New Orleans Ladder

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Levees.org unveils new website! ~Editilla reviews!

~Originally designed and built by then 15 year old Stanford Rosenthal --at right with Mark Allain, Oct. 10th, 2005 --while he and his mother were evacuated to Lafayette during the Federal Flood of New Orleans, this website became, for yer Ho Ho Homble Editilla, not only The storehouse of all things Corps-engineered for our collective destruction, but also one of the few places I could go and feel unmolested by Corps Public Relations bias. So, Gentle'rillas may imagine my anticipation of any expected evolution in the vehicle of our ride down the long road home, as well as my pleasant surprise at what Stanford came up with next! Six years have passed for levees.org, young Stan is now kicking ass in college, and the website has grown and evolved to accommodate the immense data resource retrieval needs of his mother, founder and executive director Sandy Rosenthal, ---and so the organization itself, as it has grown to 25,000 members in 5 states.

Editilla gives their new site an A++ on Site Evolution and overall Informational Congroovience. Though fairly quick before, the new site is much much faster. Furthermore, things that I require of such a website, such as static resource information like studies, pdfs etc, are cleanly listed in the links bar above, while Sharing on the Internets is well blocked in a bar at the bottom of each post. In other words, for me, a site like this for an org like this must work as much as a Resource Library as a Blog Venue for the Word Ya Heard? How many times have I already used that word: "Resource"? I can't say it enough. I use Levees.org in my own blogging about the Corps, and had grown quite fond of the website's former layout. It was big and easy to move around on. But most importantly for me, we can count on the truth in accuracy of everything levees.org says. They have always exhibited a very high IQ or Integrity Quotient. To that end, I'd like to note this really cool little Quote Box Thingy, in the upper right side, that cycles through various smart things said by smart people involved with our Great Flood. Levees.org ain't whistling Dixie ---and we don't have them featured prominently on Your New Orleans Ladder for nothing. I'm just yer humble Editilla, but actual heavyweights agree with our support of levees.org and reflect in their words a certain resonance which may hold us all together, shelter from the storm.

~Click map to enlarge~

This new website succeeds in keeping that info-fidelity, along with a certain graphic stability. On that latter note, I would like to see more graphics stitched into the overall look-design. But, Editilla loves graphics, especially maps --like the levees.org National Levee Map, an incredibly forward-looking piece of work they commissioned from the geographer Ezra Boyd, that we believe influenced the Corps and the Times-Picyune to publish their own maps and address this issue of just how many Americans live behind levees --with the answer: 55% of the pop.
I like to see blogs and websites from around New Orleans and Louisiana visually illustrate and reflect the scene from whence they speak. It is a question of Fabric for me. I'd like to see more on this new website. That said, this is a beautiful website. It should be noted that I watched the former website evolve quickly to accommodate Editilla's graphics fetish. Mrs. Rosenthal has always exhibited a lean and mean learning curve on working her son's previous hand-made website, so we can look forward to the new website to blossom and fill out soon enough.

Another facet I would like to see added, in congroovience with my Resource listings, is a Blog- Website Roll down the side. I have many reasons for this suggestion, but chief among them is the concept of what we call: Stitch'Hiking the Net. Such Site Rolls serve to offer up both Supporters Of levees.org as well as those Supported By levees.org. In short, to quote one of their own t-shirts: We're all in the same boat!
We need to keep stitching the net. We must stay quickly connected for when this all can happen again. Secondly, I know many of our 500 hits/day on the Ladder either come from or come to find a blog or website listed in our Stitch'hikers and 2nd Line rolls. Thirdly, you wanna know peoples' peoples... it shows the 'hood, the culture, literally sewn and sown into the ground beneath our shared catastrophe, our coming together to deal with it and our triumph over Corps intractability despite it.
Nous avons tous la Nouvelle-Orléans, Sinn Féin!
I love this organization so, because they've always reflected and expressed the broadest cross-section of our citizenry in that regard, with no bull shit, nothing but the facts, artifacts not politics. For example, to name just a few actions, take the recently installed State Historical Markers, or their campaign to have such breach sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places or, most fundamentally, their campaign for a truly independent investigation into that man-made disaster: The 8/29 Investigation. These artifacts seek to face the future with the past, in a way to insure that they still stand after the next "event". By doing so, levees.org has provided us with tools to deal with disaster, actual machinery to control our message in the aftermath. So too with the new website.

