Plumbing problem?

A student at Bogalusa Middle told us there was a busted pipe or some such on Monday (1/29) which flooded floors.

R.I.P., Barbaro

Euthanized today.

Latest spam

Introducing the morons who've filled my inbox:

• PaulRubeal - with the busted spacebar.
• Dan Molinaro, who says he's from Bismarck, North Dakota.
• Ethan Wayne
• Saunders Triplett
• Perry Mertens
• ned aleta - of the broken shift key
• Kathrine Haney
• Raymundo Titor
• Vito Peel - sounds like a blender. "Ladies and gentleman, I'm here to demonstrate the amazing Vito Peel. It chops, it dices!"

I also get a bunch of messages from "Free Hoodia," could be a rallying cry. Free Hoodia! "Jose Hoodia is still being held as a political prisoner in this humid tropical dictatorship..."

My favorite subject lines are the ones that promise to help me with my "tonnage." Hey, since when is an extra 15 pounds "tonnage"? Ya catch more flies with honey...

The good ol' days

Seen in the comments at Blackfive:

Take Me Back to the Sixties.

Turn on your speakers and enjoy.

Barbaro has another setback :-(

He's in trouble again:

After Barbaro developed a deep abscess in his right hind foot, surgery was performed Saturday to insert two steel pins in a bone, one that was shattered but now healthy, to eliminate all weight bearing on the ailing foot.

The procedure is a risky one, because it transfers more weight to the leg. If the bone were to break again, chief surgeon Dr. Dean Richardson said: "I think we'll quit."

Hang in there, fella.

PS - The article has good background, if you haven't been reading the Barbaro news.

Slothful Sunday

As you might guess, today's Slothful Sunday wasn't as relaxing as I might wish, heh. There was nothing I could leave undone today.

But I've been getting in a little relaxation by watching movies, yesterday and today.

Darling Daughter and I had a Harry Potter festival. I'd never seen any of the Harry Potter films, and she's got the complete set.

My verdict is: very entertaining. And the set decorators must've had a blast. Wonder if there's someplace I can buy a set of those spine candles?

Justice at last

Good news [emphasis mine]:

A white former sheriff’s deputy who was once thought to be dead was arrested on federal charges Wednesday in one of the last major unsolved crimes of the civil rights era — the 1964 killings of two black men who were beaten and dumped alive into the Mississippi River.

The break in the 43-year-old case was largely the result of the dogged efforts of the older brother of one of the victims, who vowed to bring the killers to justice.

James Ford Seale, a 71-year-old reputed Ku Klux Klansman from the town of Roxie, was charged with kidnapping hitchhikers Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19. He is expected to be arraigned on Thursday in Jackson.

Maybe there will be more word soon on Oneal Moore's murder, too:

The crime occurred around 10 p.m. in Varnado, a village on the outskirts of Bogalusa. Rogers and his partner, the first two black sheriffs deputies in Washington Parish, noticed they were being trailed by a pickup truck with a Confederate flag emblem on its front bumper. When they crossed some railroad tracks on the way to Moore's home nearby, they were fired upon. Moore was killed instantly, and Rogers lost an eye in the shooting.

One hour later, Mississippi authorities stopped Ernest Ray McElveen in nearby Tylertown. He was driving a truck that matched Rogers' description, and authorities said he was armed with a .45 caliber pistol and a .22 caliber pistol. But two weeks later, the local district attorney released McElveen, and nobody was ever tried in connection with the shooting. Attempts to reach McElveen, who lives in Bogalusa, were unsuccessful by presstime. [...]
In a 1998 interview with Gambit Weekly ("The Last Klan Case," Dec. 15, 1998), Rogers said he hasn't forgotten the night of the attack. "The older I get, the more it gets to me," he said.

There were three original suspects. McElveen has died. If he was guilty, presumably he's down in that hot place. As for the other two, there are a couple of the worst murderers living among us. Could be my neighbors. Or yours.

Turn 'em in, people. Closing ranks around this kinda scum is inexcusable.

Open note to Creed Rogers: Keep after the FBI, sir. I wanna see the perps fry.

School arrests

There may have been students with weapons as I was told by a student on Monday.

The Daily News has the info:

The day of in-school disturbances began Monday at Bogalusa Middle when a fight broke out and school officials called in police.

The early morning incident happened at about 8:30 a.m. and involved three youngsters, all of whom were sent to a regional juvenile detention facility, Darden said, following a written order by Juvenile Court Judge Bobby Black.

