Save The Date

Rising Tide IV is currently scheduled for Aug. 22 2009, tentatively at the same location as last year. After three successful years, we look forward to another lively exploration of the recovery and future of one of America's great cities.

The final details (location, featured speaker, panels, parties) should be finalized in the next few weeks, so save the date and watch this blog and the other New Orleans bloggers for details as they are finalized.


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NOLA Weather blogger organzing TX relief

Active Weather Underground blogger Patrap is putting together a relief truck bound for Texas. I will post more details as I get them but what this space, the nola-bloggers@googlegroups.com list and risingtide on Twitter for more details as they are available.

I think this is a good opportunity to NOLA Bloggers to help Texas by helping the efforts of one of their own.

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Comments! Suggestions! Gripes! Kudos!

Attention Rising Tide attendees!

We need your feedback on this year's conference!

Please head to the "Contact" section of http://risingtidenola.net and drop us an email, or leave your comments for us beneath this post.

They will be greatly appreciated and carefully considered.

Thanks again for making this year's conference the best yet!

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RT3 Afterwords

Here are some links to local blogggers on their experience at Rising Tide III.

Cliff's Crib
Pistolette on the Education Panel
Suspect Device
Varg at The Chicory
Deidra of G-Bitch
Tim promises more to come
We Could Be Famous
Adding:
Michael Tisserand on Gambit's BlogOfNewOrleans
More Monday mid-morning:
Oyster on John Barry
Tim's Nameless Blog

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Conference Live Blogging Links

From Leigh at Liprap's Lament: Notes from the front table
From Maitri at Maitri's Vatul Blog:
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Politics Panel
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Journalism Panel
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Education Panel
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - John Barry Keynote
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Blogger Award
From Greg Peters at Suspect Device: Deadblogging Rising Tide III
From Deidra of G-Bitch: RTIII
Bart at B-Rox: My Education Question

I expect a lot of day after posts at some point, especially since the remains of TS Fay will be making it a rainy day in the Crescent City. I will round up after posts tonight and list them here.

If I have ommitted a post here just drop me an email. If your post was primarily about the altercation between two attendees, I have omitted it intentionally. I don't want that spilling over here.

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Rising Tide 3 Media Coverage

So far, there is a story in the Times-Picayune here.

I will round up links to live-blogging entries and after posts as well from the NOLA Bloggers as soon as I get enough coffee to compensate for beers at the after party.

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Radio Days - Or Minutes

God bless Varg.

He got Sheckrastos and I to do a radio talk show - Eric Asher's over at WIST 690 AM - at about 1:30 in the afternoon today to chat up Rising Tide. I've called in to radio shows before, but have never been in a sound booth with a fuzzy mic in my face. You can listen to the aftermath of our time on the air here, beginning about 22 minutes in.

First off, Eric is a sweetheart for having us blogheads on his show, and he's pretty savvy about what's being put out there by the NOLA blogpocheh. He mentioned Bayou St John David's The Nagin Files as a particular fount of information that he draws upon regularly, and he was an all-around great host.

On listening to the podcast, though, I've noticed a few things:

-I sound like my mom. I'm also laughing so much, people might think that my corner of the booth was full of nitrous oxide. Sorry 'bout the giggles, guys.

-Somebody in this town better hire Varg full time, dammit, and pay him well. We forgot to fully recognize him as the webmaestro of the RT site. At least I pointed out the stirring gothic beauty that is The Chicory over the airwaves. And if not a single one of these awesome flyers of his makes its way to the people's penthouse on Friday night, something ain't right with the world.

-Adrastos needs his very own talk show. His personality cannot be contained in an Ed McMahon-ish role opposite Eric Asher's Johnny Carson. Somebody, get the man a sound booth and some airtime so's he can reveal the mysteries of those who are Naked On Roller Skates.

-Eric brought up Ashley Morris, and in our race for superlatives to best describe Harry Shearer's favorite mime, we forgot to mention the first-ever Ashley Morris awards, which will be presented at the Zeitgeist on Saturday near the end of the day.

When all is said and done, if nobody else registers for RT III after this, then I'll have to whip out some Jewish mother-style guilt on y'all.

"It's all right. I'll just sit here by the glow of my laptop, blogging away for you. And only for you."

Problem is, that sounds too much like a come-on. Just register already!

cross-posted at Liprap's Lament- The Line

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Rising Tide Weekend Starts Tomorrow!

