Benazir Bhutto

Looking back on her life, though she may have been corrupt and power-hungry, one thing you have to say for Benazir Bhutto is that she had incredible courage. I have been reading up on her life. Pakistan, imagine it, is a dangerous place. During her time as am member of Parliament in the Nineties, her fellow parliamentarians, party members, and even her own staff were constantly being jailed, tortured, kidnapped, beaten and disappeared. But she kept on keeping on.

Consider her life. Her father was hanged by General Zia, the military dictator who deposed him as Prime Minister. Both her brothers died under "suspicious circumstances." She herself spent time in prison, as did her husband. Given all that, she could have spent her life in comfy exile in Europe or New York, writing books, raking in money on the lecture circuit. But she chose to go back, to risk death on a daily basis to try and reform her country.

She may have been self-aggrandizing, she may have had feet of clay. But even so, she put her life on the line for her beliefs. And sacrificed it. Her sheer physical courage was so great she may not have been careful enough of her life in that dangerous place, these dangerous times. Even with inadequate security she insisted on meeting the public face to face at these giant rallies, magnets for suicide bombers. She would not back down.

I'm not cognizant enough of the situation to know the full implications of her death for Pakistan, but I know they will be bad. Real bad. Her death edges that nuclear country one step closer to chaos.

Fire on the Bayou?

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I really don't know how to feel about the housing projects crisis. I'm sure you've seen the awful poster on nola.com, if not around town. Like Jeffrey, said, it's a shame it's had to come to that point. But really, I tend to agree with most of the Nolabloggers that the poster was probably created by some whitey trustafarian, in town working with some long-haired relief group. Native New Orleanians are too easygoing to go around burning other people's houses down. New Orleanians don't riot. I mean we just don't. This is not Seattle.

Anyway, the poster is unfortunate because it is so inflamatory (no pun intended) that it will -- has -- dried up sympathy for the cause. Which cause I'm not so sure is worthy. Yes, there is a housing crisis. Yes, the working poor are being crushed out of existence in this city post-K. But -- the projects? The projects??? The thought of people clamoring to get back into the notoriously hellish, crime- and drug-infested New Orleans projects quite boggles me. It seems to me there are better battles to fight. Force the Road Home to cough up some payouts for renters. Light a fire under the state's Katrina Cottage program. Something. Isn't this an opportunity to make things better, instead of falling back into old, dysfunctional patterns?

I do agree that just knocking down the projects and handing them over to developers with no guarantees is not just, nor a good use of the city's resources. There is so much rhetoric flying back and forth, however, that it's hard to know what's really the truth on the ground. Will there be one-to-one replacement of housing units in the new developments? Should there be, with the city's smaller population? How many units in the new developments will be low-income/subsidized, how many middle-income? Is it really more cost-effective to knock the old buildings down and build new, or not? Are "the bricks" really that well-built, as their advocates claim? I have to say, that's the first time I've ever heard that claim about the projects.

It occurs to me that the Times-Picayune has done a piss-poor job on this issue, providing no context, no facts to provide ubderstanding of this heated debate. I think what we need is some solid facts about the situation. How many people lived in these projects before katrina? How many want to move back in now? How many of those people were/are working poor, how many on the dole, which is what seems to so arise the ire of the "man on the street" (to go by the nola.com comments threads). It's been two years -- where and how have these people been livingin the meantime? And on the developers' side, what exactly is going to be done with this land? How many units are you going to build? At what cost? What will they sell or rent for? Will former renters get first priority? Are there any kind of guarantees that you will do what you say, or is this just a land grab, Iraq war-style?

What I would like to see is some kind of middle way emerge, wherein the projects are demolished, but some other kind of new, clean low-income housing is built in its place. Little villages of Katrina Cottages, perhaps, with room to expand, and an option to buy, with subsidies, if the occupants have the wherewithal. Back in my FEMA trailer days, I would have been freakin' delighted to have a Katrina Cottage. Or a very aggressive program for the city to reclaim and renovate blighted housing for the homeless. (Which would not be easy, clearing titles and such, I know.)

