Katrina
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Walkinghairball
- Posts: 25037
- Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2004 9:42 pm
- Location: In a rock an roll venue near you....as long as you are in the Pacific Northwest.
Here's something for the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Musicians to Gather for Katrina Concert
By STACEY PLAISANCE, Associated Press Writer
19 minutes ago
NEW ORLEANS - Ticket sales have been far from spectacular, but Ivan Neville says performing at the same Hurricane Katrina anniversary concert Tuesday night as Stevie Wonder is going to be incredible no matter how many people are there.
"What an honor," said the New Orleans keyboardist and singer, and son of Neville Brothers singer Aaron Neville.
Besides Ivan Neville and Wonder, the lineup for "New Orleans: Rebuilding the Soul of America ... One Year Later" includes New Orleans trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, New Orleans bluesman Dr. John and gospel singer Yolanda Adams.
The show was spearheaded by Marsalis to benefit the trust he established after Katrina to rebuild the city's cultural infrastructure. The concert was announced earlier this month, but getting the word out hasn't been easy, organizers say.
"With all that's going on, it's kind of information overload," said Bill McFarlin, executive director of the International Association for Jazz Education and one of the organizers. "It's easy to understand how people are distracted."
The concert will take place at the New Orleans Arena, near the Superdome. The original plan called for more than 10,000 seats but was cut to about 6,000 when ticket sales were slow. About 3,500 seats were reserved as of Monday morning, McFarlin said.
If nothing else, Neville hopes the concert will be a boost to the city's cultural recovery efforts and possibly a step toward emotional healing for those who attend.
"It might make someone smile," he said. "It's one small step."
Neville, who has been performing professionally for more than two decades, said he'll sing "Fortunate Son," originally recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival during the Vietnam War era. Neville recorded the song at a studio in Austin, Texas, with a group of other New Orleans musicians while on hiatus after Katrina.
"That song meant so much when it was originally recorded, but it means as much if not more than it did then," he said.
Neville has been in Austin since Katrina hit last summer. He's returned to New Orleans frequently, and though he's hopeful his hometown will rebound, he says he has many concerns about the city's levee system and how soon residents will return.
Much of his family is still scattered across the country. His father is living in Nashville, Tenn.
Tuesday's concert is scheduled to run about two hours, with most acts performing two or three songs. Wonder will close the event with a 30-minute set.
Earth, Wind & Fire was part of the original lineup but dropped off the bill because of a scheduling conflict, McFarlin said.
After the concert, Ivan Neville will perform at the historic Tipitina's night club, where the Tipitina's Foundation is donating $500,000 worth of instruments to more than a dozen music school programs in the New Orleans area.
Many schools haven't reopened, are under repair or are trying to acquire basics like desks and classroom supplies. Instruments and music programs vital to this city's musical culture have had to be put on hold.
"We're losing a generation of musicians," Neville said. "When you see something like this, you don't want that tradition to miss a generation. We've got to continue to pass it along like it was passed to us."
Musicians to Gather for Katrina Concert
By STACEY PLAISANCE, Associated Press Writer
19 minutes ago
NEW ORLEANS - Ticket sales have been far from spectacular, but Ivan Neville says performing at the same Hurricane Katrina anniversary concert Tuesday night as Stevie Wonder is going to be incredible no matter how many people are there.
"What an honor," said the New Orleans keyboardist and singer, and son of Neville Brothers singer Aaron Neville.
Besides Ivan Neville and Wonder, the lineup for "New Orleans: Rebuilding the Soul of America ... One Year Later" includes New Orleans trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, New Orleans bluesman Dr. John and gospel singer Yolanda Adams.
The show was spearheaded by Marsalis to benefit the trust he established after Katrina to rebuild the city's cultural infrastructure. The concert was announced earlier this month, but getting the word out hasn't been easy, organizers say.
"With all that's going on, it's kind of information overload," said Bill McFarlin, executive director of the International Association for Jazz Education and one of the organizers. "It's easy to understand how people are distracted."
The concert will take place at the New Orleans Arena, near the Superdome. The original plan called for more than 10,000 seats but was cut to about 6,000 when ticket sales were slow. About 3,500 seats were reserved as of Monday morning, McFarlin said.
If nothing else, Neville hopes the concert will be a boost to the city's cultural recovery efforts and possibly a step toward emotional healing for those who attend.
