Day 986: Cyclone Nargis Flood Maps
May 10, 2008 - Filed Under aid, global, mapping, weather
IFRC: Aid moving out but more needed
[As of May 9th,] over 220,000 people have received some form of aid from government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), other organizations and the general public. Over 80,000 of them have been served by Myanmar Red Cross … “Food, hygiene kits, water purification tablets, mosquito nets, sanitary supplies and most importantly shelter materials. Shelter material is an absolute priority now, although we are keeping a very close eye on the health situation. With a lot of stagnant water around we are already hearing reports of isolated outbreaks of intestinal and mosquito-borne diseases.”
* This Unosat map has a lot of information including the cyclone’s path and extent of flooding over an existing political map. It appears that Cyclone Nargis made landfall as a Category 2 on our Saffir-Simpson scale.
* From NASA Earth Observatory:
* The Dartmouth Flood Observatory has a simulation of Nargis’s storm surge as a Google Earth layer and a “flyover” movie.
* The extent of flooding in the Burmese capital city of Rangoon/Yangon is discussed here.
* News footage from the morning shows members of the Burmese military posing for photo ops while handing out relief packages to a handful of cyclone victims. I suspect that these folks are not being told that the aid came from UN drops, but instead from the government itself (Update: my suspicions are confirmed). However, as the Australian PM says, the blame game can wait.
Day 985: Barack Obollywood
May 9, 2008 - Filed Under desi / india, funny, government, music
This one’s for Alli:
In my last post, I mentioned the possibility of travelling to Myanmar later this year to help the victims of Cyclone Nargis rebuild. Thanks to the latest actions of the military “leadership” there, Americans may not be let in until then. 0 comments #
Day 984: The Victims Of Cyclone Nargis
May 8, 2008 - Filed Under global, government
Last week, D and I watched a Discovery Channel program which traced the Ganges all the way from its Himalayan headwaters to the Brahmaputra delta of southern Bangladesh. While talking about the Sundarbans, the fertile estuarine environment where the river meets the sea, much like Southern Louisiana and the Mississippi delta, the narrator mentioned a 1970 cyclone which claimed 300,000 Bangladeshi lives. D and I looked at each other and simultaneously mouthed the words, “That’s about the entire current population of New Orleans.”
Cyclone Nargis, which unfortunately shares its name with one of India’s most lovely old-school actresses, recently claimed about 22,000 lives with another 40,000 still missing. They are, as D put it, “a large, poor, mostly brown population who couldn’t evacuate and got hammered.” It is so easy to fathom and dismiss natural disasters and large populations dying as a result in underdeveloped nations because, along with political corruption and poor infrastructure, it happens there a lot more often than it does here. When talking of Katrina and the Flood, we often opine that what we experienced is the sort of thing that happens in the third world. We are Americans, how could this happen to us?
This is where people like my husband and Varg step in and say that we are so much luckier than those dead, missing and distraught in Myanmar right now. From Myanmar: “It Ain’t Me, It Ain’t Me”:
Hurricane Katrina swept through a heavily populated delta region the same as Cyclone Nargis swept through the Irrawaddy Delta. Is there a Weather Channel there? Contraflow? Mandatory Evacuations? Comfort Inns? Fema? Army Corps of Engineers?
All the recessions, crooked politicians, dead fetuses, foreclosures, high gas prices and crime rates here in the West pale in comparison to Myanmar. Aid in New Orleans came late at the expense of lives but it did indeed come.
That last paragraph made me weep. It makes me want to go to Burma over my next vacation and help some folks rebuild just like those who came here to get us back on our feet. It’s a thought, a seed, not impossible. Until then, I am going to give what money I can and urge you to do the same. Southern Louisianans, I know times are hard and many are strapped for cash during our own rebuilding, but … you know.
