August 2008 Archives

first rain bands approaching. Now we're in the middle of it. rain bands moving 25-30mph. Winds 20-30mph at the moment. Neighborhood is in total darkness.

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (PBJ) is on the boobtoob right now (1730CDT), patting himself on the back for successfully evacuating the bulk of Southern Louisiana. For him, it's Miller time, but there are still thousands on the roads of Mississippi, trying to get out of the way of Gustav. And from reports along I-59, it's not a pretty sight:

We left our home at 3:45am and didn’t get to Hattiesburg until 1:00pm. The contraflow, which we took, was a joke. It only lasted about 10 miles or so, and was bumper-to-bumper from start to finish.

Hey, PBJ, if your buddy Barbour doesn't help ease the way through his state, it really doesn't matter how well you do in yours.

My wife and kiddo bailed around 1030CDT, reaching Jackson on I55N by 4pm. They've still got to go across I20E to Birmingham to get to the hotel.

It looks like Louisiana has worked out evac/contraflow up to the state line, but not so well beyond that. The process has a long way to go. PBJ and his state homeland security staff need to put down the celebratory cocktails and get back to work.

stormcat says: don't mess wif my comfy chair!

Wife, kiddo, and mother-in-law left around 11am, going I10W to I55N, then they'll go I20E to Birmingham, AL. Amber (above) and I are staying. I'm comfortable that the house is secured against wind. Hopefully the water stays the heck out of the neighborhood.

Follow me on Twitter (YatPundit) for the immediate play-by-play. Will post to blog as things develop as well.

Katrina Remembrance at Metairie Cemetery on Pontchartrain Boulevard

I didn't have time yesterday to write a "third anniversary" post. There's a bit going on in the city at the moment, and I'm not talking just about Hurricane Gustav, which is about to punch through Cuba and enter the Gulf of Mexico. That's because the New Orleans metro area is back to business. (Besides, I wrote down our story about evacuating and such last year.)

I was out of town for most of this past week, in Manhattan. I taught a 4-day class for Hitachi Data Systems, then took the 7:30am nonstop from LGA back home, just as I had planned before Gustav was something to factor into planning. Because I travel 2-4 weeks a month (read about what I teach, and you'll understand that I would have to travel to do it whether we got hurt by a storm three years ago or not), I follow and observe airport statistics and comings-and-goings. In spite of the general economic turndown and obscenely high fuel prices, flights to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) have been on the increase, and are slowly making their way back to pre-K numbers. That's a very good sign.

While evacuation is not something any of us want to contemplate, I did find the traffic jam caused by yesterday's noon exodus from downtown to be encouraging. The backed-up traffic on I-10W heading into Metairie meant there actually were people working when most companies took half the day off. Southern Decadence was in full swing last (Friday) night, and will continue again tonight, although the big parade for tomorrow was canceled.

All of this, combined with the fact that I was just too darn busy to do more than stop for a moment of silence at 9:38am at MSY (the official time of the 17th Street Canal floodwall breach that flooded most of Lakeview and MidCity), is a good thing. Keeping busy is a good way not to re-live trauma. Still, part of my agenda yesterday was to pick up my 14-year old at Brother Martin High School, where he's a freshman. That meant going into Gentilly, and that's still a sore point for me.

For all that the positive signs around the city are starting to out-balance the negatives, the neighborhood of Gentilly is one of the saddest of the negatives. People living in that once-thriving area now consider themselves "pioneers" in their own city. And like the pioneers and homesteaders of 19th century America, their lives are an interesting mix of primitive and civilized conditions. Old neighbors and new are pulling together, as people re-build and folks with a bit of the pioneer spirit move in.



Holy Cross School, on Paris Avenue in Gentilly

Holy Cross got caught a lot of flack when they made the decision last year to leave their historic Ninth Ward campus and build a new school in Gentilly. The low, one-story buildings you see in the right-hand background are portable classrooms; that's their school for boys in grades 5-12 at the moment. The order and the school's board negotiated a long-term lease for the land that used to be St. Frances Xavier Cabrini church and school, along with what used to be Redeemer-Seton High School as the site for the "new" Holy Cross. The demolition of Cabrini church was controversial, but the school won the day and the new facility is rising from the flooded area.

But as the school rises up, the neighborhood is left as religious "pioneers." As part of the Archdiocese of New Orleans' post-storm consolidation/reconstruction plan, Cabrini was a parish slated to be closed down. Combine that with St. Raphael's over on Elysian Fields still being a mess, the entire area has been merged with St. Leo the Great parish. Now, this isn't just catlick mumbo-jumbo here; churches are the anchors of a neighborhood. When you've got to drive miles to go to church instead of walking blocks, you've lost a piece of your community. Three years on, Gentilly is still missing a number of things that make a neighborhood, such as gas stations, convenience stores, coffee shops, and churches. Sure, folks in the area can get in the car and go to Lakeview, where retail is coming back faster, but that doesn't do anything for property values in Gentilly.

