It started with a post that I read on Craigslist looking for New Orleans Bloggers. A paid blogging position sounded too good to be true but sure enough, I became part of Blogging New Orleans during its early weeks. It was slow going at first, no commenters and no direction. I feel like we've really come into our own in the past few months with individual voices coming through and drawing comments from even the quietest lurkers. I'm happy to have been a part of this and grateful to Weblogs, Inc. for giving our city a platform on the AOL network.

I was blogging well before Blogging New Orleans. I had a personal site called "Yer Mom an' Dem" that I took down after Katrina. I lost my sense humor and didn't feel much like blogging at the time. I also had a pregnancy blog entitled, "Baby Mama Drama" that I stopped in early 2006. Before that I had an online journal to fulfill any exhibitionist tendencies of mine. Where to now? I intend to remain on board with Weblogs, Inc. The people that I've met are great and I'll ride it out as long as they will have me. I've toyed with the idea of another personal blog centered around the Crescent City but I'm not sure that I will be going in that direction any time soon.

Geez, I wish that I had known. Maybe these guys can recommend a plumber to me. "This Old House" will be making its way to New Orleans to focus on the rebuilding efforts in the 9th Ward. They will be taking a look at the Musicians Village (no so old) and also zoning ordinances in Holy Cross (very old).

It certainly makes sense that they will be making their way down here and I'm glad that they will be looking at a house in Holy Cross which is a beautiful neighborhood. When you get the chance, drive down there and check out the two Doullut Steamboat Houses. The neighborhood is sandwiched between Jackson Barracks and the old Holy Cross school. There is a significant amount of renovation in the area led by the PRC and prices are great.

I look forward to catching a few "This Old House" New Orleans episodes in January.

Our house alarm woke me from my afternoon nap this afternoon (it's a glamorous life being barefoot and pregnant, let me tell you). Several loud beeps told me that the power was out and I was instantly aware of the lack of A/C in the house. I first blamed the guys working on the siding for tripping the breaker yet again but as my neighbors poured out of their houses and started yelling up and down the street -- as is their custom during power outages --- I knew this was an Entergy problem. Fortunately the siding dudes were able to switch gears and start working on the roof so all was not lost.

Our status as of today is that we are waiting for a plumbing inspection to close in the walls. The contractor told me it would be done by Thursday of last week and the plumber told me it would be last Friday. "I know you are excited to have this finished but not nearly as excited as I am," he added. I'm not sure what that meant since it has been clear from the beginning that this job has never been a priority for him as he shows up late in the day, works for an hour or two and leaves. He's seriously lucky that I haven't started throwing things at his head whenever he seeks me out to complain.

Beyond the plumber, I'm a little disappointed with the fact that there is about 550 square feet of addition that does not require plumber and can therefore be insulated and sheet rocked, right? I knew the contractor was whacked when he told me that it would only be three weeks from last Monday but he seemed so sure of it! I'm just hoping that we finish by the original estimate which is the first week of October. I don't know how long it takes for carpeting to arrive but I'm glad that I've already bought and paid for my tiles as they took over a week due to a custom order.

The end is near, however, I can feel it. I get all of my home renovation information from watching flipping shows on television and on those programs it takes about two minutes to sheet rock and paint an entire house so that can't be too many days in real time! We're close enough to the end that I am taking a hard look at the budget to make sure that I'll have enough for the final payment and a new shower curtain -- and maybe some blinds as well.

By mid-August of 2005 there were 192 murders. I remember it being a deadly summer. With a smaller population, we are at 140 murders already for this year, 26 in this August alone. Mark over at m.d. filter sums it up pretty well on his site complete with quotes from our mayor and police chief.

I often wonder what would have happened if Landrieu had gotten those few extra votes to become mayor. I know that no politician is perfect but I feel like he would have been more involved with stopping crime -- he would have had more to prove in the new position. As it is now, I feel like we not only have an incompetent mayor but one that doesn't care. I'm sorry that Nagin is not running for governor as that would have at least gotten him out of City Hall.

We had a perfect opportunity after Katrina to quell crime here with the help of the National Guard. We blew it. Although i never would have said this three years ago, I think that the police need to knock more heads.

It wasn't too many days ago that I was last on Canal Street and it still looked torn up. I remember when Nagin originally revealed his plan to give a face lift to New Orleans' famous street. His big recovery project has since been overshadowed by another much larger recovery project.

