| George Seldes: Witness to a Century |
[10 Dec 2009|03:58pm] |
There's a 14 part interview with journalist and writer George Seldes (1890 - 1995) on YouTube:
First enstallment
I'm finding it a treat for those interested in 20th century events, oral history, and history of journalism. Seldes was a first hand witness to many interesting events and knew some of the 20th century's key figures. The bulk of the interview focuses on the time from the U.S. entry into WWI to the early 1950s. I'd read some of Seldes' books years ago, but hadn't been familiar with this filmed interview.
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| TV journalism related links |
[06 Dec 2009|12:11pm] |
PBS.org: 'I Am Not in the Entertainment Business' and Other Rules of MacNeil/Lehrer Journalism
Quotes:
* Do nothing I cannot defend.
* Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
* Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
* Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am.
* Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
* Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
* Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything.
* Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions.
* No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.
* And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business.
Ah. No wonder the PBS newshour doesn't top the ratings.
Also:
YouTube:"Climate Change -- Those hacked e-mails." "Now that the conspiracy theorists have blown off steam, it's time for a more sober analysis of those e-mails and what they mean."
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| Floods in New Orleans: What Hath MRGO Wrought |
[19 Nov 2009|11:03am] |
Some background to illustrate a point relevent to my previous post.
New Orleans hundreds of years of history has multiple examples of floods from semi-tropical downpours, hurricanes, and levee failures.
What happened in 2005 was radically different.
( More illustrated history )
In short:
There's a difference between a flood that gets your feet wet in the street
And one that drowns you in your attic.
Heck of a job, MRGO.
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| Judge: Feds liable in Federal Flooding of Greater New Orleans |
[19 Nov 2009|12:26am] |
"It has been proven in a court of law that the drowning of New Orleans was not a natural disaster, but a preventable man-made travesty," the attorneys said in a statement. "The government has always had a moral obligation to rebuild New Orleans. This decision makes that obligation a matter of legal responsibility." -- CNN story
Here in Greater New Orleans, where people routinely talk about "the Federal Flood" and refer to the MRGO Canal as "the Hurricane Highway", the news isn't the facts of the case, but rather the judge finding legal liability.
If I understand the ruling correctly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has legal immunity from being sued for damages from the failure of their mis-designed and mis-built levees, but not for the fact that the MRGO Canal channeled deep sea storm surge right into the heart of the city. This point alone is enough to make them culpable for the majority of the flooding of the Greater New Orleans area in 2005.
Times-Picayume story
On Bloomberg
On UPI
WDSU, with link to PDF of lawsuit
For those interested in details of what happened and why concerning the great flood, I reccomend the book Catastrophe in the Making: The Engineering of Katrina and the Disasters of Tomorrow. It also makes the point that rather than Greater New Orleans being unique in vulnerability, bad decisions by political and business interests have created no shortage of other engineering disasters waiting to happen.
YouTube video of one of the co-authors and members of levees.org at a reading/discussion at Octavia Books.
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| Halfway House |
[14 Nov 2009|08:22am] |
One of the few important jazz age dance halls still standing in New Orleans is "The Halfway House" at City Park Avenue/Metaire Road and the Pontchartrain Expressway. Still standing, yes, but in sad looking shape.
The name came from the location at the halfway point on the streetcar line out to Lake Pontchartrain along the New Basin Canal.
The house band for about a decade in the 1910s and 1920s was led by cornetist Abbie Brunies, and was known as the Halfway House Orchestra. They made a number of recordings in the mid/late 1920s.
Other notable recording bands that played here included Piron's New Orleans Orchestra and the New Orleans Owls. Notables who played here but unfortunately didn't leave us recordings include Emile "Stalebread" Lacombe, now a rather obscure figure, but to many of his contemporaries he was among the handful of musicians (including Buddy Bolden) credited as the originators of what became known as jazz.
