Kim Carver, Nothwest Carrollton resident and Board member was just selected By Governor elect Bobby Jindal to sit on the Hurricane Recovery and Emergency Preparedness Transition Advisory Council.
Good Luck Kim
I will have a booth at the Festival, come Visit .
Voice of America article about Brice Miller, one of our own Northwest Carrollton displaced residents.
Karen Gadbois never fails to amaze me with her stamina.
Thanks Karen for fighting for the soul of our city.
I remember when I was younger there was a song about appearing on the cover of the Rolling Stone
While I never had musical aspirations, I also never had aspirations to appear stippiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal
So there you go…
From: “Scott Barron”
To: letters@timespicayune.com
CC: Subject: letter to the Editor
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 18:35:40 -0500
Gadfly?
Re: “Xavier planning for 21 demolitions,” Page B-1.
July 3, 2007
I would like to strongly disagree with the author of this article, for using the word “gadfly” to describe Karen Gadbois. The reporter uses this term to paint Karen as a neighborhood obstructionist, who is opposed to change, and is only trying to preserve the status quo. This
characterization is completely unfair. It is also, a surprisingly poor use of the english language, if used by a professional writer to describe Karen .
For the record, a gadfly is defined by the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary as;
a person who stimulates or annoys esp. by persistent criticism.
There is a second definition but I will assume the author was not referring to; any of various flies (as a horsefly, botfly, or warble fly) that bite or annoy livestock.
Anyone who knows Karen, knows calling her a “gadfly” is both unfair and wrong. Karen has been a tireless advocate for the rebuilding of the Carrollton area. She has only looked to the best interests of the city, and has proven to be a very constructive force, in maintaining a positive rebuilding dialogue, in her neighborhood. When our political leadership sat down, Karen was willing to stand up and help lead. When the planning process began, almost two years ago, Karen dedicated herself to being a consistent advocate, for the smart growth New
Orleans needs. When the neighborhoods became aware that Walgreen’s was planning a new store, at Carrollton and Claiborne, Karen helped in the development of a plan that was
acceptable to both Walgreen’s and the residents of the area.
Karen Gadbois has proved, again and again, her commitment to the rebirth of our great city. She deserves, but never asks for, our thanks and gratitude. And, I am sure, she does not deserve to have the label of “gadfly” thrown at her. By doing so, the reporter seems to be looking to misrepresent her actions, and therefore belittle a great citizen of New Orleans!
Scott Barron
President, Claiborne University Neighborhood Association (CUNA)
New Orleans
Thank you Scott… and THANK YOU KAREN.
Kim Carver and his wife Kristen chaired the Silent Auction at City Park which raised funds for the “The McFarland Institute”
The various events raised close to 200,000.00 for the Institute.
This is AFTER the Quality of Life Officer visited.
And the number of cars towed away ONE
SOMEONE is still towing these cars into the Neighborhood.
Our campaign to get them cleaned up has resulted in NO cars being towed.
And in fact we are still recieving new junks
Todays installment of the towed car takes a turn for the wierd.
Mr. Russell has towed the car back to it’s original location but now pointing the other way.
I guess that is progress.
Updated the post. Keep sending me addresses
Thanks
Please leave the location of junk, stolen, or unlicensed cars in the comment section of this post
It looks like our Neighborhood Tow Truck Driver has decided the entire Neighborhood is his junkyard.
My Santa Wish List.
1. Levees
2. StreetLights
3. Sidewalks
4. Fix Pot Holes
5. No more Demolitions in Historic Districts
6. Lower Entergy Rates
7. Lower Insurance Rates
8. No more Garbage in the Streets
9. A Mayor
10. People..come home
Thanks for Opening your homes for the holiday Tour
In May of 2005 while searching for Health Insurance I discovered I had Breast Cancer. I joined the ranks 1 in 7. That is the number, one in seven women will get breast cancer. Now I was 1.
Surgery at University and Doctors appointments at Charity, if you can find it and you can afford it get some health insurance, it was too late for me my search was over, now I was a patient.
On August 27 I could hardly get out of bed, 2 surgical procedures and a bad ass dose of Chemo left me weak and sick. On Sunday we evacuated in the car, I was on the floor on the sofa cushions in my pj’s. The dogs, the kid, the husband..
All I could think of was the fact that I was scheduled for Chemo in 10 days, that one of the most important parts of treatment is consistancy, stick to the schedule,stay on track. By Tuesday my mission was to find a Hospital and a Doctor that would give me chemo, a dosage that was now under water in the bowels of Charity. One of the last phone calls I recieved before we left was from my Mother, she encouraged me to check into the Hospital afraid that the 12 hours in the car would be too much for me.
<I was in Houston, and then Austin and finally in a Doctors office, ready for my next dose. I got there by being loud, by yelling and fighting, I got there cause I demanded to get there.Now we are back in half our house, and all the fight that served to save me feeds me to fight this fight.
