The Redstar Perspective

I’m back on my couch beside a snoozing M.A.S., after we got up at 5:45 am this morning to fly from Raleigh,NC home. Of course, in this wintry post-Jet Blue world, our 9 am flight was delayed three hours, and with commuting via T from the airport, it was 4:45 pm before we finally came through my door. I’m not much longer for this day myself.

But of course, there’s a whirlwind of thoughts going through my mind, spurred in part by spending the weekend in an American exurban subdivision, one from which the M.A.S.’s sister has wracked up 83k miles on her car in only three years in her daily commutes between home, work and leisure. I’m not a great navigator in M.A.S. road trips by any stretch (I’m definitely a driver, and not one who’s keen on asking directions), but I was particularly pitiful this weekend with nothing but fields and farms and sparsely dispersed strip malls as my landmarks.

Needless to say, I was out of my element among the highway culture and no Starbucks in sight, even if the M.A.S. clan and friends offer rich conversation on cities and planning and keep me busy trying to keep pace with their family dynamics. But then he and I took a road trip Sunday to Greensboro and, along with my latest academic read, we were back in more familiar territory of exploring urban history, decline, struggle and activism. We also visited with my lovely friend K and her delightful new babe, and I got to give more yummy baby clothes in my role as Auntie Redstar, you know the glamorous one with the retail addiction.

And after seeing his sister’s custom built home with the paint on the walls and the china in the hutch, I am back on my couch confronted again with my own need to paint my condo and renovate my kitchen. Some people find the prospect of design exciting. I dread it, and can only think, irritably, what a hassle.

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On behalf of working mothers everywhere - incl. my myriad friends, the M.A.S.’s sister hosting me this weekend, the M.A.S.’s mom visiting with us, my mom, my aunt, my cousins, etc. etc. etc.

There is a new “movement” underfoot, a modern feminist organizing strategy for working women (even though the word “feminism” is downplayed so as not to alienate my generation).

I’d love to talk more about this - including the fact that the NYT put this article in the “Fashion & Style” section…because those are the women’s pages?  Because this is a fad?  But, I will have to come back to For now I need to be a supportive girlfriend and stand by for assignments while the M.A.S. clan plans the menu for tonight’s housewarming party. (And by assignments I do not mean cooking!)  Truthfully, I’m hoping I can just keep hiding out here in the living room while they enthuse about hors d’oeuvres and ingredients and table set-up, etc.  But, as we women know too well, duty calls!
With love to my women and the men and children who love them too, sent across the highway miles from NC suburbia.

I promised to keep you updated on the housing hearings happening in New Orleans today and tomorrow, but I misspoke.  I’m more or less off-line until Monday, as I’m spending the weekend down south with the M.A.S.’s extended family.  Eek!  I’ve met them all, and am even getting to know his New Yorker brother well, but this is the first extended time period with the group.  I suppose it’s time; he’s been starring in the Supportive Partner role for so long now. 

So this is what I’ve got for you on the day’s events in NOLA: Nagin makes a power grab, HUD is Public Enemy #1, and activist-residents “[heckled]” their pro-demolition neighbors.  I’m sorry I missed it.  Not least because it would have been much more fulfilling than this nonsense.  (And here’s an embarrassed confession: I spent so much time today carrying on about the trials and tribulations of NOLA I missed perhaps one of the day’s most important announcements! Fair enough - if GA is going to Jump the Shark, Shonda et al. might as well make a soft landing in a new series featuring the ever luscious and endearing Kate Walsh.  Yes, I confess, I have a girl crush.  And I’m not alone.)

Looking forward to delivering a full report on family time, New Orleans, GA, and the rest on Monday…here’s hoping the erudite M.A.S. clan plan to kick back on the Oscar red carpet with me on Sunday night! 

While I’ve devoted myself pretty substantially to the public housing battles in New Orleans, countless conflicts over the redevelopment of the city are at play. One is regarding the future of Charity Hospital, a public facility that is the “oldest, continually operating hospital in the county” and the hospital for the region’s poor and indigent (and, frequently ignored in the following debate: a Level 1 Trauma Center).

“Big Charity” has been closed since Katrina, with a small satellite operating out of the convention center (this link from the American College of Physicians offers an excellent overview of the hospital’s pre-storm operations). The legislative skirmish over how much money to allocate to LA State University (LSU) over re-opening Charity has been both typically partisan and atypically political: while it’s just another fight between Dem. Gov. Blanco and GOP Senator Vitter, it also represents the first time the state legislature overrode the governor’s hand-picked Louisiana Recovery Authority’s recommendations for redevelopment regarding its plans and spending for LSU to re-build Charity. The opposing claims are using federal $$ to re-open Charity as a service provider for the indigent ASAP (Blanco) vs. setting aside some of that $$ for private voucher programs that will theoretically give the poor some choice in healthcare and eliminate the “two-tier” system of healthcare for the poor vs. the insured (Vitter). I say theoretically because voucher programs tend to be circumscribed by who is willing to accept them, and quite often it’s facilities a step above a Charity but rarely the sort of place a discriminating, insured American would opt to seek care.