The Holy Cross development will hopefully spark some retail development along Paris Avenue, from Robert E. Lee Blvd. to Mirabeau Ave. Most of the students attending Holy Cross aren't from the neighborhood, so that means a lot of car-pooling soccer moms going back and forth. That's a potential retail base. The return of retail will encourage more people to "pioneer," turning this:



into this:



The problem is that rebuilding of the neighborhood is inconsistent. One block over from the above corner is this:



The complexities of Road Home, employment and school issues are only some of the reasons blocks of Gentilly have not been rebuilt. The best solution for the neighborhood now is to give up on the notion that things will go back to the way they were before the storm. Gentilly must hope that major developments like Holy Cross lead to general expansion. If the government contractors who populate the office complex across the street from the University of New Orleans (as well as UNO itself) continue to offer quality employment opportunities, the prospect of a 2-4 mile commute to work will attract new families to Gentilly. The jury is still out on the charter schools which have opened in Gentilly, but their success also contributes to the growth of the area's growth.

Pioneers are tough people. Gentilly just needs more of them.

Oh, and by the way, one of the reasons I was too busy yesterday to write a +3 post is because I went to Parkway Bakery with friends for lunch. After five days in Manhattan, I had hot sausage po-boy on the brain:



To everyone in Gustav's path: STAY SAFE!

No, I really don't blame SeeRay for being in Denver to see Barack Obama speak at Invesco Field tonight. This is a moment in history that won't be repeated, and he can get on a plane to come home as soon as the speech is over. Hell, I'll bet someone would let him hop a ride on a corporate jet so he doesn't have to deal with the nightmare that is DEN.

From an e-prep standpoint, there's not a lot the Mayor of New Orleans can or should be doing at this juncture. The current position of the storm is west of Haiti and south of Cuba. The 5-day cone has it going in 70-80 miles west of the city on Tuesday evening. That's a significant distance away from the city, making it difficult to judge an evacuation order at this time. The most the mayor can do now is to stay on the phone with his weather guys, as well as with the Jefferson Parish emergency ops center and PBJ's people.

That's where aides and mobile phones come into play. One would assume that there's someone in SeeRay's entourage with at least a smartphone, as well as a laptop with an aircard. With those two, he can make informed decisions all the time he's in Denver. With all the Dem power brokers converged on that city this week, it's good for New Orleans that our leader is there and in the thick of things. Running home at this time would be similar to Carter hunkering down in the White House in 1980, refusing to campaign against St. Ronald of California, because of the Iran Hostage Crisis.

No, SeeRay made the right call on this one. Would that he got it right more often.

NASA's Constellation booster and Orion manned vehicle, currently under development.

It looks like the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night members of McCain's team are in charge at the moment. Since he's running on a "four more years" platform, scaring the heartland of the homeland is a top-priority strategy.

Problem is, the tried-and-true scare tactics of the Cheney administration aren't going to work for McSame. First there was Tom Ridge and his constant (and usually unfounded) terrorist attack warnings. Olbermann used to do a regular feature on how much bullshit came out of Ridge's mouth as DHS secretary. The job is currently held by Michael Chertoff, and his performance during and after the storm puts him in the Gibbering Idiot Hall of Fame. We've been on a state of "high alert" that Orange is the New Green.

Seeing that the scare-them-with-terrorists is Epic Fail, the McSame-ites are going back to the 1984 playbook for a boogyman - the Rooskies! And they're abusing the space program to do it.

NASA's fleet of Space Shuttles is slated to go end-of-life in 2010. They're old, expensive, and arguably unsafe. The agency is developing the Constellation rocket system to replace the shuttle, but it's not expected to fly until 2015. That five-year gap means that manned flights to the International Space Station would be made on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

The Soyuz has launched more humans into space than any other type of spacecraft. It's inexpensive and (relatively) safe.

But that's not good enough, says McSame, because it's Russian:

With tensions high between Russia and its ISS partners regarding the recent fighting in Georgia and Russia's subsequent recognition of breakaway Georgian regions, many are reluctant to rely on Moscow for space lift. Senator McCain says he is also upset with the Russians over their sales of weapons and other technology to countries such as Iran, and argues that funding Soyuz manufacture indirectly assists ballistic-missile development by America's possible enemies.

Oh, those naughty Russians!

NASA isn't all that excited about extenging the life of the shuttle:

For its part, NASA says that the shuttles must go in order to free up
cash for Constellation, and that a gap in US manned lift is inevitable
without extra funds. While McCain and his Republican colleagues are
happy to demand more shuttle flights, they don't specify where the
money should come from. McCain's presidential rival Barack Obama has
also called for at least one extra shuttle mission above current plans,
but he too is loath to offer details on the needed lucre. His fellow
Democrats in Congress don't seem even as convinced as he is of the need.

What we need is a firm re-committment to the growth of our space program. If McSame really thought the Rooskies were a threat, he'd find ways to fun NASA and continue their work. Of course, Bush's War makes any new spending tough, one of the reasons Obama and his team are cool towards NASA.

Still, the Rooskies will scare the old folks. After all, Russia scared them when they were young folks.

Gustav is just west of Haiti and currently downgraded to a TS.

Get a grip!

