Author: polydactyl

A brief Prologue:  As we commemorate the first anniversary of Katrina, I thought that I would repost my thoughts from another milestone in the recovery of the Gulf Coast, Mardi Gras 2006.  This personal journal was originally posted Wednesday, March 1st at the Welshman’s New International Times, so you will find it a bit dated grammatically speaking, but I’ve left it in it’s original form.   You will also find that because of the intimate nature of the NIT that the writing is a bit less formal and a good bit more personal (rather like the Froggy Bottom Cafe crowd), and I tend to let all sort of emotion seep into my commentary.  My writing reflects the conflict of emotion that I’ve experienced and see mirrored in the eyes of my fellow Louisianans.

So with all of the caveats out of the way, I hope you’ll indulge me with regard to the frankness that this very personal commentary was written – polydactyl

Au revoir Mardi Gras, bonjour Cendre Mercredi

Goodbye Mardi Gras, Hello Ash Wednesday

Well, the carnival season is over and the season of Lent begins.  We’ve had our drink, gorged our bodies on animal flesh and king cakes, and danced to all manner of music much to the chagrin of the Bible Belters.  We are all hedonistic villains, you know.  But now, the time of self-flagellation and abstinence begins replete with more officially sanctioned guilt than you can shake a rhythm stick at.  

I am all for facing my mortality head on, but after six months of mold spores, sky-scrapers of debris still in piles and the image of florescent orange signs of death on every door etched into my brain, I think I can maintain a little perspective without getting smudged in a ritual and hearing “Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”  Tell that to the floaters and those washed out to sea, the bloaters still under the unattended rubble, the 3,200 missing and the 8,300 misplaced by the government and thankfully found without the help of FEMA.  Lou Reed was right, you need a busload of faith to get by…and, faith and religion don’t always go hand in hand.

Most folks around here pick alcohol and chocolate as their ‘personal’ abstentions, but the really hard part this year is going to be the whole carne val thing, the farewell to meat.  Besides tearing holy hell on all of south Louisiana, the hurricanes trashed the inland marshes, home to the crab and the nurseries the bebe shrimp.  The tidal surges provided sufficient salt-water intrusion into the estuary system that all of the natural breeding grounds of the crawfish have been wiped out for this year and perhaps another.  The only crawfish this season will come from commercial ponds and even there, the season will be poor because of the drought.

Lent in Louisiana is all about the crawfish.  Crawfish boils, crawfish etoufee, crawfish bisque, crawfish pizza.  It is going to be hard doing without or doing with less, but we’ll get by on lots of catfish and sac a lait.

It struck me as a rather cruel irony that the six month anniversary of Hurricane Katrina landed on the 150th anniversary of Mardi Gras in NOLA, the day that is so emblematic of the joi de vive of New Orleans.  

I certainly didn’t begrudge the citizens of New Orleans their abbreviated Mardi Gras season, nor do I question the judgment of Mayor Nagin for proceeding with the party plans even though the city is in the red to the tune of $120 million.  I bear no ill will toward the hundreds of thousands of revelers from far flung locales that have descended on the French Quarter to experience a New Orleans Mardi Gras.  They got what they came for…when you are hip to hip with two hundred thousand of your closest, new best friends, you really can’t tell the difference of a crowd cut in half.

I didn’t make it down this year, the Peach was in a play with three nighttime performances last week and had soccer matches over the weekend.  Word out of the New Orleans office (who worked sporadically during the week due to parade routes closing roads and clogging parking, etc.) was that the crowds were definitely smaller, the locals were sorta somber but still fit to party, there were a lot fewer roving gangs of teenagers and frat boys only out to drink, and a high visibility of well-heeled tourists who were out to spend money and do the Mardi Gras thing big time.

I took that as a comfort.  I don’t want to draw too much of a post-911 NYC economic comparison, but if you have high end tourists spending money in upscale restaurants, boutiques and galleries that is a good bit more productive in raising up the community than college kids sleeping in their cars and only carrying beer money.  To those tourista types though, I appreciate the cash flow but want you to ponder two things:  the French Quarter and Mardi Gras are not the sum total of Louisiana, nor should they be the gauge to measure the progress of gulf coast reconstruction.  Second, the people of Louisiana are the culture of the state.  Entire communities were wiped out by Katrina and Rita leaving us with a very personal void that cannot be filled by Johnny-come-lately-contractors and LandShark developers.

I write this from central Louisiana, the Crossroads, the ankle of the boot.  Before the summer of storms, the parish seat of Rapides, Alexandria had a population of just under 46,000.  Today, the best guess estimate is closer to 68,000.  Sunday, Alexandria held one of its three Mardi Gras parades.  In years past, the crowds would approach 75,000, but this year was different.  People came from across the state and from around the country.  The Peach and I marveled at the license plates we saw coming into town and the sense that this year’s parade had a different flavor, a different intensity.  The police estimate on the crowd was reported at 150,000 and I wouldn’t argue too much with that.  And, I don’t argue with the influx of new people and the strain on our small city’s infrastructure or the incredible traffic we have now.  I embrace all of that and only wish that the federal government had not flung our south Louisiana brothers and sisters to the winds across 44 states.

Local street musicians roll before the Alexandria main parade

Krewe du Rapides float

My friend Danny as we stake out a spot, two hours before the parade

Watching the parade on Sunday, I thought a little bit about how it resembled the suburban parades in Metairie that I’d go to growing up.  Big floats, lots of throws…doubloons and beads and little stuffed animals, marching bands, plenty of freaks and skin, but without the wanton debauchery, fear of random violence or overwhelming smell of sick that is attendant so many of the New Orleans nighttime parades.  I don’t miss the crowds of New Orleans Mardi Gras, but I miss New Orleans.  The real New Orleans, the people on normal Tuesday night in the middle of April far away from the Quarter, listening to the sound of an oyster knife splitting the shell mingling with whatever music is playing and the laughter of fifty conversations going on all at once.  The friendly casualness of it all and the smell of atomized fry grease.  

