Beyond Katrina

Beyond Katrina Featured on Baton Rouge's Channel 9 News Tonight!

Greg Meriwether and Rick Portier of 9News, Baton Rouge - wafb.com

Well, Channel 9 News just helped make my 50th birthday a great one. A few days before the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina Greg Meriwether covered the story of my blog for his superb "Street Beat" segment of the nightly news. Channel 9 ran the story tonight and as soon as I get a link to the video I'll post it here. Check out their website, anyway, as there are some really good Katrina related stories and news posted on their site tonight.

The above is a photograph I took from my Palm Treo 650 smartphone of Rick Portier taping Greg as he reads my blog for our "Street Beat" interview. Hmmm...now whose story is this?  Seems I'm documenting them documenting me!

One of the really interesting things about  being a citizen journalist  is I sometimes get to turn the tables on the traditional journalists. We're all inquisitive storytellers at heart so when you get a few of us in the room together there's just no telling what might happen! I know I couldn't resist the temptation to turn the tables on them for a moment, and they were really good sports about it. They even helped me figure out the best way to set up the shot!

Now there is a metaphor in all this and a powerful one at that - It's the blending of traditional media and new media. We all know what traditional media is but what I mean by new media is real time, collaborative, personal and social media such as blogging, citizen journalism, and other forms of personal publishing.

Now this conversation represent a whole body of knowledge and passion I've been accumulating since I started blogging Katrina, and its too big to cover in this one post. The point is there they are  - Rick and Greg -  documenting me with their Channel 9 news camera, and there I am in the background documenting them with what basically amounts to a cell phone. The idea is that old and new media seem to be coming together in a way that is more than either and bigger than both and that's really what excites me about blogging. 

...and by the way, I'll let you in on a little secret. Rick Portier's a blogger! I'd love to link you to his visually awesome blog,  but if I told you where it was I'd have to kill you. I am kidding of course  but I do need to ask him if it's okay before I pass on his blog address.

Katrina Anniversary Ritual - Photos

On August 29, 2006 Elizabeth Underwood, an artist and New Orleans evacuee temporarily relocated to Austin, initiated a simple ceremony to commemorate the one year anniversary of hurricane Katrina in conjunction with her exhibit at the Doughtery Arts Center in Austin, Texas This exhibit included a site-specific sculpture of the New Orleans levee system built with marble chips, rock salt, and Louisiana sugar. Woven into the sugar were the hand-written names of the city's victims of the storm. Beginning at 9:30 a.m. when the first levee collapsed, Underwood and New Orleanian evacuees,  read aloud the names of the 1,900 New Orleanian victims of the story. After the reading of the names, the levee sculpture was deconstructed and the contents placed in sealed jars to be given away to those in attendance. Elizabeth, (who was recently interviewed by Austin's local NPR radio station  WKUT for a profile on New Orleanians living in Austin) has graciously provided Beyond Katrina with photographs of the commemoration.  The photos are intended to give readers a sense of the lineage of the room and the performance. (Click images to enlarge)

Stage 1

View of the room with the levee sculpture

Closer view of the Levee Sculpture

Corner wall of the exhibit

Close up of the levee sculpture showing the materials used to construct it.

Waterlogged New Orleans girl

Deconstruction begins on the Levee Sculpture

The contents are placed in sealed jars

Stage 2

Room View with the Jarred Levee Sculpture Fragments

New Orleans evacuees read aloud the names of the deceased

Tami Nelson, New Orleans evacuee reads

Virginia Fleck Reads

Young Girl Reads

Stage 3

Room View - The Reading

The Shrine

Room view after the reading

To read more about Elizabeth and her work see:

http://www.elizabethunderwood.net/

Katrina Anniversary Images From New Orleans

Brian Kurpis of HurricaneKatrinaRelief.com has generously offered to share photographs taken during his recent trip to New Orleans for the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I am posting a few here, and have added my own comments. However, I do recommend that you visit his site where you can view more awesome images, great links to other Katrina photo-journals, and many good resources related to Katrina matters. Kurpis, who is from New Jersey, has been a real champion for the Katrina cause. His mission for HurricaneKatrinaRelief.com is to use the world wide web to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina by providing useful information about hurricanes.

