AddieStan

From the incomparable J. Scales comes word of the deliverance of the members of two outstanding New Orleans bands: Zion Trinity and Mother Tongue . The members of both groups, however, have lost nearly everything, and need the help of fellow musicians and music-lovers to make it to the next phase of their recovery. To assist to Zion Trinity, buy their CD , "Eyes on Zion" (featuring the incomparable J. Scales on bass), and/or send donations to: ZION Trinity c/o Melody Friday 2258 Wild Turkey Court Decatur, GA 30035 To help their colleagues in Mother Tongue (Dorise Blackmon, Michaela Harrison, and Tanya), send your contribution to: Fundraiser for Dorise, Michaela, and Tanya c/o E. Christi Cunningham 1335 Jefferson St. NW Washington, D.C. 20011 Click here to purchase Mother Tongue's CD. From a member of Zion Trinity: September 3, 2005 Andaiye [made contact] today after many days of concern and prayer....she's dry and still at her home at 1555 Gentilly in New Orleans....

Your blogstress’s new friend, Wilson Kolb of Seattle, has begun a blog, WillieSnout , chronicling his experience “adopting” a married couple who evacuated New Orleans. Here’s Wilson: This article by Dr. Red Head really hit home. I am here in Seattle and as of last Friday I am one of those well-meaning people who has paid the rent on an apartment for a displaced family of fellow Americans made homeless by the storm. Even before reading her article I had been thinking about the issues Doc Redhead raised and, boy, could I ever use some practical ideas. Meantime, I'm making it up as I go along, and am hoping that a lot of caring and some common sense will get us through. This is a family of five who made it up here in their car. I only met two of them, a husband and wife who I'd say are in their mid-40s. I had learned about them through an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer , and met them at the Central Area Motivation Project (CAMP), which specializes in helping low-income...

Your blogstress asks her readers' forbearance in chaotic times. A family emergency and frenetic activity at her pesky day job have interfered with your ecrivaine 's blogging, and in the interim, she has received many interesting pieces from readers that she has yet to post. Don't give up on the cybertrix--not you, Leigh, nor Wilson Kolb nor the incomparable J. Scales . Your net-tete will do yas right--really. Tomorrow, your Webwench departs for Baton Rouge. Posting may be sporadic.

Well, here’s one way that his administration’s abject failure--its criminal negligence--in its lack of response to the nation’s most devastating disaster is working for it: the president promises that the next time disaster strikes, the federal government will simply take over, with a “much greater role for the armed forces.”

While the president focused his speech on what needs to happen to rebuild the Gulf Coast, he said precious little about the disaspora of Louisianans and Mississippians now dispersed throught the lower 48. Today, the city of Dallas announced it was sick of waiting for the feds to deal with the thousands of evacuees they’re housing in a convention center and an arena, so they’re raising money from private sources to get these folks situated in Dallas apartments. Is it fair to leave this massive undertaking to the efforts of a municipal government? Is it smart? How long before the people of the suburbs and the inner cities begin to resent the newcomers?

Okay, your cybertrix is calming down a bit--at least enough to grock that the president has pledged a lot of dollars and efforts to rebuilding lives and real estate in the Gulf Coast region. Amen to that. And he has admitted that discrimination causes poverty (though he did seem to imply that it was the discrimination of the bad old days that caused the poverty endemic among African-Americans in the South), not that it exists today, n'est-ce pas ?

Your blogstress is willing to bet that George W. Bush wouldn't know John Coltrane from Gary Coleman. Hence her outrage at the closing lines of the president's speech tonight. Invoking the funerals given for jazz musicians in New Orleans, he spoke condescendingly of the joyful strains played by the living on their return from the cemetary--after playing a mournful dirge on the walk between church and grave. New Orleans is still in the dirge phase, he said, but the joy is just around the corner. Yeah, right.

“This is an unprecedented response to an unprecedented disaster,” so the president just said in his address to the nation on the disaster called Katrina. He cited a litiany of efforts and supplies, measured in tons and dollars and numbers of staff, to demonstrate the breadth of his administration’s response. It is actually amazing that he is touting his response without apology up top, without recognition of his failure.