Though a bit too focused on Brad Pitt, The Atlantic had a spot on housing in New Orleans this week. Check it out!"If you look at the way ants behave when they’re gathering food, it looks like the stupidest, most irrational thing you’ve ever seen—they’re zigzagging all over the place, they’re bumping into other ants. …
Louisiana in the Economist
Two of my favorite things come together in this cautiously optimistc Economist article about Louisiana. Guess they must be reading my hopeful blog posts.Hat tip to Dunc, the source of most of my interesting news links.
Looking forward
Jackie from Gramercy, Louisiana, isn't looking back. 'We a post-Katrina couple,' she told me proudly of the man she'll marry this weekend. 'We havin a blue-jean weddin, doin it our way, since we both done the deal before.' Her before was definitive and, in definitive south Louisiana fashion, pronounced something like bufowah. 'My ex-husband, he …
Rosa (Or: Home)
When I traveled to New Orleans a few months after Katrina, my friend Lindsey and I spent an afternoon driving around gawking at the damage. At the end of the day, I was spent; I needed home. Not Shreveport, necessarily, but some place of refuge – a bookstore, a coffee shop, a Scottish pub.Home doesn’t …
When a nation becomes a community
Anxiously, I've been tracking from afar the movements of Hurricane Gustav. From the e-coverage, I draw an encouraging note: Americans of all stripes are demonstrating their concern for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. State governments are at the ready, the GOP convention is turned upside down, and Gustav dominates the electronic print media. There …
Don’t do it, Bobby!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/us/politics/21cnd-mccain.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin As great as it would be to have a Louisiana boy in line for the Presidency (and really, how long would John McCain last in the Oval?), I've got one message for Bobby Jindal as he meets with McCain this week: Don't do it. Why? First and foremost, Governor Jindal, we need you. Ethics …
Better than casinos
Shreveport gets some NYTimes buzz: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/movies/20shre.html?_r=3&ref=movies&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Cultural Erosion
During one sleepless night in Shreveport this summer, I was browsing my dad’s bookshelf when I ran across Bayou Farewell by Post journalist Mike Tidwell. Tidwell wrote about the devastation of Louisiana’s coastline that was taking place long before Katrina and Rita and which continues to suck a football field off of LA's coastline every …
Crawfishing
Moving from Louisiana to Ecuador, I resigned myself to giving up good seafood - crawfish especially. Last week, however, I was happy to find that during the months with an r in them,* coastal Ecuadorians eat the dirty little things with gusto. From what I could gather during a conversation with one of my costeño …
Home.
After almost getting deported from South Africa and then interrogated in Amsterdam, I made it home Wednesday night. At least this didn't happen (although, thanks to whatever I swallowed on rapid number seven in the Zambezi river, it could very well have): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6213644.stm I've already had my sweet tea and a flu shot, and will …
Mark Clayton Hand 