Baton Rouge's WAFB 9News on the scene!

...and another Baton Rouge station showed up in NOLA-  WBRZ.

This is a photograph of a single residence, but keep in mind folks there are miles of houses that look like this. Newsman Danny Heitman of The Baton Rouge Advocate said one journalist he knows clocked 85 miles of this on his odometer. By the way, the Advocate was generous enough to publish a story about Beyond Katrina, for its Katrina anniversary special, here.

Sign in front of Common Ground Collective's Distribution Center. The organization whose mission is is to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities, has worked tirelessly on behalf of Katrina recovery.

2nd Military Police Hummer on Canal St.

Superdome Redux - check out that shiny new roof. The Dome will forever burn in my mind as an important icon of the disaster, along with its next door neighbor The Hyatt Hotel. The Hyatt which sheltered some residents, dignitaries, and journalists, was the first image I saw of Katrina's aftermath in NOLA. There it stood with its blown out windows and torn curtains blowing like shredded white flags symbolizing NOLA's surrender to the wrath of the terrible storm. 

The infamous FEMA trailer. Blogger Rick Portier of turdpolisher said it succinctly in a headline of this post at his blog - FEMA is a 4 letter word, especially  around NOLA. By the way turdpolisher is not a typo - that's really the name of his blog. If you want to find out why he picked the monicker head to  http://turdpolisher.blogspot.com

A notable sign in many yards around the neighborhoods of New Orleans. The folks at Levees.org are the quintessential  advocates for levee reform in NOLA. Their site has a WEALTH of information and great resources for just about everything you would ever want to know about the levee system in New Orleans.

and last but certainly not least...Is that Brian Kurpis walking out of the Fox News Van???  To see who else he connected with while in NOLA check out his other pics, here.

All photos are courtesy of Brian Kurpis - HurricaneKatrinaRelief.com. Please respect copyright. For more great pictures see the photojournal at Brian's website. (Copy written by Margaret Saizan, Beyond Katrina - www.beyondkatrina.org)

Ernesto & Katrina

A Reader's Rants

Publisher's note: The following post was submitted by friend and Rennaissance woman, Michele Fry. Michele also generously shared her photo-journal of Katrina's damage to Slidell/Mandeville, Louisiana and Waveland, Mississippi at this post.

The other day there was a special CNN report on the new Girl's Leadership School that Oprah has opened in Kenya.  It was an hour long report of how she designed the school, worked with the architects to realize her vision, interviewed all the girls, and selected the teachers. 

The program ws 100% positive information for a full hour about what she's been doing with her time and money to solve the social problems she sees. It was all about vision and generosity and independence.  It made me feel absolutely wonderful.  It also made me realize how we are so inundated with bad news 24-7 despite all the good news and heroic, heartwarming things that happen every single day -- it has to make a difference in our depression level and mistrust of one another. 

I yearn to hear about the manufacturers who keep on making those FEMA trailers, and building all that heavy equipment.  The driver training schools where folks learn to operate the heavy equipment.  How the Corps of Engineers is on the job every day figuring out new solutions.  How the government is finally reviewing it's ability to respond quickly, and getting rid of red tape. How did we get all the red tape in the first place?  Wasn't it to appease a public  screaming for "accountability"?  How do we weigh the cry for accountability against the need to be nimble? 

These questions keep percolating through my mind. Are private institutions and individuals doing anything to help themselves?  Would things be better if we depended less on government?  What if private groups and organizations decided to take matters into their own hands, like Oprah did?  Is anyone doing it?  This is supposed to be the great American experiment, where free enterprise comes up with solutions faster and better than any other system.  Who is singing about that?  Who says federal government has to resolve all our problems?

I mentioned to a friend of mine the other day that a  light bulb needed changing at public facility. She said,  "they'll have to put in a work order, which will take 2 weeks to process, so   I'll just bring a few light bulbs and we can change it ourselves!!!"

