The Tide Rose

The Tide Rose in New Orleans last weekend, and I was still inspired by the NOLA Bloggers. The attendance was greater than previous years, the posters and t-shirts more beautiful, the keynote more riveting and the panels and parties, the participants and reparte, more wonderful than ever. Who thought that possible? The hard part about going to Rising Tide from out of town (and of insisting on driving) is that I don't get much chance to blog about it because I'm busy driving home in the immediate aftermath. That's also the worst thing about working the sign in table too. Live blogging is for those seated among the attendees (well, except perhaps for Liprap who maintained the RT Blog while also working the sign in and buy swag table with me *jealous raspberry at her mad skillz*), and Maitri killed it in this series of live posts. Killed it.

Harry Shearer's Keynote was excellent, and much of its content ended up published as a blog post at HuffPo. He came early and caught most of the Culture Panel (my fav) and stayed for a long time shaking hands, posing for pictures, signing books, talking, listening. The lunch by Cafe Reconcile was amazing (thanks, David). If you don't know what Cafe Reconcile's about, then this is the one link in this post to click. In addition to their noble purpose and good works, Reconcile produces fabulous food. White Beans and Shrimp, Crawfish Pasta, Greens, Cornbread... oh, my! The afternoon was the Politics Panel & we closed with the Sports Panel, playing to the worn out but die hard crowd.

Coming home late Sunday and straight to work Monday was rough, but there's no rest for these bloggers, and it's taken just about all the focus I can muster while also working full time (and work's been an intense dead run this week) to follow their creative bursts burning up the internet tubes with inspired and energetic plans for next year's event. It will be bigger and better than ever before and I'll be sharing specifics soon. We came away from Rising Tide pumped.

Harry Shearer: Comments at Rising Tide IV in New Orleans (22 Aug 2009) from Crystal Kile on Vimeo.

I came away from it all resolved to be a better blogger and with renewed devotion to New Orleans, more specifically, New Orleanians. I'm also increasingly convinced that self-censorship rooted in fear of what folks I know or work with or may one day know or work with will think if I speak my heart makes for bad blogging, the kind that's gone on here for too long. As we approach the coming 4th anniversary of New Orleans' flood that followed the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, the NOLA Blogosphere is full of eloquent posts about Rising Tide as well as the anniversary, but I'll direct you to Scout Prime's Farewell Post at First Draft:

I am just an American who felt strongly about the necessity of this country to right the wrong that had been done to the Gulf Coast and in particular New Orleans. I believed and still do believe that it is a moral imperative and that in not doing so we, as a country, as a community, risk losing our soul. I would submit that as a society we lost our moral compass when bodies were allowed to remain in the streets of N.O. for days and weeks, or in homes for months and even a year in some cases, as the powers that be argued over who would foot the bill to recover the remains of the victims of the flooding of New Orleans. There is something very wrong when such a thing can occur in a great nation.

Read her post. Watch her videos. Take a few moments to think, as this anniversary approaches, about how we can be a better country, how we can find our national soul. We've come a long way, but we still have far to go.

Peace, out, y'all.

Rising Tide IV

Rising Tide IV is coming Saturday, August 22, 2009. Harry Shearer is the Keynote Speaker and there are panels planned on New Orleans' Culture, Health Care & Sports. There will be a cocktail meet and greet on Friday (details later) as well as a catered lunch. This is always a great event, characterized by lively interaction with incredibly interesting folks (and great food and plenty drink).

Many thanks to Greg Peters for another amazing poster. This year's conference theme is "Sinking To Great Heights". Quoting Greg's poster description: "The figure represents Yemaja, a Yoruba Orisha and owner of all waters, patron of fishermen and wreck survivors, and manifestation of the feminine principle of creation."

Details will unfold on the Rising Tide Conference Blog.

Y'all come. Seriously. Registration is available here.

Note: Dambala has a great further explanation of the Orisha pictured here over at American Zombie. Of course he does.

True Love or not True Love

This started as a comment on World Class New Orleans, to Mr. Clio's excellent post A Toxic Culture for the Heart (what I had to go through to get Facebook out of those links is a'whole'nother post). Writing in reference to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's infidelity scandal, one of his points is that we glorify "following our heart" and then punish those who do. I think often about the emotionally unhealthy nature of much of the music I listened to growing up, and its profound effects on me, especially in the context of the rest of popular and family cultures. Hours of "I'm Your Puppet" (just the best example, one of too many) over and over accompanied by melodramatic heart-bursting pining can't lead to anything good. It cost me a fortune, in more ways than one, to escape this way of being.

