Atlas Obscura has a feature article celebrating an amusing new regional ethnic art form.

PEDESTRIANS IN NEW ORLEANS’ TREMÉ neighborhood might notice a collection of beautiful, patchwork wooden doors. Known as “wooden quilts,” the colorful interwoven entryways showcase one artist’s incredible craftsmanship and history.

Jean-Marcel St. Jacques is a self-taught folk artist with deep roots in the Louisiana soil. A 12th-generation Afro-Creole, he left the state in the 1970s, but returned 16 years ago to reconnect with the land of his ancestors. St. Jacques says he takes his inspiration from his great-grandmother, who made patchwork quilts, and his great-grandfather, who collected junk and upcycled materials in the early 1900s. Like his great-grandfather, St. Jacques transforms what has been destroyed or discarded into art. The materials used in his “wooden quilt” doors were salvaged from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the damage to his home. He considers this practice a way to find higher purpose from the disaster.

Just paint the underside of your porch roof haint blue, and you’re all set!

RTWT

Late last January:

A new sculpture honoring the ancient female serpent deity Mami Wata has replaced the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee on the public square in New Orleans. The governing leaders of New Orleans felt that a new direction for the city was necessary, as has been reported:

“Ultimately, the artist felt, as we did, that because the original placement of the Robert E. Lee atop the pedestal was one of power and domination—the statue had loomed over the city, symbolizing the tyranny of white supremacy—that this new work should be closer to the level of the individual…”

(*Originally an African deity, and still worshipped there by various names, Mami Wata worship in the West is primarily found among Voodoo practitioners across the Caribbean).

The Mami Wata sculpture was only a temporary exhibit, to be removed in August. I haven’t yet heard what replaced it.

WGNO:

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)— Earlier this week the “dumpster gator” became a sensation in Uptown New Orleans on Perrier Street and Upperline Street.

The “dumpster gator” shocked neighbors who wondered how the dead alligator ended up in a Demo Diva dumpster.

As to how the alligator ended up in the dumpster is still a mystery?
Large dead alligator discovered in New Orleans Dumpster

WGNO’s Kenny Lopez contacted Demo Diva and the owner Simone Bruni went by to check out the “dumpster gator.”

Bruni told Lopez that the alligator would be going to the landfill along with the other debris and trash in the dumpster.

But before doing so, she put a flower on the gator’s body as a sign of respect for the animal.

The statue of Robert E. Lee recently comes down in New Orleans.

How did New Orleans move from being “the Queen City of the South” to a decaying minority slum ruled by crooked pols whose chief priority is taking down Confederate Monuments? A long-term resident explains on Quora:

New Orleans was still the Queen City Of The South until around 1970, but the seeds for its fall from grace came about in the mid 1960s when the unions that worked the port refused to allow for the creation of a modern containerized port foolishly thinking that they would lose their jobs, but they forgot to understand the nature of future business and eventually they lost all of their jobs.

The immediate result was that formally small ports like Gulfport and Houston suddenly modernized and containerized and became giant ports, while New Orleans’ port became smaller and smaller and today is extinct and has been replaced by the Port Of Louisiana, which is far away from the filth and poverty of New Orleans.

Additionally, as the city developed a larger and larger dependent population and its educational system decayed, it reflected these changes with a terrible lowering of the quality of leadership that increased the cost of doing business, while leadership concentrated on keeping its dependent population satisfied with shiny trinkets and other diversions.

So, one by one, large employers either went out of business or got smaller and smaller and the economy became less diversified until today there is only tourism and no other diversification.

Continental Can, sugar, cotton, iron and steel, American Standard, trade with South America, aircraft manufacture, boat manufacture, etc, etc, etc, are all gone and have not been replaced with any other industry. City taxes in New Orleans went up from 3% to today’s almost 10%. The productive fled!

The same politicians who helped to destroy the economy are still in office and the city is currently loosing population and becoming more and more poor and now is #1 in the nation with percentage of people in poverty.

Since the percentage of those in poverty continues to increase and the same politicians are kept in office by the poverty vote, it becomes an endless cycle of increasing taxes and fees on the productive, who have left en mass to surrounding areas like Metairie and the North Shore towns of Covington and Mandeville and Slidell, where diversification of their economies is strong and education is first rate and the people live better lives than the remnant population of New Orleans.

The trend to lower the quality of New Orleans continues, as drugs and crime is beginning to affect the one trick pony of the remaining economy, tourism, that still sputters along. Unfortunately, once the number of injured and murdered tourists becomes unbearable, even that small flicker of life will kill what is left of New Orleans, when that industry folds.

