DevraDoWrite

Rifftides has already posted a note about The Chicago Jazz Archive’s list of New Orleans musicians found safe. To that I add two more online musician information lists:

WWOZ radio’s List of New Orleans Musicians Who Survived the Hurricane — you can communicate with the station via email at wwoz@wwoz.org or by leaving messages on their message board

and

JazzAscona’s News About Our Musician Friends — If you have information to contribute, end an email to info@jazzascona.ch

The Jazz Educators’ website has information about how to help musicians and music teachers. Go here and click on Hurricane Relief Zone. That takes you to the Hurricane Assistance and Relief Efforts page where, after brief paragraphs about How To Help and How To Ask For Help, you’ll see a green Enter Community button; click on it and and then click on Guest (no registration required) to read the postings in the Conference area under Hurricane Assistance. (If you want to post a message yourself, you will need to register.)

Among the messages I saw there, which included individuals offering support and refuge, and a statement from Recording Academy President Neil Portnow about NARAS/Music Cares Hurricane Relief, was this posting from Jazz Foundation of America:

We will be addressing the longer term needs of these jazz and blues artists who will have just lost everything.

We will be raising funds and distributing money for the musicians to get a new apartment or room for rent: by giving a first month’s rent, possibly more, for them to start over, a place to live. (This is what we normally do on a daily basis for musicians across the country who become sick and can’t pay their rent, we also keep food on the table and get employment to hundreds of elderly musicians through our Jazz in the Schools program. Our operations normally assist 35 musicians a week.)

As well, we will be attempting to help New Orleans musicians by replacing the thing that matters most and the only way they can ever work again: their instruments.
To those who lost their instruments, like drummers and bassists who could not carry their heavy equipment, and guitarist with their amps, we will be making an effort to work with manufacturers and music stores to replace those instruments for as many as we possibly can.

Remember, New Orleans was only “New Orleans” because of the musicians…

Send donations to:

Jazz Foundation of America
322 West 48th Street 6th floor
NYC 10036

Director: Wendy Oxenhorn
Phone: 212-245-3999 Ext. 21

email contact: Joyce@jazzfoundation.org

website: www.jazzfoundation.org

To make an online CREDIT CARD DONATION OR PLEDGE:
go here and click bottom right corner of page where it says “instant pledge”

Thank you, from our hearts.

I read it earlier, the mayor of New Orleans is pissed, and now I’ve heard him for myself. He is so desparate that he has called in to a radio station to tell it like it is. The language is unvarished as he vents about politicians spinning their bs while people are dying. What can we do the host asked – Nagin suggested keep talking about it, pressure your politicians, ban press conferences until they do something. “Don’t tell me 40,000 people are coming down here. They’re not here. Get off your asses.” Everyone needs to listen to this.

Lazygal has posted a piece from the trenches, reportedly written on Tuesday by someone named Gregory S. Henderson MD, PhD.

“We have commandeered the world famous French Quarter Bar to turn into an makeshift clinic. There is a team of about 7 doctors and PA and pharmacists. We anticipate that this will be the major medical facility in the central business district and French Quarter. Our biggest adventure today was raiding the Walgreens on Canal under police escort…In a sort of cliche way, this is an edifying experience. One is rapidly focused away from the transient and material to the bare necessities of life. It has been challenging to me to learn how to be a primary care phyisican.”

A dubious reader has questioned its authenticity, based on his or her belief that “there aren’t that many practicing physicians who are MD, PhDs” and an inability to find a listing for the doc in the Louisana area. The doubter wonders “Is this just a well-intentioned blogger’s attempt to put a first person spin on the news?” By the doc’s own words, primary care is not his field — maybe he’s a pharmacologist — what difference does it make? Do I sound naive? Normally my zeal for “nonfiction means checking all the facts” would make me smile at the doubters questions and resourcefulness, but right now I am a little desparate myself, desparate to believe that someone somewhere is doing something to help those people who are in such dire straights. I know bad situations give rise to many scams, but there will be plenty of time when this is over to vet the reports and unmask the pretenders.

Meanwhile, let’s not flog the bloggers who are filling the communication void and providing an invaluable service. To see more blogs from the trenches, check out Terry Teachout’s site containing summary info and an amazing list of links to “bloggers who’ve been posting from/near/about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.”

From Terry Teachout’s aggregation of Katrina-related links and information I have learned that

Thursday is Blog for Relief Day, “a day of blogging focused on raising awareness of and funds for relief efforts to aid those affected by Hurricane Katrina.” For information, go here.

Courtesy of Electric Mist blogging from Baton Rouge:

The Red Cross has started a fund that will be specifically for people in Louisiana / New Orleans area. If you haven’t yet made a donation to the Red Cross and you want the money to go specifically to this area, please put HURRICANE KATRINA in the memo section. If you want the money to be specifically for Louisiana (Katrina funds will be split among the three states), then put NOLA in the memo section.