The latest 5-day cone puts it south of Grand Isle at 2am Monday. Assuming it curves due north from there, Gustav will come ashore on Monday night, Tuesday morning.

That means work and school today, tomorrow, and Friday. It means you have all day Saturday and Sunday to board up your windows. It means you can take a long weekend visiting family somewhere else in the region over the weekend.

Get a grip!

Honestly, if you can't live with the threat of hurricanes, you shouldn't live on the Gulf Coast. Just like someone who has a neurotic fear of earthquakes shouldn't be living in California.

This is life in New Orleans. I'll be 50 in November, and I can't remember it being any different all my life. Yes, we got hit and hurt bad 3 years ago. I refuse to validate those who think the city's comeback should not be fully funded by worrying about the next storm.

Come Sunday, I'll have a full tank of gas in the car, and an ample supply of cat tranquilizers. If the thing grows to an uncomfortable intensity (strong Cat 3 or better), then it's off to Shreveport to see freiends we go. Until then. Life goes on.

As it should.

As it MUST.

Get a grip!

I don't know if this is done anywhere else, but it seems like Chris Paul's gold medal in Beijing is important enough to hang a replica of that medal on the wall of the New Orleans Arena. We hang banners for retired players and for title victories, let's hang a banner with a picture of the medal on it. He earned it and it reflects well on the Hornets.

It's been some time since I've flown into Cincinatti-Northern Kentucky Airport from home. Most of the MSY-CVG flights these days are on "regional jets," those smaller, ~50-seat planes that Patrick Smith of Salon's "Ask The Pilot" decries as the main reason airport delays are what they are. (Capt. Smith argues that airlines want to schedule more flights, so they use the smaller jets rather than packing 300+ people on one wide-body plane.) I'm usually not a big fan of the regional jets, because my fat butt is rarely comfortable in a coach seat on a B737, much less an even smaller CRJ-100.

Still, today was an exception, because Tropical Storm Fay is playing havoc with weather patterns across the Olde South. My comfy first class seat on the 5:30pm nonstop from MSY to New York's LaGuardia airport looked like a Really Bad Idea when I went to bed last night, so I dragged Mrs. YatPundit out of bed at 5am to drive me to Armstrong. Delta re-booked me on a morning run to LGA, connecting through Cincinatti.

I used to go through CVG a lot, back when I was teaching for Digital/Compaq. The Digital mothership facility for Tru64 UNIX was up in Nashua, NH. Not wanting to fight Boston's Logan International, I'd fly into Manchester, NH (MHT). Flying a big jet from MSY-CVG and connecting to a regional jet to MHT, then the reverse was a regular thing for me, right up to 9/11. In fact, I took the MHT-CVG/CVG-MSY route home on 15-Sep-2001.

Back at that time, CVG was a Serious Hub Airport. You could walk along the "A" or "B" concourses and see the Big Jets, the 767s and 777s, heading to California, Japan, and Europe. Delta's bread-and-butter jets, B757s, 737s and MD88s were in-and-out as fast as the ground crews could turn them around. Little Feat even wrote about CVG in their tune "Oh, Atlanta."

Not only did the big jets fly in and out of CVG, but the airport was also the home port of ComAir, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines. ComAir operated the smaller jets and prop planes that would feed fliers from the hub airport to the single-runway, small-town airports of the south and midwest. Want to go to Grand Rapids, MI? Fly to CVG and take a "puddle jumper" plane to your destination.

Sad to say, the Hard Times of George W. Bush have hit CVG. In its heyday, you'd transfer by bus from the big jet you arrived in on "A" or "B" over to the "regional" concourse, "C." I was worried about time this morning, when the pilot of the Embraer 145 regional jet I took on the MSY-CVG leg of today's trip said we'd be 15 minutes late. Factoring in the bus ride from "C" back to "A" didn't leave me with a lot of time. Imagine my surprise when the flight attendant told me our arrival gate was A18.

A 50-seat jet landing at CVG with the Big Jets? Wow, that was a surprise.

Only that there were no big jets.

With the exception of two MD88s, all the jets parked at gates on "A" were regional in size. There are a number of possible explanations for this decline in the need for big planes at CVG:

1. 9/11 spooked a lot of Americans, and we don't fly as much now.
2. The general economic malaise of the last few years keeps people home.
3. Market forces in the airline industry have pushed the big jets aside.
4. $100+/bbl oil means obscenely high prices for jet fuel.


Take your pick, they're all solid reasons (and if you've got others to add, feel free to do so in comments).

It's interesting that three of these four can be attributed to the policies of the Cheney administration and their Republic enablers in Congress. Still, voters in all of the states where Delta hubs are located (GA, OH, UT), are going to vote for a continuation of those policies.

Go figure.

@WestleyAnnis asked just now on Twitter about slide tackles in soccer. It's more complicated a subject than one can explain in the 140 bytes/message that Twitter uses, so here's a quick run-down.

A "slide-tackle" in futbol is a technique used by a defender to take the ball away from an attacking player. The defender executes a foot-first slide, similar to a baseball player trying to steal second. The problem with the technique is that the ball on the pitch is, unlike second base, a moving target. If the defender judges correctly, ball is taken away, and hopefully one of his mates is there to send it the other way.

