Oil Spills and Louisiana Wetlands: What You Learn in Books

Reporters covering the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are calling our coastal lands here, "Louisiana's fragile coast." Why that word "fragile"? If they mean easily damaged, then the word "fragile" is appropriate, and for decades now, trying to save the marshlands along that coast have been a dance of abuse, call to restore, abuse, call to restore.

If you're keeping up with the news about the BP oil disaster, if you read the blogs, listen to NPR, CNN, Fox News and other media outlets, you see a fact of life quickly: Everything is political. But to residents along the Gulf Coast, however, "Can home be a political thing?" And don't live in a state that kisses the Gulf coastline, should you care about what happens to the ecosystem down here?

With the news building over what's being called possibly the worst national environmental disaster in decades, some readers may be interested in books that will educate them about the ecology of the Louisiana wetlands as well as the oil industry and its impact on the state's natural environment and financial health. The New Orleans Literature Examiner points you to three books that address why saving and restoring our wetlands is important. In the next few days, she'll consider which books on the oil industry are easy to digest. ... Read more at the New Orleans Literature Examiner.

Stench Over New Orleans: Oil Spill Worsens

While I used to do both public relations and technical writing for a government-related environmental restoration entity, which means I grasp some of the science and technology discussed regarding the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and its ecological impact, I've chosen not to write about this catastrophe. I live in the New Orleans area, and have been in a fairly decent mood of late. I don't want to slump into an environmental depression.

However, with all the tweets about the nauseating stench creeping over the city due to the oil spill and growing panic about the wetlands as we hear that the oil is washing onto the Gulf Coast shore now, I can't pretend this disaster is not happening.

RisingTide just twittered this:

Sick RT @colleenkane Of course the Gulf coast #oilspill doesn't register on U.S. trending topics. #howyouballing = way more urgent

The frustration is nearly palpable. And Humid City tweets that they're talking about the oil spill on Larry King Live tonight on CNN.

Arlene, the NOCrimeExaminer, said that the "oil spill is now gushing through blowout preventer on the sea floor & into the water." She's referencing this post from the L.A. Times, "Gulf oil spill: Drilling technology explained":

The drilling rig that blew was floating in the deep seas, about 5,000 feet above the sea floor and 40 miles offshore. Such ultra deepwater drilling rigs operate using a series of pipes nested one within another plunging to the sea floor and below, according to Tim Robertson of Nuka Research and Planning Group, an oil production and spill response consultancy based in Alaska.

... Much of the work on oil platforms and rigs has to do with inserting and extracting equipment in and out of these nesting pipes and operating the blowout preventer to ensure there are no leaks, Robertson said.

... The riser pipe bent and collapsed, and although the blowout preventer has several mechanisms designed to shut it in an emergency -- including one known as a “dead man’s switch” -- these somehow failed to close.

Oil is now gushing through the blow-out preventer on the sea floor, and through the broken pipes and into the water. It is described as light oil, which evaporates a little more easily than the heavy oil typical of Alaskan wells.

Robertson said both regulations and technology for dealing with oil spills have improved in recent decades. “But the basic physics haven’t changed,” he said. “Once the oil is in water, it’s a losing ball game.” (Read more)

Officials at BP, the company that owns rights to the oil and leases the rig from a company called Transocean, say they cannot yet be sure exactly how the explosion occurred Tuesday night, April 20. The New York Times reports BP officials estimate that this oil spill will cost the company several hundred millions of dollars, and it's already put a dent in its corporate image.

Driving in the car earlier this week, I heard about the impact on wildlife via NPR and have seen photos at CNN. Experts say this oil spill could be the "nation's worst environmental disaster in decades." It could equal or eclipse the infamous Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. I remember that the nation talked about that ecological disaster for a decade.


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I don't know. It could be hormones, but if I linger too much in this oil spill news, it really upsets me. I'm not an engineer, but having talked to so many of them in the past about environmental risks and damage, I think I may be feeling what mechanical engineers feel sometimes before they fly. Knowing more than the average amount of information about how the plane works, they sometimes get jittery.

Or I may be flinching at memories of Katrina, how I felt seeing the city underwater while I was in New Jersey. The first-hand accounts of the landscape after the waters receded as told to me by friends and family. I'm not an outdoorsy type, but even then I personified nature in one of my poems, "Lady Pontchartrain Dreams She's Dying." It's a poem that I reveal and hide online, hide because I'm embarrassed by the passion I felt writing it and that I still feel when I read it or think about what's in the world beyond my control, and yet I won't change a word of that poem. It sits in a moment of sensing loss.

You may have heard that Governor Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency since "the Coast Guard confirmed that the undersea well was spewing five times as much oil as previously thought and that it was leaking from three spots instead of two," per the Times Picayune. In addition, President Barack Obama has increased federal involvement.

We've lost human lives over this, and now we're losing animal life. I hear the brown pelicans that make me smile flying over the lake are in danger. That state bird feels like home to me as much as New Orleans music, as much as the French Quarter, as much as the Seventh Ward.

People do care about this crisis. Last time I checked, more than 11,000 comments have been logged at the Huffington Post.

But more people won't care about this spill until the financial devastation is fully calculated. I think for now, many people, especially those who don't live near the Gulf Coast, look at this disaster the same way we've been told to view spilled milk. Don't weep and worry about it. All you can do is clean it up, and move on. The problem is that a glass of spilled milk is a trivial matter, but thousands of gallons of milk would be overwhelming. Now consider that it's not milk in the sea that's washing to shore but oil. BP has confirmed at least 200,000 gallons of oil per day is spilling.

Read more at WWL-TV and also NOLA.com. In addition, New Orleans Ladder is doing round-ups of articles and posts.

BlogHer Syndicated My Arizona Tea Boycott Debunking Post

Just after midnight yesterday, which technically makes that today, I posted on the Bogus Arizona Tea Boycott here at WSATA. That's right. There is no boycott. BlogHer.com asked to syndicate it, and so it's posted there now as well. Yippee! -- "The Bogus AriZona Tea Boycott: It's Not the Internet's fault."

