September 2007 Archives

The Bush administration encourages creativity:

St. Tammany Parish officials should seek innovative methods to finance sorely needed road improvements, while residents throughout the greater New Orleans area can help ease traffic by staying off the roads during peak travel times whenever possible, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters told local government and business leaders Friday.

Shorter BushCo: Sorry, even if you're one of the heaviest Republican areas in the state, we really don't care much about your needs.

Lolis Eric Elie, my favorite op-ed columnist in Da Paper, does a great job of putting an article by Mr. Ben C. Toledano in Commentary into perspective.

Now, I don't know Mr. Toledano personally, so I'm loathe to call him a racist. Still, when someone writes things that smack of racism, well, it's the old smoke-and-fire thing. After all, being a member of a segregationist political party doesn't necessarily mean you still think poorly of the Eebil Coloreds.

It brings up an interesting point that we regularly see in urban areas where white flight leaves the city proper in control of African-Americans. It always seems like the outrage about local government corruption is greater when the white folks aren't the ones benefitting from government largesse.

Elie does a good job of taking care of Toledano's not-so-veiled racism, but there is one aspect of the issue that I'd like to develop a bit.

Mr. Toledano's thesis is that the rich WASP-types who are the backbone of social clubs like the Boston Club are responsible for the demise of New Orleans. According to Toledano, it's the Episcopalians' fault, not the Italians, Germans, Jews, and other white ethnic groups. The WASPs messed the place up until the Coloreds took over, and then they just totally trashed the place.

Such a view of the city's history is far too kind to the non-WASP white folks. The entire white community of New Orleans, both those who stayed in the city in the 1960s and 1970s as well as the white-flighters who bailed to the suburbs, must be held accountable for their refusal to support the Orleans Parish Public School system. The Italians and the Jews don't deserve the pass that Toledano wants to give them. The white ethnic groups and the suburbanites rejected public education in favor of Catholic and other private schools.

It's natural for families who are struggling to pay private school tuition to reject the notion of paying taxes to support schools that their kdis don't attend. Politicians responded to this demand from their white constituents and restructured public school financing so that the burden was shifted from homeowners to commercial property owners and renters. Commercial property owners have their own lobby, and there's only so much blood you can squeeze from renters. The net result was that the city's public schools were black and broke, and none of the white folks really gave a damn, Mr. Toledano included.

Just imagine someone from the local Chamber or other economic development group trying to explain our local schools to companies looking to set up shop in New Orleans. They can't say, "dont' worry about our horrid public schools. We have good Catholic, Jewish, and private schools, and what you don't pay in property tax you can use to cover the tuition."

The destruction of the city's public schools in the storm is an opportunity for the metro area to get it right this time. Hopefully more people will focus on that than will join Toledano in blaming the WASPs and the Eebil Coloreds for our problems.

Looks like a brother-in-law deal to me:

Once considered a haven for Coca-Cola products, the school district has officially shifted gears, recently signing a five-year contract that guaranteed Pepsi exclusive pouring and beverage rights systemwide.

The drastic switch affects 80 of the district's 84 schools, all of which had been supplied by Coca-Cola in the past. The remaining four already are serviced by Pepsi.

What I find interesting is that Pepsi projected $3.3million in revenue to the school district, where Coke proposed giving them $2.2million. Coke says Pepsi's numbers are inflated and unrealistic.

I'm not so sure, even though the deal's convoluted structure looks fishy. When all is said and done, a lot of kids prefer Pepsi to Coke.

Since Da Saints lost Monday night, and Deuce McAlister appears to be out for the sesaon, no doubt someone will blame the team's misfortunes on the "cemetery curse." Many people believe that Da Saints are doomed to perpetual failure because the Superdome was built on top of a cemetery, specifically, Girod Street Cemetery.

It wasn't. Girod Street Cemetery was built between Girod, LaSalle, and Liberty Streets, roughly on the area now occupied by the parking garage for the New Orleans Centre shopping mall. Da Dome was actually built on the site of an Illinois Central Railroad engine terminal and roundhouse.

The photo shows Girod Street Cemetery in decline in 1942. The cemetery was founded in 1822 by the chapter of Christ Church (Episcopal). Prior to 1822, Protestants were burying their dead in the back of St. Louis Cemetery Number One, but the Episcopal congregation wanted their own burial ground. Girod was a grand cemetery, but because Christ Church did not establish a "perpetual care" fund, the cemetery fell into disrepair and the church did not have the funds to maintain it. By 1957, the cemetery was even more decayed and overgrown than what you see in the photo, and Girod was "deconsecrated" and demolished.

You can find more details on Girod on my work-in-progress page on the cemetery at CitiesOfTheDead (dot net). The "history" section has been completed.

From 1963, Perley A. Thomas streetcar 832, running outbound on the Canal Line to the Cemeteries Terminal. 832 is approaching Galvez Street. The Canal Street neutral ground transitions from concrete to grass just past Claiborne Avenue.

The 800-series streetcars were essentially the same design as the 900s, with one major exception. The doors on the 800s were manual, and the 900s were automatic. The manual doors weren't a problem for operations, though, because the city required NOPSI to operate streetcars with 2-man teams, a motorman in the front and a conductor in the back. NOPSI howled about two-man operation for decades, arguing that the system doubled their labor costs and that streetcars could just as easily be operated by one person.

Some little details in the photo: Notice the crowbar-like tool that's mounted on the front of the streetcar, right over its number. This is the tool the motorman used to throw the manual switches at crossovers along the line and at the terminal. The route sign indicates he's operating on the Canal line (at the time, the only line running on Canal Street, of course), and that particular streetcar was the 40th run to leave the barn that day.

When streetcar service was discontinued on the Canal line in 1964, the 800-series streetcars were scrapped. A few were saved by trolley museums in other parts of the country.

(Photo courtesy of Earl Hampton)

(This is my Daily Kos diary entry for today)

Ohmy, all the navel-gazing and hand-wringing in the Blogosphere over the Jena 6! Like others here, I'm concerned that a front-page dKos post strolls down memory lane while there's a lot of work to be done on this issue. I'm also amused by the notion that the "black blogosphere" is annoyed with the "white-o-sphere" because the liberal white folks are coming very late to the party and still aren't doing enough to help the Jena 6.

On the subject of helping the Jena 6, let me also pimp blueintheface's diary from earlier today. I'd like to go a bit further and suggest a few more things.

Give to the Jena 6 defense fund. blueintheface already mentioned this, but let me re-empasize this. Even pro-bono legal work comes with expenses, not to mention the fact that these families have been turned upside down by all this. Hell, someone should probably start a fund to re-locate these folks to someplace where the kluxers of the local klaven won't come after them once the bright light isn't shining on Jena. And if you think that's not going to happen, consider the fact that they found a shotgun in the truck with the nooses today.

Contact the Louisiana Attorney General, Charles C. Foti and encourage him to start an investigation into the LaSalle Parish District Attorney's office. The Grand High Foti has had himself a helluva time sticking his nose into cases in Orleans Parish lately, so he's no stranger to flexing the muscle of his office. Be sure to remind Mr. Foti that, once upon a time, New Orleans Archbishop Rummel excommunicated a politician for refusing to integrate schools, so stopping racism is as important to the church as stopping euthanasia.

