Actual books in actual libraries
~Library Chronicles

The 8/29 Bookshelf~Harry Shearer

The Dream is Over~Bayou Girl
~bayougirlblog Sign the petition 4 oil spill clean up workers to have respirators - they need them! http://bpmakesmesick.com/

Going Against the New Narrative – the University of Georgia, the American Medical Association and Mississippi Fishermen~Disenfranchised Citizen

JAMA: Is Gulf Seafood Really "Safe"? ~Kate Shepperd ~Hat Tip~Library Chronicles

Almost 80 percent of BP's spilled oil still threatens Gulf, report finds
~Facing South

Edrust has left the building! State Farm dumps its BP stock ~slabbed

Waste from oil spill cleanup has Gulf residents concerned
~Krissah Thompson

Study Faults the Corps of Engineers in Recovery Contracting for Small Businesses

12 Days 2 Year 5:
A Photographic Journey
~NOLAFemmes

Defend New Orleans reminds us that The BigUneasy will premier Aug 30th!
~Local screenings at Prytania Theatre & Canal Place on August 30th only. Prytania Theatre screening will be followed by a Q&A with Harry Shearer.

Why A Brush With Death Triggers The Slow-Mo Effect~NPR
~Editilla Flotellas~Why does this relate to our 5th Anniversary of the Federal Flood? Well, Gentle'rillas have caught some of my stories and others can fang back down the Ladder to posts at around this holy week of 8/29, both the week before and somewhat during the week following.
Let's ask the Angel of Grief and Loneliness...
As many people remember in that surrealistic way of nightmares, the time started stretching with each day that passed after the Corps Bad Levees Failed. My tank is nearing empty on retelling my own observances and experiences. What has made it to this Ladder is bad enough, while what has not can only remain passed over in silence...yet there were moments that I may never find the words to describe.
It is these and other moments that pay to the article above about Slow-Motion Live Fear During Catastrophe... or something like that. I had been through that before, where you are faced with Death and time slows down. This is true, and I have come to believe it a Nervous System Defense Mechanism.
(Sorry for the caps but I want to lay this out:)
During the Flood, so many "life-changing events" happened so often and in such relentless succession that Precedence became an obsolete, quaint law idea.
I can't count the times me and my friends would say "Damn! Never seen THAT before...", until it wasn't even funny anymore.
So many times something would happen to cause me to shake my head... sometimes trying to bury the image... sometimes in just abject wonder at my own peripheral vision's sudden astounding acuity.
I went through at least 3 Slow Motion Life/Death Situations... I mean, real dream stuff but real life slowed down like falling off cliff. But now I see it within the entire larger event of the flood that first week in New Orleans as the whole big thing moved slower in time and yet slower on each day that passed with no relief in sight. Follow that? "7 days" cannot cover it. The whole city moved into this lack of formal time --as every church clock had stopped ringing bells every hour which is really what always paced my days in New Orleans, and every other bank clock or whatever timepiece had stopped 8/29. Real Time had ceased since it wasn't needed as Real Civilization had ceased. Society seemed as if it had gone feral.
As I think back on these memories even still, some of them continue that slow motion replay as if that is actually how it happened... when I know that some of my own brushes with death were over in the blink of an eye...
...and thus I have lived to tell about it.
Here is one of my songs, started but not finished going on 3 years now....

~I'm going to take this little bone in my heart
I'm gonna put it in a glass box
with some candles and some broken clocks
just to see the sea of faces
stopping in the dark dark
~If you've found a friend in God
please ask them for direction
to the places they left the restless souls
to drown in their own damn'nation
--under rooftops--in their backyards
--behind the family sofa
---while their Grand Mas banged against the walls
---abandoned in Saint Rita's.
----I don't really care what they say
----We heard it all before the Breach
----They may think they know what it means....
----To bet your soul... and find your self
-----losing.

Loyola law professor to sign new book this weekend~Robert Verchick, J.D., Gauthier-St. Martin Eminent Scholar and Chair in Environmental Law at Loyola University College of Law, will sign his new book, “Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World,” this Saturday, Aug. 21, at 6 p.m., at Octavia Books, located at 513 Octavia Street, in New Orleans.

Eat your dinner, there are starving children~Poke Salad Granny