On Fat Tuesday, I thought of something different and it made my heart ache.  Mardi Gras in small town south Louisiana is about as different from New Orleans as you can get and a good bit of that culture has been put on hold for the time being.   I really wanted to be in Mamou yesterday and watch the Courir du Mardi Gras.  The courir is a custom that predates the traditional parade Mardi Gras.  The courir is a “man thing” with riders on horseback going house to house in search of the ingredients for a chicken sausage gumbo.  The riders are dressed in wildly colorful, distinctly unmanly costumes, there is a lot of beer involved, trick riding and a good bit of chicken chasing.  Mud diving contests and wallowing in mud puddles are a pretty good bet around noon, as the drinking starts at dawn.

Chasing the chicken (Mamou 2004)

The history of the courir dates back to the medieval fête de la quémande, a ritual “begging festival”.  This medieval flavor influences the rider’s costumes which can include pointed hats, miters, and mortarboards to mock the wealthy, the ordained, and the well-educated.  The point of it is for the rider’s to mock the usual social order: men dress sort of like women or the rich dress as the poor (and vice versa).  Many riders prefer to dress simply as clowns or monsters.  The courir sometimes involves sexual imagery when riders use whips to flog one another or have phalluses on their costumes.  The women and children follow the courir on a procession of decorated flatbed trailers that always include a live band or two.

When I was in Mamou two years ago, the courir came back with 45 live chickens and enough other fixings for six 20 gallon gumbo pots.  There is a covered community center which is the staging area for the return of the courir and there is music and food there all day…mostly boudin and crab-boiled eggs. Down the way is Fred’s, a Cajun stomping ground that is infamous for opening early and staying up late and is the fais do-do capital of the world.  If you want to learn how to do a good coonass two step that is the place.  If anyone wanted to get a true taste of Louisiana Mardi Gras, Mamou or Eunice would be my suggestion.  I’ve met people from Nova Scotia and Brussels who were looking for their roots and people from Memphis and Austin trying to authenticate a sound.  If you are one of those people for whom the accordion is an anathema, you haven’t heard Mitch Cormier and the Can’t Hardly Playboys.

There is this other little place in southwest Louisiana about an hour from New Orleans called Gheens and they take the religious side of the Mardi Gras tradition to the extreme.   On Mardi Gras, the children of Gheens play this wicked game of hide and seek.  It is really a twisted take on old initiation and fertility rites buried in Celtic tradition where young adult males wear clown or monster costumes with bells on and run or ride through the town with willow whips.  If you are on the hiding end of the game and you get caught, you drop to your knees recite the “Our Father” with your hands folded in prayer.  Once you finish the prayer, you have to run away with cries of “pardon! pardon!” and the riders go off looking for someone else to taunt into penance.  Religion is weird stuff, I tell ya.

The Ghouls of Gheens

Edit/Update thingy: So, I was sorta rereading this not really wanting to “proof it” cause it got so damned long and I peeked in on the NIT and saw Keith’s (Welshman) additional request for a Mardi Gras roundup, so I’ll add some additional NOLA details, but they are all anecdotal from my office mates, the radio and the web.

I won’t go into the traditional big time parades except to say that Michael Keaton was off the leash (and using language that only Ray Nagin could understand), Stephen Segal is still a pompous ass, but has a serious love connection with Sheriff Lee and the reason that Brian Williams was not in NOLA Monday and Tuesday night for the NBC nightly news is because his older sister died of breast cancer.  That gave Louisiana home-girl Campbell Brown a chance to step in and up for the occasion.  I love her dad, Jim Brown, our former and embattled insurance commissioner, recently released from prison after an incarceration for a sin of omission with the FBI, but it is hard for me to get over Campbell’s prior relationship with J. Paul Bremer’s buttboy and chief mouthpiece, Dan Senor.

But on to the off the beaten path parades…the one’s you really need to seek out if you are fortunate enough to make the trip in Mardi Gras’s to come.  The big, big point of Mardi Gras this year (outside of the obvious cash infusion) was to vent a whole lot of steam and to maintain some semblance of normalcy.  There ain’t shit normal about New Orleans right now.  You can’t go to the grocery store and have the checkout clerk ask ‘how yo’ mom an dem?’ for fear that they are dead or lost or in some other state.  It has changed the whole dynamic.  Polite conversation has been boiled down to the essence of living day to day.

First, on the must see list is the parade of the Krewe du Vieux.  It is always a bawdy good time with lots of sex, alcohol and rock n roll and always very, very hip and snarky.  They are always on the cutting edge of hipster culture and this year was no exception.  This year’s theme was C’est Levee.  Heh.  I laugh every time I think about it.  Almost all the krewe parades this year made fun in some way of FEMA, but the Krewe du Vieux made it a full time occupation.

When KDV first announced their parade plans for the abbreviated season, I knew it would be a classic…it is just a shame that I missed it:

2006 KDV Parade Theme, Royalty Announced

We’ve learned that you never leave behind a refrigerator full of seafood. We’ve learned that sometimes you can’t help but sleep on the wet spot. We’ve learned new meanings for “open house” and “waterfront property”. We’ve learned that FEMA’s just another word for nothing left to lose. What’s Krewe du Vieux’s response to all this insanity? In the laissez faire spirit that has so typified our home town that even the Army Corps of Engineers got swept up in the tide, the Krewe will stage its 2006 parade with the theme of “C’est Levee!” Leading the soggy celebration will be New Orleans environmentalist, film maker and comedian Walter Williams, creator of “Mr. Bill” of Saturday Night Live fame. As Mr. Bill knows much more about flood protection than Mr. Bush or Mr. Brown, the Krewe considers its 2006 king a true wet dream.

Ack…what a time to not have the flexibility to travel!  The Times-Picayune’s pre-parade preview wrote it up like this from a double secret spy, Deep Float:

“You’ll see that they really don’t have a route this year — it’s what they’re calling a ‘projected path’ from Decatur and Port streets through the French Quarter, and ‘landfall’ is at Canal and Rampart at the State Palace Theater,” Float said.

You told me,” I reminded him, “you had contacted the KDV Poobah of Publicity.”

“I have,” Float said. “He said through an intermediary that they’re going national with publicity, to keep the message in front of the world. That’s why you’ll see ‘FEMA’ and the ‘Army Corps of Engineers’ all over these floats.”

“And what does the Poobah see happening?” I asked.

“He said every float will probably break down and FEMA will be there two months later to fix them,” Float said. “They’re designed for only a Category 2 parade.”