Encourage Democratic Presidential Candidates to visit Jena. If you really want to mess with the law enforcement agencies of Jena and LaSalle Parish, get Edwards, Clinton, and Obama to pay courtesy calls on the families of these young men. Those families need all the nelp and encouragement they can get. Of course, any visit from one of the big three Dems will mean that their USSS protective details are going to go with them. Those agents don't have a lot of patience for the KKK or local government officials who enable them.

Encourage the FBI to stay on the case. Yeah, the DoJ blew off the investigation, but that doesn't mean fed involvement has to be over. Write Director Mueller and remind him that most of the kluxers are really just criminals who need to be slapped down, racial implications notwithstanding. The political hacks at Justice may not care because of the Kanye West theory, but common criminals offend the institutional sensibilities of the FBI.

Speak up on racism in your community. Make sure your community doesn't become Jena. Consider starting a chapter of ERACE, an organization here in New Orleans whose mission is to open up dialog on racism with the hope that talking will promote understanding. ERACE has information on how you can facilitate dialog in your local community on their website.

Now, onto the subject of the colors of the liberal blogosphere. While I join with ProgressiveSouth in wondering why some of the major lefty sites in Teh Blogosphere haven't emphasized the story of the Jena 6 as strongly as perhaps they should, I'm wondering about this whole notion of the "black blogosphere" and the "white blogosphere." Maybe it's just me, but a lot of the black folks I know down here are pretty much still working on trying to make The Road Home program work for them so they can re-build their still-gutted houses in Gentilly.

Still, if there is indeed a "black blogosphere" that is upset with the "white blogosphere" about the Jena 6, I would strongly suggest that there might be a few things happening that are just a tad bit more important than the plight of six young men in Central Louisiana. I'd further suggest that the "black blogosphere" get off its Collective Black Blogging Ass, come down to New Orleans, pick up a hammer and help Habitat for Humanity re-build the Ninth Ward. Maybe I'm a bit selfish on this issue, but the 100,000+ black New Orleanians who were put on buses and shipped out of state might be just as important as six kids who like to fight.

That question is up there with the three made famous by Marcelle Bienvenu:

Who's Your Mama?
Are You Catholic?
Can You Make a Roux?

Those three are what a New Orleans mother will ask a girl who wants to date her son, but the son will simply ask, "where did you go to school?"

Earlier this year, I was sitting in the bar of a restaurant in suburban Atlanta. (I often eat at the bar in restaurants when I'm traveling, since it's easy to get seated as a single.) The bartender, asked me where I was from, and I said New Orleans. A guy down the bar chimes in, "Yeah? Me too," and a New Orleans conversation ensued.

After a couple of minutes, the guy asks me, "So, where did you go to school?" Now, he's got an Auburn University ring on his hand, but I know he's not interested in the fact that I went to the University of New Orleans. He wants to know where I went to high school, of course, because that's what really matters to a New Orleanian. Where your education took you after high school just isn't as important to us.

There are a couple of reasons where you went to high school is significant to New Orleanians. First it's a throwback to a time when not everyone went to university. While many of the "greatest generation" took advantage of GI Bill benefits, a lot of vets returning from WWII ddin't continue their education. For them, high school was it, and those guys are still proud of their Warren Easton, Jesuit, Francis T. Nicholls, and St. Aloysius class rings. They worked hard throughout their lives to make sure their sons and daughters could go to college, of course, and many of the boomers are just as proud of their schools as their dads were.

The other big reason why high school is more important here is because there are so many of them. In cities and towns where public education dominates, everyone goes to the same high school. New Orleans has a 150 year tradition of Catholic education in addition to the public school system. Catholic schools were founded by the various orders of priests and nuns who came to America to preach the gospel. The Spanish brought the Jesuits with them, the French brought the Redemptorist Fathers, Ursuline nuns and the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. The Holy Cross Fathers came through New Orleans on their way up to South Bend, Indiana, and founded their school in the Ninth Ward. The School Sisters of Notre Dame attracted young Irish women who educated the boys and girls of the Irish Channel for generations at St. Alphonsus.

Neighborhood and ethnicity played a significant part in where kids went to school as well. There's a paragraph on the website of the Academy of the Sacred Heart that's telling:

In the late 19th century, the French Quarter was in decline. Most importantly, the established French, Catholic families from the Quarter and Esplanade Ridge, whose daughters were the mainstay of the student body, were moving across town into what was the American sector. In addition, second generation English and Irish families, who were already uptown, were seeking for their daughters a school that provided the same type of education that the religious had been providing downtown.

It was therefore no surprise that the religious sought refuge from their deteriorating urban environment and turned their attention upriver. Demographically, the nuns and the city were moving in the same direction.

Hmmm...the "decline" mentioned here was that Italian immigrants were moving into Da Quarters and Da Ninth so fast that the "established" folks bailed out for Uptown. I'm sure the families who sent their boys to St. Aloysius and their daughters to Holy Angels would consider it a surprise that they weren't considered "religious" by the uptown folk.

Not everyone sent their kids to catlick school, of course. Warren Easton on Canal Street, Nicholls on St. Claude, John McDonough on Esplanade, and McDonough #35 on Pauger Street in Treme are just some of the Orleans Parish schools attended by the greatest generation. Others popped up in the 1950s and 1960s as the city grew. Integration changed the public school landscape dramatically, though. White families whose kids had always attended public school were now focusing their efforts on opening Catholic elementary schools in the various church parishes. White flight was happening so fast that parish governments couldn't keep up, so the archdiocese filled in the gap. Prior to the storm, the church administered over 70 elementary schools in a four-parish area. By the 1980s, public schools in the city proper had a student population of 98% black, 2% white, this in a city that was 60% black, 40% white.

At face value, one might accuse the Catholic church of facilitating de facto segregation by running mostly-white private schools literally around the corner in some instances from mostly-black public schools, but the black community of New Orleans also has a strong tradition of sending their kids to catlick school. The Josephite Fathers have educated young black men at St. Augustine High School in Gentilly since 1951. St. Mary's Academy, for black girls, dates back to 1878. Xavier University Prep, founded by St. Katharine Drexel for black girls, opened its doors in 1915. St. Mary's Academy's campus on Chef Menteur Highway, as well as St. Aug's in Gentilly, were heavily damaged by the storm. Those two schools and Xavier Prep banded together to form the MAX School at the (relatively) undamaged XUP campus uptown. The boys have since moved back to Gentilly and SMA has re-opened in the old St. James Major school facility on Gentilly Road near Franklin Avenue.

All this about the public and catlick schools, and I haven't even gotten into the other private schools, such as Isidore Newman School uptown (primarily Jewish), St. Martin's Episcopal, and Metairie Park Country Day, both out in the burbs. There are two dozen or so other high schools I haven't even mentioned, and all this in a metro area of 1.2 million (pre-storm).

The various orders of priests and nuns still maintain ownership and control of their respective high schools. The catholic elementary schools are nominally administered by the archdiocese, but each parish has its own school board which makes specific policy and handles personnel matters. The private schools, of course, are administered by their own boards of directors. All this community involvement has been an important factor in the acceptance of charter schools in the wake of the storm. The storm has given the city the opportunity to fix the dismal failure that had become our public schools, and community leaders, parents, and others are stepping up to serve on the boards of charter schools to get public education moving once again.