At about 11:30 a.m., another fight broke out at the middle school. This fight led to the arrest of seven students.

"Retreat isn't an option"

Liz Cheney gets it:

We are at war. America faces an existential threat. This is not, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed, a "situation to be solved." It would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and say, as Sen. Barack Obama suggested at a Jan. 11 hearing, "Enough is enough." Wishing doesn't make it so.

Go ye and read it all, for it is good.

Names from spam

I was enjoying the view at Gallery of the Absurd and somehow ended up at Fresh Spam, which has great illustrations of spam names and subjects.

Spam names? Sure. Here's a selection from my own inbox:

Ladyda Jessica
Dorita Crow
Minnie Sadler
Rajan Eileif
Kobi Levi

I used to see authors like "Wrestling B. Dangler" but maybe my ISP is filtering those now.

Anyhow, after the Fresh Spam site I hopped over to this post at Birdmonster, where a bunch of kind folks are sharing the spam names in their inboxes.

Naturally, you would follow stock advice from Grinchmas Gashy, right? lol

You can make your own names with the Spamfriend Generator.

Update: Discount Mats

At Fox News:

Army Sgt. Jason Hess, stationed in Taji, Iraq, with the 1st Cavalry Division, said he emailed his request to Discount-mats.com because he and his fellow soldiers sleep on the cold ground, which contains sand mites, sand flies and other disease carriers.[...]Khetani [the owner] on Monday told FOX News that the person responsible for the email reply had been fired. The Web site, meanwhile, has been temporarily taken down.

Previous:
Don't do business with Discount Mats.

Vacation in Mexico? I'll pass.

In a move that will thrill gun-control advocates, the Tijuana police are now armed with slingshots.

Arrests at Bogalusa Middle?

We heard from a student yesterday (Monday 1-22-07) that two students were arrested at Bogalusa Middle School with weapons.

Can anyone confirm?

HTML. The language from h3ll.

Apologies to my readers.

Tried to make the blog classier and add more ads. And I totally screwed up the format.

Par for the course. I think we're back on track now.

Thanks for your patience :-)!

Don't do business with Discount Mats.

Via Gulf Coast Pundit:

Wisconsin Mat Company Gives US Troops the Finger

The link leads to Gateway Pundit, and this:

Sgt. Hess, who is from the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Iraq, emailed a company called discount-mats.com, an online retailer in West Allis, Wisconsin to inquire about ordering some mats but wanted to verify that they would ship to a APO.

From: SGT Jason Hess
Sent: Tue Jan 16 3:25

Do you ship to APO address? I’m in the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Iraq and we are trying to order some mats but we are looking for who ships to APO first.

Well, you wouldn’t believe the disgusting reply he received back from the company:

From: contact@discount-mats.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 9:44 PM
Subject: Re: Feedback: from discount-mats.com

SGT Hess,
We do not ship to APO addresses, and even if we did, we would NEVER ship to Iraq. If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.

Bargain Suppliers
Discount-Mats.com

As Gateway Pundit notes, it's been verified as true by Snopes.

Send an email, phone, write 'em a snail mail. They deserve it [big evil grin].

414-736-8394 contact@discount-mats.com

Bargain Suppliers
3259 S.106th Street
West Allis, WI 53227

The Daily News fails grammar.

In today's issue, this headline:

Textbook selection processes has many hurdles [emphasis mine]

I sure hope the people reading and reviewing our children's potential future school books are a bit more learned than whoever wrote that headline.

The verb is conjugated like this:

I have
you have
he, she, it has
we have
they have

Processes is clearly plural, so use have fer cryin' out loud.

New blog and group

I was lurking in a Usenet group and ran into a link for this Time magazine article [excerpt]:

A little over a year ago, 10 friends got together in San Francisco over a potluck dinner. There were a few teachers, a technology marketer, an engineer, a dog handler. What would it be like, they wondered amid the Christmas shopfest, if they all pledged not to buy anything new except food, medicine and essential toiletries for a year? Thus was born a movement that they named, in a light-hearted way, after the 1621 Mayflower Compact. "We are a group of individuals committed to a 12-month flight from the consumer grid," they wrote in a chat-room manifesto that lists their aims as going "beyond recycling," reducing clutter in their homes and simplifying their lives: "Borrow, barter or buy used."

Here's the San Francisco blog.

