LakeviewGal (Login LakeviewGal) Members from IP address 206.172.95.145
..of the recovery effort. The Carmelite nuns in particular - I hear Mt. Carmel is one of the few spots in Lakeview that is functional. Damn, y'all, the Thing was August 29th. This is February freakin' 3rd. I keep hearing about tons of federal money earmarked for recovery - what the hell is the delay??
I can only imagine how frustrating this is for you folks who are actually there.
My mother used to opine that the government should be run by housewives that knew how to pinch pennies to survive on the family income. Let them run the government with only the money that comes in and not allow debt that can't be repaid. The theory is similar.
Nostalgic trivia question (no prizes): guess who said (and when it was said)...
February 4 2006, 12:13 PM
"Not only must we make New Orleans a good place to live and work but we must also make it a good place where our children can grow up with unlimited educational, career, social and cultural opportunities. We must crate a clean, safe, prosperous and comfortable environment to keep our present residents here and attract new people to our city... It is the undying pursuit of this vision of creating a better quality of life for all citizens that drives every action of the Administration."?
(1) It was quoted in a brochure that envisioned monorail urban transit running along Canal Street, Poydras Street, and Convention Boulevard.
(2) A montage of images of happy-looking black and white children and older folk in the brochure illustrated a reference to "..'people programs' for solving human problems".
(3) Under "Flood Protection", the brochure promised the city's intentions, inter alia, of "Maintaining a levee system compatible with the natural environment"; and "Upgrading, testing, and modifying the city's disaster plan".
I'll post the answer tonight if nobody in this forum solves the puzzler correctly.
The late Ernest N ("Dutch") Morial (Marc's father)...
February 4 2006, 3:28 PM
.. was the mayor of New Orleans during the 1984 Louisiana World's Fair & Expo.
It was a wonderful fair, in spite of becoming the only world's fair ever to declare bankruptcy while still open (probably because projected local and regional attendance was underestimated. New Orleans, nevertheless, got the Warehouse District redevelopment and the Ernest Morial Convention Center out of it.
I was still living in the French Quarter then (and dating RHG). We loved the fair, its food (from Italian calzones to German beer), entertainment (Pete Fountain, the Neville Brothers, and many other famous performers), cultural and international exhibits, and much other marvellous stuff. We had season passes and made much enjoyable use of them.
But the fair was not the occasion of my quotation at the head of this thread. Keep those guesses coming: one of you is getting warm!
And the answer is indeed - Mayor (1978-86), the late "Dutch" Morial...
February 5 2006, 3:18 AM
... in his inaugural speech, May 1 1978.
The colorful and visionary brochure that opens with that quotation is "New Orleans 2001", published by Mayor Ernest N. Morial (and incidentally inscribed "Not printed at government expense"). In it, the mayor invited the citizenry to ".. envision with me the City of New Orleans as we approach the 21st Century".
Oddly, the printing of the brochure itself is not dated; but it refers in a section on modernizing city government and budgeting to "... agreement on recovery of indirect costs which resulted [note past tense - JCG] in $1.8 million to the City Treasury in 1980 alone". Later, "New Orleans 2001" mentions that the "1984 World Exposition Complex ... promises [sic] long-range economic benefit to the City. Among the credits, Reynard J Rochon is named as the administration's CAO. One artist's impression shows the gateway to Armstrong Park.
So the document must be dated to the early 1980s.
In some illustrations - particularly the imaginative cover illustration (with a touch of the purple, gold and green of Carnival) by Andrea Pescheret - the future New Orleans (in which we were supposed to be living!) looks almost Star Trekkian, with enclosed pleasure domes and gleaming skyscrapers arising between old New Orleans buildings. On one page, there's an interesting architect's concept of a hurricane-proof building atop a well-designed levee!
But illustrations of supposedly future technology applications in city government, and increased communicability with and within City Hall look quaintly archaic to the eye in 2006 - hulking mainframe computers with huge tape reels, for example; and in one flight of fancy, City Hall is depicted as a massive landline telephone hand set with a touchtone keypad on the front and a spirally corded receiver resting on top - nary a mention of Blackberrys, websites, or wirelessness.
A citywide monorail appears in several of the sketches - whizzing past the Superdome, for instance. (The cars as shown don't look too ADA-compliant, however; but then the ADA wasn't enacted until 1990. And the the presumably steel-wheel suspension technology illustrated would have made the brutes noisy as hell.)
It was some of the current (2006) "visionary planners'" babble in the media about post-Katrina rebuilding of the city, hyping an elevated transit system as a brave new idea, that made me unearth a dusty file containing Dutch Morial's brochure. Shiny new rapid transit always appears in futuristic visions: the Post office ought to issue a stamp this year commemorating 60 years of talking about a rapid rail link between the airport and downtown!
There is a poignancy in the fact that Dutch Morial (1929-1989) didn't live to see the dawn of the new century. But, having talked with him occasionally when he was mayor about his vision of the future of New Orleans, I fear he would have been mightily disappointed - even before hurricane Katrina.
On the ride down the still without electrical powered West End/Pontchartain Blvd. last night on the way to the restaurant we noticed a street a few blocks to the East that had blazing street lights. I commented to JP that I thought it was Milne Ave. and couldn't imagine why "they" would restore power to Milne (a relatively minor thoroughfare) before taking care of the more heavily used (pre-k) West End Blvd. This topic, LakeviewGal, caused me to realize that Sister Camile must'a had a lot to do with it. She's one of my new idols. And yeah, maybe we ought'a put the feisty nuns in charge. I'd put Sr. Camille on a ticket for Mayor with the formidable Sr. Imelda as president of the School Board..
LakeviewGal (Login LakeviewGal) Members 206.172.95.50
Clarification re Sister Camille
February 5 2006, 12:17 AM
My former classmate clarified this for me. Apparently the nun known as Sister Camille was, in our day, called Sister Stephen, and it was her very first year of teaching. My friend gives her opinion:
"I agree that she should be in charge of rebuilding New Orleans. Twice while everyone was in various places of the south - Baton Rouge, wherever - she tried to start classes for all of the displaced high school students in that particular area, no matter what school they were from in N.O. Both times, about a week before opening day, some priest/man in the diocese office canceled the whole thing. Finally, the third time, she just continued, and asked everyone to pray for her humility. Go girl go!"
Frankie Ford at JazzFest talking about his teacher Sister Mary Peculiar and the Principal, Sister Mary Mussolini. I'm sure they could run things a whole lot better than any gathering of politicians!
