Oscar The Cat reacts to this morning's presser.

Hard-hitting journalism: “Did you feel the earthquake, Mr. President?” I am not for Geology PR at all costs, even if deep fault reactivation on the eastern continental margin is hella cool.

BP halts Gulf oil flow for first time since April. Now waiting on test and seal of the dud well and the relief well to capture all flow from the reservoir. Does anyone have a good graphic of the intended relief/capture mechanism?

Gulf’s Artificial Islands Already Failing I was under the impression that engineers had a) thought about the islands’ long-term stability – wrong, and b) figured, “We’re screwed if we do or do not. Why not give it a shot?” Coastal scientist Len Bahr, who is quoted extensively in this article, will be an environmental panelist at the Rising Tide conference in New Orleans this year.

Wanna know how I feel about sports this week?  Yeah.

Sports panel, hosted by Jeffrey Pants: Alejandro de los Rios, reporter/blogger for the Gambit, Patrick Armstrong of Hurricane Radio, Leo McGovern, editor/publisher of ANTIGRAVITY Magazine, Chris Wiseman (AKA Mr. Clio, AKA Dilly, AKA Lee De Fleur) long-time local blogger, ever-enthusiastic member of the Black and Gold Patrol and locally famous Crescent City Classic participant.

Sports culture in New Orleans: Chris describes being in costume at an away game in Indianapolis.  Sounds like my experience when I wore my beaded cheesehead to the Superdome.  When you’re a Saints (or Packers) fan, it’s all about PURE LOVE.  Jeffrey says the four seasons in NOLA are Mardi Gras, Summer Jazzfest, Hurricane and Football.

As Tim notes, Chris says fans usually celebrate victory, but his outfit memorializes losses: Ashley, Buddy D, Sam Mills.  More about Saints and Hornets fandom.

Again, Jeffrey references Dave Zirin’s remark to Rising Tide two years ago: “Stadium construction is not a substitute for urban policy.”Alejandro de los Rios see plus and minus of public money for Saints and Superdome.  When a hike in Brown County taxes was proposed to renovate and expand Lambeau Field, a minority of residents balked, but they don’t realize what a cash cow the Packer enterprise is for their area. It definitely is a bread-and-circuses model of economic growth, as Pat puts it, but one that makes money for the city and local businesses if properly funneled.  The problem is where the money goes.

I’d really like for development (store fronts, restaurants, bars) around the Superdome to go to businesses that are locally-owned, reflect New Orleans culture and bring growth to Orleans Parish and its taxpayers, and not national chains and ESPNZone or some such.  This is not impossible.

And with that, WE ARE DONE.  Thank you for another great day!  Our baby is FOUR!

The fourth annual Ashley Morris Award For Excellence In Blogging goes to … American Zombie!  Jacques Morial accepting on behalf of Dambala.

Sinn Fein and Ashe. FYYFF!

Update: Video of Oyster’s introduction and Jacques’s acceptance speech

You want a citizen journal, you’ve got a citizen journal: Ariella Cohen talks to us about the New Orleans Institute and announces the upcoming Orleans’s own investigative news site: New Orleans Public Record.

Based on The Washington Independent and San Diego Independent News.

Healthcare panel includes public health Ph.D. candidate and local blogger Holly Scheib, Cecile Tebo, crisis unit coordinator for the NOPD and one of New Orleans magazine’s Top Ten Female Achievers; Dr Elmore Rigamer, medical director of Catholic Charities, moderated by our very own Liprap.

It’s not an exaggeration to show that the nation’s healthcare woes are magnified in New Orleans, especially after Katrina and The Flood.  If there was a time for accessible and affordable community clinics in this city, it is NOW!

Katrina Pain Index 2009:  “0. Number of hospitals in New Orleans providing in-patient mental health care as of September 2009 despite post-Katrina increases in suicides and mental health problems.”

Closure of NOAH = crime against New Orleans.  Cecile Tebo lets us know that these patients will end up in hospitals not in the area.  The mentally-ill also end up in the closed structure of jails to contain problem, where they do not get required treatment.