I doubt this middle way will materialize, however. HUD controls the projects now, and if the Feds want them to come down, they are going to come down. Keeping the working poor from getting kicked out in the cold will take a very concerted resistance effort. And, given that we only ever see the same two or three people show up at these housing protests, I don't think the political will is there.

No blogging last week, because work was sheer hell. My branch library receives abrupt jumps in its circulation and attendance from time to time, as word of our advent spreads in the neighborhood, I suppose. Last week was one of those times. But we were short-handed all week, as one of our peeps was transferred to fill in at another branch. Plus, the interbranch delivery had not been done the whole week of Thanksgiving,so we were getting two weeks' worth of books and supplies in one, which all had to be processed. So we were kept hopping. By closing time I just had enough left to go home every day and sag on the sofa in front of the TV, while my husband tried to sustain me by slipping bits of food between my teeth. Coherent thought was not possible.

Yesterday another patron told me she reads my blog. Freaky! My experience has always been that being a public librarian is like being a kind of minor celebrity. Everywhere I go -- the movies, the mall, Mardi Gras parades, the doctor's office -- people know me. "There's Miss Kirsten! It's the Library Lady!" Maybe blogging is not such a good idea. Overexposure. But she told me she surfed over from Wet Bank Guide, that Mark had put me in his blogroll. Which is very cool. Mark Folse is a hero to me.

So I guess I'll keep truckin.

Master Plan

Yesterday, Irwin Mayfield, who is the Chairman of the New Orleans Public Library Board, gave a presentation to the staff about the NOPL Master Plan, the library's long-term blueprint for recovery. Mostly he talked about "branding" the library, about NOPL core values that we can present and enact, like "preservation" and "celebration" (of New Orleans culture).

I liked his idea of the library as "information first responders" in times of crisis -- which is certainly true, as we saw during the Katrina evacuation and diaspora -- people went to the public libraries wherever they were to find information, contact FEMA, and email friends and family. And when people returned, the library was one of the first places they turned to -- for information, for diversion, for community.

But generally, I was hoping for something a little more concrete, like, "we are rebuilding this branch in 2008, that one in 2009, we have secured funding from these sources." Maybe they haven't gotten to that point in the masterplanning process.

I do think Irwin is a good ambassador for the library, as he is an internationally famous jazz musician, and he clearly takes the job seriously.

The library is holding a public forum on the Master Plan this coming Monday -- read more about it here. You can also take a survey or email the library with your suggestions.

If you have any interest in the library at all, I encourage you to take part in this process. The library is supposed to serve the community, after all. To serve, we need to know what you need.

I Become Visible

My recent experience with my Mystery Patron Reader has inspired me to pay more attention to my presence in the blogosphere. Jeffrey told me to add a Sitemeter counter to my blog so I can see who's linking to me, and here I am joining Technorati:

Technorati Profile

-- which I still don't really understand, but hope now to learn.

Release the spiders, yo!

OK, so what does Technorati say about me?

Oh, I have 0 fans, how sad. No surprise, though, since I don't actually post that often.

My "authority" seems to be 2, which I believe means how often people have linked to my posts. OMG, that is pitiful -- and both times were my dear friend and co-worker Jeffrey. Link to me, people, I implore you!

My Technorati rank is 2,910,025. Dismal! Atrios, I'm not. I really should post more often. Maybe now I will.

I am abashed. I have had several other blogs/journals online, and I thought I knew a lot about this stuff. But it seems, not nearly as much as I thought I did.

Any other suggestions for embiggening myself in the blogosphere? Send 'em along!

Guess what! The other day a patron stopped by the reference desk and told me, "I like your blog."


My neck craned up like a startled chicken's. "What? You read my blog?!"

"Yes. I knew it was you by your picture." (On the left there.)

I knew this woman only as a patron, didn't even know her name. I was flabbergasted. Hardly anyone reads the blog, as far as I can tell -- even my hubby doesn't read it. "How did you find it?" I asked, mystifed.

"Well, you know, I read blogs by some other New Orleans bloggers, and they link to other bloggers, so you follow the links, that's how. I liked your post about K-Ville. It's bad."