We all have seen how important it is to Own the Word on New Orleans. This has always been the crux of the biscuit with Sandy Rosenthal: Get The Word Out.
The new website compliments, informs and enables that mission splendidly!
~Editilla, New Orleans Ladder

An early start to hurricane season?
~Dr. Jeff Masters, Wunderblog

Vitter warns hurricane protection is not complete ~WWL

~Hat Tweet @ MayorLandrieuResidents who need city assistance in evacuating should call 311 and visit http://bit.ly/ls66BP for more information

~Hat Tweet @Editilla the Pun~@johnmcquaid @tmorrisTP Nowhere in this dilettante's screed will you see the words Levee Failures or Corps of Engineers. So, fucke'em.

Hurricane projects fueled economic boom for New Orleans area
~Rebecca M0wbray

Senator Mary Landrieu warns of fund shortfall ~Gerard Schields

Strongest Gulf hurricanes ease near coast, study shows

River nears crest @ Morgan City ~WVUE~Also~Kerner Bridge closed after barge collision

Floods cut phones in eastern Montana rains continue

Ala. town hit by tornadoes bans FEMA trailers

Temporary jail buildings beginning to take shape in Orleans Parish Prison complex~Matt Davis, The Lens

Get Ready: A “Revised” Kaufman-Hall Report is likely coming soon
~SaveCharityHospital.com

Louisiana State Senate panel approves ban on oil spill dispersants

Astronauts get set to land Endeavour one last time

Got Ink? Share Your Tats On u local~Are you tatted? Share photos of your tattoos or body art on WDSU's u local page. And please share a little information about your tattoo: the story of why you got it, what it means to you or tell us where you got it! Photos with the best descriptions or stories have the best chance of being used on-air!

The "culture" bubble
~Library Chronicles

Whew~Blackened Out

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Sinn Féin

New Orleans Ladder
Chere'yat Bourgeois Nievete?
Every goodbye ain't gone.
Every shut eye ain't sleep.
Gonna' build up this Living Ladder.
Gonna lean it up against the world, so we can pass over our damn nation, so we can always find the long road back home.
Stitch-hiking the Web for Daily New Orleans News, Bloggery, Videos, Poetry, Photography, Music and Humor, yeah where'yat, post Kafkatrina Recovery for the City That Care Forgot and Presidente Bush left for dead.
The New Orleans Ladder accepts no advertising revenue.
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Anything goes on the Ladder, except no kiddy- porn ~{which will be forwarded immediately to someone who can track you down quicker (if you're lucky) than I (if you're not), no lie, believe it, faster than a speeding bullet and with as much regard as a dragon fly, perched upon the head of a water moccasin, waiting for its prey} --and no gratuitous profanity.
Just paste the articles' url in the comments.
Contact me directly on Twitter.
Please tell your friends about the Ladder.
Lassezes Le Bon Temp Roule'!!! Who Dat!
Thank You All,
Editilla the Pun.

A note to advertising types
~From your ho'ho homble
Editilla the Pun,
thank you for asking.
Here's the Deal: what we hang upon this Ladder we do so with LOVE, HONOR and AFFECTION. Heart'stopping Awe and Adoration...Aw'dat
--especially this right side.

Of what we hang here I want our Gentle'rillas to know: We accept no ad revenue,only Blessings of Thanks -and Tons-O-Traffic!- from All Youz who'z contacted us with Notes of Glee at finding yourselves thusly hero'hung --by this Ladder with Care-- and we hope y'all get some Gat'zillion hits there!
Please put ya'Finger on'em...
--let'em know we're here!

