The Redstar Perspective

While Weboy and the M.A.S. lament their lack of a/c in the stifling humidity and heat of New England, the exact same weather in New Orleans feels balmy and lovely to me, a woman whose toes turn purple at the slightest provocation of chill.  Indeed, I loathe the air conditioning that plagues me throughout the summer.  If I had my way, Weboy, the M.A.S. and I would all be chilling at the rooftop pool here at Le Pavillion.

Instead, at the moment, I’m nursing a nearly empty Baileys on the rocks in the piano bar.  Probably the most annoying aspect of this rather chez-crumbling-historic hotel is the showtunes in the elevator (no joke: Cats, Phantom of the Opera, others I know but can’t recall after four cocktails tonight), although the high-end service (employee-gentlemen rushing to press the elevator button for you as if you couldn’t possibly manage) and cable (OMG - Daily Show! I never have the pleasure) is certainly appealing. 

The best moment in the bar tonight is the blond behind the piano with the fur wrap laid across it

 coming out for a break, and cornering the vacationing-NY-Jewish-couple-with-son-Jonah-and-adopted-Chinese-daughter-Milan (sp??) to grill them about why they’re here and broadly comparing their experience to her local six children all within several years of one another.  The adult NY’ers had little idea what to do with this information, though responded rather warmly in contrast to their excessively blase children.  Apparently they no longer live in the city and come to NOLA quite frequently.  From there the conversation devolved into the gratuitous thanking of the tourist family for their regional spending, and then the entertainment once more reverted to the 80s soundtrack of the digital music channel playing while the pianist was on break.  I kid you not, “I’ll be Loving You Forever” by New Kids, not to mention Bobby Brown and Jody Watley hits.  This musical nostalgia is a consistent theme I love about New Orleans.

And our pianist concludes a Dan Fogelberg cover and moves on to Carole King as I type.  Meanwhile, Redstar seriously considers a refill of the Baileys.

Unintentionally in honor of my new cousin, tonight I ate at chef John Besh’s latest joint, Luke. 

Tasty crab, but better, a fun conversation with Ashley, the bartender.  I was hunched over a glass of white wine and genius historian Alice O’Connor’s Poverty Knowledge, furtively and energetically making notes in this hip little journal TK gave me titled “What I Read”, so Ashley verbally surmised that I was “working on something.”  When I mentioned planning, I got my usual somewhat-random-association of earlier patrons who worked for a company that takes 3d photos to use for “planning” and stuff.  I immediately turned the tables of inquiry on her career in the high end food industry (thanks for giving me some insight, Nikki!) and we chatted amiably while I ate.  Our only real glitch was at the end of the meal when she told me her brother lives in Boston, on/near MLK blvd/st, close to “the stadium” and the “waterfront.”  I told her in Boston that wasn’t possible, that she was more likely describing the Bronx (even though MLK in NY is in Harlem).  My recapping later to the M.A.S. confirmed that MLK is in Roxbury, and it’s likely a born-and-raised (white) New Orleanian who’s somehow found himself living in Roxbury, MA could easily equate his address with proximity to Fenway and the ocean.  Boston is teeny-tiny.  Of course, symbolically, and according to neighborhood boundaries, his address is impossible.  I unintentionally chagrined Ashley, but perhaps the joke is actually on parochial old me. 

Staying in such a service-oriented hotel in a block of the Central Business District within walking distance of a multitude of New Orleans neighborhoods (biz, warehouse/hipster/loft living, and FQ), I feel a bit more like a tourist than usual in the midst of my usual familiarity with the city.  I also feel safe here, which is an unusual and satisfying change.  I’m pretty sure I hate the French Quarter. I’ve been taking some camera photos but nothing I feel like throwing up here at the moment.  I have some deeper thoughts re: recovery and participation, but I’d prefer not to do them the garbled injustice of three white wines and a Baileys.  In the interim, I’ve added a new category here at the RP on planning and development, and it’s a collection of some of my best writing on the reality down here. 

