Krewe of Dead Pelicans

Feeling helpless at the immensity of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans resident Ro Mayer organized a protest in a typical New Orleans way: a mock jazz funeral for the Gulf and its wildlife. Participants in The Krewe of Dead Pelicans were asked to wear black pants and blue shirts, and to carry blue umbrellas painted with black splotches--symbolizing the black oil beneath the blue waters. They also were asked to wear shrimpers' boots--the short white rubber boots you'll see many people in the second-line parade wearing--symbolizing the mighty Louisiana seafood industry, which is likely to be permanently devastated by the oil spill. 

Photo of oil-coated pelican by Matthew Hinton/The Times-Picayune

As Ro Mayer said in her video interview with the local newspaper's reporter, we feel helpless in the face of this calamity. We have to cope as best we can. At nearly five years after Katrina, we are faced once again with an environmental disaster that will destroy our marshes, our wildlife, our homes, our businesses, our jobs, our economy, our lives. Its effects will be felt for decades, if not centuries, and will reverberate far beyond Louisiana and the other Gulf Coast states.

See the video of the event, held Saturday, June 5, 2010. Hundreds of people participated.

In a press conference last week, BP CEO Tony Hayward said he'd like to have his life back. Yeah, so would we, but it ain't happening. How about this, Mr. BP? You don't get your life back until, and unless, we get our lives back. You suffer what we suffer, as long as we suffer. How about that?

Photo by Michael DeMocker/The Times-Picayune

Who Dat Won Dat!

Yeee-haaaahhhhh! That's my cheer for the Saints winning the Super Bowl. I'm a few weeks slow getting this post online, but that works out well. I've had a chance to observe not just the night of the Super Bowl victory, but the days and weeks afterward. 

Wow. We're still elated, floating on air, exuberant, overjoyed, delirious with happiness. It's been a huge boost  for everyone, not just the sports fans. It gave us our power back, power that seeped away over many long years of defeat after defeat--failures not just of the Saints, but of the city, the area, the whole state. Katrina was nearly a death-blow. We're fighters, though; we've hung in there, remained loyal to the Saints, kept hope alive despite our civic messes, doggedly rebuilt from disaster after disaster.

Now, well . . . who ever thought we'd see headlines like "Aggressive tactics boost mighty Saints to first title" (USA Today) "Mighty Saints"! There was a time when those words would have been said only in cruel derision.

I keep thinking, "Sport as metaphor . . . sport as metaphor . . . sport as metaphor." That, in fact, was what I talked about in a blog entry from 2006, when I first became a real Saints fan. It resonates even more with me now.

Hail and Farewell

I welcome 2009 because it brought a new president, in whom I have much hope.

I shrink from 2009, however, because it brought the departure from New Orleans of Laura Joh Rowland, a good friend whom I shall miss greatly.

You know as much as I do about our new president, and the hopes of the voters who elected him. I shall focus instead on my friend, whose departure I bemoan. Laura has moved to New York due to her husband's job change.

I've known Laura since 1993, when I joined SOLA, the local chapter of RWA, a national writers' organization. Laura was already a member and she made her first book sale that year (Shinju, first in her Sano Ichiro mystery series). For a long time we were mere acquaintances, but over the last eight years we became friends. Since 2001 we've belonged to a writers group that meets once a week. Over those years I've seen Laura nearly every Monday--she was a faithful attendee and rarely missed a meeting. I had the chance to get to know her, and everything I discovered about her is admirable.

Laura is, first, a fine person, kind, loyal, honest, hardworking, and conscientious. She has a serious demeanor, but underneath an antic sense of humor and a fine wit.

She is, second, a true artist, creative in many ways. As an author, she's had 14 books published (13 in her Sano Ichiro mystery series set in 17th century Japan, one so far in her Charlotte Bronte mystery series). She's a fine writer, with a wonderful skill at taking us back into a historical setting and making us see, hear, feel, smell and taste it. Her characters live and breathe, as if in the room with us. Her plots are fiendishly clever.

Laura is generous in sharing her knowledge with fledgling authors, and encouraging them to become productive writers. She regularly gives talks to groups of writers as well as readers, and presents programs at writers' conferences. For more than 10 years she mentored a critique group in New Orleans that had been started by the noted science fiction author George Alec Effinger. She always has a fresh perspective to offer on one's work; her advice is cogent, succinct, and as valuable as gold.

