Miscellaneous

Viva Burlesque!

Will you pardon us while we take a break from being all-serious all the time? This weekend, Sept. 11-13, The City That Care Forgot hosts the first annual New Orleans Burlesque Festival, which we hope will be the first of many to come. Featuring Foxy Flambeaux, Praline...

An Open Letter to LSU Chancellor Mike Martin Re: The van Heerden Affair

The following letter has been faxed to LSU Chancellor Mike Martin, with copies to engineering dean David Constant, vice chancellors Chuck Wilson, Brooks Keel, and Robert Twilley; Governor Bobby Jindal, senators Mary Landrieu and David Vitter; Garret Graves, Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities; and R. King Milling, Chairman, America’s Wetland Foundation.

LSU Fires van Heerden of LSU Hurricane Center; Director Marc Levitan Resigns in Solidarity

This is definitely one for the Fresh Hell file: Just before the Easter weekend LSU notified Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center, that it would not renew his contract (he is not tenured) and he will be out of a job by May 2010. The university is not saying why—not to him, and not to the public. The firing comes after the university has imposed limits on his contacts with the media, demoted him, and retracted storm surge modeling responsibilities from his direction, among other limitations. Ubiquitous on CNN and in print after Hurricane Katrina—

It’s a Whole New Year

2009 will not be easy, we know, but embedded within the new year’s challenges are opportunities for renewal and a whole new sense of national purpose and possibility. Seeds of change. It is a time for hope, optimism, for dreaming big new dreams and for working hard to make them real. With a new (and very different) administration and many new elected officials coming to Washington and to state and local governments across the nation, it’s a time for collaboration and cooperation for the common good.

ReNEW | ReOPEN Charity Hospital

Our friend Schroeder at People Get Ready rightly points out that in a city beset by so many problems at once, New Orleans residents have to choose their battles. Levees Not War focuses on infrastructure and coastal restoration, but we also urge our readers—in the Sunken City and beyond—to help save Charity Hospital, a towering embodiment of the social contract built with obsessive attention to detail by Huey Long in the 1930s, from an expensive, unnecessary, and largely destructive plan by the LSU Medical School and the Veterans Administration that would raze it and about 250 structures in the surrounding neighborhood (all on the National Historic Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of America’s Most Endangered Places).

In memoriam: Tim Russert, 1950–2008: A Father’s Day Tribute

We were dumbfounded and profoundly saddened to learn yesterday of the sudden and untimely death of Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington Bureau Chief and moderator of “Meet the Press.” The high professional esteem in which he was held by colleagues and public officials was inseparable from their personal affection for this dedicated and friendly journalist. He is praised for his command of the issues and keen analysis, and his nonpartisan, “equal opportunity” thoroughness in questioning guests of all political stripes. While he made his subjects sweat, he also exuded a genuine enthusiasm for politics.

‘Surrounded by Water’ Now at Historic New Orleans Collection

In New Orleans last week we visited an excellent exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection on Royal Street, “Surrounded by Water: New Orleans, the Mississippi River & Lake Pontchartrain.” As usual with the HNOC, you get the best of archival maps and photographs of Louisiana with detailed explanations, a French Quarter-cum-Oxford University Press approach to any subject they take up.

There Will Be Floods

An excellent Op-Ed piece by Alex Prud’homme in the Feb. 27 New York Times explains the nation’s critical need for infrastructure reinforcement, as seen in Hurricane Katrina and recently in a flood in Nevada. (See “Floods in Nevada?” in In the News, left column.) The U.S. is threatened by dangerously inadequate levees, he says, and Congress must allocate funds for the Corps of Engineers to do its job: “We need to reinvigorate the Army Corps of Engineers and give it a mandate to build and maintain a coherent, robust, nationwide flood protection system—as opposed to the ineffective, piecemeal measures that failed so catastrophically in New Orleans.”

Nuestro Amigo en Texas

Obama draws a crowd of 25,000 or so in Austin. They can’t get enough of the man in the black hat. The Texas Observer reports “Obama Storms Texas.”

Kristolnacht at The New York Times

Levees Not War is strongly opposed to Kristol’s becoming a New York Times columnist because that paper would give him an even more prominent platform (in addition to his magazine The Weekly Standard and his appearances on Fox News) from which to push for war with Iran as lustily as he pushed for war with Iraq—a ‘regime change’ he believes is going just fine.

A Christmas Wish

On Christmas morning, on Christmas day we pray for gifts of home, food, family togetherness, good health, and heart-warming music for all, especially for those who have lost their homes and livelihoods, and those who find themselves far from home in a foreign war — may they all be never far from the peace of the Lord born this day in a lowly manger. In the new year may our faith and our works help bring shelter to those who have none. Peace to all.

The Picayune Has Friends, Indeed

The Friends of the Times-Picayune fund-raiser last night at the Time-Life Building on Avenue of the Americas was quite a success—and a taste of home, with dee-licious hors d’oeuvres and music by Henry Butler (classic in his purple suit) and Davell Crawford. Mr. John Huey of Time Inc. welcomed everyone and pledged that Time will keep the spotlight on New Orleans and vicinity.

In Memoriam – Harry Lee, Sheriff of Jefferson Parish 1980-2007

With respects and condolences to the family and many admirers of Sheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana-the second-longest-serving sheriff in the parish’s history and an extraordinary politician even by Louisiana standards. Mr. Lee lost a five-month battle with leukemia on Monday, Oct. 1. He was 75. The son of Chinese immigrants, Lee was born in the back room of his family’s laundry on Carondelet Street in 1932. He was a protégé of the late U.S. congressman Hale Boggs. Regularly outspoken, often controversial, sometimes impolitic, but always reelected (in 1994 his approval rating was 84 percent), Harry Lee served seven terms.

Making Blogging Sexy: Rising Tide 2 | New Orleans | Saturday Aug. 25, 2007

See the Rising Tide blog here. Prepare to meet people you’re gonna like.

“In Levees We Trust.” Engineer Timothy Ruppert gave an excellent one-hour overview of Army Corps of Engineers repairs accomplished and planned through 2011. He compared Corps’ Louisiana work to flood protection systems in the Netherlands and London. Tim Ruppert is president of the Louisiana section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Stay tuned-we’ll be writing more about Tim and his report soon.

“The mission here is not accomplished”: N.O. City Council Member Shelley Midura’s Stern, Bracing Letter to President Bush

Here is an eloquent and hard-hitting letter from New Orleans City Council Member Shelley Midura-first seen on Your Right Hand Thief (thanks, Oyster). Please join us in pressing the White House (202-456-1111; comments@whitehouse.gov) to “second” Midura’s motions.

[Note: Midura is now blogging on DailyKos. She writes: “I hope you can take the time to click on the link to my open letter to President Bush, Press Release and Fact Sheet . . . New Orleans will not allow the discussion of our recovery to be anything but factual and done via the reality based community and not through spin and talking points.”]

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