Back on Blogger

Well, I'm back on Blogger. For some unknown reason, and without any intervention on my part, it seems SULASULA published using Blogger, is working correctly again. I quit using Blogger in January because I couldn't get it to list or display archived posts, but that seems to have fixed itself. In the interim, I started using WordPress, which I liked, but it apparently allowed my server to be hacked. A Trojan Horse was installed which added thousands of hidden website links to every index.htm page on my DJLphoto.com domain. There are probably 250 such index.htm files on that site. You do the math. Like a real nimrod, I manually changed all the html for each file back to its intended condition, only to find them re-altered by the Trojan Horse the next day. Apparently there was some script installed in the WordPress disrectories which was checking and editing the index files.

So, for the time being I'm done with WordPress and back on Blogger. We'll see how this goes.

Unfortunately, I deleted all the posts I had on WordPress. I did back-up the database, and the posts may be there, but I don't know if there is any way of retrieving those posts without re-installing WordPress.

iWISH(I had my old phone back)

I had a Palm Treo. I wasn't thrilled with it but it was very functional, and I have been using the Palm desktop application for years. Recently, some miscreant happened by my car on the one night I left it unlocked (in my driveway behind an iron gate) and, finding no money, drugs or weapons among the contents of the glove box which were left strewn about the car, decided to relieve me of my Treo.

Standing around the local cellphone store while the salesman was checking whether they had something other than a red Treo in the stockroom, I was attracted to the slick high-tech iPhone display in the middle of the store. When the salesman returned with a boxed Treo under his arm, I asked the regrettable question, "What about iPhone?"

"Cool," he said.

"Can I transfer my contacts and calendar from Palm desktop to the iPhone?"

"Absolutely."

While he was writing up the ticket on my new iPhone, he mentioned that there was a $100 restocking fee, if the iPhone was returned for any reason. Why would I ever want to return it, I thought.

After spending about a thousand hours trying to export and import my contacts into numerous different formats, loading an old copy of Outlook onto my desktop, consulting with the generation Y lawclerk in my office, and pulling out large clumps of my graying hair, I have yet to successfully get a single contact onto the iPhone without entering it by hand.

Worse yet, rather than the easy-to-use desktop interface provided by Palm, which interacted seamlessly with the Treo, iPhone is about little more at this point than selling music. Every time you connect it to a computer to sync (sync what?) you are dragged into the iTunes storefront and music is shoved in your face.

Anybody interested in a cheap, almost-new iPhone?

"Down this trail's where darkness waits."

© David J. L'Hoste

I've been plagued by computer problems for the last week or so. It's been a nightmare of long phone sessions with computer techs and maddening responses from this dumb, senseless machine around which too much of my life revolves. I feel unconnected and powerless without a working computer and internet connection. How people can go for an extended period of time without being connected is beyond me.

Although my data is kept on two external hard drives, some odds and ends were irretrievably destroyed when I re-installed Windows. I will need to go through the painstaking process of re-loading a score of programs and tweaking the preferences to get back to even ground. The whole experience is like going down a dark trail into uncharted territory.

New Orleans Ballet Theatre 2007

From Les Sylphides - © David L'Hoste


For the third year running, I shot the spring performance of the New Orleans Ballet Theatre. Unlike previous years, I shot not only the dress rehearsal, but the Saturday night performance. I think I got some good images. Denise came on Saturday, and we both enjoyed it immensely. Dancers have perfect bodies. In particular, Christine Winkler -- who did an engaging cat-and-mouse dance (John and I...) with her very-buff husband, John Welker -- has an unbelievably sculpted dancer's physique. Welker also exhibited great athleticism in a contemporary solo dance called Exit. Click the photo above and then click through the photos.

A TIMELINE OF THE IRAQ WAR

ThinkProgress has a well-sourced timeline on the Iraq war:

A TIMELINE OF THE IRAQ WAR

None so blind as those who will not see

Those who still doubt the crisis of global warming may benefit from considering world population. It took tens of thousands of years, almost the entire history of our species, until about 1800 to reach 1 billion in number. In just another 125 years that figure doubled. And we've added more than 3 billion in the last half of the 20th century alone. What will be the effect of the increase in greenhouse gas emissions which will inevitably accompany the explosion of the world population and world economy over the next 50 years?

