"Music Brings Hope"

The Bogalusa High School choir was gifted with a trip to Arizona, thanks to the generosity of high schools in Arizona:

With the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina, a high school choir from Bogalusa, La., had no hope of making a spring music trip.

So the choirs from three southeast Valley high schools gave them one.

The visitors will sing tonight in Mesa at their own benefit concert, the culmination of a project conceived months ago by Cristine Evans, choir director at Hamilton High in Chandler.[...]"You are our heroes," Milton Gholar, Bogalusa High's music director, told Evans and her choir. "You have done something for me and my students that we will remember for the rest of our lives."

Bogalusa is a town of about 14,000 roughly 60 miles northeast of New Orleans. The high school's gym was destroyed by the storm. About 70 members of a senior class of 190 have not returned; some are finishing school in Texas.

Also reported in The Daily News.
Photo from the online Daily News by Danny Hanemann. Not yet archived and linkable.

Chickens in mud

Three-month-old Silkies:

Officials pay themselves overtime.

I don't subscribe to The Daily News any more. It hasn't been daily since Hurricane Katrina, the typos drive me nuts, and the reporting and editing ain't too good, in my opinion.

But every once in a while, they print a story that's a tantalizing hint of excitement to come. Like this one from April 6, 2006. Excerpt:

Actions taken after Hurricane Katrina by Bogalusa mayor Mack McGehee without the consent or knowledge of the city council are under review by the state legislative auditor and as a result, the council has authorized its president, Danny Stogner, to hire an attorney.
[...]
The three issues involve McGehee taking action after the hurricane without council approval, which is required by the city charter. He reportedly also failed to inform the council after-the-fact.

The mayor also authorized overtime compensation for himself and his department heads, signed a contract for emergency services and signed a contract for other services, such as damage repairs.

Read the whole thing. Serious stuff.

Down in St. Bernard Parish, overtime has attracted the attention of the FBI:

In the first seven months after Hurricane Katrina devastated St. Bernard Parish, the tax-starved parish government paid millions of dollars in overtime wages and hired more than 150 temporary employees, including relatives of parish officials, moves that now have sparked an outcry from the Parish Council and an investigation by the FBI.

Between Aug. 29 and late March, St. Bernard spent $3.4 million on overtime wages, payroll documents show, with the payouts in the period immediately following the storm reaching up to 40 times the prestorm rate.

Will we see some parish and city officials leave office in handcuffs?

James Delos Nobles

Over at the Hardcopy message board, the site owner posted a picture of Delos Nobles, described as the wanderer of Washington Parish. Kids were threatened with him - "Delos Nobles will gitcha" - and he was seen everywhere, on foot, throughout Washington, St. Tammany and Tangipahoa parishes, even as far as Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi. Seems that he attained a sort of legendary status and was a well-known local character.

I can't figure out how to post a screen snapshot on this blog, and the archives at the Hardcopy board aren't saved. From what some who encountered him have written, Delos was probably schizophrenic, poor soul. He was described as talking to himself, haranging inoffensive people with the threat of hellfire and damnation, etc.

This page shows his genealogy. He was one of ten children of George Washington Nobles and Arneecy Caroline Miley, and lived to the ripe old age of 80 years, dying in 1991.

Rest in peace, Delos.

UPDATE: Comment screenshot. Whoopee!

And the rains came.

In the midst of our drought, the heavens opened up last night. It got pretty windy, and the lights flickered a few times but didn't go out.

A straight-sided bucket I left outside held six inches of water this morning. Hope G*d helped those with a FEMA tarp for a roof.

UPDATE: Weather Underground lists a Personal Weather Station at Popularville, Mississippi which shows precip total for 4/29 as about half an inch, and for 4/30 it's 2.5 inches. That's more like it!

The link too long to post here, just doesn't work. Plug in "70427" as the zip code and go from there.