New Orleans...
a courtesan, not old and yet no longer young, who shuns the sunlight that the illusion of her former glory be preserved.

The mirrors in her house are dim and the frames are tarnished;
all her house is dim and beautiful with age. She reclines gracefully upon a dull brocaded chaise- longue, there is the scent of incense about her, and her draperies are arranged in formal folds. She lives
in an atmosphere of a bygone
and more gracious age.

And those whom she receives
are few in number, and they come to her through an eternal twilight.
She does not talk much herself,
yet she seems to dominate the conversation, which is low-toned but never dull, artificial but not brilliant. And those who are not of the elect must stand forever without her portals.

New Orleans… a courtesan whose hold is strong upon the mature,
to whose charm the young must respond. And all who leave her, seeking the virgin’s unbrown, ungold hair and her blanched and icy breast where no lover has died, return to her when she smiles across her languid fan…

New Orleans.

William Faulkner~1925

My Name Is Burma

Please check out my friend Moe Swe, who emailed me wonderful Burmese Music after we met through my online work with the Burma News Ladder, during the Democracy Crackdown in that country in September-October '07.
I had just joined in New Orleans with Rising Tide, btw, at the 2nd Flood Anniversary. Synchronicity?
One song's lyric: "A drop of rain is now a Raging Tide. Burma How Long?" You tell me. Heads or Tails?
Lotta music there. Take your time.
Use the pause button. Fang though the playlist. Tell yer friends. Enjoy!
As with my love for New Orleans,
I cannot think of a better, quicker way to know Burma than through her music: the song of her soul, the instrument of her dreams, the expression of her hopes & fears.
Burma Sinn Féin!
Burma Rocks World Boogie!
Please shout'out and say hello to
Moe Swe--Let'em know we care.
Kyay Zoo Pyu Pea...Koo NyiBar
Kyay Zoo Tin Bar Dae
8-08-88~~8-08-08
8-28-08

Crucifixion Road

by Karl Demolay

This is for the city that care forgot...
the city that forgot to care.
This city, carelessly forgotten,
our party time's behind us now, sensual drums in the dank and virile heat. City of culinary delights, musical giants, simple pleasures, squalid splendors.
A city of dust, now shrouded in mold, forever succumbing to entropic bliss on pause.
This city of history, a living archive of revelry and regret. The past and the future collide in slow motion. This is the city that must be remembered and rebuilt, this bastion of visceral pleasures and historic decadence. All to our collective delight and nagging melancholia.

This is for the ones that evacuated...
the people who left it all behind. The ones that lost almost everything, or maybe just the one thing they cared about most of all. The ones marooned on highways for far too long, no way home, even as the storm unleashed its initial fury. Those left deserted, no place to rest their heads, thoughts still heavy with guilt or fear or resignation.
This is for the people that won't go back, can't go back, afraid of possibility and all of its attendant pitfalls.
This is for those that have nothing to return to at all, not one single thing.
This is for the ones that relocated, expatriates forced into strange lands with odd customs.
This is for the terminally restless,
the suddenly homeless,
the penniless brave.

This is for the ones that stayed...
the insane, the stranded, the curious tribes, erstwhile survivors and civic warriors alike.
Those souls who stayed calm and true despite the chaos, or lost their minds to apocalyptic fancy.
Battened down and hunkered low, sipping bottled water with hushed first glances, suspicious demeanors and flashlights at the ready.
Proud and defiant holders of the line, sometimes criminal in intent, quick movement on the perimeters, shoot to kill orders...
For all those who were trapped in makeshift shelters, replete with suicides, murders, and rapes: victimization rank and feral.
For the bitter end of salvation, acrid tastes on parched tongues dry, even as bids for escape were made.