So, with all these schools, it's no wonder that everyone wants to know where you went to high school.

Oh, and by the way, the guy in the bar? He went to De La Salle High School, uptown, and I went to Brother Martin High School, in Gentilly. That worked out just fine as far as I'm concerned, since he didn't go to Jesuit. :-)

For those of you who don't follow European footy, the two big days of the week in the sport are Saturdays and Wednesdays. Saturdays are the "league" days. Like the NCAA games here in the states, Saturday is the big sports day for footy. There's one or two games in England on Sunday, but the bulk of the action is on Saturday.

Wednesdays, however, is "Europe" day. The top club teams in each country compete in the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Champions League, and the second-level clubs compete for the UEFA Cup. Today was such a day, and Arsenal FC from London defeated Sevilla from Spain. Unfortunately, Manchester United FC from England defeated Sporting Lisbon from Portugal, with Christian Ronaldo (who plays for the Portuguese national side) scoring the 1-0 victory for the Evil Red Bastards.

Still, at least I could ring up my firstborn and brag that Arsenal scored more than MUFC. :-)

There is no organized storm in the Gulf of Mexico today.

and

IT'S JUST A BLOODY TEEVEE SHOW!!!!!!!!

(there, that felt better)

...from CitiesOfTheDead (dot net)

Grave of Clara Schkolnikov and Abraham Heiman in Beth Israel Cemetery on Elysian Fields in Gentilly.

clicky the image for a larger version

Those who are knowledgable about New Orleans cemeteries often will go out of their way to debunk the notion that we bury our dead above ground in New Orleans because of concerns about our high water table. They point out that above-ground tombs were fashionable in Europe in the 19th century and that's why we have so many tombs here.

Like most urban legends, though, the water table story has some truth to it. Yes, the French German and Italian families of New Orleans buried their dead in above-ground tombs, Continental style. Jewish families, however followed their own traditions and buried their loved ones in-ground. But the high water table is a problem--in many parts of New Orleans, you couldn't dig down six feet without hitting swamp and muck. That's why several congregations acquired land along the Gentilly Ridge, one of the highest parts of the city. Congregation Beth Israel did just that. Beth Israel is an Orthodox congregation that is over 100 years old. They moved out to Lakeview in the 1970s, and unfortunately, their synagogue on Canal Blvd. got a lot of water when the 17th Street Canal floodwall breached. The congregation currently holds Shabbat services at Congregation Gates of Prayer in Metairie. (You can click here to learn how you can help Beth Israel re-build and return to Lakeview.)

the Schkolinkov and Heiman grave is distinctive because most Jewish graves have very simple headstones. Theirs is a bit more elaborate. In a non-sectarian or Christian cemetery, this grave would be dwarfed by tombs, but it stands out in Beth Israel.

...criticizing anyone in the country who gets federal assistance to rebuild their town:

KSFO's Rodgers accused Katrina victims of "sniveling," "whining," riding "gravy train"

Summary: On his radio program, Lee Rodgers said of Hurricane Katrina refugees, "[T]he people who have been freeloading for two years are whining because the gravy train is slowing down," adding, "At what point after a disaster and personal hardship are people expected to start taking care of themselves again? Is one hurricane supposed to be a permanent lifelong ticket on a bleeping gravy train? Come on!"

Someone needs to remind these assholes that the rest of the country paid to rebuild San Francisco.

Twice.

In an excellent DailyKos diary published yesterday, Blue Patriot Woman outlined the extreme violations of civil liberties that will happen if TSA is allowed to implement their "Secure Flight Plan." I concluded my comment to that diary by saying, "One of the first things that the next president needs to do is rein in TSA in a huge way." I though I'd expound on that a bit more today.

First, some background: I do computer consulting and training for a living. I teach classes for companies like Hitachi Data Systems and EMC. I've traveled literally all over the world to do this. The classes usually run from Monday-Friday, so that means I've spent a lot of Sunday and Friday nights in airports. Delta is my preferred airline, and I'm a "Platinum" frequent flyer, a level one reaches when one has earned over 75,000 frequent flyer miles.

I started teaching at this level in 1998, doing classes in Tru64 UNIX for Compaq Corporation. At that time, going to the airport to see dad off on a Sunday afternoon was a family event. My wife and two sons would come with me, we'd all hang out in Delta's Crown Room club at Louis Armstrong International Airport (MSY). September 11th changed all that, of course, because airlines restricted access to the gates to ticketed passengers only.

When the TSA was first created, it was over a great deal of Republican opposition. Security companies like Wackenhut held the passenger screening contracts for large airports, and those companies are huge Republican donors. Security screeners were often minimum-wage employees with little to no training in terms of what to look for when doing their jobs. After 9/11, I wish I had a dime for every time an untrained screener would look at the cables, adapters, etc., in my computer backpack and simply yell "bag check" rather than do their job. TSA was supposed to change that, but it's been done Bush-style, employing political hacks and idiots. Sometimes I look at the obnoxious people TSA hires and wonder if the agancy's management is deliberately trying to tank it, in the hopes that people will wish for the return of the private security companies.

So, yes, the next President needs to get TSA and the FAA back on track. Here's some ways they can make progress quickly:

1. Change the "Homeland Security Advisory Level" to Cookie Monster. The DHS color system has become a complete joke in the hands of Bush's gang. Rather than abolish it, we should use it properly. Currently we are at:

Let's make this "heightened awareness" level a baseline, or a "normal" point, and set it as "blue." I wouldn't advocate going all the way down to Oscar, but let's stay at blue:

If a "normal" day is Cookie Monster, and the advisory scale reflects that, should a future incarnation of TSA decide to raise the level to Bert, or even Ernie, people might take it seriously.

2. Stop screening aircrews. Face it, a pilot doesn't need a box cutter to kill everyone on the plane. It's a waste of time and resources.

3. Stop this whole liquids ban process. While TSA martinets strut around telling us that we can't bring our shampoo, holy water from Lourdes, Central Grocery olive salad, or that bottle of Aquafina you just bought at the gift shop on the plane, there's a guy two rows back who just bought a couple of liters of kick-ass rum at one of the many duty-free shops at the airport in Mexico City. Now, that rum's more than a bit flammable. They're up above you, in his carry-on bag. Guess what's in-between you and two liters of flammable liquid? The plane's emergency oxygen system. All he's got to do is light them up with the lighter he had in his pocket when he went through security (not permitted, but it's all plastic, so it's undetected).

The catch here is that, if TSA inconveniences passengers by making you put your Herbel Essence in a ziploc bag, there's not much they can do about it. They'll get held up at the gate and won't be allowed to board the plane if you complain, like the "sippy cup terrorist." The owners of duty-free shops, on the other hand, are a different class of citizens.

4. Question passengers, don't merely screen them. Train TSA officers to spot irregular behavior patterns in passengers. Have them actually talk to the passengers while going through the metal detectors and putting their stuff through the x-ray. Airport security people across Europe do this daily. They're trained to spot potential terrorists, and they do a pretty fair job of it.