Loki’s aunt Ninette asks two great questions: What about the health of our first responders?  Also, what about the stressful nature of living in New Orleans, with two or three full pages of obituaries daily as opposed to just one?  Dr. Rigamer invites one and all to the Catholic Charities free care, but it has its limits.  Holly: We get caught up in conversations about access; health is more than access, doctors and medicine.  Where we live, who our neighbors are, what we eat, these community factors are paramount, and the conversation should be broadened to include these factors.  Cecile touts 211 – more New Orleanians need to know about this.  But, an internet search of “New Orleans 211″ yields useless information.  As the G-Bitch asks, “Where’s the information? Where are the lists and hours and phone numbers?”

Short-term funding for much-needed clinics eventually runs out.  Continued care is crucial to full recovery.

Q&A: Loki mentions seeing a mental health counselor on returning to New Orleans in late 2005.  This professional had a breakdown while treating Loki and subsequently quit the profession.  (I’m sure it wasn’t Loki who drove this poor person up and over the wall.  Not at all!  :-P)  Similar thing happened to me;  I had to quit my post-K counselor after one or two sessions because it was obvious she needed therapy more than I did.  In and after a crisis situation, it is a back-breaker to be strong for everyone around you.  This is why I personally went with Pistolette‘s self-treatment.  (Hey, it worked in 1991, why not in 2006?)  Not everyone can just snap out of it, however, especially those with pre-existing, chronic, chemical and/or genetic issues and conditions.

Update: Healthcare in this country is broken on the whole, as friend Jenny and I discussed later, and this comes down to what people define as “healthcare.” Definition 1: Not taking care of yourself, be it through lack of education, motivation and/or money, and hitting the ER or Urgent Care facility for an expensive emergency procedure.  Definition 2: Annual physical exam, preventive care, exercise, eating well, education as ongoing armor against illness.  Definition 3: Preventive care mentioned in 2 as well as available, affordable care in case of accident, cancer, childbirth, etc.  A lot of people in New Orleans and America think healthcare is Definition 1, while what we need is people thinking in terms of Definitions 2 and 3, a healthy mix of personal responsibility and a social net.

Lunch from Café Reconcile was excellent, especially the white beans on rice.  Yummy!  On to the politics panel: Adrastos moderates Clancy Dubos of The Gambit & WWLTV, political cartoonist John Slade, Lamar White of CenLamar and Ethan Brown, journalist and author of Shake The Devil Off.

Thunderous applause for the Mose Jefferson verdict.

On Mose Jefferson conviction – Clancy says Mose conviction more important than Dollar Bill’s; Bill was brain, Mose was the muscle.  John Slade warns against this opportunity to blame Black Machine Politics and says “We can’t cherry pick black people [to throw rocks at].”

Upcoming mayoral election – Clancy: The last time, 72% of voters were not strongly committed to a candidate and that’s how we got Nagin.  “If there ever was a time New Orleans needed a great mayor it is now, Nagin is the worst mayor in 100 years.”; Slade: “Anybody that says, ‘We need to run New Orleans like a business,’ just walk away from that!” (Can I just say John Slade is da bomb? He nails it again and again.)  Lamar White: “need a mayor who’s going to honor and restore integrity because that’s what’s been eroded.”

Public safety platform – Slade not worried about crime, but mental health.  Touches on importance of public-input channel when it comes to decisions like Charity.  Panel split on importance of candidate running on public-safety, anti-crime platform.

Bobby Jindal, good or bad for Louisiana? – Clancy: Bad. He’s making decisions that have nothing to do with Louisiana; John Slade: “Jindal’s a Rhodes Scholar, he’s got to have taken a geology class.  He got re-elected because there a lot of people in North Louisiana who hate New Orleans.”  Lamar: “Hindsight is 20/20, but knowing what I know now, Blanco would have been a much more effective leader for the state.” Ethan: “Whatever is in [the Republican interest] is not in your interest.  Anything that’s for the public good, they’re against, that’s what the modern Republican party is about.”

On David Vitter: Did Adrastos just put Keith Richards and David Vitter in the same sentence, even if he refers to Vitter as the human cockroach?  Blasphemy!  And did Slade just croon “Love to love you, baby?!”  What is happening here?  Lamar: The state Democratic party is completely broken.  “Now [Mary Landrieu] doesn’t need/have the party’s permission to vote how she wants to vote.”  Ethan: “Vitter is a real political animal.  My wife got a Vitter robocall inviting her to the anti-ObamaCare meeting.”  [Note: David Vitter sent an invite to a Louisiana anti-ObamaCare meeting to my OHIO ADDRESS. Tell me taxpayer money wasn't used there.]