Float said that the Krewe of Mama Roux, now headquartered on Mold Gentilly Road, will present “Home Is Where the Tarp Is.” Members were able to get a special discount on blue canvas uniforms from a FEMA sub-sub-sub-sub-subcontractor, so the material was a mere $985 a yard.

The Krewe of Space Age Love, he said, will release its list of “Mold on the Brain Top Nine,” which will include some familiar names. “A deer in headlights would be Mensa material compared to Louisiana’s version of ‘Lost in Space,’ ” is what they’re saying.

Underwear will present “A Day at the Breach,” with the Army Corpse of Engineers, somehow weaving in the notion of breaching for the stars. The Krewe of K.A.O.S. will have a float with a “Waiting on FEMA” theme. The Krewe of Rue Bourbon is scheduled to interpret “Fridge Over Troubled Water,” and as usual, all interpretations are subject to last-minute changes.

“Some krewe, I hear, was supposed to do ‘Attention, K-Mart Looters,’ but that may have changed,” Float said. “You never know what the Krewe of Spermes or the Krewe of Drips and Discharges is going to do, so hang loose. Spermes is probably doing something premature, but it won’t be evacuation. Use your imagination.”

“What I’m hearing is that we’re going to see some out-of-the-boat thinking,” I said.

I haven’t seen any photos posted just yet (edit: KDV website still not updated), but you can be sure that there were plenty of blue tarp bikinis and other equally festive attire.  This is one of the only krewes I know of that put out their own publication…check it out, it is a hoot.

The other parade that I was loathed to miss was yesterday’s Societé de Sainte Anne parade.  It is a neighborhood parade that has most of the craziness of KDV (a little toned down because they skip-jump on the end of the Rex parade for a couple blocks before veering off toward the river), but has an actual spiritual purpose to match it’s revelry.  So while there were reports of folks dressing up as MRE’s with a banner that said “lunch is on us”, and folks dressed up as graffiti covered refrigerators, the end of the Sainte Anne march every year is at the Riverwalk where the ashes of that year’s dead are sprinkled into the muddy Mississippi and there is a mass baptismal.

Sainte Anne’s will have photo gallery up in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime you can listen to Andrei Codrescu’s play by play commentary on NPR from yesterday:  if you are willing to install Real Audio player.

I’m not willing to get into a battle of the mores with anyone over Mardi Gras, but I think that overall it was a very good thing and that the release of all that pent up anger, snark and aggression was timely indeed.  After all, how would you feel if for the last six months the federal government had been telling you to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps when your boots had washed in to Lake Pontchartrain?

What’s a Prologue without an Epilogue?  There will be some who read this as part of the Katrina anniversary who have very well defined feelings about FEMA, the Corps of Engineers, the Bush Administration and the tragically slow pace of the recovery on the Gulf Coast.  My feelings tend to be defined in the emotion of the moment.  My reactions to Bush’s public appearances in Biloxi yesterday day was typical…Three Minutes?  A year of hard work and suffering and three minutes with the public is all he can muster?   I can hardly wait to see his reception in New Orleans, unless of course he is insulated by an army of Rockey Vaccarella’s.

To all my fellow Louisianans:  Peace.  Strength.  Patience.

Originally posted at New International Times

Some three weeks after Katrina made landfall, I referenced (at the NIT)the complete collapse of the judicial system in Orleans and the surrounding parishes.  There were some 69,000 parolees that were unsupervised, their whereabouts unknown; an additional 7,000 registered sexual offenders in New Orleans alone  had been evacuated to localities in Louisiana and elsewhere that did not know their offender status.  In the wake of Katrina, 10,000 violent offenders were transported, after a fashion, to other jurisdictions in Louisiana without proper paperwork to identify them, or their crimes.  Many, many others under incarceration in New Orleans for lesser crimes were also sent to parish detention facilities farther north.  An unknown number released on bond await their day in court.
The firm that I work for does not do criminal representation per se, but does represent municipalities and their law enforcement agencies.  This has been a major headache for us, as the accused have been pursuing their rights to a speedy trial or being released without charge.  There is a clash ongoing between the tenets of Louisiana law that provides for detention without charge for 60 days on felony charges and 45 days for misdemeanors and outsiders interpretation of civil rights under the constitution.  

Obviously, both of these deadlines would have long expired for anyone held prior to Katrina and there have been many arrests in the wake of the storms.  There are several issues besides the constant ticking of the clock at hand, namely, the destruction of every court in Orleans parish and all of the repositories of evidence and paperwork.  New Orleans no longer has a single functioning courthouse; the main Criminal District Court compound remains shuttered and dark. Court records, the city’s two primary evidence vaults, coroner’s reports and the city crime lab were all flooded.  Eye witnesses to crime have been flung across the nation, as have many of the attorneys.  Defendants who were out on bond are now located across the country, some of them relocated to states far away with no prospects or means to return if called to make an appearance.  And, of the former 1.5 million people that lived in the metro area, only 60,000 have returned on a permanent basis, so there is hardy much of a population to draw a jury pool from.

So, can the state provide defendants with the trial by jury that they are guaranteed by law?  It doesn’t appear so, but when the state is struggling with so many financial and infrastructure issues, they are trying to walk a fine line in reestablishing law and order.  Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and the state Supreme Court have given prosecutors extensions, which defense attorneys say might be illegal considering that the state and U.S. constitutions guarantee defendants the right to a speedy trial.  New Orleans police are patrolling during the day to prevent continued looting, but abandon the city patrols by night.   Cases are piling up, both old and new.

Recently, an attorney in our office, representing a local detention center stood by as the Orleans Parish’s chief Criminal District Court judge ordered more than 100 prisoners freed. After reviewing the ruling, the Louisiana Supreme Court said 34 of the inmates should be released immediately. The others have to remain in custody until at least Jan. 6 while the district attorney’s office considers how to proceed in those cases.  But, the DA’s office bears an unusual burden in attempting to prosecute cases when the evidence room at New Orleans Police Department headquarters on Broad Street, the crime laboratory on Tulane Avenue, and the basement of the criminal court at Tulane and Broad were all were flooded.  Much of the evidence has been destroyed.

So, where do we stand on the rights of the criminally accused?  Do we extend the deadlines in order to allow prosecutors additional time to make a case sans evidence?  Do we hold the accused under the burden of transporting themselves back to the jurisdiction they are charged when it was the government that displaced them?  Do we throw up our hands and allow a fractured community to sink further into lawlessness in the name of civil rights?  Or do we just concede that you win some and you lose some and like the levees that protect New Orleans, we have to build the legal system over from scratch?

