Eye Of The Storm

2006-04-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

Friends,
As Josh said, this ride has reached its end. I have been humbled and awed by the people who came to this blog to read our words and experience Katrina for these last eight months. I hope it was useful to some and calming to others.
We decided to end this blog today on the news of being honored with the most prestigious journalism award in the country. Not to bring it down, but it is a bittersweet thing to accept. I would gladly hand it back if it would prevent the death and untold suffering for which we were awarded the prize.
Let it also be known that this award only highlights the fact that we did nothing special. Any journalist that I am proud to know would have done the same thing. Some would do it for the glory and adventure, but most would because they believe in the power of words to help, to calm and to force action, especially when life spins around on you and kicks you in the guts.
Katrina chose us, we did not choose Katrina— all we had to do was show up to work.
Thank you all for reading.
Mike Keller

2006-04-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,
We have been asked by our superiors to remove the last two photographs posted to this blog and instead of editing out portions of my last post that some readers could find offensive, it has been removed in its entirety.
I have one thing to add here that Mike and I have not made sufficiently clear: Nothing shown or expressed on this blog is directly or indirectly affiliated with, linked to, as a result of or in league with the views, opinions or beliefs of the Sun Herald or any of its corporate affiliates.
Again, The Sun Herald and its corporate affiliates do not support, agree with or condone any commentary, opinion or even reporting written into or expressed on this blog.

I am humbled by the spirit of the people of south Mississippi and congratulate the Sun Herald staff for its efforts after Hurricane Katrina, which have recently been justly recognized.

I will not be going ahead with the Biloxi Banter blog.
I will repeat one thing I wrote earlier:
Our loyal readers have made this worth it. Thank you profoundly for reading.

Our Dance with Katrina is done.

2006-04-13T20:01:00.000-07:00

Just to keep the content fresh, here's a photo of a chicano caballaro in Gulfport last week during our smallish version of the many nationwide marches protesting the "Sensenbrenner" bill that would have made undocumented immigrants felons. Mississippi Congressman Chip Pickering co-sponsored that bill. I wonder if he considered how many of those immigrants were rebuilding the Gulf Coast?
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-29T19:04:00.000-08:00

As the debate over immigrant laborers rages in the country right now, I find myself in the middle of it down here. Well, at least for the moment. I have become the unofficially official "diversity" reporter at the SunHerald. What that actually means is that I'm supposed to keep up with and write about issues involving the Vietnamese and Latinos on Mississippi's Gulf Coast.
Anyways, after a string of disturbing interactions with locals over my new beat, the following exchange occured.
I will refrain from expressing my true and complete beliefs on this whole thing, (your welcome Keller) because my employers may read this, but I will say this: being of half-Jewish ancestry, I have a hard time refering to a human being as "illegal."

First, I've got here a link to the story that started this all.
Second, I've got the letter I sent out to the newsroom, in addition to an email that I got in response to the linked story. As much as I'd like to do the opposite, I removed all parts of the email that might identify the sender.
I'd like to hear what you all think about all of this.

The story:
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/14210604.htm

The letter:

Hi All,
I have received numerous disturbing responses to my articles on
immigrant laborers in the last few months in person, on the phone and
via email.
Attached is the second email of this nature I have received in response
to my article on immigrant laborers that ran today.
The other email I got simply attacked me personally, but this one
actually raises a point on word usage that we will all probably have to
deal with before long in our work and will certainly be dealing with in
conversation.
It is the question over how to refer to someone who has entered the
country without documentation to live or work and has still not received
official clearance to live or work.
As the writer of this email so astutely points out, there are basically
two ways to refer to them: as "illegal aliens" or "undocumented
workers."
The reason I always refer to them as "undocumented workers" has to do
with the fact that a human being cannot be "illegal."
It is not off-base to call immigrants "aliens" by the ultimate
definition of the word, which is someone or something for somewhere
else. It simply carries with it a connotation that is obviously
negative, and, for some reason, the word "alien" only gets attached to
Latinos these days, not European, Asian, African and Middle Eastern
immigrants.
Laws do not govern the state of a person, rather, they govern a person's
actions. Laws do not consider the existential nature of man, they simply
say what you can or cannot do.
Hence why the state of Texas came up with the since struck-down and
now-infamous "sodomy laws" that made the acts that homosexual people may
or may not commit illegal and not the state of being homosexual illegal.
While the Texas legislatute would have liked to have proposed Nazi-esqe
laws making a person lawbreaking simply for BEING what they are, it is
impossible to do under modern, humane law creating restrictions, and for
good reason.
My point is, the prevalence of hostile and racist responses I've been
getting about my stories on Latino immigrants makes me uncomfortably
feel like I need to ask you all to think a little harder about how you
refer to them.
Again, it is illegal to enter this country without documentation and it
is illegal to work without a working visa, but it is NOT illegal to BE
from somewhere else, which is what the phrase "illegal alien" implies.
I have had to catch myself several times in conversation to not let the
phrase "illegal aliens" slip out, because it has been so commonly used
for so long.
But since the debate over immigrant laborers is raging right now, and
since there seems to be a segment of society in South Mississippi still
grossly misinformed about and hostily unreceptive towards the presence
of a group of people making the cleanup and recovery more possible, I
feel like we all need to think a little harder about how we refer to
them.
Thanks for listening.
-Josh

To: Subject: LRe: "A Tale Of Workers In A Strange Land" Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 11:55 AM

These people are not "Undocumented Workers" but rather "Illegal Aliens" -- something that journalists just can't seem to get their lips to utter.
They violated our laws to get here -- that makes them ILLEGAL! They are nothing more than "gate-crashers".

Please use proper terminology when printing stories to be digested by the public.

(a guy from)
Gulfport

2006-03-18T18:56:00.000-08:00

And I conclude with these guys, who I simply cannot explain. Anyone having any clue as to who they might be and what those automobiles/go carts are that they're driving, is invited to comment.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

Tell me whether or not you can read that white circular pin because it's a funny one, especially when I tell you the guy wearing it was no younger than 70.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-18T18:50:00.000-08:00

Any of these guys could have been my grandpa Jack, lord rest his soul.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-18T18:49:00.000-08:00

I want to take this time to admit that I think Connie Moran (on the right, wearing boa, Mayor of Ocean Springs) may very well be the foxiest mayor in America, weird hair streaks and all. This photo, unfortunately, does her foxy-ness no justice. I have no idea what kind of mayor she is though, and frankly, I don't care.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-18T18:46:00.000-08:00

I often wonder if people down here are just looking for excuses to throw beads at each other. I heard they did it during the MLK day parade too. Un-frickin-real.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-18T18:45:00.000-08:00

Howdy Y'all. Welcome to Biloxi's St Paddy's Day parade, the subject of today's brief photo essay.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

And for my final, sobering photo of this series. The Sgt. on the left pulled the Cpl. on the right out of an Amtrac that was on fire. They were both riding in it, it suddenly exploded from an IED, 8 other Marines inside died almost instantly, and these two made it. The Cpl. was covered with severe burns and is still recovering. This was actually one of the first times they met up with each other since the incident. The Sgt. got shrapnel in his head and some burns also. This incident occured only three days after the Sgt. was shot in the back while trying to rescue another friend of his. Said the Sgt, "I just felt like I had a big target on me that week." Hard to remember this shit is still going on from the comfort of our living rooms while we scream at the T.V. and its moronic talking heads, no?
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:55:00.000-08:00

These were the two dozen young recruits who showed up mid-morning to wathc the war games on the beach and get psyched about going to war. Too bad that where they'd end up, you'd have to take the water away from the sand equation. (Did that make any sense?)
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:54:00.000-08:00

