One Voice For New Orleans: Another comprehensive website designed to help New Orleans back on its feet with links to problems, other aid organizations, Times Picayune pictures, local webcams and their main mission, getting Americans to write letters to their government representatives on behalf of New Orleans. Be patient during the page load – their server tends to get overwhelmed easily.

OVNO asks Americans to write their representatives and tell them you care about the future of New Orleans, and that you expect your leaders to care, too …

• Tell your congressional leaders right now that you support every effort to preserve one of this country“s most captivating cities.
• Tell them that the failure of the levee system was not a natural disaster.
• Tell them that Katrina did not discriminate …
• Tell them it could happen to you.

Communicating with federal, state and local government is an underestimated tool of citizen participation. Believe it or not, constituents and their problems still matter to politicians. The squeaky wheel gets greased … I mean, gets the grease.

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katrina.com: Donated to the Hurricane Katrina cause by a woman who named the site after herself, katrina.com provides a long list of resources and how you can help families in need this holiday season. The Katrina Angel Tree program helps you “adopt a family,” if you ignore all of the kitschy caramel and the Filling Of Forms associated with it. No, it’s not exactly secular and is a bit tedious, but I have a feeling all of the money gets to the intended party by using this method. A little bit of work to help a family in need is not a bad thing at all.

Disaster Tours Of New Orleans: I’m unsure how I feel about this.

Pros:

– Like Mardi Gras, the business will bring tourists into the city and resultant money into our economy
– Heightens awareness of what happened in New Orleans after the storm. People can now see the devastation and the recovery firsthand and pass on real data, as opposed to hearsay.

Cons:

– “Hurricane Katrina Tour – America’s Worst Catastrophe!” sensationalizes the disaster, likens it to a t-shirt or those annoyingly ubiquitous wristbands, and markets to (and will invariably attract) the American voyeur
– Unlike Mardi Gras, the tour is designed to highlight the disaster aspect of New Orleans. It will go through the most devastated areas in and around the city, where locals are still picking up the pieces, in a manner of speaking. Would you like to be a stop on the safari of the Louisianan bush? Participating in Mardi Gras is fun; watching people rebuild or mourn while you just sit there in a luxury bus is not.

Let’s face it, New Orleanians have learned to treat tourists as a necessary annoyance. Is it really going to be any worse than the tourist who takes pictures of you raking leaves in the front yard of your Lower Garden District home (this happened to me) or the frat boy who pukes up his Huge Ass Beer on your front stoop? Let’s hope the tour turns out to be more of an informative experience than satisfaction for a bunch of mere Peeping Toms.

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Animation Of All 2005 Hurricanes: NASA has assembled a visualization of all storm activity that affected the Gulf and Atlantic coasts in 2005. It is worth downloading the ~50MB file to watch the year’s activity as storms form, grow and decrease in size, with tracks provided for all of the named ones. We think of hurricanes as these awesome and decisive forces of nature, when a few tracks look like the markings of a one-year-old who just found a pen. I found this video very educational and highly recommend it to teachers, scientists and generally curious people everywhere.

[Yes, I am currently experiencing a “Science Rocks!” moment.]

i.e. a man-made error. Today’s nola.com hosts Evidence points to man-made disaster, a long and comprehensive article on the sequence of events leading up to the current state of Orleans and surrounding parishes, a timeline that heads back from August 29, 2005 into the 1950s.

Experts say the New Orleans flood of 2005 should join the space shuttle explosions and the sinking of the Titanic on history’s list of ill-fated disasters attributable to human mistakes.

… most structures that fail do so not because they’re hit by overwhelming forces, but because of flaws that creep in unnoticed during design, construction and upkeep … 80 percent of 600 structural engineering failures he studied in the past 17 years were caused by “human, organizational and knowledge uncertainties.”

… “What makes levee design and engineering so challenging is you can have a system that’s many, many miles long and you only need the weakest 150 feet to rupture for the whole system to fail.”

… Corps standards for levees and floodwalls date back decades, officials say, and were intended to protect sparsely populated areas, not cities and billions of dollars of infrastructure. The safety factor of 1.3 used in the designs is significantly lower than those used in structures with similarly large-scale tasks of protecting lives and property.

… and the list goes on. My concern does not surround what happened, but how and when this nation is going to address all of these now known problems before the next big storm. Or if they are at all. When the Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for the current levee circumstances, why are they on the job again? Are there no other options for southeastern Louisiana?

I fear that this nation as a whole is losing its Onwards and Upwards mentality, especially when it comes to science and engineering as well as sociopolitical areas in which it cannot easily see economic redemption. What an unfortunate fate for a country that coined the term Yankee Ingenuity. This taxpaying scientist cannot see anything that remotely resembles innovation and ingenuity in the complication-addled Iraqi occupation and NASA shuttle program, but these ventures continue to be funded and minus this level of contention. Why the resistance to readily fund an enviable engineering marvel – the modernization of the levee system in an area of economic and social import to America? Thoughts?

Following the last post, I received personal emails from a number of you wondering if I’m ok and to hang in there, take it one day at at time, and rely on the “simple human presence” of friends. Damned if I write an informal and personal post, and damned if I don’t, huh? I love you for your concern, am ok, and am taking it a day at once.

It’s getting increasingly difficult to hear about the news and stories of suicides and suicide attempts coming out of New Orleans. A metroblogger referred to the local newspaper as the Times Buzzkillayune, but Katrina is not over by the stretch of anyone’s imagination. Such a beautiful and joyous place should never have had to be reduced to this because of government incompetence during the storm, negligence even before, and the thoughtless comments of people who know little to nothing of the city. It hurts. Yet, results, goodness, and hope arise.

The post was meant to express that:

a) emotions abound and freely so, running in and out of center stage as they see fit, no permission, no knocking first,

b) it’s hard to be away from MY OWN SPACE for so long, even if it stands yet, even if it’s only a few more months until I go back, even if I live in the coziest house in The ‘Wood surrounded by the cutest puppies and kitties ever, and a friend who fixes my car for me even when I don’t ask,

c) some things aren’t getting better in New Orleans, but so much positive has happened and so incredibly fast (even by NOLA standards),

e) time heals a few wounds and renders gaping and horrific chasms of others,

e) people make me mad when they voice uneducated, unsolicited, and just plain rude opinion on New Orleans. Someone’s home is what you’re talking about – have a bit of respect. Whatever you think, kicking when someone’s down is impolite. As J and I caucused tonight, “Wait until your levee breaks!” and

f) even some other aspects of “back home” are messed up on many fronts.

I may consider myself very lucky, but it doesn’t stop me from being affected by sorrow sometimes. That’s all. Give it a rest.