5. Stop making everyone go barefoot. The shoe bomber notwithstanding, the whole screen-your-shoes thing is silly. See #3 on liquids, the guy with the booze can blow up the plane. Richard Reed could have stashed the explosives in his pants just as easily as his shoes.

6. Make better use of video surveillance. While I'm usually reticent to use the British as example, given their atrocious track record on civil liberties and terrorism, they do use technology better than we do. Hire a bunch of people who handle video surveillance in a Vegas casino, and have them work with the Brits to identify terrorists as opposed to card cheats.

7. Fire the ball-busters and perverts. Clean out TSA of all these crackpots who think it's fun to harass passengers. The Bush administration wants TSA to fail, so they can go back to private contractors. That's why these people are allowed to touch women inappropriately, single out passengers for no reason for additional searches, etc.

I know that there are more pressing issues we all want to quiz the Democratic candidates on--the war, healthcare, etc. I'd much rather see details from Obama on how he's going to withdraw the army from Iraq than what he's going to do with ATL or ORD. What I would like to see all the candidates do, however, is to acknowledge that TSA is broken and that they will work on making it into the agency it was intended to be in the fall of 2001.

I can't believe he's really that dumb...cats have nine lives, not murderers...

Perley A. Thomas car (vintage 1924), idling on Canal Street in front of Canal Station, waiting for the operator for the next shift:

(clicky the photo for a larger version)

932 had just completed a "switchback" operation. Because the operator was waiting for his replacement to come out of the station, he was idling on the outbound track. The new operator didn't come out right away, though, so 932 had to switch off to the inbound track. But then 971 was running down Canal inbound, so 932 had to switch back. We caught the 932-971 switch here.

The original Canal Station, built in 1861 by the New Orleans City Railroad Company, was torn down in 1994, to make way for the A. Phillip Randolph bus facility, built on the same spot. When the streetcars returned to Canal, a car barn was built behind the bus facility.

Canal Station is located in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans, which has one of the most active neighborhood associations (the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization) in the post-storm era. Parts of Mid-City got as much as 5'-6' of water, and some sections are still a mess. The people of the area have worked hard to bring their neighborhood back to some semblence of normal. Their biggest obstacles are twofold: the bureaucratic mess that is city government after the storm, and crime. There is grave concern in Mid-City that gangs which used to haunt the Central City neighborhood are moving into Mid-City, because so much of Central City is deserted. Still, Mid-City schools, businesses, shops, pubs, restaurants, and coffee shops are returning, spurred on in part by the old, green streetcars running day and night along Canal Street and N. Carrollton Avenue.

Lefties, as in left-handed folks, that is:

Scientists have been left scratching their heads with both hands, after research showed the number of left-handed people in the population has almost quadrupled over the last 100 years.

According to The Telegraph, the proportion of folks fiddling with standard corkscrews and taking their lives in their hands by using right-handed scissors has increased to 11 per cent, compared to three per cent a century ago.

The reason for the increase? Well, we've been here all along:

The conclusion is that it is largely down to schooling. Whereas the left-handed Victorian and Edwardian school child would have been soundly thrashed before having his left hand nailed to the desk, today's kids are free to use any hand they want, teachers being pleased they've decided to turn up at all.

And carry that as late as WWII. The nuns at Good Shepherd in Manhattan went out of their way to try to break him of left-handedness. One particular none, er, nun, when she realized there was no way he was ever going to write with his right hand, began to break him of the left-handed trait of writing upside-down. She would crack him on the left wrist with a ruler, so that he eventually wrote perfect Palmer Method script as if he was right-handed.

If any teacher tried that with my left-handed kiddo, I'd shove the ruler up her ass.

Your blog format sucks.

No, really. That's not a comment about the shoddy writing or the unbelievably vile comments the racist wackos who read it post. It's a technical/design remark.

There's a post entitled "Gubernatorial hopefuls on the recovery" whose entry consists of the following:

The Times-Picayune asked the four major candidates running for governor their views on issues related hurricane recovery. Here are their answers.

OK, where are the answers, folks? Oh, they're in a graphic file that's a scan of the newspaper article.

Most of us who actually read the news on the internet prefer to read text. not open graphics files.

Don't worry, I'm sure you'll do better next time.

Love, YatPundit.

Former Gov. Edwards' son Stephen Edwards out of federal prison

Remember when seeing these guys go to jail was the big story? It seems now like another lifetime.

Rouses to buy out area Sav-A-Centers

I did some computer support work for Rouses many moons ago. They're good people. I'd shop at their Metairie store if it wasn't for the fact that there's a better grocery (Zuppardo's) essentially across the street from them. When they got the opportunity to buy the old Schwegmann's stores, the Rouse brothers were pretty adamant about not moving into Orleans Parish. I'm glad to see they've changed their thinking, because they're going to keep the Sav-a-Center stores in back-of-town, uptown, mid city, and gentilly.

Jacques Morial pleads guilty to failing to file tax returns

Clearly the timing here has all been pre-arranged, given that he was just indicted the other day. Letten knows he won't get Jacques to roll on older brother. Hell, Jacques has been covering for him most of his life.

Many grow nervous about twin spans repairs

no kidding! The last time I drove that temporary mess that is the north-to-south span, I was scared shitless. I'll take Hwy 11 or drive back over to Da Causeway next time I have to come home from over there.

...and it's getting closer to Markey-Marc:

More than three years after federal agents raided his French Quarter townhome, Jacques Morial, the brother of former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, has been charged with failure to file tax returns.

Of course, there's no way Jacques will roll on his brother. I doubt this is a plea deal to avoid jail time. If all they've got on him is failing to file tax returns, this is just kicking the family while they're down.

Dear Senator Landrieu:

I'm a bit disappointed that we have not heard any comment from you on Rep. Boehner's very insulting remarks to our troops. Given that so many Louisianians have given life and limb in Iraq, and given the extent to which LA National Guard deployments in Iraq hobbled rescue efforts in the wake of the two hurricanes of 2005, I find your silence at this point rather disturbing.

Senator, there is no reason for you to be silent on the subject of the war, unless you are part of the less-than-one-third of the country who support this President and his war plans. There is noone else who will speak for Louisiana at this point. Our other senator is a national laughingstock whose party would gladly throw him under the same bus they're throwing Sen. Craig, were it not for the fact that Gov. Blanco is a Democrat. I'd like to think that, after eleven years in the Senate, you've grown weary of being rolled by these people. They're not your friends. They opened up on you with both barrels in 2002, and will do so again next year. Laying low and hoping they'll go away isn't a very sensible option at this point.

It's been difficult over the last eleven years to defend you and the positions you take when confronted with them by more liberal members of our party. Many wonder why you just don't switch party affiliations, that way the Democratic party can begin the discussion of who would be a good candidate that would truly represent our interests. My standard response has always been that it's tough for you to be as progressive as they would like in a state with such a strong conservative electorate.

The catch is, even that electorate rejects this President and his war. They know it's a bad idea to continue occupying Iraq. They want our troops to come home. In particular, Louisianians want their National Guard in place to support the state in times of emergency and national disaster. Nobody in metro New Orleans wants to wait again for the Wisconson and Pennsylvania National Guards to get here for assistance. It's time for you to take a very public stand on these issues. It's time you stood toe-to-toe with Senator Liebermann and demand that his committee seriously review FEMA and other DHS policies that impact Louisiana. We, the voters of this state need you speaking for us.