This is for the politicians...
Federal, State and Local, at once inept and indispensable, some more than others, caught unprepared, unconcerned, unshaven---Playing cat and mouse in a city of smoldering ruins, screams from the darkness of urgent plight, atavism gone awry. Ignorance and obviousness, the slow motion train wreck broadcast for all to see and discuss, obfuscate and ignore. Declarations of me and mine, you and yours, pitted squarely against they and them. This is for too little, too late, the same old song played at precisely the wrong time, over and over. Nagin, Blanco, Brown, Bush, please report center stage to assume the mantle of scorn and blame, everyone gets their turn.
This is for the ones that try to rewrite history or deny it outright, we wish we could deny it all so easily.

This is for the ones that died...
for the loved ones, the foolish ones, the forgotten and cumbersome alike. For the elderly, the infirmed, Vera in her cobblestone grave, the unidentified ones that received no such memorials.
And our beloved household pets, loyal until the end.
The parks and neighborhood greens, flora and fauna turned to a sepia-tone static gray. The houses, once renowned for their architecture, are reborn as new testaments to the destructive coupling of Mother nature and Human Folly. To the spray-painted X's, harsh and unrelenting, omnipresent in their emergency orange hue: 1 dog dead, 1 person saved.
This is for the newest necropolis to rise, our once proud city, our interrupted way of life, breaks in the line of comfortable static. For the evidence of our empire, washed away in the eye of the storm and the turgid, toxic waters that followed.

This is for the ones that rescued...
the Firefighters, EMT's, Police Officers, National Guard. For the people from far and near that just appeared out of nowhere, just wanting to help any way they could, using anything waterborne. And for the locals brave and true, risking life and limb to save just one more person, over and over and over. For all of the endless, tireless, selfless sacrifices and tear jerking humanity. For their shining light of salvation into the boundless dark, onto rooftops, inside of hacked-out attics, out of harms way to higher ground. For beaming from all directions, these beacons of hope, springing eternal and true.
This is for all those who lent a hand, however small or large. Our gratitude, more than could ever be conveyed, is all we have to offer in return.

This is for the media...
the good, the bad, the ugly, for the rescuers and the soothsayers, the shelterers and the kind words, for the dispassionate, the doubters, the cynical and the apathetic.
The pundits and pontificators, their talking points and bad haircuts, feigning interest at all the scripted moments. For the smiles as the makeup is applied, the vacant suppression of harsh, unforgiving reality in plentiful evidence. The ones that control the present controlling the past controlled the future; as always, blissfully unaware of the consequences...
For the sidebars and scrutiny, the breaking news and tight focus close-ups, hands and mouths reacting in opposite directions, in equal amounts, all from the outside looking in. This is for updates at every quarter of the hour.

This is for the hospitals...
the nursing homes and hospices unprotected and ignored. Piling the dead or leaving them where they lay, morgues and freezers packed tight. This is for the generators that failed too quickly. No sleep or food or water or sanity or safety or hope. For our doctors and nurses, in hellish conditions, against impossible odds, this is for the ultimate and undying respect they deserve. This is for the thugs storming the gates for drugs and evil kicks on top of everything else happening, brash and ignorant of their crime...
For the hotels and hostels, kicking guest out to fend for themselves in our city gone mad. Inundation and tragedy, fragility and breakdown, the worst vacation, convention, honeymoon ever.

This is for the looters...
for the desperate, the prescient, the survivalist hordes. Scavenging and pilfering, salvaging and hoarding anything and everything of use in seemingly useless times.
This is for the business owners, opening their doors wide to allow retrieval of water, food, diapers and formula, keeping their cool and doing the right thing. And for the pharmacies, their good intentions torn asunder by destructive addicts and wasteful ignorance like so many store display shelves.
This is for the home invasions, the armed intrusions, for making a bad situation worse, for spreading the fear...
This is for the ones that made it easier even while others made it ever harder by the minute.

