army corps responds to catastrophic tire breach, warns “you better get that looked at”

Last week my car became a whiner. Not entirely unlike my cats when they want to be petted, the car started demanding attention. It began, innocuously enough, with a service light and its attendant beepy noise, which would alert me that the car was feeling needy every time I turned it on. Being an attentive car owner, I immediately made an appointment and took the car in for an oil change. Well, apparently the car feels more comfortable talking about its needs with a disinterested third party, because it turned out that in addition to the oil change it also needed a tire rotation, a fuel system flush, and some sort of process that cleaned its rear brake pads. It became a car spa day of sorts.

Fast forward to this morning, when the car violently clanked its way down the driveway. I pulled to the corner, got out, and surveyed the damage of an entirely flat front tire. Now I'm not typically one to try and lift an entire vehicle several inches above the ground or replace its critical parts, but we all have to do our part for self-reliance in the PostKatrinaRitaWorld. So I stood ouside, alternately staring at the spare tire and owners' manual, and committed to changing the tire myself.

I should probably point out that I live directly across the street from the site where the Army Corps of Engineers is installing its flood gates at the Orleans Canal – not usually a fortunate location if one enjoys (1) sleep, or (2) unobstructed motoring. But this morning, as I was wiping the sweat from my brow and contemplating AAA, I learned to appreciate the small benefits of The Recovoery. Two workers walked across the street and offered to "fix your tire in a jiffy." That's a direct quote.

I don't like to stand between a man and a good deed, so I let them, all the time thinking:

* Whoever said sweating ain't ladylike?

* The federal government is probably spending millions of dollars for these guys to change my flat tire.

And you know what? I must not be as self-reliant as we thought. I sopped up that federal aid with a smile.

i guess gentilly will have to wait

The Lakeview presentation started late, as community meetings are want to do, so I didn't 'get to Gentilly.

Since I had written the first draft of the presentation, I didn't learn much new information. But it was heartening to see so many Lakeview residents coming back to rededicate themselves to the neighborhood. Although I've done a lot of work with the The District 5 Recovery Team, I never stop being amazed by the organized but grassroots nature of their work. When it seemed that professional planners might never come to their aid, the neighborhoods developed an elaborate committee structure and combined the efforts of Lakeview, Lake Vista, Lakeshore, City Park, Country Club Gardens, Lakwood, and Parkview.

In the end, when the paid planners did come, Lakeview residents were ready for them. They had already developed a proposed land use scheme and overlay zoning districts. They had collected detailed data about current infrastructure needs and mobilized block captains to survey current conditions. So today's presentation was really an oportunity for planners to organize the information residents had already collected.

Here's a mercifully brief photo essay:

Paul Lambert did business before the presentation

Freddy Yoder and Martin Landrieu discussed the agenda while

everyone socialized.

Once the meeting started a consultant presented previous work done by the District 5 Recovery Group,

and we tried to pretend we weren't being filmed.

It was pretty difficult.

Come to think of it, it was very difficult.

Later, Jim Amdal got pretty fired up about infrastructure,

But who can really blame him?

Finally, Martin reminded us that a finished plan is only the beginning of the rebuilding process.

But it's a step in the right direction.

tag team planning

I'll be trying to make it to two meetings today: Alfredo Sanches' presentation to residents of planning district 5 and the Gentilly Civic Improvement Association housing committee. Of course they are taking place at exactly the same time, 1-3pm. This makes me strangely annoyed, as though Lakeview and Genitlly were colluding to ensure that I miss out on neighborhood planning breakthroughs. What if there were some revelation of the public will?

Or worse… what if I forgot about something I'd promised to do. I've never really bought into the anthropological ideology, but this participant observation stuff is tough. I'm constantly asking myself iterations of the same question: What skews my analysis more? Participating in planning as a concerned citizen of New Orleans, or the artifice of forced neutrality. There's an exhilarating dissonance that comes from flinging myself into this from both sides.

so apparently this is a blog

I had never really intended to become a "blogger." Even when my roommate used her LiveJournal to tell me that she'd moved out 3 days before. I thought it a personal afront rather than some sort of commentary on my life. She was a heartless egotist for using such an impersonal method of communication becuase it certainly was not the case that a LiveJournal could actually *be* your primay method of personal communication.

Still I was not a blogger. I was a reader. And when I'd post anything at all it was out of some strange sense of duty. As though there were was cavernous, lonely space all over the interweb just waiting for me to fill it. Fluff to fill the void, as it were.

