HumidCity

I do not have the energy to write a new post here on this subject so please go over to Katrina: An UnNatural Disaster and read what I wrote for them. Comments are hugely appreciated, leave them on the actual post not here.

Here is an exceprt to get you started:

A few days ago my wife and I evacuated from New Orleans, piled into a friend’s car with our four cats. Thus began a series of events that simultaneously evoke the horrors of three years ago and put a vicious post-Katrina spin on them. I am going to tell you what this kind of evac is like. Be ready, because it is not pleasant.

First comes the mad packing. What can fit in your car? What can be left behind to make room for neighbors? There is always something to be secured around the house no matter how complete your prep may have been.

The soundtrack to this is the panicky, fearful misinformation coming from our political class. Despite claims by the mayor, Gustav was not the “Mother of All Storms,” a phrase whose use was hardly conducive to anything other than panic. Neither was the storm 900 miles wide; its hurricane-force winds only reached 50 miles from its center (note Katrina stretched 105 miles from its center).

Katrina was more than 50 percent stronger than Gustav. Panic and threats that anyone found on the street would go directly to the state prison at Angola, something I believe is usually against the law, constituted the majority of the official voices on the airwaves. At the time, we had none of the facts handy about this “Mother of All Storms,” just a litany of fear voiced before a backbeat of polemic. I am honestly surprised I did not hear the phrase “run for your lives.”

Read the rest here.

Loki, HumdCity Founder

Alrighty then…

It has been a bit since I have been able to post much due to a massive over inflation of my schedule (read: work, lots of it!). I do want to take a few moments and thank reader Barnzey who has left me several comments recently.

It seems that in my prior posting about David Vitter I spread some misinformation, which I would now like to put right. I did go to De La Salle High School with one of the Vitters, and I could swear the first name was David, but it was actually Paul. I would ike to herewith retract comments made in my posts about the character of David Vitter as based on personal experience, I was remembering a sibling of his.

That said, my comments and posts about his public behaviour and his political posturing remain unaltered. Recent news has borne out my assertions of hypocracy and idiocy on his part better than anything I have written. He is, quite simply, still an utter ass and has no place in public office.

I would also like to encourage fact checking readers out there to continue to assist me by leaving comments and sources whenever they see me accidentally dispense misinformation. I will never take such comments at face value, for anyone can make an assertion with or without factual basis, but I will follow up and recent if that is required to maintain the standard of honesty I require.

Thanks Barnzey!

Allow me to begin by saying that my mother’s side of the family is French Creole. We got here wth Bienville and helped to found this City of New Orleans. As a child I remember steaming cups of Cafe Au Lait on the breakfast table every morning and wine with dinner every night. I started learning to cook when my age was tallied in single digit numbers. My maternal grandmother has been a proud and vocal keeper of our family’s creole heritage for as long as I can remember.

That makes it personal when a lackwit like Alan Richman makes statements about creoles such as, “I have never met one and suspect they are a faerie folk, like leprechauns, rather than an indigenous race.” Not being satisfied he continued to shove his foot further down his own throat by adding, “the idea that you might today eat an authentic Creole dish is a fantasy.” There are 8 pages of this tripe in his article in GQ Magazine (”Yes, We’re Open” November ‘06 Issue).

I know I am late jumping on the bandwagon with this one having been out of the country for awhile, but I feel impelled to address it. The NY Times has had their say on the subject, now ’tis my turn.

The idea that someone who shows such a fatuous and willfully ignorant attitude is seen as an authority in his field is mind boggling (although not surprising these days). His lack of even a cursory attempt to do any historical or cultural research before making blanket statements of such an insulting nature calls into question his reliability as a food critic and a writer. I guess its okay, after all he didn’t use the racially explosive “N Word,” and he didn’t present a definable epithet. Denying the existence of an ethnic group isn’t the same as actually calling them names, is it? Merde.

I would like to ask everyone reading this to please take a minute and sign the online petition to have him fired from GQ. Ill informed people will always exist, as shall both the narrow minded and the woefully unpleasant. I do not believe that they they should be allowed to spew their ignorance forth as fact .

It only takes a moment and it’s the right thing to do. In addition I will view every signature added as a personal favor to me and to the many generations of creoles that are my forebears. Merci beaucoup!