Enjoy, even if you can’t be privvy to the Bread, John Lennon and Kansas covers that might stimulate your own thinking on Gulf Coast recovery. 

Here, at least, is a picture of some excellent locally-grown long beans that I ate last night.  TASTY:

88 degrees and 61% humidity.  My sources tell me it’s worse in Boston. 

Sitting on the king bed in my room at the historic hotel Le Pavillion.  I’ve long been told by New Orleanians that this is THE place to stay in the city (and if you click on the hotel’s link above, you’ll be greeted by some equally insistent classical music), and finally a deal on Travelocity afforded me the chance. 

On the wall is a framed photo of the Doullut Steamboat House in the Lower 9th Ward, a place the M.A.S. and I discovered in our troubling follow-up visit there last summer. 

  

Right now on the local news Gov. Blanco, Lt. Gov. Landrieu and tourism officials are heralding the passage of some sort of tourism bill.  Ironically, while they voiceover that business is only 65% of what it was before Katrina for many establishments down here, the reporter visits a hat store on Royal Street in the Quarter where the proprietor tells him “We’re fine” and marvels that folks continue to call from around the country to make sure they are not “still under water.”  (They never were.)  Her remarks point more to Wesley’s frequent comments here at the RP about how little the reality of life on the Gulf is disseminated nationally than the need for more visitors to the relatively bustling French Quarter.  But, what do I know, I’ll never have a pre-storm comparison to the tourism I see in the Quarter now. 

After rummaging through the mini-bar for some extremely fantastic dark chocolate almonds, I’m off to do some yoga and walk over to one of my local standbys, Herbsaint.  I’m here til Friday.  Pictures of the lobby chandeliers from this 100 year old hotel - “the belle of New Orleans” - and other anecdotes from my latest trip down here sure to follow.

 

For those of you who keep up with me via this blog, I have news.  The M.A.S. is moving to Brighton!!

No, not in with me.

But down the street, to a beautiful, sunny 1BR!

I am very happy as I pack up to head off to New Orleans this afternoon.  I leave you all with this quote from Katherine Hepburn celebrating the forthcoming arrival of my new neighbor:

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

Welcome to the neighborhood! 

At a Gulf Coast recovery meeting a few weeks ago, a long-time community activist I respect deeply lambasted Louisiana’s Road Home program - a post-Katrina homeowners’ assistance program - as the “worst piece of legislation” he’s ever seen.  Far be it from me to accuse this nationally-known politically active septegenarian of hyperbole; this is an absolutely abysmal public recovery initiative.  And now the state is about to plow an additional $1B into the already $10B capitalized homeowner’s payout program, in the (foolish) hopes of extracting additional bail-out funds from DC, and at the expense of municipal, rental and small business recovery funds. 

When I worked in Lower Manhattan after September 11, I learned from experience that recovery funds are never enough.  No matter whether you’re a victim’s grieving family member, an ailing small business, or a homeowner trying to rebuild, focusing political energies on extracting recovery monies will only end in frustration and resentment.  I don’t care if you get $1.5M or $5,000, you’ll want more, and you’ll inevitably interpret the payout as representative of your relative value in the all-around recovery process.   Depending on your sense of victimization, entitlement and trauma, it’s highly likely you’ll believe you’ve come up short.

But when it comes to political atrocities like the Road Home program, who can blame you? 

First, there’s the question of all the bad data they appear to be working with.  While we know who to chastise for FEMA’s under-estimates of hurricane damage, it’s less clear who did the math that led to the under-estimates of post-storm construction costs and insurance payouts that have left the state with too little money to cover the average $72k grant to 148,000 applicants.  And given that all this shitty arithmetic means that homeowners are left with much larger financial gaps to overcome in rebuilding, and that the state has made this bloated and mismanaged program the centerpiece of its recovery efforts, it’s reasonable that homeowners want and deserve the funds that the state has promised to them.