The Bogus Arizona Tea Boycott: It's Not the Internet's Fault

Based on the twitterings of an enigmatic Twitter member, some folks think there's a real boycott of Arizona Iced Tea in the wake of the state of Arizona's ill-advised immigration law. Yes, some people are boycotting Arizona's baseball team and Arizona tourism, but what does that have to do with AriZona Tea?

This story has been reported more or less as being a problem of stupidity because the Arizona Beverage Company, producers of the bottled and canned tea, is located in New York, nowhere near the state of Arizona. The bigger problem, in my opinion, is that the so-called tea boycott was ever reported as news at all.

There was no boycott from what I can see, just a New York Daily News reporter who doesn't understand Twitter. (As of 9:32 a.m. Thursday morning, this has been confirmed. No boycott. Just joking.)

So, is this misunderstanding the fault of Twitter joker Travis Nichols who twittered the following on Tuesday.

I think we should all also boycott Arizona Iced Tea because it is the drink of fascists.

Or is this potentially harmful misunderstanding more the fault of Helen Kennedy's misleading story at the New York Daily News? Kennedy used that Nichols tweet and one other tweet by Twitter member Jody_Beth to declare opponents of the Arizona immigration law had called for a boycott of the Arizona Iced Tea brand.

I mean, come on, Jody_Beth has only 345 followers, and Nichols has a meager 69. Nevertheless, I may have to follow Nichols on Twitter myself because he tweeted earlier tonight these gems:

The drug of fascists? Oxycontin! #thedrinkoffascists

The movie of fascists? Rush Hour 3. #thedrinkoffascists.

And I really love another of his tweets that was included in the New York Times post on the hyped boycott issue.

Though lizards don’t have lips, the stewardess had what can only be described as lizard lips. Explain that one, Darwin!

The Lede blogger at the NYT, Robert Mackey, also writes that he tried to reach Nichols, who is a contributor at The Believer, at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. So, is this Nichols some kind of tweeting poetic comic? (He's an editor at the Poetry Foundation.) According to his website, he's a novelist, and I'm impressed by his wit. He's too young for me, but surely I am in love with him. He's so wacky, and sometimes writes at the Huffington Post.

Whatever Nichols's power or the lack thereof, this tweet-inspired potential boycott bothered the New York-based Arizona Beverage Company enough to make it issue a statement distancing itself from the state of Arizona and its crazy law. Some companies, perhaps, fear the Twitter gods. Others, not so much.

You know, if Helen Kennedy were a mommy blogger and not a staff reporter at the New York Daily News, someone probably would have suggested by now that she may have received an incentive to create this tempest in a tea pot. I find nothing about Arizona Tea trending on Twitter. So, was there ever any real threat to the company?

I first saw this story on the Huffington Post, but it was just an AP brief. The New York Times has much better story.

He's Vagina Friendly, But Bye-Bye to Mayor Ray Nagin's Mouth

The Times Picayune is giving the soon-to-be former Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin one helluva send-off, as in it's roasting him royally. His job ends when Mitch Landrieu takes office May 3rd.

On Tuesday morning I posted Nagin's exit interview brought to local residents by the Picayune, and tonight I couldn't resist sharing its latest farewell to Ray, the Nagin Sound Board.

For personal reasons, one of my favorites is "So I stand before you a vagina-friendly mayor. I am in." He said that at a performance of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, and I covered the V to the Tenth conference in New Orleans in 2008 for for BlogHer.com. But there are plenty of other Nagin sayings that either amuse me, like the one about bloggers, or that make me cringe.

Ray Nagin swept into office in 2002 as the embodiment of a new way of doing business at City Hall.

But he often made news more because of what he was saying than what he was doing. Some of his memorable quotes came in the chaotic, desperate days after Hurricane Katrina; some came at more unlikely times. (NOLA.com)

That passage is followed on the daily's site by a list of 23 infamous--oops!-I mean memorable--Nagin quotes.

Click the graphic and you'll be taken to the Picayune's round-up. Once there you can mouse over the words in the original graphic and hear clips of his honor, the mayor, speaking.

Nagin may miss the power of the Office of Mayor of New Orleans, but I doubt he'll miss the growing criticism, jokes, and sometimes full-fledged harassment, most often sent his way from city council, that goes with the office. The New Orleans city council is quite colorful. I'll be watching to see how Landrieu handles the wolves.

Oklahoma Abortion Laws: Social Conservatives Shoot Fiscal in Foot

3D Ultrasound

I've just posted at BlogHer.com an article on Oklahoma's new anti-abortion laws. It may be published live later today, but here's the lead followed by my opinion, which is not in the BlogHer piece:

In what could be considered an excellent example of States Rights versus federal law that protects women's reproductive and civil rights, the Oklahoma legislature voted Tuesday to override Democratic Gov. Brad Henry's veto of two constraining abortion laws. One requires pregnant women to see the fetus in the womb and hear details about its development and appearance so the women will understand that they carry life, babies. The other law protects doctors from lawsuits if they fail to inform women of a fetal defect. (More at BlogHer)

I think the law that protects doctors from lawsuits shows how socially conservative Republicans, who seek to legislate "morality," shoot purely fiscal conservative Republicans, who don't want the government involved in the people's most intimate decisions, in the foot, perhaps more accurately, in their behinds. Simply, if a government passes a law that prevents you from being able to hold a doctor financially accountable for not informing you that your child will have a disability that requires costly care, then that government should be prepared to give you all the financial aid you require to care for that child. The state, having assisted in misinforming you, is as responsible as the physician.

Where is the concern for moral burden here? How can anyone who supports not informing the woman that she will have an additional debt far beyond the expenses of raising a completely healthy child not support the tax increases it will take to provide the care? If the mother/parents are fully informed and choose to have the baby, then they have knowingly chosen to accept the financial baggage. If they were purposefully not informed, then where is the choice there?

And of course, this discussion could take us back to how arguing against universal health care is generally morally repugnant. Parents who choose to have a disabled child should not be barred from receiving government assistance either. Why is it that some conservative pro-life advocates appear to despise the living?

