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2 protests from the levee break life, 2006 and 2010

First, an installation done by my neighbor Jonathan in 2006 in the bayou next to our flooded apartments. I just happened to see him setting this up at dawn on the morning of August 29.
jonathan

A quote from local activist Tracie Washington made into a poster by activist/printer John Fitzgerald in 2010 or 11:

resilientposter

And an interesting post from 2012 about another negative association of resiliency, with a great quote about how it can reveal the deform in certain systems:
Resilience, from the Latin resilīre, to spring back, is the ability to return to an original form after deformative stress. When it comes to institutions, those moments of deformative stress can be revealing. The institution loses its decorative bunting and what we see is its essential nature.

“The next person who calls me resilient I’m gonna stab in the neck…”

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“Dedicated to President Bystander”

Two of the grief-filled but somehow repairing moments that we experienced at JazzFest 2006: Springsteen’s Acura set and John’s chilling jazz tent performance.

bless you Bruce.

John Boutte singing Randy Newman’s Louisiana 1927 at JazzFest 2006:

John is the voice of the shared soul of New Orleans.

And fuck you bush, blanco, brownie and nagin.

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August 28 event at Canal Place-FREE

Admission is free; activities start at noon.

Programming includes screenings of several documentaries, highlighted by Alexander Glustrom’s “Big Charity: The Death of America’s Oldest Hospital” and Harry Shearer’s “The Big Uneasy.” There will also be live music from Armand St. Martin, Steve Allen and Hannah Schulingkamp, several short films, and a slideshow of images courtesy of the New Orleans Kids’ Camera Project.

NOLA.com food editor Judy Walker will be on hand to discuss and sign “Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found From The Times-Picayune of New Orleans,” newly released in a hardback edition to mark Katrina’s 10th anniversary. (Walker speaks at 4 p.m. and signs until 6.)

Events in Greater New Orleans.

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Save the Kitchen Witch

*Update 08.25: they have to be out by 9/30. if you know of a likely retail space or can offer support to Philipe and Deb in any way, I hope you stop by Toulouse between Royal and Chartres to offer it.

Just as we were about to celebrate Kitchen Witch’s 10th anniversary we received the letter no business wants to open. Our rent will more than double and our excellent lease has expired. So, it appears that our beautiful, quirky and happy space will no longer be home to our books and wonderful customers.

This is how small business dies–The lease increase of 115% is more than they can afford, so on your next visit you find them gone. But what if the landlord — SuLuEtteDee c/o Latter&Blum 712 Orleans Ave. NOLA 70116–received a card, letter, post card from you–would it help? Yes Indeed!!!

Kitchen Witch Cookbooks

631 Toulouse St, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130
Hours
Wed-Sun: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

“Kitchen Witch is a small, but purrfect book shop in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans. We specialize in rare, hard to find, out of print and pre-owned books on food and cooking.”

(504) 528-8382

http://www.kwcookbooks.com
http://phillamancusa.blogspot.com/

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dammit I am tired of the passive and the aggressive war on bicyclists in this city. way too many “No bike parking” signs, drivers driving in bike lanes without regard to anyone’s safety, (or almost as bad) driving JUST behind us out of eye sight as if we impede your driving lane. Scary to see how many drivers who cannot calculate safe distance on either side. Trucks using dedicated bike lanes for parking even when there is ample parking to pull into, thieves running amok with tools to cut even the best locks in less than a few minutes and entirely too many people immediately blaming the DEAD cyclist when an accident happens.The fact that the cyclist is often no longer among the living should tell you that an accident involving a car and anything human-powered is not a fair fight. What is really going in in many cases is the driver either “doesn’t see” the cyclist at all (which tells you about the level of distraction and road awareness among many drivers) or the driver felt the cyclist had no right to the road and encroached on their space, resulting in a tragedy for one side. And yes, I am also tired of the few cyclists I see who have a disdain for bicycle traditions, including communicating with savvy drivers when possible with hand signals, using eye contact and acknowledgement and ceding the road to pedestrians when necessary. I see those cyclists, but I do not believe they actually number as a significant number of us. In order to ride a bike for a long period, one has to believe in those rules and to honor them. And those few who disregard the rules are just that, few. They are just more visible to those looking for examples of bad cyclists.
There seems to be a belief that the “grown up world” is about owning an auto and bicycles are for the immature, the Peter Pans of the world. That the rights of car drivers extend to the ownership of the road and that their decisions should override every other conveyance, even while they using their car as a weapon or wreaking havoc on the streets because of the distractions they have added to their driving time. For those who believe in auto-only roads, I would be happy to cede the highways to you and to take back the city streets for pedestrians, for cyclists and for low-powered motor vehicles. I am sure we’d all be a lot safer.

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Please Forward: How Blogging Reconnected New Orleans After Katrina

Much of the story of Hurricane Katrina lived on the internet as the city reconnected during its diaspora. When Cynthia Joyce went looking for one vital account for a course she was teaching, she found the site down and the piece forgotten. This inspired her search for the works that became Please Forward: How Blogging Reconnected New Orleans After Katrina. Some of the writing included is famous and easily obtainable; a good percentage of the work is currently unavailable due to aging servers and broken links. Taken together, these pieces are powerful testament to the New Orleans blogging community who proved the internet could function as a crucial platform in a time of crisis.

Official Launch Party

WHAT: “Please Forward” launch party, featuring contributor readings and book signing

WHEN: Tuesday, August 18 at 7PM

WHERE: Press Street HQ (3718 St. Claude Ave.)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Please-Forward/572978082845369

Other events in New Orleans:

  • Thursday, Aug. 20, 6PM:  Octavia books reading/signing featuring readings by Deborah “Big Red” Cotton, Michael Homan, and Bart “Editor B” Everson (New Orleans, LA)
  • Saturday, Aug. 29, 10:30AM: Rising Tide Conference – “What if we’d had Twitter? — An exercise in anachronistic tweets” (New Orleans, LA)
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1930s home movies: French Quarter

….cars in Jackson Square, no gates around Cabildo or Presbytère entrances, Desire streetcar on Royal, but the rest is the same exact reality. That is thanks to preservationists like Martha Robinson and her neighbors a half century or more ago and for the small businesses that still want to serve the city center.