If the defender mis-judges, however, his slide will take him right into the ankle(s) of the attacking player. Then the referee applies the basic standard for the severity of a foul, careless/reckless/excessive force.

If defender slides and misses, or attacker keeps the ball, play the advantage and let attack continue.

If the slide is from the side, say 9 o'clock or 3 o'clock, and the attacking player isn't kicked hard, blow whistle and call a foul--"careless."

If the slide is from the side and attacker is taken down, play could be considered "reckless," blow whistle for foul, caution (yellow card) defender.

If the slide is from the side, defender comes in cleats-up, attacker is taken down, play is "excessive force" and defender should be sent off (red card).

When a tackle is from behind (in clock position, 4pm to 8pm), a referee should come down on player like a ton of bricks. In youth play, all slide tackles from behind are usually regarded as "reckless" and merit a caution. Studs-up, send off.

Age is usually the determining factor on how much a referee comes down on slide tackles. Younger kids (below U16) can't control a slide well, so it's best to shut them down altogether. At U16 and older, the slide from the side is a legitimate tackle, so judgement comes into play.

I'm not going to Rising Tide III, because I just got home yesterday from San Diego, and I have to turn around and go to Santa Clara on Sunday. For me to run off to a "bloggers conference" would get me into more hot water with my family than I need to be in. That said, if you have time tonight and tomorrow, YOU should go to Rising Tide III.

Tonight, they're having a meet-and-greet at Buffa's Lounge, at 1001 Esplanade Ave. The main conference begins tomorrow, at the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, 1618 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. The sessions run until roughly 4pm, and lunch is provided.

Go out and meet some of the most active people in the NOLA community!

One of the things missing from the First Gulf Fiasco that we had in the First Gulf War was a top-down hero. In Desert Storm, H. Norman Schwarzkopf was lionized as a successor to Ike and Grant. While neocons and Limbots have tried to hold up David Patraeus and put him in the same position as "Stormin Norman," it's just not working. As Alterman points out in his column today, it's mainly because, well, Petraeus isn't all that heroic a figure:

I'm having a little trouble understanding the MSM master narrative on David Petraeus. If he is the savior of Iraq, turning that country from a hellish cauldron of hatred to Tahiti, why is he leaving when he, himself, admits, "It's not durable yet. It's not self-sustaining." What could be more important than sustaining that alleged success and making it durable? A nicer job, perhaps, with cushier circumstances and more status, but really, why walk away from Iraq? Surely, it's the most important priority in US foreign policy right now. Whatever promotion he wants or deserves, why can't it wait?

Does this mean Petraeus is merely an opportunist who realizes that his career is going nowhere fast if he stays in Iraq? Let's face it, if he can hide in a different job, perhaps he won't be viewed by an incoming Obama as a neocon/Cheney loyalist.

Last week, Loki from Humid City took issue with a comment I made on Twitter about making fun of the Mayor of New Orleans, SeeRay Nagin. I put forth that it does no good to mock SeeRay, because he's past the point where any attempt at humiliation on our part would be effective. After yesterday's revelation that a city contractor tore down a house a Gentilly couple had purchased after the storm and were re-building, I've come to a different realization.

I was wrong, and Loki was right, SeeRay deserves all the scorn and humiliation we can heap on him between now and election day in 2009.

I would go a step further and submit that it's time that any member of the SeeRay gang (I hesitate to call them an “administration,” given that they're in such disarray) should receive the same scorn and humiliation given to the boss.

Take the issue of housing demolitions, for example. This was supposed to have been settled by a consent decree agreed to by the city and various groups who sued SeeRay's gang in federal court, because the demo process was haphazard and did not afford homeowners anything in the way of due process.

It appears that obeying court orders wasn't something they taught in whatever Civics classes the SeeRay gang took, because Erica and Brian DeJan now have a pile of rubble on a lot where their house stood just last week.

What is amazing about the DeJan fiasco is that, while one group in SeeRay's gang issued the couple a building permit to repair the house, another group within the gang was ordering it torn down.

That's where humiliation comes into play. It's one thing to mock SeeRay—his political career is, for all practical purposes, over. His gang lieutenants, and the sergeants under them, however, anticipate employment under future mayors. SeeRay didn't order that the DeJan family home be torn down; a bureaucrat did.

Those bureaucrats are usually invisible to the world, and often immune from scrutiny. Take Michelle Krupa's description of her contact with those involved in home demolitions, for example:

(insert quote re city response here)

Can't comment, won't comment, don't know what to say even if she could comment. It's at this point that Krupa should have started a new line of questioning:, such as, “Where did you go to school?”

It's a classic New Orleans question. If you're a local, you know the question well. The proper answer is where you went to high school. Non-locals will answer with their university, when what they should say is “I grew up out of town.” Clearly the bureaucrat will realize that s/he is quickly becoming part of the story. Once armed with more information about the person's background, follow-ups can and will make them more and more uncomfortable. As they should be, when they've done something as heinous as destroy a family's home.