Here is an interesting article by Dr. James E. Hansen.

It kind of makes me long for a Gore run in 2008.

From N.Y. Time Magazine article Al Gore has big plans:

In James Hansen´s view, which Gore shares, we have no more than 10 years to level off the production of greenhouse gases; by 2050, despite massive growth in population and the world economy, we must have cut global emissions to “a fraction of what they are now.’ Otherwise, we go over the cliff. This is what Gore means when he says that the outer edge of the politically possible falls short of the inner edge of the necessary; and this is why he believes that the only hope is to transform the definition of the possible through a campaign of mass persuasion. There are now half a dozen greenhouse-gas bills in Congress; the most drastic of them would meet Hansen´s target through a combination of tough gas-mileage standards, requirements that utilities resort to alternative fuels and a market-based “cap and trade’ system. Under such a regime, mandated by the Kyoto Protocol and now in place in Europe, companies receive an annual “allotment’ of carbon emissions; those that produce even less can sell their “credits’ to those who can´t or won´t make it under the bar. Of course this system works only if the annual “cap’ starts low and gets smaller and smaller every year. Gore´s great fear is that business lobbies and lawmakers will unite around some kind of compromise legislation that will demonstrate “commitment’ without actually driving up the cost, or driving down the permissible volume, of carbon emissions. And he views even the most stringent legislation as inadequate.

In the Land of the Living and the Dead

Lower Ninth Ward - Jan. 2006 © David L'Hoste
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I found this article while browsing the N.O. forum on NOLA.com. Very nice.

NOTES FROM NEW ORLEANS: In The Land Of The Living and The Dead
By Deborah Cotton
May 3, 2007

Deborah Cotton

Perhaps you might remember me – I was once an embedded journalist in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina. But around last November, I stopped writing.

I also stopped talking, stopped answering the phone, and stopped going outside my apartment. After fifteen months of covering ‘Survivor New Orleans: The Apocalypse’, I collapsed into a black hole of depression.

Memories of the Doppler radar, rooftops poking through the floodwater, and dead people floating in the streets played like a loop track in my mind stuck on August 29, ‘05. I was now a journalist embedded in my attic apartment, eating cereal and watching reruns of ‘Sex and The City’.

New Orleans continued to tap at my door, trying to lure me back to the laptop with outrageous anecdotes about her incredible resurrection, but I couldn’t answer her. I had checked out of the land of the living.

For months, the only time I left the house was to buy groceries or go to the doctor. My only connection to the world, besides Carrie Bradshaw and my shrink, were the Black drag queens strolling at night in front of the hotel of ill-repute across the street, which I watched with mild interest from my bedroom window. Them, and a pig that shuffles under my window during the day, eating and snorting.

Yes, a pig. For some reason, my neighbor Joan thinks keeping a pig in her backyard is cute. She’s 50-years old, Black, and from D.C. – I know she knows better.

One morning I heard a bloodcurdling squeal of unmistakable origin. Racing downstairs and peering over the backyard fence, I saw my neighbor, the pig, bleeding with a pit bull locked onto the side of his face, Joan on the ground covered in leaves trying to pull them apart, and her handyman John standing above the fray, beating the unyielding dog on the head with a wooden log. I hollered to them that I was calling 911. Ten minutes later, my block was inundated with police, EMS, and the SCPA, along with the rest of the neighborhood which turned out to watch the potbelly pig/pit bull/police rumpus.

