William Douglas
McClatchy Newspapers
Aug. 30, 2007 12:00 AM

NEW ORLEANS - President Bush marked the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastating cut through the Gulf Coast region on Wednesday, proclaiming that “better days are ahead” for New Orleans and promising that his administration is still engaged in recovery efforts.

Bush and his wife, Laura, observed a moment of silence at 9:38 a.m., the moment the levees broke here, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology, the first school to reopen in the city’s heavily damaged Lower 9th Ward.

Afterward, the president described New Orleans as rebounding after the 2005 Category 3 hurricane that killed 1,695 people, displaced 770,000, and caused at least $96 billion in damage to homes, businesses and government property in the Gulf Coast.

“My attitude is this: New Orleans, better days are ahead,” Bush told a group of education officials, students and community leaders. “It’s sometimes hard for people to see progress when you live in a community all the time. And it’s easy to think about what it was like when we first came here after the hurricane, and what it’s like today. And this town is coming back.”

The trip to New Orleans was Bush’s 15th since the hurricane. The White House was the target of withering criticism of its initially slow response to the storm’s aftermath.

During last year’s anniversary ceremonies, Bush accepted responsibility for his administration’s handling of Katrina. On Wednesday, he said that the federal government hadn’t abandoned the region and noted that it has made available or disbursed about $96 billion of the $114 billion promised for rebuilding New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas.

Despite Bush’s optimistic assessment, evidence abounded that the recovery has a long way to go in New Orleans.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0830Bush-Katrina0830.html

 Meal at Dooky Chase’s welcomes president to town

Wednesday, August 29, 2007By David Hammer

President Bush began his overnight stay in New Orleans for the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina surrounded by good food, eye-popping artwork and an eclectic mix of the political and cultural leaders of a still-disaster-weary city.

“We’ve got social entrepreneurs in our midst, artists in our midst, all of whom have dedicated their lives to the renewal of New Orleans,” Bush said as he sat inches from Leah Chase, 84, the larger-than-life owner of and chef at Dooky Chase’s restaurant in Treme. “And we’re so honored to be in this restaurant. I know you would want me to say that the food here is about as good as any place here in New Orleans. I will say it.”

Bush didn’t say much in his evening appearance, saving his comments about hurricane recovery for today’s anniversary events at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology. But the sheer variety of guests sharing the large table with him and his wife Laura seemed to signal a lively conversation would ensue behind closed doors.

<!– if (parseFloat(navigator.appVersion) == 0) { document.write(”); } –>At the table, Bush was flanked by Norman Francis, chairman of Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s Louisiana Recovery Authority, and the Rev. Fred Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church. On the other side of Luter was LRA member Kim Boyle and next to her, Saints quarterback Drew Brees.

The group also included developer Joe Canizaro, musician Irvin Mayfield, chef John Besh, Children’s Museum director Julia Bland, indicted U.S. Rep. Bill Jefferson, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, Blanco and her husband Raymond “Coach” Blanco, outgoing Bush political adviser Karl Rove, Bush’s recovery chief Donald Powell, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, business owner Tommy Andrade, Mayor Ray Nagin, Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, Americorps volunteer Jared Jahan, Business Council of New Orleans Chairman Jay Lapeyre, Smilie’s Restaurant owner Augustin Lopez, the Rev. Vien The Nguyen of Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church and Becky Zaheri, president and founder of the neighborhood cleanup organization Katrina Krewe.

Chase welcomed the group for a meal of jambalaya, stewed okra and gumbo z’herbes, an all-greens gumbo that is a tradition at Chase’s Holy Thursday dinners. The restaurant has served a few private engagements recently, but is finally ready to reopen in a few weeks, said Chase’s granddaughter, Myla Reese. But Chase has kept involved in culinary events, the Urban League and other cultural development since the storm.

The 66-year-old restaurant is known for its large collection of African-American art, none of which was touched when looters ravaged the establishment immediately after Katrina. Ironically, one of the smaller pieces is of a pensive Huey P. Long, the former Louisiana governor and U.S. senator seen as a symbol of the state’s reputation for graft and corruption, which is often cited as a reason to limit the flow of federal aid to Louisiana since the storm.

The usually punctual Bush ran a bit late after flying from Reno, Nev. Upon arriving at Louis Armstrong International Airport, Bush met with Allison Stouse, a volunteer at the Louisiana Children’s Museum and founder of the Faubourg St. Roch Project, a nonprofit group dedicated to sustaining nine blocks in the St. Roch neighborhood. Bush gave her his Volunteer Service Award, part of his USA Freedom Corps initiative to expand volunteer service.