I’m talking at ya’ll as a proud woman from Louisiana working hard to do my part in my state’s recovery and I’m feeling like a crack whore that’s been kicked to the curb.

Louisiana gotta $3.75 billion dollar tab by FEMA and Big Pimp Sugar Daddy wants his ducets now.  Or else.  Or else he will jerk our ass up off the curb and withhold my federal funding for health and hospitals, education and transportation funds.  Big Pimp Daddy don’t care that
all twelve of the hospitals in the charity system are broke as of December 1st, or that 7,000 DHH employees have been laid off, or that hundreds of schools remain closed all across south Louisiana.  Big Pimp Daddy don’t care if he holds back the match to rebuild our sunken roads and screwed-ass bridges.

It don’t matter to Big Pimp Daddy that there are nearly 100,000 businesses outta business across the state, 310,000 unemployment claims filed in Louisiana as of November 1st with another 12,000 per week since then.

Big Pimp Daddy thinks it’s wise to kick   150,000 evacuees in hotels to the curb on two weeks notice and to short-sheet another 200,000 renters in his worthless voucher program.  That is how Big Pimp Daddy rolls holiday stylee.

Big Pimp Daddy don’t care that my state is already in the hole to the tune of $1.5 billion.  Or that my lame-ass insurance don’t cover $3.5 billion in damage to state buildings.  That ain’t of no concern to Big Pimp Daddy.  He just wanna get paid.  It don’t matter to Big Pimp Daddy that I can’t get a loan cause my bond rating got jacked.  It don’t mean shit to Big Pimp Daddy that the SBA’s computers are whacked and they can’t get out a loan.  It sure as hell don’t mean a thing to Big Pimp Daddy that it only took a month to wipe out our private stash…you know the one that was supposed to tide us over until Big Pimp Daddy and the SBA made good on their word.

Big Pimp Daddy got problems of his own.  Like how fine he looking, or how he don’t have no money or answers, about how all dat flood water got him in trouble with the bank and they won’t lend him no more.  

Well, shit.  Big Pimp Daddy don’t even know how he spent all dat money.  Big Pimp Daddy’s
spending like a drunken sailor on port call, but a drunken sailor got something to show for it in the morning, even if it’s just lipstick on his collar.  Big Pimp Daddy don’t want us to know how dat moneys being spent either.  

Big Pimp Daddy, He just want to get paid.  And iffin’ we don’t come up with the scratch, $2.8 billion come 60 days, we’ll owe him another $225 million in penalties plus some sort of variable interest.  Every month, 6% penalty plus interest.

Fuck you, Big Pimp Daddy.  You ain’t no Pimp Sugar Daddy.  You is a slope shoulder, knuckle-dragging, loan shark, cheap ass mother.  Why you want to kick us when we’re down?  Back in the day, this cat who used to be President called Thomas Jefferson thought enough about the city of New Orleans that he paid $15 million to a French guy for it.  Hell, half this country came with New Orleans as gravy.  You sucked on my big ass titties for two hundred years and you liked it.  Your big oil and gas money flows between my legs and you like it.  Now cut your bitch some slack…give me a fair chance to pay back what I owe or you’ll have to come on down here and take it from me.  You don’t want that.  You ’bout drowned the bitch and she’s pissed.

::

Seriously, I don’t know anyone from Louisiana that doesn’t feel like the state should pay it’s fair share over time.  But sixty days or sixty months just isn’t going to cut it.  The tax base here has been decimated and we are trying very hard just to take care of our own…to put housing where the jobs are, and create jobs where the houses are.  If we have to make deeper cuts into education, we will lose two more generations of Louisiana’s brightest and our hope for the future.

There are things you can do to help, there are things the President can do to help, but that is not going to happen without pressure from Congress.  Get out the word, if you think that these are reasonable propositions:

–Waive all penalties and interest for the Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas FEMA payments.  There is no logic in this immoral co-pay scheme when you consider this is the greatest natural disaster to hit the US

–Establish a reasonable time frame and payment schedule

–Extend the coastal boundary of Louisiana to 12 miles…equal to that of Texas and Florida.  This will provide Louisiana with an additional $500 million annually in oil and gas revenues.

–Support coastal restoration of the Louisiana coast…the White House’s neglect of this attributed greatly to the damage wrought by Katrina and Rita

–Support a unified, enhanced levee system for all of south Louisiana…a collaborative effort between state and federal governments to undo the ravages of oil and gas development, take away the provincial in-fighting among parish interests and build the New Orleans system up to a Category 5 protection.

All of this will take time, money and most importantly a commitment from all of the citizens of the United States.  You can do your part by communicating your commitment to this rebuilding to your congress-people.  They can’t keep it on the front-burner, if they don’t know it is important to us all.

Originally Posted at New International Times

In his speech to the nation from Jackson Square in New Orleans on September 15th, Bush said:

As he stood behind that podium, shirt-sleeves rolled up, the roar of the generators providing that unnatural lighting could not drown out the shallowness of his promises:  

Jesus wept, George.  What the hell is taking you so long?  For all the promises and all the trips which showed you posed, sweating in your shirt-sleeves for the benefit of a photo-op and nothing else, it is only on Monday that you formed your “Gulf Coast Recovery and Rebuilding Council”

I pity the fool who will have to work hand-in-glove-in-pocket with Michael Chertoff aka Skeletor in a new DHS agency that is built on the already crumbling foundation of the Stafford Act.  That fool’s name is Donald Powell.  

Just more cronyism in the style of Michael Brown….Powell’s claim to fame was as the CEO of a bank in Amarillo, Texas (one of the Top 10 armpits of the Earth) and as one of the leading fundraisers in GWB’s 2000 S’election campaign.  A Pioneer.  For that, he was appointed FDIC chairman.  So now, he joins the gianormous Homeland Security bureaucracy without any previous experience in disaster recovery or master planning.  On the other hand, he may fare better than Darth Cheney or Krusty Karl Rove, Bush’s previously anointed `recovery czars’…just what happened to those guys anyway?