Writer Idol? The Literary World is Full of Simon Cowells. So, 'Yay!' for Paul Harding's Cinderella Publishing Story

Ah, "7 Reasons Agents Stop Reading Your First Chapter." That's the title of a post that came to me through Writer's Digest email. It's written by Livia Blackburne at Chuck Sambuchino's blog, A Guide to Literary Agents.

I recently attended the Writer Idol Event at Boston Book Fest. It was not for the faint of heart, but for those willing to brave public ridicule, it was a great way to get helpful feedback.

This is how it worked: An actress picked manuscripts at random and read the first 250 words out loud for the panel and the audience. If at any point a panelist felt he would stop reading, he raised his hand. The actress read until two or more panelists raised their hands, at which point the panel discussed the reasons they stopped, or in cases where the actress read to the end, they discussed what worked. Helene Atwan (Director of Beacon Press) and agents Esmond Harmsworth, Eve Bridburg, and Janet Silver (all from Zachary Shuster Harmsworth) served on the panel. ... Read more

Blackburne says fewer than 25 percent of the panelists read to the end of the 250 words. There goes your fist page. Then she gives a list of their reasons for rejection. The first bit of advice was don't open with dates or the weather. Sounds like agents have read Elmore Leonard's "10 Rules of Writing." I like Leonard. God knows anyone still writing successfully at his age must be doing something right, but I do wonder how many of these agents miss good books because they bore easily. Remember, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter saw its share of rejection before acceptance.

That brings me to the next topic, the Cinderella publishing story of Paul Harding, author of Tinkler. That book won a Pulitzer, but prior to that he saw plenty of rejection with agents and editors asking "Where are the car chases?"

The early rejection “was funny at the time,” Mr. Harding said. “And even funnier now.” Mr. Harding, a onetime drummer for a rock band, is far too discreet to name any of the agents or editors who wouldn’t touch his work a few years ago.

I'm a black woman working on a novel. I hear about rejection from writers of all colors, but what's more scary is that I hear that if you're black, unless you're writing street fiction, books with black characters are a hard sell. So, while Harding is not black, I need to read a story like his, especially after reading about how ready editors and agents are to say "No."

The list is helpful, yes. The quote in the tip about description made me laugh out loud, really. But I would not advise writers read this list near bedtime.

Malcolm X in Books: His Only Confessed Assassin is Free

News outlets around the globe report that Thomas Hagan, the only man to admit to shooting controversial black leader Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz), has been released from prison in Manhattan. On February 1965, while giving a speech at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom in New York, Malcolm was gunned down in front of his family. Investigators said three men carried out the assassination plot.

Here are some resources about Malcolm X, including a list of seven books. ... Read more at the African American Books Examiner.

Mayor Ray Nagin's Exit Interview

Ray Nagin leaves office as Mayor of New Orleans, and Mayor-elect Mitch Landrieu, who takes office May 3, inherits a $25 million budget deficit. A number of factors influence the shortfall, and you can listen to that story at WWL-TV.

I thought this video from the Times Picayune of Nagin discussing his eight-year run was more interesting. Like any other politician, he's an apologist for his legacy, and he makes some good points, comparing a mayor's quest to solve a city's problems to be much like that of a scientist working in a lab. It's trial and error.

However, Nagin says when Thomas Edison was off in his lab failing before he had success, there were no reporters waiting to announce his missteps. In the video, he list some positives of his administration that he thinks get lost in political drama.

Mayor Ray Nagin

Lance Reddick of Fringe Talks Jazz and Acting

I just listened to SciFiPulse host Ian Cullen at BlogTalk Radio and his interview with Lance Reddick of the J.J. Abrams show Fringe, which comes on Fox Thursday nights.

Reddick, who also played novelist James Baldwin in the 2004 film Brother to Brother and who has played roles on Oz and The Wire, talks to Cullen about his role as Phillip Broyles in Fringe. However, he tries not to reveal any Fringe secrets.

In addition, he tells the host about his love of jazz. He says he grew up listening to pop music but has been trained in classical and ended up doing some jazz. He has a contemporary jazz CD out as well. Really, he looks like a jazz musician, doesn't he? Kind of Miles Davis. I love his look.

Reddick attended the Yale University School of Drama, according to both his interview and his bio at his website. His bio at JRank says he gravitated to acting after a back injury.

He discusses his appearance in the independent movie The Silence of the Belle a little bit also.

If by the time you see this post, the player below is featuring a new episode, you may listen to the Lance Reddick interview at this link.



No, I did not give away all the SciFi talk in this interview. I know true lovers of Science Fiction will listen to the show. :-)

What if the Tea Party Were Black? by Tim Wise

Thank you to the folks at Ephphatha Poetry for posting "What If the Tea Party Were Black" and to the BlogHer CE who sent the link. I'm only going to quote part of it and encourage you to visit Ephphatha to read the rest. It's a piece by Tim Wise, author of Between Barack and a Hard Place. He suggests we play a game, "Imagine," and replace conservative white political activists and talk show hosts with black people in order to gain some insight about race and white privilege.

 >> Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose. (Read more of Wise's piece at Ephphatha) << 

Last year I placed Tim Wise's book on a list of books people should read if they want to understand how race impacts American politics. I think remaining ignorant about race is another sign of white privilege when the person is a white American and cultural brainwashing/miseducation when the person is an American and person of color. I excuse people who are from other countries and talk out of their rears on this topic.

Americans, however, should know better, which is why I don't trust people who say "I don't see race. I'm color blind." I think they're either deceiving themselves or attempting to deceive others. According to a recent study about race and the color blind philosophy, my instincts are right on that one, and I've been saying it for the longest.

Tim Wise's website.

Want to Earn More Than Average in America?

At CNN, Career Builder has an article, "30 jobs that pay $30 an hour." According to the piece, which uses information based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly wage in America is $20.44. Wouldn't you like to know how the Bureau arrived at that figure?

I think Career Builder cheated a bit on its list because it lists different types of college professors four different times.