I've begun a blog for Louisiana. Posts coming this p.m.

The Louisiana Compact Yahoo Group. Ya'll are invited to join :-).

The huge The Compact Yahoo Group.

Sex sells

Gucci bag, style "princy," $725 and up:




Underwear by Hanes, much less $ for a five-pack:

Slothful Sunday

What aren't you doing?

I've been watching videos. Over at Blackfive, I saw this video showing Makoto Nagano, the fellow who won the 17th Japanese Ninja contest.

It's broadcast on some cable channel, but we don't get cable.

My hat's off to Mr. Nagano, who has incredible upper-body strength. I highly recommend wasting 10 minutes watching the video.

What we aren't doing: yard work.

Have a great Sunday!

Addendum: More at Wikipedia

"Yalla Ya Nasrallah"

Hilarious video with a catchy tune and footage of Israel's military. Subtitled in English.

If you know the artist, please post it in the comments.

We dodged a bullet...

... though the rest of the U.S. hasn't been so lucky.

Near as I can figure, it got down to the mid-30s last night. Still, I hope y'all let Fluffi and Fideaux sleep indoors. It was mighty chilly.

Bomb found in car.

In today's Nola:

State Police are investigating a bomb they found in a vehicle during a traffic stop in Elmwood.

Read it all.

What in tarnation is goin' on down there?

Open letter to Britney Spears

My dear Ms. Spears,

This letter is prompted by my 14-year-old Darling Daughter's disappointment. She's afraid for your well being, sweetie! Especially since she's seen the pictures. You know the ones - with the blank spots hiding naughty bits. Ick.

The gossip columnists are having a field day. Surely you're used to living in the public eye by now, but still. It's painful to read.

You need a makeover.

One of your greatest assets is that you're a talented young lady from Kentwood, Louisiana. Quit trying to be a Hollywood socialite, partying with the likes of Paris and what's-her-name - you know, the other chick who doesn't wear drawers.

Those two, I wouldn't invite to scoop poop.

Get some counseling for your self-esteem. Not a Hollywood shrink - pick a good one in Baton Rouge or Hammond, y'know? Spend more time with your kids (they're adorable!), and much less time partying in public.

Hire a better stylist. Stay outta the plastic surgeon's office. You're a cute girl. Let everybody else look manufactured, and you be the real one.

You're from the back of beyond in the Deep South. Work that for all it's worth. Be proud of your roots. They're unique!

If you need some time out, send me an email or leave a comment. Everybody ignores us, so you could hide here for a couple weeks and decompress. We'll toss balls for the dogs, walk in the woods, plink with the .22s. Darling Daughter is a competent babysitter; leave your entourage out on the Left Coast.

Love ya, kiddo. Take care.

Batten down the hatches.

Prepare for the worst - even though it's only a 30% chance. And don't leave Fideaux or Fluffi outdoors Tuesday night.

Image redacted from the NWS:

The blogs of war.

Any readers alive and aware during the Vietnam War? To me, it was the first conflict we watched on television. A lot of footage was on the nightly news.

In the present war against islamofascism, we don't only have soldiers' letters home or articles from reporters who are, more often than not, sipping cocktails at a hotel in Baghdad and taking reports from "stringers" with an agenda. We've got milblogs.

There are too many of 'em to list, so hie thee to Milblogging-dot-com and read, read, read.

On the war in Iraq

Via Michelle Malkin, a great and thoughtful post from The Anchoress[excerpts]:

This is an enemy that does not wear a uniform, it hides in the crowd, it fights with no code and concurs with no convention. It doesn’t mind hiding behind women and children or storing arms in churches. If this enemy takes a prisoner it slaughters him on camera, and with great glee.[...]This is an enemy that says, “you love Pepsi, we love death. And we are happy to die as long as we are killing you, too.”[...]…they’re fighting and using terrorism as a means of movement, to advance an idea the bottom line of which is “Die. Or, you know, convert. But mostly die.”[...]If Bush fails in going “all in” and we pull out, okay…we’ve brought our sons and daughters home and basically rendered meaningless our 3000 honorable military deaths. Iraq will immediately fall and the 21century killing fields will commence.

[...]
The whole thing.

