Returning from Gustav
Sep 04 by Sean P. Clark
We got in last night. Aside from a couple of fallen branches and missing shingles, the house is all good.
Last night it appeared a good amount of Lakeview is out of power, but the Lakeshore area near Canal has power, Gentilly near UNO doesn’t have power either. My parents in Baton Rouge are still without power.
There were tons of energy trucks on the road coming from as far as Tennessee and Michigan on our way here. In New Orleans east I saw a parking lot full of them ready to go. So they definitely have all the resources they need to get people up and running.
A Night in Nashville
Sep 02 by Sean P. Clark
We went out to eat at the Mellow Mushroom, and had Tempeh and mushroom sandwiches. And as an appetizer, a huge mushroom with cheese on top of lettuce with vinaigrette dressing. It was all unbelievably good. I washed it down with a Delirium Tremens, named after an alcohol withdrawal symptom. It’s a very strong, tasty Belgian Ale. I also had a Paulaner Hefeweizen… also good.
Then we hit Broadway street and walked around a bit. The architecture surrounding the area reminded me a little of Kansas City. It mostly seemed like a less diverse version of what you’d find in New Orleans, then again I’m sure we only hit a tourist spot. One guy tried to hustle us saying that he was from New Orleans and lost his kid. I guess the first place you’d go if you lost your kid is on a street full of clubs and cowboy boot shops, right?
Too bad we didn’t have much time to scratch the belly of Nashville. I’m sure we’ll go back at some point in the future.
I-59 or Eastern Escape Nightmare
Aug 31 by Sean P. Clark
Listening to the radio in the car you’d imagine everyone was smooth sailing on the evacuation. Let me tell you that just isn’t true for people who were stuck on I-59.
It was bumper to bumper stop and go for many hours. We left at 7am Sunday and headed north east. The exits were blocked off, droves of people were peeing on the side of the road, cars were breaking down, and we didn’t make it out of Mississippi at all on Sunday. At one point we jumped out of line and headed the wrong way down an exit ramp on the contra flow side of the interstate. We drove down a bit and found a gas station where we grabbed a bite to eat.
Then something horrible happened. Dulcinea, Sarah’s mom’s 16 year old dog started to go into spasms before we were about to leave. She couldn’t move and she felt overheated, so we carried her to the grass trying to cool her with water and ice on the pads of her feet and ears. Her gums started turning white, but we kept at it. At one point it looked like she was starting to come back, but, being elderly, her symptoms could have been another condition that was aggravated by the heat and stress of the trip. When she seemed to be more stable (eyes looking around, able to lick water from our hands) we drove further into the small town.
We pulled over near a guy working at home on his trucks. He was very friendly and helped me find a 24 hr. vet clinic. A relative of his worked there. I looked at Ducinea one last time before I went into his house to make calls. She coughed and her tongue and head went limp. She didn’t make it. It was a horribly sad trip to the vet, and this event was stacked on top of the already emotional drain of the evacuation. I carried her into the hospital and Sarah, her mom and I said our goodbyes to Ducinea.
Standing outside in the parking lot there was a real sense of sadness and despair over the trip. The potential of Hurricane Gustav seemed to be weakening from reports on the radio, but we couldn’t go home because the roads were one way, and judging from news reports we’d be turned away if we tried to go back home. We continued driving…
I can’t remember what rest area we stopped at (some place in Mississippi), but it was dark and overflowing with people sleeping in cars. The rest area was a zombie-like atmosphere of tired evacuees making their last pit stops before curling up in their cars outside. My eyes were twitching before we stopped and sleep was definitely taking over. Even after we got through the 2 mph traffic, we just had to pull over following the depressing loss of Dulcinea, and our energy completely drained.
After a few hours of rest, cool breezes came into the car window and helped me wake up. I took my turtle Squeaky out of his box and let him walk around a bit. We did the same with the dogs, and I dropped my own small present at the rest area. Relieved and halfway refreshed we finished our trip to Nashville. As of this writing, Gustav is falling apart and is a Cat 1 now over Louisiana. The winds knocked down a large tree at my parents house in B.R. I hope our home was spared any lost windows, fallen trees, or rain damage.
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Gustav Packin'
Aug 30 by Sean P. Clark
Welp, we’ve got our reservations set and our crew is gonna have six dogs, 2 cats, a parrot and a turtle. We’re getting our stuff together. We’ll be waiting until Sun to see if the weather makes any extreme turns, but otherwise we’ll be hitting the road. Homeboy is a Cat. 4 at the moment, and will be at a 5 if speed picks up by just 5mph more.
A hawk the size of a owl was standing in our birdbath this morning. A Native American might say I was greeted by a messenger. Whether he was forewarning danger, bringing peace, or just thirsty, we’ll see…
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RTIII Another Day Later
Aug 25 by Sean P. Clark
John Barry gave a great talk about the Mississippi River and the economic value New Orleans is to the rest of the nation. I picked up a copy of his book to reinforce some of the topics he covered. All of the details on barrier island destruction, sediment diversion, economic reasons for our industrial canal system, and everything leading up to our waterway felt a bit overwhelming. So I’ll have to piece through it as I find time. Here are six facts to consider from Barry’s website. If I could take one thing away from his talk it was that in the Netherlands it sounds as if they make a strong effort to educate its citizens about the water.
