AddieStan

Since Hurricane Katrina struck, the cost of renting an apartment in New Orleans has gone up by 45 percent. More than 200,000 of the city’s residents have yet to return home, unable to afford the soaring rents, and with little in the way of job prospects. Ain’t nothin’ comin’ easy these days in the Big Easy. But some people just can’t seem to get the message. Go figure; there are still some poor people – mostly black people whose Gulf Coast roots go back some 400 years – who want to stay. Looks like the only way to get rid of them for good is to raze 4,500 units of public housing, and let developers replace it with “mixed-income” (read: too costly for the people who used to live here) neighborhoods. Is your blogstress too cynical? Too conspiracy-minded? Perhaps. But yesterday, the frustration of New Orleaneans spilled out onto the streets when they suspected just exactly the scenario your cybertrix has spelled out, especially when they found themselves locked out of the city counci...

I know the anniversary of the storm's landfall has passed, but that doesn't mean your blogstress intends to forget about the lives ruined by the government's failure to protect and care for the million-plus people whose lives have been upended by Hurricane Katrina, the storm that devestated the Gulf Coast two years ago. Your ecrivaine had hoped to be in New Orleans for this year's anniversary, as she had for last year's but, alas, other work got in the way of her getting that far south. On a joyful note, your Webwench did enjoy hearing, once again, the sound of New Orleans jazz as played by the Treme Brass Band (pronounced "tre-MAY"), only this time in Arlington, Virginia, as part of the wonderful "Planet Arlington" concert headlined by South African trumpeter and singer Hugh Masekela . The last time your net-tete heard the Treme players was during the jazz funeral in New Orleans last year that marked the one-year anniversary of the storm. T...