Bush rode in the Marine One helicopter from the airport to a parking lot near the Industrial Canal accompanied by Laura Bush, Blanco, Nagin, Powell and Rove.

. . . . . . .

David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3322.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1188367335232970.xml&coll=1

Two recently announced projects for downtown New Orleans stand out as the first truly creative attempts to foster the city’s resurrection. The first, an extravagant proposal for a new New Orleans National Jazz Center and park by Morphosis, is the most significant work of architecture proposed in the city since the Superdome. The second, a six-mile-long park and mixed-use development along the Mississippi, designed by TEN Arquitectos, Hargreaves Associates and Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, would undo decades of misguided building on the riverfront.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/arts/design/28jazz.html?8dpc

New Orleans: A Startup Laboratory

Entrepreneurs are finding fertile ground for new ventures

they think will help bring the devastated city back to life

by John Tozzi In a fifth-floor penthouse office in the central business district, developers craft an online trading system to let companies sell their accounts receivable at a discount for cash. A few blocks away, a programmer builds a tool to send patients’ medical data to doctors’ smart phones in real time. On the other side of town, workers assemble a sleek modular home from aluminum framing and interlocking panels—no nails or screws required. At the end of the day, they might all head for a hip new nightclub near the waterfront.

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Wall Street Journal, Aug 21 2007

Louisiana State University professor Gregg Henderson is a bug scientist, but lately he’s been obsessed with grass.

In a city searching for ways to combat two great plagues — termites and flooding — Dr. Henderson believes an unremarkable-looking tall grass could be a new weapon to fight both. Vetiver grass’s densely clumped stems quickly shoot up to 8 feet tall. It puts down a massive root system that has been touted for diverse uses, ranging from erosion protection for the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast to a treatment for baldness.

Dr. Henderson, an entomologist at LSU’s AgCenter, is interested in vetiver’s ability to repel subterranean termites, including the rapacious Formosan species that is devouring much of New Orleans. His studies have convinced him vetiver would be ideal for reinforcing the city’s protective floodwall system, fighting erosion and discouraging termite infestations that he believes have weakened the levees.

But the bug professor’s vetiver crusade has hit a wall: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps, charged with fortifying the city’s levees, is skeptical that the grass can really do all its advocates claim. And the Corps frets that vetiver isn’t a native plant, which could be a problem if the plant proves to be invasive. Government officials are still wincing from the consequences of importing virulent kudzu — known as “the vine that ate the South” — to control erosion in the 1930s.

“We’re obviously concerned and proceeding with caution when it comes to vetiver,” says Col. Murray Starkel, in charge of operations at the Corps’ New Orleans district office.

It’s not the first time vetiver has run into skeptics. A global organization known as the Vetiver Network has been preaching the virtues of the grass for three decades. It has succeeded in getting vetiver widely adopted in countries around the world. But in the U.S., “We have had no luck getting anyone’s attention,” says William Journey, a biologist and expert in rural water supply who became a vetiver believer through his work for Unicef and the World Bank in South Asia.

Vetiver is native to India. Its fibrous, aromatic roots have been harvested for centuries and turned into perfumes, insect-repelling textiles, closet sachets, and even food flavorings. The “Vetiver Grass System” caught on among foreign-aid workers in the 1970s and 1980s, who taught villagers and farmers how to use it for controlling erosion and water runoff. Vetiver could grow in sand or clay, in the desert or submerged in water.

The more people planted it, the more uses they found for it. In Guatemala, a villager confided to U.S. Aid worker Jim Smyle that his wife brewed the roots in a tea to soothe her hormone-rattled nerves. Others believed it was good for treating diabetes and high blood pressure. As for Mr. Smyle, who grows the grass around his home outside San Antonio, Texas, “I can personally attest to its worth as a hangover cure,” he says.

But the Army Corps of Engineers has so far shunned the grass for what many believe to be its greatest use: erosion control. While vetiver can’t survive in colder northern climates, devotees argue the grass is ideally suited to help protect hurricane-prone coastal areas in the South.

In a breakthrough, vetiver recently made a short list of 10 plants the Army Corps was considering for plantings along the New Orleans levees. “It has some characteristics worth exploring,” concedes Col. Starkel. But Corps planners are concerned about vetiver’s tendency to develop roots at its leaf joints. If pieces broke off and washed away during a flood, they could root elsewhere and spread the plant to places it’s not wanted.