If nothing else, the Katrina disaster has demonstrated that King George reigns over a government that does not believe in government – except, of course, as a device for gathering tax revenues from the masses and redistributing it to defense contractors and campaign contributors, and also for keeping dissenting citizens under surveillance and control. Otherwise, whatever the government attempts to do, if we are to believe the right-wing think-tank gurus, private individuals, private property, and “the free market” will always do better.

Tell that to the state of Louisiana that finds itself in a $1 billion dollar tax shortfall through the end of the year, with more grim projections for next year.  A state under-served by it’s insurance coverage to the tune of $3.5 billion dollars.  

Tell that to the feisty middle class that is trying to re-inhabit New Orleans and the rest of south Louisiana armed with nothing more than credit cards and good intentions.

Tell that to the employees of the federal government who are looking at having their pay frozen because Congress is unwilling to cut the pork from their own districts, but were all too willing to make promises in front of the cameras in the immediate aftermath of Katrina.  After Rita, it seems that they regained the false disguise of fiscal conservatism, so long as it doesn’t affect their pet projects.  

But, what are we hearing back?  Last week at the Aspen Institute’s roundtable address, members of Gov. Blanco’s Louisiana Recovery Authority had hoped that Chertoff would have some answers for them or at least be able to provide a status report.  Instead, they got a snide and snippy Chertoff who refused to answer specific questions about hurricane recovery, such as the status of community disaster loans.  Instead, he spent the bulk majority of his time defending Homeland Security’s response and reiterating that he, and not the President should deal directly with FEMA.  

This is in direct contrast with the position that special advisor to Gov. Blanco and former FEMA director James Lee Witt is lobbying for.  He maintains that the Katrina experience proves that the FEMA directorship needs to return to it’s former cabinet level position.

Another woeful meeting from last week was at the White House where members of the Louisiana Recovery Authority discussed the abysmal failure of the Small Business Administration to handle Katrina related requests.  Out of 7,000 loan requests, 600 had been rejected, 68 had been approved and the remainder are unprocessed.  There are 79,000 small businesses in Louisiana affected by the two hurricanes and each one represents both the economic and community base of Louisiana.  Without the businesses, there can be no viable tax base for the state to operate on and without the jobs, there can be no community.  It all boils back down to a need for cash influx and housing.  The third tier is storm protection in the form of coastal restoration and levee enhancement, it is not only a practical necessity, but the lynchpin to drive business reinvestment.

There have been 311,000 Louisiana residents who filed jobless claims after hurricanes Katrina and Rita and roughly 195,590 or 63% are still living in Louisiana.  The state’s unemployment rate has doubled to 11.5% and in the New Orleans area it is closer to 16 times the normal rate.  

This week shuttle bus service has begun between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but transitional and permanent housing are desperately needed in the greater New Orleans area.  The closest FEMA trailer park is in Baker, nearly 80 miles away.  Municipalities closer to New Orleans do not have the existing infrastructure to accommodate temporary parks and are disinclined to do so.  FEMA and Corps of Engineers contract jobs are going to individuals from out of state because of the housing situation.  It is far easier to accommodate a single worker than it is to provide housing, healthcare and schools for a family.

There are jobs to be had, but no housing.  As Bush’s “man on the ground”  Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the Federal Emergency Management Agency´s Gulf Coast director, said recently:  

In addition to the limit space to park “FEMA trailers” in the affected areas is the cruel reality that only 86,000 were manufactured in 2004 and FEMA is expecting 120,000.  The residents aka job-seekers and the small businesses that need them cannot wait another quarter much less another year for this to sort itself out.  

In another White House meeting last week, New Orleans’ Mayor Ray Nagin’s New Orleans Recovery Team met to discuss the levee situation.  According to member Sean Reilly, the president´s advisors agreed to support more money for business bridge loans, Medicaid reimbursements and tax incentives for businesses and individuals, but would not commit to repairs to the levee system beyond their current CAT 3 levels and would not discuss the larger coastal restoration project.  A top tier levee system from New Orleans to Morgan City would take years and $20 billion to build, far more than the Bush administration and conservatives in Congress are prepared to go.  

Yesterday, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works about levees, economic development and other issues affecting the city´s recovery.  In addition to the levee and coastal restoration initiatives, Nagin addressed the need to fix the Stafford Act, to establish tax incentives for local business and provide protections to ensure that local businesses and workers are being fully utilized in the rebuilding effort, restoration or replacement of water and sanitation systems and the development of a minimum funding formula.  

Also testifying before the Senate Committee was William Hines, director of the economic development group Greater New Orleans Inc., who said,

The gulf coast restoration and the rebuilding of the New Orleans and Southwest Louisiana’s economy is a chicken and egg challenge of epic proportions.  Not one entity either city or state or federal is going to have all the answers.  But, it is far past time to concede that the federal government could help with a rapid cash influx in the form of loans, tax incentives and grants.  There will also have to be a long term commitment to making the Louisiana gulf coast viable for business, industry and the workers that keep them operating.  All I can ask of you is to keep your ear to the rail and pressure on your congress-people.  

Don’t let unavailable trailers and unaffordable levees doom my state’s future.  You need New Orleans and Southwest Louisiana as much as I do.

This was originally posted at New International Times late yesterday afternoon.  I am not much of a diarist and certainly read a good bit more of the blogs than I ever write or comment upon.  But this is a topic very close to my heart.

This morning’s news on the release of Michael Brown’s “fashion god” emails makes me cringe.

If you are interested in a more personal look at the gulf recovery story, I invite you to read my postings chronicling my own limited view of Katrina and Rita from a small town in Central Louisiana (most recent first):

Rebuilding New Orleans One Small Business at a Time

Circling Vultures and Congressional Cretins

The Rita Wrapup

Breaching the Levee of Faith

Hurricane Live Streaming which was an open thread during Hurricane Rita among the NIT community and evolved also into a discussion of the Asian typhoons.

Americans:  No tents, No Books

Three-Ring Hell

The NIT running Hurricane Katrina thread and a very special relief effort by the NIT’s site host, Welshman, To New Orleans – A small thank you from the UK for the great gift of your music

The New International Times is not fast paced or highly trafficked like Booman Tribune, but we are a small, deeply engaged family concerned with the well being of all the souls on this planet and I invite you to come, read and sit a spell with us.