But the state should never have allocated this kind of money exclusively to a homeowner recovery problem.  In a state where two-thirds of the physical damage occured in the Greater New Orleans region, an area in which homeownership rates are less than the state and national averages, the Road Home program immediately failed to address the demonstrable needs of renters and their host municipalities who bore a disproportionate amount of the brunt of the 2005 hurricane season.  Secondly, the primary federal funds used for the Road Home program are Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) monies, entitlement funds for states and municipalities to address issues of housing and economic development.  While the state technically is operating with CDBG guidelines by allocating billions of dollars solely for homeowners, it is in spectular violation of the spirit of the CDBG program, which is the current incarnation of historical anti-poverty, affordable housing, and anti-blight federal initiatives in the U.S. 

CDBG funds are also critical for infrastructure development, including schools, government buildings, roads, and other public facilities that are the backbone of local communities.  To close the Road Home shortfall, the state is proposing to cut $50M in additional CDBG funds from other recovery initiatives, including municipal efforts to repair schools and other local structures.  Now picture restoring your home to a pre-storm condition amidst shuttered schools, blackened street lights, rumbled streets, and nearby to overcrowded rental properties because the state starved other recovery programs responsible for rental housing development and infrastructure repair. 

Sounds like a great place to live, don’t you think?  As my highly leveraged small business owners told one of my colleagues in 2005, “If I had known on September 10 what I know now….” they would not have taken on the very expensive fight (emotionally and financially) to stay put in the post-9/11 Lower Manhattan that, to them, changed for the worse around them.  What a shame that the state of Lousiana is setting up its homeowners to learn the same very painful lesson. 

Is the number of my first and second cousins, with the arrival of Lucas Patrick this weekend!

My cousin Erin, TK’s sister, is the proud and able mom, whipping through labor in a matter of hours and bringing the relaxed air that only a nurse who works with babies can offer to the thrilling, overwhelming uncertainties of new motherhood. (She confirmed she’s confident in her ability to take care of her new son.  Prepared for raising a child, on the other hand?  She’s as much of a newbie as the rest of you who’ve been down this road.)

I’ve seen a lot of new moms, and Erin ranks among the top in post-birth radiance. The M.A.S. and I, along with my dad and stepmom, had a great visit yesterday afternoon at the suburban hospital where Erin used to work and now delivered.  Erin is often sandwiched between too many larger-than-life personalities in our family - TK and I are two of four cousins all around the same age who generally jostle for the throne in our hierarchy. (Actually, it’s no competition - I’m a distant third to my cousin “the general” Kristen, with Tracey acting as a COO of sorts in the day-to-day operations of the fam.  Our lone male cousin long ago learned to do his own thing.)  On the other side, Erin and TK’s younger sister Jane is a glamazon more than capable of holding her dazzling own as the youngest and most glitterati of the family.  Erin is thus squarely in the middle, not only of her sisters, but of our overall brood.  Luke joining her and her high-school-sweetheart-husband seemed to round out their chill, solid relationship in a manner that should only ground her further in the midst of all our clannish noise and antics.  Nonetheless, my mom shipped 3 months worth of coffee to them this morning as they checked out of the hospital. 

Given the span of five years between us, Erin was my cousin who bore the brunt of our torment when my friends and TK and I were growing up.  I’m pretty sure we never convinced her she was adopted, though not for any failure of effort on our part.  She knew the sex of my cousin Jane when my aunt was pregnant when the rest of us didn’t, because my aunt knew we wouldn’t believe her anyway if she told us.  Now, when my friends see or get updates on Erin, one of them never fails to utter “We’re old!”  (Jane, in contrast, is nine years behind us, and proved unrecognizable to my friends when they assembled for my grandmother’s funeral in January.) 