But taking a strong stance on the Iraq occupation isn't about politics, it's about Louisiana lives. You've been in the Senate almost as long as my 13-year old has been alive. If you and the rest of the Senate majority allow the Republicans to establish a permanent presence in Iraq, you are assisting them in placing my son and his friends into harm's way as well as all the men and women who are already risking their lives for a failed policy.

Please, Senator Landrieu, join other Democratic senators who have taken a strong public stance against the Iraq occupation. Stand up to men like Rep. Boehener and do not let their offensive remarks go unchallenged.

Either that or let us elect someone who will.

Sincerely,
YatPundit

...passed away Tuesday. I was catching up on Adrastos' blog and he had this vid of Weather Report's "Birdland"

which led me to this Manhattan Transfer vid of the tune:

Gotta love those 1980s hairstyles...

RIP, Zwainul.

sometimes Schroeder really has more fun than he should be allowed to:

I still say someone should show up at every Jindal campaign event dressed like a giant package of diapers.

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (R-Kenner), currently the CongressCritter for LA-01, is the prohibitive favorite to come in first in Louisiana's gubernatorial primary. The primary date (for gov and all other statewide and parish elected offices except for District Attorneys) is October 20th, with the runoff on November 17th. Prior to Governor Blanco's decision to not stand for re-election, the conventional wisdom was that Jindal would not only defeat Blanco this time (he lost to her in 2003, when the seat was open), but he would pull at least 50.1% of the vote in the primary. When Blanco announced she was not running, Democrats were more in disarray than the party was right after the First Gulf War, when Bush41 was polling at 90% or higher and nobody but an unknown governor from Arkansas contemplated taking him on.

The dynamic has shifted dramatically since Blanco's decision, however. Foster Campbell, a Democrat from north LA with good populist credentials has entered the race. From the flooded-and-rebuilding parish of St. Bernard, state senator Walter Boasso has switched parties from R to D to run. Metairie businessan John Georges switched from Republican to Independent to run as well. Suddenly, Piyush isn't so invincible, and if he can be forced into a runoff, he can be beaten. Here are seven easy steps to make it happen:

One. Define Jindal as the born-again redneck he truly is. Jindal first made a name for him self as then-Gov. Murphy "Mike" Foster's healthcare policy wonk, heading up the state's Department of Health and Hospitals at the time. This seems like a lifetime away because of the storm, but in 2003, healthcare was a huge issue for Louisiana, and Jindal was portrayed as the techono-policy-wonk could fix the problems.

Of course, to be a Republican politician in the modern era, one must sell one's soul to the religous wing of the party. Piyush has done that, by declaring that he's a "born again Catholic." As someone who was baptized and raised Catholic, I have no idea what that means, since most "born again" folks firmly believe Catlicks are going to Hell. Jindal talks the fundigelical talk on the stump, anti-choice, virulently anti-gay, pro-school vouchers. He also wants you to believe he's a good ol' boy as well. Opponents need to define him thusly, dispelling the myth that he's a wonk with our best interests at heart.

Two. Make him appear in public. This one ties to #1 in a big way. Jindal makes minimal public appearances and tries to limit them to stronghold areas such as his Jefferson Parish base. The reason is simple: He and the Republican Party don't want to advertise too loudly that Jindal is Not White. The Republicans don't want the public to get to know their candidate because their voting base is highly racist. What they've done is the real-life equivalent of Dave Chapelle's "Black White Supremacist" sketch. Jindal is an Indian with dark skin who doesn't like black people. Make him appear in public and he'll have to face voters who will simply see him as another Colored Guy. The racist, "under-the-radar" vote is what killed Jindal's run in 2003. There's a significant segment of the population in this state that just won't vote for a non-white candidate.

But there's more to making Jindal debate and appear in public than just race. The more he has to appear in public, the more he has to convince the racists who are his party's base that he's "one of them." He's already started that push, running a TV ad showing him on the steps of the Gretna City Hall, accepting the endorsement of Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee. The subtle undercurrent of that appearance was nauseating. Gretna, you will recall, is the city whose police officers fired shotguns over the heads of storm evacuees trying to leave New Orleans by crossing the Mississippi River. By appearing in Gretna with the two chief law enforcement officers responsible for that incident (Lee and GPD Chief Arthur Lawson), Jindal was sending the message that he'd shoot at black people, too.

But what happens when those who think it's OK to shoot shotguns at black evacuees see that their candidate is Not White? It's Clayton Bigsby all over again. Pull the white sheet off of Jindal by forcing him to appear more in public.

Three. Force Jindal to take ownership of the war. As a CongressCritter, Piyush has voted with the dishonorable piece of crap who lives in the White House 97% of the time. He's pro-everything-Bush-wants. Lots of Louisiana families have lost loved ones in a war that 60% of the country thinks was a bad idea. Carry this a step further, and you can even erode Jindal's white-bread, soccer mom base in Metairie. Now that it's quite that the Republicans are for endless war, ask Piyush when he plans to support the return of the conscript army. Start making soccer moms think that their boys who are now 12 and 13 years old may be drafted to fight for Jindal's war in a few years, and even the most anti-choice, Catlick woman will think twice about further buying into this war.

Four. Force Jindal to take ownership of the storm. Republicans really, really thought they'd be able to hang the entire aftermath of the storm on Kathy Blanco for this election. Of the viable candidates in the race, only Jindal was in a position do something about the storm prior to its landfall. Make him take ownership of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Make him take ownership of Bush's guitar-playing stunt while the storm was making landfall. Make him take ownership of Karl Rove's ineffective (and discriminatory) Gulf Coast recovery efforts.

Flodding and the storm are the main reasons that State Senator Walter Boasso (D-Chalmette) is now in the race. Boasso led the post-storm effort to re-structure the politics of flood control in Louisiana by attempting to reform the state's "Levee Districts." His frustration in dealing with the state legislature (combined with a healthy dose of ambition) are the reasons he's in the gov's race. A lot of Democrats don't trust Boasso, but a lot of Chalmatians do. They know they've been burned by the feds, and Jindal is a fed.

Five. Force Jindal to take ownership of Tom DeLay. One of the common themes in post-storm Louisiana is that we can't be trusted with federal funds because we're all a bunch of corrupt thieves. Remind the voters who the first-string crooks in Washington are, namely Delay and the K Streeters. In Congress, Piyush has been a good little Republican Caucus member, doing what Delay and Boehenr have told him to do. The litnay of crooks and influence-peddlers in Jindal's stable is extensive, and easily exposed.

Six. Force Jindal to take ownership of "Big Charity." Keep in mind that Jindal's supposed to be a policy wonk. He's portrayed in GOP circles as even wonkier than Bill Clinton. While the death of Charity Hospital in New Orleans means little to his upper-middle class neighbors in Jefferson Parish, the collapse of the state's hospital system scares the bejeebus out of residents in other parts of the state. Underinsured workers in the oil/gas industry in Southwest Louisiana, farmers in central LA, day laborers in north LA all rely on what's left of the state's public healthcare system. Jindal was the wunderkind who was supposed to fix all these problems. He didn't and couldn't, and doesn't have a clue where to start now. Hammer this home with the families of veterans who are returning from the war. Make them see that, even if Jindal is a smart guy, he is now in thrall to people who literally don't care if they get sick and die because they don't have health insurance.