It's time for Rising Tide. Meet the NOLA Bloggers Friday night, 8/22 at 7:30 PM to kick off the weekend of events at Buffa's Lounge, 1001 Esplanade Avenue. Pick up your badges, grab some refreshments, and chat with other bloggers. Cash bar.

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The Katrina Myth

From Levees.org founder Sandy Rosenthal:

Dear all,

I am hoping to meet a lot of you this weekend at RTIII. On Saturday, I will present a sneak preview of levees.org's brand new eye-popping video The Katrina Myth; the truth about a thoroughly unnatural disaster.

The hard-hitting 10-minute documentary produced for levees.org by FoodMusicJustice.com dispels a lot of the harmful myths that are slowing the metro New Orleans recovery.

I also will share some things that levees.org tried that were very effective in growing our membership, and we think they could work for you, too.

But most important, I cannot wait to meet the people who have been so critical to the recovery and to the strength of this city!

Again, I hope to see you there!

Sandy



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As we get down to days to count off until Rising Tide 3 on Aug. 22, here's a link back to a blog copy of a Katrina second anniversary letter written by our featured speaker, John Barry.

A city worth saving

Remember, it's never to late to register, and you can sign-up at the door. See the details below.

And don't forget Friday night's kickoff part at Buffa's Lounge on Esplanade Avenue in the Marigny.


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2008 Rising Tide Conference Schedule

Friday night, 8/22, 7:30 PM - Meet and Greet at Buffa's Lounge, 1001 Esplanade Avenue. Pick up your badges, grab some refreshments, and chat with other bloggers. Drinks are not included in the conference fee.

Saturday, 8/23, 9:00 - Conference begins at Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center, 1618 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd - coffee and pastries are served.

The following presentations include 15-minute Question and Answer sessions:

9:30- 10:30 - Keynote speaker: John Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America and commissioner for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority - East

10:45 - 12:00 - The Past, Present, and Future of Elementary and Secondary Education in New Orleans.

Panelists:

· Dedra Johnson – professor and blogger, author of Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow

· Jeffrey Berman - teacher, Booker T. Washington High School and Schwarz Alternative School

· Grayling Evans - teacher, Coghill Elementary School

· Leigh Dingerson - Education team leader of the Center for Community Change, editor and contributor to Keeping The Promise?: The Debate Over Charter Schools

· Clifton Harris - concerned parent and blogger

· Christian Roselund - UTNO Communications, blogging at Dirty South Bureau

Moderator: Patrick Armstrong, former Recovery School District teacher and blogger

12:00 - 1:00 - Lunch provided by J'anita's

1:00 - 2:15 - Journalism and Blogging: Intersections and Digressions

Panelists:

· Lee Zurik: WWL-TV investigative reporter

· Kevin Allman: author, journalist, and blogger, frequent guest blogger at Gambit's Blog of New Orleans

· David Winkler-Schmit: journalist and frequent contributor to Gambit Weekly and the Blog of New Orleans

· Eli Ackerman: blogger at We Could Be Famous

Moderator: Jeffrey Bostick

2:30 - 3:45 - Local Politics Panel - Panelists and Moderator TBA

Refreshments can be purchased at the Zeitgeist concession stand for the duration of the conference.

Sunday, 8-24: Community Service Activity TBA

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Rising Tide details taking shape!

This year's Rising Tide registration fee is $20 in advance, $25 on conference weekend. Of course, donations are also welcome. After making your purchase or donation, you'll receive a confirmation email. The Rising Tide package includes:

• Friday night meet & greet party, beverages not included in registration fee
• Saturday's Conference, with John Barry as keynote speaker, and lunch included
• Sunday's optional public service component
• Party venue/menu, Conference panels, Saturday lunch & Sunday service project details to be announced

Our registration PayPal is now online at right.

We're looking forward to seeing you all there. Please feel free to visit the Rising Tide Website and contact us with any questions or suggestions. You can also leave comments on this blog.

This is shaping up to be the best Rising Tide Conference yet! Click here to see the Rising Tide Flickr Pool for pictures of RT I & RT II!

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John Barry keynoter for Rising Tide 3

John Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, will be keynote speaker at the third annual Rising Tide Conference sponsored by the NOLA Bloggers, a community of writers, citizen journalists and on-line advocates for the rebirth of New Orleans.

