federal flood

Katrina & The Flood – Four Years On

August 28, 2009

Since leaving New Orleans for Ohio (and San Jose, Boston, Vermont, Chicago and Colorado) five months ago, I’ve met a lot of people. There are those who exclaim “Oh, New Orleans, wow, that must have been exciting!” and ones who ask with genuine concern, “Were you there when …?” In these rolling spice-starved foothills of [...]

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Zeitoun By David Eggers

July 21, 2009

A clip from the Salon interview below shows why you and I must read this book.  It’s not because Eggers is a good writer who edits the most evocative, funny, often mind-blowing Best American Non-Required Reading series.  He fully gets what happened to America in 2001 and 2005, how they are not disconnected and what [...]

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Day 1278: Apparently Jindal Forgot About Hurricane Season

February 25, 2009

Thanks to joejoejoe, who reminded me of this from last night’s Republican response to the SOTU address.  Read a geologist’s rebuttal to Governor Bobby Jindal’s picking on a percentage of $140 million, a drop in the bucket of the stimulus package.  The $140 million to which Jindal referred is actually for a number of projects [...]

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Day 1240: The Lower Ninth Ward Today

January 18, 2009

Dear President Bush, A parting gift as you leave the White House: an image of New Orleans as it is today. This is where our complacency met your apathy, a deadly combination. Thanks for waking us up to the worst possible America. Sincerely, Maitri Tweet

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Day 1235: “Helicopter Drivers”

January 13, 2009

In yesterday’s post about The Beast’s fifty most loathsome people in America, I forgot to highlight a punishment the article proposed for our outgoing president: “Detained in formaldehyde-laced FEMA trailer without charges or counsel.” That’s also for recently taking credit for the amazing, self-directed response of the US Coast Guard immediately after the storm hit by saying, “Don’t tell [...]

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Day 1231: The Old Man And The Storm

January 9, 2009

The punchline first: Watch this film now. Most documentaries are such somber and sobering accounts of reality that I can’t bring myself to view them.  D has been trying to get me to watch The Dark Side and Lovesick near on a year now and I keep putting it off because I’m an internalizer.  How people and [...]

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Day 1160: Pattern Recognition

October 30, 2008

The flood line is emblazoned onto every New Orleanian’s retinae.  It doesn’t wash off easily, no matter how many blinks.  Even today, more than three years after The Flood, I will catch sight of one on an unclaimed or even an inhabited property.  My breath will unwittingly catch itself.  It doesn’t cover easily, even under [...]

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Day 1144: NOLA Levee Termites Quit Holding Hands, Study Finds

October 14, 2008

Levees here were stuffed with newspaper and lined with termite-attracting sugarcane waste.  The absurdity never ends. Science Daily | Did Termites Help Katrina Destroy New Orleans Floodwalls? Author Gregg Henderson, a professor at the Louisiana State University AgCenter, discovered Formosan subterranean termites (Coptotermes formosanus Shiraki) in the floodwall seams in August, 2000 – five years [...]

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Day 1098: Remember

August 29, 2008

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August 23, 2008

Now watching a sneak preview of Ken McCarthy’s “The Katrina Myth: The Truth about a Thoroughly Unnatural Disaster.” Sandy Rosenthal of levees.org introduced it. Tweet

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