After the dance hall closed down in the Great Depression, the location was an ice cream parlor for a good number of years, then in the late 20th century housed the offices of "Orkin" exterminators. After they vacated the building about 2000 the building was damaged by fire, and has been vacant and unrepaired since. Like most buildings dating from before 1900, it was built at a sufficent elevation to escape the great flood when the Federal levees failed during Hurricane Katrina.
A group of jazz fans has been trying to buy or lease the building to fix it up for years. A couple years ago newspaper stories sounded like this was going to happen, but now the owners want to tear it down.
Thursday a local preservationist and musician friend phoned me, asking if I could come to a City Planning Commission meeting the following morning where the state of the building would be discussed. I did, and talked about some of the music history connections of the building.
There seems to be a good amount of politics and procedures involved, that I can't pretend to follow. The commission voted to study that the building might be of significance, which will preclude demolition for the moment, but can be appealled before the City Council. If I understand correctly the building got to this point years ago, then the property owners got it overturned.
At the hearing the property owners had a report arguing the building needed to be demolished, while "The New Orleans Jazz Restoration Society" had an engineer's report saying it was structurally stable and could be restored.
There were a number of curious exchanges, but certainly the most bizzare statement was the property owners saying that from their "research" the building wasn't the famous Halfway House at all. Until they brought up that claim, that was about as much a matter of "dispute" as the question of whether or not that big church shaped building on the Chartres Street side of Jackson Square is St. Louis Cathedral. Someone in the audience muttered about the property owners "lying through their teeth". Giving them the benifit of a doubt for motive, its certainly one of the lousiest excuses of supposed historic research I've encountered. There's a wealth of period print doccumentation. There are tapes and transcripts of oral histories of musicians who played there at Tulane's jazz archives. 20 years ago old-timers who remembered it first hand were still common, and even today I know there's at least one nonogenarian who can still recall going there regularly.
What's going to happen to the building? Heck if I know. Looks to me like its going to be a political decision. So yet another aspect of New Orleans seems to be returning to pre-Katrina normality: demolishing our history and landmarks because someone finds them inconvenient in the short term.
Times-Picayune Halfway House photos
Gambit Weekly "New Orleans Know-It-All" on the Halfway House: Feb 2007, May 2007.
Preservation Resource Center article
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| Afghanistan, Blackwater, Iraq, Obama |
[12 Nov 2009|07:42am] |
Ambassador opposes Afghan surge
Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador in Kabul, has written to the White House to oppose sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan. Eikenberry said President Karzai's government should first prove it would tackle corruption.
Obama may be afraid of Blackwater
Blackwater continues to do brisk business in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and the Obama administration may be too afraid of the firm to do anything about it, says investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill.
Bribes to Iraqi officials kept Blackwater in Iraq despite the Iraqi government ordering Blackwater out of the country after the 2007 Nissour Square massacre.
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| Armistice Day 2009 |
[11 Nov 2009|09:02am] |
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, The Great War was stopped, and it was declared that henceforth the 11th of November of each year should be called Armistice Day, to celebrate the end of war.
The war was so terrible that many hoped that leaders would no longer be so foolish as to start new wars, or if they did that the people would refuse to fight.
For Armistice Day 2009, there are only 3 combat veterans of the Great War still alive, all aged near the limits of human longevity.
May there come a day when only an aged few have first hand memories of the horrors of any war.
Let us once again raise our voices in a song from the Great War:
Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,
Who may never return again.
Ten million mother's hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Head bowed down in sorrow
In her lonely years,
I heard a mother murmur thru' her tears:
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It's time to lay the sword and gun away.
There'd be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."
What victory can cheer a mother's heart,
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All she cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
Remember that my boy belongs to me!
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier
To go fighting in some far-off foreign land.
He may get killed before he's any older
For a cause he'll never understand.
Why should he fight in some rich man's battle
While they stay home and while their time away?
Let those with most to lose
Fight each other if they choose;
For I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier!
"I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier" with MIDI. Sing along!
Peace, -- Froggy
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| "Interests" |
[01 Nov 2009|01:01pm] |
According to LiveJournal, I'm interested in too many things. My user profile can only have more interests added if existing interests are removed.