Barry is the prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author whose books have won more than twenty awards. In 2005 the National Academy of Sciences named The Great Influenza, a study of the 1918 pandemic, the year’s outstanding book on science or medicine, and the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens gave Barry its 2005 “September Eleventh Award.” Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, won the 1998 Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for the year’s best book of American history.

The annual conference started in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of the city when a small group of New Orleans, La.-based bloggers decided to expand their on-line advocacy for the rebirth of New Orleans into a public event. The third annual conference will be held Aug. 22-24 2008. Saturday’s main event will take place at the Zeitgeist Multi-disciplinary Arts Center, 1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd (@ Felicity) New Orleans, LA 70113.


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Rising Tide 3 Poster

We are going to have to use paste pots to put these up, or they will fly off the walls as fast as they go up. Hell, even Fred Radtke will want one to add to his collection.

If you're wondering where the hell the cranes we were promised are, join us in New Orleans August 22-24 to help solve this riddle.

504ever.

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Rising Tide III

It is that time of year again, and the New Orleans bloggers are laying the ground work for a third annual conference on the recovery of the post-Federal Flood city. The tentative date is August 23. The venue and program are in development and will be announced as they take final shape. The preliminary plan is for a Friday night social/registration event, a day-long conference on Saturday and a volunteer activity on Sunday.

Watch this space for more information.

The risingtidenola.com web site was both registered to and administered by the late Ashley Morris but we hope to straighten that out soon. I have registered risingtidenola.org and risingtidenola.net just in case.




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Remember Ashley Morris

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8 - 29: Dave Zirin on New Orleans

And Still They Rise: Confronting Katrina
By DAVE ZIRIN

"I'm scared to return. Too much death. Too many spirits." This is what a friend said to me the week before I left for New Orleans. I had never been to the Crescent City. He had traveled there many times - a"home away from home" - before August 2005 changed the course of the city forever. Now he fears it.

I felt the fear before my plane even landed at Louis Armstrong International Airport. As we began our descent, dark jagged shadows jutted across the verdant swampland. It was all too cinematic. I foundout later that what I thought were dramatic shadows was wetland defoliation; the banal reality proving to be far more frightening than the supernatural.

My second NOLA moment was leaving the airport, catching a glimpse of a man riding down the center strip of the highway in 100-degree heat, on a bicycle, with headphones, no helmet and his hands off the handlebars. At the time, I thought it was just local flavor, likeseeing a cardinal in St. Louis. But later, after learning about thespike in the suicide rate over the last two years, I began to wonder if it was something else.

I was in the Big Easy as an invited speaker at a conference of NOLA bloggers called Rising Tide II. In most cities, bloggers practice a peculiar virtual cannibalism, tearing each other apart for sport. But at Rising Tide, among people young and old, black and white, I saw my first glimpse of what can be termed blogger solidarity. It stemmed, as one told me, from "the necessity of coming together after Katrina." They referred to each other in conversation by their blog names, more colorful than the mobsters in the film Goodfellas. There was DangerBlonde, MD Filter, my unflappable guide, Liprap, and Mom'n'em.(Mom'n'em is a man. The handle comes from a matriarchal New Orleans phrase. Instead of asking, "How's the family?" You say, "How's Mom'n'em?")

The bloggers represent the best of something beginning to bubble that you won't see on the nightly news, as the two-year anniversary of Katrina arrives today. Amid the horror, amid the neighborhoods that the federal government seems content to see die, there are actual people sticking it out. And they do it with gusto. As Valentine Pierce, a poet and journalist at the conference, said, "Bush's promises don't hold water. The only thing that holds water is the city."

They were also the perfect people for me to speak with to learn the ground-truth about post-Katrina New Orleans. They're not paid to write about the myriad of issues they confront - from mental health to public housing to the loan swindles to the state of art. They do it because they want everyone - those staying away, the transplants from the North, the ones who get their information from the mainstream media - who sees New Orleans as merely a symbol to know the facts: the good, the bad and the ugly.

And the ugly side is that the majority black city is still being left to wither slowly on the vine. There is a reason President Bush did not say the word New Orleans in the last State of the Union. This is Moynihan's "benign neglect" writ large. But it has had a bizarre boomerang effect. Because the future of city is at stake, the neglect that guides federal policy is something that both whites and blacks have to confront. Also, since New Orleans was far less segregated to my eyes than Washington, D.C., where I live, it puts the suffering of the black majority into people's faces where it can't be ignored. If Katrina wrecked and removed 40 percent of the city, it has, among a minority, also brought people together.

