Source: Miscellaneous

Fourteen architects donated time and energy to draw up 14 different duplex models for Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation. You can get a glimpse of each model on the foundation's website.

The Ninth Ward was populated by single-family homes before Katrina, so the duplex is a relatively new idea here that may give working class families a chance to get back on their feet.

Source: NBC

From Brian Williams tonight, a bit of a surprise about the pace of growth in NOLA. Behind the cut, a clip from the nightly news:

Source: Miscellaneous

The Scooter and Hum blog has written a terrific review (more like an homage, perhaps?) of our book, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans. There are loads of quotes from the book as well as some artwork. We don't know Scooter and Hum (nor did we pay them) but we thank them, whoever they are.

Source: HuffingtonPost.com

Forgive me that headline but honest to God, I feel like if I read one more thing that FEMA did wrong in the wake of Katrina my head is going to pop off. Get a load of this:

In the summer of 2006, FEMA spent more than $7 million on two warehouses the agency said it needed to repair trailers and mobile homes used by disaster victims. One of the warehouses was paid for from federal disaster relief fund, which investigators say is not permitted. The other warehouse was paid for with proceeds from sales of travel trailers and mobile homes _ also not allowed.

But, he said, "FEMA does not tolerate wasteful spending and is committed to making sure that any past mistakes are not repeated."

I love that last line - did he say that with a straight face?

Source: New York Times

Dan Baum, author of NIne Lives, had an opinion piece in the NYT last week on what he learned about joy in New Orleans:

Circulating at the time were a lot of plans to use the Katrina destruction as a “blank slate” to make New Orleans “bigger and better than before.” One high-level commission after another spoke of mixed-income neighborhoods, casino districts, light rail, a denser urban “footprint,” the works. Their proponents pointed out that New Orleans before Katrina was a cauldron of urban pathologies: crime, corruption, decaying infrastructure, lousy schools, and more. To a certain way of thinking, Katrina represented a chance to “fix” things.

In their zeal to imagine a new city, the big-picture planners lost sight of how happy New Orleanians had been with the old one. In a nationwide Gallup survey shortly before the storm, New Orleanians — in numbers far greater than other Americans — reported themselves “extremely satisfied” with their lives, despite some of the worst violence, poverty, and mismanagement in the country. New Orleanians measure happiness differently than the rest of us do.

There was apparently a lot of response to his essay and the paper ran some letters that came a few days later. Some agreed while others "...took issue with what they viewed as a romanticized notion of the city that ignored the troubling realities faced by its residents." Read it all for an interesting take on finding the right way to view New Orleans. (Part of me thinks it's crazy to even have this discussion but it's out there, so I'm bringing it here to you.)

Source: Miscellaneous

Via The Bottom of Heaven, some thoughts on the PSA from 2-Cent Entertainment . From BOH:

When I returned to the city to retrieve my belongings in October 2005, the Lower 9th seemed frozen in time. The combination of the wind and the flood had shoved houses off of their foundation, slamming them into one another like an action movie set. Cars were flipped over in the most unusual positions; holes were busted in roofs from attics where people fled to escape the rising waters. Boats were overturned on the sides of streets and awkwardly settled on front lawns.

I know this because I, too, visited these neighborhoods and captured it all with my video camera. When friends and family came to visit, I drove them through the streets to see the damage for themselves. And, I have to admit, I started to feel ashamed. I’m no longer offering my own Katrina “tour” and the PSA video does a good job of explaining why.

Behind the cut, a second look at the PSA.

Source: BBC

BBC correspondent James Coomarasamy revisits New Orleans before ending his stint in the US — a stint that included covering the broken levees and Katrina nearly four years ago. This radio broadcast is pretty depressing -- it's an honest look at how some folk are faring (not well) four years after the disaster.

Source: Miscellaneous

From News 8 in Austin, TX:

Researchers at Tulane University Hospital and Clinic found there was a threefold increase in the rate of heart attacks treated at the hospital since the storm. In the two years before Katrina, the researchers found heart attacks accounted for 150 of the 21,229 patients admitted to the hospital. In the two years since the hospital re-opened in 2006, there were 246 heart attacks out of 11,282 patients.

Dr. Irimpen suggested conducting the study because he noticed he was being called in much more often to treat heart attacks at Tulane.

Source: Times-Picayune

Each year, the Army Corps of Engineers and private companies dredge about 63 million tons of dirt from Louisiana's coastal areas, primarily to service the needs of shipping and petroleum interests.

Now, the state is demanding that the corps use more of its dredged mud to rebuild wetlands. And it's told industry to reuse 100 percent of its mud for restoration, or to pay the dollar equivalent into the state's coastal restoration fund.

This has to be the stupidest thing ever. The federal government won't let us do the right thing because it's too expensive? How about cheaper in the long run? Oh but wait - there's more:

In February, the corps turned down most of the state's demands. Corps New Orleans District commander Col. Alvin Lee said the additional money from Congress won't be available until the fiscal year 2010 budget is approved.

The corps counters that federal law requires it to use the cheapest alternative for disposing dredged material. And that requirement will not accommodate the steep cost of moving the dredged material miles away from the river's navigation channel to areas desperately in need of fresh mud.

At some point does anybody ever bring up the fact that we are all Americans and if the coast isn't saved then Louisiana's problems become America's problems and a helluva lot more expensive? I sometimes think the COE is from another planet - the inability to see the big picture is staggering.

Talk about smart people acting stupid.