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In my hometown of Braintree, some familiar faces have moved on. The Hilltop Steakhouse, the “western-style steakhouse” conceived by Frank and Irene Giuffrida, has closed its doors. The only one remaining is the original in Saugus.

The fiberglass cows that greeted Braintree residents and Route 3 travelers from their hilly post sold for upwards of $1,000 at auction yesterday.

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Another sure-to-be-circulated article from NYT’s architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff.  I just got it off the activist listserv this morning.  Ourossoff talks about the inequities in HUD’s approach to public housing redevelopment so far:

• a refusal to investigate viable alternatives to demolition (with a reference to John Fernandez again.  Love MIT celebrity!);
• ignoring the input from preservationists and other experts;
• threatening the architectural and urban fabric of the city with cookie-cutter suburban design proposals;
• using design “concerns” as a foil for larger social policy problems.

This article is published as the Congressional hearings kick off today.  Tours of the public housing developments are underway as I type.  Difference sources tell me it’s been a mysterious process getting these tours set up, worthy of Deep Throat.  A call received a half hour before you’re supposed to meet Maxine Waters at Lafitte; times for tours etc. changed at a moment’s notice.  Etc. etc.  Stay tuned at the RP for coverage of the hearings as they unfold.

 

Ok, I don’t have confirmation on the marketing campaign yet, but surely representing Christian dieters everywhere is Sherley’s next career move?

On Friday, February 16, MIT’s Professor Sherley ended his hunger strike, explaining that his “carefully modified” demands were still on the table even though he was breaking fast from his success at shining attention on issues of “equity” and “diversity” at MIT and in higher ed. Too bad it was his insanity that spent most of the time in the limelight; his “open letters” to the MIT community got increasingly vociferous and wacky as he dropped 20 pounds in 2 weeks. In one letter he compared his own travails to that of African-America civil rights activists, writing:

“These actions on the part of our provost and president are nothing short of the water hoses, dogs, and billy-clubs of the civil rights struggles that Martin Luther King, Jr. led.”

This proved to be too much for some on campus. Last week, other professors and execs - including a former President of MIT who bristled at the suggestion that he might be the administration’s “errand boy” in his visit to Sherley’s hallway protest site - got in on the hunger strike “listserv” and started emailing public responses to Sherley.

Some highlights:

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I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Mardi Gras is today (especially for all you Catholics looking for that last bender before Lent kicks in tomorrow).  Truthfully, the M.A.S. really needs to guest post on this one; he’s the cultural historian and surely knows the finer details of Mardi Gras traditions, especially the story of the Mardi Gras Indians.

Last year I made it to a bunch of parades, but both this year and last I missed today’s festivities.  When I packed up Willow Street a few weeks ago, I packed up all my beads from 2006.  If I’d been following tradition up here, I would have draped them around my house - clustering them on display in bowls, hanging multiple strands on my door (and looping them around fences and porches if I had either of those). 

In failing to do so, I urge you to check out the brilliant photos from the Backstreet Cultural Museum photo gallery, an amazing NOLA museum dedicated to the cultural traditions of the city’s Black society (incl. Mardi Gras).  Here’s a few I picked up on the web (I have some great ones of kids on my old phone, but understandably they may now languish in obscurity there…)

Happy Mardi Gras!

I am happily no longer a Treo user.  PDAs are a waste for me.  I’m never that far from my PC that I need my life-as-data in the palm of my hand, and I dislike technology enough to never bother to learn how to maximize all the features in these various electronic doodads.  What I’m good at is dropping and breaking these fragile little bitties (I’m on my third iPod, that was my second Treo, and if any of you have seen the stingray gash down the middle of my PC screen you know what I’m talking about).

So now I have a much smaller, lighter and more pleasing LG flip phone.  I’ve got the M.A.S. on speed dial, and that more or less sums up who I speak to on the phone.  But no fear, the rest of you will be programmed in my own sweet time.  I was just playing around with Ringtones - I was always impressed whenever my friend Shannon’s phone rang with “Big Pimpin’” when her husband called her.  But so much choice!  I feel like I’m picking my relationship song in just considering what I might download for the M.A.S. (never mind that the popular stuff he likes I don’t know, and the stuff I hear him listen to ain’t popular). 

As for the rest of you lovelies, any requests for that special ring tone that sums up you and/or our relationship in 15 seconds of memorable electronic karaoke?

The housing subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee will meet this Thurs and Fri (2/22-23) in New Orleans; the fate of the city’s public housing is on the agenda. Here’s some of the latest that’s been going on:

- Federal court ruled the residents’ case must go to trial;

- Bush met with the (liberal and Democratic) Congressional Black Caucus (only his second meeting with them since 2005) on Thursday to discuss Gulf Coast rebuilding (among Iraq and other topics);

- House Democrats aimed to make $500M available for rental housing in the Gulf Coast and postpone the demolition of public housing until “alternatives are identified”;

- LA Governor Blanco urges HUD to re-open public housing for use as temporary worker housing (note: this is not necessarily the same as supporting the residents’ lawsuit).