The underlings in the SeeRay gang have been able to run under the radar since the storm. The leader of the pack has been acting like he got hit on the head with a rock ever since 29-Aug-2005. SeeRay's crazy remarks, behavior, and expensive bar tabs at Metairie restaurants can and should be attributed to his erratic behavior; business decisions, such as when to tear down a building, should not. Those wo make those decisions should be dragged into the light of day and held accountable.

Another group who should be held accountable for the actions of the SeeRay gang is the gaggle of politician-types who endordsed SeeRay in 2005. You're a judge whose signs are now up as you run for a seat on a higher court, explain to us all why you thoguht this gang would shoot straight. You're a legislator, give us a similar explanation while you also vote the $$$ needed to fix what this gang has either stolen or what we'll have to pay out to settle the inevitable lawsuits.

I've long argued that we Democrats should make the Republics take ownership of George W. Bush and the criminal enterprise he leads. What's good for the goose, etc. It's time for local Democrats who supported SeeRay to stand up and fix their mistake.

There's a lot of outrage this morning over the Cheney Administration's latest assault on the sex lives of Americans:

The Bush administration has consistently opposed providing funding
for international birth control programs, but until now has not tried
to limit the use of contraceptives inside the United States.

That could change in the president's final months in office. Health
and Human Services officials are considering a draft regulation that
would classify most birth control pills, the Plan B emergency
contraceptive and intrauterine devices as forms of abortion because
they prevent the development of fertilized eggs into fetuses.

This is a position so out in right field that most American Catholics reject it and the gay old men in the Vatican who have tried to push it since Paul VI's Humane Vitae. But this move by the Republic Anti-Sex League comes at a time when it can be used against them for maximum effect.

George W. Bush and his boss, Vice-President Cheney, the foul-mouthed Dick, have run their final campaigns. Not so for John McSame McCain. This is the kind of government action that can be taken into the streets and used as a club to beat McCain. Do these idiots really think young Republic men and women want to make more babies indiscriminately? Do 40-something Republic couples who have teenage girls want to be raising their grandchildren because their promiscuous daughters didn't use The Pill?

The Republic Anti-Sex League will continue to push and push. This isn't about abortion and "baby-killing," but rather stopping people from fucking. That's where they're out of mainstream Republic thought.

Rush Limbaugh used to argue that people would support repealing the Estate Tax, even though the overwhelming majority of them would never be subject to that tax in the first place. The reasoning was that, even if they weren't multi-millionaires, they subscribed to that part of the American Dream where anyone could pick himself up by his/her bootstraps and become a millionaire. if the protections against that virtual fortune they don't have yet are taken away, they'll never live the dream.

Now, apply the same logic to McSame and the Republic Anti-Sex League. There's not a lot of chance that your average Republic middle-class guy is going to get the chance to spend a weekend in Milan, banging supermodels. Shit, there's really not much chance he's going to get the chance to bang one of the local Hooter girls, when you get down to it, but he dreams of that chance. If those girls can't get on The Pill, the potential pool of girls-Republics-want-to-bang is going do drop dramatically. That situation is just as unacceptable as the "Death" Tax.

Obama clearly opposes this latest Anti-Sex move:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has signed a letter of protest written by a group of U.S. senators. (Republican candidate John McCain has not taken a position.)

Democrats should take every Republic candidate running for office to task for this position. If the Anti-Sex forces succeed, use it as a club against them all. Karl Rove used gay marriage as an effective wedge issue against Dems in 2004. This could easily become the karmic payback for that.

There are days when I wake up and read whatever the next stunt the Cheney Administration has pulled and I scratch my head. Sometimes an elegant scheme will be revealed that makes you wonder, are these guys really that smart? Then there are the days when it's clear that they're dumber than a box of rocks.

When you listen to Cheney and Rice talk about the current flare-up between Russia and Georgia, they sound like sensible people, but Juan Cole's column in Salon this week makes it clear that they really have no idea what they're doing:

In a unipolar world, the Bush doctrine of preemptive war allowed
Washington to assert itself without fear of contradiction. The Bush
doctrine, however, was never meant to be emulated by others and was
therefore implicitly predicated on the notion that all challengers
would be weaker than the United States throughout the 21st century. Bush and Cheney are now getting a glimpse of a multipolar world in which other powers can adopt their modus operandi with impunity.

When we look back on all the pre-war projections and claims made by Cheney and his planners, it's easy to see they were clueless. Their main motivation was to re-direct goverment spending to companies they or their close friends controlled. Republicans have certainly not created an environment of less government, just one where their friends rake in the profits.

But they didn't factor in the laws of unintended consequences. They changed the rules of international diplomacy to make a buck, and now we all have to live with a Vladimir Putin and his own version of the "Bush Doctrine."

What's disturbing about this is that Putin can truly get away with whatever he wants. Even if he couldn't point to Cheney's actions as justification for his own, the US military has been so weakened by the neo-cons that there's just nothing we can do about Russia.

Throughout the latter quarter of the 20th Century, we worried about nuclear proliferation. After this Republic administration, we're going to have to guard against Stupidity Proliferation.