Any suggestions on what I should stop being interested in?
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| New Orleans on the Silver Screen |
[30 Oct 2009|11:10am] |
Two people on my LJ friends list have posted about Hollywood films using some good New Orleans scenery but having actors speak with "Southern" accents little like how New Orleanians talk. I agree -- Friends and I have been discussing and laughing about this for years.
Comments on few of the films, either mentioned by others or pop to mind at the moment:
Benjamin Button (2008) I discussed this film earlier. One of the most beautiful usages of New Orleans scenery Hollywood has done. Alas mostly Hollywood standard for the accents, though not as bad as some, and at least they didn't try to give New Orleanians a faux "Cajun" accent.
JFK (1991) -- I'll take a pass about assessing the "conspiracy theories" here in interest of preserving the small segment of the internet remaining devoted to neither porn nor arguing about the Kennedy assassination. I will note that even if it had nothing to do with Dealey Plaza, the Garrison - Clay Shaw case seems to have rounded up a cast of colorful characters that seem out of a lost novel by Tennessee Williams or John Kennedy Toole. A number of them still alive at the time have cameos in the film (including my former trombone teacher, the late Layton Martens). If Kevin Cosner looked little and sounded less like Garrison, I have to say that John Candy's portrayal of Dean Andrews is uncanny. A fair amount of good local location shooting. The real trial was actually at Tulane & Broad, not the old Courthouse in the Quarter.
After seeing "JFK" on the big screen, my date and I got into a cab and started discussing the film-- a well done bit of cinema, certainly the story should be taken with more than a grain of salt, but who expects accurate history from Hollywood, it's entertainment. The cab driver quickly injected himself into our conversation in a heavy Yat accent. "Every thing in the movie is true! It was exactly like that! I know, I was there!" We had gotten into a cab driven by one Perry Russo. (I wonder if he circled his cab around cinemas showing JFK when the movie ended in hopes of starting just such conversations.) Becoming increasingly worked up as we drove along, he amplified on the theme, and made claims including that many of the scenes in the movie which I thought were obvious re-creations were actually secret original footage discovered by Oliver Stone. I sort of enjoyed his rant as a colorful anecdote, but after we got out of the cab my date confided she'd been frightened by the experience, worried that the driver was a dangerous maniac. I later learned that Russo said he wanted to expose the Conspiracy because he didn't want that chicken-shit Oswald to get all the credit for the patriotic accomplishment of putting down that Commie bastard Kennedy. If I'd know that then, I would have been creeped out too.
The Big Easy (1987). One of the worst for making New Orleanians into Cajuns. Great historic footage of Bucktown Point, a gone pecan since Katrina.
Live and Let Die (1973). One of the classic era James Bond films. The New Orleans scenes are too breif, and the chase along the Bayous with the caricature Southern Sheriff is far too long. Highlights for me are the scenes with Dejan's Olympia Brass Band, including many now gone greats, and trumpeter Alvin Alcorn knifing the secret agents as the baby-faced killer.
Tightrope (1984). Some interesting local scenery, edited into geographic impossibilities. The Prytania Theater broke into laughter during the foot chase scene where they're running through Jackson Square, turn a corner, and are in (IIRC) Metairie Cemetery. Local model Kathy B. as nude corpse #1; Kathy B. was known as "the Official Tits of the 1984 World's Fair" as she was also the model for the giant mermaid statues at the main entrance.
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). The only New Orleans scenery is right at the beginning. It shows the area near the foot of Canal Street, with the old Canal Streetcar, the old Louisville & Nashville Railway Station and the former pedestrian walkway over the tracks. I think this was around where Canal Place is now; I and most New Orleanians are too young to remember it now.