1. Post-secondary communications teachers teach courses on different types of communications (journalism and advertising, for example) at universities and colleges. Hourly pay: $39.96
2. Post-secondary education and library science teachers teach education and library science courses at universities, colleges and other higher education institutions. Hourly pay: $39.91
3. Post-secondary chemistry teachers educate college and university students on chemistry and related subjects. Hourly pay: $38.88
4. Post-secondary art, drama and music teachers teach courses in their respective fields at universities and colleges. Hourly pay: $36.50

Couldn't they have said something such as "Post-secondary professors in the fields of communications, chemistry, library science, and the arts. Average hourly pay: $38.96"? Separating the professors out makes me feel the list is padded. Still, it's worth a look.

I think the list figures could be more helpful. For instance, how do you earn this kind of money in the fields listed right out the gate or do you earn it after working a few years in the industry. Purchasing manager's on the list. I used to know one who in 2005 was earning almost $65 per hour. If you threw in his yearly bonus, his pay was more like $82 per hour, but he'd been at it for almost 20 years, had switched companies and moved into computer procurement that involved buying company software.

Furthermore, I've seen jobs down her for communications professors that pay $48,000 to start. That's less than $30 per hour out the gate, about $23 and change per hour. So, doesn't it also matter where you're located in the country? Not to mention you often need a Ph.D. to teach at a four-year university.

Also, just last year CNN had another list, Best Jobs in America. This is what it said about professorships under drawbacks.

Low starting pay and a big 50% salary gap between faculty at universities and community colleges. If the position is at a four-year university, you'll probably have to relocate, and you'll be under pressure to constantly publish new work to sustain career momentum.

In addition, while it's possible to teach at some colleges with less than a doctorate, the article says, they all want professors with lots of teaching experience.

Stephen Hawking Warns, Don't Give ET Candy

LeVar Burton

I might have missed this bit of news on physicist Stephen Hawking warning humans not to engage aliens if I didn't follow Star Trek's LeVar Burton. Earlier today on Twitter, he sent, "Hmm...! RT @jollyroger: Steven Hawking recommends humans should avoid talking to advanced alien species. http://bit.ly/dqnFUG."

Does this mean I need to follow JollyRoger as well, who I think is actually Tekzilla, or at least somebody promoting Tekzilla? After all @JollyRoger sent it first.

And OMG! Levar Burton is better looking now, at 53, than he was 30 years ago. Why don't I see any straight men in their 50s who look like this on the streets of New Orleans? Well, Burton is taken. So, moving on ...

Stephen Hawking

Yep, here is the beginning of the Hawking article in the UK Times.

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact. (Read more)

Mediate posted on this as well, pulling this Hawkings quote:

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans…We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

And let's not forget Africa, bub.

So, he and astronomer Jill Tarter of SETI as well as other scientists, all believe we're not alone in the universe, but after that Tarter and Hawking's messages conflict. Tarter wants us humans to work together to find us some extraterrestrials. The sooner, the better. I don't know that Tarter wants us to over aliens sweet tea and cookies, but her talk about seeking out a alien meet-up was definitely less gloomy.

Hawking leans more toward our first contact being like the movie Independence Day or ABC's resurrection of V and its sinister aliens who want something from us we can't afford to give. Maybe they have that cookbook from the Twilight Zone, To Serve Man. Yes, Hawking thinks that if aliens ring Earth's doorbell they're going to come, take what they want, and leave us stripped of our goodies like a, um, ... you fill in the blank.

He'll be sharing more in a new show on the Discovery Channel, Into the Universe.

Stephen Hawking hosts an epic new kind of cosmology series, a Planet Earth of the heavens. It takes the world's most famous scientific mind and sets it free, powered by the limitless possibilities of computer animation. Hawking gives us the ultimate guide to the universe, a ripping yarn based on real science, spanning the whole of space and time — from the nature of the universe itself, to the chances of alien life, and the real possibility of time travel. (Discovery Channel's description)

What? Time travel? I know J.J. Abrams will watch some of this one, but maybe not until after the Lost series finale and live event.



Into the Universe premiered last night, April 25. I'll have to catch it on demand or in a rerun. It came on first at 9:00, and I can't miss Tremé on HBO. Seriously, Tremé is the first time I've seen a show about New Orleans done right.

Fortunately, episode one of this Discover series repeats tonight.

The Old Negro Space Program: History of Blackstronauts

I have to thank Milton Davis at the Black Science Fiction Society for sharing this mockumentary on black astronauts kept from NASA's whites only space program back in the day. It's a parody of Ken Burns's documentaries like The Civil War, which is one of my favorites, and Jazz.

Driving into the Lake: Fear of Falling into Lake Ponchartrain is Real

There's something about riding for more than a few minutes over a wide body of water that can scare you if you let it. While I'm not one of the people terrified to ride over water, I can attest that if you focus on how easy it would be to have an accident and fall in, you could unhinge yourself. People who live in the New Orleans Metropolitan area and have good reasons to go back and forth across Lake Pontchartrain may know what I mean.

Image of Causeway Bridge from WWL TV

North of the New Orleans-Metarie area are two growing areas, Mandeville-Covington and Slidell, La. If you're headed from New Orleans to Mandeville, most likely you'll go from Metarie over the Causeway Bridge, one of the longest bridges in the world. If you're headed to Slidell, it's more likely you'll go through New Orleans east and take the Twin Span Bridge. Both these bridges take you over our great Lake Pontchartrain, which is relatively shallow with the exception of a few holes estimated to be 80ft deep. Crossing the Causeway takes about 22 to 25 minutes, while crossing the Twin Span takes maybe five.

Everytime I hear of car accidents that send drivers into the lake (in the last week there have been two), I think of different relatives who dread the drive over Lake Pontchartrain. There's a story in my family about my grandmother waking up in a car that was crossing the lake and nearly losing her mind. The family was returning to the city from a vacation and apparently took a different route back than they had going while she was asleep in the backseat. She awakened, looked out the window and became terrified, cussing and yelling at the driver, "You had no right to put in the middle of all this water!"

I imagine my grandmother never liked the waters nearly encircling New Orleans. She grew up in Notasulga, Ala., not surrounded by water, and moved to the city after she married my grandfather, a Louisiana native. I don't think she had any kind of general fear of water, just fear of being in the middle of a large body of it. I do have a cousin, however, who used to wig out even driving across a canal.