Erin is also one of many sibs and relatives of my high school friends, so her extended crew is one I still trade updates with over beers when I turn up occasionally at Braintree functions.  Erin and I went to camp together with all these peeps, and I have photos of us in matching sundresses that we picked out together for my mom’s wedding to my stepdad earlier that summer.  My college friends know her too, from when she visited me my sophmore year at Deis, and again when she crashed with me in NY after my business school graduation, where we smoked practically an entire pack of cigarettes together before taking the party back to my apartment with some of my Deis girls.  The visit to her in the hospital yesterday was one of the few other moments I got some quality time with just her.

(It was also the M.A.S. second visit to see a new baby in the hospital, after his brother was born when he was 8 and 1/2 and he turned up in his Little League uniform to visit his new sibling.  Mostly what the M.A.S. remembers about this moment was that his parents bought him a present of a baseball encyclopedia to cushion the blow of the new baby). 

As Erin settles in for the permanent realities of child rearing, I wonder if she’ll remember the $50 I offered her to have a boy when I learned she was pregnant.  Though the panoply of daughters my friends have churned out would indicate research is correct that fewer boys are being born, Erin, as my stepmom and I were talking about yesterday, also seems to be leading a current pack of expectant moms with baby boys on the way.  In fact, my cousins Eric (ok, his girlfriend Jody) and Claire, with their respective baby boys due, should deliver cousins 37 and 38 later this summer. 

…that make me want to go into market research.

Did you know only 1 in 4 “sexual acts” involves a condom?  (I presume “sexual act” means activity that actually requires condoms, and not that we should be hanging out in them when alone or possibly just making out?) 

Pandagon takes Fox and CBS to task for refusing to air the new Trojan “Evolve” ad campaign (”use a condom every time”), but I’m much more into the idea of the condom company with 75% market share simply trying to grow the overall market for condom use.  How do you dispute that corporate agenda?  Plus you get to smirk repeatedly during the work day when employing euphemisms like “pleasure accessory.” 

The Pandagon link also has the youtube clip of the ad.  Rest assured, TK, there’s no animals dressed as people (she hates that…or is it just monkeys?)

 

PS: Big Brother is smarter than you.

On Monday, as the M.A.S. and I set out from the Hamptons to ride our three ferries back to Connecticut (that would be (South Fork-Shelter Island-North Fork-New London), I grabbed the free newsletter of the environmental advocacy organization, Group for the East End from its storefront in Bridgehampton.  On ferry ride #1, I read aloud to him from the editorial, “Growing Pains,” in which a local activist-resident warned of the risk of overdevelopment to Sag Harbor and called for

“a deliberative process conducted by both the board and the public in an atmosphere that includes a little breathing room [from speculative development].” 

“Why, it’s a call for planning!” the M.A.S. exclaimed in mock seriousness.

True ‘dat, my handsome urban planning Swede, true ‘dat.

As I prep for a trip next week to New Orleans, I’m pleased to see a similar mandate rise like a phoenix from the wreckage of the 2005 hurricane season.  The Louisiana state legislature has just passed a resolution that considers establishing a state office of planning, per public sentiment as reflected in the state-wide planning process over the last two years.  Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) has released a “Risk and Reliability Report” comparing past and future flood risk to Orleans Parish following its repairs of the levee system (Note: modest upgrades are part of these repairs, but a levee system able to withstand a 1-in-100 flood will not be in place until 2011.  Katrina was considered a 1-in-400 flood according to ACE calculations).  The head of civil works for the Corps described the report as “a good tool for planning.”  In fact, it is the only risk analysis tool of its kind made available to the public ever, giving New Orleans “‘a huge advantage’ no other city has.”  How’s that for putting New Orleans on the cutting edge for a change!

Though it often feels like there are few recovery objectives locals can agree on, modernized, sufficient levee protection is one.  Yet, rightfully so, federal Recovery Czar Don Powell and local residents acknowledge that New Orleanians will be taking the information available in the plan with a sizable “grain of salt.”  (The Army Corps blew up a portion of the levees along the Lower 9th Ward to divert water from other parts of the city during the 1927 flood.)  Powell explains, “It’s that tension…betwen trust and reality and history” that is the fundamental obstacle to using this new data. 

True ‘dat, Don, true ‘dat.