"Home-loan house of cards ready to fall"

Excerpts [emphases mine]:

This week brings an update on the deterioration, via comments from two very knowledgeable friends. One of them, a former top executive at a subprime lender (whose chronicling of the unwind has been amazingly accurate and timely), told me that serious issues are developing, and that large companies like New Century Financial, Accredited Home Lenders and NovaStar Financial will, in his words, "hit the wall" very soon. [...]"This will, and should, take years to play out. (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben) Bernanke will yield to the Lobby and the Street, trying once again to lower rates and allow people to bail themselves out, while in turn allowing the buyout firms of the world to overpay for the companies they buy with easy money. The game is so rigged against honesty, it boggles the mind."[...]I am not as sure as he is that it will take "years" to play out. The damage will last for years, but the crackup that precedes the big damage will happen this year, I think.

Read it all, and Mr. Fleckenstein's earlier article, Voodoo Debt and the Coming Recession.

Be careful out there.

Earlier:
Mortgage lenders going bust
More on the bubble
Biggest bubble of 'em all
Advice for the New Year

"A Sense of Place"

Fascinating article in Gambit about the Neighborhood Story Project. Excerpts, with emphases mine:

The fate of the poor obscures a deeper issue. With most of the projects now empty, crime is surging.[...]NOPD is deteriorating, while the drug culture, permeated with guns, is on a roll. [...]Annie Pearl Nelson, a 40-year resident of the (now empty) Lafitte housing project, has this to say in a book called The Combination:

"When I first moved into Lafitte, this was the best housing development there was. The kids could come outside and they could play. You could leave all the doors and windows open. We didn't have to worry about breakin in, robberies, or anything like this. ... But now you could see [drug] transactions goin on anywhere you might be passin. ... I've had someone run in my door twice and the police were there, and they ran in my house twice."

Okay. The "welfare culture" has yet to return to New Orleans. The National Guard's still there, so there are a lot of good guys with guns on the street.

Yet it sounds like the Wild West down there.

Is this some mass post-Katrina psychosis goin' on? Or is it possible that those at fault for the crime were not the so-called entitlement class?

Once upon a time, we lived in a violent, poor, inner-city neighborhood. Ashley Nelson puts it so well:

Ashley Nelson's grief over her parents' drug use leads to an unblinking look at reality: "People I know who sell [drugs] say, 'They just making a living cuz it's hard." But it's more than that, too. Once I asked my uncle, 'Why do people deal drugs?' He told me, 'Respect and power. ... Once you get it, you feel like a leader.'

My experience is, this stuff about respect gets all mixed up in inner-city kids' minds. Yeah, in some ways the ghetto respects a drug dealer. He's got money. People fear him. Junkies worship him. He's got the juice and he gets what he wants.

In areas where many people struggle day-to-day, and there are no better examples around - because even the moderately successful leave - the drug dealer is king. He's the role model that too many children wish to emulate.

So I applaud HUD's efforts to close down those big projects permanently and go to smaller, scattered sites and vouchers. Children need to learn that the wider world views those "street heroes" with utter contempt, as the scum they are. They should live in a more varied environment and have exposure to working- and middle-class mores.

Then we'll make a dent in this problem.

Do go to Gambit and read it all.

It's Slothful Sunday.

This is a new weekly feature here at bogalusa!.

For at least an hour on Sunday, I put my feet up and do nothing instead of somethin' like yard work. I read the news, or a short story, or contemplate the lint in my navel.

At the moment, I'm not scrubbing floors.

What aren't you doing?

UPDATE: The look of the blog is cleaner with Arial instead of Times New Roman, ain't it?

Lookin' for a makeover

I'd love to be able to put Amazon ads in their own column.

Which practically requires a three-column template.

So no more posting for today, while I go ahunting through the WWW for a more suitable look.

Stay tuned for Slothful Sunday! Tomorrow a.m.

UPDATE: Okay, we've got three columns. Now I need to make them the correct width and add all those links in by hand, and possibly a few other refinements.

So far, wuddaya think?

Many new links

If you know of a local business with a site that ain't in the list, or find a link that's bad, please tell me in the comments.

Thanks!

Bomb scare at Bogalusa Middle

This kinda stuff has been going on forever.

When I was a kid - before the last Ice Age ;-) - there were fake fire alarms. Some enterprising little hoodlum would pull the lever in an empty hallway, bells would sound, and we'd all file out the nearest exit and hang around outdoors until the appropriate city officials came and looked through the building.

Yeah, bells. Round metal things with clappers. The schools didn't have those electronic doohickeys that sound like a robot farting.