So tommorow is my last day of chemo. I had a new treatment which began AFTER I ended my first rounds of chemo. This course lasted a year, once a week. Every week, I never thought I could do it and I did.
Last week one of the women who sat with me was buried. June lost her house in Gentilly, first to the flood and then to a fire. She lost her life to Breast Cancer, and she always made me laugh.
I miss you June.
Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto,
Me ha dado la risa, me ha dado el llanto,
Asà yo distingo dicha de quebranto,
Los dos materiales que forman mi canto,
Y el canto de ustedes que es mi propio canto.
Thanks to life which has given me so much,
It’s given me laughter, it’s given me tears,
Thereby I distinguish good fortune from ruin,
The two materials that make up my song,
And the song of all of you that is my own song.
Violetta Parra
“Gracias a la Vida”
UPDATE
Thanks to everyone who was so kind and generous, Greg Peters, Gambit cartoonist and all around talent is off to Cleveland Clinic, please support this effort to make sure his stay there is not offline
Congratulations to the Millers !
Brice, Brice Jr. Shaneeka, and the newest Miller ZOE RENEE MILLER
The Millers live on Dublin St. but from the sounds lof Brices
latest e mail he lives out of a suitcase.
here is just one entry from the newsletter.
Bordeaux France We spent 18 days performing and
sharing the culture and histories of N.O. jazz with
hundreds of people, visited and performed at several
schools, libraries, and community centers. I
participated in several blah blahs (community
awareness workshops) and even cooked my famous
barbecue chicken (which will be featured in an
upcoming French cookbook). What a trip!
Congratulations and here is to many sleepless nights!
Finally the parents of Ida Schooler are happy to report she has a job.
If you see her give her a big tip!
One of the projects I worked on while living in Mexico was Embroidered Retablos.
Most commonly retablos are hung in churches to give thanks for divine intervention.
“I dedicate the present retablo to the Holiest Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos for having saved me from a Texan who tried to carry me off. I hid under a tree by the side of the road with my little brother.”
The ExVoto is a public display of an answered prayer, and often the names retablo and ex votot are interchagable.
The women I worked with were mostly illiterate. They lived on outlying ranches and about 75% of the men in the community worked in the U.S. The project had started as a way to taking a traditionally male trade, retablo painting and using a female craft, textiles.
There were many bumps in the road. The issues of the narrative, since these women were for the most part, illiterate they had to tell their children the story, and the kids would write in pencil on the fabric. The issues of privacy, as soon as these women realized that they were creating a narrative record of their lives they became very bold and at times sordid.
Historically these paintings told a dramatic story, and that was that.
But with my ladies the stories were a source of income, I had a store and I sold them. I knew who sold faster, who had a better narrative sense and who was a master at needlework. The work was uneven but always entertaining.
Some of them even began to resemble the ubiquitous comic books that are read by adults all over Mexico.
When I first came to blogging Alan Gutierrez the Executive Director of Think New Orleans, a nonprofit that helps neighborhoods use the Internet to organize, seemed pretty determined to create a blog for my neighborhood and I went along with it. Whenever it would lay fallow he would call and demand that I publish.
And then like my Ranch ladies I began to understand that what I was doing was creating a historical time line, a chronicle of events as they happened. It sounds simple and obvious but for some reason I had never connected the two things.
What would those women do if they had a blog? What kinds of narrative voices are we missing for lack of, what? Not for lack of stories.
And here in New Orleans, the idea of a collective story of the city where multiple Neighbors and Neighborhood write the Recovery is a very exciting prospect. Where we could check on what other folks are doing across the City.
If anyone is interested let me know in the comments section.
I alwasys have to say thanks to the New Orleans Bloggers.
“People are beginning to feel more emboldened in their roles,” Gadbois said. “Everyone’s very
aware that we are living history and our fates are still undetermined in terms of the city and the community.
“Our city could be dying before our eyes. We’re not sure. So what we’re trying to do with these blogs is ask specific questions that only a specific audience would be interested in. And that’s going to help the whole city.”
Friends of New Orleans invited several Neighborhood Organizations to the premier of All the Kings Men.
Make some time to support the arts and our local actors.
Go and see Callie’s Tally at Southern Rep (Canal Place).
http://www.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=54307
My family, including my 11 year old daughter, had a laugh out loud time last night.
If you’ve ever been pregnant or parented newborn or are one of those kid’s told (horror) stories of what it was like…. you will enjoy this play.
Hands clapping for our NorthWest Carrollton neighbor Morrey McElroy.
Here is a quote from the New York Times
In the neighborhoods, New Orleanians are skeptical. Why does it seem that every time someone swoops in to help us, it winds up being a mess ? asked Jenel Hazlett, of the Northwest Carrollton Civic Association, a neighborhood group. They keep moving the players around, and we as citizens keep getting jerked around.
Read the entire article in The Sunday Times