Okay, we’re doing our best to balance the tragic with the comic (one of the reasons we extended the photo contest). Apologies for the inconsistency in tone, but it keeps us sane. So here’s the latest rundown.
- Blog transforms into first-person account of what’s happening in New Orleans. Sounds like the police infrastructure has turned into Rio Bravo. (via MeFi)
- Multiple telethons prepared to raise funds for Katrina victims.
- NOLA: Looters getting closer to heavily populated areas.
- Radio used to inform people of horrors.
- Thousands now belived drowned; martial law in effect.
- WWL blog is reporting that buses are arriving early at Astrodome, some of them renegade.
- Craig’s List New Orleans flooded with housing offers.
- Horrific reports from within the Superdome: people sleeping in urine and peeing on the floor.
- T-Mobile offers free wi-fi.
- New York Times: “Waiting for a Leader.”
- Storm Digest reminds us that typhoid and cholera are next.
- Engineers struggle to find ways of “unwater” New Orleans (via < Brendan Loy, who is doing a great job).
- Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg has started the fight about the Bush Administration’s late response.
- Maud points to this article of New Orleans literary landmarks.
- 500 complaints of gas gouging in IL.
- In Florida, thieves are posing as FPL workers and stealing cash from widows.
- New York Yankees and NFL gives $1 million to aid.
- Jack Shafer wants to know why race and class haven’t been mentioned.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
How can this be happening? Even some of the right-wing pundits at FOX, that bastion of Bush-loving propaganda, are confounded by the dearth of federal lwa enforcement and aid where it is most needed. Shepherd Smith has said, “It is in no way an exaggeration to say that people are dying and will die on the interstate…” He’s talking about the hundreds of refugees lined up along I-10 leading out of New Orleans, “dozens of them in wheelchairs,” many “holding tiny babies in their hands.” There is no National Guard there to help them. No one dropping food and water. How is this possible?!
I saw that same moment on Fox. Smith and Geraldo Rivera both losing it in the reality of NO. Meanwhile it turns out FEMA chief Brown is an unqualified crony.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_08_28.php#006399