Perhaps I've over-corrected, driven by a love for my children that requires me to at least try to put them first as the best way of insuring my own happiness; and maybe I'm lying to myself by insisting that the notion of "true love" as a goal or priority is self-indulgent drivel, or more importantly, at least at my age, icky.

When I see someone like Sanford doing this kind of damage to those they claim to love and citing "falling in love" as an excuse, it's repulsive. They put their own grandiose gratification above the well-being of their families. Gross and immature, this seems worse to me than Bill Clinton or even Larry Craig just wanting to get a little on the side. I'm not advocating detached sexual dalliances, but somehow that seems more honest. There are lots of valid reasons to leave a marriage. Even the Catholic Church provides a way of escaping impossible union, and I think it's totally okay for someone who's fought the good fight, tried everything they could to make it work and come to the realization that it can't be done because no one can do it alone, to go and seek happiness with dignity; but, please, lose the drama.

Mr. Clio's description of cultural glorification of "searching for true love" as "bait-and-switch" is exactly right. What works in a novel or a movie becomes destructive in real life. We've been taught wrong. What we should be seeking is a quieter, more day to day, way of living love. It's just not as much fun to watch.

What I find most telling about the whole Sanford mess is that the people closest to him hung his ass out to dry. His family and staff just let him have it. His Lieutenant Governor called attention to his absence. His communications people had no safety net in place, no damage control deployed in his behalf. His wife, his former campaign manager, knew exactly what she was doing when she told the world she didn't have a clue where he'd gone. They must really hate this guy.

Welcome

If you've found your way to this page, it was probably by way of a link from the comment section of a blog that doesn't allow Name/URL comments. While I occasionally update the content on this blog, I have a primary, regularly maintained blog that can be found here. Thanks for clicking over. I look forward to your clicking through. Peace, y'all.

From the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary ArtsCenter! John Barry is getting ready to speak as Oyster, our fearless bivalve leader, provides an introduction. I will continue to update this all day, so check back often. Barry tells us that he "was in this space a few weeks after the storm," so it holds extra meaning to him to be speaking to us here today.

"..the Gulf of Mexico at one time went all the way to Cape Girardeau, Missouri..." All the land south and west was "made by the deposit of sediment of the Mississippi River... Everyone in the conference knows that we have lost roughly 2000 square miles of land, over time. "He's talking about the breadth of the "Mississippi River" which he considers a "cone" that stretches from northern New York state all the way to the Continental Divide. He calls it an "enormous cone" citing the map in the book, that which is the River's drainage basin, and he explains the difficulties the deposits caused to shipping and the nation's economic development by creating sandbars at the mouth of the river, so in 1875 there were jetties built to stop the creation of these sandbars. This resulted in an explosion in commerce along the river, deeply into the heartland."The port of Tulsa can't use the port of Houston. The port of Pittsburgh can't use any other port but New Orleans.... It's not the port of New Orleans, it's all the cities that New Orleans makes into ports." This is the point I don't think most Americans understand.

Barry states that right now the state of Louisiana is only getting about 1/3 of the sediment that the river should be depositing in the wetlands south of NO, it's "being impounded" by cities (made ports) upriver. "One half of all the sediment that is lost is actually sitting behind dams in ND & SD, dams built to provide electricity. " This creates a major problem for LA & the city of NO, from which nothing is received. He also points out that the entire Gulf IntercoastalWaterway, constructed for purposes of national security, has also provided a hindrance to the deposit of sediment at the mouth of the Mississippi. Add to that the additional salt water intrusion that's further harmed the wetlands, much of which has been caused by the oil industry, especially by their construction of canals. He compares the wetlands to a block of ice, taken out of the freezer and placed into the sink. He also points out that the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway and the Industrial Canal were man-made, dug to enhance shipping for the oil industry. But for them, the water would have never reached the Lower 9. By now, many of us know this, but most of the country doesn't know this and he's committed to getting that word out. Every article he writes he titles "Things You Don't Know About Katrina", a title that has always been changed by his editors.

Answering a question, he points out that the port of New Orleans is 90 miles long, stretching functionally all the way to Baton Rouge, altogether making the largest, busiest port in the world. He suggests that some time in the future a "low water" event might allow an opportunity to repair some of the damage and get the river back on track. He speaks of "risk communication" as a "term of art" and says that what must be done is "you tell the truth". Of course, that's what did not happen here. The truth, known, was not told and New Orleanians did not know the state of their flood protection, or their lack thereof. He suggests that fixing this could become a growing industry, pointing out that we're in better shape, in terms of sea level rise, than in many other parts ofthe world because the marsh is still alive. He also says that every port in the world is below sea level, by definition: Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, all below sea level because they are ports. He adds, "Death Valley is below sea level but it's got a pretty little levee system." 60% of goods shipped out of America go down the Mississippi River. Without New Orleans Tulsa and Pittsburgh are no longer ports.