Another way to help is by not turning into a people like the shackled citizens of Myanmar. I’m not going to get all Rah Rah America Hell Yeah on you, but the unacceptable proposition of living and dying at the mercy of a dictatorship is why I always wanted to be an American and moved here. It was the promise of freedom and infrastructure, not either or none. We still have it in spades, but unless we fight for it everyday, it will slip away. Let’s keep America whole, for ourselves and for those who may one day need solace from tyranny and its results.
In solidarity with the victims of Cyclone Nargis and the citizens of Myanmar.
* International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
* A whole host of links at Network For Good
Day 983: Yes, But Is Our Children Learning?*
May 7, 2008 - Filed Under education, new orleans
NYTimes: Changes at New Orleans Schools Bring Gains in Test Scores
… Nonetheless, more than half the students who took the test in those grades did not pass, and 60 percent of high school students got an unsatisfactory ranking in standardized English and math tests, a figure three to four times higher than the percentage throughout Louisiana.
* George W. Bush, March 29, 2001
Day 983: The New Orleans Bingo! Show
May 7, 2008 - Filed Under music, new orleans, pictures
Never a dull moment during this mix of makeup, theatre, beats, friends and bliss. D saw them two times in the last ten days, once at One Eyed Jack’s and then at Jazzfest with me, lucky dog.
Day 982: Renard Poché’s 4U/4ME
May 6, 2008 - Filed Under family & friends, music, new orleans
D and I turn into hermits after Mardi Gras and Jazzfest, so we did not make it out to Renard Poché’s debut as a solo artist at the Maple Leaf last night. I love telling people that, aside from being the boyfriend of the beautiful LisaPal, Renard played with the Meters and Professor Longhair and gave me a guitar pick. Yes, I have a Renard Poché guitar pick. Please sample songs from his new album and then purchase it online (with liner notes) at RenardPoche.com.
This model of record sales is brilliant - it offers so much more freedom and control to the artist and consumer - and deserves to be supported by more and more of us ‘netheads.
Day 982: Laura Bush Should Know All About “Inept” Responses
May 6, 2008 - Filed Under WTF, global, government
On our way to and from Jazzfest, many of us have the opportunity to walk through formerly-flood-ravaged portions of MidCity. Do you notice in the spraypainted Xs that many houses were not visited by boat until September 11th, 2005, almost two weeks after much of New Orleans was submerged? How would you rate the disaster response of your government? Following that, what feelings would you harbor about the legitimacy of your government?
I’ve been wondering what effects the Myanmar Cyclone disaster will have on its government as it headed into voting on a draft constitution that shifts a lot of power to the military. Will accepting aid from foreign countries, especially democracies, force the government to rethink its stance? At considerable risk of not getting this aid to suffering people on time, it’s not unthinkable for foreign governments to hold such aid hostage until such time the current military government steps aside with a quickness.
But, the United States should send that message through someone other than Laura Bush, especially after her own husband’s and his administration’s “inept” response to a similar disaster within the Bushes’ own country. It’s hard to take seriously one’s assessment of the “false legitimacy” of another government, however illegitimate it truly is, when one is married to a doofus who’s out playing guitar and helping John McCain blow out his birthday candles as his people suffered and died.
UPDATE: Athenae points us to Network For Good’s list of how to donate to the cyclone victims. Please give what you can like those who gave to us.
Day 981: Another Jazzfest Where All Becomes One
May 5, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, music, new orleans, pictures
My favorite moment of Jazzfest occurs at 6PM on the final Sunday in front of the Acura Stage. The sun goes down on New Orleans setting afire the dome over Our Lady of the Rosary on Bayou St. John, the tall buildings of downtown in the distance and all of the Fairgrounds and music worshippers in between. We are that panorama of bliss. All is one.