On Anh Joseph Cao: Slade doesn’t feel that he is a one-timer and isn’t going to represent the district well.  Especially when he puts personal “moral” ticks over healthcare for all.

Q&A: James Perry may be the sleeper mayoral candidate but Clancy thinks he’s got to raise some serious money and people’s support.  Cliff raises a good point in his question about undue media influence: Does the media follow public opinion or vice versa? Panel ends with discussion of everyone running for (major) office in Louisiana right now.

Thank you, panelists, for a most lively time!

Update 1: I’m just not in the mood or right frame of mind (sleep-deprived) to take offense at anything right now, but John Slade referring to Bobby Jindal as Haji doesn’t sit right with me.  Overall he’s a very funny, erudite guy who did a fine job on the panel and there is a fine line between comedy and slur, art and blasphemy, free speech and bad taste (and I occasionally refer to myself as a dothead, mostly when people ask me what kind of Indian I am), but it’s like calling a black person Sambo or Shaneekwa, ok?

Update 2: John Slade offers an apology.

Harry Shearer takes stage.  “I’m delighted to be anywhere, any time I’m in New Orleans.”  I can’t decide whether it’s Mr. Burns, Smithers or Ned Flanders talking to me and it shakes me to my very pop-culture core.  No, wait, it’s Principal Skinner.

“If they could get Geraldo Rivera in here after the storm, why couldn’t they get food and water in?”

“We have lost the media battle of what happened to us.”  A lot of comments from “people who don’t wish us very well.”  N.B.: In my time in Ohio, I’ve received only one “That city should never have been rebuilt” but not a lot of folks realize that the hurricane did not cause the majority of the damage here and that the whole city is not below sea level.

Laziness of mainstream media: “They did not seem to get to St. Bernard, Lakeview, Gentilly … They get a sense of what the story is, a template [and stick to it].”  Talks about time as a Newsweek reporter sent on “template” assignments, e.g. rooftop living in Los Angeles.

On Johnette Napolitano’s fact-finding visit: “They’ll never be able to build a levee big enough to withstand Katrina?  Really?”  Pssst, visit the Netherlands.  For shame.

On blogging for Huffington Post: “The important point is I have the luxury of not rushing to print with [a story], a luxury a journalist does not have.”

On being conduits for information: “Robert Novak was known, on the one hand, for being a parasitical conduit for his inside sources but there’s a complicated relationship. Every whistleblower has an agenda; no source feeds you information without an agenda.  We have an obligation to … what may elevate us over mainstream journalism is taking a second look at the issue.  If I am going to pass this along to my readers, [I have to let them know] what [the source's] interest is and what our relationship is.”

The bad news: “At the beginning of the Obama administration, I started getting the same messages from the Left as I was from the Right.  Some of the Obama commenters said, ‘Why are you blowing off steam in the Huffington Post? You’re  a celebrity, go talk to the White House.’”  [Impersonation of Mr. Burns talking to President Obama.]  Recites his odyssey of contacting White House and being rebuffed.  Mentions attending The Dutch Dialogues.  Finally reached “David Washington” and, in two weeks, got a call from the legislative liaison for the Army Corps of Engineers.  *headsmack*  Was advised not to talk to David Axelrod or Rahm Emanuel “because all they want to do is destroy Bobby, just like their predecessors wanted to destroy Kathleen.”

Brian Williams finally told Shearer the truth: “Honestly, we feel that the [raw, contextless] emotional stories are more compelling for our business.”  According to Shearer, the emotional stories are our job.  “Can’t fight water, water always wins. We need to learn to live with water.”  Was this in reference to the Army Corps or nature?  If it was said with respect to nature, it contradicts what he said before.

Shearer is done playing the Inside The Beltway game and intends to write about it (look for upcoming articles /interviews in Times-Pic and WWNO).  Again stresses that bloggers have the luxury of time, to dig up facts and take advantage of those time resources.

Jessica Rohloff, of Net Squared New Orleans (@NewJess on Twitter), up there talking about social media in New Orleans.  Call themselves “nerds* getting together for a project.”  Attended last SXSW conference to show that “New Orleans is on the map, New Orleans is not under water, people live here, there are tax credits perfect for startups.”  20th Net Squared meetup group in the world, preceded Net Squared Austin by a day.  One of the largest Net Squared groups in country.