The Amtrak train, the Crescent, which travels from New Orleans to New York City, takes passengers over the lake. When I was younger, I took the Crescent relatively often, going to visit friends. After I was married, I took the train from Virginia with my daughter, who was a toddler, and for the first time, perhaps because I was mother, I considered the terror of the train going off the tracks and plunging into the lake.

I shared this fear with my father, a World War II veteran and good swimmer, when he picked us up from the station. He was probably in his early sixties then, and was not rarely showed fear. He also used to travel on trains a lot when he was a young man working for the United States Post Office.

He laughed when I told him about the train possibly going off the track over Lake Pontchartrain. He said, "Well, if that happened, all you'd have to do is stand on top of the train car. The lake's probably only 12 feet deep around there."

Another drive that rattles some people is travel across the Bonnet Carré Spillway. If you live down here, you'd be wise to learn to swim and swim well.

Bret Michaels Hospitalized After Massive Brain Hemorrhage

Updates on Bret's condition are available on his Twitter page and also in notes on his Facebook page, where it says he's still in the ICU.

I'm sorry to report rocker Bret Michael's had a massive brain hemorrhage and is in the hospital in critical condition, reports the Huffington Post.

 >>  Joann Mignano, Michaels' New York-based publicist, confirmed a report on People magazine's website that said the former Poison frontman was rushed to intensive care late Thursday after a severe headache. The report said doctors discovered bleeding at the base of his brain stem.

Mignano said tests are being conducted but did not know where he was being treated.

The 47-year-old glam-rock reality TV star had an emergency appendectomy at a private care facility for diabetics last week after complaining of stomach pains before he was scheduled to perform at Sea World in San Antonio, Texas. (Read more)  << 

Yes, I watch the Celebrity Apprentice, usually on demand cable, and until that show, I hadn't paid much attention to Michaels. He's been one of the highlights of the show for me though this season with his unfocused creative energies and great eyes behind man-liner. He can't win, but he has been entertaining.

I know reality shows are partially scripted and certainly manipulated, but I believed Bret when he was so upset about the possibility his daughter could be a Type 1 diabetic as he is and require insulin shots. My prayers are with him and his family.

Here's a video clip of Bret from the show.

The Future of Food: More Scary Information

We're seeing a lot news about the obesity crisis lately, people blaming parents, folks blaming fat people, but few people, other than a handful of documentary filmmakers and a book author here or there, addressing that how our food is grown and produced may be contributing to the nation's obesity epidemic and other nutrition-related health issues. Below is the full documentary, The Future of Food by Deborah Koons Garcia, which was released in 2004.



By no means am I saying we shouldn't each be accountable for what we put in our mouths and feed our children, but I am thinking that some of the issues related to food have nothing to do with what we've done personally but what big business has done and the government has allowed, mostly in the name of capitalism.

Either here eat WSATA or in email threads or on Twitter, I've talked in the past about both Food Inc. and King Corn, and changes in how we are metabolizing foods. In addition,lately I've seen people talking about Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC, and of course years back, Super Size Me, the documentary about fast food and health, was a conversation topic.

In the same year that Super Size Me came out, 2004, and before the other documentaries named and Jamie Oliver's TV show, another documentary on food apparently was released that hasn't gotten the same kind of attention, The Future of Food. It addressed not only the changes in how we grow food through biotechnology, but also how giant agricultural companies, like Monsanto, have gone gangster on small farmers in a move to monopolize the farm industry. It's the full documentary I've embedded at the beginning of this post. Disturbing stuff.

In addition, here are the trailers for Food Inc. and King Corn.

Food Inc. trailer




King Corn trailer



I watch these types of documentaries and wonder what can we do? How can we address this food crisis beyond cooking our meals at home, growing a personal garden and buying organic? Remember some people can't do at least two of those actions. Perhaps the clearest sign that this nation isn't run by ordinary people is how often our interests and well-being are kicked aside in favor of the interest of mega-corporations. Maybe Michael Moore is right. Maybe America is more in love with capitalism than it is democracy.

Writing Voice and Race: Can You Pick Up a Writer's Race in Storytelling and Tone?

Not a long post here, but I had to share the beginning of Wesley Morris's review of Tyler Perry's movie, Why Did I Get Married Too? It made me laugh, yes, but I also could tell before even clicking Morris's name to see his picture that he was black just in the first paragraph.

Tyler Perry is many things to many people. Stingy isn’t one of them. I paid $11 to see “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?’’ I got $111 of drama. That’s Broadway value. But very little on the stage — not even one of Perry’s own plays — has had me sweating, crying, rolling my eyes, and sucking my teeth like this. The movie is 120 minutes of emotional Stairmaster. It’s so exhausting, in fact, that Perry himself has to climb off early, ending the movie without really finishing it. Shocking car crashes, shocking confessions, shocking cancer, shocking cameos, shockingly wet hair: It’s like two seasons of some cable show condensed into two hours. Just watching a hysterical — and hysterically coiffed — Janet Jackson redecorate a house with a golf club burns 500 calories.

Perry’s premise is both more flagrant and more flagrantly entertaining than in the first film, from 2007, in which four flamboyantly bourgeois couples got together and examined the fractures in their loves. (BostonGlobe)

You can't always discern a writer's race from tone, but this piece is a great example of a writer's personality and cultural identity coming through in tone and voice. It's entertaining writing with flavor.

No, I did not get to see this movie, but it's still showing in my area, so maybe I will just to see all this drama that's not about me.



Yes, I am studying voice and style in writing at the moment.

Restore America Back to What It Was? Dear Conservative Americans, What Does That Mean?

When conservatives speak, how do you know the difference between code-switching language for turning back the clock to 1959 versus something else? What do they mean when they say "restore this nation to what it once was"? Which once? Which point in time? At what point in the past would any people of color be better off than they are now?

We have not yet reached the point in America where politics can be severed from race because many of the social policies of the last five decades that anger conservatives have hinged on perceptions of race in America. They know this.

Watch Glenn Beck talk to Bill O'Reilly. Notice how he brings up William Ayers, who the right already tried to tie to President Obama, in the same thought with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.