And, that is why the Queen City Of The South has degenerated into the cesspool of poverty and ignorance and bad governance of today. It is a very sad tale.

San Francisco’s story is actually similar. Just like in New Orleans, the Longshoreman’s Union chased the port traffic out of town. Over time, normal productive middle-class residents were gradually displaced and out-voted by the homosexuals, minorities, rich liberal elites, and student Bohemians.

MacAoidh notes that the revolutionary Left is reveling in its power to tear down monuments in New Orleans because that city, like so many others in this country, has become a one-party state ruled by a democrat party kleptocracy with a guaranteed grip on office.

Intelligent adults can see a Beauregard or a Robert E. Lee or a Jefferson Davis for the complex humans they were, and learn the lessons their lives can teach. Intelligent adults can also mark their contributions to what is good in our society while acknowledging their failings and those of the time in which they lived.

But it’s clear we have a shortage of intelligent adults. We particularly have that shortage in New Orleans, and have for some time.

It has worsened in recent years, but the exodus of intelligent adults – it’s been called “white flight,” but this is a lie; the middle class and the productive class is made up of people of all races, whether they share similar politics or not – from New Orleans is half a century old. As such, the city is made up of a new class of post-Katrina carpetbaggers, college students who hail mostly from far away, a giant underclass living on poor wages and government assistance, an outsized criminal class in and out of the penal system, small pockets of put-upon middle class homeowners and a declining monied elite. Most of the people who make the New Orleans metro area work have moved out of the city limits, and most of those moved away a generation or two ago.

And it’s mostly those people who have taken up the cause of those monuments. Not because they’re “white supremacists;” that is an ugly slur thrown around by the same social justice warriors who throw around racism as a towel into the ring in admission they lack a better argument. They wish to preserve the history, and a connection to the culture they and their families were raised in.

But they don’t live in New Orleans anymore.

That feeling of powerlessness, of knowing there is nothing they can do to stop the bowdlerization of the city’s history and that of the region, carries with it pain, to be sure. But that powerlessness is a choice; these people left. That’s not an indictment of them; they left for a better life in the suburbs or in another city. But the choice carries a consequence – when you leave, it’s those you leave behind who make the decisions in New Orleans. And when what’s left is a city of fools who make stupid decisions, last night is the natural result.

The question is what to do about it. Should the productive class, the protectors of the history and tradition of the region, the put-upon and the assailed simply move on? If so, don’t be surprised when the Beauregard takedown begets the Lee takedown and the Lee takedown begets the takedown of the Andrew Jackson statue in the famous square which bears his name.

Perhaps this can’t be stopped. Perhaps all that can be done is to inflict one’s own set of consequences on those left in the city.

After all, the productive classes in the suburbs still contribute an enormous economic impact to New Orleans. Maybe that should be rethought. Maybe the restaurateurs who live in Metairie should move their businesses closer to their homes. Maybe the lawyers and stockbrokers with offices in Orleans Parish should decamp for the ‘burbs and eschew the commute.

And maybe the captains of the Mardi Gras krewes who contribute such a massive amount to the city’s economy each year ought to rethink what they’re doing. After all, those krewes were all formed by the same people who contributed to the erection of the Lee, Davis and Beauregard statues. Their heritage is bound up in the same package as those monuments Mitch Landrieu and his bowdlerizing fan club have been howling to destroy.

And most of those krewe members don’t live in New Orleans anymore, either.

There are lots of parade routes in Metairie and Kenner, and lots of them in St. Tammany Parish. Those routes might not have the tradition of a St. Charles Avenue or Canal Boulevard, but they also don’t have the elevated risk of paradegoers being shot or the dysfunctional police department incapable of arresting the bad guys.

And these judgments can now be made, because of this corrosive, stupid modern mentality which is taking down the monuments. If the culture which gave us Beauregard is to be scrubbed, then the fruits of that culture shouldn’t be enjoyed – and those wonderful Mardi Gras parades are some of those fruits. Let the good follow the bad out of the city, and let Bacchus and Endymion and the others roll down Veterans Boulevard or Metairie Road for a time.

Landrieu has cast his marker down. New Orleans’ traditions and cultural patrimony is no longer welcome. So be it. Let the full consequences of that decision fall. And if “we don’t live there anymore,” then let the economic and other effects of that be felt.