This is for the children...
the lost or outright abandoned, the marginalized or used, for the separation anxiety, trauma and tears on long hot nights that just got worse and worse.
The unfamiliar and the dangerous, the abusive and profane, forsaking even common sense, for the lack of decency, for the bad examples and poor supervision. This is for the countless orphaned souls, forced to bear an adults pain with no advance warning, no preparation or guidance...
This is for the countless smiles, the innocence and playfulness, the ability to make it all disappear, if only for a moment at a time. And for their will, unbreakable and resolute in its purest form and function. This is for what we owe them, first and foremost; their satisfaction will be our compensation over time.

This is for the survivors...
all of us, if any of us, also still, the huge debt owed to those who didn't. This is for all of us in our sad, sad group, no matter where we are at the moment, home or abroad. For the hopes and dreams, reborn from the ashes of the ones previous, for our Phoenix on the bayou. For the nightmares and shock and ennui, the blank stares and paranoia deep into the night. And the helplessness, constricting, paralyzing, numbing...
This is for finding a way to get out of bed in the morning to go to work, gut your houses and reassemble your lives. This is for those that mourn their dead, their missing, their damaged. This is for all of us that are left to find their way back to some semblance of normalcy and well being in these dark times.

This is for the rest of the country...
witnesses to our plight, shelters in the storm, final arbiters of our collective destiny. This is for all of the numerous benefits and donations, the concerns and the heartfelt sorrow. The letters and emails, the long talks on the phone into those September nights and beyond, the shoulders to cry on and beds to sleep in. As well as the showers and food, simple things like ice and clean clothes. For the religious intolerance, the thought that somehow, we deserved this,
that this was God's doing...
This is for the stupidity and hypocrisy, for throwing the first stone when we were down and out. This is for their fatigue, their need to move on, not towards a better understanding, but only to the next sad refrain. For helping us stand, then forcing us to walk away stronger and more assured. This is for those that are rebuilding with us, as well as for the ones that make us want to now more than ever.

This is for the world...
the governments and their citizens, for the superpowers and third-world nations alike.
For their offers and advice, their engineers and city planners, the visits of rebuilding and improved protection. This is for the feeling that we weren't alone, that this has happened before elsewhere, only much worse, that it does get better with hard work and cooperation. For the lessons learned and experience shared; the first real promises of something good in uncertain times. This is for the most that we can share, our lessons, our triumphs and defeats, our heartbreaks and celebrations. This is for an open welcome to the grand rebuilding, our glorious comeback and their involvement in all that promises.

This is for the past...
and how not to repeat it. This is for shoddy levees and interrupted communications, driverless buses and improper shelters. For the wild ride to here, the respite in its warming memories, stories and legends yet to be told.
The anecdotes and folktales, the ghost stories and the pirates' songs, for history and the curious wisdom it imparts. For the good times, the bad times, the in-between times, we all had them here in this place we called home, no matter if you're local or not. This is for why we still call it home today, even if we won't, or can't be here now. This is for the sacrifices, the sweat and blood, the personal tales of reward and loss. This is for the chance to finally get it right, to learn form our mistakes one more time, to teach others the same as well; it's that precious and rare.

This is for the future...
and the promise that it holds.
For the chances in abundance, the endless, limitless boundaries presented. This is for the process of starting over, no matter how long or tough it turns out to be.
For the ways to see beauty in the ugliness, to fashion something new and exciting out of something broken and in a state of disrepair.
This is for our city, its legacy, our neighborhoods and families, friends and foes alike.
For our scenes and cliques, parishes and wards, businesses and hangouts, for the determination to rebuild them all, damn the engines.
Our wishes for a better way are here and now, ready and waiting, the concept of building better, stronger, and more secure. All we have to do is make it happen.
This is for the here and the here from now on.

So this is for you, in your own private way. For peace, contentment, steadfast resolve in trying times. For dignity and patience, reassuring calm after the storm. This is for the knowledge that you are not alone, no matter how lonely it may seem right now. For your hopeful return to the place we call home, if not now,
then in due time...
For the knowledge that she will wait for you, she always has,
she always will...
This is for our fair lady,
our New Orleans,
Past, Present and Future...