Alan Gutierrez

For most of you, I’m sure, the first meeting of the Community Support Organization that you’ve missed by the time you’ve read this, will come as a suprise. It’s at the Hilton at 8:00 am tomorrow morning. Another example of outreach on a need to know basis. Keep in mind that although I’ll be working with volunteers to keep track of the doings of the UNOP, I’m not officially involved in it, in any way.

I’m going to be doing more organization in the open, here at Blogometer and also at the Think New Orleans weblog. I’ve created a WordPress plugin that allows me to choose what goes on the front page of Blogometer, and what can go in the sidelines.

It’s an extension of a concept I’ve had for a while, of a stream of consciousness blog, a place where you post ideas in their infancy, ask questions, or leave yourself notes. It is not even an aside, one of the short scrunchy posts that you see here, since it is information that ought to interest no one, except perhaps the oddballs that Google brings in.

If you look in the categories section, you’ll find posts that are not visible in on the front page. I’m going to experiment with categorization, so that if you’re involved in a particular project, you can follow along by viewing a particular category, or a particular tag.

For now, if you want to catch what is missing, bookmark Sideline or subscribe to the Sideline feed and I’ll be sure to tag posts that are not on the front page with “Sideline”.

Reading one book about the disaster has done wonders for my understanding. Books have been known to do that. I’ve got a new interest in the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. Many people want to close the MRGO, and when you watch the disaster unfold, you can see how it funneled the storm surge into the Industrial Canal that collapsed into the 9th Ward and Gentilly. The MRGO is a channel that was dug to connect the Industral Canal to the Gulf of Mexico. It was dug through virgin wetlands causing great harm to those wetlands.

Paul Christmann has updated his friends with an email message, where he tells us about the renovation of his house. He ends with some observations on waterlines.

But I must relay one last observation I’ve found over the last several months: flood lines on buildings are an absolutely mesmerizing sight while driving. More than once, I’ve nearly hit a curb when I get distracted by the water marks on a building. Its not just the heights, its the unbelievable straight-ness of the line. You can follow a road that gently moves up and down; the line is straight. You can look at older buildings that lean; the line is straight. That’s often one of the first things people do: try to clean the line. Its not easy. Trust me. In fact, I don’t think its ever actually removable. We’ll have to repaint over it. But I’d like to find a way to leave it somewhere on the house. Of course, Noel won’t have any of that. but we’ll see.

I can imagine an unpainted circle, with a frame around it, on a home that wanted to remember the water level, or if that is too unsightly, to afix some molding along a yard of the waterline, and paint over it.

On this day, I’m not much into reflecting. I don’t feel that there has been a pause since I arrived. I don’t know why I’d pause now, in the midst of the 2006 hurricane season.

I’m reading Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure or Homeland Security. I’ve read it all day yesterday, and I’ll finish it shortly. It is the first accounting of the Hurricane that I have read. I know now that much of the flooding came from the collapse of the flood walls on the canals.

Reading this book also explains whey Ashley is so adamant that the floodwalls were destoryed in a terrorist attack. In Disaster authors Christopher Cooper and Robert Block describe a brand new Department of Homeland Security that has taken control of FEMA, and taxed it’s natural disaster response resources to fund preparation for further terrorist attacks.

The DHS did not recognize that a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was a historic disaster, and did not respond with the fury that was required. We are fortunate to have our neighbor Texas, which dispatched more resources to Louisiana than FEMA, which was absent three days after the storm. We are fortunate for the intervention of Wal-Mart, which brought necessities to the National Guard at the Convention Center, when FEMA could not.

Upon reading Disaster, I feel that Michael Brown is a perfect scapegoat.

Today, Karen Gadbois and Craig Morse and I went to the Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association’s grand opening of it’s new community center. I hope to have people contributing to the Lower 9th Ward NENA web site, from the computers that they have installed at the community center. I’m looking for some content commands, some people that can help in person or online at this center, and to help follow up on the new WordPress blogs that we are getting underway.

“I’m like bad grass. Because it never dies. You gotta pull it up and even though you do, it still grows back. I don’t care how hard something looks, I’m still going to try.” from Recovery remains slow… via A City of Bad Grass at Da Po’ Blog.

A play on the Katrina Cottage, made blogger famous by Mark Folse. A 70 square foot home. Let’s hope that the LRA doesn’t get any ideas. While we’re at it, here’s some Katrina Cottage interior shots. The Katrina Cottage is a lovely home compared to a formaldehyde filled trailer, but what about compared to new construction?