The Mystic Krewe of Marlboro

Hello everyone,

Well, it's been a little while and I decided I would resume some of my e-mailing to "fill-in-the-blanks" of what's been going on. Plus I have a lot of snippets of links I've been collecting that you may find of interest.

We took a short trip to Arkansas to look at some property, but as luck would have it, the property we were interested in, which had only been on the market a week, was sold out from under us as we drove 10 hours to see it! I could strangle this real estate agent. He knew we were driving up, he showed the property to someone else and let them make an offer and didn't tell the seller someone else was interested. That was pretty depressing.

btw, I'm not planning on moving to Arkansas, but I've been looking for property up there for a long time, as an investment and a place to get away to, not unlike how locals have traditionally had "camps". Unfortunately, this has been a long, ongoing process that is hindered by sleazy real estate agents. So my trip to Arkansas where I thought I might relax a bit, wasn't that relaxing. For several days I drove all around the state and put almost 2000 miles on the car. The amazing part is that I had my iPod hooked into the stereo system and I didn't even make a dent in the playlist. iPods are truly one of the neatest inventions in the last few decades (that and Tivo), and the newer car stereos have interfaces where you can plug the iPod right in and control it from the head unit (which reminds me, Mobile One is open in Metairie ;).

Speaking of Metairie, things in Jefferson and New Orleans are slowly coming back online. I'd estimate that 25% of the businesses in the city are probably now open in Jefferson Parish. Orleans has substantially less. In JP, most places are still closing around 6pm, with the exception of bars and such. It's still a pain if you want to run to the grocery store later at night. Gas now suddenly seems to be a big problem. Half the gas stations in the city don't have gas, and the rest have big lines. It seems like there was more gas available last month than now. It's pretty frustrating.

I've also been helping various friends visit their houses and get stuff, and also putting up people as they come through town. It's an exhausting experience as you re-live over and over, the total destruction many people have experienced.

One outstanding thing seems to come to mind through all this. The city will never be the same.... whatever you hear in the media about "New Orleans rebuilding" and "People coming back" just doesn't jive with what I've seen and the people I've talked to. Many businesses will re-open, but perhaps just as many are relocating elsewhere or throwing in the towel. I've spoken with many people who have, at first temporarily relocated, only to find better pay and better working conditions elsewhere, from California to Texas to Georgia. Many people aren't coming back, and some people left, and aren't even coming back for their stuff. I know of several groups who almost have a cavalier attitude about even going back to get minor things -- they're asking friends to grab some essentials but are otherwise moving on and aren't coming back, period.

I hate to say it, but I was much more hopeful about the city's rebirth earlier than I am now. New Orleans and the surrounding areas has become a city of roving bands of contractors (featuring lots of new minorities that never had that big a presence here before), occasionally dotted with a homeowner here or there, more often than not, grabbing their stuff and going.

You can pretty much draw a line between the types of businesses who depend upon the city, and those that don't, and this divides those who are staying and those who are leaving, minus the many businesses who lost everything. And the big thing is employees.... there are many businesses that could open but all their people are G O N E. Gone.

And to top it off, you have Mayor Nagin, who had originally had my respect for the uncompromising way he handled FEMA's incompetence, but then started pushing for this bone-headed idea that allowing casino gambling in all the area hotels would be a boost to the local economy... what the hell kind of medication is he on? This is our one chance to really change the dynamic of the city and we have politicians recommending the most superficial, backwards approaches towards revitalization?

One of the city councilmen has been pushing for removing the restriction on commercial sponsorship of Mardi Gras as another "economic solution". If this happens, that's it for me -- I will never attend nor promote Mardi Gras again. That's the most offensive thing I can think of. That's like offering the opportunity to be "the official deodorant of Christmas" to whoever ponies up the most money. That isn't in the spirit of Mardi Gras. And we have brain dead politicians pandering to soulless corporations as a way to help New Orleans get back on track?? Can you see it? The Krewe of Verizon. The Knights of Baccardi. Mr. Clean will be the King of Endymion. The Baccus-Gator will be flanked by inflatable Michelin Men and Pillsbury Dough Boys. The King of Rex will be the Energizer Bunny. Oooh, look here comes the Bud Light float featuring a paper mache Gecko from Geico!

I think I'm going to puke.