This is just to prove that we were in Gulfport. That's the Grand Casino in the background.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:53:00.000-08:00

This was one of the few Marines from this company who was not in Iraq during Hurricane Katrina and took a couple of the Amtracs first to Biloxi on Aug 29 to rescue people and then to Waveland (which they got to float to) on August 30.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:51:00.000-08:00

It's also rather unnerving how close to the water you ride in this. These guys must get utterly drenched in these poorly ventilated bastards in any kind of waves.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:50:00.001-08:00

but damn was it fun
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:50:00.000-08:00

It's mostly surreal because these things are the size of mid-sized bedrooms. My 6'1", 230 lb, ass was a tight squeeze in there.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:48:00.000-08:00

It is hard to explain how amazing the displacement of water is from these 27 ton bohemoths as they move through the water at 10-20 knots. It's rather surreal.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:47:00.000-08:00

And yes, yours truly got to ride along.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:45:00.001-08:00

These boys were fighting in the Al-Anbar province near Syria. Needless to say, there isn't a whole helluva lot of water there, so this was the first time in two years they got to drive their Amtracs in water.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:45:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of spending last Saturday with a group of amphibious assault vehicle (aka Amtrac) driving Marines recently returned form Iraq as they practiced on the beach in Gulfport. Hulluva nice bunch of guys, except for this one uncomfortable moment where one of them, some smart-ass Sgt., says in reference to some period of time from last year, "And where were you that May, when we were sweating our asses off, dying, bleeding, fighting in the desert protecting your FREEDOM! Sitting on your ass probably!" Thankfully, he cracked a smile, but not before he had quite artfully allowed an uncomfortable moment to pass. We warmed up to each other eventually, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it was a rather thought provoking joke.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

I had to send the cop photo again cause i think you can see his face better in this one.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

Finally, my favorite photo of the day. This looked like a black blob on my view finder, but a little digital magic on the contrast and brightness made, for me, a very entertaining photo.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

This is ony of my favorite photo techniques, where (for you photography nerds) you close the aperture and slow down the shutter speed from normally balanced setting and then pan with the subject as the shutter is open. What's great about the reality of this scene is that they were going maybe five miles per hour.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

I did not go to any of the Coast's parades, because I was lazy on Saturday and forced to work Fat Tuesday, but I did not get the sense of urgent release like so many people described going on for other people's parades. There were about 1,500 people there, which must be the entire population of Stone County, but it was just kind of a ho-hum and not wild family affair.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-01T19:20:00.000-08:00

No explanation necessary.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-01T19:19:00.000-08:00

I just enoy this quirky shot of the band.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-01T19:18:00.000-08:00

Because the "Official" King and Queen did not show up, this regal pair stood in for them. Think I was making them nervous?
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-01T19:17:00.000-08:00

Wiggins' Mardi Gras dog, the bulldog Hoot.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-03-01T19:11:00.000-08:00

I had the thrill and privilege of covering the Wiggins-Stone County Chamber of Commerece Mardi Gras parade on Fat Tuesday instead of the booze-orgy that is the St Anne's parade in the French Quarter that my erstwhile colleague Herr Basement had so much fun at that he mostly forgot how the last half of his day went, only that it somehow involved a Panamanian lawyer in a catsuit, or so he claims. Anwyays, above are my photos from Wiggins. I thought this was a bad shot till I saw the expression on the cop's face. Let me know if you can see it too.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-02-24T19:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to another HOLY S#%T moment for me in regards to my place in the new frontier of blogging journalists:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002074689

I can't say I'm surprised that journos get fired for putting things on their blogs, and that they have been for years, but it still makes me uneasy.
In my relatively narrow opinion, it seems like news organizations want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to blogs and and their reporters blogging. They want the notoriety and "cool factor" that a blogging reporter can bring to their paper or TV station or whatever, yet they don't want to allow the full intellectual freedom that blogging can be.
Unfortunately, this intellectual freedom often leads to moronic behavior or, as my girlfriend so astutely put it, "mental masturbation." (Case in point, see earlier post on the reporter in Delaware.)
It does not take a genius to see how public statements (which is basically what blogging is) can affect your career as a (relatively) public figure in journalism.
I agree that we should be held accountable for what we say and do in the public realm as the supposed eyes, ears and conscious of society. But blogging and the internet has since its inception blurred the public/private line.I am mostly made nervous by the lack of a clear defining line between what is a fireable blog entry and what is just goodhearted fun. Hence why we have been so reserved on this blog, (save for FEMA criticism).
In retrospect, it makes me a little bit nervous about my salty toungue on this blog. Yeah, that kind of language is not what I use in the newsroom or in my reporting, unless the source starts it, but it is what I use in the day to day, thanks to my Jerzey upbringing. Mike cautioned me against using the language, saying it meant that I was, well, dumb because I couldn't think of a better, non-profane way to say it. I disagreed and do still disagree of course, as I think cursing adds honest, unrepressed emotion to things like blogs.
But now I am nervous that the same bosses who gave me permission to do this blog so long as I wasn't working may take offense to something like my sometimes nasty language and perhaps do to me what they did to that guy in Houston and that kid in Delaware.
Or, maybe I'm worrying too much and over analysing the whole thing.
Ah, fuck it.

2006-02-23T19:20:00.000-08:00

Here are the links to the Katrina dead stories in their entirety. I will post some follow ups on these stories depending on time and whether you all ask any questions. There is a chance the links will stop working, so let me know if they do and I'll try and work something else out. Unfortunately the photos are not attached to the last two anymore. Again, I'll try and work something out.
Personally, I felt best about the quality of the third one (How Did They Die?). However many people have responded to the first one very emotionally. Ah well. They're all long reads, so be patient and read through to the end...I guarantee it'll be rewarding in some way.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/13893899.htm

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/13903323.htm

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/13909486.htm

2006-02-23T19:13:00.000-08:00

By popular demand and without paragraph markers because I can't get the code to copy right, here's the Burning Man story.
(FYI, last I heard they'd gone to Pearlington, Miss., to set up shop.)
The following appears courtesy of the Sun Herald.