One of the most damaging effects of Katrina, to me, is the notion that people are helpless  and the federal government is responsible for saving everyone from every disaster.  This  mentality has been successfully projected onto the whole country now, discussed and accepted as a given, undisputed by any voice I've heard. We are all reduced to helpless children.  We are supposed to just stand in line and sign papers and wait to be assisted. We have psychologically given up our power, and given it all to government. Bye, Bye America.  The experiment of freedom is over.

We fear.  We doubt.  We are oppressed by all the bad news. How to turn that around? For me, focusing on<as much good news as possible, and as often as possible, without being an ostrich, sounds like a wonderful, uplifting plan.

New Orleans suffers without post-Katrina plan

I envision us building an incredible city that is so livable, so unique with all the New Orleans wonderful things that everybody appreciates, that everybody is going to want to come( Ray Nagin)

The following is from an editorial at Wisconsin's Appleton-Post Crescent sadly proclaiming the lack of a cohesive vision for building the city of New Orleans...

"Bureaucracy and politics have triumphed over hope and the human spirit, at least for now, as a lack of leadership and clear planning has left the city spinning its wheels...On Sept. 11 last year, we called for a Rudy Giuliani figure to emerge in New Orleans, someone who would step forward and lead the city out of the rubble of catastrophe the way the New York mayor did after the World Trade Center fell in 2001. We offered names from Nagin all the way up to President Bush. No one seems to have filled that role".

On the heels of a recent post focused on the national/global media's inability to grasp the true situation in New Orleans, this one is the exception. While it doesn't paint a pretty picture, nevertheless for an accurate depiction of the state of affairs in NOLA, it's a good read. Check it out here.

Where there is no vision, the people perish

Year After Katrina

...from one of my favorite cartoonists, J.D. Crowe of the Mobile Register. (click image to enlarge)

Crisis as Opportunity

Here are a few wise quotes offering a different perspective on how to see and understand crisis, particulary one as mind-boggling as the katrina disaster...

Crises refine life. In them you discover what you are.

Allan K. Chalmers

Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.

Maxwell Maltz

... as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or we grow weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become.

Bishop Westcott

Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis--once that crisis can be recognized and understood.

Norman Cousins

Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

Nawaharlal Nehru

The Quest Continues...

"Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to...";

- Frodo to Sam

The first year anniversary date of Hurricane Katrina has come and gone. Still, I think "we" survivors will be "doing" the anniversary for a bit longer. For a while I thought that  because I live on high ground  here in Baton Rouge, that I couldn't call myself a survivor. It's like I am not worthy of that label or somethin' because my home didn't get devastated down to the foundation.

It's not that I like labels anyway. And I especially cringe when I hear folks call those impacted by Katrina,  "victims". No victims here  as far as I'm concerned...only good, honest, decent, ordinary folks who are going through a major transition. But for the sake of brevity, if we've got to have a label to describe a population of people who've been impacted by the disaster, I prefer to use "survivors".

In retrospect, I suppose I do really consider myself a survivor. As a place of refuge for the many evacuees who landed here, many of us here in Baton Rouge felt very impacted by the Katrina  disaster. Collectively we've all survived - and are still surviving - the greatest disaster in U.S. history.

On another note, It's funny how some simple thing will trigger a reaction, and for me it's the blackhawks. Seeing them on the news today  brought back the old feelings all over again. My home sits underneath the flight pattern between here and NOLA - 24/7 those things were buzzing over the roof of my house as constant reminders of the unfolding disaster. This  went on for many days and nights until one morning  I noticed the silence. It was like you feel when somebody finally stops scratching their fingers on a blackboard.

The "hawks" had suddeny stopped flying over and once I noticed that, I immediately felt better, lighter, more normal again. Prior to that, I remember wanting everything to be normal again, and fearing that it never would be. I realize for some, it's still not normal, but life does go on in "the new normal". 