Despite the earned mistrust of the Corps and all things government down in LA, there is no denying this is an important analytical tool for residents and municipalities to have to guide their recovery decisions.  Imagine if all disaster-prone communities had similar public access to detailed risk information like this.  I’ve no doubt the government would devise a clear and easily available system for accessing such materials, likely with snappy, appealing titles like those in this report:

“Volume II. Geodetic Vertical and Water Level Datum”

and the absolute page-turner:

“Volume VI. The Performance - Interior Drainage and Pumping.”

Oh I can just see the M.A.S. and I snuggling up together tonight with a couple beers, Menino on the tube, and these excellent reading materials!

(Who am I kidding, I think the environment = BORING!  Just like space.  Absolute Dullsville.  Oh, and sporting goods stores.  Snooooze.)

Is the title of my latest link addition to the RP.

It is effectively a community record of activity around Allston-Brighton, especially updates on development, crime, politics, festivals, etc. etc.

Students from my department are working with the residential Harvard Allston task force around Harvard’s proposed expansion in their neighborhood.  Meanwhile, my immediate neighbors are organizing around BC’s planned expansion since its purchase of the Archodiocese’s St. John’s site on Comm. Ave. Tuesday night’s community meeting b/w BC and residents became particularly unruly, with one volatile resident continually disrupting the show and eventually being ejected by the police. Beyond his antics, meeting hostility also revolved around questionable tactics by the Boston Redevelopment Authority and BC reps, on whether they’re adhering to Boston’s Open Meeting Law and following all the guidelines to make meetings public and accessible. 

One thing I’ve learned from three years in an urban planning department, working in New Orleans, and dating the M.A.S. is how contentious community planning efforts are.  Quite often they are little more than dog-and-pony shows for powerful developers (institutional entities like universities, the BRA, etc. are particularly mighty) to co-opt residents into thinking they will benefit from proposed developments.  At their worst, planning processes circumvent public input almost entirely.  At best, they foment dissent from and occasionally collaboration with residents to minimize harm to the neighborhood.

I’ve written sporadically here about the changes afoot in the area; in Brighton Center, the retail transition makes it too soon to tell in which direction that neighborhood could go (though I was expectedly pessimistic about it). Meanwhile, even as rumors fly that BC is essentially turning my neighborhood into an extended playing field, the sales office for the luxury condos built on the other side of the reservoir from me is now closed, leaving me to believe that they’ve all been purchased. 

For the last week I’ve woken to the soothing sounds of chain saws leveling the trees on the property of an historic house down the street from me, recently saved from demolition by residents who were opposed to additional condos going up in the neighborhood.  The developer in that case was a small, independent entity against whom residents were relatively evenly matched (the M.A.S. even mysteriously turned up at a public meeting and made an informed speech about planning rules and regulations that was instrumental in shifting city sentiment towards preserving the property; he then disappeared into my waiting clutches).  As this point, we have no idea what’s going on across the street (my super is keeping close tabs but can’t seem to find out much), but for now the house stays, and our daily concerns over parking and congestion have not escalated. 

In contrast, development by BC appears inevitable (for anyone who’s familiar with the scale of this neighborhood, perhaps you’re as amused as I am by BC’s immediate marketing of the forthcoming site as their “Brighton campus” vs. the “Chestnut Hill campus” that is literally three minutes up and across the street).  Residential mobilization can have some effect in shaping how development unfolds, or possibly extracting some concessions from the university to maintain or even gasp - improve - our quality of life.  (The major desire of residents appears to be getting students to SHUT THE F*** UP late night, as well as to stop urinating on their lawns, and parking their cars all over the goddamn place.) 