BILOXI - The Burning Man group spends one week every year building aplace called Black Rock City for 35,000 people in the middle of theNevada desert. They then spend a week enjoying their city as an artfestival and another three weeks burning it up and tearing it down. While the public perception of the group is sometimes less thanpositive, it actually takes a host of construction and demolition skillsto do what they do, in addition to organizational capabilities andinitiative. "The people who say it's just a bunch of people running around thedesert taking controlled substances haven't been, don't know whatthey're talking about," said Tom Price, a Burning Man member. "Peopleare super-self-motivated." That self-motivation and a bit of dumb luck led members of the group toSouth Mississippi shortly after their annual event ended in August, andthey put their skills to work helping locals in Point Cadet andelsewhere to recover and rebuild from Hurricane Katrina. Almost every piece of art created for the Burning Man festival getsburned at the end of the event, and one of the centerpieces is a woodentemple, Price said. One of the men who regularly constructs the temple,Matt Linsday, heard about the hurricane during the August festival anddecided upon return to Oregon that he had to help out, Price said. Linsday then hopped in his construction crane and drove it for fivedays with two friends before ending up in front of the destroyed Van DucBuddhist Temple in Biloxi, Price said. Linsday felt it to be too much ofa temple-to-temple coincidence, so he parked his crane and set up campin the Biloxi temple's parking lot. Word spread quickly via the group's Web site and word of mouth, andLinsday's father and friends and fellow Burning Man participants beganarriving in droves with funds and supplies, Price said. A name was eventually given to the spontaneous group of do-gooders,Burners Without Borders. Though there is no leader or president ofBurners Without Borders, the group gets the job done. In the last fivemonths, hordes of members have come and gone, handing out mountains ofsupplies, moving tons of debris, completely repairing the Van Duc Templeand cleaning up dozens of homes along the way. Help for the Burners has come from far and wide. Jeff Wolfe, who worksfor the Atlanta-based company that makes Daewoo construction equipment,showed up one day and handed Price the keys to several pieces of heavyconstruction equipment on a year-long free rental program. ActressPatricia Arquette sent a truckload of tools. Those who come to work represent a broad spectrum of interests andskills. Some members, like 20-year-old Eli Lyon of Seattle, had been driftingsince the festival and decided helping out after the storm was the rightthing to do for a time. Others, like 41-year-old carpenter Philip Leizgold of Houston, had beenlooking for the right time and place to put their skills to use.Leizgold said he did not want to do cleanup work, which is why he waiteduntil last week when debris cleanup was well under way to show up andlend his carpentry expertise. He has built everything from cabinets forhomeowners to ramps for FEMA trailers. The group largely survives financially on the kindness of friends andstrangers to pay for rent back home and food and fuel here, because theydo not have official status as a charity. This and their ability to work around federal and state regulations hasperhaps been the cause of some grumbling from local officials, Pricesaid. Locals also have taken to the group slowly, Price said. One member wholeft recently had long dreadlocks and a bone through his nose; he madesome locals uncomfortable, Price said. "If that funny-looking person is the one cleaning your house or givingyou food, you get over it," Price said. Today is the last day for Burners Without Borders in Biloxi. They willbe moving their base to Pearlington but continue to work in all threecoastal counties until April, Price said.< The group ardently maintainsits free-spirited roots, even in the midst of the tattered lives it ishelping to rebuild. There was a fireworks-filled trip aboard a raft made of storm debris toDeer Island recently, Price said.< And at the end of almost every longday, Price said the group does what it does best: "We burn things."<

2006-02-23T19:01:00.000-08:00

This is all I have to say about my vacation and the wonderful charm and restorative powers of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-02-19T19:52:00.000-08:00

Howdy folks. Been a while. MKeller here.
I figured since our boy Josh is soaking in the tropical sun and pina coladas with dark rum floaters in an undisclosed location (how's that for a slew of prepositional phrases), I'd reappear for a post.
First off, Norman gets props and a link for a great series about those souls taken by Katrina:
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/13909486.htm
I think this link is the last of the three-part series.
I think the series really pops because the editors had the good sense to start it with maps created by an evil cartographer named MKeller.

While Josh has had the dubious distinction of focusing on the dead for nearly a month now, I have gone back to my pre-storm environment, energy and business beats. Of course, every enviro or business story has some Katrina peg to it.

I have been noticing Chertoff and Brownie on the TV pointing fingers and laying blame. It's interesting that I never here conversations about how the government handled the storm, except for the occasional FEMA jab or joke.
Now the insurance companies, that's another story.

I was lucky on Saturday in that I had to drag myself out of a warm bed on a cold and rainy morning to cover Orange Grove's Mardi Gras parade. For those who don't know, Mardi Gras on the coast is much more family oriented than the debauchery over in New Orleans. Parents bring their kids to the parade route where merry revelers on gold, green and purple floats pelt them with plastic beads and trinkets, called throws.

I got to the staging point of the parade about an hour early and walked around. It was overcast and a cold mist was coming down, making note taking a bit like trying to write on wet toilet paper.
Yet the folks waiting to mount the floats were not all that heavily dressed. "Curious," I said to myself when I realized that no one seemed to be the slightest cold and yet all of their faces held beaming grins and rosy cheeks.
Then I started to notice a correlation between smiles and 32-ounce plastic cups containing some clearly spiked orange juice. "Damn the Mardi Gras revelers," I said to myself. I wished I could have been so prepared.
Everybody who I talked with said almost the same sentence- "We could really use a parade."
I think people are tired of being tired.
Anyways, it was a good couple hours for people to enjoy themselves.

Josh suggested I post some of the bars that are left and worth a damn. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow, or maybe I'll keep those Ocean Springs haunts secret. One doesn't like to be crowded in when one sets down to have a cocktail.

Anybody in the vicinity should try to make it over to Mardi Gras in NOLA. All the parades are running on one route from Uptown this year and the Krewe of Endymion rolls this Saturday at 3:30. I think the Krewe of Rex rolls at 10 am on Fat Tuesday.
It won't be as crowded this year, which will be a good thing. I haven't been to Mardi Gras since college.
Check out this site for proper masks:
http://www.amasquerade.com/ThemePages/mask.htm
I think either the bauta, the Cuori Bastone or one of the nasos would do the trick.

2006-02-11T16:11:00.000-08:00

The series on Katrina's victims will run next weekend when I am on vacation, but I will post it here with extras after it runs.
I thought an update on the Coast might be relevant now:
Officially, there are 166 known victims of Hurricane Katrina in South Mississippi's three coastal counties, including four unidentified victims but not including the estimated 300 or so missing people. That does not mean 300 people were swept to sea. All it means is that the official number of victims will surely rise. I will explain later once the series runs how FEMA severely screwed up the search for missing people in Mississippi.
The most active aid groups here now are probably all faith-based, except for HandsOn International, Americorps and members of the Burning Man festival-sponsered group, and this is no joke, "Burners without Borders."
If there is an interest, I'll post the story I wrote about them later.
FEMA continues to make life difficult down here for everybody, from mayors to tent dwellers. I don't know how to explain it except that for every good thing they do, and they do do some good things, I hear about three instances where incompetency, arrogance, ignorance, laziness or miscommunication have really messed something up.
There are not as many people in tents as there were before but there are still a lot, mostly in Pass Christian and in random spots in Hancock County.
Debris cleanup is about three quarters done coast-wide, but Pass Christian and HAncock County are way behind the curve, largely thanks to the hyper-careful slowness of the Army Corps of Engineers. The big problem now is getting onto private property to remove debris and demolish badly damaged houses, and you can imagine the massive fights that go on with that, especially with so many people still living out of state.
Homeowners are slowly starting to rebuild. There is the big problem now of building back safer, which of course also means more expensive. The federal government is wisely, in my opinion, dangling financial incentives in front of towns and individuals that build back safer.
Despite the extra money that it might provide, The Coast's towns have all rejected a regional water and sewer authority that would have come with a $600 million dollar bonus because, as one local mayor put it to me recently, "They can't take away our authority like that."
It's funny how improtant home rule is here. I never thought about it really, coming out of the Northeast. We don't really have that attitude there, save maybe New York City itself. What's great about many local's opinions on home rule is that they don't take into account the fact that an overarching governing body could actually mean less levels of bureacracy than several small local governing bodies, especially for businesses.
Ah well, the -you-won't-tell-me-how-to-run-my-ship attitude down here does go back to the beginning of Southern culture though. Hence all the guns.
'Tis a shame though.
Businesses are trickling back. Three casinos are taking people's money as we speak. Just about every month from now to August another should be opening up or breaking ground on their new land-based operations.
The FEMA trailers are, apparently, pieces of crap. As a coworker put it last week, "My FEMA trailer has a blue roof."
The best place to get drunk on the Coast right now is Ocean Springs, at least according to my erstwhile co-blogger Mike. There are several cool bars open there now. Harrison County still only has bars that are guarenteed to present you with at least one mullet and at least one toothless grin before the evening is done. Good for a laugh, but not for chilling out. Perhaps I'll coax him into giving a better update on the Coast's nightlife, of which he is an expert. I generally go to New Orleans or Mobile for a good time.
We're giving a talk at USM about this blog next week. Not quite sure what to say yet, other than our laziness in keeping it updated lost us a lot of readers.
There was a great story about a (moronic) kid in Delaware who was fired from his reporting job for posting some (moronically) inappropriate comments on his myspace.com blog.
http://www.nbc10.com/news/6667658/detail.html

I can say confidently that I am definitely not as moronic as that kid after reading his blog, but it still made the hairs on the back of my head stand up because he was fired, apparently, without prior warning that what he puts on his blog could get him fired. I know only a small amount of common sense needs to go into making that connection, but still, it's fucked up that there was no warning.
And on that uneasy note I close.