Vetiver advocates point to hundreds of years of cultivation abroad — as well as in the U.S. — to prove that the grass is well-behaved. The grass has been a part of the New Orleans landscape for two centuries without becoming invasive, say local residents. “I grew up knowing about vetiver,” says Jean Fahr, president of the civic gardening group Parkway Partners. “My grandmother hung it in her closet to repel moths.”

New Orleans nurseryman Don Heumann first learned about vetiver 20 years ago while exploring plants for coastal restoration projects. As Mr. Heumann learned more about the grass, he became enthralled — and then frustrated. “You just can’t get anyone to believe all the things this plant does,” he says.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed Mr. Heumann’s greenhouses south of the city and flooded his land with saltwater for days. He says his vetiver grass was the only plant to survive.

Intrigued by its insect-repelling reputation, about 10 years ago Mr. Heumann tried dropping some chopped up roots on a swarm of termites. The next day, the termites were gone, he says, except for several dead ones. That’s when he took the plants to Dr. Henderson, a leading expert on Formosan termites at LSU’s AgCenter.

Over the years, Dr. Henderson and other scientists pinpointed a chemical in vetiver roots called nootkatone that’s toxic to many insects, including termites. Several patents later, Dr. Henderson is conducting more experiments to prove his theory that vetiver grass can form an effective barrier to subterranean termites, and that it can thrive in a salty Gulf Coast environment.

Years before Katrina, Dr. Henderson warned that Formosan termites were invading trees growing along the levees, and even eating the sugar-cane-based seam-filling material in the concrete dike walls, which he believed weakened the protective system. Vetiver, he says, could not only provide erosion control and a breakwater barrier, but it could help ward off future termite infestations.

The Corps regards termites as only “a minor contributing factor” to levee failures, and officials remain wary that vetiver could prove to have downsides that outweigh it benefits.

Despite the government doubts, private landowners have begun to embrace vetiver grass.

Doug Terreson, an oil-industry analyst for Morgan Stanley in Houston, installed thousands of the plants along the shorefront of his property on Mobile Bay, Ala., after losing several feet to erosion from Hurricane Katrina. The grass was by far the cheapest solution he found to his erosion problem, costing $2 to $5 a plant, depending on the size. “They call it the soil nail,” he said. “And that’s what it is.” Two months after planting the grass, “I couldn’t pull it from the ground.”

Earlier this month, Dr. Henderson and Mr. Heumann were invited to talk about vetiver grass to members of the Parkway Partners civic group. At a plant sale before their presentation, New Orleans homeowners snapped up pallets of the grass to plant around their houses.

“I’ve been a victim of termites — twice,” said Mary Lou Main, 80 years old. “I don’t know if vetiver will stop them. But I do hope it will retard their progress.”

Weeding By Example

NEW ORLEANS. Aug. 24, 2007

---

(CBS) New Orleans’ City Park was once one of the best urban parks in America. But after Hurricane Katrina flooded it, the city abandoned it.”It just bothered me that it didn’t look good,” says Jack McShane.”These are things adults are supposed to take care of,” says CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman in this week’s Assignment America.

“Well, nobody was doing it, so I had to do it,” he said.

Just about every weekend, no matter how hot and miserable it gets, you’ll find this 13-year-old boy somewhere on City Park’s 1,300 acres, mowing all morning.

“We love Jack,” says John Hopper, the volunteer coordinator at City Park. “He is definitely, without a doubt, the most consistent volunteer that we have at that age group.”

Jack also recruits other volunteers into his grassroots mowing club called the Mow-Rons.

“Our original slogan was ‘The Mow-Rons are in City Park, the idiots are at City Hall,’” says Jack, “but we kind of changed it because it was a little bit inappropriate.”

Their new slogan is “Weeding By Example,” and Jack has certainly done that.

Patrick McShane says he never really taught his son anything about community service.

“That’s not been my strength,” he says. “After the storm, I’ve learned more about the importance of volunteerism, and I’ve learned it right here at home from my own son.”

The Mow-Rons are now an official, non-profit charity and have already purchased a dozen mowers. Each week they clear a little more of City Park and bring a little more of New Orleans back to life.

“It’s really great to see that, because people are having fun in the park again,” says Jack.

But does Jack keep his parents’ lawn looking great, too? “No way,” says Pat.

Guess no one ever said charity ends at home, though Patrick says that all things considered, he doesn’t mind picking up the slack.

© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Businesses Try to Rebuild After Katrina
 

By JOYCE M. ROSENBERG
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; 2:45 PM

NEW YORK — It wasn’t until this past June, nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated his New Orleans coffee house, that Robert Thompson was really back in business. It took that long to clean up and rebuild after the flood waters had receded.

“It’s hard to express the experience to people,” Thompson said. “There’s not one picture or sound bite that describes it.”

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***http://katrinafilm.com/fairgrinds.wmv

***http://www.viddler.com/explore/katrinafilm/videos/13

***http://katrinafilm.com/dogdaze.wmv

***http://katrinafilm.com/dogz.wmv

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/22/AR2007082201664_pf.html

52 stars of the street came out to participate

in Fair Grinds Dog Daze of Summer.  Thanks

to Diane Angelico and the rest of the Louisiana

SPCA team who helped make this event possible.

Check it out here:

http://www.viddler.com/explore/Katrinafilm/videos/25/

On August 15th, 2007, the City of New Orleans and Mayor Nagin bestowed upon Terranova’s Grocery a much deserved commendation for their work after the storm.   Even though their home flooded, Terranova’s stayed open 7 days and had extended hours for months after the storm to make sure everyone had a place to obtain much needed items. 

Sitting among the likes of Galatoire’s and Folger’s Coffee who also received awards,  Terranova’s stands tall among the major forces helping to bring New Orleans back.     The Terranova family has, for decades, consistently contributed to the many events in the Faubourg St. John neighborhood.  

The proclamation they received on August 15th states,  “In recognition of your commitment to the business community and the City of New Orleans and in gratitude for your outstanding work in helping to Bring New Orleans Back!”

Please stop by Terranova’s Supermarket at 3308 Esplanade and congratulate them on their award and thank them for their many decades of service to our community.

   

United Press International®
News. Analysis. Insight.™

NewsTrack - Entertainment

Published: Aug. 14, 2007 at 9:20 AM

New Orleans still on trumpeter’s mind

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Aug. 14 (UPI) — The music on Terence Blanchard’s new album strikes close to home for the New Orleans trumpeter — it was inspired by Hurricane Katrina.

Blanchard’s latest album, “A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina),” comes directly out of the plight of the post-hurricane Crescent City and is an outgrowth of Blanchard’s work on Spike Lee’s acclaimed HBO documentary “When the Levees Broke.”

“We had all this material we couldn’t use,” in the film, says Blanchard, who was teaching at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles and got his wife and four children out of New Orleans just before the hurricane hit. The family has subsequently returned to the city.

“The record was reliving the whole thing for me in a lot of regards, of course. It put me back in that space, stories friends told me they endured. I’m not gonna lie to you; it was hard.”

Despite the personal nature of the project, Blanchard says the members of his band helped considerably with the arrangements and orchestrations on the album.

Fats Domino gets new gold discs

Posted Wed Aug 15, 2007 8:40am AEST

Pioneering pianist Fats Domino has been presented with replicas of 20 gold records that were lost when his New Orleans home was badly damaged during Hurricane Katrina two years ago.

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, it was rumoured that Fats Domino had died in the storm.

Images of his home were shown with the words “RIP Fats, you will be missed” painted across the front.

In fact, he had been rescued from his house in the lower 9th ward neighbourhood by the US Coastguard.

But his house had been badly flooded and many of his treasured possessions from his career as one of America’s greatest musicians were lost.

Today the music industry has presented him with replicas of 20 of the gold records lost in the storm.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/15/2005334.htm?section=entertainment

New Blow to New Orleans in Council Leader’s Plea

By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 13 — In a new blow to this city’s ethically troubled politics, the City Council’s senior member, Oliver M. Thomas Jr., pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge on Monday and immediately resigned, adding to a pervasive feeling that corruption infests public life here.

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On Sunday, August 26, 2007, from 12:00 until 2:00 pm, New Orleans musicians will join forces for a “Musicians Solidarity Second Line”. The procession will start at Armstrong Park and proceed to Jackson Square where leaders of the music industry will speak in protest of the current fragile state of the local music industry. Although no music will be performed during the second line, musicians are asked to bring their instruments as a symbolic gesture of their importance to New Orleans culture and how they are being ‘silenced’ by an apathetic business community. By creating a Second Line, which is a New Orleans musical cornerstone, without music, the march seeks to capture the public imagination to consider what New Orleans would be without its musicians.