Meetings ==  First Tuesday of every month at the Bridge Lounge.

Links: Net Squared, TechSoup

* You’re geeks, not nerds.  There’s a difference.

Emcee Loki is up there!  Watch out, wake up, etc.  Introducing Wet Bank Guy, the moderator of the Culture Panel.  Panelists are Edward Buckner of The Porch Seventh Ward Culture Organization and the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club, Susan Tucker, editor of New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories and Bruce Raeburn of the Hogan Jazz Archive and author of New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History.

Raeburn: About 60% of the music population has returned, but with fewer paying gigs.  “If you are making $100 a night, six nights a week, you’re not going to make it … What happens if the culture doesn’t come back?”

Buckner on music and culture: “Kids relate to [musical heroes like Kermit Ruffins, Trombone Shorty].”  Buckner contends that Mardi Gras Indians and musicians need the means to record, photograph and archive themselves so they can make the money instead of writers and photographers.  Alex Rawls tweets, “No one’s making money off MG Indians, writers and photogs included.”

Raeburn: “Displacing musicians” into neighborhoods that they are not from disrupts musical culture.

Tucker on food: “New Orleans was the first gastronomic statement in the US … Expensive food and no neighborhood stores is a problem.”  Reads from 2007 obituary of local musician: “He didn’t eat pork unless it was on a muffuletta!”  Emphasizes support for local food.

Buckner: “How much damage are we doing to the culture of New Orleans?”  Lists everything from crime, lack of quality education, everything we know and have talked about that keep New Orleans culture from “blossoming.”  “We as a society need to embrace each other just as we embrace the music.”

Tucker: “People in exile thought about [New Orleans food] a lot.”  Tucker keeps mentioning talking and thinking about food.  We do that on blogs and should do it more.  The lovely Swampwoman reads my mind and asks Ms. Tucker about it.

Food, music, family, neighborhood, community.  This is vital to New Orleans recovery and survival.  Red beans & rice on Monday.  Large family- and friend-centric meals.  The only two places I’ve experienced this are with my own large Indian family and my larger New Orleans family, witnessed last night in culinary spread and friends that came together to welcome D and me back.  This is special.

Please visit and donate to The Roots Of Music – New Orleans’s only free, year-round music education program.

Thank you for a great panel!  Makes me want to go home and cook, and blog about it!

Greg explains: “The figure represents Yemaja, a Yoruba Orisha & owner of all waters, patron of fishermen and wreck survivors, and manifestation of the feminine principle of creation.”  The Zombie explains further, “She is the Yoruba Goddess of the oceans and hence the mother of life itself. You could look at her as the mother of the world and her personality traits are indicative of that role … understanding, patient, loving, and nuturing.”

Some uncanny parallels with Hindu mythology here:

a) The very reason each member of the Hindu trinity – Brahma, Vishnu and Siva – has a female counterpart, i.e. Saraswati, Lakshmi and Parvati/Uma/Shakti, is to symbolize the feminine counterpart of the cycle of life – creation, preservation and destruction.  Creation, symbolized by Brahma, cannot happen without knowledge, i.e. Saraswati.  Preservation, represented by Vishnu, occurs because of Lakshmi, symbolic of wealth (money, work, food, house, children).  Siva the destroyer acts with energy in the form of Parvati or Shakti, in order for creation to begin anew.  There is no Hindu god that is totally male or female; they reflect one another, the yin and yang of being.

b) Another tenet of Hinduism is the abhorrence of a vacuum or utter chaos.  From pralaya, creation will begin anew.

c) Lastly and most interestingly, Yemaja brings to mind Mathsya, the first of the ten avatars of Vishnu, who manifested as a fish and saved mankind from a flood.  Indeed, Mathsya appeared before a very Noah-like Satyavrata/Manu and said to him, “Gather up representative samples of all plants and animals and get in a boat before there’s more water up in here than you’ll know what to do with.  You have six days.  Go.”

Yemaja, feminine aspect of creation, Shakti, rising from the water, Mathsya, Noah … I dare you to tell me our ancestors didn’t hang out and smoke the Peace Pipe together.

Rising from the water.  The rising tide.  That is New Orleans itself and what this annual conference is all about – bloggers and other concerned citizens gathering on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and The Federal Flood to talk New Orleans.  Register here and, if you can’t make it, please donate.  As New Orleans goes, so goes the nation.