2006-02-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

Sorry to flip to a more somber mood on this blog, but I must to explain my absence. About a month ago my editors asked to me write about the Katrina dead in South Mississippi, all of them, in whichever way I saw fit.
Needless to say, that's occupied my time recently.
When the series is published in our paper, I'll either post links to it or simply run it in its entirety here along with comments on the reporting of the story and other tidbits I couldn't run.
It's funny, but talking about the dead is something we only touched on briefly at the beginning of this blog. Truth be told, the dead won't have as much of an impact on Gulf Coast society as the destruction will, but to lose their stories to time and apathy is to have failed them.
So I apologize again for the change in tone, but I do not regret it.

2006-02-08T16:40:00.000-08:00

This photo was taken about two weeks ago in front of the house in which the only toddler to die during Katrina drowned. I found his mother the morning after the storm sitting to the right of where those flowers are. The toddler, Matthew, was lying on a stool wrapped in a blanket just behind where those flowers sit. I don't know who put this makeshift memorial in front of the house, but it was put their sometime this year as I have visited the house many times and only saw it for the first time recently. The quote is from a 17th century French priest.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-01-06T14:34:00.000-08:00

This is the end result of too many fireworks and bottles of booze on the only night of the year where it is not only excusable to get stupid, but encouraged. The lady to my right asked not to be identified for fear it might incriminate her chihuahua and the gentleman in the gray t-shirt, well, I have no idea who that vagrant is. I think he's german though. Here's to a new year. and thanks again for reading.

This photo by Joshua Norman

2006-01-01T09:48:00.000-08:00

Happy frickin New Year!
I am working this fine, misty New Year's Day while my cohort is allowed the requisite recovery time from an excess of booze and fireworks.
And with that, I present some New Year's wishes":
May my headache go away.
May this year bring a waning in natural disasters.
May my New Year's baby story not be difficult to deal with.
May the road rise to meet you all.

2005-12-30T19:35:00.000-08:00

This is on 2nd Street In Pass Christian. The Pass is the only city in Harrison County that took FEMA's advice and contracted the Army Corps of Engineers to remove debris instead of a private local contractor. They have also shown the slowest progress in debris removal in the county.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-12-29T18:32:00.000-08:00

Finally, I am getting around to answering some questions from earlier.
Frauding and the Red Cross:
Sure there is. Fraud is an American institution. I have not seen or heard any direct stories though. There is also not much the Red Cross can do about it. They are short-staffed and in debt and therefore can only put Band-Aids on their problems for now.

The mall:
It's open for business. About half of the stores are already open and nearly all should return before the summer. Retail in general is about at 50% of pre-storm levels Coast-wide in the places that weren't destroyed. Many businesses whose offices were destroyed are quickly moving inland and/or into trailers. Nearly all of Pass Christian's businesses are now in trailers in Memorial Park on Beach Blvd. http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/special_packages/condo_watch/13491751.htm

Where the cash from all these benefit albums/books/art shows/etc. is going:
It is very hard to say. As a former development worker in the third world I can say that nothing is harder than getting money to someone or something that needs it the right way. In all likelihood, most of it is going to someone's idea of a good cause (read: pet project). Sometimes that cause involved God and/or Jesus. Sometimes it involves music. Sometimes it involves schools. The need is so spread out here in Mississippi, I'd be hesitant to say one place needs it worse than others.
That said, there is no doubt the schools have suffered greatly here on the coast. Mississippi is consistently ranked in the bottom five states (often below Puerto Rico too) in education standards and success rates. Considering that so many schools were wiped out, so many teachers were dislocated or forced to leave because of a lack of shelter and that things were already so bad there, it's a safe bet your money will go a long way towards a good thing. To donate, here is a list with contact information for all the local school districts:
http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/Katrina/help/assist_contacts.htm.
Simply call up your favorite district (the ones near us are Harrison, Jackson and Hancock Counties in addition to Biloxi, Gulfport, Moss Point, Ocean Springs, Bay-Waveland, PAscagoula, Pass Christian, and Long Beach) or send an email and say you want to help. I can guarentee you they'd take it.That said, supporting the cultural community could be just as important. The South prides itself on its art and culture and it is also a big money maker for it. So keeping the arts alive here would probably help in the long run, it's just not where I'd recommend sending my aid money right now.

Casino check-off:
Imperial Palace is fully functioning and ready to take your insurance settlement check anytime you want.
The Palace is going to open one bar and some gaming in time for New Year's.
Isle of Capris is mostly fully funcitonal. Still a few hiccups but it's bascially back. And that's it for now. More updates on that to come.

That's all. Not as many questions as I thought on second look. Remember, we are here to pontificate, so throw us some questions every now and again and I promise we will work harder to answer them.

Finally, before I go, I need to plug a story I wrote that did not get as much play as I would have liked. I know this is going to sound like I am tooting my own horn, but screw it, I think it's an important sotry and that not enough people who matter are going to read it.
Here's the lede, courtesy of the Sun Herald:
Dr. J. Chester McKee has the most unusual distinction of being someone who was invited to Jackson twice in his lifetime to consult on the recovery from Mississippi's worst natural disaster.
The first time was after Hurricane Camille, when Gov. John Bell Williams invited the former Mississippi State University professor to be the director of the Governor's Emergency Council, formed on Sept. 6, 1969, with the directive of coordinating and guiding Mississippi's recovery and rebuilding effort.
The second trip came almost exactly 36 years later when Jim Barksdale, chairman of the Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal, invited McKee back to Jackson to share some of his lessons learned.
"The problems were pretty much the same as we've got now for Katrina," McKee said by telephone last week.
The GEC disbanded after three years with some success, but most of its suggestions went unrealized, said former GEC members and staffers.
Here's the whole story:
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/13483562.htm

Again, thanks for reading! More photos to come...

2005-12-26T21:28:00.000-08:00

Well, it was an uplifting holiday weekend for me on the Coast. Out-of-town volunteers and the people of South Mississippi proved again how much solemn resolve they could muster to share their hearts with neighbors in need.
On Saturday, I went over to Bay St. Louis to cover a Christmas eve party at an emergency distribution center. After wandering around for a good bit of time, I glommed onto little Maddy, a 3-year-old who was much less concerned about the fact that she was at a party than with piling dirt and grass into a little pile. Story follows, of course courtesy of Sun Herald:

BAY ST. LOUIS - Madeline "Maddy" Bellman intently piled handfuls of brown grass and dirt into a small mound in the outfield of Bay St. Louis' McDonald Field during a Christmas celebration Saturday.

"I'm making a mountain with a straw on top," the 3-year-old said.

A pile of gift-wrapped shoeboxes next to Maddy along the outfield fence dwarfed her and her mountain. The gifts, organized and brought down by volunteers with Quota International, a community service group, would be handed out later in the morning to the 400 children invited to the party.

"The shoeboxes came from over 20 cities throughout the United States," said Vicki Miller, a member of the group's local chapter who was dressed up like a rock 'n' roll elf, complete with glittery white stars painted on her face. "The boxes have crayons, school supplies and dolls for girls and boys."