One of the best parts of the the Canal Street Improvement Project was the promise of eradicating all of the bead and t-shirt shops. That part of the plan has yet to be accomplished. However, a celebration of palm trees and fresh sidewalks will be taking place tomorrow starting at 10:30 in front the Ritz. Canal Street shops, restaurants and hotels will be offering freebies to the visiting public. There will of course be plenty of live music.

LOOOOOOVE IT! I cannot tell you how excited I am for the final list of city council at large candidates to be released. We were introduced to some of these crazies during the last mayoral election. But my favorite NOLA looney by far is, you guessed it, Kimberly Williamson Butler! Hooray! I seriously thought that she would have left town by now. In fact, why haven't we RUN her out of town?

In case you haven't been paying attention, here's a nice link trail to follow. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. This folks is what makes living in New Orleans fun.

Nothing says "welcome" like a temporary office and no staff. This is was Inspector General, Robert Cerasoli encountered on his first day of office. I certainly hope that he is the type of person that sees this as a challenge and that the city's ambivalence to his job ignites some sort of fire to seek out corruption. Otherwise, given his warm welcome, he might not want to stay very long.

Cerasoli worked in Boston to find misused funds in their Big Dig project. I was doing a little research the other day and found that the Big Dig cost $14.6 billion in federal and state tax dollars and still is not completed after fourteen years. That's money spent to beef up a few roads and tunnels that many of us will never travel. And yet, how much have we gotten for levee protection? About $1 billion. I don't hear Ohio complaining about this.

Cynthia Willard-Lewis, City Councilwoman for District E has thrown her hat into the ring for City Council Member at Large -- Oliver Thomas' old spot. HA! No really, ha ha ha ha ha. Ok, I think that I'm done laughing ... oh no wait, ha ha ha ha. With most of her constituents not even living in the city, I'm not sure how she intends to pull this one off. In fact, I think that Mama D might have a better chance of winning -- oh yes indeed, she is running too. She's going to need to get her little hippie following to register to vote here before they head back up North in their Land Rovers. Please, please tell me that there will be televised debates. So far these are the only two that have stepped up to the plate.

Thanks Adrastos for the heads up!

"I ... don't ... know ... why ... they ... keep ... asking ...," I said in tears the other day. I was clearly at the end of my rope and nearing the end of this long summer pregnancy when I read one too many "Should We Rebuild New Orleans?" articles. I can handle the conservatives who tell us to "stop whining" because often they site some of the same citizens that I roll my eyes at. However, there are a few key points that are being lost in the debate of whether or not to use federal money to restore the Crescent City.

1. We pay taxes too. It might be hard to believe but bartenders and barristers alike pay taxes from what they earn in this city directly to the federal government. Those taxes in turn pay for farm subsidies in Iowa and bridges in Alaska.
2. New Orleans exports more than hungover tourists and Girls Gone Wild footage. You wouldn't know it from a brief stay here but there are citizens of this metropolitan region who don't frequent The Quarter every night and actually make it to work on time Monday morning. Our citizens pump crude oil out of the marshes and into your cars. Our citizens also operate one of the largest ports in the country. If you combine our port with the nearby port of LaPlace, was have the largest port system in the world ton for ton. How else could we possibly import all of those tacky beads?
3. If the global economy doesn't appeal to you, perhaps this will: New Orleans is beautiful. There is no other place like it. There is a reason why people return here year after year. In a nation that is becoming homogenized by strip malls and quiet suburban housing, New Orleans is a gem worth protecting.
   

This has all been said by other bloggers better than I but as the 2nd anniversary came to pass and more people weighed in about what a waste of money we are down here, I just wanted to provide a few simple points.

I was listening to a previously recorded Garland Robinette show this afternoon on WWL. I think that it was from last week and C Ray was the guest. He has a regular monthly appearance where Robinette throws softballs and Nagin dodges some of the tougher questions from the live callers. Today a caller asked, "in your personal opinion, what have been the biggest successes of your second term?" A good question, I thought. Nagin paused for a moment and this is what he came up with:

1. Bringing 300,000 people back into the city. I don't know about you, but I'm quite sure that Nagin didn't factor into my moving back into my home. In fact, I don't remember him filling my gas tank and I certainly don't remember him picking up the household trash that festered outside of my house for weeks on end.
2. Nagin pats himself on the back for cleaning up the city and lifting people's spirits. Do you remember how long those cars sat under the I-10 overpass? Months and months and months. In fact, I seem to think that it was over a year before the cars were cleared. It took Nagin that long to find the right towing company for the right price when it was rumored that one company offered to PAY US to take possession of the flooded vehicles.
3. Lastly, Nagin claims that he has succeeded in providing utilities to most of the city. I'm not sure what he had to do beyond give a single command to the Sewerage and Water Board and a nod to Entergy. Speaking of utilities, I'm not sure I'd want to take any sort of credit for what Entergy is doing right now given the sky-rocketing utility prices.