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I have a cousin who’s more like a sister but either way we couldn’t be more different. My little urban condo is her big suburban home. My Manhattan Portage massenger bag is her Louis Vuitton Speedy. Her Sportscentered husband is my McLehrer News Hourly M.A.S. But whenever stories like this come up, I send them along to her. We’re no strangers to grueling professional travel schedules. When I finally flew Jet Blue for the first time in 2005 after years of hype, and met up with her in Florida underwhelmed by their tiny televisions and jokester service, she summed up the airlines and my sentiment perfectly: “They all suck.” Well put, Trace, well put.

Needless to say, the idea of a Passengers’ Bill of Rights is long overdue. Though it’s minimally demanding, the bill contains an essential rule that passengers have the right to deplane if their plane has been sitting on the tarmac for longer than 3 hours. For anyone who has ever been trapped inside a jet stuck on the runway, this requirement amounts to little more than basic human decency (ok, I’m almost as hyperbolic as the passenger who described being stuck on a Jet Blue aircraft for almost 9 hours like being in the “Hanoi Hilton.” Gotta love the Massholes, especially those bound for Cancun for school vacation!).

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Packing bonuses and checkbooks, arriving by taxi and private car, the investor army approacheth…

 

On 2/8/07 I wrote,

“…wedged between Canarsie and East New York…”

Because, you know, purchasers of luxury homes are always looking for a few affordable properties nearby…just to keep it real ‘n sh*t…

 

 

I just pulled an all nighter.  I don’t know who I think I am.  Almost 24 straight hours of cranking out a proposal.

I may die.  Who’s up and with me right now?!?!!?

 

Your city’s future - a meticulous plan carefully hatched b/w the hours of 3am and 6am.  Good stuff.

Paying attention to the content and not the fact that the first sentence is the longest run-on ever, enjoy my latest post on Foresight, my first since December. 

 

Globalization, cities, all my faves.

 

Enjoy.

I am easily outdone by the professionals at bostonist.com…may I introduce Massachusetts Barbie! 

(For you non-Massholes seeking your own playful stereotyping, the site suggests others are available for other places around the U.S.)

I’m holed up in my kitchen trying to get a research proposal out the door, with only the break of cleaning the newly fallen snow off my car before me. Fortunately, the M.A.S. delivered some beautiful miniature roses last night, and they’re keeping me company while I bang away at the PC. To keep you entertained on your end while I’m effectively in absentia for the next couple hours, here’s the latest and greatest from the New England region, fodder for you smart alecs and any Yankees fans out there who dare read this site…

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Ok, maybe that’s a false choice for some (or no choice at all), but with the popularity of the “rehab” route these days of gaffing celebs, as well as the various crack-ups splashed all over the news lately, I’m a little worried about us all right now.

I’ve been sympathetically enthralled by last week’s stories of the astronaut, Anna Nicole Smith, and MIT’s Professor Sherley and their concurrent degrees of unraveling in high stress environments. So much violence and uncertainty in our lives feels random, but for women and children at least, we’re much more likely to know our assailants, and as it turns out, a prior relationship exists in 40% of all non-fatal workplace-related incidents.

I didn’t know Sherley other than as a data point in my overall research on gender in academia, but I’m feeling some real psychological disturbance over his hunger strike. For one, he’s moralistically appointed himself the symbol of redressing institutional racism, claiming that by his receipt of tenure MIT will

“provide a clear and lasting admission that racism and corrupt process were responsible, and they will not be tolerated at MIT.”

(from his 5th Open Letter to the MIT Community sent via e-mail this past weekend)

He’s gone from stem cell researcher to anti-”embryoism” (his word in one of his “Tenth Hour” daily 10 am hunger strike addresses) activist to martyr. Part of me is disgusted.

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Tells feds, “temporarily” re-open public housing, help us bring displaced families home and solve our housing crisis while we’re at it…

Perhaps she believes she’ll get further with this new Congress than the last?

This just in from Bill Quigley, one of the lawyers representing the public housing residents against HUD and the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) over the proposed demolition of 50% of the city’s public housing:

 

Judge Lemelle just issued a 24 page decision in the class action by residents against HUD and HANO.  The judge refused to dismiss the case as HUD and HANO asked.   The judge said the residents deserve a trial on Due Process Constitutional claims against HANO and HUD, Fair Housing Claims against HANO and HUD, and Lease violations by HANO.

The judge said our claims for actual demolition by HUD and HANO are premature because HUD has not yet approved demolition.  We hope now that they have heard the judge, HUD will not approve the demolition!  If they do, we can clearly put that back in the case at that point.

Finally, the judge said he wants a trial on:

1)  Number of units that are habitable
2) extent of repairs needed to make apts habitable
3) Number of residents who wish and are able to return
4) Inadequacies of current voucher program
 
Great victory for the residents!  The struggle continues!  Great work team!  We are moving forward!
 

Chalk one up for the do-gooders!

Here is an article from the Times-Picayune on the whole debacle.