Back in the classroom, we'd get a lecture about how it was against the law, blah blah blah. I never knew who did it 'cuz I didn't hang out with the hoods. Sometimes they were referred to as "greasers," which has a whole different meaning today.

I don't recall any of my classmates going to juvenile hall for pulling the alarm, but that was a looooong time ago and perhaps memory has faded. It was before video cameras were everywhere. Heck, it was before they were anywhere. The first VCR was sold in 1971.

Can you imagine? Nowadays, we're all in someone's lens by simply running errands: at the bank, at the convenience store, at WalMart.

In the mid 70s, bomb scares came into vogue. The building where I worked was evacuated several times after phoned-in threats. But still no caller ID, and I never heard of an arrest.

From the Daily News article:

Police Chief Jerry Agnew said police identified the call as coming from a cell phone. He said cell phone records would be subpoenaed to help identify the caller.

The call not only came into the school but to 9-1-1 as well, and 911 records are being checked to identify the caller along with voice recordings.

Today's kids have grown up with all this technology. They know they've gotta take precautions to make anonymous prank calls to their friends, f'rinstance. The patent for caller ID was filed in 1982, likely before the perp was born.

Not too bright, to believe you can phone in a bomb threat and remain unidentified.

To find this culprit, they prolly oughtta check phone records... and test scores. Heh.

Where? Why?

Hello, visitors!

Where are you from, and what brought you here?

Comments are open. Feel free to leave one!

Miraculous

Missing boys found:

BEAUFORT, Mo. - Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby disappeared 4 1/2 years and 40 miles apart. Police were stunned to find both boys — alive and apparently well — in the same suburban St. Louis apartment.

The shocking development Friday was hailed as a miracle in two rural Missouri communities — Richwoods, where Shawn was 11 when he disappeared on Oct. 6, 2002 — and Beaufort 40 miles to the north, where Ben, 13, hadn't been seen since getting off a school bus Monday afternoon.

In fairness, it doesn't sound like either of these kidnappings could have been avoided by reasonable means. You can't keep your kids within eyesight 24/7/365.

But here's some further reading with good safety tips: Preventing abductions

So far, it's been a warm winter...

... though we've got another cold spell headed our way. Down to around 30 at night in a few days.

Wild azaleas in the woods are budding, and trees are beginning to leaf out. It's the middle of January, and they're acting like it's March. I saw many big tulip poplars that Katrina laid down still alive :-). We have a horizontal forest.

It will be a shame if a hard frost kills the tender new growth - especially for trees and shrubs that are still trying to recover from the storm's battering.

I took cuttings of the azalea. If I can't enjoy it in the woods this year, I'll see some blooms near my desk.

Could be worse. Dallas-Ft. Worth has an ice storm warning goin' on.

Breathtakingly idiotic - Barbara Boxer

From the New York Post:

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, an appalling scold from California, wasted no time yesterday in dragging the debate over Iraq about as low as it can go - attacking Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman.

And the Post gives her a scolding in turn. Read it all.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

Excitement at Lake Peigneur:

Lake Peigneur, which drained into a salt mine after an oil rig accident 26 years ago, was bubbling Thursday morning, area residents said.

Richard Suire, a retired oilfield worker who lives on the lakefront, said he saw it when he let the dog out Thursday morning. "It was bubbling up probably a foot and a half high, and 15 feet north and south, and about two to three feet wide," he said.

More reading on the 1980 Lake Peigneur disaster.

Numbers!

I wonder if there's any significance to having $6.66 in my checking account...

Flying objects

There seems to be more air traffic than usual - small planes and helicopters.

Anybody know what that's all about?

Substitutes

One problem at Bogalusa Middle seems to be lack of teachers. There are at least two out long-term, we've been told by a student, info not verified.

Yet I find no vacancies listed at the state civil service employment site, at Teach Louisiana, or at Bogalusa City Schools employment page.

In Bogalusa, a substitute teacher can be noncertified and non-degreed and will get paid $50 per day [page 15, line 66].

Is it acceptable for a high school graduate to teach your kids?

Bogalusa schools

The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has taken an interest in the Bogalusa schools - because they've got problems. Low test scores, discipline, etc. Surely some enterprising parent or teacher will bemoan the supposed lack of G*d in the schools, too [sigh].

I missed the meeting and sure hope The Daily News puts the results online.