The people who are currently in charge of our government, many of them -- not all of them, are the 1960s radicals, and they do have a very fundamental transformation of America planned. They need to have the typical American, the one who stands up and says, 'Wait, our founding fathers were good. Hang on, our constitution is good,' they need those people to look like radicals. See, what they learned when William Ayers was out bombing in the 60s and 70s, what they learned when Malcolm X went and said, 'We're gonna take it!' (Beck shouts), is they learned that Martin Luther King saying 'Peace' is the answer. Well, they learned it too late. So, now they're the man so they need to be able to say 'Look at these guys. They're violent, they're radicals.' (These guys being conservatives and Tea Party types.) [Beck on O'Reilly Factor]

First of all, did you catch that he infers that the people in charge call the people who don't have power "radicals" whether it's true or not? Is that his acknowledgment that conservatives slandered people in the 60s? He's also agreeing that his kind of people were actually the people in charge back then. Since John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were the presidents who dominated the 60s and they were not Republicans, is Glenn reminding us that white people were in charge back then?

Second, he's banking on us not noticing, I suppose, that the only guy left standing in that trinity he built of Ayers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X is the white guy. Unlike MLK and Malcolm X, who were both assassinated, Ayers is still alive. He's currently a university professor, and he was never convicted of anything. Sarah Palin and other conservatives resurrected his image as bomber to throw mud on candidate Obama in 2008 and apparently, Ayers still comes in handy when they target President Obama and progressives today.

Another point that Beck may not even know because he's not the sharpest pencil in the box is that Malcolm X was murdered after he began to espouse racial harmony and peace. The motive for his murder appears to be related to a power struggle within the Nation of Islam.

And, naturally, Beck doesn't want you to think of lynchings, church bombings, cross-burnings or the Oklahoma City Bombing. I suppose he hopes it escapes you that these domestic terrorist acts are committed by people who tend to identify with "conservative values" not progressive values. Also, let's pretend we don't see the gun-toters at Tea Party rallies and don't hear news of their more paranoid fringe training militias.

Nothing is apolitical in blackness, in race. In many ways, conservatives see black people as a political party that they must attack, and it's clear that Beck is happy to make it seem as though the prominent power figures on the left are African-Americans. So, when conservatives talk about returning America to what it once was, do you suppose that means to a time when they were in charge before the 1960s?

Motherhood Is Not a Woman's Sole Purpose: More Thoughts On Octomom's Oprah Revelations and Self-Mythology

The following is an excerpt from my post at BlogHer.com on Nadya Suleman's Oprah appearance. While I never felt a desire to have more children to fill a void in my life, I did once realize I was overly-invested in a child's life and using that child's experiences to compensate for something else.

To me ... it's possible for a woman to be overly-invested in raising children.

I left college to get married and didn't finish my degree until 16 years later, and while I have children whom I love and for whom I would do almost anything, I recall a period in my life when it occurred to me I was too enmeshed in my daughter's academic achievement. I was living vicariously through her school life.

When my daughter was in the fourth grade, she had an awful teacher who did not challenge students' skill levels. I still say, "Yes, an awful teacher." While I kept my anger in check in public, I developed a seething rage toward this teacher and questioned that emotion. I realized something must be missing in my personal life separate from whatever fulfillment I found in being a wife and mother, and I needed to address that hole. I decided the root of my rage was regret that I had not completed college. So, I went back to school, finishing my degree at age 36.

Yes, we should be good mothers, but motherhood does not annihilate self. Mother is a role with heavy responsibility and duties that should be executed with love. It's not a sole purpose for a woman's living, however, in my opinion. I know there are plenty of women who disagree, but I can't say motherhood is a woman's sole purpose for living because that would mean I was saying women who aren't mothers have no purpose. That would be a lie.

File this under more on self-mythology as well. Read full post at BlogHer.com.

Emilio Sosa's Exit Interview: Project Runway

I liked both Seth Aaron and Emilio Sosa on Project Runway, but I liked the clothes Emilio showed at Bryant Park more. Yet, Seth Aaron did put on more of a show, and so I agree with his winning. While some of Sosa's comments during the season about Tim Gunn annoyed me, he has a good attitude in his exit video here. I think that's because he's a business man and he knows he sold himself. Expect to hear more from him, and remember he was making a name for himself before Project Runway.

Drew Brees Continues to Be Great New Orleans Ambassador

Here's video of New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees on Live with Regis and Kelly.



He's speaking to Kelly Rippa and Anderson Cooper about the city's recovery, his work with the USO, being a father, and of course, the Super Bowl win. He said his wife is pregnant again. She told him the news after the Super Bowl. He also threw a football to Cooper.

I don't know how he came by it, but he always seems so likable and grounded. Plus, he knows how to have fun with the fans. Brees is making the media rounds lately. WWL TV also has video of him delivering David Letterman's Top 10.

Octomom: Nadya Suleman's Self Revelations on Oprah: She Had Babies to Fill a Void

Yes, if you were watching, that was Nadya Suleman aka Octomom you saw on the American Idol Gives Back benefit show Wednesday night. She appeared in the phone bank, answering lines with a few of her older children. On Tuesday, the day before, you also may have caught her on the Oprah Winfrey Show, where she said she does not regret having her children.

Nevertheless, she feels guilty because no one person can meet all the needs of even one child, let alone 14. She said now she understands that her desire for more children was about filling a void in herself.

In February, BlogHer CE Melissa Ford wrote a good piece on the Octomom saga: "One Year After Octomom: From Magazine Covers to IVF Regulations," and here we are two months later still hearing about this mother's life with octuplets. She will probably not leave the public eye completely until those eight babies, born to her while she was raising six other children, are grown and out of her house completely. For financial reasons, holding the public eye may be a good thing for the family; however, such scrutiny has drawbacks.

The full post will be posted at BlogHer.com tonight or tomorrow. Please look for it there.

Jill Tarter's Wish to Crowd Source the Search for Extraterrestrial Life

Cool stuff! Astronomer Jill Tarter, the director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute, delivers news that's bad to some but exciting to others via TED.com and posted at CNN. Humans should understand that they are not the pinnacle of evolution, she says.

