We were supposed to have a garage sale on Sunday, August 28, 2005. We had recently moved into a house we bought in Central City and had cleaned out our old Broadmoor apartment and planned to sell the odds and ends that didn’t make it to our new home. It was to be the final hurrah of our move. Suffice to say we evacuated the night before and the garage sale never happened. I didn’t get back into town for another three weeks, but there on the second floor of our old apartment’s stoop was our last Times-Picayune, still in the plastic and dry. I tossed the paper in the car and drove back to Houston. I finally pulled that newspaper out of its plastic bag this weekend.
Today’s Times-Picayune has a Jobs section that is 4 pages long, while the Jobs section in the 2005 Times-Pic was 14 pages long. Here’s what I assume is Charity Hospital’s last display ad:
A 16 year old girl who attended Chalmette High School died in a car accident on August 21, 2005.
On August 26, 2005 a man was shot to death in the Ninth Ward. The Times-Pic reported:
His body was found on the north side of the street between a gray car and the sidewalk in front of Off Da Hook, a barber-beauty shop and music studio, and across from a neutral ground crowded with cars apparently parked by people seeking higher ground in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina.
Layers of misery …
Then, regrettably, there’s Sheila Stroup with a B-1 column called “Cat got what he wanted at church” : “This is the story of Grayson, a cat who went to church. He was an Episcopalian, and a loyal one.” Last 2 graphs: “Even now, after a month and an outpouring of sympathy, it’s difficult for Patty to go to church, because there’s no gray cat sitting in the foyer, no shadow to follow her home when Mass is over.” The cat died.
An editorial pushed the Orleans Parish School Board to approve the charter application for Lusher Alternative Elementary School. A couple letters to the editor and a Stephanie Grace column raked over the details of a recent scandal involving an audit of the Orleans Parish School Board that found questionable expenditures on overtime and stipends.
And here’s a couple of news nuggets from 2005:
Greenspan says Fed will survive departure
JACKSON HOLE, WYO — Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan expressed confidence Saturday that the central bank will meet the challenges that lie ahead after he steps down next year from the institution he has led for nearly two decades.’I have little doubt that my successors, and theirs, will continue to sustain the leadership of the American financial system in an ever-widening global economy,’ Greenspan said.
World record attempt kills Iranian daredevil
TEHRAN, IRAN — An Iranian daredevil died while attempting to break the world record for jumping over buses on a motorcycle, state television reported Saturday. Javad Palizbanian, 44, was trying to leap over 22 buses parked side-by-side when his motorbike came down on the 13th bus, the report said… Minutes beforehand, Palizbanian had told an audience of hundreds: “I am going to break the world record and do something for my country to be proud.”
The Times-Picayune neglected to run our garage sale ad.
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Yesterday as the sun was going down I took our dog for a walk in our Central City neighborhood. It had rained all day but in the west a blue window of sky opened. As I walked stunned by the blues, oranges, and grays of the clouds and sky I berated myself for not bringing a camera (I bring a camera with me on roughly half of these evening walks). I could only gawk and gawk I did. I turned up certain blocks just to keep my eye on that blue window as long as I could. I passed a guy sitting in the passenger seat of a car with the door open. “How about that sky?” I said. He looked up. “Beautiful! Just beautiful …” I turned the corner and saw an old woman on her porch. “How about that sky?” I said. She smiled and shook her head in awe. “Who could make something like that?” she said and entered into extended praise of god. To another old woman on another porch, “Isn’t that sky beautiful?” “Yes it is.” On the next block my eyes moistened. I ducked down a darkened block fearing I was about to lose it. I get why most of us try to edit sentimentality out of experience. It can be a little embarrassing. But it can be earned, too.
Billy Sothern from his Salon review of Spike Lee’s new documentary about N.O.:
The claim that it is “not easy” to live in New Orleans turns out to be one of the very few understatements in the documentary, which dwells at length on the many things that create this dis-ease — separate and aside from the storm that drew the country’s attention and the oil spill that refocused it. The viewer is led through policy debates and critiques and personal stories highlighting the demolition of New Orleans’ public housing projects and consequent housing crisis; the collapsed healthcare system (New Orleans’ public hospital remains shuttered because of political wrangling about the future of healthcare); the mental health crisis that has been responsible for murders, suicides and less-than-joyous substance abuse and drinking since the storm; the incompetence of FEMA in providing post-storm assistance to the city and the agency’s mismanagement of its emergency housing plan; the civil engineering missteps by the Army Corps of Engineers that made the city vulnerable to flooding and that have degraded our wetlands; the shattered education system; the out-of-control crime and violence that have plagued the city; the police corruption and history of police violence that have led to numerous federal murder and conspiracy indictments for officers involved in several, separate incidents; and deregulation that provided the opportunity for corporate greed’s fouling of the Gulf.
