Federal Flood, good and proper. By then the water seemed deep enough around the the Thunderdome for them to jump, as many did. When this photo was taken, the levee failures were still a sort of rumor.
You can tell that by the relative clarity of the water.
Also, those 12,000+ American Citizens were still imprisoned in the Thunderdome in this photograph --locked in there for 2 freaking days-- conspicuously absent in the frame.
That was how I dressed though when venturing out: ball cap, backpack for water, more weapons and "found supplies".
Except, by Thursday I would also have had a bicycle chain secured tightly around my right wrist, leather strap wrapped around my left wrist...quite prepared to kill or be killed...
...yet not at all ready to die:
Left boot: 8" folded serrated produce knife,
Right boot: 8" folded Buck knife,
Right Belt: 2, 4" folded Buck knives,
Left Belt: 2 foot long antique Navy Sabre,
Left wrist: push carpet razor and ice pick,
Right wrist: bicycle chain wrapped tight and tied,
Right Back pants pocket: Big Maglight,
Left back pocket: small Maglight...
By Thursday or Friday I had already used the saber twice, one time on a news photographer who had tried to shoot holes in one of my grief-stricken nervous breakdowns, another time here.
This shit really happened...but was that really me?
I still ask myself that question...still, alone and unquiet.

Many who did not see, feel, hear, smell and taste the fear believe it should be so easy to wrap their head around, as if we could just send in a Mythic Disaster Management Scholar and save a little girl, your mominem's little girl, I saw laying face down in the sunrise over a bloody Holy Cross, dead and alone, floating in the water with her eyes down, during that first week of The Breach.
There was no one else around, no parents, no aunts, no saints... ---no neighborhood, no city, no more mominem. Believe me.
She was about 4 feet long, with those little hair ribbons and wore a dress with prints of butterflies on it. Butterflies for Goddess' sake. As dozens of military choppers flitted overhead, the scene uncoiled my sense of taste and timing like a patient snake doctor.
I watched the reflections dance about the fetid waters which held the body of our lost soul, and realized that as surely as she was gone we would remain and shall see more of The Inferno from the Reaper's Exquisite Corps. I felt to believe in Redemption...
--only to grasp Vendetta in my own Resurrection, and my cup filled with the Blood of Noble Truth. Got Myth? Yeah, hangin'low.
Buddha nailed it. Pilate nailed it. Dante nailed it. Pain is Real.

Give me a secret, bring me a sign,
give me a reason to walk The Line,
see another dawn through a daughter's eyes
So give me a reason to walk The Line.

This shit really happened. This flood was thicker than water.
Yet we cannot as easily wash our hands of it as blood.
New Orleans Is a City of Living Metaphor. Get that or die...
--and you will lie in the graveyards of fools. Res Ipsa Loquitur!
Sooo, if any of you have found a friend in God, please ask them for direction to the places they left those restless souls to drown in their own damn'nation: under rooftops, in their backyards, behind their family sofas, while their Grand Mas banged
against the walls abandoned in St. Rita's. Myth My Ass.
I don't really care what you think. I heard it all before the Breach.
Some may think they "know what it means"... to bet your soul
and find your self losing. Give me a reason to Walk The Line.
But please don't ask me to go easy on anyone who fails to face down this rape of our nation and those who would Crucify Our Mother of Muses, New Orleans, Sinn Féin Evermore.

New Levee Safety Program begs question of need for 8/29 Review

Getting a few words edgewise –cats, claims standards, levees, mitigation, perils, profits, providence, termites, and others that come to mind ~slabbed

Mississippi River diversion at Violet questioned by St. Bernard residents~Chris Krikham
~Others questioned whether St. Bernard would really benefit from the project. When the Violet diversion was authorized as part of the Water Resources Development Act in 2007, it was born out of a compromise between Louisiana's delegation and former Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who had been pushing for years for a freshwater diversion into Lake Pontchartrain meant to stimulate oyster production in Mississippi.
The diversion at Violet, rather than at the Bonnet Carre Spillway, was a way to stave off an attempt by Lott to hold up other Louisiana coastal restoration projects in the bill.
Former Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez said Monday that the plan "smells of Mississippi."

Pawlenty to wield veto pen on bonding bill~Don Davis
~ A compromise protecting communities downstream from a proposed Fargo-Moorhead flood diversion project won legislative approval Monday night, but the bill containing the provision is destined for a gubernatorial veto. Originally, state legislators wanted to forbid any state spending on the diversion until the federal government drew up a plan to prevent downstream damage; the new language allows the state to draw up the plan since Minnesota legislators have no control over Congress.

Walter Blessey, Tulane civil engineering professor, dies at 90

Vodou practitioners attacked at ceremony for Haiti earthquake victims
(c) This digital image was created by Sam Fentress, 5 July 2005. This image is dual-licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License,^[1] Version 1.2 or later, and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 2.0.^[2]. Attribution is required. Please direct any questions to User talk:Asbestos.

Remap plan targets N.O. blacks
~Marsha Shuler
~A state senator and Louisiana Family Forum Action are promoting a state Senate redistricting plan that would move some political clout out of New Orleans. The proposal would reduce five Orleans majority black districts to two and create three new black districts in south Louisiana: one each in Acadiana, the Bayou-River Region and in the central part of the state.

Eric Holder pledges additional resources to state and local counterterrorism centers

Jefferson Parish Corruption the way Daddy still does it~slabbed
~Dumpster dived Jimmy Lawson and the ‘Heebe’-Jeebies.
A look back at Steimle & Associates v Camp Dresser McKee.

Renowned clarinetist to perform

The Brass Roots of Music
~Alex Woodward, Gambit