Laura is a painter, too, and plans to pursue that talent with serious study at a major art school soon. She faithfully took painting classes for years while in New Orleans, and her work decorated the walls of her home in New Orleans. (I wish I'd asked her to paint one for me.) Last year the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts gave her a special award for "exceptional promise, discipline, and selfless devotion to the fine arts."

Laura now resides in one of New York's five boroughs, outside of Manhattan, in a busy neighborhood full of people speaking other languages. The population in her new neighborhood is mostly Korean immigrants. (Laura, a third-generation American of Korean and Chinese ancestry, says for the first time in her life she's part of the majority ethnicity.)

What wonderful grist for a writer's mill. I know she'll enjoy all the opportunities and excitement that New York has to offer, but oh, how we'll miss her here in New Orleans.

Ave atque vale, Obama and Rowland.

Darwin Awards Winners?

A friend emailed me the message below, captioned "2008 Darwin Awards." It's hilarious, so I'm sharing it with you. I double-checked it with the actual Darwin Awards website ("A chronicle of enterprising demises honoring those who improve the species...by accidentally removing themselves from it!"). The 2008 nominees listed didn't include any of these anecdotes. Perhaps they're from previous years...but the website has so many I didn't take the time to check them all.

So enjoy the stories, whether true or apocryphal, and visit the Darwin Awards website for more tales of unbelievable (and deadly) human idiocy.

"It's not the heat, it's the stupidity."
_____________________________________________

Subject: 2008 Darwin Awards

It's that time again...The Darwin Awards are finally out, the annual honor given to the persons who did the gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid ways.

Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out.

This year's winner was a real rocket scientist....HONEST!

Read on...And remember that each and every one of these is a TRUE STORY. The awards were bestowed this year by December 6th, 2008 because the panel of judges believed that no one else could do more stupid stuff than these morons did by that time in 2008.

* * * * * * * * * * *

And the nominees were:

Semifinalist #1

A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply, because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he rushed to vomit into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his unfortunate sister.

Semifinalist #2

Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles (HARD to control light airplanes when everyone moves to one side).

Semifinalist #3

A 22-year-old Reston, VA man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot rail road trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. 'The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground,' Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was 'Major trauma.'

Semifinalist #4

A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend -- no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate -- was hospitalized.

Semifinalist #5

Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc.

After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter.

Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as ''bright'' by his peers.

*** Now, to the winner of this year's Darwin Award ***

(awarded, as always, posthumously):

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene. Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket scientist ... had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off, actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO!

The facts as best as could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3..0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location.

The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20-25 seconds.

The driver, and soon to be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event. However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable. However, small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the crater, and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.

You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?

AND PEOPLE JUST LIKE THIS ARE ALL AROUND US TODAY - AND THEY BREED & VOTE, TOO.

Weird Events

In the last few weeks some weird things have been happening in the New Orleans area, or not far from it:

KKK Reappears
A hitherto unknown enclave of the Ku Klux Klan was discovered about 60 miles northeast of New Orleans, a group of eight or so cretins who had gathered to induct a new member. The leader of the group ended up shooting and killing the new member because she got cold feet and wanted to back out of the deal and go home. The other members of the group helped him try to cover up the evidence and dispose of the body. The whole thing was done so clumsily police had little problem in finding the evidence. All was revealed within a short time. Police were tipped off to the shady doings when a clerk at a nearby convenience store told them two people he/she recognized had asked how to get blood out of clothing. Despite having signed an oath of secrecy to protect their fellow Klan members to the death, etc., the Klanners couldn't talk fast enough once police found them.

Neo-Nazi
Police in a New Orleans suburb arrested a man they saw walking down a street in full Nazi uniform, carrying a loaded 8mm Mauser. He told them he was planning to kill a neighbor with whom he'd argued about a dog. Subsequent news article say his family members say he has mental problems. No sh*t, Sherlock.

Mad Bomber
A car exploded in uptown New Orleans and police were able to determine the bomber lived nearby. They found his home was a stockpile of explosives. What do you want to bet his family members also will soon be reporting that he has psychiatric problems?