Professional degrees are cool in that you essentially apply what you’re learning to your life as you go.  Planning, despite it being a seemingly boring profession that no one fully understands (zoning law, anyone??), and its outcast role as the red-headed stepchild to the more lucrative and glamorous development, is something that impacts anyone who doesn’t live a life of sketchy solitude in a hut in the woods.  Yet, I’ve also learned in my travels through MIT that planners are quite often as vilified as developers, recast from the red-headed stepchild to the bureaucratic enablers of the capitalist-development-liar’s plan for world domination.  Per usual, seems the education I’m getting beyond the classroom should prove far more instructive in understanding the world around me.

But, oh those credentials!

(plus I’m reading some seriously great stuff.)

 

CLICK HERE FOR A MAP of the Chestnut Hill Reservoir area in Brighton in which the St. John’s site and luxury condos are located. (Click on the “My Maps” tab and then on the “proposed development” map.)

 

Though it appears I’m suffering from some serious writer’s block this month (does Pfizer have a pill for a blogger’s performance anxiety???), I am chiming in on my usual sites around the net.  I’ve been endlessly haranging Wesley about immigration, and he’s been so responsive and deliberative that wonkish-types from that other Cambridge university are trying to recruit him to their inner circle (stay strong, Weboy!).  Will it be long before his banner reads:

Media, Politics, Fashion, Movies, Music and Immigration. In roughly that order.

Meanwhile, over at Pandagon, I’ve been - rather sloppily - weighing in on specific cases of our immigration fiasco (mainly, that the wife of missing-in-Iraq soldier Alex Jimenez - from Lawrence, MA - is possibly under threat of deportation at the moment).  Another commenter, however, brought up this story of a man beaten to death last night when the car he was riding in hit a little girl (she was not injured).  It’s an ugly world we live in when our country reminds me of Tanzania, and not in a good way. 

In Dar es Salaam, where I lived, theft was common - during my last week there, a young boy stole my cell phone out of my hand through the open window of the car I was riding in while we sat in traffic.  It happened so fast it took a moment before I bellowed, “MY SIMU!” (simu is swahili for phone).  And he was gone.  My E. African friend Sala got out of the car and tried to question all the Tanzanians standing on a nearby porch who witnessed the theft, but it seems no one saw anything.  Given I was leaving and it wasn’t my phone to begin with but an extra of my American friend Kristina, the incident turned out to be more email fodder than anything else.  But K had warned me when I joined her in TZ several months prior, never to yell thief (”Mwezi”) if robbed, as mobs were known to chase culprits down and beat them severely/to death.  Here, it brings new(er), horrible meaning to Don’t Mess with Texas. 

Sigh.  As part of my blog-soul-searching these days, I’m circling the world wide web looking for new blog communities and some inspiration for my next big re-org of the RP.   I’m tired of feeling like I’m writing in relative isolation, though it’s no easy task sifting through 30 million blogs for even a few you’d like to visit, comment on, and link to regularly.  Wah.

Here’s hoping that in the interim, I get another shout-out on Universal Hub for repeating the M.A.S.’s comment that Boston public access television is like some version of state-run tv, given his theory that 24 hours a day one can find Mayor Tom “Mumbles” Menino in front of the camera (the latter link has some amusing audio).  Watching Menino go so far as to speak at the blessing of the Pine Street Inn/Partners Healthcare’s new outreach van finally prompted the comment.  (What can I tell you, we’re urban planning nerds; we were enthralled). 

Fresh off a wedding weekend in the Hamptons, I’m both inspired by (and all set for now, thanks, on) the quaint and rural-ish charm of eastern Long Island, and surly about being back in my own urban world chock full of assignments and looming responsibilities.  With 16 web pages still opened on my PC as I sort through the news and blog posts from the weekend, my need for commentary eludes me.  Instead, I long to be sitting again with D- on the back porch of her brother’s Bridgehampton rental while the M.A.S. swims and sunburns on a glorious Monday afternoon, or to be submitting to Jake’s teasing over brunch in E. Hampton on Sunday about my “logical” falling for the M.A.S. (this was Jake’s summation of my story of how I “decided” to date the M.A.S. after carefully considering the evidence that I was a) choosing not to date anyone else even though he and I were just “friends,” and that b) though we were only “friends” I was spending all my time with him).   My gorgeous pink and red rose bridesmaid bouquet is drying in front on me on the kitchen table; I can still smell the flowers’ fading scent.  I’ve got a plethora of new freckles and some modest color of my own after a couple hours at the beach with a Vogue and my man on Sunday afternoon.