So I’m standing out front with little Mrs. Proctor from two doors down explaining to her what happened when the lead police officer came over to report that both the pig and Ms. Joan were going to be okay. Then, in a big flourish of emotionalism, he hugged me and little old Mrs. Proctor and thanked us being good neighbors to Joan.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m from L.A. – we don’t do group hugs with the police after a 911 call. And while I’ve come to expect the abnormal and bizarre living here in New Orleans, even having a pig for a neighbor and Shaq-sized drag queens strolling in front of my house could not prepare me for teary, Oprah-hugs from the First District police department. Had this been any other time in my life, I would have found this entire outrageous scene worthy of some knee slapping laughter and certainly an article or two. But I just stood there, numb, staring into space. It seemed no amount of The New Orleans Show could shake the iron grip that depression had on me.

So, never one to be ignored, especially by one of her most loyal cheerleaders, New Orleans called out the big guns - known on the ground here as ‘The Second Line’.

Last summer, I moved to Treme, one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in the country. Second Line parades are a cultural tradition here. One Thursday afternoon, I came outside to find a hearse rolling down my street followed by a brass band and a hundred plus folks dancing with black parasols. I decided to walk with them out of solidarity to the dead, since these days I felt more kinship with them than the living. About a week later, another second line started up around the corner at the church after Sunday services. I tried ignoring the seductive drums and horns but before long, I was scurrying around looking for flip flops to throw on and running down the street to catch up, rationalizing that some fresh air and exercise might do me some good.

The New Orleans Second Line parade is nothing short of a Black storm surge - loud, wrong, thrilling, soulful, colorful, and over the top. The parades are sponsored by ‘social aid and pleasure clubs’ with great old school names like ‘Lady Buckjumpers’, ‘Black Men Of Labor’, and ‘Big Nine’ that roll out of their clubhouse sporting kill ‘em color-coordinated suits with feather plumes and jeweled baskets, shaking and strutting like a Harlem Cotton Club revue. Brass band music by ‘Rebirth’ or ‘The Hot 8’ blasts through the excited crowds like thunder and lightning, trumpets screaming at the sky like Chaka Khan; wild cow bells crying above the din. Then the club, the bands, 500 people or so, plus the police on horses bringing up the rear, all take off down the road to conquer the streets of New Orleans for the next four hours.

At one point, the second line begins to take on dream tones - people stuck in parade traffic jump out and start clapping and dancing instead of honking and cursing. Young Black men buck-jump wild battle-dance steps with each other atop porches, rooftops, rickety FEMA trailer steps. Giant magical Mardi Gras birds with brilliant white, turquoise or red feathers, beads and tambourines chant and swirl, towering over regular-sized human beings. And the big sweaty Black tuba player is fawned over, flirted with and appealed to like a rock star.

With each second line that rolled down Ursulines Street, New Orleans lured me from my dark brooding funk and tossed me into the fire of dancing Black folks and brass instruments bobbing down the street, burning, sweating, marching from one end of town to the other. This went on every week for months until one day, between the parades and sessions with my shrink and onset of Spring, I began to feel alive again. And the haunting images of dead floating bodies faded away.

This is the beauty - and the problem - with living in New Orleans. At any given moment, life and death change places with each other when you least expect it. And try as you may to control what you let enter your life, you never know what’s waiting around the corner that will either thrill you - or level you to the ground.

Last week, I toddled on down to the main post office to drop off my Netflix. I turned towards the exit corridor to leave and ran smack dab into six tall blue panels featuring dozens upon dozens of photos of local folks that died during Katrina, little index cards tacked underneath citing their names and the things they once loved to do. You could tell by the grins and campy poses they didn’t expect to drown in their own living rooms. Or that they’d one day have their likeness assembled into a makeshift shrine in the post office lobby down on Loyola.

I climbed in my jeep and drove home, trying to regulate my breathing, repeating to myself, ‘Don’t cry. Don’t indulge grief.’ I got home and sat down in the driveway, put the cat in my lap, and let the breeze wash over me, waiting for my reaction to seeing ghosts of our recent past at the post office. ‘Was I gonna cry? Fall back into depression? Be struck with an epiphany about the greater wisdom of the universe…?’

At that very moment, a guy with a mullet passed by walking a Shetland pony on a leash. He looked over, smiled and waved. I tried to wave back but the scene was so surreal, I couldn’t lift my hand or close my mouth. Then he was gone. And suddenly, I started to laugh at the absurdity of life, of my neighborhood, of my city. I was back in the land of the living – right alongside the dead.