Seven. Force Jindal to take ownership of David Vitter. Other than the people who are still gutting flooded homes, poor Vitty-cent is the most miserable man in Louisiana. He's a Republican politician whose entire political future rests on the hope that another Republican loses the governor's race. If Piyush is elected, Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott will throw Vitter right under the same bus that they threw Larry Craig. The only thing that's saved him so far is that Blanco would appoint a Dem to Vitty-cent's seat should he resign now. Diaper Dave's only hope is that a Dem is elected and the whole thing blows over before he stands for re-election in 2010.

Because the GOP doesn't want Vitty-cent to quit now, he's laying low. He'll probably not even come home this fall, hiding up in DC until after the election. Jindal's opponents need to make him take ownership of Vitty-cent. If I had the money, I'd hire someone to show up at every Jindal public even across the state dressed as a giant pack of Huggies (a reference to Vitter's diaper fetish). Make Jindal take ownership of Vitter and he must take ownership of GOP hypocrisy. Force Piyush to reconcile his "born again" faith with Vitty-cent's whoremongering. David Vitter at his best was not a popular person in the GOP--he stepped on a lot of people on his way up. If you can hang Vitter around Jindal's neck, Piyush won't be able to walk upright.

Of course, the big problem is that all of Jindal's opponents are afraid of attacking him. Foster Campbell is trying to run a positive, populist campaign when half the state doesn't know him at all. Walter Boasso is essentially a one-issue candidate, and even though that one issue is flood control, it's not enough unless he goes after not just Jindal, but Bush. Louisiana voters aren't worried about protecting themselves from the next storm--they know they're royally screwed if we get hit again. They want and need help recovering from the last storm. John Georges is a virtual unknown who might peel off Republican votes in Metairie and Kenner from Jindal, but simply being another white guy wearing an LSU shirt and holding a football isn't going to get him to the runoff.

The Democratic Party structure isn't going to be much help, either. Their first attempt to be a playa in this race was a disaster. By trying to attack Jindal's Catholicism (see www.jindalonreligion.com), all they accomplished was to unite all the candidates in support of Piyush.

The candidate who steps up and forces Jindal to take ownership of his base, his president, his leadership in Congress, and the storm will make it into the runoff with him. From there, it's just a matter of hammering those themes home combined with letting the inherent racism of Louisiana Republicans go to work and Jindal will go down for a second defeat.

The Rogers-Palfrey-Brewster-Stilwell Cross (west face)

I was driving past Metairie Cemetery yesterday, and it occurred to me that most people only see this cross from the highway. Metairie Cemetery was originally built on the western bank of the New Basin Canal. The canal was filled in around 1947, and replaced by the "Pontchartrain Expressway," which connected West End Boulevard with downtown. It's since become part of I-10, so thousands of people drive right by it every day. But they only see the side of the cross that faces the highway, and this particular monument is rich with symbolism on all sides. So, here's the western side of cross, what you see when you're standing inside the cemetery, looking east.

This photo was shot before the storm; you can see my old Cherokee in the background. That's the car that got over a foot of mold in it after the Broussard water around my house receded. The cross is in the original (1871) part of Metairie Cemetery. This part is relatively high ground, right on the Metairie Ridge. (Metairie Road, which is the northern boundary of the cemetery), was originally a bayou that dried up. The elevation gets lower as you go north from Metairie Road, which is why the funeral home on the grounds of the cemetery flooded badly.

The cross and the symbols etched into it are described in detail on the website.

A LiveJournal user who commented on my post about the upcoming Council-at-large race over there (I cross-post YatPundit to my LiveJournal) said this about council candidate Gail Masters Reimoneq:

And please find something else to bash Gail Masters about. Being related to someone is not now, nor will it ever be a felony. My grandma used to say, "You can pick your nose, you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family." And I don't seriously that Marc Morial had a personal relationship with ALL of Pampy's family, considering the man has over forty (40) first cousins. Gail Masters is one of 12 siblings.

No, you can't pick your family, but you can pick your business associates, and Gail Masters Reimonenq picked Markey-Marc and his cohorts. As documented by Celcus at Some Came Running, this lady is in pretty tight with the Morial mob:

Her antics on behalf of the Morial clan with Nagin business partner and Gubernatorial candidate John Georges during the 2002 mayoral race are documented in my post from last week, Thick as Thieves.

A quick google search of her name led not to a splashy campaign ad, but to LA board of Ethics campaign finance ruling 2002-059, the top item and the one I cited in my post.

“Gail Masters” is listed as chairman of the New Alliance Business PAC, and the registered agent of the four bogus corporations and near the end of the document she is identified as “Gail Reimonenq” again, as the agent for the PAC.

Celcus' second post is quite interesting, as it documents how this particular PAC launched an ad buy attacking State Senator Paulette Irons during her 2002 campaign for mayor. This was the race where Markey-Marc backed his hand-picked police superintendent, Richard Pennington. Irons and then-businessman C. Ray Nagin were also running. The attacks against Irons helped speed the demise of her campaign, leaving the race for all practical purposes a head-to-head match between Pennington and Nagin.

Given Masters Reimonenq's very close affiliation with the Markey-Marc political organization, it's clear that this is more than just family ties. And also, given that she was involved in unethical behavior that got her find by the state ethics board, it's also clear that the apple didn't fall all that far from the tree.

(the virus, not the blonde pundit)

While pointing out CNN's stupiditiy in saying that there have been no terorist attacks in the US since 9-11, Atrios reminds the Atlanta Idiots of the anthrax-related deaths. But then he makes this comment:

*People object when I suggest this, but while the 9/11 attacks were of course The Big Ones, anthrax was this creepy shit which was KILLING US THROUGH THE MAIL. While most people didn't expect a plane to fly into their building, the anthrax attacks created a heightened sense of OMIGOD THIS COULD HAPPEN TO ME. 9/11 was terrible, but the anthrax attacks were terrifying to people.

I think the reason Dr. Black sees anthrax as a more serious threat than I do is a north-south thing. He's your basic Philly yankee who doesn't live in a hotbed of anti-abortion sentiment. All too many people in the South in particular look past the initial envelopes that were actually filled with the virus to all the hoaxes and false alarms which were attributed to anti-choice activists. In spite of the deaths caused by whatever madman actually put the virus into the postal system, most folks here don't see it happening to them because they don't work at an abortion clinic.

The story of the storm is not without tales of heroism, but it's not the stuff of Grand Drama, like the stories of heroic firefighters and policemen on 9-11. Rather than a few city blocks of disaster surrounded by an otherwise undamaged city, a movie about New Orleans would come out looking more like "Resident Evil" or "Mad Max" than "World Trade Center" or "Backdraft."

Still, there were heros, and for my money, the stories that most make me proud to be a New Orleanian are those told by health care workers. The most dramatic and intense episode of "ER" or "Grey's Anatomy" pales in comparison to the experiences of the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff that rode out the storm. Unfortunately, many of those medical professionals are some of the most traumatized folks who survived the storm. Yes, it was that bad for them.