Source: Galleycat

I'm going to characterize myself as cautiously optimistic about this news item from Media Bistro's Galleycat:

Dave Eggers made literary headlines once again, breaking the news that his new nonfiction book, "Zeitoun," will come out next month--a story about how one Muslim-American family experienced Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Here's more from the interview: "We vet books as thoroughly as anyone, but then when they're ready to go to press we send them to press. There's not much of a delay between when they're ready and when they're available to readers. For Zeitoun, the gap was about six weeks. We sent it to press in mid-May and it'll come out in early July, depending on how far from the printer we need to truck the books. The printer's in Canada, so maybe if you're in Canada you'll get it at the end of June."

Here's a bit from The Rumpus interview as to how the book came about:

We have this series of books called Voice of Witness, where we use oral history as a window into human rights crises. Back in 2005, right after Hurricane Katrina, a group came together in New Orleans and elsewhere, and they interviewed New Orleanians about their experiences before, during and after the storm. The book became Voices from the Storm, edited by Chris Ying and Lola Vollen, and one of the narrators in that book was Abdulrahman Zeitoun.

Right after the book came out, I was in New Orleans to visit the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts—this incredible high school for the arts—and while I was in town I met up with Abdulrahman and his wife Kathy. We started talking, and pretty soon it was clear that there was a lot more to his story than we’d been able to cover in Voices from the Storm.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Here's a novel idea:

In the Netherlands, water management is incorporated into urban planning, taking into account parks and other open public spaces that could function as safety reservoirs in case of floods, and also barrier islands and wetlands.

Landrieu was speaking on her second visit to the Netherlands to study water management since Katrina, and said she planned to ask Congress to approve funds to improve water management along the Gulf Coast.

Source: Living on Earth

Sunflowers are good for New Orleans:

CURWOOD: It's hard not to smile at a field full of radiant sunflowers, and that's one reason why a redevelopment group in New Orleans is planting the giant blossoms in vacant lots, a bid to reclaim a badly blighted neighborhood near the superdome.

BRADSHAW: There's no question that sunflowers make soils better with respect to the level of heavy metals. What is debated about it is how much better and how quickly the things get better. There has been some research here in New Orleans out of the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane and Xavier that shows that because the pH levels in most of the soils in New Orleans, that the uptake of heavy metals is significantly delayed. And Howard Mielke in particular has done some research that shows it may take as much as a thousand years to actually clean a heavily contaminated plot in New Orleans. But there's also some competing research that comes out of Dillard University that has shown that in a couple of growing seasons a lot in Central City moved from being unsafe according to EPA standards to a safe level for alternative uses.

Listen to the whole radio show at Living On Earth.

Source: CNN

Seriously - he's stuck there!

The mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana, has been quarantined in China after possible exposure to the H1N1 virus, his office said Sunday.

"We have talked with him and he is in good spirits," Quiett said, adding that there was no indication how long the quarantine would last.

Source: Forbes

Chris Paul, star of the New Orleans Hornets, is one of Forbes' 100 influential celebrities, a well-deserved honor from what I can tell. His concern for NOLA seems genuine, and lord knows his skills are top-notch. Maybe someday we'll see him in the finals instead of the oh-so Hollywood Kobe.

Source: Washington Post

I swear to God, it seems like Ii have been writing about this same story forever:

The Obama administration will announce plans today to virtually give away roughly 1,800 mobile homes to 3,400 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who are living in government-provided housing along the Gulf Coast, officials said.

"We knew we needed to bring this program to a close," the official said. "We also want to ensure a humane and secure transition for all of them."

Just what comes next - what's after trailers and transitional housing? Can I hear news about apartments or rental homes or something that's, I don't know, more permanent?!

Source: National Public Radio

Another issue surrounding the question of rebuilding:

But that's exactly what people decided to do with an island off the Louisiana coast more than 150 years ago.

What follows is the saga of Isle Derniere, lost forever in 1856 after a devastating hurricane and a decision not to rebuild. Fascinating stuff for history lovers and modern day environmentalists alike.

Source: Gardens & Guns

The saga of Louisiana's last shrimpers:

Ninety percent of shrimp consumed in the United States is imported from Asia, where aquaculture farming is widespread. More than a few tourists in the French Quarter have enjoyed étouffée made with shrimp grown by a Thai farmer named Pakpao. The flood of farmed shrimp onto the market has led to a 40 percent decline in the price for caught shrimp—with adjustments made for inflation, the price of shrimp today is about the same as it was in the early 1960s. The same cannot be said for fuel, ice, and parts. But unlike mixed baby salad greens, or, say, grass-fed beef, the average consumer doesn’t care about the origin of his shrimp enough to pay a premium for it. This is too bad, as the flavor of a Gulf shrimp, netted at the peak of its life cycle and best enjoyed after the simplest preparation, evokes the faintest flavors of salt water and Gulf life. By comparison, a farmed shrimp feels soggy in the mouth and has a faintly sweet taste—or as one shrimper tells me, “dey taste like all the shrimp shit dey swimmin’ around in.”

It's a great article and well worth checking out. I think, like a lot of other foods (such as tomatoes and apples for starters), we've forgotten what shrimp really taste like - or we've been trained not to remember. You get what you deserve in cases like this; if we want good food then we need to ask for it (and be willing to pay the price).

I get my shrimp from my father-in-law who fishes all summer in Alaska; I can't imagine eating farm shrimp after the pleasure of wild caught.

Source: NBC

Many New Orleans students who started their freshman year just as Hurricane Katrina crushed the Gulf Coast survived the trauma largely through the goodwill of others. Now, after spending their high school years passing that goodwill on to others, they’re graduating with special honors. NBC's Mike Taibbi reports.

See the NBC Nightly News clip behind the cut............

Source: Nolafugees

The folks at Nolafugees have given their site a few tucks and a trim. Check it out.