The Wacky World of Doctor Morgus (1962). Low budget sub-B movie featuring well loved local horror host not at his best. Some good footage of Canal Street and the Moissant Airport, and lots of real New Orleanians saying the dialogue. Also features an appearance by exotic dancer Chris Owens, who astonishingly is still entertaining on Bourbon Street. (I can recall joking with friends about Chris Owens' improbably long career more than a dozen years ago. How naieve I was then! Now I realize she is one of New Orleans' eternal fixtures, like humidity. She was probably here before Bienville landed from France, and will still be here a thousand years after the city sinks into the Gulf, doing the cha-cha for an audience of entertained marine life.)
The Savage Bees (1976). I think I last saw it some time in the '80s. Killer Bees movie, with some footage of a Volkswagan Beetle with plastic bees glued all over it driving through the French Quarter and into the Superdome. A friend who saw them filming a scene in the Quarter thought it looked like the movie was going to be pretty stupid; she was right.
Miller's Crossing (1990). The story isn't specifically set in any particular city, but most of the exteriors were filmed in New Orleans, making very good use of the city to get a late 1920s look.
Deja Vu (2006). Mentioned here. First film to do much filming in New Orleans after Katrina. They could have had lots of astonishing footage, but mostly didn't because it would have overshaddowed the story.
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| Capitalism - A Love Story |
[16 Oct 2009|10:32pm] |
H & I saw Michael Moore's film "Capitalism - A Love Story" today.
A well done film, reccomended.
Moore argues that we need not Capitalism, but rather Democracy.
He seems to identify himself with FDR's New Deal, but has little respect for the majority of the current crop of Democrats.
I think people of other economic/political opinions will find much to agree with as well, including free market advocates-- as long as the latter are willing to make a distinction between actual free markets (ie, where freedom of interaction is the goal) and Capitalism (what some call "crony capitalism", a system rigged by politics and law for the benifit of those with the most capital). His skewering of AIG, Goldman Sachs, and the Giant Bailout are masterful.
Yeah sure, it's infotainment. If you want serious info on serious topics, read a book or at least multi-page articles. And not talk radio or tv soundbite talking heads, which serve less nuance and detail than this film.
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| Close Encounters of the Vitter Kind |
[05 Oct 2009|07:02pm] |
I just took a much needed shower. I'd been in the same room as Senator David Vitter.
Vitter was talking at NASA Michoud. I had to leave my camera outside the auditorium. Security specified no cameras, no sketches (! I wonder if I could have been detained if I doodled a stick figure representation of the Senator?).
Vitter's main points:
1) He's a fiscal conservative.
2) He's in favor of adding a minimum of 3 billion dollars a year to NASA's manned space program budget.
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| From small ACORNS grow... |
[24 Sep 2009|09:20am] |
You may have heard from some on the American "right wing" about the huge threat to the nation posed by the scary scary ACORNs.
Fortunately, bold legislative steps are being taken to combat the ACORN menace.
Louisiana Governor Eddie Haskell has cut off all state funding of ACORN. Before the ban, the amount of Louisiana state funding of ACORN was zero. It has now been reduced to zero. Way to go, PBJ!
I'm much more impressed, however, with Rep. Alan Grayson's "Defund ACORN Act" (H.R.3571) This is a truly remarkable and important bill. Rather than focusing narrowly on ACORN, it prohibits the Federal Government from funding, contracting with, or entering into any form of agreement with:
"Any organization that has been indicted for a violation under any Federal or State law governing the financing of a campaign for election for public office or any law governing the administration of an election for public office, including a law relating to voter registration."
*OR*
"Any organization that has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency."
Okay. THIS. IS AWESOME.
Ryan Grim: "Whoops: Anti-ACORN Bill Ropes In Defense Contractors, Others Charged With Fraud"
The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.
In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex.
Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR, Lockheed Martin, Hewlett-Packard, yeah sure, obvious targets of the bill.
But don't think so small. It doesn't just say contractors, it says "any organization".
Who else? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers?
The Federal Reserve?
The C.I.A.?
The Democratic Party and the Republican Party?
This could get interesting. Hats off to you, Representative Alan Grayson of Disneyworld, American Patriot!
Help identify organizations that fit this criteria
[update]
It seems Grayson knew exactly what he was doing here
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