There’s been a lot of waiting and watching on Gustav up to this point. I had told myself I’d know to switch gears to full on ‘hurricane survival mode’ when I started hearing the helicopters coming in. Choppers overhead in Baton Rouge are my enduring memory of Hurricane Katrina. On the Friday before the storm hit I was at Independence Park up on Lobdell which is right next to the State Emergency Response Headquarters, hitting baseballs on one of the fields when the helicopters started coming in, landing a few hundred yards away to shuttle officials into disaster planning meetings. It drove home the fact pretty quickly that something big was going down even though we still didn’t have a clue as to how big that something was going to be. After the storm they were the constant reminder of how bad things were down in New Orleans: for a number of days the only way into and out of the city was by helicopter, all of which were using Baton Rouge as home base. For at least 6 weeks after the storm the sound of rotors cutting the air was a constant companion to life post-Katrina.
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Excuse me for not mentioning that Ashes & Water was taking a bit of a summer vacation. Thing is, I really didn’t know I was going on vacation myself, but here it is a month and a half since my last post. It’s been a busy couple of months with Professor Fury & Contessa throwing the last Poolapalooza, a trip to South Carolina for fun with the cousins and Maddie Potter moving into the Yellow(ish) House on Morning Glory. But after this weekend’s sojourn to Orange Beach with the Underpass Gang, which I’m out the door for in just a few minutes, vacation is over and I’ll be back in the keyboard powered saddle, whipping this thing for all it’s worth. With the Braves hardly ever playing on TBS anymore it’s been a rather sports starved summer and so it seems that the arrival of football season is even more welcome than it normally is, which is saying a lot. I’ve been following the Saint’s training camp at my alma mater pretty closely this year (I even made it up to Jackson with a Saturday scrimmage), especially with the aid of fellow Millsapian DeMeat’s very thorough training camp expose.
In other circles, Gorjus and I also managed to get him a dedicated website for the Sandusky Review up and running. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t made it over that way yet.
I’ve followed horse racing since doing some work for a breeding consultant when I lived in New Mexico and have always wanted to be able to say that I saw a horse win the Triple Crown. Every year since then I’ve watched the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont and seen a number of horses come close to horse racings banner achievement. While I was alive the last time a horse won the Triple Crown, I was only two years old, so today’s opportunity to watch Big Brown, the most dominating thoroughbred race horse I’ve ever seen run, take his shot is an exciting one. I’m even missing the first few innings of LSU’s super regional game against UC-Irvine to see if Big Brown can repeat horse racing history. (more…)
Gorjus just emailed to announce that he’s completed his third edition of the Sandusky Review. It’s available for download as a pdf and you can mail-order physical copies for $5, which is a steal considering the time and work that he puts into these things. I’m getting ready to print a copy, blow off work, grab a cooler of Natural Light tall boys and head up Hwy 61 to read this thing the RIGHT way.*
More at PrettyFakes.
*Actual results may vary.
Only a few days after the publication of the article that I linked to in my last post and Baton Rouge is facing a pretty big community art crisis. It’s a rather lengthy play-by-play, so I’ll just link to The Advocate’s article on the matter. Wgo had told me about the school board meeting and I had planned to attend but just ended up watching the meeting on public access. I turned off the proceedings before the vote on the matter, thinking that there was no way that anyone could argue with the substitute motion that was filed. Alas, it only garnered a 5-5 vote, and so the Baton Rouge school board has cleared the way for the demolition for a student-built sculpture that is listed on the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s inventory of American sculptures. Culture Candy sent out a call to action, where Wgo summarized the issue as such:
Culture emerges from community; and the various artworks and attitudes that comprise culture sustain and inform the very context in which they arise. Authentic art arises from authentic community, and this art in turn models authenticity to the community. Education is one of the more conspicuous of the means by which culture is communicated and sustained; it is certainly the most conspicuous guardian of a community’s intellectual health, and in a healthy community, this intellectual well-being includes the arts and humanities.
And this is why citizens who recognize the central role of culture in a healthy community must take notice when its school board votes to destroy a public sculpture on the Smithsonian list of monuments, a sculpture built by its young people through the process of education, an artwork that has authentically arisen in the community through the very process of acculturate that community. This is more than deeply troubling. The system by which the Baton Rouge community is educated has chosen to authorize the destruction of one of the few public displays of arts in education in this town. This is pathological; this is an animal eating its own heart in an attempt at sustenance.
I’m not sure what can be done or who is going to do it, but take a look at the full Culture Candy email for their immediate suggestions (I’ve reposted it here it because their site is down right now). If education, art and community are something you value in Baton Rouge, be on the lookout for ways to help out with this. I’ll post more as I know it.
My submission for the second issue of Culture Candy‘s Sweet Tooth:
“The existence of a unified, art appreciating community brings with it the notion that there is some adhesive that binds the group together, a mutual concern or vision that provides the foundation and the impetus for further growth. Both here in Baton Rouge and in my previous home of Jackson, MS, the formulation and communication of this idea seems to have been the most major obstacle to overcome in art community growth. Beg, plead and cajole the larger community into taking a more active role in appreciating the arts and many of them are going to ask a very good, necessary and deceptively simple question: why? There are innumerable ways for us to answer that question, and such is the beauty of art: there are a myriad of avenues by which one can come to commune with and appreciate it. The challenge to us is to answer it in a way that communicates a real and concrete reason across the gulf of the disconnect between our art community and our larger one.”
Read the entire article.
Along with most of the football following world I’d like to give a public thanks to quarterback Brett Favre, who announced his retirement from professional football today. I consider it one of my distinct pleasures as a football fan to have been around to watch him play the game and as a fellow Mississippian, it was a point of pride to share my home state with one of the greatest players in football. While the Saints are my first love in the NFL, the Packers have always been my second favorite with Favre at their helm. I even had a Packers Party during this year’s NFC Championship between the Packers and Giants, replete with brats and cheap Wisconsin beer, which turned out to be #4′s farewell game. Wright Thompson’s article on ESPN.com says a number of things that I can’t say any better about Brett, Mississippi, and the hole he’s left in many a football fan’s heart. It’s a good read. So thanks again, Brett, for all the memories. I wish you’d played one more year so I could have seen you play in the Dome this season, but the fun’s got to end sometime, I guess.