So as I reflect on day 2, one year later, I am discovering that the anniversary is so much bigger than the date Katrina actually made landfall. I think the anniversary is something that many of us will be moving through for a while.  Having said this my quest continues.  It began last night when I decided I'd launch a "vision blitz", which I  originally intended to be 24 hours of reflecting and writing about positive change. I find that I'm not done yet. I've been pilgrimaging long enough now to know that quests aren't over til they're over - and this one isn't.

I'm not sure what it is I am questing for, though. These usually start as some kind of vague longing, like an itch you can't quite scratch. They sweep you away as if by the force of their own will, finally leading you to something you didn't quite expect. At the end, you're a very different person than when you started and you will have learned something important for having embarked. 

I do know this much - the anniversary has called me to reflect more deeply on what it means to recover from the greatest disaster in U.S. history. Out of this reflection I feel new insights will emerge - and these I will use to help impact positive change in the ways that I can.

I began this post with a quote from Lord of the Rings, the quintessential quest tale from the wise& imaginative, JRR Tolkien, and thus I'll end it with another...

"I can't do this Sam.";

"I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.";

"What are we holding on to Sam?";

"That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.";

- Sam to Frodo, at Osgiliath

As I write I am hearing thunder roll across the sky and a few bolts of lightening have flashed through the window outside my office. I am thinking this surely  must be an omen of some kind.

Blogburst Mentions "Beyond Katrina"!

Blogburst is a syndication service that places  blogs on top-tier online destinations, such as SF Gate, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Austin-American Statesman, Gannet, and others.  On the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Blogburst compiled posts from blogs across their network to promote to publishers for use on their sites next week - I am delighted to learn that  Beyond Katrina is one of the blogs selected! Check it out here.  As a result of the exposure, the Austin-American Statesman published guest author Carol McClelland's wonderful 'anniversary date post' at their website... check it out here. Kudos to Carol!

Follow Up: Katrina Anniversary Ritual in Austin, Texas

I believe in this way we can, in some small fashion, honor and ritualize what is one of the darkest and most profound days in our collective history. (Elizabeth Underwood)

When I began Beyond Katrina a year ago, I didn't know artist Elizabeth Underwood. We met through this blog, and  have corresponded throughout these long months. One of the best gifts for me in the Katrina disaster, and in the experience of blogging it, has been making connections with so many wonderful people.  Elizabeth is one of them. She is an amazing person and I want to tell you more about her, and her wonderful healing art.

Elizabeth Underwood is a New Orleanian exile currently living in Austin, Texas. Over the past months she has worked passionately and tirelessly in the creation of an extrordinary art exhibit to honor Katrina's deceased. The exhibit opened yesterday in Austin, Texas at the Doughtery Arts Center.   It included a site-specific sculpture of the New Orleans levee system built with marble chips, rock salt, and Louisiana sugar. Woven into the sugar were the hand-written names of the city’s victims of the storm.

To commemorate the dead, Elizabeth read aloud the names of the 1,900 New Orleanian victims of the storm, beginning at 9:30 a.m. when the first levee collapsed. keyetv.com in Austin covered the event, here. While I couldn't be there in person, I was able to  hear the names of the deceased being read in the background of the video tape, provided by the news station.   It was so poignant and moving for me to hear the reading of those names, that I can't even fathom what it must have been like to actually be there in person.  Following the reading of the names of the deceased, the  sculpture was deconstructed, and its fragments placed in beautifully sealed in glass jars to be given away to those in attendance.

Elizabeth's days as a Katrina exile will soon be coming to an end. The city of New Orleans has commissioned her to create public art in the streets of NOLA so she'll be moving home next week! This is both a blessing for her and a real gift for New Orleanians. Her plans for bringing joyful, healing art to areas in NOLA that "have become synonymous with tragedy and loss" are simply amazing. After she's rested up from the tremendous effort expended in preparing for her anniversary exhibit, I'll get her to tell you all the scoop!

In the meantime, be sure to check out the keyetv.com news coverage of the exhibit and the anniversary ritual here.

Katrina Anniversary Cartoons - # 2

(click image to enlarge)

New Orleans One Year Later
By: Bob Englehart
The Hartford Courant

Spike Lee's WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE To Air Tonight!