Over at the New International Times, I have built myself a special place called The Rant Room.  It is specially designed to be sound proof, as to not disturb the rest of the members when I get off the leash.  The INT Times is a cozy place, where thoughtful people from around the world can have a slower paced discussion of political changes that are happening across the planet.  Not quite at the frenetic pace of dKos or here at Booman Tribune, but a small part of the effort to increase dialogue amongst the citizens throughout the world.  Despite the membership spanning dozens of time zones, the New International Times serves as a meeting place to share and exchange information and opinion on developments in our individual countries and to discuss common global issues.

Last time I sent myself to the Rant Room it was over GWB’s single-mindedness over Social Security.  This week, I find myself in a similar situation, only I am the one with the one track mind.  It happened quite by accident, but I have not been able to shake my disbelief and no matter what else I have read, I can barely concentrate on anything else.

Earlier in the week, I stumbled across a WaPo article titled, Bush Meets Dissidents In Campaign For Rights, a collaborative piece by two of WaPo’s staff writers that appeared on the front page of the print edition…above or below the fold, I could not say.  

If things had been different and I merely heard the cut-n-dried version, say, a matter of fact recounting in a radio newcast, I would have thought `that darn Bush…he’s diving for cover in light of the Amnesty International report and all the bad news out of Gitmo’.  But as I read the article, I kept hearing love and admiration for our wonderful leader as he reaches out to the tortured and oppressed.  Some two days later, I am still beside myself.  There is a lot going on in the world and all I could think about was George W Bush taking political advantage of the victims of political oppression.

Facts are facts.  Bush met in the Oval Office with Kang Chol Hwan, a North Korean dissident/defector who spent 10 years in a North Korean prison.  In this meeting cum photo op, Bush asked,  “If Kim Jong Il knew I met you, don’t you think he’d hate this?”  “The people in the concentration camps will applaud,” the defector, Kang Chol Hwan, responded, according to two people in the room.

But, if we are to believe what was written, Henry Kissinger recommended to Bush that he read Hwan’s book, “The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag” and then began urging his senior advisors to read it…like Condi Rice and Mike Gerson.  According to WaPo, Bush didn’t just read a book, he plowed through it.  I find the whole notion of Bush reading a bit difficult to reconcile.  It is not that he is a moron, it is just not in keeping with his natural and expressed interests.

WaPo characterizes the meeting with Hwan as powerfully symbolic yet potentially risky approach modeled on Ronald Reagan’s sessions with Soviet dissidents during the Cold War.  And further, the WaPo staffers indicate that this is a furtherment of his personal commitment made in the 2004 Inaugural address where he vowed to activists around the world that “we will stand with you” in battles against repression.

Were this a personally held belief and worthy of action, then the White House and the State Department would not have turned their back on Chen Yonglin, a Chinese diplomat in Australia, a prisoner and subject to “re-education” as a result of the Tiananmen protests, who is currently being denied asylum status in Australia.  How could this be?  China asserts that Yonglin is a dangerous dissident and Bush cannot risk a diplomatic challenge at this point when he depends on China to bring Korea back to the table for non-proliferation talks.  I supposed George has great faith in his ally Howard to do the right thing.  However, the Australian government has already denied Yonglin political asylum, as has the US embassy and is very slowly evaluating a protection visa.

Human rights vs. free trade vs. political expediency…hardly a fair fight in GWB world.

Is this an isolated incident?  No.  Bush recently also played host to a Venezuelan hostile to the Chavez government, Maria Corina Machado, founder of a Venezuelan civil society group called Sumate and a leading critic of President Hugo Chavez. Machado faces a possible prison sentence after receiving a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy.  It made for a wonderful photo op, she commented that the meeting was a “recognition and signal that the world does care about what is happening” in her country. She added that it has inspired people who face intimidation by the government. But she also said that the government has reacted negatively to the meeting, with its allies in the news media and the legislature threatening to revoke her citizenship.  But will Bush be there for Machado when the chips are down?  Was she sucked in by Bush’s cowboy charm?

The most truthful statement in the article came with this:  So far, Bush has focused his attentions largely on activists from countries with which he is already openly hostile, while those from allies such as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have not won Oval Office invitations.  

That speaks volumes about the Bush Regimes commitment to fighting oppression, supporting activists and upholding human rights.  As far as image campaigns go, this has not done a thing to Brasso the tarnish off the lamp that is Guantanamo.  That genie is not going back in the bottle.

Good ol’ George will have another opportunity to test the depth of his commitment at the end of June.  This again will speak volumes to the character of GWB and the nation’s obligation to be a leader on human rights and not merely political opportunists.

June 27th, Mohammed Salih, chairman of the Democratic Erk Party of Uzbekistan, a leading opponent of the Karimov government will visit Washington.  There is little question that Bush is between a rock and a hard place one this one.

After the massacre of hundreds of protestors at Andijan last month, there were mixed messages coming from the United States with the State Department pushing for strong declarations repudiating the actions of President Karimov’s military police for firing on unarmed civilians and the Pentagon being both obstructionist and silent out of fear of losing their base access in Uzibekistan.  Karimov has already restricted US military flights out of the base in response to the most modest of State Department statements.

This is what happens when a government keeps company with tyrants for purposes of political expediency.  We have access to their bases, we have access to the air strips and we have used Uzbekistan as a defacto jailor and surrogate torturers under the rendition programs of the CIA and military.  These are our allies in the global war on terror even though the US State Department’s 2001 report on human rights characterized Uzbekistan as “an authoritarian state with limited civil rights.”

This is a country where President Islam Karimov has banned genuine opposition parties and independent media and imprisoned thousands of government critics.  Whether you are picked up by Karimov’s military police or rendered by the US, upon imprisonment, you can look forward to genital electrocutions, beatings, asphyxiations, having your toe or fingernails forcibly pulled out and by State Department accounts, you could be boiled to death.  Karimov, the authoritarian is our ally.  The bases and jails of Uzbekistan are key to Bush’s global war on terror.

I have no beef with the activists, dissidents, or political prisoners that Bush has met with.  I have no argument human rights groups or NGO’s that benefit from White House exposure.  But I do have a beef with this administration’s selectivity based on what is politically expedient.

Mohammed Salih may have a US travel visa, but I bet on June 27th, he will not be meeting Bush in the Oval office for another politically correct photo-op.