At the party, recorded Christmas music could be heard coming from a red-and-white striped tent placed over home plate. Inside, a band named "Tribute" set up on a makeshift dance floor of plywood and shipping palettes.

The band started up.

Maddy, looking content from a project finished, stood and yelled, "Now it's finished!"

"Here's your flag, honey," said her mother, Angela Bellman. Maddy stuck the flag, a straight twig with a piece of grey duct tape at the tip, into her mound.

Sleigh bells sounded in the distance and a group of children playing football and bingo looked up the street.

Santa Claus walked up to the field and Maddy took off from her mother's side to meet him.

"Santa!" Maddy yelled at him, as if Santa didn't know his own name.

"Ho, Ho, Ho!" he said loudly.

Moments later, the glare of a weakened sun filtering through a heavy Coast fog made Maddy squish her face to protect her eyes and then look down. There on the ground she found her mountain. As quickly as that, Maddy forgot about Santa and went back to piling grass on the mound.

A while later, after making her mountain even higher and intermittently running through the crowd, Maddy curled up on one of the folding chairs. She sat backwards on it and rested her chin on the seat back.

It was not yet noon, but Maddy had already had a full Christmas Eve day.

-30-

The story was twice as long, but so goes the heavy hand of editing for a daily newspaper.

I went along with some volunteers on Sunday, Christmas day, who used their own holiday to prepare, pack and deliver turkey dinners to the needy. I met some really interesting people at the place, including a Duke University student who dragged his parents down from NC to do some volunteering on the Coast. He was a public policy student at the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, a great school with some really smart people coming out of it.

Sorry, my mind started wandering there for a sec. Where was I? Oh yeah, meals to the needy.

Another interesting guy I met there was Jamey Turner, who was entertaining the volunteers with a bunch of cognac snifters that, with wet fingers that he slid atop their rims, he played Mozart and Beethoven on.

Story is at the following link:

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/13488048.htm

Again, I don't know who's doing the editing, but they hacked off the lede in the online story. I was proud of that sentence because I used both 'nary' and 'awash.' Maybe that's why they hacked it. Oh well.

2005-12-22T13:31:00.000-08:00

For everyone still tuning in, I want to wish you all a very happy holiday season and new year filled with luck, joy and excitement (if that's what you're into).
Down here, the first casino reopened today after being out of commission for 116 days. I hear they have three floors of gaming delight re-opened, but no buffets or restaurants to complete the hedonism.
On a state-of-the-coast note, November unemployment figures for Mississippi came in yesterday. In the six coastal counties, over 34,000 people were unemployed and seeking assistance, around 17 percent of the labor force.
I will be covering some Christmas events over the weekend and I'll try to do a better job of keeping you all updated.
Again, Happy Holidays!

2005-12-21T08:45:00.000-08:00

And I close this post in Long Beach where all the firmen from out of state who volunteered there after the storm surprised their local colleagues this weekend by driving down a van load of gifts for all their kids and families. It was good to see some of these rough and tough firemen in Long Beach finally shed a tear or two.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-12-21T08:41:00.001-08:00

Then there are the little versions for you to take home.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-12-21T08:41:00.000-08:00

Every firemen's kid in Biloxi was able to get at least three gifts. Here they are after being sorted. A big hello to Woodbridge, NJ, for lending a hand with this shipment of toys.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-12-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

Nothing says the holidays like taking out a classic car and putting it on display.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-12-21T08:38:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd continue the holiday theme with an impressive showing in Long Beach with the lights display. Reminds me of home...
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-12-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

"Don we now our gay apparel....." Happy Holidays, South Mississippi style.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-12-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

Hey folks.
No, the blog hasn't closed down yet.
I know it's been a while since the last one. We've been a little busy and lazy.
Our time recently has been filled with working and farting around.
As the Gulf Coast settles into the minutae of rebuilding, I guess I can't figure out as well what would be of interest to the outside world.
I'll start running some of the more interesting tidbits of info again that I get. (Example: found out that Long Beach alone had 4 million tons of debris.)
I don't know what my cohort's plans for this thing are.

Update on the Coast:
Debris cleanup is about 50% done. At least for all the debris that they're aware of.
The raging battle between slimy insurance adjusters (One of whom, I read in his report, claimed that Katrina was a Category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 75 mph when it hit shore) and homeowners goes on.
Illegal immigrants continue to get ripped off by contractors. I've heard (from both immigration authorities and immigrants) that subcontractors will frequently call immigration rather than pay illegals what they are owed.
Rebuilding has not really begun yet. The "new" construction I've seen has largely been small, cheap stuff way inland.
The Governer's Commission has big plans and strong assurances that their big plans will be put into place. To see their big plans, which are interesting, go to www.mississippirenewal.com.
I am personally skeptical of the high-minded values of modern urban designers winning out over the almighty green of developers and their interests.
Looting, apparently, still continues. I've heard from several Long Beach residents saying they've seen and dealt with shady individuals south of the CSX tracks on several occasions. As one woman told me, "They've stolen every last blade of grass at my place."
Housing is a funny issue now. There are still a lot of people in tents. They are quickly running out of public land on which to put trailers. Towns don't want to give up the land for it because of the strain on city services and the fact that there are still "emergency" trailer parks in Florida that are 3 years old now.
Jobs are still plentiful, they're just not good jobs. That is a large part of the reason why the Latino population is so succesful; immigrant laborers will do almost anything. However, as FEMA and Red Cross money dries up, those jobs will be filled up quickly.
We're coming up on the high stress season here. Combine the holidays with the normal PTSD-like symptoms that come up several months after disasters, and we should be in for an interesting holiday ride.
I don't know what else to write about.
Since there are probably only a dozen or two of you folks still reading this, I'll do my best to answer any questions you may have.

My personal info update: I've settled well into my new place. It's only about a mile from my old one, closer to the beach and on higher ground. Go figure.
My girlfriend's dog likes it so much that she's pooped on the floor an average of 1.5 times per week that she's lived there. I've been told that it's a sign of good luck.
I got to go home for Thanksgiving and was relieved that my relatives were largely gentle in their questioning.
I did the StoryCorps thing this weekend during the Giants game. (Which they won. Go Giants.) It's a really interesting project, if you get a chance, I'm gonna go ahead and link another website here: www.storycorps.net. It's great stuff and if you live near where ever they end up, you should check it out, it's great.

And just so those of you still with us know, you will know this blog has ended when I put up what I call, "the money shot," of my colleague showing Hurricane Katrina where the sun don't shine. Yes, there was a wire photo by a professional, but mine was better. So, if you see that, you'll know it's all over but the cryin'.