Handcuffed D.A.
Two judges at a local court had simultaneous hearings that involved the same assistant district attorney. One was in the middle of a several-days-long murder trial; the other had a pretrial hearing in a murder case that had been repeatedly postponed. Each insisted the A.D.A. had to be present in her or his court immediately. One judge came to the other's chambers and they argued. Finally, the judge with the pretrial hearing ordered the A.D.A. placed in handcuffs to keep him from going to the other courtroom. It was eventually settled when a higher-up in the D.A.'s office came down and pledged to handle the hearing while the targeted prosecutor was uncuffed and allowed to go back to the ongoing murder trial.

Scary things--sometimes kinda funny, except for what they portend.

On Crusie's "The Double-Edged Blog"

(Yikes, two posts back-to-back! Is the world ending?)

I just read Jenny Crusie's latest entry on Argh Ink, "The Double-Edged Blog." Jenny's a best-selling author of women's fiction, known for her great sense of humor. She blogs about her works-in-progress, the businesses of writing and publishing, and life in general. She's found that while her blog gives her a chance to express herself freely on topics beyond her writing, it also results in the occasional flame-war from readers who don't like her opinions. She analogizes blogging to a double-edged sword:

I found out that blogs were a chance to say anything I wanted and I was hooked. For awhile, everything was lovely, and then I posted something a lot of people didn’t like. I can’t remember what it was now, but it was the first time somebody said to me, “You know, you should stop blogging, it’s going to hurt your career.” I said, “How is that possible?” and she said, “If they don’t like what you say on your blog, they’ll stop buying your books.” That was incomprehensible to me then, and it’s still puzzling to me now. ...

Then I tripped again, this time because I was thoughtless (this happens a lot). One of my friends got a ludicrous letter from a reader and I posted it with her first name on it. That was flat out wrong of me, and I did apologize and take the name off the blog but basically, I screwed up. First lesson: Never blog when you’re really angry but not admitting it to yourself. Practical application: Wait twenty-four hours before you post something you’ve written.

Then while I was being careful on Argh–well, careful for me–I lost my temper on somebody else’s blog and became The Author Who Is Pro-Plagiarism (because that was more fun for people to get upset about than The Author Who Thinks This Is Being Handled Badly and People Should Stop Author-Bashing Until They Know the Facts). This annoyed some people so much that they’re still mad at me; some of them cornered Bob [Mayer, Crusie's co-author on a couple of books] at Thrillerfest to tell him just how awful I am, as if he didn’t know the black depths of my heart already. And of course, they’re never going to read me again. (Actually my fave comment about the whole mess was on another blog: a reader said she was never going to read me again and then followed it up by saying she’d never read me before either. I kept thinking of the old “Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after my broken arm heals?”/”Of course”/”Funny, I couldn’t play it before” joke, but that’s probably just more evidence of how depraved I am.)

I always enjoy Jenny's blog entries, whether or not I share her point-of-view on certain issues. I'm baffled by the people who incite flame-wars because someone has an opinion that differs from theirs. Or, even worse, those who begin online campaigns against a particular writer because they don't like his/her point of view.

Jennie's blog entry is well worth reading, especially for anyone who's had a similar blog-experience. Several of the comments following it are thought-provoking, too.

As Jenny says:

I feel strongly that anybody who evaluates the rest of the people in the world by how closely their attitudes and statements agree with her worldview is in danger of structuring a life much like the Alberto Gonzales Justice Department. We don’t learn from the people who agree with us, we learn from the people who make us say, “Wait a minute,” and that learning goes both ways. I learn a lot from the critics who intelligently analyze my books and find them wanting; I’ve also learned a lot from the people who have thoughfully and calmly disagreed with me on this blog. Haven’t learned a thing from the shriekers and condemners, though.

Katrina Tattoos

I live in Metairie, a suburb that suffered far less than New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. As we approach the third anniversary of the storm, I can drive around Metairie and see few signs of storm damage except some empty lots where buildings have been razed, and the occasional FEMA trailer still remaining in someone's yard.

If I go into New Orleans, however, it's a different story. No matter where you go in the city, except perhaps the French Quarter, you cannot escape evidence of Katrina. First, many devastated homes and businesses remain, neither rebuilt nor razed. Second, the streets--in bad shape before the storm--now are truly dangerous, with enormous potholes, sinkholes, and other damage either unrepaired or worsened or recently developed. Third, there are the Katrina Tattoos remaining on many homes, even those that have been restored and are reoccupied.