On any given day in New Orleans, you might run across a classy Black lady with a pig or a man in a halter and heels or a pony on a leash and sometimes… Sometimes, you still see dead people here.

But the good news is a second line can’t be too far behind.


Deborah Cotton is a freelance journalist living in New Orleans. Her email address is Deborah.cotton@gmail.com.

New Orleans Ballet Theater Fundraiser

In 2005 and 2006, I photographed the dress rehearsal of the spring show of the New Orleans Ballet Theater (NOBT). Some of those photos can be found here and here. I was please to be asked to print about 20 dance photos that will be auctioned at a fundraiser this Friday. I hope some sell and the ballet makes some money.

Spring Skiing In Alta, Utah

Since 2003, on the last weekend of March, I've gone to ski in Alta, Utah. It's a group of jocks, including this geezer-jock, who ski from lift opening until last chair for about four full days. Normally, I can barely walk by the time it's over. This year was no different. My back has been aching since my return.

On an earlier trip one of our number wore a hunter's orange knit hat while skiing, and since then our entire group wears orange hats. All the better to find one another on the slopes and lifts.





Photos from each trip are here.

Galapagos Islands Under Siege

Blue-Footed Booby by D. L'Hoste
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In 2001, I was privileged to spend a week cruising around the Galapagos Islands. The variety and uniqueness of the wildlife was stunning. However, I could see even then, with small cruise ships anchored in some of the larger ports, that the pressures of the growing eco-tourism industry would eventually ruin the very thing that gave rise to its success. My photos from the Galapagos Islands.

This story on the site of The Independent is instructive:
The cradle of evolution: Under siege and under threat
Tourism, over-population and overfishing have become the blight of the Galapagos Islands that inspired Darwin. Now the UN is sounding the alarm. By Michael McCarthy
Published: 12 April 2007

"The threat is growing to the cradle of evolution. Crucial talks take place today over the increasingly precarious future of the Galapagos Islands, whose unique wildlife inspired Charles Darwin's revolutionary theory.

High-ranking United Nations officials will be meet ministers from the government of Ecuador, which owns the volcanic islands 600 miles off its Pacific coast, to discuss how to protect them from the increasing threats posed by immigration, mass tourism, development, overfishing and the invasion of alien species." Full Story

Chocolatier in Chief Strikes Again

From today's Times-Picayune:

Nagin denies comments had racial implication
By Gordon Russell
Staff writer

In what has become a cliché of post-Katrina politics, Mayor Ray Nagin stood before the media Monday in an effort to undo any possible racial fallout from remarks he made in a speech last week that erupted into controversy upon its hitting the Internet.

Nagin said that a Washington Post story that appeared Saturday under the headline “Nagin Suspects a Plot to Keep Blacks Away” unfairly took his comments out of context.

“I’ve been in enough hot water for things I have said,” Nagin said. “And this is what makes me mad. Because I didn’t say it, and now I’m almost in hot water, so this is just not right.”

The Post article, which recounted Nagin’s speech Thursday to the National Newspaper Publishers Association, an industry group of papers that target African-American readers, said that Nagin “has suggested that the slow recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans” is “part of a plan to change the racial makeup and political leadership of his and other cities.”

That article supported the premise with a quote attributed to Nagin: “Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere. They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community.”
Full TP Story here.
Washington Post story here.

Maiden voyage for the "new" canoe

Several months before Katrina, I felt comfortable enough with the results of my extensive research (I tend to over-amp when deciding on any significant new acquisition)to purchase a 15' Mowhawk canoe. For many reasons, not the least of which being the hurricane, I never put the canoe into the water except for the mandatory test run in my pool on the very day I picked it up from the shipping company. Saturday was such a perfect blue-bird day, I had to get out into it. So, more than two years after its purchase, I decided to take the canoe to Jean Lafitte National Historic Park for its maiden voyage.