In NOLA I have never had in-depth education about our surrounding environment including waterways. Given that our lives and public policy depends on it, we need to be making sure the future kids know more than “we live in a bowl,” because that’s the kind of over-simplified BS that will prevent the next generation from having the political and social knowledge to fix our problems. Now more than ever people want to learn.
The education panel spent a lot of time talking about the changing structure of our public schools, and the struggle for parents to make sense of it and teachers unions to organize around it. Leigh Dingerson from the Center for Community Change made a strong point that regardless of if we are supportive or not of the way the Charter school system is being handled, we need to reinstate the ability for our communities to have input on whether a Charter school is going to be put in place. It sounds like a population eager for change, might not be keeping an eye on retiring teachers’ health care, junior level teacher’s being thrown in on LEAP testing classes, top-heavy payscales that leave teachers making less at a Charter than a RSD school… I don’t know all the details, but one thing seems clear. People are confused.
Leigh made the comment that Charter schools were originally designed as model schools to help the foster positive change in the surrounding public schools. If they replace all of our schools, then is public input lost? Regardless if I’m right or wrong on my general assessments, I’ve never heard a parent, teacher or student who feels that the LEAP tests are doing anything more than hurting our schools. This and the bureaucratic battle to get proper staffing and resources to schools has got to end.
At lunch I scooped up on some vegan red beans and rice and some kind of delicious roll thanks to dsbnola. And of course a fist fight broke out while I was outside enjoying the weather and getting out of a crowded room… I couldn’t tell you the details, but I’m sure others will.
The politics forum, although a fun chat, didn’t really address actual policy making more than horse race talk. Looking at polling numbers and talking about integrity is useful, but it really doesn’t help anyone. We get the same kind of stuff on a national level about our presidential race and it gets tiresome. Is it really more about the race dynamics than what the job entails. The part of the conversation about the DA race was the most useful. There was overwhelming agreement that we spend more time prosecuting non-violent minor drug crimes than on the real public safety concerns (I’d lump violent and corporate crime in that list). I think the question that didn’t get raised is where are the police supposed to take people with mental health issues or drug rehabilitation. We’ve got a disconnect here, and our city needs to provide those services first. We’ve got the highest incarceration rate per capita in the nation, and I’d argue that its creating public safety problems not preventing them.
The intersection of journalism and citizen reporting was a good panel. I didn’t come away with any concrete thoughts on the subject, but it was a fun discussion all the same. Oh, and if you were there, this picture captured my reaction to Clancy’s question. That’s my “where’s he going with this” look.
Electric-Biked It
Aug 13 by Sean P. Clark
Electric-biked it into work today. The rain wasn’t a good start for the day, but it died down for enough time that I could make it downtown. I had a bolt that was stripped, but got a spare one from some guy with a cold. Woohoo…
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Rise Some Tide
Aug 06 by Sean P. Clark
You could be doing this, this month. Or maybe a picture can say a thousand wrong words – I would’ve shown more exuberance had I known I was under the lens. This is a worthwhile event, with intelligent people, diverse opinions, and people who communicate what’s going on in NOLA from a web logger’s eye view. Mine is a vainglorious blog with little direction, but some of these people display real everyman journalism.
I think my generation’s seeming complacency has a lot to do with active minds that don’t take their ideas beyond the monitor. Rising Tide III represents a shift from that barrier.
August 22-24
Zeitgeist Multi-disciplinary Arts Center
1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd (@ Felicity)
New Orleans, LA 70113.
White Sardine Night
Aug 03 by Sean P. Clark
Julia street was packed, humid, and sweaty last night. The mix of people were excited to be there, and then I heard outside “why are we here, honey” from a middle aged couple, and in one gallery I hear from a young guy pressed against the wall “lets come back Monday so we can see the art.” Blake did a good job getting his new space together–The Canary Collective.
The truth is that the crowd was too successful of a showing and maybe split over a couple nights it would’ve thinned out enough. It’d be nice to stand and think for a moment and not feel pushed through like damp, white water buffaloes. I hope it made someone deserving extra dough or recognition.
...and later that night a sad goodbye to Bridget whose headin’ to Chicago. Will she be back for another annual Guac-off and Cornhole competition? Hopefully…
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Louisiana's recent Oil Spill
Jul 24 by Sean P. Clark
I’d rather hear about solar panel spills than oil in our river, but just yesterday…
“No one was injured, but heavy, almost tarlike fuel oil spilled from the barge, forming a slick 12 miles long, Commander Ben-Iesau said. About 47 miles of the river was closed. The barge held more than 419,000 gallons of oil in three tanks.”
Our local paper says it was 80 miles closed.
It’s sad that I made a post just days ago about our dirty dance with oil, and not wishing Alaska the same political and environmental challenges that come in the wake of drilling. This happened right in our city folks.
Things Sagmeister has Learned So Far
Jul 23 by Sean P. Clark
Sagmeister’s collection Things I have learned in my life so far has made a profound impact on me. It’s not just the design and presentation, or the anecdotal stories that he uses to illustrate the maxims… It’s that he applies these lessons to his work.
View a lesson learned video sampler filmed by Hillman Curtis here.
Sagmeister – Happiness in Design: