This month's Good Magazine is all about New Orleans. Not surprising given the month long coverage of the 5th anniversary of Katrina we have all witnessed on every news outlet from CNN to Rachel Maddow (I love you!) to my little ditty 'Renee Claire'. The rebuilding of New Orleans is on everyone's mind.
I lived through Hurricane Andrew in 1994 in South Florida and Hurricane Juan in 1985, which until this very moment always though it was named after a princess wand, not a man named Juan. Welcome to Reneeland. Neither of those hurricanes had the impact on the entire nation that Katrina has had. Andrew tore apart South Florida, destroyed communities, and sent our part of the state into chaos for a long time, but it was manageable chaos. I went back to school, children from Miami were bused to Broward, people didn't go homeless, they weren't given up on, the government was there to help.
Mention Katrina to anyone for any moment, even someone whose name is Katrina and there is a moment of pause. There is a moment where we stop and whatever photo most impacted your experience during the Fall of 2005, is what flashes before you once again. It has forever changed who we are or more what we thought we were.
In late 2006, my family went for a visit to New Orleans, Lafayette, and New Iberia where we were all born and raised and where the bulk of our family still lives. We stopped in New Orleans for 2 days to visit a cousin, Johnathon, who had been flown out of combat in Iraq to help at the Superdome two days after the storm hit, then to spend to next year patroling alongside the New Orleans Police Department. We all went to dinner and drinks and then I stayed with him for the rest of the evening. He showed me around the city, what his normal patrol looked like. We even met up with the rest of the Louisiana National Guard boys that were on patrol that night. We drank beers in the parking lot of some high school just outside the more touristy areas of the city. Just me and 10 National Guard dudes in full gear sitting in a Humvee drinking beers on a sweaty New Orleans evening.
The other thing I did that trip was visit Shylia Lewis. In 2004 Greenpeace partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build pvc-free homes for four families in the seventh ward neighborhood of Roche. I wasn't part of that project, but I went to visit her to see how her family and the pvc-free homes had stood up to Katrina. Besides about 4 feet of water damage on the inside of the homes, they stood up nicely and better than the homes that were built with pvc siding.
Shylia, returning each weekend from Houston to fix the damage, said that if she hadn't partnered with Habitat to build her home her family could never have moved in so quickly after the storm. She built new cabinets, took down the drywall and then built it back up again on her own. Shylia is raising three children, not all her own. The kids in 2006 had to attend a private catholic school since there weren't any public schools open near her home. There was still no school bus service to the Roche neighborhood. At the end of the street from Shylia's home was a FEMA trailer park. Hundreds and hundreds of empty FEMA trailers sat in a lot. Her neighbor to her left lived in a trailer in the front yard as they had been unable to repair all the damages to their home.
Shylia, two of her children, and I drove to the lower Ninth ward, where her grandparents house stood before the hurricane. We all know the images of a demolished lower ninth ward, so I'm not going to repeat them here. I will tell you that we had hard time finding the drive way of her grandparents home even though Shylia had visited for almost 40 years and on more than one occasion I saw one house resting on top of another house. At one point one of the boys said "mom, can we leave now?" Then we drove to see the Musicians Village that Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation is building. Later that afternoon Shylia dropped me off in the French Quarter where my family was staying and whispered "we don't come down here too many gays and prostitutes". You can read the article from Greenpeace about my time with Shylia and our work in New Orleans here.
Good Magazine's September edition is thorough and unique. Did you know that Louisiana passed the Digitial Media Act in 2009 to help attract companies working on software and mobile and video gaming applications. There is a 35 percentage tax credit on labor expenditures and a 25 percent credit on digital media expenditures made in the state. It's the most robust of its kind in the nation. Given the kind of literature and art that has seeped out of New Orleans for the past hundred years or so, I bet this will impact the kind of games and stories being sold to kids for the next several years. There is also an article about comic books. New comic books about the storm and alarming high murder rate are also on the rise.
There are also short articles on New Orlean's 25 best and brightest. Those that are changing politics, community, and renovation in the city. One of the best articles is about new media. How New Orleans bloggers are setting new standards on eliminating corruption by bird dogging and researching those that are vying for power. An interesting new concept in Louisiana. As Eli Ackerman, blogger of We Could Be Famous, stated, "Politicians in New Orleans have learned that people can google them." Ackerman's blog hasn't been updated since June, though his blogroll includes a dozen other local New Orleans blogs that are worth a scan.
The article continues, "Just like it did everywhere else inthe world, blogging took off in New Orleans in the early 2000s. But after katrina, when many New Orleanians grew tired of the way the government and national media were ignoring them, new media got a boost. Citizens turned to blogs to rant, inform, and otherwise take ownership of the city's rebuilding process. The impact as been tremendous. Blog reporting has spawned FBI investigations of the city programs, affect the 2010 mayoral election, and resulted in an injection of funding from the Rockerfeller Foundation. It also inspired old-dog media to embrace its online counterparts - which is no small feat in itself - and together, they have found innovative ways to foster collaboration: New media brings off the beaten path stories, and traditional media brings a massive audience, legitimacy, and infrastructure."
I'm leaving for a month in the city on Sept 15. I'm excited and overwhelmed by what I will do during my time in New Orleans, but I think I know I will have some good stories to share with you.
Ciao,
Renee Claire
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
"What! You're Not My Mom!?"
Kids say the darndest things on a two hour plane. I sat just one row in front and across the aisle from what I can only image to be the type of child that I will be given one day. A little girl with long blonde hair who sang about EVERYTHING the entire plane ride from Austin to Phoenix. It was amazing! She sang her book that she was reading, she sang 'mom', 'mom', 'mom', and what we learned was the 'I love you' song, 'I love you', 'I love you', 'I love you', with her mother never lifting her head or acknowledging, even during terrible turbulence.
It was obvious this mom was completely and utterly exhausted! At one point, when mom woke for just a couple minutes to make some playdough snowmen, the little girl in the most inquisitive and innocent voice said, 'what! you're not my mom!?' I have no idea what 'mom' had said to her, but 'mom' wasn't shocked by the comment. In fact by her response, 'you know better than to behave like this', it became evident the little girl's shocking comment was nothing more than a little manipulation to gather other passengers attention. I'm totally going to have a child like that one day.
I'm currently reading Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I've been threatening myself with this book for about a year. I finally found it on a bookshelf in my living room. It's pretty fucking good. Living in the bubble of North Oakland with two UC Berekely grad school alum and having watched an array of food industry documentaries, I'm pretty aware of much of what he is describing. This prior knowledge doesn't make the information any less jolting.
Here is an excerpt:
"One reason that obesity and diabetes become more prevalent the further down the socioeconmic scale you look is that the industrial food chain has made energy-dense food the cheapest foods in the market, when measured in terms of cost per calorie. A recent study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared the 'energy cost' of different foods in the supermarket. The researchers found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips and cookies; spent on a whole food like carrots, the same dollar buys only 250 calories. On the beverage aisle, you can buy 875 calories of soda for a dollar, or 170 calories of fruit juice from concentrate. It makes economic sense that people with limited money to spend on food would spend it on the cheapest calories they can find, especially when the cheapest calories - fats and sugars - are precisley the ones offering the biggest neurobiological rewards.
Corn is not the only source of cheap energy in the supermarket - much of the fat added to processed foods comes from soybeans - but it is by far the most important. As George Naylor said, growing corn is the most efficient way to get energy - calories - from an acre of Iowa farmland. That corn-made calorie can find its way into our bodies in the form of an animal fat, a sugar, or a starch, such is the protean nature of the carbon in that big kernel. But as productive and protean as the corn plant is, finally it is a set of human choices that have made these molecules quite as cheap as they have become: a quarter century of farm policies designed to encourage the overproduction of this crop and hardly any other. Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories int he supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest."
The chapters on corn is incredible. If you don't want to read a whole book on our food industry, then just read the first 100 pages of this. It's like a novella. The size of a Capote story. I've heard issues around farm policies and of course the plight of the small American farmer but I didn't really understand it until I read these pages. It's an easy read and fairly beautiful prose as well.
I'm now reading the section on the organic industry. I love my weekly CSA box and my handful of veggies in my backyard. I do not love organic tofu from Trader Joe's.
I'm also reading Natural Capitalism. Just as shocking and interesting, but much more dense. It's not a train reading book. It's a sit down, grab a pen, and be prepared to learn kind of book. Little mind bombs of 'ohhhh that's what those people in suits have been talking about!" Totally worth the read. If you are interested in learning some new theories on how to restructure our private sector to prevent the wasteful use of natural resources, but not sure you want to dedicate the end of your summer to 347 pages, take a read of an article by the authors in the Harvard Business Review.
The basic premise is:
"Critics on the left may argue that business people pursue only shortterm self-interest unless guided by legislation in the public interest. However, we believe that the world stands on the threshold of basic changes in the conditions of business. Companies that ignore the message of natural capitalism do so at their peril. Thus our strategy here is not to approach business as a supplicant, asking corporations to change and make a better world by respecting the limits of the environment. Actually, there are growing numbers of business owners and managers who are changing their enterprises to become more environmentally responsible because of deeply rooted beliefs and values. But what we are saying is more pressing than a request. The book teems with examples and references, included to show that the move toward radical resource productivity and natural capitalism is beginning to feel inevitable rather than merely possible.
It is similar to a train that is at the station about to go. The train doesn't know if your company, country, or city is safely on board, nor whether your ticket is punched or not. There is now sufficient evidence of change to suggest that if your corporation or institution is not paying attention to this revolution, it will lose competitive advantage. In this changed business climate, those who incur that loss will be seen as remiss if not irresponsible. The opportunity for constructive, meaningful change is growing and exciting."
Really good stuff.
It was obvious this mom was completely and utterly exhausted! At one point, when mom woke for just a couple minutes to make some playdough snowmen, the little girl in the most inquisitive and innocent voice said, 'what! you're not my mom!?' I have no idea what 'mom' had said to her, but 'mom' wasn't shocked by the comment. In fact by her response, 'you know better than to behave like this', it became evident the little girl's shocking comment was nothing more than a little manipulation to gather other passengers attention. I'm totally going to have a child like that one day.
I'm currently reading Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I've been threatening myself with this book for about a year. I finally found it on a bookshelf in my living room. It's pretty fucking good. Living in the bubble of North Oakland with two UC Berekely grad school alum and having watched an array of food industry documentaries, I'm pretty aware of much of what he is describing. This prior knowledge doesn't make the information any less jolting.
Here is an excerpt:
"One reason that obesity and diabetes become more prevalent the further down the socioeconmic scale you look is that the industrial food chain has made energy-dense food the cheapest foods in the market, when measured in terms of cost per calorie. A recent study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared the 'energy cost' of different foods in the supermarket. The researchers found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips and cookies; spent on a whole food like carrots, the same dollar buys only 250 calories. On the beverage aisle, you can buy 875 calories of soda for a dollar, or 170 calories of fruit juice from concentrate. It makes economic sense that people with limited money to spend on food would spend it on the cheapest calories they can find, especially when the cheapest calories - fats and sugars - are precisley the ones offering the biggest neurobiological rewards.
Corn is not the only source of cheap energy in the supermarket - much of the fat added to processed foods comes from soybeans - but it is by far the most important. As George Naylor said, growing corn is the most efficient way to get energy - calories - from an acre of Iowa farmland. That corn-made calorie can find its way into our bodies in the form of an animal fat, a sugar, or a starch, such is the protean nature of the carbon in that big kernel. But as productive and protean as the corn plant is, finally it is a set of human choices that have made these molecules quite as cheap as they have become: a quarter century of farm policies designed to encourage the overproduction of this crop and hardly any other. Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories int he supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest."
The chapters on corn is incredible. If you don't want to read a whole book on our food industry, then just read the first 100 pages of this. It's like a novella. The size of a Capote story. I've heard issues around farm policies and of course the plight of the small American farmer but I didn't really understand it until I read these pages. It's an easy read and fairly beautiful prose as well.
I'm now reading the section on the organic industry. I love my weekly CSA box and my handful of veggies in my backyard. I do not love organic tofu from Trader Joe's.
I'm also reading Natural Capitalism. Just as shocking and interesting, but much more dense. It's not a train reading book. It's a sit down, grab a pen, and be prepared to learn kind of book. Little mind bombs of 'ohhhh that's what those people in suits have been talking about!" Totally worth the read. If you are interested in learning some new theories on how to restructure our private sector to prevent the wasteful use of natural resources, but not sure you want to dedicate the end of your summer to 347 pages, take a read of an article by the authors in the Harvard Business Review.
The basic premise is:
"Critics on the left may argue that business people pursue only shortterm self-interest unless guided by legislation in the public interest. However, we believe that the world stands on the threshold of basic changes in the conditions of business. Companies that ignore the message of natural capitalism do so at their peril. Thus our strategy here is not to approach business as a supplicant, asking corporations to change and make a better world by respecting the limits of the environment. Actually, there are growing numbers of business owners and managers who are changing their enterprises to become more environmentally responsible because of deeply rooted beliefs and values. But what we are saying is more pressing than a request. The book teems with examples and references, included to show that the move toward radical resource productivity and natural capitalism is beginning to feel inevitable rather than merely possible.
It is similar to a train that is at the station about to go. The train doesn't know if your company, country, or city is safely on board, nor whether your ticket is punched or not. There is now sufficient evidence of change to suggest that if your corporation or institution is not paying attention to this revolution, it will lose competitive advantage. In this changed business climate, those who incur that loss will be seen as remiss if not irresponsible. The opportunity for constructive, meaningful change is growing and exciting."
Really good stuff.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday Gumbo
Another beautiful day in Oakland. I keep hearing from my Amsterdam friends that monsoon season has officially started in the Dam. I will see for myself in mid-October.
New Orleans: I got an apartment! It's a little cheaper than my room here and I have a subletter for while I am gone, so it will fully cover my New Orleans rent. Yes! Also, the landlord is here in the Bay area this week. We are going to get together tomorrow to meet up and nail down the details. Very serendipitous!
Green for All posted a new video from their green jobs work in New Orleans. It's a great video. Share it far and wide!
I'm trying to find a copy of The World that Made New Orleans, but having a difficult time. I have to keep reading a couple pages at a time at the library. I don't have a library card because I don't have a California ID. It took me 6 years to get a DC ID and I'm not sure how long it will take me to get a CA one. Too much trouble!
I'm Feeling Good: I'm a little obsessed with this song right now. I just listed to Michael Buble sing this song. He is pretty fantastic! And of course I'm making everyone who will pay attention to me listen to Kat Edmonson. In fact it was the only thing my dad would listen to on the entire trip from DC to Oakland. Luckily I had my ipod to keep me entertained with Radiolab, Planet Money and This American Life podcasts.
I couldn't mention this song with also mentioning Nina Simone. An old high school friend introduced her to me when I was 16. He was only trying to make out, but I'm really glad he used Nina Simone as his mood setting music. I've been in love with her ever since!
The New Yorker: I finally get my New Yorker each week again! And Foreign Affairs and our dream house gets the Sunday edition of the New York Times for free. It just appears each Sunday on our doorstep. Kind of wonderful.
This week's New Yorker has a great story about the Koch brothers. Billionaire brothers who are funding the tea party and climate deniers. It's really good. Check it out.
People You Don't Want to Hang Out With: And if you didn't get a chance to check out Glen Beck's rally this weekend, read about the people that attended. Seriously, its good.
Ciao,
Renee Claire
New Orleans: I got an apartment! It's a little cheaper than my room here and I have a subletter for while I am gone, so it will fully cover my New Orleans rent. Yes! Also, the landlord is here in the Bay area this week. We are going to get together tomorrow to meet up and nail down the details. Very serendipitous!
Green for All posted a new video from their green jobs work in New Orleans. It's a great video. Share it far and wide!
I'm trying to find a copy of The World that Made New Orleans, but having a difficult time. I have to keep reading a couple pages at a time at the library. I don't have a library card because I don't have a California ID. It took me 6 years to get a DC ID and I'm not sure how long it will take me to get a CA one. Too much trouble!
I'm Feeling Good: I'm a little obsessed with this song right now. I just listed to Michael Buble sing this song. He is pretty fantastic! And of course I'm making everyone who will pay attention to me listen to Kat Edmonson. In fact it was the only thing my dad would listen to on the entire trip from DC to Oakland. Luckily I had my ipod to keep me entertained with Radiolab, Planet Money and This American Life podcasts.
I couldn't mention this song with also mentioning Nina Simone. An old high school friend introduced her to me when I was 16. He was only trying to make out, but I'm really glad he used Nina Simone as his mood setting music. I've been in love with her ever since!
The New Yorker: I finally get my New Yorker each week again! And Foreign Affairs and our dream house gets the Sunday edition of the New York Times for free. It just appears each Sunday on our doorstep. Kind of wonderful.
This week's New Yorker has a great story about the Koch brothers. Billionaire brothers who are funding the tea party and climate deniers. It's really good. Check it out.
People You Don't Want to Hang Out With: And if you didn't get a chance to check out Glen Beck's rally this weekend, read about the people that attended. Seriously, its good.
Ciao,
Renee Claire
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