It is remarkable that a city can be both torn asunder and also find a measure of salvation in the same name: Katrina. To the people I spoke with, Katrina is a noun, an adjective and even a verb. But one thing it isn't is simply a hurricane. When locals talk about Katrina, they are very conscious of the fact that the hurricane itself barely dented this proud city. Katrina means the breaking of the levees. Katrina means loss of their homes. It's the politicians so fatally slow with aid. It's the spike in violent crime. It's the ever-rising suicide rate. It's the aged who have died of desperation.

Katrina is something ephemeral, a sadness seeped into the humidity. It gets in your clothes, your eyes, your hair. It's everywhere, even ifyou aren't staring at a house with a black X, with a number underneath, denoting a death at the hands of levees. It made me feel as if the city's almost satirically gothic above-ground cemeteries were monuments to August 2005, even though the graves have stood for generations. The only thing I can compare the experience to would be visiting Kent State University, another site with spirits that can't find peace.

But as spiritual as post-Katrina New Orleans feels, the ravages of the city are something that residents know were man-made. The people ofNew Orleans are the last ones to need a lecture about how horribly unnatural this disaster was. It wasn't an act of God. It was the product of a whole set of priorities that put their city last. Bumper stickers are everywhere that read, "Make Levees Not War." People have signs in their front yards telling the Army Corps of Engineers to taketheir eminent domain and back off their houses.

Make no mistake, there is anger and a sense of desperation among the city's poor. Sometimes it's inward, as the mental health and suicide studies show. Often it is outward, as the violent crime demonstrates.That feeling of being abandoned by this country and this criminal administration, of being left to die on a roof, remains. And yet, they still, so very inconveniently, continue to live, love and, most importantly, struggle and agitate. Everyone in this country should travel to New Orleans and be among a people supposed to perish, who act like they just didn't get the memo.

as seen in the Houston Chronicle

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Living on the Edge

The ground breaking for the new Minnesota Twins baseball stadium was scheduled only forty-eight hours after the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis. Naturally, it was cancelled. It would be unseemly to highlight the fact that the government of Minnesota had found a half-billion dollars to build a new ball park, but no money to repair the I-35W bridge.

Featured Speaker David Zirin took the Rising Tide 2 crowd on a whirlwind tour of the disfunction of a system that has spent 16 billion dollars in recent years on stadiums for a handful of the wealthiest men in America while the rest of our infrastructure--including our levees--collapse about us.

Zirin is a sports columnist, but one that comes at what sports has become--what he calls the Athletic Industrial Complex--as both a filter though which we view society and a reflection of what our priorities have become. He was invited partly because his latest book, Welcome to the Terrordome, opens with an examination of the Superdome as shelter from hell for people who could not afford a Saint's game ticket, and ends questioning the priorities of a nation that first rebuilds it stadiums while a city lays in ruin all around it.

I would disagree with him to some extent, and regret that while speaking to him during lunch I didn't raise the issue. The Saints were a god send to this city last Fall, the only group of people in a position of prominence who demonstrated the competence and spirit lacking from all of the rest of our leadership.

His speech was a rollicking romp through much of what's wrong with society as reflected in the glass eye of ESPN and our other focii of sports. Read his book, and catch him speaking somewhere if you can. Sports is one of the things that makes us Americans, that links us together in a time where we increasingly have no common experience. If we do not listen to voice likes his, there is scant hope for the future of this nation.

Check out his on-line column at www.edgeofsports.com


Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Think New Orleans Louisiana FEMA levees flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK wetlands news rebirth Debrisville Federal Flood 8-29 David Zirin Welcome to the Terrordome

photo of RT II conference room courtesy of Maitri's blog

(go give her a cyber pat on her virtual back, y'all. She worked her tail off for RT)

spray painting on blue window shading tarp inspired by AshMo

(He worked something else off (heh), but it was ultimately good for RT)

My head is spinning, y'all. Must...digest...blogger....conference.......

This fellow's doing a waaay better job of it than I am at the moment...

Take in some Sophmom impressions of the whole conference experience, while you're at it.

And I must give a big, huge thanks to keynoter Dave Zirin, who gave one heck of a talk and seemed to get a big kick out of the NOLA blogger krewe. Safe trip back, Dave. All the best to your mom'n'em...uhhh, your family and friends, not this mominem...


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