2005-11-18T20:00:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd end this with a personal favorite: Tuesday's sunset in Pass Christian.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-18T19:59:00.000-08:00

This photo is a better indication of what happened to Jeffries house. Those are his steps on the left with the foundation cinderblocks in the background and his house on the right.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

Say hi to, well, his name is on the building behind him. Jeffries helped his uncle build that house in Pass Christian some six decades ago. It was knocked around by Hurricane Camille - it floated a good 100 feet away - but stayed intact. Katrina did much worse. It floated it only 30 feet away, but cracked severely in half. Such is the way things are in most of Pass Christian. I heard recently, and haven't had a chance to confirm yet, that only 130 or so out of nearly 4,000 of all structures there are useable.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

Buenos Dias! Arturo here shares this tent with six other people on a frisbee golf course in Lyman because, well, he's got no other choice. The Mexican migrant worker has been having trouble finding work since a crew he was working on exposed the fact that they weren't get paid and other contractors have been hesitant to hire them because the know they'll demand fair pay. Imagine that!
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-12T18:42:00.000-08:00

The following appears courtesy of the SunHerald -
The rubber boot rose high into the air, landed with a dull thud androlled within just a few feet of a bucket inside two white circlespainted on the ground. The crowd let out a cheer and the welly boot tosscompetition ended just as it began, with smiles all around.Welcome to the first and possibly last Wee Mini Scottish Highland Games,hosted by Karen and Jeff Green at their Long Beach home on Country FarmRoad Saturday afternoon.These games were the substitute for the 20-year-old Celtic Gamesnormally hosted by the Highlands and Islands Association, a Scottishheritage group made up of expatriates, Scottish descendents and generalCeltic enthusiasts from all over Mississippi.The official games ? which draw up to 3,000 people annually ? werecanceled because of "tha’ wee storm," so Scotland native Karen Greendecided to host a smaller version in her expansive backyard for 50 or sofriends, relatives and anyone who managed to hear about it."The folks who lost everything, they need something like this," Greensaid.As its name indicates, these were a seriously miniaturized and somewhatsilly version of the centuries-old Celtic games, which normally involvepicking up large or heavy objects and throwing them as far as you can.The welly boot toss competition stood in for the caber toss, in whichcontestants try to throw a 19-foot long, 120 pound poll end over end.The games also included a tug of war and a fishing competition in theGreen’s pond. Former firefighter Mike Bass of Long Beach was the runawaywinner with a 6-inch perch.The main similarities between the Wee Mini Games and the actual eventwere the abundance of fermented barely drinks - namely beer and scotch -as well as a significant number of men in skirts which the men calledkilts.While the men claimed the pleated, plaid and airy designs are quitemanly in Scotland in addition to being traditional Scottish dress withsignificant historical and genealogical meaning, their appearance didnot vary greatly from the getups many of their wives were wearing.The colors and design in kilts have significant meaning, Green said,with the variations in kilts symbolizing a person’s family, geographicarea or country.To that end, Green recently submitted a design to Scotland’s TartanAssociation and the Mississippi State Legislature to be the officialstate tartan.Maggie Bass, also a Scot, said she admired the design.Bass, whose husband was the fishing competition winner, said she lovesMississippi for its people and weather, a large part of the reason shehas been here over 20 years.While her home, which lies just north of Magnolia Street in Long Beach,sustained major damage after the hurricane, it was livable. She said thehurricane has done nothing to dampen her enthusiasm for her new adoptedhome."You have to put up with something to live in paradise," Bass said. "TheBritish Consulate called to help get me away after the storm, as I amstill a subject and they knew I lived here. I told them I am not goinganywhere!"As the afternoon wound down, the promise of a ceili, or Celtic music jamsession, had the group upbeat. With several bagpipers, bodhran(traditional Celtic drum) players, guitarists, a singer and an accordionplayer in attendance, the night was sure to be long.

2005-11-12T16:40:00.000-08:00

Close up of the proposed official Mississippi state tartan. Description of the meaning of the colors - Dark Green: for the never ending forests of Pine and evergreen leaves of the Magnolia.Light Green: for the lustrous leaves of the Great Southern Oaks.Dark Blue: for the waters of the world famous Mississippi River and the many lakes within the State.Red: for the color in our State Flag, and for the blood shed in our historic past.White: for the beautiful sands of the MS Gulf Coast, and the cotton fields of home.Yellow: for the heart of the Magnolia, our beautiful State Flower.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-12T16:39:00.000-08:00

Looking over the proposed official Mississippi state tartan.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-12T16:37:00.000-08:00

The welly boot toss competition, which was a stand in for the caber toss at the Wee Mini Scottish Highland games in Long Beach.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-12T16:36:00.000-08:00

This is the eventual winner of the fishing competition at the Wee Mini Scottish Highland Games. A self-described "Mississippi coon-ass" who married a Scottish woman, he won with a 6-inch perch.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-09T18:33:00.000-08:00

That's the Tran house. There used to be nine people in it. Four have moved away in search of work. Grandma Tran, in striped shirt, worked in the shrimping industry, like a majority of the Vietnamese on the Gulf Coast, and is now jobless, like a majority of the Vietnamese on the Gulf Coast. Papa Tran said he was able to get nothing out of the house.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-09T18:31:00.000-08:00

I am working on a story about the Vietnamese community. This is the Tran family. That's Julie in pink. She attached herself to my leg during my time with them. Papa Tran, in cap in background, was a welder in Mobile. That's their FEMA trailer. There's six of them in there.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

Another fog photo. This is on Highway 90 in Biloxi at around 5:30 p.m.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-09T09:21:00.000-08:00

There's been a spooky fog in South Mississippi the last few days. It feels like London. Driving along the beach road at night is harrowing, as visibility has been at around 50 feet and there are no lights there.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-05T16:37:00.000-08:00

The woman in the dress is a Vietnamese immigrant from California filming a music video amongst the rubble to appeal for aid at home and in America for the thousands of Vietnamese in Biloxi who lost their homes, jobs and everything else to Hurricane Katrina.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-11-05T16:35:00.000-08:00

Yes, that's yours truly with a 6-foot, 10-pound, red-tailed boa constrictor named Beta found in the rubble of Long Beach last week. Someone discovered it out in their yard curled up in a couch. The thing survived about two months on its own. Well, that and a category 4 hurricane, assuming it was someone's pet. Being that it is indigenous to the jungles of South America, I am assuming that it was in a house that was destroyed and survived. I've contemplated bringing it home, as it needs a home at the moment, but I live with a 5-pound chihuahua now and Beta would make quick work of her.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T19:04:00.000-07:00

And this'll be today's last photo. It was great, this Halloween fest, just two months after this town was leveled. My heart ached everywhere I went on the coast after the storm, but nowhere worse than the Pass. It was thrilling to see this town scratch and claw its way back to almost zero. Well, I guess they're a long way from that, but there was nothing hollow about their desire to have some fun. It was more than earned, it was a needed infusion of hope. That's why I leave you today with this photo, of the beach in the Pass. This spot was under at least 35 feet of water during the storm. Houses, cars, people floated over it on their way back to the sea, from where all life begins. This little growth, this burst of green on the stark stretch of white sand and debris represents the end of a cycle of disbelief and skepticism for me. Life goes on.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

Ah, to be a kid.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

And the award for one of the best costume pairs I've ever seen goes to Jayme (the bottled water) and Rebecca (the MRE). FYI, Rebecca is No. 13, the vegetable tortellini.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

If it weren't for the mountain of debris in the background, you might not know the eye of one of the worst hurricanes in modern history passed over this spot.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T18:51:00.000-07:00

There she is, Pass Christian native and Good Morning America host Robin Roberts. I can't imagine where Mississippi would be without its native sons and daughters. Christ, do you think anyone in the NFL would've even known Katrina leveled this part of the Gulf Coast if Brett Farve's boyhood home in Kiln had not been flattened? Do you think Dubya would've made 8 trips here if the maginficent Haley Barbour were not our governor? Do you think Good Morning America would have bothered with this teeny, devastated town, were it not for Robin? Shoot, how many of you would have known about this place and what happened had you not stumbled across our blog? I still get riled up a bit about how much more attention New Orleans got/is getting. I still hear stories of people asking whether or not Mississippi was even affected by KAtrina, of some companies considering anything outside of a 40-mile radius of New Orleans not in a Hurricane-affected area. Tell that to the kids sleeping in tents on the beach going to school in mobile homes and having to celebrate Halloween two days early without the trick-or-treating because their whole neighborhood was leveled and there are literally no doorbells to ring. Sorry, had to let that one out.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T18:44:00.000-07:00