So, there you have it. Nagin himself can't come up with a good enough justification for his paycheck.

The husband and I toyed with the idea of going out for our anniversary. I didn't want to do anything that would require a sitter so our choices were narrowed to an early dinner or drive-thru. We'd both been meaning to try Ye Olde College in since it reopened its new location (next to the old one). I hadn't eaten there since 2001 when a near horrific experience kept me from ever going again. However, it is a New Orleans favorite so it figured it was worth a second try.

When I first went to Ye Olde College in years ago (probably 2001), I was seated in a dated dining room which would have been fine except that I was clearly younger than any of the other patrons by a good forty years. I remember wondering if the restaurant was a favorite for senior tours. My waitress was harried and I held my breath as she dropped an entire tray of food belonging to the table next to us. She returned almost instantly with new dishes prompting this exchange:

"Wow! That was fast," said the customer.
"Yeah, not all of it fell onto the ground," she replied.

I lost my appetite then and pretty much vowed never to return.

I ran into a neighbor of mine at Walgreen's last night. We were both picking up junk food. She mentioned that they recently started parking their vehicles in their fenced-in backyard due to theft. This surprised me since her husband is a cop. "It's a game," she said. Apparently people have been removing bits of their two Hummers (I know, I know) piece by piece. One day they realized that the caps to their gas tanks are gone, the next, pieces of chrome are missing from the exterior. The thieves know that they can't steal the cars because of the LoJack so they just peel pieces off bit by bit. It's no surprise that we live a block from a chop shop. It's not only theft though, the other day my neighbor came out and saw that one vehicle had two flat tires. There were no punctures. Someone had simply let all of the air out and replaced the caps.

"We're moving," she said. "It's worse than it was and not everyone is back yet," referring to the fact that there are still many empty but habitable homes in the streets surrounding ours. She brought up that the vandalism on their luxury vehicles was more than a case of her husband being a cop (who refuses to get involved with neighborhood disturbances in order to to avoid repercussions), it's a case of haves and have-nots. She probably has a point except a conversation can quickly turn into an "us vs. them" situation which isn't the solution either -- especially when I own a Honda Civic.

We pick the best images added to the Blogging New Orleans Flickr group and post a resized version with a link to the original here. Just add your photos to the pool and you could see your image posted here! Be sure to check back for another NOLApic.



This picture was taken four years ago today on the Paddlewheeler Creole Queen. Our photographer rushed us up to the deck in order to catch the New Orleans skyline as we headed back to shore.

Happy Anniversary Darlin'!

"Are you sick of seeing 'two years later' news stories yet?" my father asked me today.

"No," I replied. "You forget that I didn't see much of the footage as it was happening as I was without power for two weeks." But that's not really true. I think I've seen my fair share of footage. I was glued to CNN for weeks after I did get access to cable. So why am i not sick of today's coverage? Why am I currently watching pretty-boy AC stand in front of a group of Americorps volunteers somewhere in the city? Probably for the same reasons anyone in the country is watching. It's partly voyeuristic and partly the guilt that I have for not feeling connected enough -- for perhaps getting off too easy.

That might sound strange from someone who lives here and lived here before Katrina but being part of the lucky 20% that didn't flood means that I could open the door of my home and pick up relatively back where I started. Also, because I am not a native, I don't have to deal with the loss of roots. Now, that's not to say that Katrina didn't affect me greatly. It doesn't mean that my marriage and psyche have not been pushed to the limit. It just means that I've had it easier than the other 80%.

So, I'll continue to watch the coverage and record features of interest through the evening. It's important for me to see how the city is portrayed and there is an excellent chance that i might learn something.

I've pulled together some of my Katrina pics to share today. The strange thing is that although I tend to take a lot of photos, I was in such shock upon returning that I didn't take as many shots as I should have. There are still so many reminders with us today; the flood lines, demolished buildings, and empty homes that photos can never do justice to the vacant feel that this city still has.



The National Guard told us by their marks how many dead people were inside the houses. The SPCA told us how many animals -- with exclamation points, no less.