Also in that spirit I direct you to a site that a DevraDoWrite reader called to my attention — Network For Good has a collection of links to online donation sites for the following charities:

American Red Cross — Providing disaster services and relief.
America’s Second Harvest — Providing food to victims.
Catholic Charities USA — Providing relief and recovery assistance.
Charity Hospital in New Orleans — Providing medical care to residents of Louisiana.
Church World Service — Developing long-term recovery plans to assist with recovery.
Convoy of Hope — Providing disaster relief and building supply lines.
Episcopal Relief & Development — Mobilizing to support residents affected by this disaster.
Heart of Florida United Way — Assisting with hurricane recovery efforts in Florida.
Hearts with Hands — Activating response teams to assist in the Gulf Coast and locally.
Humane Society of the U.S. — Rescuing animals and assisting their caregivers in the disaster areas.
Lutheran Disaster Response — Providing emergency relief and recovery supplies.
Mennonite Disaster Service — Providing relief to victims.
New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity — Assisting victims of hurricane Katrina.
Noah’s Wish — Helping to keep animals alive in face of the storm devastation.
Operation Blessing — Transporting food, water, cleaning kits, and other emergency supplies.
PETsMART Charities — Providing relief for the animals impacted by hurricanes.
Salvation Army — Local, regional, and national disaster relief programs.
Samaritan’s Purse — Helping victims of natural disasters.
United Methodist Committee on Relief — Providing relief to victims.
United Way for the Greater New Orleans Area — Helping victims of hurricanes locally.
United Way of Miami-Dade — Helping victims of hurricanes locally.

A reader from Europe wrote to Terry Teachout to thank him and OGIC for their amazing collection of Katrina-related web links and noted

Another point. Weirdly, while the tsunami was a major topic of conversation here in Norway for days, nobody seems to be talking about the devastation in New Orleans.

I have to say that at a local West Coast cafe this morning, one where I generally overhear all sorts of discussions and debates, social or political in nature, not one word did I hear about the devestation in New Orleans or Mississippi. Driving home from there I tried to superimpose the tv images of decimated wastelands over the sunny streets of my neighborhood….I couldn’t, it’s beyond comprehension.

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay

Well all last night I sat on the levee and moan
Well all last night I sat on the levee and moan
Thinkin’ ’bout my baby and my happy home

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
And all these people have no place to stay

When The Levee Breaks — “Kansas” Joe McCoy (a/k/a/ Kansas Joe, Georgia Pine Boy, Hallelujah Joe)

At first we react from our own perspective, but my initial incredulity that anyone would choose not to evacuate soon gave way to the growing awareness that many people simply had no choice — no resources, no money, no transportation, and even worse, no place to go. Most of these people are poor — some, families with many children, others, elderly citizens all alone.

When the Levee Breaks was recorded in 1929. Back then flooding was feared by black field hands who lived in low-lying areas near the river, while the plantation owners lived safely on higher ground. In many ways, not much has changed.

Money is an immediate need, to be sure. But after we’ve searched our pockets and donated whatever we can, I hope we search our hearts to find a cure for the underlying problems that plague our society.

They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad
They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad
Wednesday’s worse, and Thursday’s also sad…

Call It Stormy Monday — T-Bone Walker

It might have been the big one – and then it wasn’t, New Orleans was spared…or so we thought for a few hours. Now the situation is worse than ever with two levees breached, water still rising and people trapped everywhere – in house attics, on roofs, in hotels with blown out windows. There is no power, no phone lines, no sewer, no drinking water or food. And in Mississippi entire communities have been leveled. At least a million Americans are now homeless and jobless – they are hungry, tired and scared. Aid workers will soon set up refugee camps, once a sight seen only in foreign countries.

Where’s the silver lining?
Something good comes from even the worst events? Everything happens for a reason? Every cloud has a silver lining? I cannot imagine an upside to the horrors I’ve been watching unfold in Louisiana and Mississippi. People have lost homes and personal property, and that’s a shame to be sure. But to see entire neighborhoods – stores, businesses, schools, churches, hospitals, libraries, museums, restaurants – destroyed is beyond heart-breaking. With the water continuing to rise I can’t help but wonder if New Orleans might become a modern day Pompeii; thousands of years from now, some future civilization might excavate the site and uncover the shards of our civilization.

It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature
Is any of this our fault? Have the changing weather patterns and atmospheric conditions been negatively impacted by our emissions, our pollution. Would the marshlands have saved the gulf cities had they not been eroded and lost? Have we brought this on ourselves in the name of progress and pursuit of the good life?

[Written Sunday night] On the corner of Touro and Urquhart streets in New Orleans, not far from the French Quarter, stands the house where my husband was born 93 years ago. Today you would call it a duplex, but back then they called it “half a house.” One of John’s earliest memories is of sitting on the stoop and watching his grandmother beat yellow bricks into a fine powder that she used to clean the steps. A few blocks over is the Thompson Methodist Church where John as a pre-schooler attended services with his mother, aunt, and grandmother, and on occasion was permitted to ring the church bell by pulling on the long rope dangling from the belfry. We’ve been to New Orleans only a handful of times over the last fiften or twenty years. A few years ago, we got a cab driver to take us to the house — it’s still a very poor neighborhood — and we were pleasantly surprised to find that, for the first time ever, the long and narrow dirt streets were being paved. Several streets were closed for this reason and the cab driver got as close as he could and waited for us while we walked down to the house to take some pictures. When we got back into the cab the driver could not turn around, so he had to back out down the block. It’s hard to believe that a city neighborhood that waited so long to be renovated with basic amenities may cease to exist tomorrow.

We called our friends who live there. Those we did not reach we assume have left town, but we did speak to one friend and has chosen to stay, not at home but in a downtown hotel. The logic seems to center on being above the water level, so I guess a high-rise building might feel safer, but what will happen when the first floors are under water and the power is out? I’m scared from thousands of miles away. Our friend is not a young man, so he’s not hanging out for the thrill. He’s something of a community leader, active in the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, so I imagine that he’s staying in hope of being useful in the aftermath.

I am watching news of Katrina as I prepare for the interview I have scheduled for tomorrow morning, look up the driving directions to the hotel where my subject is staying, and charge the batteries for my recorder. Then I realize that people in New Orleans are pouring over maps and charging batteries for much more pressing reasons and suddenly my life feels rather small and trivial.