That's Thomas in the white shirt. I met him about three days after the storm, sifting through the rubble next to the slab that was his house. He's in a FEMA trailer now. I wrote a story about him desperately searching for childhood keepsakes of his daughter, Evelyn. Thomas's parents had lost all his childhood keepsakes to Hurricane Camille, and he was determined to not let Katrina do the same thing for his daughter. He stumbled across a DVD with all his daughter's baby videos on it. He was also looking for SpongeBob stuff, because she is a bit of a SpongeBob freak, as is evident by her costume choice. He managed to salvage a blanket and a few trinhkets. Thomas drove home for me for the first time the scope of personal loss from the hurricane. It was a bit of a wonderful circle seeing him again somewhere far away from the morning I found him dripping with sweat and digging through muck while a mixture of pain and disbelief rolled down his face with his tears. It was awkward too, I have to admit.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

This image is not relevant to any of the others. It's of a gun in the War Memorial Park in which the Pass party took place. It was one of the few things in the park, including several granite structures, that was not knocked over by the surge. That photo from earlier in the blog of the Camille Memorial sits about 30 feet away.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

Even Rocketman (with owner John) got into the mood.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

Watch out Christian Bale, the next generation is ready.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-29T18:32:00.000-07:00

Halloween came back to the Pass today. Being that there are very few neighborhoods to trick-or-treat in, Wal-Mart, Good Morning America, and several local businesses and officials chipped in today to give the Pass's kiddies a taste of what the rest of America's kids are surely taking for granted.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-28T14:40:00.000-07:00

The stupidity of our energy policy is really starting to piss me off. The Department of Energy apparently announced that they want to expand the strategic petroleum reserves from 727 million barrels to somewhere around one billion, making the total days that the reserve would last, given national oil consumption somewhere around the two and a half month mark.
Part of the proposal involves possibly using some salt domes in South Mississippi as storage tanks, then running pipelines, probably through Jackson County, to the Gulf of Mexico. The pipelines would transport oil back and forth and deposit concentrated brine into coastal waters.
Oh yeah, and approximately 30 percent of the American oil supply comes from this area already. Good idea. Lump more essential resource into an area that has a problem with current and future natural disasters.
Economies based on oil are done.
Why won't someone at or near the top get some cajones and force the billions that go into research and development for extending a dying resource, which caused enough problems when it wasn't dying, and redirect it to alternatives?
I'm not even talking about renewables or green energy, though that would be lovely. This isn't a hippie thing. This is a 'substance that fuels every aspect of modern life is on the bad part of the bell curve' thing.

By the way, not that guys at or near the top are reading this, but the machinery and other necessary parts of research and development need something to run on, for lubrication and for other laboratory functions. Do you know what that is? It ain't cherry soda, Baby. It's freaking oil.
Why not squeeze the last drop out of the ground before getting to the point that you need oil in the transition away from oil?

And by the way again, domestic oil prices are affected by rough seas and storms. Oil tankers slow down or avoid rough spots. Diminished supplies over a few days moves that intersection point with the good old demand curve. Way to keep your society fueled by resources that need to be transported over thousands of miles. Oh yeah, resources thousands of miles away and resources negatively impacted by wind. It's a good thing there isn't that much wind on this planet.
Wake up! Damn.
I'm too peeved to edit this.

2005-10-25T23:13:00.000-07:00

About the picture below:
World Shelters is a nonprofit group that specializes in providing these temporary units to people affected by war and disaster all over the world. They brought about 60 of these down to South Mississippi and gave them for free to be used as family living units, supply hangars and emergency clinics.
Not only are they doing good work, the tent design is very smart and very durable. Those PVC skeletons are designed to create the tubular structure when standard FEMA, USAID and UN tarps are connected to them. They have about eight and a half feet of height clearance at the center and are 11 feet wide. They are meant to last for two years in wind, rain and snow.
What's more, World Shelters received praise from USAID and the Buckminster Fuller Institute, an organization that advocates for smart design concepts.

ÂSomething hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary. The whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And thereÂs a tiny thing on the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. ItÂs a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks itÂs going right by you, that itÂs left you altogether. But if youÂre doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, ÂCall me Trim Tab.Â
-R. Buckminster Fuller

2005-10-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

Two employees from a nonprofit called World Shelters showing me one of about 60 tents they set up and gave away in South Mississippi. They are good people doing really good work, and they were super friendly.

2005-10-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

A loader feeds a 35-foot high debris fire.

2005-10-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

Not only wood fed the five-acre fire north of Gulfport. Along with this exercise bike, I also found fences, mattresses and engine components.

2005-10-25T20:48:00.000-07:00

Burning fields north of Gulfport. This is a county vegetation debris-burning site, one of 16 along the Mississippi Coast. At this five-acre pyre alone, over 84,000 cubic yards of trees, branches and shrubs were burned in a single 24-hour period.

2005-10-25T20:39:00.000-07:00

Can't keep the Cajuns from partying.

2005-10-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

The water line of flood waters in an eastern neighborhood of New Orleans. The writing is from a search and rescue team.

2005-10-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

Inside the Shops at Canal Place mall. The town was deserted except for National Guard, cops and utility workers. We walked into this mall, which held a few looted shops. It was silent and weird, except for this security guard playing Beethoven. A proper re-introduction to New Orleans, the party town of lost souls.

2005-10-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

After a bit of a hiatus, mkeller is back. And that's the last time I'll refer to myself in the third person, he promises.
It's been a busy couple of months since last we spoke. I'll try to distill out the worthwhile stuff.
I got my first piece published in a national mag. It's in November's Wired, on shelves now. Or you can save the five bucks and just go here:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/start.html?pg=10

It's a little piece, but I'm alongside Noah Shachtman of www.defensetech.org. I'll consider it an honor being in the same rag as Shachtman, who has been my military/defense technology go-to source for quite a while now.

On the subject of technology, I'd like to bounce an idea off of you people across the wire. I believe that now is the time to begin implementing a hardened and public wireless infrastructure under the umbrella of national security.
Just as the advent of the Internet heralded a time when every citizen could become a journalist, wireless holds the potential for every place to become a newsroom, press, broadcast and radio station or an emergency management center.
Lets take the initiative to progress and truly capitalize technology expenditures for the marketplace of ideas. Besides the benefits of open access to the Internet with its associated benefits of VoIP, open GPS signal triangulation and others, there is also a benefit to connecting concerned expert users all over the country.
When communications went down here, nobody, not even different first-responder groups, could speak with each other. Emergency operations centers were saved during this forced silence by ham radio operators, who drove in from all over the country to coordinate efforts in the days after the storm.
With a hardened and overlapping wireless network, coordinating activities would be much easier.
The Red Cross knew the importance of this. They brought in a Ford Explorer specially equipped with a satellite uplink and wireless communications equipment to get their field staff linked to people and servers at their headquarters.

I know that we are still battling over whether evolution happened, but I can dream, can't I?

Speaking of cool mobile technology during disasters, here's two examples:

1)Cell on Wheels(COW's)- mobile cellular towers that can be trucked in when your stationary ones fall down, bringing back cell communications more quickly.
One example at http://www.pceii.com/static/cow.htm

2)Mobile Integrated Geospatial-Intelligence Systems (MIGS)- from your spooky friends at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Humvee-mounted rolling mapping systems complete with earth observing satellite connections, GPS and connectivity to homebase. I used NGA (formerly NIMA) remote sensing products when I was doing some peacekeeping work in Africa. They have amazing stuff and even more amazing capabilities. NGA is at its best when it's helping humanity instead of looking for a guy in a cave.