Originally posted at New International Times

I’ve been in a state of unfocused agitation for a couple weeks now.  It happens towards the end of May every year.  It directly coincides with my yard becoming intoxicatingly fragrant with the smell of gardenias.  There are twenty or so gardenia bushes the size of VWs here, old growth planted by a previous owner and when they are in full bloom the sheer weight of the blossoms makes the limbs sag to the ground.  They smell great, but the bushes look like they are going to collapse and die under their own weight.

When the gardenias are in bloom, it means something else to me…the end of another school year and graduation season.  This year, the kids who were incoming freshmen in high school and college in the fall of 2001 are graduating.  These are the classes of 9/11.  Trauma forges strange bonds.  Sometimes shared experience brings people closer and other times, it becomes that unspoken thing.  Is it just a knowing look, shared quietly?  I don’t know.

I know that the end of the school year makes me anxious.  One year closer to my own daughter having to set her own course in life.  I think about how much a college education can either make or break you.  But what is it that we are feeding our children?  Are we doing enough to nurture and challenge their intellects and their sense of compassion?

Her school is great.  It is K-8 and teaches critical thinking instead of the proficiency tests. They are working almost two grade levels ahead of the public schools for the same age group. These are the kids of doctors and engineers and come from all over the world.  The diversity is wonderful. Then there are the locals, the kids of commerce and the law.  She doesn’t belong to either of these groups and is one of the few ’12 month plan’ kids…kids whose parents scrape together tuition and pay all year, every year.

She is different and she knows it.  But her lack of affluence isn’t what truly makes her different, it is her perspective.  She reads the local newspaper, she listens to and understands world news, she has a profound respect for the environment and she stands up when she sees an injustice.  

She was sent to the principal’s office twice this year.  The first was when a history teacher was misrepresenting a current political event, gave her an F on an assignment and called her out in front of the class to explain her work on the assignment.  The teacher did not appreciate being called wrong.  The principal didn’t appreciate me suggesting that the three of them go to the library’s computer lab and allow my daughter to substantiate her work.  In the end, they did and the grade was changed to an A, but no apology or clarification was made to the class as a whole.  The whole episode makes me wonder what else is being fed to our children and not challenged.  

The second occasion was a case of a teacher proselytizing in class about there only being one true god.  My daughter, who does not adhere to any particular religious affiliation confronted this substitute math teacher and advised that her classmates came from a diverse background of religions and that the subject for the day was plane geometry.  That earned her another trip to the office, but it was a short one.  Turned out to be a short trip for that substitute teacher, too, who later in the day was asked to leave after tossing a chair across a room, but not for offending a classroom of kids who are trying, and for the most part succeeding, in being sensitive to each others cultural differences.

So I feel pretty good about my daughter’s vision of right and wrong.  She does well in school, she took the ACT this year as a 7th grader and equaled the state average for graduating seniors.  One of the things I worry about is continuing to challenge her through high school. She was tested for the state’s gifted/talented program and they found her to be smart, but not gifted. That means that in a year, she is destined for her zoned public school which does not offer any honors or advanced placement classes in a college prep curriculum.  I consulted an attorney friend who suggested not bucking the system, but to roll the dice and request a majority-to-minority transfer into the same school that offers the gifted program and just have her enroll in their AP college prep curriculum.  In concept, this works for me, but is far from a sure thing.  I hate gambling with my daughter’s future.

I have a year to sweat this out.  But let me tell you what my daughter is sweating out, and get back to what this long story is about…what does an intelligent, compassionate young person do with their life?  She is just 13 and is terribly over-wrought by a decision she feels she needs to be making.  Having a clear vision for yourself does make working toward a goal easier.  So many of her classmates have decided on being doctors or lawyers and talk endlessly of their college plans and how they will get from here to there.  I asked her if she thought that they were really motivated to do that and she thought that it was what was expected of them, to follow in their parents footsteps.  I asked if she had any inclinations along those lines and she said that she thought that she’d be good at either, but had absolutely no desire to do so.

She just came back from a trip to LUMCON which is a marine research facility in south Louisiana.  For two days, she observed trained biologists in their work and went offshore in one of their research boats.  I was expecting all sorts of wild, starry-eyed stories of adventure when she came back and there were a few.  But the big thing she said has really compounded my anxiety over giving her any kind of sound advice on her future.  She said that all the scientists at LUMCON “looked” like they belonged in their jobs and that you could see the love for their work in their eyes and in the sound of their voices.  That is a strong statement for one so young.

My folks never steered my interests except my dad said there was no way that I was going into the army.  Both of them were sixties idealists who thought that a liberal arts education combined with hard work and integrity were all it took to get ahead.  I know different now, but I don’t know better.  I’ve only had two jobs in my entire adult life and both have suited my problem solving nature, but don’t do much outside providing a not-so-hefty paycheck.  We get by.  I’m challenged intellectually by what I do, but not necessarily satisfied by it.

I need stories to tell her, advice to give her.  

Do you shoot for an education that will provide you with technical professional skills ensuring a living wage in a competitive world economy?  

Do you follow your bliss whatever that happens to be and hope for the best?  

Is there truth to the economist model that you shouldn’t spend more on your education that you’ll make back in the first year of salary?  How can you calculate something like that if you don’t know where you belong?  

Is there any clear benefit of pursuing a bachelor of science over a liberal arts degree?  

Does having an altruistic soul make you more responsible to the rest of the world or do you just look out for yourself?  

Some of these are my questions, but some of them are hers.  

I am hoping dear readers that you will think about the people that you have known that have had it all, a sense of personal and professional fulfillment and tell me a few success stories and how they might apply to this new flat earth we are living on.

To all the inspired minds here:  it does not matter whether or not you have children.

What matters is your personal experience and those you’ve observed around you.  This is a rapidly changing world and it doesn’t matter which context you choose to compare, technology vs. intellectual property, geography vs. economics, etc., I don’t feel well suited to provide any real advice looking forward to the future.  I fell into all of my adult jobs by happenstance.  I can’t “see” how all this change is going to shape the new world.

Combine your reflections on the questions my daughter asked with what you’d consider to be success stories, and I’ll be one happy, wiser mother.  And, thankful, too.