...for white teenagers, that is. A St. Tammany Parish criminal jury convicted a 18-year old white boy yesterday in the shooting of a Salvadoran laborer. There was a lot of compassion displayed in the courtroom:

Meanwhile, the 12 jurors -- six men and six women -- shed their own tears. One juror said later that the group"went through the gamut of emotions" as it contemplated sending such a young man to jail for life. Themurder was committed two months after Carter's 17th birthday.

Not sure how many tears were shed for Jose Luis Martinez, the man that Glenn Carter popped a couple of .45 rounds into, though. No doubt they didn't see Sr. Martinez' life to be worth so much that a young white boy should pay with his own for the crime. The verdict was 10-2 for conviction on first-degree murder. A Louisiana jury must be unanimous on a murder conviction for the death penalty to be considered, so Carter was convicted of second-degree murder.

And even then, the good people of St. Tammany cried.

I can't help but wonder if they'd cry if a black teen had killed Martinez. Maybe not, after all, it's not like Martinez was a white American, after all.

Still, while it's easy to mock the duplicity of the values of this jury, I agree that we're potentially wasting the life of a teen. Even though this young man and his friends (three others are to be tried for Martinez' killing) appear to be unredeemable pieces of crap, I'm opposed to giving them or anyone under 30 life-without-parole. Ten or twenty years in prison is a long time, and a person can indeed change over such a span of time. There may come a day when even these white-bread criminals from Slidell are worth more than labor on the farm at Angola. To give up on them now and do the "throw away the key" thing isn't fair.

It's not right to do that to any 18-year old, black, white, brown.

I'm sure there would be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the families of victims if the law was to be changed so these killers had a chance of going free. I'm not all that concerned about them, because most of them want public executions brought back. They're going to scream at any remedy short of that, so it's easy to turn a def ear to them.

Not that anyone is really listening to the family of Sr. Martinez, mind you.

CC's Community Coffee House on Esplanade Ave. in Faubourg St. John

I've been reading the various accounts of the NOLA tweetup on Thursday that broke up because a female patron didn't approve of mommies bringing kids to her favorite study hall, the CC's Community Coffee House on the corner of Magazine St. and Jefferson Ave., in Uptown New Orleans. Since I was at scenic BWI airport at the time, I can't comment on the specifics of the outing. Being a frequent haunter of coffee shops, however, I have some definite thoughts on the behavior of coffee shop patrons.

It's sort of ironic that I just tweeted a message at lunch time complaining about a screaming child while I was having leisurely, late lunch at The Cheesecake Factory in Columbia, MD. I don't mind kids--got two of my own, in fact--but I really don't like screaming children in enclosed spaces. Whether it's a restaurant, church, small store, you name it, if your kid is yelling at the top of his/her lungs, it's time for you to stop whatever adult pursuit brought you to the establishment and start being a parent again. Change the diaper, feed the child, or just take them out of the environment that's causing them so much discomfort that they're driving the rest of us insane.

From the accounts I got about Thursday's tweetup, none of the kiddos at the gathering were fussing; quite the opposite, they were having fun, if being a bit boisterous. That still can be problematic for some of the coffee shop crowd, though, particularly a place whose relative proximity to two major Universities (Tulane and Loyola) means many of the patrons are students. It appears that the tweetup group ran afoul of one young woman in particular, who considered the kids' behavior annoying and distracting. The young woman, according to one description, all but slammed her laptop (which had a big Linux sticker on it) closed and stormed over to the tweetup table. Her demeanor softened a bit by the time she asked Nola (of NOLAnotes.com) to settle down the kids, but she was still clearly annoyed.

Memo to Linux-girl: Coffee shops are public places. They're social places. People go to coffee shops to meet friends. Many a short story I've written has started or ended in a coffee shop. People do business there, some read, others just watch people. And yes, some folks bring their children. They have every right to bring the kids, and I support that right, until the kid starts to hurt her lungs by screaming too much.

Coffee shops aren't libraries or temples. As someone who spends way too much time online, I'm greatly appreciative that many coffee shops have wi-fi and allow me to sit and work, all for the price of my cup of coffee or big-ass iced tea. It's a good environment for me. When I'm teaching, I'm usually behind corporate firewalls during the day, so I'll go to a local Starbucks so I can get into my servers at home, check that everything is OK, then blog my meager thoughts. I can't get chicory coffee when on the road, so I dearly love that I can go to a CC's or The Bean Gallery in Mid City and satisfy my chicory fix when I'm home. I do all this with no expectations beyond sitting down and enjoying my coffee.

I'll be the first to admit (and my University of New Orleans transcript would support this) that I didn't study all that much back in my college days. When I wanted silence to study, however, I'd usually start on the front porch of my fraternity's house on Elysian Fields Ave. There's nothing better than sitting out on a fall afternoon in New Orleans, reading a book. When the guys at the house became too much of a distraction, I'd head over to the school's library, or, horror of horrors, head home. It would have been inappropriate for me to demand that my fraternity brothers walk around on tiptoe in silence while I was reading.