(I wonder who's linking to me? Jeffrey, of course. Adastros? Editor B? I doubt it.)

"Uh, thanks!" I said. "Leve a comment some time!"

So, heck. Imagine that! People are actually reading this thing. While we were having this conversation, another patron wanted to know my blog address and read it too, so I gave it to her. Wow! Networking!

So, welcome, Mystery Patron Readers! Leave a comment and say hello! I'd love to know who else is out there!

And I guess I should take this opportunity to state that this blog contains only my own thoughts and opinions, and IN NO WAY represents the opinions or policies of the New Orleans Public Library or the City of New Orleans.

K-Ville goes Bye-Bye

From the Picayune:

K-Ville Shuts Down Production

A victim of the writer's strike. Although the word is the strike is really just an excuse to tank a non-performing show.

I know I've ragged on K-ville, but still I think it's too bad. The show wasn't as egregiously awful as it could have been. It might have gotten better. And you know, we've got to keep the brand out there, right?

Playing the Disaster Dozens

First off, let me say unequivocally that I have great sympathy for the people around San Diego who have been displaced and are losing their homes to the wildfires. I'm sure everyone in New Orleans does. We know what it is to flee, to be a refugee, to lose everything. But I just hate how it is being compared in the media to Katrina, some kind of crazy game of one-upmanship -- my disaster affecting affluent white people is worse than your disaster that drowned poor blacks. What kind of way is that to think? Aren't we all Americans?

I'm also angry about the way the evacuation and relief efforts are being handled. Quite well in fact. Why couldn't it have been like that down here? Why did people have to starve and die at the Dome, the Convention Cenetr?

I saw this article from the AP yesterday -- here's the lead:

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Like Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years earlier in New Orleans, thousands of people rousted by natural disaster fled to the NFL stadium here, waiting out the calamity and worrying about their homes.

The similarities ended there, as an almost festive atmosphere reigned at Qualcomm Stadium.

Bands belted out rock 'n' roll, lavish buffets served gourmet entrees, and massage therapists helped relieve the stress for those forced to flee their homes because of wildfires.

When I first read this article it made me so angry, just blind with rage. Massage therapy? Catered food?! What the HELL?! The people at the Convention Center would have been delighted with bottled water and MREs!!! Why do the people of San Diego deserve any better?

But then I read it again, more rationally. It may not be quite as blatant as it looks. First, the article is obviously calculated to inflame, being couched that way, comparing Katrina and the wildfires. The article could have been written without mentioning Katrina at all, or adding the comparison at the end, instead of leading with it.

Second, upon second reading it seems that all the nicer amenities provided at Qualcomm stadium were not government largesse, but volunteer efforts. The massage therapist was there on her own initiative, volunteering to help out. Local hotels donated the catered meals. The "rock bands" may have been volunteers too. Which is nice, actually. Maybe this means people learned somethign from Katrina. That we are all in this together. That this kind of disaster could happen to anyone, so we all need to be ready. That evacuees should not be left to suffer and thirst, alone, without community support. I certainly hope so.

Thirdly, in terms of water and medical supplies being ready and bountiful -- one can hardly be surprised that the govt. of california is better equipped to handle an evacuation than that of Louisiana. I mean, it's California -- wealthier, successful, just much more functional in general. Isn'tthe state of California alone the world's tenth largest economy or something like that? Plus, they know this kind of thing -- the wildfires -- could happen any year with the Santa Ana winds, and often do, so they have had every reason to be prepared.

In the aftermath of Katrina, most of my rage was aimed not at FEMA but at Mayor Nagin, the City Council and the entire city government of New Orleans. We, too, knew the Big One could hit any year. More, much more, should have been done to prepare. Citizens should not have been left to languish and starve at the Superdome. So I can hardly hate on San Diego for being prepared.