We left Jazzfest way before 7 yesterday hoping to avoid the mad exit rush, but stopped to check in at the Jazz and Blues tents before the final goodbye. What strokes of luck! The horn-packed jazz jam tribute to Tuba Fats blew me away with the clarity of each note, the passion, the friendliness of those onstage and the extremely low number of listeners in the tent (the rest still watching The Nevilles, of course). So close to the music, I could feel the saxophone highs and drum lows in my bloodstream. At the Blues tent, Susan Tedeschi (surprise!) closed out her husband Derek Trucks’s show singing “The Weight” with her strong, husky voice to match the wail of Trucks’s strings.
Somewhere between the waves of music attenuating in my skin and the goosebumps it generated, I understood once again why this is just not the same as a concert in a stadium or listening to it on the best stereo system money can buy. At a festival with such a vibe of respect for and by the musicmakers, the music becomes you. You don’t listen to the notes, you are the flow. All is one.
Fried eggplant with crawfish sauce, cracklins, cochon de lait po-boys. Never mind the rain, the food will keep your soul dry.
“Stand right in front of the granstand for a while and you’ll run into everyone you know in New Orleans,” I remarked to D. Interactions and sightings: Loki, Lex, Lyl, Cassidy, Gina, Adrastos, Dr. A, Lisa (finally!), Stacey, Rex, Clint, Veronica, Jeffrey, Menckles, Varg, Lee, Pat, Murv, Marilyn, Keith and a whole host of colleagues, Krewe du Vieux-ers, friends and their spawn. We were together as one.
Last but definitely not least, it’s the day after Jazzfest, showers have been had and I can still smell the Fairgrounds on me. You know that smell, like horses crapped out dead crawfish. All the perfumes of the shopping booths will not sweeten my little pores after it got in. We can still smell it. All is still one.
Photo Gallery: New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2008 (more coming after tonight’s upload)
Day 978: Newsweek’s Take On New Orleans Today
May 2, 2008 - Filed Under We Are Not Ok, crime, new orleans, recovery
Newsweek: Towards A New New Orleans
This latest mainstream media piece on New Orleans seems to contain a bit more ground truth (except, as Oyster points out, there ain’t no Beaujolais St. here) and is yet somehow more non-committal than its predecessors. The feeling I got when reading the article is that it throws up many pieces to the jigsaw puzzle that is current New Orleans, but doesn’t go the step further to reach some obvious conclusions.
Example 1: The authors don’t arrive at the fact that in order for artists to live and thrive here, and not just the ones interviewed that have regular gigs and recording contracts, affordable housing is key. The kind provided here and there by Tulane architecture students or Global Green is laudable, but in the absence of a philosophy and systematic legal implementation of affordable rents and mortgages, a “vibrant culture” taking root here again is going to be very difficult to impossible.
Example 2: The recovery here is 100% citizen-led. The artists mentioned in the article aren’t back here and supporting New Orleans because city infrastructure is in any way better. They are here because this is home and their staying here is funded through their own credit cards. All New New Orleans ever did for Dinerral Shavers is acquit his murderer twice. Kirsha Kaechele shouldn’t be surprised when, one day, she returns back to her street to find one of her houses randomly demolished.
The authors are well within their rights to be wishy-washy about the very fluid situation of this city, but should have expressed it as: “It’s not good because of the infrastructure chaos and it’s not bad because there are citizens who want to be here and are doing all the work of recovery. How long can this model sustain itself?”
Well, how long?
Lack of affordable housing, rent and mortgage increases, insurance rate hikes, citizen-led recovery, the high murder rate, misplaced police priorities, misplaced educational priorities and so much more to overcome. Yet, many came or came back inspite of a city and government that make simple everyday living so hard.
Newsweek’s quaint assessment that “New Orleans is dead, long live New Orleans” is both wrong and right. It’s the same as it ever was. There will forever be the ones who are drawn to the age-old charm and context of New Orleans and those who run away from her equally legendary crime and chaos. But, given today’s economic challenges, who will those people be, where and how will they live and how will the culture, look and feel of New Orleans fare in their presence and absence?
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