RTWT

Thought experiment: how much longer would democrat party machines control US cities, how long would it be before working middle class Americans and families returned to them, if we somehow arranged to tear down all welfare housing and deported from those cities everybody on welfare?

Allee Bautsch and Joe Brown

We heard a great deal from democrats, the dinosaur media, and the punditocracy of the left recently about conservative rhetoric and all sorts of supposititious threats of violence to democrats who voted for the health care bill. No actual violence, of course, ever actually occurred.

It turns out, on the other hand, that leftwing violence these days is quite real. Last weekend, Allee Bautsch, an aide to Republican governor Bobby Jindal and her boyfriend were savagely beaten in New Orleans and both were seriously injured.

Nola.com:

The news release issued by New Orleans police Tuesday evening… notes that the 25-year-old female victim and the 28-year-old male victim were attacked in the 600 block of St. Louis Street after leaving an event at a restaurant in the 400 block of Royal Street.

Jindal’s office acknowledged on Monday that Bautsch, his chief campaign fundraiser, was recovering from a broken leg after an altercation with a group of people in the Quarter on Friday night. Bautsch was attacked after a fundraiser for the Louisiana Republican Party at Brennan’s Restaurant, 417 Royal Street, the governor’s office said. …

New Orleans police say that the incident began about 10:45 p.m. when a group of three to five men made “derogatory comments” to Bautsch and her boyfriend. When the man described as the male victim “turned toward” the group of men, at least one of the men struck him repeatedly. The woman “fell to the ground and screamed,” the news release said.

Police released a description of one suspect, saying he was in his 20s, looked “dirty,” and wore his hair in an auburn-colored ponytail. The man was 6 feet, 1 inch tall with a thin build, police said. He wore a light-colored T-shirt and dark pants.

Officers in the area responded and requested EMS assistance. The woman used her purse as a pillow while waiting for help. Once she was in the ambulance, the woman realized her purse was missing, the release said.

Kyle Plotkin, a Jindal spokesman, said Bautsch had surgery during the weekend and is facing a recovery time of two to three months. According to the NOPD news release, Bautsch’s friend was treated at the hospital for a mild concussion, broken jaw and broken nose.

The attackers were probably persons involved in a radical protest against a Louisiana State Republican Party fund raising dinner taking place at a local restaurant. The Hayride, a local political blog, describes the protesters.

Michelle Malkin is discounting rumors that the couple was attacked for wearing Sarah Palin pins.

—————————————————–
UPDATE — 4/17:

Several prominent conservative blogs are reporting today that the victims were uncertain about whether their attackers had any connection to the demonstration and did not identify any specifically political insults from their attackers, including both Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey.

Human Events talked to the victim’s mother:

Della Burning, mother of Jindal staffer Allee Bautsch, confirmed that her daughter had been savagely beaten. She refused to discuss whether or not politics were involved (although at one point in the interview she did say the report was “accurate” when New Orleans Police Information Officer said slurs hurled at her daughter during the attack were “political in nature”).

Burning confirmed her daughter’s leg is broken in four places and she has five surgical scars and a steel rod now running from her knee to her ankle with seven screws holding it all in place. She did not fall and break her leg as was reported in the lonely and inaccurate story done by the Associated Press.

Burning also confirmed that the attackers did not rob her daughter or her daughter’s boyfriend.

On the other hand, the local blog Hayride (which covered this story in a lot of depth) is still arguing today that the attack was definitely politically motivated.

I wonder exactly how much of the full story is yet to emerge at this point.

Jeremy Clarkson, of the British television program Top Gear, visited the United States back in 2006. He didn’t like a lot of the same things about this country that I don’t like.

Step out of the loop, do something unusual and you’ll encounter a wall of low-paid, low-intellect workers whose sole job is to prevent their bosses from being sued. As a result, you never hear anyone say: “Oh I’m sure it’ll be all right.” …

You know the Stig. The all-white racing driver we use on Top Gear. Well, we were filming him walking through the Mojave desert when lo and behold a lorry full of soldiers rocked up and arrested him. He was unusual. He wasn’t fat. He must therefore be a Muslim.

It gets worse. I needed money to play a little blackjack in Vegas but because I was unable to provide the cashier with an American zip code he was unable to help. It’s the same story at the petrol pumps. Americans can punch their address into the key pad and replenish their tank. Europeans have to prove they’re not terrorists before being allowed to start pumping.

I seem to recall a television advertisement in which George W Bush himself urged us all to go over there for our holidays. But what’s the point when you can’t buy anything? Or do anything. Or walk across the desert in a white suit without being arrested.