Kismet's Favorite Spot

Kismet's favorite place to sleep is in the weaved grass letter box on my desk. It became her habit as a kitten. She has grown and the box hasn't. Now the sides are bulging.

In search of perfectly formed deadwood and a hot meal

It's a seasonal chore, I mean joy, to go Christmas tree shopping. Denise and I set out Saturday to find suitable deadwood at Perino's, home of the $250 Fraser Firs. Before heading to Metairie, we made two stops: 1. Nephew Scott's Nashville St. renovation project, where on passing we saw Scott, Jason, and Boozer on the front porch, which led to a full tour, and 2. Newcomb's Woldenberg Art Gallery to see sister Barbie's art in the annual Christmas art sale. We bought one of Barbie's pieces and another metal and glass sculpture by Megan. Barbie showed us her studio, and what she will be working on next year.

Once venturing into Jefferson Parish, we decided to have lunch before undertaking the weighty task of selecting the ideal tree. We tried Ruth's Chris Steak House, but it was closed. No problem, I thought, we'll go to Sal and Sam's. Closed. La Riviera - closed. Vincent's - closed. I presume it is a lingering shortage of wait staff, but Ruth Fertel must be spinning when her only restaurant left in the area is closed with so many shoppers out on a Saturday afternoon in December looking for a good meal. We ended up all the way out in Kenner at the Esplanade Mall Zea.

New Record Set on Arabella Street!

In September 2004, Denise set a record for jackets on chairs by draping a week's worth of jackets on the four counter chairs in our kitchen (it was a holiday-shortened four day work-week). That memorable event was recorded for posterity and posted on the internet here. I've checked the Guiness World Record site in the amazing feat section, and, inexplicably, she isn't listed. Now, though, I'm going to write the Guiness people and insist on her inclusion because she has broken her record. Five jackets on four chairs!!!


Five Jackets on Four Chairs - 13 August 2006

Water Bug

The family was over Sunday to celebrate the birthdays of two nieces and a nephew -- Olivia, Jessica, and Jason. Another niece, London, would have been celebrated, but she was away visiting grand parents. I rode forty miles early then spent about three hours preparing the house and yard for the party. I was exhausted all day, so I didn't take as many birthday photos as I usually do. In fact, I took none. I did take a few shots of Jessica in the pool. She was first in, last out, and went in and out all day. She's a real waterbug.


Jessica


Waterbug

Denise and the Humpback Whale

While I was recently in Carmel, CA, the local newspaper reported a humpack whale carcass was going to be left to rot where it washed ashore to allow scientists to study the process. I immediately wanted to go photograph it, but didn't get around to it until after Denise joined me in California, several days later. It wasn't high on Denise's agenda of what to do while on the West Coast. After the experience, she was glad she had witnessed something few people on earth ever get to see in a lifetime. The beach was at Andrew Molera State Park in Big Sur, CA. From the parking lot near Highway 1, it was about a three kilometer walk through a couple of beautiful meadows and the riverbed of the Big Sur River to the whale. Thankfully, the wind was howling on the beach, and the stench of rotting flesh wasn't that bad and was only discernible if standing down wind. Here is a shot of Denise with the whale. I'll post others later.

Andrew Molera SP - Big Sur, CA - 01 July 2006

Football-shaped globs

In the learn-something-new-everyday category, I now know what a quenelle is. Sort of, anyway. We dined last evening with friends at the excellent Uptown restaurant, Lilette. I couldn't resist this description from the dessert menu: "Quenelles of goats cheese crème fraiche with poached pears, pistachios, and lavender honey."

On inquiry our waiter told me that a quenelle is a "football shape," and that these were "globs" of goat cheese. Sounds appetizing, right? In spite of her description, I ordered the dish, and it was delicious, decadent and, well, primarily two football-shaped globs of goat cheese. Nevertheless, lacking all confidence that the waiter's definition was correct in any formal sense, I turned to Google later in the evening.