Thirdly, althouigh the evacuation is massive, rememebr that Souhthern California is much more heavily populated that South Louisiana, and although the burned areas have been devastated, they are in a relatively confined area. The rest of the region is still functional. Evacuees, indeed, are moving into the city of San Diego proper, where there are hotels to cater to them and emergency services are still intact. Completely the opposite of Katrina/Rita, where practically the whole of Souhth Louisiana was evacuated. There was no infrastructure anymore, no one left to speak of cater any meals to the Convention Center refugees. Emergency services were overwhelmed by a regional disaster.

Still, my feelings are complex. I doubt the Dome refugees would have been served capered chickens in cream sauce if anyone had brought them food. The racial disparities seem blantant.

I also don't like the way ther MSM is trumping this up as, if to best Katrina, as if to say, oh, thisis so much worse, we can forget about New orleans now. Last night on the nightly news Brian Williams said thst the SoCal evacuation were the largest since World War II -- which is manifestly untrue. 900,000 people have been evacuated for the wildfires: 1.2 million evacuated for Katrina, and over 2 million in South LA and Texas for Rita. The one-upmanship is just crazy and sick. I felt personally betrayed when I heard that. I thought Brian Williams was on our side.

Not that there should be any sides! Comparing disasters is pointless, and yet we can't seem to help it. The similarities ,and the differences, are so marked.

Pandagon has much to say on this same topic, and also refrences the AP article.

let me close with another quote from that article:

Hundreds sat in the stands watching the [television] sets, transfixed as news programs broadcast images of destruction. Among them was Bruce Fowler, whose home in the Scripps Ranch neighborhood had survived fires in 2003. ...

"Every couple of years, you don't want to go through this worry," Fowler said, sipping a root beer. "I never thought I'd be in a place like this, getting handouts."

Nobody does, brother, nobody does. And yet, it could happen to us all. We just need to remember that, and try and have compassion, for us and for them.


I'd like anyone who reads this post to comment and share your thought with me. This was a hard post to write. I don't really know how to feel. How do YOU feel?

A Case of the Stormy Mondays

Today is a bad day. I am completely disgusted and affronted that I have to come into work today. That I have to deal with my coworkers. To put covers on books. Check my email. That I have to go home and cook dinner from scratch, because my husband got so spoiled living with my folks while I was in graduate school that he can't even boil water anymore. That I have to clean up, because people are coming over tomorrow night. That I have to feed the cats, brush my teeth, do anything at all. A day like today is only worth crawling back into bed and spending the day dozing, reading, and occasionally drinking tea -- which someone brings me. Getting up to go to work while it's pouring rain and the sky is still black as night is just torture. It's just not right.

A patron just asked me if we were closing early because of the bad weather. I wish.

UPDATE: I see on WWLTV.com reports of major street flooding at Carrollton and Banks St., which is only a few blocks from my library branch. And schools around town are closing, including I see, Tulane and Loyola. So, maybe.

Blog Action Day for the Environment

So I just read on Blogger Buzz that today is Global Blog Action Day, and this year's theme is the environment. So ... yay ... love the environment!!!

Seriously, though, we in New Orleans have a had a foretaste of what's to come all around the world if and when global warming melts the polar ice caps and raise the seas. If we leverage our expereince and our hard-learned lessons, New Orleans could be a world leader in coastal restoration and mitigation technologies -- sure to be a growth industry, sadly.

Here's a link to America's Wetlands, the foundation dedicated to restoring Louisiana's coastal wetlands -- a vital link in the chain protection that will help prevent another Katrina.

In other news, I've disabled the captcha in my comments sectins, so it's easy to drop a note. If you're reading, leave a comment -- I'd like to know who's out there.

If no one comments, I will be SAD. :-(

Lights Out is Scary

This morning, Weekend Edition ran a story about a guy who wants to make an energy-saving gesture by convincing his hometown, San Francisco, to turn out the lights for one night: Lights Out San Francisco.

Pre-K, I used to be all for this kind of thing, but now, this idea makes me tense. Fires up my POKSS (Post-Katrina Stress Syndrome). I was here in the early days after the re-opening, when three-quarters of the city was still dark, and it was frickin SCARY. In the devastated neighborhoods. I'm talking pitch black, can't see your hand in front of your face DARK. Dark like the most howling wilderness, in the heart of the city. This is when there was no electricity at all, so no porch lights, no street lights, no traffic lights, no storefront signs, NOTHING. And quiet. No air condotioners, no radios, no cars, no buzzing streetlights. No crickets chirping, even, cause they were all dead.

