Monthly Archives: June 2008

Day 1038: Jindal’s Hail Mary

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I mean the above title wholly as a football allusion. No Catholic puns intended, honest.

NOLA.com: Jindal Vetoes Pay Raise Bill

Stuck between Republican lawmakers in Louisiana and pressure from voters and the larger national Republican scene, Jindal was forced to make a move, sided with his national backers, threw the ball and killed the pay raise. Jeffrey thinks it is because he wants Clancy DuBos to like him again, but I personally credit Candy Crowley’s tough and candid questioning of Jindal on the issue when there were two seconds left in the CNN’s Late Edition interview. Yes, I’m being sarcastic and no, DuBos still doesn’t like Jindal.

Some in and outside Louisiana think that the pay raise veto is Jindal pushing back the liberal agenda in his legislature. Earlier this month, 13 members of the the Louisiana House and Governmental Affairs Committee voted for the pay raise, while 4 voted against. 8 of that 13 are Republicans. Does it seem like much of a liberal agenda now?

My take on this is that the Republican Party is losing ground and needs more success stories going into November’s election. This is why

Whether or not Jindal runs for Vice President, his Valorous Slaying of the pay raise is yet another Oooh Look Shiny Ball! to hold in the face of swing voters and Republican voters disgusted by their party who are looking to jump ship. Despite hypocrisies and outright untruths, conservative voters will hold these acts to be self-righteous and Louisiana will remain the Red State it was destined to be. Thank God.

Day 1035: Charity Hospital In Architecture Week

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This completely slipped my mind until now: Charity Hospital was featured prominently in the June 11th issue of Architecture Week in an article called Historic U.S. Places at Risk.

The Magnificent Facade Of Charity Hospital

One of my pictures of Charity’s magnificent facade was used in the article (with permission) along with several from other contributors.  Also mentioned is the LSU/VA plan which involves “demolition of some 200 homes and buildings constructed prior to 1880 in 25 blocks of the Mid-City Historic District, despite the existence of a largely vacant site nearby.”

Lower Mid-City was flooded in 2005 but not as badly as many other parts of New Orleans.  Through hard work and the attendant pitfalls of the last three years, this is one part of the city which has been able to come back in an appreciable manner, the Deutsches Haus a prime example of such a rebound.  It seems criminally negligent and wasteful to demolish a whole neighborhood that has mostly succeeded in recovery and in maintaining its historic roots to put in a much-needed hospital, but one that has the option to build elsewhere. 

Currently in circulation is an open letter to Mayor Nagin and City Council demanding public hearings on the LSU/VA campus development plan.  Worse than a hospital complex going up on top of a recovering historic neighborhood is the public left out of the planning process.

Day 1034: On FISA And Getting Rolled

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With all of this cloture talk going around and before you think the Democrats “got rolled” on the FISA debacle, here are some points for consideration:

1.  Julian Sanchez at American Prospect: Democrats Capitulate On FISA

… But it may not be simple naiveté: The watchdog group MAPLight notes that House Democrats who changed their votes to support the new FISA bill received almost twice as much money from the telecom industry over the past three years as those who remained opposed. Either way, though, it sure looks like they’re hoping you will get rolled.

2.  Back to the criminal cloture thing, major props to Chris Dodd and the honorable gentleman from Wisconsin who tried their best to filibuster the hell out of this bill.

3.  Where was Golden Boy Obama to stand as one of the filibustering forty? 

(If you think I’m going to quit railing against the exectuive branch the moment Obama is elected president, you’re in for a world of shock.  This blog is only the extension of the 1990s-honored tradition of calling out Bush the First and Clinton via email and muttering at the television.  Politicians were, are and always will be in it for themselves.)

Day 1034: A Fundraiser For The Ashley Morris Memorial

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This just in from the Big Easy Rollergirls:

Save the date! Dirty Coast Press, The Rising Tide and the Big Easy Roller Girls Present: FYYFF It’s Black and Gold Forever: A Fundraiser for the Ashley Morris Memorial, Saturday, July 26 at One-Eyed Jack’s. It will be a night of bands, auctions, raffles and fun!  You can still donate and view pictures at RememberAshleyMorris.com

Spread the word.