(Photo from the International Journal of Health Geographics, http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/5/1/44)

What I call the Katrina Tattoo is the marking made by Search-and-Rescue teams as they made house-to-house searches for humans and animals in the months after the storm. If you saw pictures of New Orleans in the months after Katrina, you'll have seen the S&R markings on houses. S&R teams supposedly searched every building in all the flooded areas. Many houses were searched twice, by official teams and by animal-rescue teams. To notify others that a house had been searched, S&R teams marked each building with spray paint in a specific manner.

First they sprayed an "X" on the front (or roof) of the building. In the photo, it's on the roof, which means that the water was so high that searchers could access the house only through the roof. You can see they had to hack through the roof to get into the attic of the house.

(In other cases, people hacked through the roof from the inside after being trapped in their attics by rising water. I know people who keep a hatchet in their attic for precisely that purpose.)

The letters/numbers inside the quadrants of the X have specific meanings. In the top (north) quadrant is the date of the search; in the left (west) quadrant is the search-team identifier; in the right (east) quadrant is a notation of any hazards or unusual conditions in the building; in the bottom (south) quadrant is the number of victims found and their condition, e.g., live or dead. You can find an official explanation in the Army's Catastrophic Disaster Response Staff Officer's Handbook.

Interpreting the X in the photo by these guidelines, we can see the house was searched by team CA-8 on September 11, the team had to break into the attic, and they found one victim, who was dead. I interpret the arrow at left of "1 dead" as indicating to subsequent searchers that the victim can be found inside the attic, through the hole nearby. On the right side of the photo are the pieces of wood the searchers removed when they hacked through the roof. It's obvious the hole is too small for the searchers either to have entered through it, or to have removed the body at that time. The initial searchers were looking for the living; the dead were removed later.

The second X, on the front wall of the house, would have been made after the water subsided. It indicates the body inside was removed on September 19 by "Kenyon."

Ray in New Orleans blogged about these markings a few months post-Katrina, with a couple of photos. I'm sure many other bloggers and articles have discussed the S&R markings, but I'm not going to take time to do a full Google search.

After Katrina's second anniversary Travel and Leisure magazine wrote in "Soul Survivor":

Even in mostly recovered neighborhoods, you’ll notice the persistence of "Katrina tattoos," the X marks spray painted on façades by rescue workers after the storm, noting when the property was searched, by whom, and whether any survivors—or bodies—were found. Most have been painted over, but some are intact, left deliberately as symbols of perseverance. One Marigny resident has even had his cast in iron and mounted by his front door.

They were documented most famously in Chris Rose's columns for the Times-Picayune, which he later turned into 1 Dead in Attic, a book chronicling the aftermath of Katrina on the populace as well as on Rose himself. (I did a blog entry on Chris's work when the book was nationally released.)

What makes me think of this? Well, of course, it's only a few weeks until the third anniversary of the storm. (We are daily reminded by local news media, even if we wanted to forget it.) And, as I said earlier, you can't drive through New Orleans without seeing Katrina Tattoos still present on buildings. Some people, even after renovating their homes and returning to live in them, have left the S&R markings on them.

What message are they sending? I think it's something along the lines of "Remember the Alamo" or "Remember the Maine": We suffered and we survived, but others died; we came back, but we won't forget, and we'll keep a reminder ever-present.

For those of you who thought this entry would be about body-art, rest easy. Tattoo parlors, both local and around the country, have reported a huge number of requests for Katrina remembrances since K-Day (8/29/2005). You can see some of the results here and here.


Finally, I came across this while searching for links for other things: the most poignant reminder of Katrina--Unidentified Victims from Hurricane Katrina.

Nero-esque Perspective

"Bush Fiddles While New Orleans Burns"

I came across this collage accidentally while net-surfing. The poster was created by Lojo in St. Louis and her partner a few days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and was posted on Flickr on September 9, 2005.

In case the photo doesn't enlarge when you click on it, you can see the large version here. Or, if you don't have time to go there, the text on Bush's forehead says, "As thousands of hurricane victims suffered and died, the leader of the richest nation on earth went to a concert."

The artist encourages anyone to download it and post it wherever they like, so here it is.