All four acts of SPIKE LEE's WHEN THE LEVEE'S BROKE will be seen Tuesday, 29 AUG 2006 (8:00PM-midnight), the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, on HBO

17th Street Canal Bell Memorial

The photograph was submitted by NOLA blogger, Mark Folse. The caption reads "A purple and gold, fluer-de-lis votive candle on the railing of the bridge over the 17th Street Canal at the levee breech, with the cofferdamn temporary repair seen in the backround. I found this on the morning of 8-29-2006 as I arrived to attend the memorial service on the anniversary of the Federal Flood". Mark has some great video footage of the bell service and other NOLA anniversary happenings on his blog. You really should check it out here.

Tension In NOLA today - 17th Street Canal

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and (wo)men...My absolute committment is to keep things positive for the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina - my vision blitz, ya know. However as a life coach and change agent I know it's not always healthy to over-do the sugar coating.

Since, I am very intuitive - my work for transformation requires me to be - I've been feeling the pulse of an undercurrent coming out of NOLA. The tension is anger. Folks are damned mad and with Bush in NOLA they are using the opportunity to speak out.

That's not a bad thing. Anger  - in its purest form can be rooted in truth. It is often the catalyst that fuels the kind of big changes that are so needed for true recovery in a disaster as large as "Katrina" is.  Having said this, I just heard from New Orleans blogger and Rising Tide Conference organizer, Mark Folse reporting on the situation at the 17th Street Canal.

Folse said, "I've had to go back to work. My wife said the marchers from the ninth ward were being escorted by Humvees by guys with rifles on display. You don't typically see their firearms when they're on patrol. I guess they were there to protect the overwhelmingly black and angry Orleanians from all of the Bush supporters. I hear there were, like, dozens of them".

I

Katrina Anniversary Cartoons

"Katrina Anniversary"

By: RJ Matson
The St. Louis Post Dispatch - 8/29/2006

(click image to enlarge)

I just love political cartoons! My civics teacher, Mrs. Gremillion "turned me on" to them in my tenth grade year at Broadmoor High School in Baton Rouge, La. Mrs. Gremillion was a "cajun gal" from across the river in Port Allen, La. We affectionately called her a "river rat" and she took it all in good stride.

Gremillion was an inspirational teacher and she loved her subject matter. She played a key role in instilling me with a  passion for political science, history, and civics. She must have done  her job well as this penchant seems to be showing up now in the work I am doing via this medium.

But every evening the political cartoon in the State-Times (as it was called then) was required reading and we were graded for our views on them. I can't remember who the cartoonist was for The Advocate at the time, but some of them had embedded messages that called you to think hard! I am intending this as a complement to the cartoonist. Visual messages are often the best way to reveal complex issues and concerns. The touch of humor is the sugar coating that bypasses our filters and gets us to enter the truth in a more open way.

At any rate, to commemorate this date,  I'll be bringing you some of the best cartoons on the web related to the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Please know that not all of them will necessarily reflect my personal views!

Healing Through Anniversaries

Beyond Katrina guest author, Carol McClelland has devoted a good bit of her latest newsletter to the anniversary of Katrina. It's chock full of tips and articles on how to heal through anniversaries and thrive during transition. McClelland's mission  is to "offer hope, discovery,  and insight for those in transition and those who support them. This is good stuff - you can view her newsletter  here. 

From the Governor's Office...One Year Anniversary of Katrina

This comes from good friend, Phyllis Mayo who works in Governor Blanco's office:

ON THIS ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF HURRICANE KATRINA –

AND LESS THAN A MONTH LATER, RITA –

I HOPE YOU’LL TAKE A MOMENT

TO PAUSE

& REMEMBER

& HOLD IN YOUR THOUGHTS

& HEARTS

LOUISIANA

& HER PEOPLE

The link below provides a special message from Governor Blanco:

http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=newsroom&tmp=detail&articleID=2139

Sincerely,

Phyllis E. Mayo

SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE GOVERNOR

ON WOMEN'S POLICY