Well, now I'm apparently blogging again. I'd say it was "despite my best intentions," like it's out of my control. But, of course, it's not. In fact, I think it must be because of my best intentions that I'm finally starting to presume a place for myself in the internets, with an inflated sense of self-efficacy as though I had useful information to give.

You know, in The New New Orleans community meetings are all the rage. I guess I should rage on, then. There might be some lonely interweb frontage out there…

collective strength update

A note for those who missed Robin Rather's presentation to the Neighborhoods' Planning Network:

You totally missed out. Although I had seen her speak to the LRA yesterday, I still found Robin's presentation fascinating and engaging. And for a presentation of methodology and statistics it was strangely uplifting.

In essence, the Collective Strength team interviewed 2500 South Louisianians about their needs, fears, values, and visions for the future. They found an almost unprecedented consensus surrounding issues like coastal restoration, education, and the importance of transparency in the planning process – but perhaps most importantly they found that more than 80% of respondents felt that, if our plans were inclusive and well-executed, New Orleans would be the same or better than it was before the storm.

I know everybody out there must love reading social science research as much as I do, so check out Collective Strength's report here.

and the survey says…

Robin Rather:, daughter of Dan Rather and representative of Collective Strength, will present the results of her in-depth survey of South Louisiana residents. Are they coming back? Do they trust the government? What are their biggest concerns? Do they think the region will ever recover?

Come see this dynamic presentation that will help you understand who we are, what we're facing, and where we need to go from here!

June 16th. 6-8pm. Musicians' Union Hall. 2401 Esplanade Avenue.

this weekend’s neighborhood recovery planning meetings

Saturday, June 17th, 2006
New Orleans East – Districts “D” and “E” Joseph St. Martin/Deron Brown, Architects

• Place: St. Maria Goretti Church, 7300 Crowder Blvd.
• Time: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Gert Town - Cliff James/Byron Stewart, Architects

• Place: Audubon Senior Center, 3425 Audubon Court
• Time: 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon

Ninth Ward/Holy Cross – David Lee, Architect

• Place: Holy Angels Convent, 3500 St. Claude Avenue
• Time: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Lakeview - Alfredo Sanchez, Architect

• Place: Lake Vista United Methodist Church, 6645 Spanish Fort Blvd.
• Time: 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Tuesday , June 20, 2006
Hollygrove, Leonidas, Dixon – Gerald Billes, Architect

• Place: St. Joan of Arc School Cafeteria, 919 Cambronne Street
• Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Tuesday, June 21, 2006
Treme/5th, 6th, & 7th Wards Zyscovich, Architect

• Place: St. Peter Claver Church Hall, 1023 St. Phillip Street
• Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Tulane/Gravier/Claiborne – Cliff James/Byron Stewart, Architects

• Place: St. Joseph Catholic Church, 1802 Tulane Avenue
• Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Saturday, June 24, 2006
Mid City - Cliff James/Bryon Stewart, Architects

• Place: The Grace Episcopal Church, 3700 Canal Street
• Time: 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon

Fairground, St. Bernard, Bayou St. John – Zyscovich, Architect

• Place: St. Leo the Great Catholic Church, 2916 Paris Avenue
• Time: 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon

a few pictures from the last couple of days

Subtitle: I know you're jealous of all the community meetings I get to go to….

My mother and I saw this make-shift memorial to a building lost. Strangely moving. If anybody can tell me more about this building, I'd be grateful.

CityWorks, Tuesday Night

Eat your heart out ladies! Gentilly Civic Improvement Association, Tuesday night

Let's Play "Count the Documentary Filmmakers"

Neighborhoods' Planning Network, Wednesday Night

Wait! You missed one!

Kathleen Blanco: Concerned yet Confident. LRA meeting. Today.

fun new thing

Thanks to Alan Gutierrez of Think New Orleans I have now discovered the glories of google calendar. I am now a total convert. Not only is it an extremely user-friendly interface for organizing appointments, it also allows people to create individual calendars for specific organizations/causes and share the content of those calendars with each other. Thus, I can simultaneously view my personal appointments, the thinknola calendar, and calendars I've created for the Lakeview and Gentilly rebuilding processes. The Lakeview and Gentilly ones are also publicly available so that anyone can use them. They're also linked to thinknola's calendar. I'm going to try to be able to like the calendar to this site… I'm gonna be such a maven!

The image above is the person who showed me the cool new thing.

lake vista property owners’ association

Lake Vista Property Owners' Association meeting. Tonight. 7pm. St. Pius School.