Indeed, dear Linux-girl, it was wholly inappropriate for you to ask other patrons of a public establishment to leave as well. I don't care about whatever work you felt you had to complete, or Internet-based communications you felt compelled to work on at that CC's. If your personal business is so important that you felt compelled to object to the perfectly normal behavior of others in a coffee shop, it was time for YOU to leave.

Studying graduate/nursing/medical/law students have got to be the most un-appealing thing to see when one walks into a coffee shop. They "nest" at tables meant for 4-6 people, to the point where a place that can seat 50 has 8-10. They're anti-social to the point where many where industrial-strength earplugs to block the sounds around them. Some are even cheeky enough to bring in their own drinks, buying one of the smallest/cheapest things on the drink list, then staying for hours on end.

There's only one coffee shop in the New Orleans area that outright bans these study-types, Caffe' Caffe' on the corner of Clearview and W. Esplanade in Metairie. The two Puccino's coffee shops in Metairie require a $5 purchase to use the Internet, and they ask that the study-types sit in their back room, leaving the front-room tables for those actually eating. The chain coffee houses, CC's, PJ's, Starbucks, have no policies about how long you're allowed to occupy a table at their establishments. The CC's and Starbucks on Veterans in Metairie all have drive-up windows; that's where they make their $$$. They don't really care if you "next" inside, since they're about servicing the drive-up.

The two CC's locations on Magazine Street are interesting studies in contrast. The location near Magazine and Eighth Street is a friendly, albeit crowded place where you'll encounter an eclectic crowd of customers. (The Starbucks at Washington and Magazine presents a similar atmosphere). The Jefferson and Magazine location has a totally different psychic feel. Upon walking in, you immediately get a sense you're not welcome from the other patrons. Their heads are stuck in books or onto laptop screens. The opening of the side door brings in light (and usually heat), both annoyances to Linux-girl and her ilk. To accommodate more of these types, the coffee shop set up a row of two-top tables, so this breed can't spread out the way they do at other places. Their proximity to other humans already has them on edge; your presence in the doorway is just an additional discomfort. The sight of another person coming in with a computer bag is equally unwelcome, as that means another wi-fi user who will cut into the bandwidth and performance of their connection.

Now add a couple of moms with strollers or toddlers in tow. Even if the particular group of study-types in the place aren't rabid anti-breeders, children are an unwelcome distraction from the oh-so-important online work in which they're engaged. The hostility is often enough to totally turn me off. Usually I won't even bring in my computer bag, grabbing just the laptop. I'll get a drink, check email, and head on to whatever business it was that brought me Uptown in the first place.

For the record, by the way, you would most likely put me in the same category as these anti-social folks if you saw me in a coffee shop. I'm a bit different, though, in that I go to coffee shops to be among people. If I'm at home, it usually means I'm alone (wife at work, kids at school). Working in a coffee shop means I get to do some people-watching while I work. Being that they're also public places, coffee shops also lessen my temptation to watch internet porn when I should be doing my invoices or working on the new streetcar book.

I suspect it's the fact that so many of the patrons of this coffee shop are non-New Orleanians. Most locals were raised in the social fabric of po-boy shops, sno-ball stands, hanging around the parish church after Mass, you get the idea. Maybe these people chose Tulane because of a particular degree program, research track, or professor, but it doesn't look like they have a full sense of appreciation for the city in which they find their school.

Or maybe they're just asshats wherever they are. Either way, methinks that we should plan the next NOLA tweetup for a coffee place with a more social and welcoming environment.

I'd like to say, better still, let's meet at a bar, but that might make it difficult for the parents of little ones to come, and they're part of our twitter-family as well.

email from Renard:

Just wanted to let you all know that I will be performing w/ my new band - The Renard Poché Band - featuring Leslie Smith, Garland Paul, Scott Jackson and Eric Traub this coming Wednesday 8/6/8 at the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak street at 10p - We will be performing songs from my debut CD "4U/4ME" as well as some select favorites
with a new twist.

For those of you have already downloaded the CD, many thanks for your support and hope you are enjoying it. For those who would like to check it out or find out more about the band and future shows you can do so at renardpoche.com.

Would love to C U there,

Renard

I'd be there if I wasn't up here in Baltimore for the week... :-(

The desire for streetcars returns, by Saqib Rahim.

The desire for streetcars returns, by Saqib Rahim.

I'm reading a fascinating article on modern bridesmaids and the bridezillas they enable this morning in Salon. It got me thinking about some of the weddings I've been to over the years.

New Orleans weddings fall into Five basic types: The Uptown Wedding, the Downtown Wedding, the Cathedral Wedding, the Suburban Wedding and the Chalmette Wedding.

The Uptown Wedding is what the debutante has. Common churches are Trinity or Christ Church (Episcopal) or Holy Name (Catlick). They range in size from private (extended family) to semi-private, to big-blow-out. The smaller weddings are often held at venues like the Orleans Club on St. Charles Avenue, the larger at New Orleans or Metairie country clubs, and the blow-outs in a hotel ballroom downtown. (The latter aren't all that common, as the wealthy lunch-club crowd don't do that many public affairs.) The Uptown Wedding is a formal event, as in black tie in the evening--that means BLACK tie, not tuxedos with red ties/cummerbunds. The groom's preppy friends may show up in tartan cummerbunds in authentic family patterns, but all the men in the photos will be in basic black). A day wedding would mean classic morning suits, but the Uptown Wedding is most always a nighttime bash--it's more appropriate to be totally hammered at midnight rather than 2pm.