2005-10-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

In my reporting, here's what I've learned about immigrant workers (and I mean specifically Latino workers)-
1)They do jobs that most Americans don't want to do, for longer than most Americans are willing to work, for less money than most Americans are willing to take.
2)They are mobile. It is easy for a contractor to hire an immigrant worker, put him on a job in Texas for a month and then move him to Mississippi for three. They often come with their own tents too.
3)Contractors like Latino workers especially because of how infrequently they are organized, i.e. unionized. Sometimes, advocacy groups organize them and demand better pay, but the rate of this is not often.
4)Contractors rave about Latino worker's work ethics. They never call in sick. They work tirelessly. And, many of them have a multitude of construction skills and can therefore do multiple jobs.

All that said, there is no doubt in my mind that local people are not getting hired enough. The reasons for that are surely numerous. One is, I'm sure, the low cost of immigrant labor. The fact is that this country could not survive, this society could not exist the way it does, without the millions of undocumented workers doing our dirty work. The cost to output ratio would be too lopsided without them, and we don't have a system in place to change that right now.
Because of this, and because of the continued threat of immigration authorities, and because of the innumerable unfair laws the government has in place that protect contractors hiring illegal workers but not the illegal workers themselves, the rate of abuse is sickening.
I have heard dozens of stories since the storm started of workers being asked to come here for a job with the promise of housing, working for a week and then literally being left in the street. I've heard stories of workers being promised a paycheck at the end of the day, only to find the contractor threatening to call immigration if they persist in asking for it. The list goes on too.
How do we solve this? I have no frickin' idea. All I know is, it's an interesting and messed up situation.
Our society needs immigrant workers, yet we refuse to treat them fairly. I suppose this system has gone back millenia. The Irish and Italians were treated this way upon their arrival here at the turn of the last century.
Africans are treated this way in Europe today. I suppose it will just be a question of time before Latinos finally infiltrate the upper levels of our society and put a halt to this way of life for their people.

renewal forum

2005-10-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

For those of you who may not be following the news too closely down here, the plans of the Mississippi Renewal Forum were presented to the public today.
The Forum is basically a commission set up by Gov. Barbour with a bunch of big-wigs from Mississippi to make recommendations and create plans of all kinds and sizes to rebuild this part of the Gulf Coast. For the last week, 100s of architects and urban planners from across the country have been giving presentations on how to make the Coast better.
Some of the more interesting ideas involve getting rid of the CSX railroad tracks that run east-west just four blocks from the beach (and which probably saved the SunHerald building and yours truly from certain doom) in all three southern counties and making the whole area more walkable and bikeable.
Because I cover the town of Long Beach, I can only really comment on specific stuff that’s proposed there. As can be seen in the photos above, the slate has been wiped clean.
Anyways, that’s the boiled down summation of what’s going on.
It’s fascinating and a grand plan. The problem is, most obviously, the money. Everybody wants all this nice stuff: broad avenues, more trees, parks, central commercial districts. Basically, it’s everything that the coast was not before the storm. Problem is, it’s expensive as all hell. And, with no tax base to work from, it’ll all have to be done on a borrowed dime.
Another thing that concerns me is that here haven’t been too many minorities involved in these discussions about how to redo things. Actually, the general socio-economic makeup of these meetings on redoing the whole thing has generally been the same few brackets too. (I’ll let you guess what brackets those are.)
Anyways, if you get more time and want to look through the various proposals of the various towns, check out http://www.mississippirenewal.com/.

2005-10-19T16:27:00.000-07:00

An architect's proposed re-rendering of downtown Long Beach. Those circles are supposed to represent five minute walks.
This photo courtesy of Mississippi Renewal Forum

2005-10-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

Arial view of downtown Long Beach. That's Kmart's parking lot.
This photo courtesy of Mississippi Renewal Forum

2005-10-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

Same shot as before, just with storm damage indicated. Red and pink buidlings were either wiped out or severely damaged. Yellow ones rather damaged. Black ones are fine.
This photo courtesy of Mississippi Renewal Forum

2005-10-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

This is a rendering of downtown Long Beach's structures pre-Katrina. Jeff Davis Ave is the fourth street from the left with the concentration of bigger buildings around it. It was the hub of Long Beach. City Hall is that L-shaped building.
This photo courtesy of Mississippi Renewal Forum

2005-10-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

That's Long Beach's coast looking north from Jeff Davis Avenue. St. Thomas is the blue roof close to the beach. USM is just on the far side of it. Chappy's (now a slab) was just on the near side of it.
This photo courtesy of Mississippi Renewal Forum

2005-10-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

No photos, but I have good news. I got off of Keller's floor. Halellujah!
More on that later. First, what I consider to be the most interesting news out of here lately:
The new FEMA flood elevation level for buildings on the coast - i.e. the minimum height a homeowner or business must build foundation and/or pilons up to in order to be considered eligible for insurance - is going to be 24 feet off the ground. Fuck me.
At the Mississippi Renewal Forum, where hundreds of architects have come to tell us how to rebuild the Gulf Coast, this is creating all kinds of problems for urban planners coming up with ideas for affordable housing.
"It's going to cost $150,000 just to build to where you can begin the first floor," one architect said on the radio the other day.
Considering how many poor neighborhoods were wiped out completely, it's very safe to say the Gulf Coast will change dramatically.
Speaking of change, life is starting to move on for yours truly. I got a place near where one of my favorite bars used to be. So, hopefully it'll come back before I leave there too.
I got lucky, really lucky, in finding a place. About two weeks after the storm I went to at least a dozen apartment complexes that were only slightly damaged and every one had a waiting list that was already 80-100 long. I guess I just got to this place quickly enough. Thank goodness.
As I am moving, I sort of have begun to realize how much stuff I have. I know I don't have as many as most, but I've got more than many. Considering this will be my fourth move this year, and my fifth may come still yet, I've about had it with all my stuff.
These moves always makes me think of the George Carlin bit on stuff----
Actually this is just a place for my stuff, ya know? That's all, a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody's got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there. That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time.A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving. All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff! Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore. Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else's house, you never quite feel a hundred percent at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else's stuff is all over the goddamn place! And if you stay overnight, unexpectedly, they give you a little bedroom to sleep in. Bedroom they haven't used in about eleven years. Someone died in it, eleven years ago. And they haven't moved any of his stuff! Right next to the bed there's usually a dresser or a bureau of some kind, and there's NO ROOM for your stuff on it. Somebody else's shit is on the dresser.Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? God! And you say, "Get that shit offa there and let me put my stuff down!"

2005-10-12T18:47:00.000-07:00

Joyce is pointing to the ring on her pinky that her husband gave her to commemorate Hurricane Katrina.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

This is Joyce. She's a secretary for a retirement community that I did a story on today. She and her hands were awesome. She said she painted her nails that color to go with Holloween and candy corn. She said each ring has special meaning for a different event or thing in her life.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

Sorry that there weren't many photos of the city itself. We were, ahem, busy.

2005-10-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, the national media would not let a good time like this pass them by. God forbid.
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-11T17:58:00.000-07:00

The good times certainly were rolling in the Vieux Carre. Glad to see it, too. The strangest part was, whenever someone would ask, "where you from?" and we'd say where, we'd always get a "oohhh, that's too bad," or "oh, god bless you honey," or "wow, you guys really got it, huh?
This photo by Joshua Norman

2005-10-11T17:57:00.000-07:00

This was also along Hwy 11 south of Slidell. As Keller put it, "I think this just goes to show that we should have never moved away from medieval architecture."
This photo by Joshua Norman