But I’m compelled to post, to not lose the momentum of last week and for you, dear readers, because I know visiting a blog that hasn’t been updated in awhile is as frustrating as repeatedly checking an Evite to see if those curmudgeonly “Not Yet Replied” offenders have finally decided to RSVP.  Henceforth is my Hamptons-inspired, modified ”link farm,” acknowledging that I’m fulfilling neither the letter nor the spirit of the definition of “link farming,” but am instead just posting a bunch of stuff I enjoyed reading recently in the hopes that you’ll check them out too.  

Obviously, let’s start with his post about gentrification in which Wesley leads in by calling me a genius (ignore those other links that got my hackles up)…

(more…)

Just in case we were enjoying ourselves too much over here at the RP, I’m linking to my recent post at Foresight lamenting the state of the nation today in our post-9/11, post-Katrina world.

Bush (and apparently, Nancy Pelosi) made me write it.

I’m up over at Foresight, taking on class and poverty conflicts in the classroom. 

More to come here on the reunion, gender, kids, and all that good stuff. 

On Sunday night, I watched Army Wives, the new Lifetime drama, and I liked it.  A lot.  (Exec-produced by the same guy who brings us Grey’s Anatomy. Coincidence?  I think NOT!)  Today, I’ve even once again gone to the Comcast website to see if cable has suddenly become affordable, but unless I dig up a couple roommates, it remains out of reach.  So how thrilled am I to just discover that I unexpectedly have FREE Lifetime!!  I suspect as they try to promote these shows (if the commercials are any indication).

Lifetime’s never played a big role in my entertained life.  I’ve never been one to tolerate the made-for-tv movie, but they do re-run Grey’s and Will & Grace, and you know, that whole, “women’s channel” thing, how can I not concur at least in spirit?  I admit to some sheepishness about endorsing this show, but honestly, I’m no doubt so late to the game on knowing what tv is cool these days, dependent as I am on the four networks for my entertainment.  I’m really encroaching on Weboy’s territory here.

But so far, the series premier meets my requirements: the show centers on women and our lives, is an ensemble drama, represents a world I don’t know too much about, yet offers tidbits to which I can relate.

My emotions about the military are pretty mixed.  Of course, I am sociologically drawn to the military as an organization.  I believe in theory in a mandatory draft, it seems more fair, certainly, and could be designed to encompass more than combat training (by this I mean an ideological orientation towards defense and might), but it seems like such a remote possibility in my lifetime I don’t spend too much time on the notion.  I’m also pretty anti-violence (unless it’s snide invective in a debate, it seems), and this is thus my biggest mental block towards the military.  

Mainly, I have long subscribed to the (likely antiquated) concept that it is a “way out,” given it was the avenue my father used from high school to the insurance industry, eventually out of Dorchester and into his suburban haven.   Four uncles have also served, and vary sharply in how it shaped them (tattoo-ed military pride vs. well-concealed anger and resentment), and now my cousin Brian is on brief leave from the Marines and ships out to Iraq by the end of June.

My aunts - my dad’s sisters - have warned me that if anything happens to Brian, his dad - their brother - will fall apart, that Brian - his only son - is his life.  My uncle has had a rough time of it in this world, I will spare you the details, out of respect to him, and its unsettling to the point of repression to think of losing him because he’s lost his son to this occupation.  My dad is one of seven, and their life has been long and difficult, but they have stuck together, and my family is close despite it’s often factional warring (we are large enough for such clannish conflicts), and as they elders age and some grow sick, it’s worrisome and real to think which one we will lose first.  As I’m experiencing to some degree on my mom’s side, since the death of my grandmother - an original Irish matriarch - the loss of a loved one so embedded in the family unit can really crack the family foundation that holds everyone together.   Despite the best intentions, the normal pull of nuclear household demands are harder to resist without the “obligation” or rote tradition of making time to see our grandmother.  Among my dad and his siblings, my uncle is one of the core who continually turn up, who look in on one another, and more than that, as I mentioned, the solidarity of the seven surviving their cumulative life will be seriously undermined if anything is to happen to any one of them.  And to have that “anything” be the loss of a child in Iraq, after three years already served in relative safety in Asia, after my uncle’s own experiences in Vietnam, well, I’m not even sure how to finish this sentence. 

