by Maitri
on January 19, 2010
In my new-found role as New Orleanian Emissary To America, I find myself having to explain this quite a bit to the folks n00bs up here: Mardi Gras in New Orleans is not at all about boobies and meter-long what-passes-for-cocktails. So, get off those four foul blocks of Bourbon Street. And, for the record, you and your tourist frat kids made it that way.
The above is an example of a good Chicago Tribune article on Carnival celebrations down south. This, however, is not. Mardi Gras in Baton Rouge? I think not. And don’t even think about dressing like that in New Orleans.
by Maitri
on January 13, 2010
JAN 19TH AM UPDATES
Spatial Sustain | A call for a coordinated and conflated mapping effort between OpenStreetMaps and Google MapMaker in light of the Haitian earthquake. “Not surprisingly, the two data sets don’t match, and the question becomes what data is correct and how can the data be conflated to create a unified and accurate map.”
The Rumpus | “No one will ever know an actual death toll because no one is counting the bodies.”
JAN 15TH PM UPDATES
* BBC’s Jonathan Amos | How Satellites Are Being Used In Haiti: How geospatial science and technology can and do help during disasters
* Slashdot | Tech NGO’s Working In Haiti: Please also give to Télécoms Sans Frontières which “brings mobile telecom rigs and satellite phones to disaster sites, making sure that responders on the ground can communicate with each other and that individuals can contact families abroad.” Their donation site is super-slow, so please be patient.
JAN 15TH AM UPDATES
* New York Times Interactive Map: Use the slider to compare before and after satellite imagery of key buildings in Port-Au-Prince. Good job, NYT!
* Servir Maps: Damage assessment (before and after) maps and a good preliminary assessment of erosion/landslide potential.
* John McQuaid | Why Haiti Is Not New Orleans: “Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake are fundamentally different. That many people are lumping them together shows how superficial and ignorant we collectively remain about disasters and also why we never do an adequate job of preparing for them.” Wonderful essay, I encourage you to read all of it. Haiti needs the spotlight on its disaster in itself, and not for the global media to make wrong and useless comparisons to other disasters when idiot armchair critics far away can do that all by themselves.
[continue reading…]
by Maitri
on January 6, 2010
I made peace with her mortality, so the only regret I have about my grandma no longer being here is not being able to make a Carnival mask with her. I’ve mentioned that she was an artist in found objects. Hindu- and Indian-themed dioramas, wall hangings and decorative room partitions with strips of shiny and colorful cloth, cardboard and glitter, they all came from that head and tiny body. What I didn’t tell you is that my grandma loved sequins. I mean, LOVED them! So much so that my otherwise proper mother and her siblings sprinkled sequins on Patti’s sari during her wake. And laughed when they showed up in her ashes and again in the water collected from the Mohican River where those ashes were dissolved and dispersed. You know how happy and carefree you feel when you see a sequin? Maybe that was Patti telling us to chill, take a load off.
Early last year, Patti and I decided to make a carnival mask together that I would wear in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day 2010. Now, I am going to have to make it myself and hope it comes a country mile within the pattern, colors, and charms she would have picked for it. This one’s for you, Patti, wish me luck.
Folks, this year, do everything you’ve wanted to do with someone before it’s too late and they’re gone. This Mardi Gras, go all out, make the coolest and loudest costume your creativity can muster and wear it proud, before it’s too late and you’re gone. Eat every piece of king cake, catch every bead, glue every bead, sew every sequin, and live and love every minute of it all. Just roll in the glitter of life. And why not? It’s Carnival Time, y’all!