In 2009, when TED awarded me its TED prize and the opportunity to make a wish to change the world - -a wish they would help me fulfil l -- I thought of a mirror. It is the mirror that we hold up to the planet in our scientific search for the answer to the ancient question, 'Are we alone?' It is the mirror in which all humans can see themselves as the same, when compared to the extraterrestrial other. It's the mirror that allows us to alter our daily perspectives and see ourselves in a more cosmic setting. It is the mirror that reminds us of our common origins in stardust.

TED and technology are helping me and my team hold up that mirror to all inhabitants of this planet so that we can see our reflection as Earthlings. I told TED that "I wish that you would empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company." (Read)

It sounds like SETI is crowd-sourcing the search of extraterrestrial life in the universe.

Emily West's Blue Sky Video

I confess that I heard this song, "Blue Sky" by Emily West, on Celebrity Apprentice, one of my guilty pleasures on demand. Beautiful lyrics and West has fantastic voice. Speaking of Celebrity Apprentice, Holly Robinson Peete, whose playing for her HollyRod foundation, is a lot tougher than she looks.

Pearson Education Pushes Tea Party Politics on Twitter? Someone's Since Removed the Political Tweet

UPDATE, April 21: Pearson Media Group removed the tweet mentioned in this post. Props to them for that. I hope they choose what to tweet more carefully in the future.

I never thought about Pearson, an education publishing corporation, taking a political stand that a high percentage of black people probably find insulting, but I guess it may. Per its Twitter profile, Pearson, which is located in New Jersey, is part of the a media group which includes the Financial Times Group and Penguin.

Today I saw this tweet from the company promoting an article at NewsBusters, a conservative site that supposedly is fighting "liberal bias" in the media.

White NBC Reporter Confronts Black Man at Tea Party Rally: 'Have You Ever Felt Uncomfortable?' http://bit.ly/dCZ3ay

The tweet takes you to a post that implies, as many right-wing posts do, that the Tea Party has no racist aspects and to say otherwise is to parrot the "liberal media." To suggest or promote in reporting that the shadow of racist appeals does not haunt the Tea Party movement is to be fair, according to many conservatives with blogs as well as traditional media outlets. It's like nobody is allowed to look at America's political history, rhetoric, facts and stats. We're supposed to accept Tea Party members giving lipservice to being nonracist as God's honest truth.

What I find so offensive about posts like the one at Newsbusters that Pearson tweeted is they tell African-Americans to not believe your ears and eyes as though many of us can't read what the Tea Party crowd says in blogs or can't hear its sympathizers in a drugstore or restaurant.

These kinds of pro-conservative posts usually promote an idea straight from the white privilege toolkit that tells people of color, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. If you think you see racism, it's in your head.

These articles that seek to separate the Tea Party from a racist legacy by denying that much of its rhetoric smacks of Southern Strategy politics and draws a crowd that falls for that ploy every time imply that black people are being led by a white liberal media or somebody like Al Sharpton and can't think for themselves. And, yes, they suggest that a lone black man wandering around a Tea Party rally somehow is more perceptive about the Tea Party and race matters than all the other black people who say, "We smell a racist rat."

It's the same tactic people use to say Rush Limbaugh's never said anything racist: "OMG! How can you say Limbaugh's racist? He's got a black person on his staff. OMG!"

These kinds of people think window dressing should be enough to appease us black people, that's how dumb we are to them. When it suits them African-Americans are monolithic, a bunch of welfare mamas, pushers, gangsta members and crackheads with angry college-educated women who can't find husbands and who don't love America enough. Yet, when it suits them, one or two black people will be used to dismiss the opinions of the majority that they've already painted as too angry and dysfunctional to see straight anyway. This is the power of whiteness in America, to set agendas, build propaganda, and tell us we don't have a right to feel what we feel and what we feel is not valid unless it supports white privilege.

So, I'm disappointed by Pearson's tweet. I was unaware that this New Jersey-based company was using funds to push a conservative mindset that suggests there's no racist connection to Tea Party rhetoric. But I'm not surprised. Perhaps Pearson wants to ensure it gets a hefty piece of the pie being served from Texas, which is rewriting history textbooks so American school children believe conservatives are unfairly maligned, especially on matters of race.

These kinds of NewsBuster reports, and at least one point in a Tea Party myths post at BlogHer.com, are written in answer to not only posts like Joan Walsh's Salon.com piece, "The Tea Partiers' racial paranoia," but also the perception of many people of color, including me, that Tea Party folks, by and large, don't give a damn about black people or understanding race in America.

Grassroots or not, the Tea Party is an extension of Republican Party tentacles and we know its history on race matters well. What the Tea Party crowd fails to see is that it doesn't exist in a vacuum. We hear its members and sympathizers making the same kinds of arguments their predecessors made and have been making for more than a century. Many of their political ancestors were proud racists who've produced a generation of people who think it's all about overcoming the perception that they are racists rather than racism itself.

Until Tea Party leadership addresses this part of its legacy head on, the Tea Party movement will make no headway with people like me. But they won't address it because they don't want to offend core members. We know this.

As for Pearson's tweet, I'm changing what had previously been a positive opinion of that company. Its management really should not let its employees post tweets that push any political agenda, liberal, conservative or otherwise, because as long as Pearson's name and logo are on that Twitter page, that's Pearson tweeting not some unseen Republican operative. If an employee wants to push a political agenda, he or she should get a personal blog and leave Pearson's name out of it.

Yes, Pearson under Penguin publishes black authors, but perhaps Pearson has some kind of race issue of its own. I wonder how many black people it has on staff because last year the Penguin side totally left out its black struggling authors when it launched a site designed to promote underserved book authors. Now that I recall that, I'm less surprised it has people working in another part of the company, Pearson, who would be insensitive enough to push the "none of us are racists and the liberal media's unfair" talking point of the Tea Party crowd.

Undoubtedly, somebody at Pearson and Penguin will think they should be let off the hook for this kind of nonsense because they do good works sometimes like donating money to literacy programs, but I would say a big "Nah uh!" to that line of thinking.