I have been spending more time as an adult these days with my father’s family, a deliberate effort to reconnect with them now that I’m home in Mass.  This is the family, more than my mom’s side, that lives out much of what I seek to understand in our world, and knowing them helps me know my father - and myself - better.  They dig the M.A.S. (who wouldn’t), and our chain restaurant lunches are my monthly get-out-of-5,000-calorie-meal-day-free pass.  As I get my apartment ready for my Brandeis reunion brunch on Sunday, I paused for some time today to look at my cousin’s picture in his Marine uniform on my fridge.  The reality is that I’m totally unprepared to imagine my family overseas in Iraq, suddenly making a debate I’ve been more or less ignoring very very real for me.  Time to pull my head out of my ass, that’s the obvious first step.

While relatively quiet on the posting front the last few days (though I’ve more than made up for it with my “State of Emergency” post on New Orleans), I have added some new additions to the RP links.

Check out feminist blog Pandagon, the worldly and eloquent Professor Zero, and the justice work of my frolleague (friend-colleague, if you will) Lydia at Friends of Justice.  (Also take a look at Lydia’s recent post at Foresight about their work in Jena, Louisiana, which spurred some reflexive NOLA commentary from Redstar.)

Also, I have to put a link up to Lisa Belkin’s latest column in the Times on managing our time, not only because I feel totally justified by her findings, but also because she cites one of my favorite childhood books as hers too: Cheaper by the Dozen, about a fictional family of 12 kids raised by an efficiency guru.   Kooky, scientific hijinks ensue. 

Happy reading.

Chilling at the Rue on Oak Street in New Orleans while storms rage and subside outside, having a long-awaited reunion with the web until I leave for the airport in a few hours.  Arrived in New Orleans last Thursday for some business and a conference, and am hoping that today’s belated storms won’t impede my departure after four beautiful days down here.  But the warning of flash floods is the least of my concerns after an ever evocative trip to the Crescent City.

At the 2007 Planners Network conference this weekend, I participated in two panels on a) advocacy in planning, and b) progress in planning in New Orleans to date.  It should come as no surprise that I quickly established myself as the one focused on resources - i.e., where the money and power lay in the redevelopment of New Orleans and how “we” could go about accessing it amidst our more traditional liberal-progressive-radical-activist emphases on public participation and citizen self-determination.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, what does any of that grassroots, symbolic empowerment matter if the decisions made behind closed doors are the ones driving the reconstruction of this city?  It should also come as no surprise that I unwittingly insulted two other panelists, and was the only one of four members of my plenary session not to receive spontaneous applause after I dared raised the uncomfortable topics of money and power (An MBA-turned-planner is some sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing, apparently).

Nonetheless, it was a provocative experience, not least because it was one of my most pronounced moments of feeling totally out of place in this activist-intellectual world, but because it also involved intense discussions over many beers at the Maple Leaf bar Saturday night with other like- and not-so-like-minded scholars and activists re: disasters, New Orleans, development, and cities.

In particular, I connected with one professor from ASU who has studied disasters in depth all over the world.  In the disaster lexicon, there are formal stages of an extreme event’s impact on a place: mitigation, recovery and redevelopment are the three of the four I can only ever remember.  Anyway, our conversation left me wondering where New Orleans truly is these days in its “rebirth” (to use the vernacular here) since Hrs. Katrina and Rita…

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