Man! I don't care to repeat that experience! Next year the guy's trying to take this idea national. I think this will be a fun time for intact cities. But I don't think New Orleans will embrace it.

K-Ville Nitpick Patrol

Tonight's episode:

The voodoo paraphenalia: Cigars and rum are offered to Legba, not Ogun. Also, most average people in NOLA would not know this. Most people are scared of voodoo, or vodoun as it should be called.

Keeping kosher: Marlon said he once tried to keep kosher to impress a girl, until she caught him with a "pulled pork poor-boy." WTF? A cuban sandwich, man, a cuban sandwich!

I'm sure there were more errors, but those were the two that jumped out at me.

I have no say, the show is not as bad as I expected. It does not come near to the eye-gouging Big Easy level of badness. But I still don't think the show is going to survive. Not beacuse of its faux-Nola dorkiness, but because that mess is packaged in a very lame, cliched, buddy-cop-show format. Haven't we seen that a million times? It's stale, man, stale! Law & Order, anyone?

I don't object, in theory, to a show about post-K New Orleans. By no means. Bu I think the stale buddy-cop drama is just about the lamest, least interesting way to do it. I don't think America at large is going to be interested enough in picking over the corpse of post-K New Orleans enough to stick with the lameness.

Big Boxes of Books

Unlike Jeffrey, I am thrilled at the advent of a Borders bookstore in the former Bultman funeral home at the corner of St. Charles and Louisiana. I mean, think of it, would you rather have a huge, rotting, unused building on a major intersection, or a thriving business? To see a major national chain willig to invest in inner-city NOLA right now is a positive development, I thnk. That intersection has gotten positivwely decrepit post-K (and wasn't too hot before) and really needs a facelift. A large, successful anchor store could revivify the whole area. And now those of us without automobile transport to Metarie or the Westbank can enjoy a big box bookstore/cafe.

I'm confident our independent bookstores will be able to weather the change. Remember, Starbuck's didn't drive PJs or Rue de La Course out of business when it landed. Same deal here. People who will shop at the Borders are probably not the people who shopped at Octavia or Garden District Books anyway. And now, some of those people will be keeping their tax revenue in the city proper instead of sending it out to Jeff Parish.

So I think, it's all good. Personally I can't wait!

Hurricane Whatberto?

Damn, I almost fell off my chair yesterday evening when I saw on CNN.com that there was a tropical storm off ther coast of Texas! WTF? Where did that come from?

Now, today,it's a Cat 1! It formed, spun up to hurricane strength and made landfall, all in 24 hours. Glad it didn't come over this way, we would have been caught completely flat-footed.

It is heading this way, but over land now. It is pitch-black and raning right now in Mid-City already. One of our patrons just talked to her cousin in Lafayette, where it is torrentially raining and street-flooding.

"OK, stop," I told her. "You're scaring me now."

It's not just pets and little kids who freak out around here when the weather gets bad. Everyone does it. Flashing back.

9/11 again

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of 9/11. Six years. 9/11 was so huge and shocking, so terrible, that in the weeks and months after I used to wonder what it would feel like to mark the anniversary in the future, five years out, ten years out. I yearmed for the balm of time to heal all wounds. But I couldn't imagine not feeling enraged and terrified on that day.

Well, that was then. When I was thinking about the future then I never dreamed that by the sixth anniversary I would have had my own epochal disaster to suffer and recover from. Katrina has pretty much eclipsed Ground Zero in my personal hellscape. How could it not?

Also when I think of 9/11 now, it just reminds me of the tragic road to ruin in Iraq, and the indelible blight upon the United States' name and honor. The pure sorrow is tainted with anger and bitterness.

So, 9/11 + 6. Somehow, I'm just not feeling it.