George Brumat, 1943-2007

By Tom McDermott

George Brumat, a long-time owner of both Snug Harbor Jazz Club and the Port of Call Restaurant, died in his sleep in New Orleans on July 7.

Brumat, a bearlike figure in his later years, was beloved by jazz musicians in New Orleans and beyond for his generous stewardship of the city’s prime modern jazz venue from 1992 on. When he opened the Faubourg Jazz Club in 1980, he planted one of the seeds that would blossom into today’s Frenchmen Street scene.

He was born Giorgio Brumat in Zara, Italy in 1943 to an Italian father and an Albanian mother. After World War II, this land was ceded to the newly-formed Yugoslavia (the town is now called Zadar and is part of Croatia). The family spent the first few years of his life traveling around a difficult post-war Europe, in Hamburg and Monza and finally in Rome, where Brumat lived until the age of 12.

Brumat’s father had connections in the Italian film industry, and he spent much of his early childhood in Rome on film sets, where he found work dubbing American kids’ voices into Italian. He told me of one particular adventure from these days. “I was on a film set where Sophia Loren was the star,” he said. “She liked me and let me sit on her lap on breaks. This was just at the time that I was starting to notice that men and women were put together differently, so I tell people now that, when it comes to women, I started at the very top.”

In 1955, Brumat, his two brothers and his parents immigrated to America. After a short stay in New York City, they moved to New Orleans, where George lived the last 51 years of his life. He learned Spanish from his neighbors, and eventually English in the classic immigrant manner by going to the cinema every day.
From 1969 to 1977, Brumat owned the Port of Call Restaurant; for about this same period of time he was married to Donna Jursich. In 1980, he and Mike Martin opened a jazz club/restaurant where Snug Harbor is now located called the Faubourg. It had excellent performers (James Booker played some of his best gigs at the end of his life there), but there was no tourist traffic to speak of in the Marigny in those days, and the club closed after two years, reopening in 1983 under new ownership as Snug Harbor.

After laying low for a few years, Brumat re-emerged on the scene by buying Snug Harbor in 1992. He spent most of his waking hours from then on running the club, providing perhaps the most varied lineup of any music club in New Orleans. In a city that doesn’t pay its musicians well, Snug guaranteed a decent paycheck, and the musicians, freed from the onus of passing a tip jar, responded with great performances.

Where Brumat got his love of jazz is something of a mystery. His niece, Luanna Brumat, believes it was from the movies. “If you look at Italian and American art movies from the ’50s and ’60s there’s a lot of great jazz,” she says. “George was a fan of the movies his whole life.” Others credit bassist/songwriter Ramsey McLean with inspiring Brumat’s love of jazz.

And at the end of his life, Brumat co-produced his own movie. His DVD of Snug Harbor’s star performers was culled from dozens of hours of footage of regulars including Ellis Marsalis, Charmaine Neville, Astral Project, Henry Butler and others. In addition, Brumat made rough audio tapes of hundreds of shows, an archive that may be without equal on the contemporary music scene.

On July 22, many of the performers from the club performed a farewell concert for Brumat at the performance hall at the University of New Orleans. UNO has also established a music scholarship in his name.
Jason Patterson, the talent buyer for Snug Harbor who knew Brumat for 32 years, summed it up this way: “George had a rich life, but after the Faubourg closed, he was very depressed. He was really at loose ends for a few years before he bought the club. Snug Harbor was his redemption. His legacy is secure.”

http://offbeat.com/artman/publish/printer_2397.shtml

New Orleans, the city severely affected by Hurricane Katrina two years ago, has recovered its status as a popular tourist destination.

August 29th 2007 marks the second anniversary since the hurricane struck and the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) has noted the great resurgence of the city since then, reports Travel Daily News.

Mardi Gras in 2006 was a significant turning point for the city, according to New Orleans CVB and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival was a draw for the crowds also.

Stephen Perry, New Orleans CVB CEO, said: “The rich New Orleans cultural experience that has existed for hundreds of years is alive and well.

“On behalf of the entire hospitality community of New Orleans, we extend a profound thank you to every individual visitor, travel professional, volunteer, executive, meeting professional, meeting attendee, exhibitor, organization, corporation and association that has supported us and participated in the rebirth of one of the greatest destinations in the world.”

http://news.holidayhypermarket.co.uk/New-Orleans-regains-tourism-impetus-18241394.html

Destinations News posted on 10/08/2007 10:31:18

“Since shortly after Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration began enforcing the controversial law in March, which has designated hundreds of properties for FEMA-financed demolitions, fair-housing advocates and targeted homeowners have howled over what they decry as haphazard enforcement of the health-threat law, a confusing and inconsistent notification process, and the lack of a clear recourse to save condemned properties.”