Day 1033: Rest In Peace, Vinit

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SAJAForum: Vinit Chakravarty Loses Battle With Leukemia

Vinay In March 2008, we wrote about the passing of Sameer Bhatia, one of two South Asian men whose struggle with leukemia had caught the imagination of South Asians and others across the U.S. We are sorry to report that the other young man, Vinay Chakravarthy, 29, passed away this morning.

… Vinay, through HelpVinay.org and Sameer, through HelpSameer.org, used their illness as a way of mobilizing the community and bringing attention to the lack of South Asians in the national bone-marrow registries.

Vinay and his wife, Rashmi, were profiled in the recent PBS special, “The Truth About Cancer.” Through their tired eyes, I could see the young couple’s hope. 29 is no age to die and three years of marriage is way too short for a woman so devoted to her ailing husband.

In the last three years, I have lost three loved ones to cancer and now observe its growth in my grandmother as well as two friends.

And I am a heel for being one of those South Indians not on the national bone-marrow registry, relying on the sad excuse that a recruitment drive has not been held in New Orleans or a city conveniently located on my paths of travel.

I just registered myself with the Asian American Donor Program and requested a home test kit that doesn’t cost anything. Even if it does, I’ll gladly pay it. According to the site, “kits are fully funded through a special grant for anyone of all or partial ethnic minority descent” while donor eligibility requires “being in between the ages of 18-60, having no serious, ongoing lower back problems and being in good general health.” Within this lifetime, I hope my marrow helps save a life.

Day 1032: My God

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92% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit, Pew survey finds

I am one of the 92%. God has always been with me, and I with God. God is such a meaningful, soul-gripping and peace-giving entity in my life that I cannot begin to explain this relationship to anyone else, much less myself. Hence the daily exploration of breathing in, examining and worshipping the all in the all.

Rarely, if ever, do I discuss my religious beliefs other than utilizing the convenient pigeonhole of Hindu. It’s not a lack of conviction or the inability for pedagogy, but an absence of zealotry and the unwavering belief that no two humans can experience anything in the same way, even God.  My husband’s notion of the divine is not mine, just as I do not expect our children to mimic their parents’ independent assessments and voyages in the physical and spiritual realms.  How may I externalize something this personal and so exclusively created by and for me?  Why should I trivialize it?  Some of it I’ll share with you, however, that I can put in words.  That:

  • * God spoke to Moses, but didn’t speak to me,
  • * Krishna imparted the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna on the battlefield as outlined in the Mahabharatha, but I haven’t seen the Vishwa Rupa Darshana, the universal form of the Lord, myself,
  • * Jesus walked this earth a couple of millennia ago and that his words offer solace and opportunity for self-possession, but it is up to me to listen and act accordingly and every day,
  • * the bhajans of M.S. Subbulakshmi and songs of the Sufis are threads which lead out of their mouths and into the tapestry of the metaphysical, that they offer a direct line to something unimaginably beautiful and terrible at once,
  • * temples, churches, mosques and buildings of worship are great, laudable works of architecture, which are wholly useless if God does not live in the altar of your personal being.  As a very Hindu cousin wrote me recently, “I never buy pictures of God because I feel that God’s picture should be enshrined in your heart,”
  • * vampires do not exist, Sasquatch does and ghosts may or may not,
  • * I can see God in a microscopic section of rock and in the smiles of children,
  • * a Bodhisattva, a Tzadik Hador, Kalki or a Kwisatz Haderach (for you Dune-ists) arrives every generation, but I wouldn’t know one if he or she walked up to me and said, “Hello,”
  • * in truth, we are each our own Messiah.  No one else can be that for you or me,
  • * God just is, in and as everything, even in the mundane, occasionally taking form and putting on airs, and
  • * death isn’t the end.

These are some of my personal, quirky notions of the invisible and unexplainable.  They didn’t come to me all at once and I guarantee you that, as time passes, my mind will change about a few items in the above list because metamorphosis, like it or not, happens.  Again, these are my personal, quirky ideas.  Hence, I don’t vote with them and believe that a collection so personal is not open to public debate or enshrinement as someone else’s laws.  What right do I have to impose the iconoclastic or a syncretic messiah on you and you your own equally bizarre beliefs on me? 

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