When a storm hits the area, hospitals go into emergency mode like other essential service providers. There's usually not a lot that classic EMS units can do, because those huge trucks they drive often cannot navigate fallen debris and street flooding. EMTs gather at hospitals and shelters, where they do what they can for those who have evacuated. Doctors and nurses stay at work with their patients. This in particular is a double-whammy for them. They're under incredible stress at work, and they're not there to assist with the evacuation of their families.

Usually all this passes rapidly, though. Riding out a storm in a strong building like a hospital is certainly safer than a single-family home, and caring for patients keeps the staff busy. After the storm blows over, those who weren't called into work can return and relieve those at work.

But that's not what happened this time, of course. The rising floodwaters from the breached levees created numerous problems for hospitals. The flooding blocked any attempts to re-supply the hospitals. While hospitals all have generators to mainatin electric power if the grid shuts down, those generators only have fuel for a limited period of time. With no way to get new diesel or gasoline in, patients who needed electricity for life support equipment would have to come out.

Coming out was a problem in most cases, though. Within 24 hours after the storm, neighborhoods around hospitals turned into war zones of looting and violence. Hospitals are sources of drugs and equipment that is attractive to thieves. Police officers and private security guards did a good job of securing the facilities, but this was a terrible atmosphere for moving patients.

Then there were the patients who simply could not be moved, those who, if transported, were more likely to die than if they stayed in place. The stories of doctors and nurses debating euthanizing patients at Memorial Medical Center on Napoleon Avenue (formerly Baptist Hospital) have received extensive media attention. One doctor and three nurses were arrested by the Louisiana Attorney General's office, but the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office refused the charges. The details of the case and the chilling effect the arrests have had on recruiting medical personnel to work in the metro area are a story for another day.

The storm impacted health care facilities other than hospitals, of course. Numerous residents of the area's nursing homes died while being transported out of harm's way, while others died in the flooding because they were not evacuated. The most notorious incident of this sort was in St. Bernard Parish, at St. Rita's Nursing Home in Chalmette. Thirty-two residents of that facility died, drowned by rising floodwaters. The owners decided not to evacuate, and cited numerous reasons for not doing so in their manslaughter trial. That trial ended last week in acquittals for Sal and Mabel Mangano. The case had generated such notoriety that the trial was moved over a hundred miles away, to St. Francisville.

Once the living were evacuated and the bodies removed, the city has been left to try to re-build its healthcare infrastructure. Behind hospitality and the port, healthcare was the third-largest employer in New Orleans, and those jobs paid a lot better overall than hotel and restaurant positions. The driving force behind the local healthcare industry was Charity Hospital.

Built in 1936 under Huey P. Long's administration, "Big Charity" has been where the poor and uninsured went when they got sick. It was also the city's Level 1 Trauma Center. Even folks with the best of health insurance coverage would want to go to Charity for trauma treatment. Charity was only one facility in New Orleans' medical district, though. There was also University Hospital (affiliated with the LSU School of Medicine), a Veterans Administration facility, and Tulane University Medical Center. The floodwaters severely damaged all four hospitals. Tulane, privately owned and managed, has re-built. University Hospital is struggling to come back to life, and the VA has announced that it will build a new facility in New Orleans.

Big Charity, however, is dead. Dead and boarded up.

The lack of a level 1 trauma center, as well as a refuge for those who are uninsured, is hobbling the city's overall recovery efforts. Without Charity to handle indigent and uninsured patients, emergency rooms around the city have been all the more crowded. University Hospital's emergency room has re-opened, so the temporary trauma center that began life in the Convention Center, then moved to the New Orleans Centre shopping mall can close. But staffing these facilities is still a huge problem. Many physicians were forced to leave the city for the suburbs to re-open their practices and make a living. Now established in Metairie, the West Bank, or the north shore, thsoe professionals are reluctant to return to work in the city.

It all comes back to Charity Hospital. The mission and philosophy of Big Charity is straight out of the populist style of Huey Long and FDR, and that philosophy isn't all that prevalent in the healthcare industry these days. New Orleans needs a major medical facility to service the uninsured and under insured folks living here, but how to accomplish that will be debated and argued for years. The catch is that we don't have years; like many of the issues surrounding the city's recovery, it needs to be fixed now.

The collapse of the healthcare industry in New Orleans is yet another example of where Kanye West was right about the disrespectful piece of crap who lives in the White House.

From this week's CanalStreetCar (dot com) Weekly Newsletter...

The "Moving Beam" Car

In the 1870s and 1880s (before the electrification of street railway lines), streetcar operating companies were constantly working on methods to run the cars without using animal power. Steam power wasn't usually acceptable, because steam locomotives were too noisy for street railway operations. Anybody with an idea for a propulsion system could get an interview with a streetcar company.

One of the ideas that made its way to New Orleans was the "moving beam" streetcar, seen here being tested near Canal Station. The operator on the left-hand side of the photo would crank up the weel at the end of the car, which would move counterweights and turn gears, which would in turn move the overhead beams. The beams would then turn the large wheel at the back of the streetcar. That big wheel had blocks which came in contact with the ground. As the blocks pushed off on the ground, the car moved forward.

There were a number of problems with this propulsion method. It relied on the operator to occasionally crank it up, which could make for a long work day. The propelling wheel (which looks to me like a land-locked paddlewheel) did not adjust or compensate for irregularities in the street or gorund (such as potholes), so the ride could be bumpy.

The New Orleans City Railway Comnpany never took the "moving beam" car out of the testing phase, so the mule-powered "bobtail" cars continued to be the mainstay of Canal Street operations until electrification.

Brother Martin High School played Holy Cross High School last night at Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park. This year, the aftermath of the storm has brought the schools closer together geographically, renewing a friendly rivalry that goes back well over a century. Hopefully the two schools will renew more than a sports rivalry, and will become catalysts for a revival of the Gentilly neighborhood.

Gentilly was, behind Da Ninth and Lakeview, the third hardest-hit area of the city. The breaches in the London Avenue Canal poured as much as 12' of water into parts of the neighborhood. The water's gone, the canal is (hopefully) repaired, and now the area is struggling to come back. The stories of these two schools make for an interesting twist on the notion of "faith-based initiatives."

Some background:

Located in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans, Brother Martin High School opened under that name in 1969, the result of the merging by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart of their two schools in New Orleans. St. Aloysius College, located on Esplanade and N. Rampart Streets, just outside the French Quarter, was established in 1869. St. Aloysius' student body came mostly from Italian families iwho lived in the French Quarter as well as families from the Ninth Ward. In 1954, the Brothers opened Cor Jesu High School on Elysian Fields in Gentilly. By the late 1960s, the Brothers decided to close St. Aloysius, merge the two student bodies, and continue their mission at an expanded campus in Gentilly. Rather than adopt one school's name over the other, the Brothers decided to start fresh, choosing to name the school after the man who engineered the merger and transition of the two schools, Brother Martin Hernandez. Brother Martin High graduated its first senior class under that name in 1970. Because the school is located on the Gentilly Ridge, one of the highest parts of the metro area, their facilities sustained minimal flood damage.

