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 @Residents who need city assistance in evacuating should call 311 and visit for more information~Hat Tweet @ 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 M0wbraySenator 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 ChroniclesWhew~Blackened Out
In South Dakota, some blame Corps for flood threat~"I think they screwed up royally," former Gov. Mike Rounds said of the Corps, as he moved some possessions from the riverbank house he and his wife built and moved into after he left office in January. "I think they forgot their No. 1 mission, and that's flood protection."