Some comments on the above-linked meeting article [excerpt]:

District 1 BESE Board member Penny Dastugue called today's public meeting - with staff members of the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) and not members of the BESE board - an "analysis and summation of data" because "it is hard for public citizens to go through data on-line."

I'll say it's hard. The latest numbers don't exist.

This is the PDF file of the 2005-2006 accountability results at the state ed. site. On page 43, blanks for Bogalusa because "Data are shaded for districts that had all schools identified as severe impact and chose to start over as new schools in accountability in 2006-07." However, I don't recall that the schools were all that great before Katrina - assuming that's the "impact" mentioned.

Here's my previous post with an overview of the spring 2006 GEE scores at Bogalusa High, specifically its comparison to Franklinton's schools.

Online education

There are many universities and colleges with online courses and degree programs, some accredited, some shady and fly-by-night. We all get their spam.

I recently found out that there are a number of elementary-to-high schools online. Thanks, posters!

Good to know about, especially considering the state of Bogalusa City Schools. A non-comprehensive list:

Stanford University Education Program for Gifted Youth.
BYU independent study
U of Oklahoma Independent High School

There is tuition, naturally. But your teacher will probably not try to indoctrinate you into their religion during geography.

This last one might be too difficult for the pre-college students, and there's no credit or instructor access granted, but it's free:

MIT OpenCourseWare

Happy learning!

Mortgage lenders going bust

As part of our Housing Bubble readings, we've found the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter:

I set this page up to keep track of mortgage lenders in the US going bust since approximately December 2006, when it seems the first of them started going under. Many observers (including myself) have been anticipating this for some time, as rising home prices (and other financial assets) have collided with the deteriorating consumer balance sheet and low-as-they-can-possibly-go interest rates (heavily reliant on the dole of China and the oil exporters).

It appears what had to give is now finally giving: the latest subprime loans are going delinquent the quickest, and it seems likely that their prior kin will soon follow (and many of these will likely end up in foreclosure). Further, I expect a large swathe of prime loans to go bad (the prime/subprime distinction is quite fuzzy anyway). Originators cannot handle the buybacks, and so when challenged by them are immediately folding. The phenomenon is just getting started. What will the banking industry — generally all or part owners in these enterprises — do? Stay tuned.

Nine so far. Yes, do stay tuned.

More on the bubble

Over at the Housing Panic blog, Keith has an outstanding and sobering post:

· The upswing usually starts with an opportunity - new markets, new technologies or some dramatic political change - and investors looking for good returns.

(collaterized loans, 1% interest rates, globalization)

· It proceeds through the euphoria of rising prices, particularly of assets, while an expansion of credit inflates the bubble.

(Hey, my house just went up 20%! Masses quit their jobs to get realtor licenses. Neighbors talk about prices at cocktail parties)

· In the manic phase, investors scramble to get out of money and into illiquid things such as stocks, commodities, real estate or tulip bulbs: 'a larger and larger group of people seeks to become rich without a real understanding of the processes involved'.

Read the whole thing.

Grammar police.

I was disappointed to read here:

"You think, 'What did I get into? What do I gotta do to get out of this?' " Shore said.

While I applaud CNN's or APs devotion to capturing local flavor, Shore is Special Agent Shore, FBI, one of America's Finest.

Good grief, he sounds like a thug. "What do I gotta do," indeed.

The formerly flooded city

Speaking of New Orleans, we were down there a few days ago.

Did some "disaster tourism" and drove around this area:








[from Google Maps]









Sad. Very sad. Yeah, lots of homes are being worked on. Some appear finished and are occupied.

Others are empty, collapsing, not gutted or boarded up. 16+ months after Katrina.

It appears that they didn't get enough of an influx of construction workers - legal or otherwise. And I'm sure that some poor souls' rehab efforts are being hampered by the snail's pace of the Road Home program.

ATVs. Oh my goodness.

Driving down Avenue F tonight around 6:00 p.m. - well after sundown - and saw an ATV going in the other direction.

After dark. In the road.

Some people are just suicidal, I guess.

Loose livestock

I was phoned by an impeccably reliable source today that there were horses loose on Spring Valley Road.

He said this has occurred several times recently. Maybe somebody could help the owner horse-proof his fence?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaaaanges

We've become an Amazon Associate, which means you'll be seeing links to books in our posts. Some of 'em slightly humorous, I hope.

In the sidebar we'll have a running text-only list.

Happy reading :-)!

ATV fatality - correction

It's what I get for publishing half-cocked.