"It might make someone smile," he said. "It's one small step."
Neville, who has been performing professionally for more than two decades, said he'll sing "Fortunate Son," originally recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival during the Vietnam War era. Neville recorded the song at a studio in Austin, Texas, with a group of other New Orleans musicians while on hiatus after Katrina.
"That song meant so much when it was originally recorded, but it means as much if not more than it did then," he said.
Neville has been in Austin since Katrina hit last summer. He's returned to New Orleans frequently, and though he's hopeful his hometown will rebound, he says he has many concerns about the city's levee system and how soon residents will return.
Much of his family is still scattered across the country. His father is living in Nashville, Tenn.
Tuesday's concert is scheduled to run about two hours, with most acts performing two or three songs. Wonder will close the event with a 30-minute set.
Earth, Wind & Fire was part of the original lineup but dropped off the bill because of a scheduling conflict, McFarlin said.
After the concert, Ivan Neville will perform at the historic Tipitina's night club, where the Tipitina's Foundation is donating $500,000 worth of instruments to more than a dozen music school programs in the New Orleans area.
Many schools haven't reopened, are under repair or are trying to acquire basics like desks and classroom supplies. Instruments and music programs vital to this city's musical culture have had to be put on hold.
"We're losing a generation of musicians," Neville said. "When you see something like this, you don't want that tradition to miss a generation. We've got to continue to pass it along like it was passed to us."
This space for rent
Today is the first anniversary of hurricane Katrina I suppose the real miracle is to walk on this planet, eh?
wallowing in estrangement echoing in the depths of despair, oh? my aching jaws' chewing on sadness that I cannot swallow.
XXXXXXXXXXX
( @ ) ( @ )
(---------)
When people learn to build there own boats we will all be better off, till then we must help... row men row!!!
A couple of poems I wrote last year while deployed
9th ward"
Leavings of flood waters enormous grating
as glass covered streets glitter among
broken houses strewn block by block
children?s laughter of forgotten toys
huddled in the debris of their cloths
vanished rest of furrowed mattresses
resting on the motionless chocolate flesh of the earth
outrageous and bizarre the surreal landscape
extending on the horizon of peoples lives
"Katrina"
The animating spirit of
waters tangled steel
echoing in the city
winds torments of indiscretion
force without judgment
with a giants stride
hovering on the lips of humanity
a voice crying dumb with amazement
standing in the shadows? risking life
for truth in mans hope in himself
wallowing in estrangement echoing in the depths of despair, oh? my aching jaws' chewing on sadness that I cannot swallow.
XXXXXXXXXXX
( @ ) ( @ )
(---------)
When people learn to build there own boats we will all be better off, till then we must help... row men row!!!
A couple of poems I wrote last year while deployed
9th ward"
Leavings of flood waters enormous grating
as glass covered streets glitter among
broken houses strewn block by block
children?s laughter of forgotten toys
huddled in the debris of their cloths
vanished rest of furrowed mattresses
resting on the motionless chocolate flesh of the earth
outrageous and bizarre the surreal landscape
extending on the horizon of peoples lives
"Katrina"
The animating spirit of
waters tangled steel
echoing in the city
winds torments of indiscretion
force without judgment
with a giants stride
hovering on the lips of humanity
a voice crying dumb with amazement
standing in the shadows? risking life
for truth in mans hope in himself
When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men & women stand as a vanguard against abuse.
it was on the news the night....on one hand there was Bush saying how great New Orleans is coming on....on the other hand there was an old lady saying that she still had no water or electricity....I have to say that that is a disgrace that in a country like America they still do not have the very basic of needs
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ElfDude
- Posts: 11085
- Joined: Wed Dec 31, 2003 1:19 pm
- Location: In the shadows of the everlasting hills
- Contact:
Bob hit the nail on the head today.
THE LESSON OF KATRINA
The lingering lesson of Hurricane Katrina is the great value of self-reliance and the terrible danger of dependence.
It was a huge storm. Possibly the largest natural disaster ever to hit the United States. It was the storm of the century.
But it taught us more about human nature than it did about the power of nature. More frightening than the storm itself, was the widespread personal failure demonstrated in its wake.
It was a peek into the entitlement culture and a sad display of the unwillingness and inability of some Americans to take the slightest responsibility for themselves and their wellbeing.