The Priests and Brothers of the Holy Cross (the same order who founded Notre Dame University) established a presence in New Orleans in 1849. In 1871, the order transitioned their St. Isidore's Orphanage in what is now the Lower Ninth Ward to a boys school, naming it St. Isidore's College. The school took on the name of the order by the 1890s. Holy Cross' location was such that the student body was recruited from two main sources, the Ninth Ward and the St. Bernard Parish communities of Arabi and Chalmette.

Like the rest of the Lower Ninth Ward, the Holy Cross campus was inundated with flood waters on 29-August-2005. The devastation of the 125-year old campus was so severe that the school's board of directors renewed a discussion they'd been having for years, namely, was it time for Holy Cross to leave Da Ninth? White flight from the Ninth Ward sent families who traditionally sent their sons to Holy Cross to Metairie and Kenner. St. Bernard families also were branching out to Jefferson Parish after WWII. (Old joke: What's another name for Kenner? ChalMetairie. :-)) It's a long ride down to Holy Cross from Kenner. The opening of Archbishop Hannan High in Mereaux 1987 put the squeeze on Holy Cross from downriver. Hannan HIgh hit with a double-whammy: It was closer for St. Bernard families, and it was co-ed. The bottom line on all this was that Holy Cross had been contemplating leaving Da Ninth for some time; the storm was the straw that broke the camel's back.

A third Catholic high school must be mentioned in this tale, Redeemer-Seton High School. Redeemer High opened its doors in Gentilly in 1980. The Redemptorist Fathers closed their school in the spring of 1980, but the families sending their kids to that Irish Channel institution refused to take no for an answer. They were given the opportunity to re-establish their school in Gentilly, because the archdiocese decided to close St. Joseph Academy, an all-grils school whose enrollment numbers had been declining rapidly for a decade. Starting with a co-ed student body that was roughtly 50-50 black/white, white flight hit the school hard in the 1990s. Struggling to stay alive, Redeemer merged with Seton Academy, another all-girls school located on Canal Street in Mid-City.

The London Avenue Canal dumped so much water into the Redeemer-Seton campus that I would have been ankle-deep in it had I been standing in the second-floor classroom where I taught American History from 1980-1984. The entire campus, along with St. Frances Xavier Cabrini School next door, was a tear-down.

Enter Holy Cross into the picture. That school was considering a number of possible locations for a new campus, which included John F. Kennedey Senior High (public, located next to City Park and Bayou St. John in Lakeview) and a tract of empty land in Kenner. (The JFK facility was empty because the Bush Administration had exiled the residents of the St. Bernard Housing Project to Houston.) Problems arose from environmental issues with JFK, as well as community activists who objected to selling off a public school to a private institution. That brought Holy Cross' choice down to staying in New Orleans at the old Redeemer location or re-building way out in Jefferson Parish.

The school's board chose New Orleans.

HC demolished all of the two old schools, as well as Cabrini church. The church demoliton caused a minor outcry from the neighborhood, but it happened anyway. Their campus currently consists of portable buildings as they begin the process of building permanent facilities
The combination of Brother Martin on Elysian Fields Avenue, Holy Cross just off of Paris Avenue, Christian Brothers School (grades 5-7), as well as the University of New Orleans along the lakefront in Gentilly, means there are a lot of families whose children are being educated in the Gentilly neighborhood. There are a lot of people going in-and-out of Gentilly daily, but they're transient. The kids are going to school there, but they go home and eat dinner in Metairie and Kenner.

Public schools are usually constructed when a neighborhood grows to the point that the residents demand better educational facilities for their children. The schools are the result of population growth. In the case of Gentilly, the schools are here first. As you drive through Gentilly today, you see a number of FEMA trailers installed in front of homes where families are trying to come back, but it's tough. The biggest sticking point in both Gentilly (and Lakeview) is "elevation." Before these homeowners can get flood insurance (and you can't get a mortgage if you don't have flood insurance), many houses in the area must be raised anywhere from 3' to as much as 10' off the ground. This is a serious obstacle facing these homeowners. If you spend your money on raising the house, you don't have enough to repair flood damage. If you don't raise the house, nobody wants to buy it, because the new buyers can't get flood insurance. It's yet another area where government invervention is necessary.

Still, there a lot of families living in Metairie and Kenner who might consider a move back to the city if they could make it work in Gentilly. The schools, combined with the Research and Technology facility along the lakefront next to UNO, make the neighborhood attractive. But nobody wants to move to a neighborhood where two of the supermarkets (Zuppardo's and Ferrara's) are now empty lots, demolished. There's minimal fire protection, not much even in the way of fast food joints and gas stations.

Gentilly needs a catalyst. The "faith-based initiative" of the Catholic schools in the neighborhood is a start, but it's going to take a lot more to revive this lovely area.

Holy Cross won the game last night, 28-14, and that score doesn't tell the whole story. The Tigers led the Crusaders 28-0 until late in the fourth quarter. Even though I went to Brother Martin, I don't begrudge the boys of Holy Cross and their families the win If ever a community needed a break, it's them.

The Black and Gold Patrol report that the "All American" fans of Indianapolis are, well, pretty much assholes:

The Colts fans made it personal alright.

Dilly went with me to purchase socks at TJ MAX where a clerk refused to wait on Saints fans and someone else said she would check us out.

That's was even before we pulled out the signage!

I was hailed by such treasures of Midwestern American charm as :

"I hope the levees break again and kill you."

"What are you doing here? We don't want you here."

"New Orleans SHOULD have another hurricane."

and the charm as we were leaving the stadium:

"Let us take a picture flipping you off."

When I was in Indianapolis earlier this year, the best sightseeing suggestion they could offer me was to tour the raceway, and the burger place all those guys raved about couldn't hold a candle to any of the places here in New Orleans.

and now they're going to flip us off? Pffft. Put them in the same duck pit as Bears fans.

It can't be stressed any stronger that the devastation of metro New Orleans from the storm was not a natural disaster. We certainly expect a certain amount of damage when natural phenomonon like a hurricane strikes a city, but we've believed for decades that the city was prepared for just about anything nature could throw our way. The collapse of the floodwalls on the drainage canals in New Orleans was not natural, but the result of the ineptitude of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Had the true state of those floodwalls been known, alarms would have been sounded in town halls, council chambers and legislative bodies from Grand Isle to Washington, DC.

But the Corps lied to us all.

But for all the dishonor that the US Army Corps of Engineers has brought upon itself, the flooding in Jefferson Parish can't be hung around their necks. The responsibility for the billions of dollars of flood damage there lies squarely on the shoulders of Aaron F. Broussard, Parish President.

Some background for those of you unfamiliar with local government in metro New Orleans. As you know, we don't have counties. We've hung on to the old French concept of "parish" rather than "county." There are 64 parishes in Louisiana, with three, Jefferson, Orleans, and St. Bernard, comprising what has traditionally been considered the metro area. (That definition has expanded in recent decades to include parishes up the river and on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.) The municipality of New Orleans comprises the whole of Orleans Parish. St. Bernard Parish is downriver from the city, and Jefferson Parish is upriver and to the west of the city.

Jefferson Parish is an odd duck as a governmental