Through a better source - a friend of Nick's - I learned that the injured passenger was not his daughter.

Any further corrections will be placed as updates in this post.

Great book by a real journalist:

Someday we'll live at the beach...

...when the land south of us slides into the Gulf of Mexico:

A new report by scientists studying Louisiana's sinking coast says the land here is not just sinking, it's sliding ever so slowly into the Gulf of Mexico.

Will the last people to leave south of Lake Pontchartrain please turn out the lights?

Uh, wait. If anybody's still alive:

About the best that could be said of New Orleans' murder rate in 2006 is that it has held relatively steady over the past six months.

The worst is that, if it continues steady for six months more, the city would have a 12-month murder rate about eight to 12 times the national average for cities its size, rather than this year's multiple of seven to 10.

Ripping off the gov't.

I dunno about you, but I call this fraud:

He added another "big problem" is the number of vacant trailer parks that continue to get tax-supported FEMA dollars. According to Burgess, park owners set up empty trailer parks knowing in advance they will receive money from FEMA despite the lack of demand for residents.

"That's so irritating to me," he said.

Irritating, he says. That's an understatement, sez I.

Are there no honest people left in the world?

Another whoops?

Taking a look at today's online Daily News, I clicked on the obit for Carole Ann Rundell Myers and got this page:


















Mrs. Myers?

Worth browsing

I can't call this a product endorsement, exactly. I'm not an R. H. Shumway's seed customer yet.

But their catalog is gorgeous. Full of old-fashioned illustrations - like this one for bush beans.

Their website is also attractive. Order a catalog here.

PS - Before I buy online or mailorder, I check out the company at the BBB and the Rip-Off Report.

Yes, an ATV fatality

Young man in his 20s, Nick Johnson, was killed in an ATV accident.

I was told that his young daughter was riding with him and was seriously injured. She and the rest of the family will be in our thoughts.

Kebbie Loves Ken, redux

Back in Sept '06, I posted about a shop in Skaneateles, New York opened by a Bogalusa native and her husband - Kebbie and Ken Rosenberg.

An anonymous commenter warned that all is not what it seemed:

This store has a history of ripping off the artists whose products populate the shelves. Refusing to pay for merchandise sold & refusing to return products to the artisan, they should not be done business with.

Okay.

I finally looked up their BBB record:

Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau due to unanswered complaint(s).

Thanks for that tip, Anonymous!

Fatality?

Over on the Hard Copy board, Ms. Sasha says there was an ATV accident with fatality [redacted screen shot]:

I don't know how old the alleged victim was; don't know him personally. Yeah, "alleged" because I hope it isn't true.

We see them screaming up & down our street, too - in excess of the speed limit. Why do people let their kids play in traffic like that?

Here's the ATV Safety Institute. They've got a library of printable info. Literature could show up in the parents' mailbox anonymously, heh. It takes a village sometimes.

If you see repeat violators and calling 911 doesn't help, you can email the police. I can't locate a similar online form for WPSO; emailing your councilman is another idea.

Changes

Google convinced me to enroll in the new blogger.

So I did. Hope it isn't too hard to read.

There'll be fine-tuning in future with the sidebar.

Need tractor advice

Some good friends are going to be shopping for a tractor or the like in a couple months. They've got about 3 acres to cut and also plant a kitchen garden and patches for wildflowers. They'd like to be able to mow down light brush, too. They have a push mower for the lawn around the house.

I agreed to lend an ear to this enterprise, but it's the blind leading the blind, heh. Plus they're "income-challenged" so they're thinking used equipment.

Here are the possibilities they've been bouncing off me, as if I know anything. Except I've been trying to think of all the pros and cons of each. The links show examples, but not necessarily the make/model. They'll decide that when they look at what's available around the end of February.

Garden tractor
Compact tractor
BCS equipment (two-wheel tractor)

Or use animals:

Fence
Pig - the "tiller"
Goats - a/k/a bush hogs
Geese - grass trimmers

I'm not certain if they'd rather maintain an engine or care for critters, and it sounds like they're waffling with that, too.

Anyhoooooo - I'm actively soliciting advice on their behalf from folks who've got to be more equipment-savvy than I am. In other words, everybody. Brands to avoid, livestock versus machines, reliability, cost of upkeep... Whatever. Opinions are like you-know-what's, everybody's got one. Post yours in the comments and I'll pass 'em on :-).