Today marks the second anniversary of NBC’s David Bloom’s last ride in the “Bloom-mobile”.  Embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division, David gave millions of people around the world a glimpse of the frontlines, first hand as American troops advanced on Baghdad.
During the run-up to the war,  David fought with NBC news and those at the Pentagon to provide a different view of our troops in action, not your standard embed stuff.  He had a vision to put all that modern technology muster into telling the story of men and women on the ground, the boots.  And for that brief period, he was providing some of the most visually spectacular and personal stories that have emerged from US coverage in Iraq.  After his death, NBC News president Neal Shapiro compared Bloom’s reports on the daily lives of soldiers to those of Ernie Pyle from the foxholes of the second world war.  Pretty high praise.

In his eulogy, Tom Brokaw said: “Just as Edward R. Murrow transformed radio reporting during World War II by putting microphones at street level, so Americans could hear the unhurried steps of Londoners as they walked calmly into a tube station during a bombing raid, our David transformed TV reporting by taking you inside an armored division while it swept across the desert.”
   

I saw somewhere recently that there are some 45,000+ registered users on dKos and I sense that none of us are ambivalent about Iraq.  David Bloom’s story, however, is not about how we feel about our presence in Iraq or even about news coverage in Iraq, but about something we feel equally strong about:  Investigative Journalism and the sad state of the media.

Did I know David Bloom?  I didn’t.  But, I worked for 16 years as an engineer in the NBC family of affiliates, have been a news junkie since I was six-years old and I was totally inconsolable when I heard the news of his tragic passing two years ago today.  

His is a story that needs telling…we need to remember what great journalism can offer.

David Bloom is probably best known for the “Bloom-mobile” or perhaps for his easy charm and boyish good looks, as the anchor of Weekend Today.  But, the media watcher in me is compelled to memorialize and remember, David Bloom, Investigative Journalist.

He started out in small markets in Kansas and Wisconsin before joining NBC’s Miami O&O WTVJ in 1989.  He wasn’t afraid of knocking heads and stepping on toes.  He won a regional news Emmy in 1991 for his hardnosed reporting of the Florida connections (i.e. the actual arms shipments) involved in the Reagan/Bush administration’s arms-to-Iraq scandal.

He contributed to NBC Nightly News and Today Show coverage of many of that times top stories:  U.S. military buildup off Haiti; police investigation and capture of a Florida serial killer for “Dateline NBC”; reported from Cuba during “Today’s” trip to that country in 1991; the Somali famine; the ATF siege of Branch Dividians in Waco, Texas; the escape of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar

He knew a good visual and how to evoke the personal edge to a story, too.  During Hurricane Andrew, he was one of the first to see the devastation of Homestead.  It was the middle of the night, just him and a cameraman and he couldn’t really tell just how bad it was, but he felt it.  He made the call requesting that TVJ’s helicopter be onsite at dawn, and a waking nation saw the aftermath of nature’s awesome fury via uplink to the Today Show.

Later in the day, while reporting live on the effects of the storm, Bloom confronted a looter with boxes in his arms. “How can you take those things from somebody else?” he asked, shaming the man into putting the goods back.  A live, on-air display of integrity and indignation that gives me goosebumps everytime I think of it.   David Bloom’s coverage of Hurricane Andrew won both Peabody and Edward R Murrow awards.

The Peobody and Murrow awards vaulted Bloom first to NBC Chicago and then to Los Angeles.  He was the lead NBC reporter during the OJ Simpson trial and managed to keep his head above water in that circus environment.  Focusing on the facts in evidence and the procedural tactics of the trial, his coverage didn’t lapse into the cult of personality that seemed to dominate the coverage.  He was also among the first to expose the darker side of Mark Furman.

While on duty in LA, he also covered the Unabomber, The Freedman standoff and the war in Bosnia.  Then, it was off to cover Bob Dole’s Presidential Campaign.  I often wondered how hard it must have been to be around Bob and his 3rd person talking self.

Bloom was NBC News’ White house Correspondent from 1997 to 2000. Covering the White House beat during one of the busiest news cycles, Bloom reported on the Maryland Peace Summit with Yassir Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu, on Operation Desert Fox and the NATO bombings in Kosovo. He  reported extensively on the impeachment of President Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal for Nightly News, Today, MSNBC and CNBC.  Again, David Bloom rose above the ranks of the other correspondents and did not fall into the tabloid style sexual witch hunt that the affair became.

He joined Weekend Today in March of 2000 as co-host with Soledad O’Brien.  They were a real joy to watch and David’s down-to-earth, personal approach to even the fluffiest stories made them palatable.  Meanwhile, he continued to press the network for reporting assignments and true to form carrying on with the dogged persistence that had marked his field work.

His post-911 reporting of personal stories of the WTC are too difficult for me to remember clearly, but again, he stood head and shoulders above most of his peers.

Which brings us back to today and more painful memories.  I was rereading coverage from April 2003 and there are some pretty amazing stories.  One of the oddest juxtapositions was from another reporter embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division, Frederik Balfour of BusinessWeek in his article: WAR IN IRAQ — REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK

Balfour’s article is strong and also tells the story of the Army’s mortuary affairs unit.  I encourage you to read the entirety.  This is one of the positives that arose from Bloom’s death…I never would have heard the story of  Sergeant Agnes Poston of the MAU.

Soon it was revealed that Bloom had died of PE…pulmonary embolism as a result of deep vein thrombosis.  It was the long hours he spent cramped in the Army vehicle that caused his death.
Last month, Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) announced passage of a Senate resolution declaring March Deep-Vein Thrombosis Awareness Month.  David Bloom’s widow, Melanie is now the Chairman of the Coalition to Prevent Deep-Vein Thrombosis.  DVT affects up to 2 million Americans per year and PE causes up to 200,000 U.S. deaths annually — more than AIDS and breast cancer combined. Some call it the “economy class syndrome” in reference to the short legroom on airliners.

With March declared Deep-Vein Thrombosis Awareness Month, Melanie Bloom made the talk show rounds promoting Prevent DVT.  It also gave her a very public opportunity to speak about David, his death and the love of his family:

From the Today Show

From the Larry King Show

Now, I am no fan of Larry King in general, but when I heard Melanie Bloom was going to be on, I watched and then waited for the transcript.

I’ve thought a lot about the path of least resistance that our media is taking with regard to the Administration and the war in Iraq.  It has resulted in copious amounts of head and fist-shaking on my part.  But I can’t help but think if David was around, there’d be a few more feet held to the fire.

Please join me today in a sending kind thought out to David and his family.