Why bring Houston into this? 'Cause HANO certainly has.
In contracting out the disaster voucher program to a metropolis in another state, HANO is simply following HUD's lead in getting out of the public housing "business". It's a 6 1/2 hour-plus drive, HCHA officials. Start prepping yourselves for either a) doing the conscientious thing and actually eclipsing HANO many times over or b) treat New Orleanians in need of the vouchers as though we're "over there" and make like any phone calls from folks in need of help are from across the universe. Either way, folks here just won't be winnahs...damned if Harris County does their job and shows, once again, how inept local agencies are, damned if they don't do their job and more folks leave the area as a result. Nice.
Speaking of housing, I'm behind on my plans to return to the glass grind due to some lack of funds. No, it's not HANO's fault. Our property manager has been in and out of the hospital due to serious health problems...as a result, our rent checks are very, very behind in getting to us. Yes, we are waaay too nice for our own good, sometimes. On top of it all, we have a tenant who smokes like a chimney and whose emissions have been wafting down into our bathroom and bedroom, making it difficult for Dan to sleep in there at times. It's kind of our fault for not including "non-smoking" on our leases - in fact, we just realized we are the only ones in our entire house who don't smoke. On the plus side, a number of our tenants did a great job trimming a tree in the backyard and cleaning things up back there in general. Sours and sweets, y'all.
As an added side effect of the money tsuris, I've been cooking my way through a nifty bunch of recipes my neighbor lent to me on New Year's Day, put together by the author of this blog. Had some great stuffed zucchini last night, I whipped up a chocolate and zucchini cake and a tomato tart the other day, and I had a mustard chicken stew last week. Good, good stuff, and I highly recommend Clothilde Dusoulier's cookbook. Next up for the making: either a curried turkey filling good for sammiches or the ratatouille. If and when I follow through with more recipes from her book after that, I'll just have to buy a copy of my own.
Problem with that is, I already have a number of books I'm working my way through. Honestly, I have to quit with the nonfiction. The last book I finished was Frederick Taylor's Dresden, a good book which made me more than a little depressed... especially, for some reason, when I found out that the firestorm that destroyed the city was kicked off by the RAF on Mardi Gras 1945. Puts getting bombed on Fat Tuesday in a whole new, sobering perspective. Currently, I'm in the middle of NOLAFugees' Life In The Wake ( huh - they went from quasi-fictional humorist journalism in Year Zero all the way to mostly good postdiluvian fiction) and Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games. Escapism, here I come...
I came very, very late to the NORA Unconference last Saturday, but early enough to hear the tail-end of a talk by Ommed Sathe, the director of real estate strategies for the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (got questions for NORA? Go here.) One thing he spoke of that jumped out at me was that it is now taking an estimated $150,000 to develop and maintain a 1500 square foot housing unit. For a good, enterprising person in this city to be able to do that, he/she needs to be making $60,000 per year. Oy vey. All I could really do was take notes on the work other people had done all morning in their respective groups, notes I will be passing on to a couple of places in the ThinkNOLA neck of the woods...if they think they can use 'em over there.
So I head on into the weekend with hope that things will be better. We're headed to the Krewe du Vieux parade tomorrow night...it seems that I now know large numbers of folks marching in the different subkrewes, so I have to be there or else. The little guy will also be in attendance, because we are not above corrupting the young 'un. The kid's already doing some great fake passes, some tackling (much to my chagrin - he's always trying to put the hurt on kids twice his size) and serious running with the football, which is having Dan thinking future running back. Personally, I think the child is gonna make a great logistical manager. Behold his impressions of the workings of an average airport:
Organized chaos...the kid is the master. And so's the KdV.Update, 5:15 PM: Okay, LSU fans, you got some problems - but da Cajun Boy ain't one. Neither is his friend James, whose email is reprinted in the Cajun Boy's link. Read on, all. We'll see ya in front of the po-lice station on Royal tomorra night.
3 comments:
Once again, I wandered through and wandered off into linkland without remembering to comment. This time I've wandered back. :)
Very troubling and interesting stuff by way of Cajun Boy. I was thinking about posting after watching Bill Maher (like I never do that) because it kind of devolved into an anti-Southern theme. It pisses me off that these dumbasses keep thinking/talking (and, for God's stake, videotaping) like idiots. I know there are double digit IQed bigots everywhere but why are the ones in the south so dang noisy? Unfortunately, it turns even unlikely progressives into, well, anti-southern bigots, and the circle of stuck on stupid is complete. Or, something like that. (What did I just write?)
Be warm at KdV. Wish I was there.
So, is chocolate zucchini cake some evil twisted attempt at sneaking veggies into the family diet?
I think the zucchini is more about how to keep a cake moist more than anything else. I certainly can't taste it in the cake. It's a really, really good chocolate cake to make, and you don't even have to tell people what the secret ingredient is.
As for the LSU schmucks, well, it's another sad dimension to a discussion, a REAL discussion, on race, politics, the poor, and all of those dynamics that are unfortunately still in play in 2008. These guys CANNOT be excused because they are drunk off their butts, most likely. And this cannot be easily dismissed as bigoted asses from a drowned city that doesn't deserve to be there anyhow. The truths and the lies fueling their views have GOT to be examined seriously some time, and we keep putting it off and putting it off.
THAT is what disgusts me the most about that YouTube.
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