You can see a film of the pictured property here:                http://katrinafilm.com/vodun.wmv

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Thank you very much for attending the Night Out Against Crime

event at 3006 Esplanade.   Here’s a video of the event:

http://www.viddler.com/explore/Katrinafilm/videos/20/

If Louisiana would invest in higher education programs in coastal restoration, it could be at the forefront of a fledgling industry that could rival the oil boom.

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Report: New Orleans Population Up
By BECKY BOHRER
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 8, 2007; 7:03 PM

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans’ population has grown to about 273,600 people, or 60 percent of the number here before Hurricane Katrina hit nearly two years ago, a new report shows.

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It takes a (musical) village in The Big Easy
By Associated Press
Monday, August 6, 2007 - Updated: 12:57 AM EST

NEW ORLEANS - Standing outside his new mint-green house, Fredy Omar hears the rumble of construction trucks, the buzz of drills and the thud of hammers. It’s all an overture for something far sweeter - the sound of music.

     Maybe it’ll come from Omar, himself, rehearsing a soaring Latin love song on the piano in his living room. Or any number of his neighbors.

     This is a community in the making, mostly of musicians - a jambalaya of singers, drummers, and trumpet, piano, guitar, harmonica and even washboard players who’ll be living along the same streets, practicing and maybe even performing together.

     It’s the new Musicians’ Village, the inspiration of two New Orleans-born luminaries - singer-pianist Harry Connick Jr. and saxophonist Branford Marsalis - who decided in the post-Katrina ferment that something was needed to help musicians stay and play in the city.

     Two years after the hurricane, their vision is quickly turning into reality. The village - a tidy cluster of about 80 brightly painted homes - is just a small glimmer of hope in a scarred city, but it already has given Omar and others a roof over their heads and a chance to make music once again.

     “If I can have another round of New Orleans, give it to me,” Omar says, his arms outstretched as if to embrace all of North Roman Street. “I feel at home here.”

Yesterday, many people came out to join with the New Orleans Police Department and tour the neighborhood. The participants were treated to many tips about how to better secure their homes and how the NOPD can help reduce crime in our area. Congratulations to the Faubourg St. John Neighborhood Association Crime Committee, NOPD, and all the people who by participating made this event a huge success.Click here for a short film of the event.If you would like to see news coverage from two local TV stations, click here.

I have a theory that years of salt use to reduce snow on

the roadway in Minnesota weakened the joints and bolts

on the bridge as the salt seeped through the cement and

dripped underneath.

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Lab-grown skin to replace bunnies in makeup trials

                            We may be decades away from eating meat grown in a lab, but not so with lab-grown skin. Scientists at L’Oreal have invented a product called Episkin, which is basically a layer of skin cells grown from human donor skin cells in a petri dish. These small patches of skin can be used to test beauty products, saving lab animals. Episkin can tan, and can be made to age using high exposures to UV light.

The skin is being hailed as an important step in cruelty-free cosmetics, at least for Europe, where a ban on using animals to test beauty products begins in 2009 (the practice is banned in the U.K. already). We’d like to think that lab-grown skin could do more. For instance, Episkin could be an important step toward lab-grown pork crackling. – S.E. Kramer

Today, the Fair Grounds donated the police cruisers which will be used
for the enhanced patrol for the neighborhood.

This patrol will be 24 hours seven days per week and is supposed to
commence 30 days prior to the track opening its’ temporary slots
gaming facility.  (by Tommy Lewis, Faubourg St. John Neighborhood)

http://www.viddler.com/explore/katrinafilm/videos/16/

Fair Grounds donates 2 cruisers to New Orleans police
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans Police Department, still struggling to recover from damage left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, on Tuesday received a boost from the Fair Grounds Race Course which donated a pair of cruisers to help with patrols around the track. Fair Grounds President Randall Soth presented the keys to the cars to Superintendent Warren Riley at a news conference. In addition to the cars, the Fair Grounds is funding the salaries of officers who will handle the enhanced neighborhood patrol, Soth said. The track’s commitment is valued at more than $750,000 annually, Fair Grounds officials said. Tuesday’s announcement was the latest step toward the opening of the Fair Grounds’ temporary slot-machine gaming facility later this year. On Monday, the first slot machines were delivered to the track which is expected to open its permanent facility in November 2008.