Rapper Guru Succumbed to Cancer, Passed Away Monday

It strikes me as either a fitting poetic flourish or a bitter irony that the rapper Guru passed away during Jazz Appreciation Month, National Poetry Month (Rap is poetry), and during National Minority Cancer Awareness Week, which I just wrote about a few hours ago. Guru was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells, more than a year ago, but wanted his diagnosis kept private.

His music video below features Chaka Khan and New Orleans musician Branford Marsalis performing "Watch What You Say." He died Monday due to complications from the cancer and was only 43, reports CNN.

Guru "found solo success with his series of "Jazzmatazz" albums, where he combined hip-hop and jazz," says the CNN article, and his obituary in the New York Times notes he was known for social themes. You'll hear an example of his jazz/Hip Hop music in this video.



I heard about his death reading a Facebook post by singer Stephanie Renee who was also discussing another loss in the black community, the passing of Civil Rights leader Dorothy Irene Height, age 98.

Read more about National Minority Cancer Awareness Week as well as National Volunteer Week at my earlier post.

Third Week of April: Minority Cancer Awareness Week Plus National Volunteer Week Are Both Worth Time

It's National Minority Cancer Awareness Week as well as National Volunteer Week. Here's a little information about both outreach programs.

First, from Lovell A. Jones, Ph.D., on National Minority Cancer Awareness Week. Jones is co-chair of the Intercultural Cancer Council, the nation’s largest multicultural health policy group focused on minorities, the medically underserved and cancer.

On April 8, 1987, the U. S. House of Representatives Joint Resolution 119 designated the third week in April as "National Minority Cancer Awareness Week." It has now been 23 years since I approached Senator Lloyd Bentsen and Representative Mervyn Dymally to support a joint resolution to designate the third full week in April as National Minority Cancer Awareness Week. As explained in the Congressional Record, the resolution drew attention to "an unfortunate, but extremely important fact about cancer."

While cancer affects men and women of every age, race, ethnic background and economic class, the disease still has a disproportionately severe impact on minorities and underserved populations in this nation. National Minority Cancer Awareness Week was passed to bring attention to this fact and promote increased awareness of prevention and treatment to those segments of the populations that are at greater risk of developing cancer. The week's emphasis gives physicians, nurses, health care professionals and researchers an opportunity to focus on high-risk populations and to develop creative approaches to battling cancer problems unique to these communities. The American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society both endorsed the resolution as a means of drawing attention to the problem among minorities and the poor. (Read more)

Next, information from ACS on National Volunteer Week.

The American Cancer Society is recognizing and celebrating the more than 3 million volunteers nationwide making a difference in the fight against cancer and encouraging those who've never volunteered to join us too. We're asking people to pledge at least 1 hour to volunteer with the American Cancer Society in their community. Help us reach our goal of 57,000 hours volunteered. This is our chance to work together, make a real difference, and save lives. Pledge your time now! (MoreBirthdays)

New Orleans was Cut Off Line Today: Money Problems

WWL-TV reports that the City of New Orleans's website service, including email and web services for the NOPD, fire department and EMS, were down for a few hours today due to the city's inability to pay Level 3 Communications, the company that provides web service to the city.



The station reports this information via an unidentified source, and it sounds like Level 3's official response is that it doesn't know how the city's website service was turned off, but I'd bet money that the source behind this story is someone on Level 3's staff, someone who wants to be paid.

HBO's Treme series may urge more study of NOLA's black history

HBO's new show about New Orleans, Tremé, may spark new interest in the city's African-American history. Faubourg (suburb) Tremé is the nation's oldest African-American neighborhood, and most likely can claim that status because New Orleans had a large free people of color community before slavery ended.

Read more at the New Orleans Literature Examiner.

Conspiracy Theories: Left and Right Insanity?

Take a look at this CNN report about rising number of militias and mostly white people afraid of the government these days.



Now compare what the "patriots" say in the CNN video to what Naomi Wolf was saying in 2008. She is the author of multiple books, but the video below is about her book Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. I like Naomi, but I became concerned that she may have been suffering some kind of mental collapse when she started saying a coup took place on October 1, 2008. Still, she's not as scary as the people in the CNN video who are calm and armed.



Wolf seems to think in the video that Bush was going to take over the government and not let Obama take office. So, she's more to the left while the people in the first video who seem to not trust government in general, but more so now that Obama's in charge, are way to the right.

If you believe Wolf, then we're already in a police state. Ironically, she and the "patriots" and Tea Party folks seem to agree about the color of trees in odd parts of the forest.

What keeps crossing my mind is that these Tea Party/militia/so-called patriot birthers get a lot more mainstream media time than Naomi Wolf ever did. However, she's getting love these days from the Tea Party crowd or maybe giving them some. She says, per an article at AlterNet, that the Tea Party crowd is fighting fascism and she'd go speak at one of their rallies in a heartbeat.

Justin Sharrock interviewed Wolfe in March:

How can both sides be speaking the same language, yet see things so differently? Or are we just not listening to each other? I telephoned Wolf to ask her what it means when your book ends up bolstering policies you oppose.

Justine Sharrock: First off, is your book still relevant under Obama?

Naomi Wolf: Unfortunately it is more relevant. Bush legalized torture, but Obama is legalizing impunity. He promised to roll stuff back, but he is institutionalizing these things forever. It is terrifying and the left doesn't seem to recognize it.

JS: Did you realize that your book is being lauded within the Tea Party and patriot movements?

NW: Since I wrote Give Me Liberty, I have had a new audience that looks different than the average Smith girl. There is a giant libertarian component. I have had a lot of dialogue with the Ron Paul community. There are [Tea Partiers] writing to me on my Facebook page, but I figured they were self-selective libertarians and not arch conservatives. I am utterly stunned that I have a following in the patriot movement and I wasn’t aware that specific Tea Partiers were reading it. They haven’t invited me to speak. They invited Sarah Palin. (Full interview)

This seems new, but I talked about Naomi Wolf and her strange bedfellows in 2008 after the coup interview was published. However, as we mark the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombings, it's probably worth thinking about again.