Not everybody's daughter will be queen of Comus, but there are families with the means to throw a top-flight party. Those brides have a Downtown Wedding. This wedding is not about the church as much as the reception. There are some fathers-of-the-bride that want to throw a large bash for their little girls (400+ guests). They've purchased decades of nice wedding presents for friends, colleagues, etc., and now it's time to collect all those markers. To collect, though, you've got to have a place big enough to hold all those guests. That means booking a big ballroom in a downtown hotel. The church for the Downtown Wedding is usually the bride's regular parish church, then everyone piles into the cars and heads for Canal St.

A variation of the Downtown Wedding is the Politician's Daughter's Wedding, which is also a huge bash, but a legislator, judge, or parish councilman in a suburban parish can't just abandon the hotels in his district for The Monteleone or the Ritz-Carlton.

In terms of logistics, the Cathedral Wedding is the opposite of the Downtown Wedding. This one is all about the church. So many Catlick churches in metro New Orleans look like they're the anchor store of a strip mall rather than a house of worship. They're post-Vatican II design, where access to the altar and visibility were emphasized. On a week-in-week-out basis, that's a good thing, but it removes from the church the one thing a bride wants on her big day: A long aisle down which to walk. For all her fond memories of Prompt Succor in Da Parish, St. Angela, St. Ann, St. Benilde, etc., in Metairie, she wants a classic-style church for the wedding. St. Louis Cathedral, with its Spanish Colonial architecture and French roots, is the perfect solution for many brides. Of course, her guests will complain and moan, now being forced to drive into town, park, walk to Jackson Square, then get back in the car and drive out to a suburban reception place, because the family can't afford a ballroom in a downtown hotel. Uncle Joe may fuss at the time, but the bride (and her momma) know that their friends will always talk about how much prettier this wedding was compared to the ones in the 'burbs.

There are some variations on the Cathedral Wedding theme. Now that the demographics of some of the older parishes in New Orleans have changed, those churches have opened themselves up more to weddings from non-parishoners. St. Joseph's on Tulane, St. Mary's Assumption in Da Channel, and Sacred Hawt on Canal St. are three fine old churches that have the long aisle that makes a bridezilla drool.

The Cathedral also plays another role for the bride from Da Parish in that it enables them to escape from the dangers of the Chalmette Wedding (see below).

Then there are the families so loyal to their parish that they could never bring themselves to marry off their daughters anyplace else. Or possibly the young woman who was president of the CYO and then met her beau in the parish's "young adults" group. Nothing but the church building where she grew up will do, which gives us the Suburban Wedding. The hallmark of the Suburban Wedding is the Turnkey Suburban Reception Place. These are the DisneyWorlds of weddings, everything is done their way, on their schedule, with their personnel, and all you have to do is write one check. Sure you can bring in your own photographer, but their guy is a bit cheaper. Same with their DJ. A band? That might cost extra.

The Suburban Wedding is the most common type encountered in New Orleans. A quick trip to Taco Bell in between the church and the reception place usually solves the biggest problem with these evenings, the food lines. Some families have to skimp a bit on the food package they buy, so the stuff laid out on tables around the reception hall isn't as appealing as your basic three-taco special. The "good stuff" will be brought around by servers, but there isn't going to be as much of it as anyone would like. The father-of-the-bride in this situation knows that the food is less important than the liquor, which flows freely all evening. After her third Cosmo of the evening, Aunt Julia just won't care much that she never got any of the fried shrimp the servers were passing around, because the vultures would swarm down upon the tray as soon as it emerged from the kitchen.

Even though it's the least expensive of the basic wedding types, you're more likely to hear about the Chalmette Wedding even if you weren't invited. That's because it won't be recapped in the "Living" section of Da Paper, but it's very likely the event will be in the "Metro" section and the police reports. This is the classic "white trash wedding." Jerry Springer producers lurk around these, in hopes of finding future guests for the show. The Catlick version of this wedding is usually held at Our Lady of Prompt Succor on Paris Road, but often other venues are used. It's possible that the bride or groom aren't in quite good standing with the church, so a civil ceremony might be held at the Knights of Columbus hall just down the street. At least everyone's in the same place at this point.

That's when the champagne corks pop and the fun begins. By the end of the evening, there will be a fight between either the bride and an old girlfriend of the groom, or the groom and an old boyfriend of the bride. Possibly it will be a fight between the father of the bride and the 24-year old boyfriend of the bride's 15-year old sister. Or Uncle T-boy might get into it with one of the other shrimpers from Mereaux after they've both had several jack-and-cokes. One way or another, the Sheriff's Office will be on the scene before long, "encouraging" someone to take their leave of the festivities.

The common variations on the Chalmette wedding are the Bucktown, Kenner and Marrero Weddings.