The main problem I suspect is a complete lack of knowledge about the world. I asked people in the streets of Vegas to name two European countries. The very first woman I spoke to said: “Oh yes. What’s that one with kangaroos?”

Then you’ve got New Orleans, which, nearly a year after Katrina, is still utterly smashed and ruined. Now I’m sorry but insects can build shelter on their own. Birds can build nests without a state handout. So why are the people of Louisiana sitting around waiting for someone else to do the repairs? …

Among the things I don’t like is the way everyone over 15 stone now moves about in a wheelchair. As a result, it takes half an hour to get through even the widest door. And I really don’t like the way that every small town looks exactly the same as every other small town. Palmdale in California and Biloxi in Mississippi are nigh on identical. They have the same horrible restaurants. The same mall. The same interstate drone. Live in either for more than a week and you’d be stabbing your own eyes with knitting needles.

But it’s the idiocracy that really gets me down. The constant coaxing you have to do to get anything done. “No” is the default setting whether you want to change lanes on a motorway or get a drink on a Sunday. It’s like trying to negotiate with a donkey. Once, I urged a cop in Pensacola, Florida, to use his common sense and let me load a van in the no loading zone, since the airport was shut and it would make no difference. “Sir,” he said, “you don’t need common sense when you’ve got laws.”

And Tigerhawk is proud of the difference.

The flooding in eastern Iowa has reached the point of catastrophe. Towns are overwhelmed, businesses destroyed, and crops are gone. A fifth of the corn and soybeans are gone. Fox News is calling it “Iowa’s Katrina.” Here is a gallery of aerial photographs at the web site of the newspaper I used to deliver every afternoon, the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

The thing is, though, the people of eastern Iowa seem to be stepping up in the Iowa stubborn way. I have seen any number of man-on-the-street interviews, and nobody is complaining. They all seem to be working to solve their problem, which is not surprising because Iowans do not complain about tragedy. They complain about hot weather and dry weather, but not tragedy. And I have looked for reports of looting and come up empty so far.

Katrina has become a metaphor for many things beyond natural disaster, including governmental and individual incompetence (depending on your point of view). In Iowa there is a 500 year flood, but the people are not paralyzed, whining, or looting. There will be no massive relief effort from around the world, and nobody will step up to help Iowans except for other Iowans. Yet years from now, there will be no Iowans still in FEMA camps.

The difference is not in the severity of the flood, but in the people who confront the flood.

I should know better. Anonymity of the original source is always a dead giveaway that the item is a hoax.

Some alert classmates spotted yesterday’s “Denver vs. New Orleans” as hoax email which has appeared in several variant forms, and which is recorded on Snopes.

The moral is that one should always take the time to investigate these things, no matter how agreeable to one’s own prejudices and preconceptions a particular item may be. I get the dunce cap for today.

Hat tips, kudos, and thanks to Rodger Kamenetz and Stephen Frankel for the correction.

Donald Luskin posts a comparison, which has been making the rounds, between Denver (and its surrounding region)’s response to the current weather emergency and the behavior of New Orleans.

Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic event— may I even say a “Weather Event” of “Biblical Proportions” — with a historic blizzard of up to 44″ inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10’s of thousands.

George Bush did not come.

FEMA did nothing.

No one howled for the government.

No one blamed the government.

No one even uttered an expletive on TV.

Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.

Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.

Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.

CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit – or report on this category 5 snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.

No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.

No one looted.

Nobody – I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.

Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.

No Larry King, No Bill O’Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.

No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.

Nope, we just melted the snow for water.

Sent out caravans of SUV’s to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.

The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn’t ask for a penny.

Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snowbound families. Families took in the stranded people – total strangers.

We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.

We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is “Work or Die”.

We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for ‘sittin at home’ checks.

Even though a Category “5” blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world’s social problems evaporate.

It does seem that way, at least to me.

I hope this gets passed on.

Hat tip to Maggie’s Farm and Seneca the Younger.

The MSM had a field day emoting over the disaster, misreporting, and blaming Bush. Lisa of Bohemian Conservative links an illuminating perspective by Wilfred M. McClay:

Anyone who has ever lived in New Orleans recognizes the state of mind that prevailed before Katrina. That something like this could happen, and probably would happen, was utterly common knowledge. Equally known was that local officials were too corrupt and incompetent to manage a catastrophe. But a combination of fatalism and denial, and a good stiff drink, always served to banish the reality principle.