There’s been talk for some time about Detroit shrinking its footprint, just as there was a lot of talk about the same with New Orleans after our federal levees breached. I like Matthew Yglesias’ non-starter of a solution:
There are clearly insurmountable logistical, legal, practical, constitutional, and political obstacles to doing this but I can’t help but think that with 165 million people around the world telling Gallup they’d like to permanently relocate to the United States that it would be possible to find 1.3 million people who’d be interested in permanently relocating to Detroit and bringing the city back up to its peak population level.
I believe he’s right when he says the obstacles to such an approach are “insurmountable.” However, what if we found a bunch of Americans to bring to Detroit? What if we had a reciprocal relationship with the good City of Detroit whereby we spent our summers up there and they spent their winters down here in New Orleans? We love their music; surely they love our music. We could escape the heat, they could escape the cold. See where I’m going?
During the down months the respective cities could simply rollback services from the areas where the populations have receded. Over time, we would fix dilapidated housing stock in Detroit and Detroiters would do the same here.
After all, it’s always easier to fix someone else’s problems than it is to fix one’s own.
Posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago at 2:16 pm. Add a comment
“Criminal prosecutions alone, I have learned, are not enough to change the culture of a police department,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez told TPMmuckraker in an interview Monday.
Perez repeatedly emphasized that the Civil Rights Division plans on being in New Orleans for the long haul. “We have a robust and regular presence, a presence that’s getting larger by the week,” Perez said, adding that several civil rights staffers are “de facto living in New Orleans right now.”
Posted 4 months, 4 weeks ago at 11:21 am. Add a comment
Fifth District officers responded to a call of a “shooting” and found the victims suffering from apparent gunshot wounds: a 24-year-old female, a 17-year-old female, a 7-year-old female and a 4-year-old male. Emergency medical technicians arrived on the scene and pronounced the victims dead.
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago at 8:40 am. Add a comment
Topping the list of mayoral also-rans expected to get a hard look from Landrieu is James Perry, the fair-housing advocate who finished fifth Saturday with 3 percent of the vote. During the campaign, Landrieu allies said they were impressed with the 34-year-old Perry and felt he could have a bright future in government.
Asked Wednesday about his interest in serving on the new mayor’s team, Perry didn’t mince words.
“I’m open to it. I’m absolutely open to it,” he said. “The next best thing to being mayor is serving in the administration.”
Congratulations to Mitch Landrieu. It will be a relief to have a competent mayor who can speak whole sentences at a time without offending people and who has the intelligence and fortitude to deal with our city’s biggest challenges. I was excited about his campaign when he ran last time, because back then I thought he was the one politician who could build a multiracial coalition of support. Then I wavered in that belief. He didn’t do it last time but he sure seemed to do it yesterday. Sixty-six percent of the vote!
James Perry received only 2,702 votes, or 3 %. Not quite runoff territory. He was a good candidate, but his lack of a traditional campaign presence did him in. I’d like to see him join the Landrieu Administration in some capacity.
I was sorry to see Janis Lemle missed the runoff in the assessor’s race, but at least Claude Mauberret is out of the picture.
There you have it, my perfectly benign political observations of the day.
Once Garrett Hartley’s kick cleared the uprights in the Superdome last night, people ran into the streets of my neighborhood–I assume every neighborhood–screaming. It was like New Year’s, a bottle popping–but this was personal, only for New Orleans, we’d won. We went out onto our front porch and added to the whooping and hollering, and I wandered off into the night with my camera. Almost immediately I realized my error. I should have brought my digital voice recorder instead. Every car honked, fireworks cracked over Baronne. Down on St. Charles I saw a guy drive by alone in his car blowing a trumpet out the open passenger window. Parties poured out of houses. Packed cars of screaming fans yelled at everyone. This is going to be some Carnival season.
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago at 7:55 am. Add a comment
