That’s What I’m Talking About
Shortly after I mentioned “an idealized dream scenario wherein an alternative media outlet …could find somebody with specific expertise to dig into [the Katrina] story on short notice,” Slate posted an article on New Orleans’ environmental history, observing that “the sodden city has long placed itself in harm’s way, relying on uncertain artifice to protect it from unpredictable environs.”
Ari Kelman’s claim that “New Orleans’ dysfunctional relationship with its environment may make it the nation’s most improbable metropolis,” which was also the subject of his book, might get some argument from Los Angeles’ most persistent critic, Mike Davis. But the article is a smart and fresh introduction to the historical context–exactly the sort of thing I was looking for yesterday morning.
Meanwhile, Davis seems awfully busy these days himself, contemplating Dubai and the avian flu. But don’t be surprised if he turns up at some lefty policy journal by the end of the year talking about the institutional failures that made this disaster a lot worse than it could have been.
1 September 2005 | uncategorized |
Katrina’s 20th-Century Rivals
I’m surprised that John Barry’s Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America is all the way back at nearly #8,000 on Amazon’s rankings but pleased to note the synchronicity of the first two “Capitalized Phrases” the online retailer’s search engine found in the book being “New Orleans” and “Red Cross.”
And, wanting a little break from the slow crawl of actual information amidst all the “look at us in the rain” antics from CNN and MSNBC the other morning, I turned to Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938, which tore up most of the Northeast, especially Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Harry Shearer’s been doing an okay job blogging about the aftermath of Katrina for the Huffington Post, but I’m thinking of what I suppose is an idealized dream scenario wherein an alternative media outlet with the kind of funding I imagine HuffPo to have could find somebody with specific expertise to dig into this story on short notice–and no, Salon’s excerpt of a 15-year-old John McPhee book doesn’t count. Not that you’ll ever hear a bad word about McPhee from this corner…
31 August 2005 | uncategorized |
Our Endless and Proper Work is my new book with Belt Publishing about starting (and sticking to) a productive writing practice. 