LeighCheckman is blogging beside me, watched over by our own Mominem. Updates soon and often. Thanks for watching. Peace.

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First update: Missed most of the Education panel (schedule here) fighting tech difficulties (thanks Alan & Mayoress for fixing). Wanted to add that Inspector Cerasoli came to the meet & greet last night and stayed to the last, talking, and listening, to the bloggers. He's a good thing for New Orleans.

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LisaPal's pics from last night coming soon. Don't miss them.

Journalism panel now. Jeffry Bostick moderates.

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Lee Zurik says his eyebrows are real!

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Loki asks that those of us live blogging let people know that Humid City is temporarily down migrating to a new server. It's been a glitchy couple of days. Oh, and there's a tropical storm coming. Not sure about getting back to Atlanta. :/ Mark LaFlaur of Levees Not War, in from New York, asks the great question, how do we, the grass roots of the blogosphere (us) connect with the top tier of the blogosphere (Kos, TPM, etc.). Eli answers that we should push, we can email Josh Marshall, Kos, etc. Zurik suggests that patience and relationship building is important too, citing that he and Karen emailed for over a year before they, together, broke the NOAH story. My attention span wanes. We just saw a sneak preview of the new Levees.org film, which I'll post when it becomes available. Now the local politics panel is seated, peppered with friends, Dangerblond, Suspect Device, Schroeder. Fellow blog citizen, Adrastos, is moderating.

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I'm officially the only person live-blogging the after party and it won't last long. We're at Rendevouz at the corner of Magazine & 8th, Uptown, New Orleans. This is the best part! Small contingent of bloggers, mostly drinking. That's all. If you're in the neighborhood (lucky you) stop by!

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Correction: In my last update I meant to say that the "live blogging" won't last long, not the afterparty, which continued well into the wee hours. I can't get enough time with these bright people. Finally, here in my golden years (heh), I've fallen in with the Best. Crowd. Ever. Rising Tide was such a stunning success. There wasn't one uninteresting moment. Somehow, the panels, which have been excellet at each event, manage to continue getting better. I'll be back with a more thorough round up a bit later, but would like to thank The Mayoress for all her help yesterday during B-C's downtime. It's easy to forget how fortunate we are to have a host with such fine citizen service.

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More Sunday morning. Until I get my wrap up post finished and us, RT iii blogging central can be found at Maitri's. She did a fabulous job covering yesterday, with pics (some of which I'll glom later - thanks in advance, M).

RISING TIDE!

Mark your calendars for the weekend of August 22-24 and start planning your trip to New Orleans for Rising Tide III, the NOLA Bloggers' annual conference.

More than just interesting speakers and topical panel discussions, the weekend includes a Friday night party and a Sunday public service component, great opportunities to break bread and share cheer with the NOLA Bloggers and those who come to learn about New Orleans, as well as to put hands on and do something.

Best. Time. Ever.

Blogerati! Lively Banter Guaranteed!

It depends on how you define safety

Gary Hart to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, after having been asked if it's expected that the Republicans will once again try to get away with characterizing the Democratic Party as being "weak" on defense (emphasis mine):

HART: A lot of us supporting Barack Obama have pretty long history of experience in national security matters. And I for one would yield to no one in this country in terms of my commitment to this country's national security, and new ways to achieve it. We're not living in the Cold War anymore. And to pretend that simply spending a lot more money on the Pentagon is going to make us safer was proved false by 9/11. This was an administration that was warned that terrorists were going to attack this country, and they did nothing. I am not going to listen to anybody in this administration talk about Democrats being weak on national security. They let this country down.

Finally. Shall we all say it again, and again and again? I've had quite enough of leaders who live by the old 1960s rule of let's not, and say we did, who live in a fantasy world in which what one says or calls something or someone is more important than how people and things really are, a world in which appearances trump actualities, in which spend-thrifts are called conservatives, a world in which the duped people of America buy this load of crap. It's over. It's time to call a reckless spendthrift a reckless spendthrift.

Our nation is dangerously in debt. Our defenses are worn thin and frayed from fighting a war for the benefit of Halliburton, KBR & Blackwater. It's time for the Corporate plunderers to leave our looted treasury alone, to take their newly-enhanced wealth and go home. It's time for some reality-based leadership to come in and clean up their mess.

Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films