The most complete information comes from a private web project by hobbyist in the etymology of words, who offers this:

"The definition is found in most dictionaries: 'A seasoned ball whose chief ingredient, meat or fish, has been reduced to a paste' is what the OED says. The American Heritage Dictionary gives this definition: 'a ball or dumpling of finely chopped meat or seafood bound with eggs and poached in stock or water.' Each definition provides slightly different information. Neither is incorrect, though the OED is more correct with its suggestion that the meat of fish has been reduced to a paste. Anyhow, now that we know what a quenelle is, where does the word come from? Surprisingly, the OED says it is a mystery, but other sources claim that quenelle derives from German Knödel 'small dumpling', the Middle High German diminutive of knode 'knot', presumably referring to the shape of the quenelle. The Old High German form was knodo, cognate with Latin nodus and English node. The Indo-European root would then be *ned- 'to bind, to tie'. Surprisingly, English knot is not thought to be related, but comes instead from a Germanic root meaning 'round lump' versus 'something tied'. Some sources do believe that Knödel and noodle are related. Italian gnocchi 'dumpling' comes from the same Indo-European root, *ned-."

For my main dish I had the day's special, a Lane Snapper. The football-shaped-glob lady, told me that "Lane Snapper was like a Red Snapper but from smaller bodies of water, a fresh water snapper." That didn't sound right to me either. So, I learned a second new thing yesterday: Lane Snappers are very much like Red Snappers and inhabit the same waters.

Even though we didn't have the most well-informed waiter, our experience at Lilette was, as it has been consistently, an excellent one.

Brood Parasitism

I've recently noticed our local Northern Cardinals carrying nesting material into a Japanese Magnolia in our yard. This morning, Denise told me she saw a cowbird hanging around the tree. I climbed up and found a nest with three eggs, two brown-speckled cardinal eggs and the solid blue-green egg of a Bronzed Cowbird.

Cowbirds are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other species. A favorite host species is the cardinal. The common species in the U.S. is the Brown-headed Cowbird. Much less common, the Bronzed Cowbird is largely restricted to Mexico and Central America, but they occur in small numbers in the states bordering Mexico and in Louisiana.

Cowbird eggs tend to hatch ealier than the eggs of the host species, and cowbirds usually target smaller species as hosts. So, cowbird nestlings out-compete the nestlings of the host. I've been called several times by confused friends who had witnessed a cardinal feeding a larger black bird. Although similar in size to the cardinal, cowbirds also lay eggs in the nests of much smaller species, such as vireos, warblers and wrens.

While posing no threat to the abundant Northern Cardinal, cowbirds do put pressure on the populations of less common species, especially certain neotropic songbirds. Cowbirds' preferred habitat is open grasslands and fields, and Brown-headed Cowbird numbers exploded with the removal in the 19th century of the forests of the eastern U.S. Not wanting to see my local cardinals lose a brood, I removed the cowbird egg. Here it is:



I moved the egg from the cooler cloth, on which it appears above, to a warmer, more neutral poster board, and it rolled off the table and broke.

Frog and toad chorus

With all the rain we've had these last few days, there have been numerous frogs and toads calling each night in our yard. Tonight I heard at least three species, and located a squirrel tree frog in our back yard. It's the first time I've actually identified this species. It looks similar to the green tree frog, and I've probably mistaken the squirrel tree frog for the official LA amphibian (green tree frog) in the past. The calls are quite different. Here are two sites which have audio files of Louisiana frogs and toads: LA D of W&F; National Wildlife Federation.

The other evening, gulf coast toads calling in our front yard were nearly loud enough to prevent me from sleeping. A third species I have not yet identified sounds like a cricket: a soft, two note squeak that usually comes from under the house or in the garden against the house.

Forest Find

On our recent trip to California, we stayed at the Carmel Valley Ranch Resort, a rather tony, gated conglomeration of condominiums and houses sprawled all over the hillsides of Carmel Valley, about 10 miles from the coast. There was much green space, mostly oak covered hills. I explored them on a couple of mornings, and found this deer skull.




Here's another view of the skull.

New Blog: SULASULA

A new blog is born!