The T-P tells us that the feds are taking a "fresh look" at restoration efforts. Good, but now is the time for action. Now. Now. Now. Which is a greater threat to my family and me? Al Qaeda? Or diminishing coastlines? Wetlands: the fundamental homeLAND security issue. [...]
Number of comments: 1 Professor Diamond's essay in the NY Times compares the stupidity of corporations who refuse to spend short-term money on long-term sustainability to the federal government's negligent treatment of New Orleans over many years: Economic reasons furnish the strongest motives for sustainability, because in the long run (and often in [...]
Number of comments: 2 In this video, is the President catching a pass from Drew Brees, or is the President being a total weenie and stepping in front of a pass intended for a kid? In any case, it's good to see Mike McKenzie in a Saints uni in a commercial whilest knowing he's' [...]
Number of comments: 0 In the 1960s and 70s, New Orleans and Louisiana took a risk by investing in the Louisiana Superdome. There was strong and principled opposition to the project. I have no doubt that there was corruption somewhere in the process of construction. In the end, though, the result was a world [...]
Number of comments: 0 One the one hand, the Corps wants to be able to inspect levees while the river water is high. This need threatens the river parish bonfires. Maybe I'm a Scrooge, but levees seem pretty important to me, so on the face of it I'm glad the Corps is looking [...]
No, the New England football squad are either "the Pats" or "the Past." When I think of the Pats, I think of old times. Pats starring a quarterback named Grogan. Pats getting beat down in the Louisiana Superdome. Past indeed. When I think of Our New Orleans [...]
Number of comments: 0 The third Dillyberto brother will join Berto and me for the Saints-Patriots game on Monday Night Football. And he will be properly attired. See below for my order today. [...]
Number of comments: 0 Look, revenge is a very unattractive thing, but I just gotta get this out. I spent three terrible, horrible, no good years in the state of Missouri. Those were the three worst years of my life. Then I returned to New Orleans, and a few years later had to endure [...]
Number of comments: 4 According to this excellently placed (front-page) story from the T-P, 15 people--many of them already sick from something else--die from eating raw oysters each year. This occurs in a country with over 300 million people, many of whom are overweight. Tens of thousands of us die each year because [...]
Number of comments: 1 Although the overarching purpose of this blog is to point to a positive vision of what New Orleans can and should be, sometimes I use that vision to criticize our city's newspaper titan, the Times-Picayune. (It's a "titan" because it's the only one.) After the storm, the Times-Picayune and its' [...]
Number of comments: 1 Ed Blakely is gone (that's old news), but his departure and other things I'm seeing help me to conclude that we are arriving at a significant and stirring phase of the resurrection of our region.
We are more than four years beyond the levee failures that temporarily crushed [...]
Number of comments: 4 I finished Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers, during my trip to New York this week. I was on a plane from JFK to Memphis as I read the last 50 pages. I couldn't swallow, such was the lump in my throat. I think it would be a striking read' [...]
Number of comments: 1 As part of the Occasional Gridiron Poetry Series at World Class New Orleans, we present a new poem by Saints defensive end Bobby McCray, as taken from today's Times-Picayune: So until Monday afternoon,we can still be high off our victory. You know,talk about it,talk to your parents about [...]
Number of comments: 2 Why? Because he said all of this, but particularly this (in remembering the Greatest Play in Saints History):So I remember that moment. And I remember thinking -- as I broke through the line -- that I wasn't going to get there. I was like: I don't think I'm going' [...]
Number of comments: 1 . . . though I'm not sure it's the message he wanted. I was peacefully reading an article at nytimes.com when I saw his ad in the sidebar. The ad was an attempted slander of Charlie Melancon. I didn't like the looks of it. So I clicked on the ad--I' [...]
Number of comments: 0 I was privileged to meet him last week at Rising Tide IV. Now it looks as though he's in for an adventure dealing with City Hall people. Dambala is a world class part of the new New Orleans. The City Hall people described in the T-P article' [...]
Number of comments: 2 Why? 1. I'm a practicing Catholic, which means I'm not very good at it. But our city took a step forward out of its leadership crisis when Archbishop Alfred Hughes stepped down. (Can you imagine? The city has gone through the failure of federal levees, Katrina, utter chaos, and the [...]
Number of comments: 1 On WWL 870 radio today, I caught the tail end of a talk that Tommy Tucker was doing with the director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The director was talking (via phone) about how it goes against common sense to have people showing up to townhall meetings [...]
Number of comments: 0 (Thanks to the T-P for highlighting this amusing story.)
Look, we shouldn't be mad at the graphic design people who came up with this: Because when your mascot is a Colonel, there really aren't too many good places to go. After all, you started [...]
Number of comments: 2 I'm not blindly jumping on to the James Perry bandwagon(as some might want to accuse me of doing). However, I've done some research on him, and I like what I see so far. At least he's using the language of progressive politics. And he seems intelligent, interested in' [...]
Number of comments: 2 From Mister McCray's training camp memoirs, which one day will be reviewed in the New York Times Book Review and the Times Literary Supplement, but for now is being excerpted in the Times-Picayune: This is training camp. No leaving the hotel. I call it jail. If you need something,' [...]
Number of comments: 2 Governor Mark Sanford's public meltdown and Americans' reaction to it are good evidence of a basic illness in our popular culture (and our political culture as well). Actually, let's just call it an illness in our culture as a whole.
I suppose that most of us (me included) have' [...]
I am a BIG fan of Abita, but the Satsuma stuff just doesn't do it for me. I'm not a fruit and beer guy, and this particular brew from Abita tastes [...]
Number of comments: 2 1. From the NY Times Magazine today: “How do I say this delicately?” [Senator Max Baucus] asked. “President Bush, he liked being president. You know, there are be-ers, and there are doers. And I think he liked being president, as opposed to doing.” Obama, on the other hand, strikes Baucus [...]
Number of comments: 1 I have been informed that certain fans of the Black and Gold have initiated efforts with benign supernatural forces to ensure a Black and Gold Super Bowl in Miami 2010. Last year, when similar efforts were made, the Saints went from 3-5 in the Dome to 5-2 (6-2 if you [...]
Number of comments: 1 So two benchwarming Saints players made like Norman Robinson last night by urinating publicly in an Elmwood apartment complex parking lot. Lovely. Not world class. A few brief thoughts:Let he among us who has not sinned thusly, cast the first stone.I can almost guarantee that this kind of [...]
Number of comments: 0 I had thought that tomorrow was Ashley Morris Day. But Hana reminds us it's today. I have more to say about our champion, the man who lived the Warrior's Code. (Thanks for that song, Greg. You cost me 99 well-spent cents on iTunes that will lift my [...]