Something for everyone. This should take care of my blogging responsibilities for the rest of this weekend, don’t you think?

New Orleans: On Tuesday, several of us from work volunteered (wo)manpower to Jazzfest pre-production. From bunting and putting up signs to painting canvases and filing, we spent a day helping prepare for the two most exciting weekends in New Orleans after Mardi Gras. Beginning tomorrow, if the pre-sale numbers are trustworthy, tens of thousands of people will pack the Fairgrounds Racecourse and proceed to congest all of our city’s main arteries. It’s okay – please enjoy yourselves, spend a lot of money, tip well, don’t puke on the sidewalk and drive through.

Guvmint: Taking a break from painting in the Grandstand building, I decided to get some pictures of the inner courtyard. What is up with my tendency to trip over every political event within a five-mile radius? Blindly sauntering into the courtyard, a gaggle of reporters and entourages came into view, as did a shiny, bald head with a very familiar voice. It was Ray Nagin, along with Mitch Landrieu, a state senator and Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, addressing Fairgrounds Race Course personnel, Jazzfest staff and the press on the grand reopening of the venue. In essence, I’d walked into a major gratitude-and-suck-up fest with Churchill Downs on the receiving end. Oh well, at least I got some pictures (and a conversation with Quint Davis) out of it.

Nagin And Landrieu Work The Press

Music: Take a look at the Jazzfest schedule. On this first weekend, I can’t wait to see the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, Johnny Sketch & The Dirty Notes, Bob Dylan, Dr. John, The Iguanas, The Soul Rebels, Allen Toussaint, Elvis Costello (squee!) and Bruce Springsteen. The second weekend will see me in Wisconsin on a geology alumni mission, but I make up for missing Jazzfest by catching Mike Doughty live (double squee!) at the High Noon Saloon.

What is life without water? What is living without music?

Wisconsin: Speaking of Wisconsin, (imaginary) boyfriend, Brett Favre, has returned to the helm of my beloved Packers for yet another season. And if Bart says Brett has “many good years left,” who are we to argue? N-so?

A reminder: We still rule hockey. (Thanks, Sparky!)

***

Books, Internet & Public Domain: Project Gutenberg is in the news once again. The WaPo did a piece on better readability with the new generation of eBooks.

Perhaps most comparable to an iPod for books, e-book readers — a breed of upcoming devices designed to hold thousands of text files and display them at the same resolution of a printed page — could change the landscape of how books are both purchased and read.

For users looking to download free texts to an e-book reader, Project Gutenberg is an Internet-based effort that has placed more than 17,000 public domain books online for download — everything from the Bible and “Hamlet” to “Don Quixote” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

This after a Project Gutenberg title made it into the New York Times editorial page (registration required). The article, entitled A Blogger Ahead Of His Time is available in its entirety for free at the International Herald Tribune and speaks of Hilaire Belloc’s 1918 work, The Free Press.

… an extended essay examining the history of what Belloc calls the “Official Press” in England and the emergence of a rival “Free Press” in the form of small, often short-lived journals.

Small, often short-lived journals? Hmmmm, do these sound in any way familiar? B … bl … blogs, you say? What an interesting concept! Read on.

… There are whole paragraphs in Belloc’s essay where, if you substitute “blogs” for “the Free Press,” you will be struck by the parallels.

The free press that Belloc describes was a horde of small, highly opinionated, sometimes propagandistic papers that arose in reaction to “the official Press of Capitalism.” What characterized the free press, Belloc wrote, was “disparate particularism.”

He notes that the journals of the free press seldom pay their way and that they often suffer from the impediment of “imperfect information,” simply because it is not in the politicians’ interests to speak to them.

… “the Free Press gives you the truth; but only in disjointed sections, for it is disparate and it is particularist.” (For “particularism,” Belloc offers the synonym “crankiness.”) To get at the truth by reading the organs of the free press, you have to “add it all up and cancel out one exaggerated statement against another.”

But his point is that you can get at the truth.

Blogs, the new generation of the free press. Disparate, particularist, cranky … and a much-needed alternative for free thinkers who respect informed choices.

And with that, I bid you adieu for now. If you’re in New Orleans this weekend, have fun at Jazzfest (drop me an email if you want to get together). If elsewhere, have your own party.