Hurriane Katrina News

Hurricane Katrina News

This looks ike a good clearinghouse site for recovery news, launched in time for the anniversary. It's put together by Joshua Clark, author of the Katrina memoir Heart Like Water -- who incidentally is giving a talk about his book at Author's Night at Hubbell Library tonight.

Katrina Index, Special Anniversary Edition

Well, this is interesting. It specifically mentions the library.

I wonder what it says about murders?

Happy Talk in the Ruins

I've noticed lately, since I've been back, that a lot of the Nolablogers that I read regularly are angry. Really angry. They have just had it with the crime, the incompetence, with the pumps that don't work, with the Corpse, the Road Home to Nowhere, Hizzoner C. Ray, Gov. Maw Maw, Dr. Flakely, the Recovery School District, the lameitude of the Picayune, just the whole stinking pile of hot bayou mess that is "the recovery."

And who can blame them? It is a mess. These things are bad. It is not going as well as it should. I don't blame them.

But for myself, I am coming from a different place. I just got back to town after two years away. And I feel good.

My husband and I are very happy. We are living together again, in our old stomping ground, the uptown Magazine Street corridor, where I have lived since high school. We are happy to have our old jobs back, more or less. I feel quite fortunate to have had gradaute school to keep my mind and spirit busy in the painful post-K years, and then to have the job I have, helping the recovery with a library in the flooded neighborhoods. My husband sings in the car on the way to work.

And speaking as someone who has spent the better part of the time away, who only came home to gut my house or visit family, I can say, things are better. Things are way better. Hey, the streetlights are working! The water is running! (In most places.) Magazine Street is open! Many beloved businesses are operating again. Vegetation is blooming. Rebuilding and recovery is all but complete in some neighborhoods, booming in others. In Mid-City, where my library branch is, it seems like every house is being renovated. People are even rebuilding in the Lower Nine. The search tags are painted over.

I've been away, so I see it with fresh eyes. But for those who have been here for the last two years, I know how hard it seems, how far there is to go. It just grinds you down, living in the recovery, the constant parade of bad news. I've seen it in my own family. Last year I had to have my Mom come and spend part of August in Baton Rouge, just to get away, because the one-year anniversary had brought her so low.

I'm sure I'll get there myself at some point.

But thst's the nature of the beast. Recovery. A long, grueling process. I remember hearing around the anniversary last year that people were still living in tent cities in Kobe, Japan five years after the big earthquake there.

It's a long grueling process. So if some people are angry and burned out, it's OK to step away for a while. I want to say to any of my fellow bloggers and citizens, that if you need to stop blogging for a while, or take a less demanding, more lucrative job, or go on vacation, or move to the Northshore, it's OK. I'm here. Other newbs are here. We can take up the fight. New people are moving into the city all the time -- I see it every day at my library. College students, Teach for America teachers, young professionals. I've heard several stories of volunteers who came down to help with cleanup, and loved New Orleans so much, they moved here. An amazing development. New people who are optimistic and ready to put their shoulders to the wheel.

This long haul is a relay race. No one has to do it alone. And I'm ready for my leg.

The Other Side of the Camera

I feel so strange watching the news coverage of this bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Because I know what it's like now, to be on the other side of that news camera. To be in the midst of a huge disaster. The confusion, the terror, the despair.

In the first couple days after Katrina, the aftermath, I couldn't stand the thought of people in the rest of the country just sitting on their couches, watching CNN, thinking, Wow, huge disaster. Like it was just a TV show. It made me sick.

And now here I am, sitting on my couch, thinking, Wow, huge disaster. I feel so guilty.

Hard Day's Day

Well I just had a hell of a day at work. Now I remember what's sucky about public library service -- crazy patrons and crazy coworkers. Put them together and you have an explosive combination.

Upon graduation, one of my professors told me I would not find the public library "challlenging enough." Well, it may not be intellectually challenging, but it is certainly emotionally challenging. There were several times today when there were four or more people at the desk, all clamoring for my attention, the phone ringing, and I was just going, What? What? You want what from me?? Ahhgh, overstimulation! Couple that with riding constant herd on an erratic new employee and you have the makings of a very long and tiring day.

I need a drink!