Certainly, this is a generalization. There were clearly many people and communities who stood up to the storm and its damage stoically, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and working tirelessly to clean up and rebuild.
But they didn?t make the news.
Instead, the year since Katrina has been a national sob session. It?s as if we?re all paralyzed by some giant fit of post-traumatic stress disorder. We have made whining an art form, and a year?s news coverage has been an endless rehash of just two stories ? the pathetic helplessness of individuals and the incompetent failure of government.
We have spent a year celebrating weakness, enthroning entitlement and demanding sympathy. It has been a shameful time, not for what the government didn?t do for the people, but for what they seem too good or too lazy to do for themselves.
First of all, this wasn?t the world?s first disaster. Certainly it was historic, but it was not unprecedented. Calamity has been humankind?s near-constant companion. All peoples in all times have been faced with incredible challenges, large and small. Fires, earthquakes, floods, tidal waves, plagues, blizzards, droughts, famines and even hurricanes.
And through them all people have survived. They have dug deep and found in themselves the grit and determination necessary to survive. And if they didn?t, they didn?t. They died. And stouter, tougher people took their places.
Because we are a species of survivors. At least we used to be.
But the example of Katrina was something else altogether. Instead of displaying the best of human strengths, it highlighted the worst. Instead of showing people?s native toughness, it showed their selfish weakness.
At least it did on the news.
Countless sob stories talked about displaced people whose highest ambition seemed to be sitting on a cot in an evacuation center angrily wondering when they were going to get their FEMA trailer. Sometimes you didn?t know whether it was the wake of a disaster or a giant welfare scam. People angrily demanded that somebody come do things for them.
It was the welfare mentality at its worst. A selfish, chip-on-the-shoulder sense of entitlement that recognized nothing but unreasonable desire. There was no consideration of the difficulty of relieving an entire region of the country, of the physical impossibility of serving so many people instantly. A sub-culture of dependent people, demanding instant gratification, bit the hand the feeds them.
Even now, after a year, the only politically correct perspective on the hurricane is the one regurgitated nightly by the evening news ? sob story after sob story of people demanding that somebody do something. While invariably the people involved have done nothing to help themselves or anyone else.
And don?t expect to hear a word of gratitude.
After astounding amounts of taxpayer money were sent for relief, more hundreds of millions were donated by concerned Americans. And all that has been heard from anyone is a cry for more, more, more.
Compounding it all has been a relentless attack on the federal government with the seeming intent of damaging public confidence. That has presumably been done as a partisan media attack on President Bush, but it has come at the cost of national peace of mind. A year?s worth of trashing in the press has reduced public confidence in the government?s ability to respond to a disaster by between a quarter and a third.
Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster.
Our response to it has been a national disaster.
Not the government response that has been the staple of a year?s newscasts, but the personal response which those newscasts so often showed to be shameful and failed.
Those who have done best in the wake of this disaster are those who were self-reliant, who took the cards they were dealt and made the most of them. The ones who worked and cleaned and rebuilt.
While those who were dependent, whose mindset was based on the assumption that others had an obligation to take care of them, have failed miserably. They have whined for bigger payments and more services, gotten both and insisted that it was not enough. Each new largesse has engendered not gratitude, but anger. Each new benefit has created more dependence and personal failure.
It hasn?t been a pretty year.
We learned about the ravages of nature and the weaknesses of men.
At least according to what we saw on the news.
- by Bob Lonsberry ? 2006
Aren't you the guy who hit me in the eye?
Reminds me of a Rush song.ElfDude wrote:And don?t expect to hear a word of gratitude.
After astounding amounts of taxpayer money were sent for relief, more hundreds of millions were donated by concerned Americans. And all that has been heard from anyone is a cry for more, more, more.
Onward and Upward!
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Walkinghairball
- Posts: 25037
- Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2004 9:42 pm
- Location: In a rock an roll venue near you....as long as you are in the Pacific Northwest.
the question that burns in my mind....(and forgive me for seeming ignorant, but)... exactly WHO'S MINDING THE STORE???awip2062 wrote:Reminds me of a Rush song.ElfDude wrote:And don?t expect to hear a word of gratitude.
After astounding amounts of taxpayer money were sent for relief, more hundreds of millions were donated by concerned Americans. And all that has been heard from anyone is a cry for more, more, more.
4.8 THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS is much muh-ney.
Don't start none...won't be none.