Hey, you New Orleans politicians. Stop taking the easy way out. Try Google'ing "integrity" and learn a little something.

Ok, sorry about the rant.

In the next installment, I have more pictures and some interesting commentary on what kinds of things people have lost. It's pretty neat to see the bizarre and amazing stuff some people had in their homes that was destroyed or spared.

Miscellaneous tidbits.....

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Some great pictures of the flooding in Lakeview taken from a boat while the water was high:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?Uc=n7vl128.10k36pe4&Uy=-lsttlk

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Index of Hurricane Katrina-related stories at DailyKOS - a great site for in-depth commentary on social and political issues:

http://www.dailykos.com/tag/Katrina

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Nutjob pseudo-pastor Fred Phelps, notorious for his "godhatesfags.com" web site has another site ( http://www.godhatesamerica.com) where he says "Thank God for Katrina":

America is irreversibly doomed. It is a sin to pray for the good of this evil fag nation.

"Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me; for I will not hear thee." Jeremiah 7:16.

It is a sin NOT to rejoice when God executes His wrath and vengeance upon America

But perhaps what is even sicker than this guy's opinion, is his own personal history of being a hateful, vengeful, evil person, which can be found here:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/michael_haggerty/expose3.htm

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Interesting pictures of the total devastation of the Martin Luther King branch of the New Orleans Public Library:

http://nutrias.org/mlking/mlkphotographs.htm

An index of pictures of damage at various NO Public Libraries:

http://nutrias.org/~nopl/welcome.htm

Best Hurricane FEMA Time-Line I've Found:

http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina_timeline

Brown, it turns out, was the administration's scapegoat for the FEMA debacle, when it wasn't his fault

WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12637172.htm

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Thinking of moving? Here's an interactive map that will show you a graphic representation of flood areas, historical hurricane paths, hail & wind storms, earthquakes, tornadoes and more. Check out areas of the country and how they rate on the "disaster scale."

http://www.esri.com/hazards/makemap.html

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Army Corps of Engineers maps of levee breeches:

http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/cepa/katrina/pumps/pumps.html#New%20Orleans%20Pump%20Status

FEMA "rules" slow hurricane clean-up to a crawl and outrage locals

Hancock County Workers Protest New FEMA Rules
Debris clean up in Hancock County came to a halt Tuesday morning as workers contracted by the government to do the job parked their trucks in protest. A new set of rules for clean up from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started the standoff.

The crews stopped in their tracks along Highway 90 in Waveland.

"There are four lanes here, we blocked one on each side and let the through traffic go through. The State Police come in and said, 'If you don't move, we're going to take you all to jail,'" Arizona contractor Tony Jones said.

Jones said the protest was in response to new rules from FEMA and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

"We get told this morning at 6'oclock that they are allowing one monitor per loader, not per company, but per area. That monitor from the Army Corps of Engineers has to sit there and dictate what pile of debris gets removed," Dennis Whitehurst of Texas said.

Clean up crews say that will slow down the process tremendously.

"You can't come in here and load one truck at a time and let the other ten crews wait while the monitor goes around and says, Okay, it's your turn to load now.' Our kids won't see this place cleaned up at that rate," Hancock County resident Jamie Bean said.

Jimmy Smith of South Carolina agreed with Bean.

"Where we're loading 50 trucks an hour now, we'll be loading one truck an hour per section. It will take 50 years to clean this place up."

The general consensus among the clean-up crews is that it's hard to do business in Hancock county. They say something has to give.

"You can't work like this," Bean said. "What's going to happen is we're going to lose all these people out of our town to clean our town up. They are going to go to New Orleans, they're going to go to Harrison County, they're going to go to Jackson County, wherever, cause these guys have spent money to get down here and they need to make money now."

"We need help period. Stop fighting and just work. Let them help," Rosemary Paul of Hancock County said.

The decision makers at FEMA and the U.S Army Corps of Engineers must have heard her plea. By mid-afternoon they decided to scratch the new rules and put the crews back to work.

"We talked to FEMA because we support FEMA's mission, cause that's what we're here to do. They were agreeable to it at this point and time and we'll move forward," Russell Retherford of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers said.

The protest lasted about 3 1/2 hours before crews went back to work. There is more than seven million cubic yards of debris to be picked up in Hancock County.