Ain't Nobody can say dat dey gonna beat dem Saints

The collective outpouring of joy on the streets of New Orleans last night was enough to make a sportsfan out of even a football-hating curmudgeon like me, someone who had barely registered that the Colts had left Baltimore and moved to Indianapolis. And that happened all the way back in 1983. But it doesn't matter what city the Colts claimed to represent, because the New Orleans Saints crushed them underfoot like a tired string of Mardi Gras beads on Canal Street.

As people have been saying for weeks in this town, "this is about so much more than football." For this crime-ridden, flood-damaged, third-world outpost on America's southern shores, the Saints' first-ever Superbowl appearance was a gigantic unifying event, bringing together races, classes, uptown and downtown, hipsters and hip-hoppers, all happy to invest their aspirations and self-esteem in the one common goal of victory. Saints banners and bumper stickers and tee-shirts were everywhere. Revelers wandered the streets, charging up to total strangers and screaming "WHO DAT?" (say dey gonna beat dem Saints?) at the top of their lungs. I've been Who-datting right back; I hope that's the etiquette. (Tulane Geographer and Brooklynite transplant Richard Campanella told me "I've been Who-datted in the street by some really beautiful women. I still don't know quite how you are supposed to deal with it. Do you say 'oh, nice to meet you, I'm Richard?'")

The feeling that the flood might have destroyed the essential character of New Orleans, which now has 100,000 fewer residents than it did before Katrina; a sense that the city had transitioned from tourist stronghold to terminal aid-recipient; the blighted, blown-out buildings and the still-wasted neighborhoods and the ineffectual local government and the high crime rate: all of these things, these problems, were as nothing before the blinding light of the onward marching soldiers, the torches held high by the crusading Saints, going all the way to Miami. That essential and eternal New Orleans jazz-gospel classic, "When the Saints go Marching in," which I listened to over and over as a child on scratchy old Preservation Hall albums, took on a deep, city-wide resonance. It became the hymn of a wounded people rising back from the mud and slime of the Mississippi Delta muck to reclaim New Orleans' place as a proud and great American city. Every band of every musical persuasion played it in clubs in every corner of the city.

The NFC Championship victory at the Superdome finally redeemed even that imposing chunk of architecture for the city. Synonymous after Katrina with violence, hunger, thirst, and the abject failure of the Federal response to the flood, the massive stadium had become a representation of loss and losers, poverty and squalor, hardly associations a city wants its football palace to conjure. But hours after the Saints beat the Arizona Cardinals there two weeks ago, the cleanup crews had to beg the partying fans to pack it up and go home, as if the people of New Orleans had decided symbolically to reinhabit and rebrand the building they had once fled to as homeless, soggy refugees.

In Bywater, where I watched the game, people poured out onto the sidewalks after the final whistle, popping champagne corks and Roman candles under the yellow streetlights. On Louisa street, a brass band immediately started playing, and the road filled with joyous dancers. Even the police, reviled here thanks to a reputation for immense corruption, got a rare thumbs up. One patrol-car passing by broadcast a "Who Dat!?" over their megaphone growler. "That might be the best thing I've ever heard," said a young woman on the streetcorner, basking in the afterglow.

Unifiers Soul Brothers Hair Styling Tonsorial

 

On North Claiborne, in the 7th Ward, New Orleans

  

 My hair is getting awfully wild and woolly, so I've been scouting for places to get a trim.

  

 

"THINK: If you are following a God that looks like someone other than you, then you are a slave to the one that he looks like."

It's officially a kidnapping...

In more than fifteen trips to Haiti over the last twenty years I have experienced a lot of heartbreaking moments, but most difficult to bear of all was a brief stop in the remote countryside on the way back from Pestel, a little-visited town far out to the west of Port-au-Prince, in about 1994. I don't remember why we stopped, exactly, perhaps just to try and buy a cola. We were a film crew, a car full of blan, as foreigners are always called. As often in rural Haiti, just the simple fact of being in a car in that place meant that we were people of incalculable wealth and privilege. At the end of our short visit, as we were getting back into the vehicle, one of the women we had chatted with came running out to us, with her newest-born baby in her arms. She thrust the child, perhaps a year old, through the driver's-side window. "Please take him," she begged. "Take him home with you to America, and give him a life. We have nothing here for him." We protested that it was impossible. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was tearing up. We said we hoped that there was a better future in store for them. We did our best to wish them well, and we drove on.

If you interpret this tragic anecdote as meaning that Haitians don't care about their children, then I'm afraid you are someone who needs to expand your mind and try and come to terms with how brutal and difficult life is when lived in a state of eternal poverty. Nothing is more sacred in Haiti than the "ti moun," the little children. In Haitian culture, even more than in our own, the innocence and life of the small child is to be safeguarded at all costs. Grownups will starve to let the little ones eat. Imagine, if you can, the supreme sacrifice required of a mother to try and seize, in one terrible moment of opportunity, a better life for her own baby, knowing full well that she may never see it again. It is almost too terrible to contemplate.

It is in this context that the ten Idaho baptist kidnappers caught at the Dominican border with thirty-three underage Haitian children should be prosecuted. In Haiti, not, as some have proposed, in the United States, where the religious right will make a mockery of any trial. It isn't difficult to picture what happened. These misguided evangelical zealots, so arrogant in the certainty of their own spiritual superiority, are probably not unlike many missionaries I've met over the years in all manner of third-world hell-holes, marketing their one true God to starving people. I'm sure they believed they were doing a great thing. In fact, it seems they were so certain that they were doing a good thing that they were willing to lie and dissemble to accomplish their goals. They claimed the children were orphans. This has proved not to be true. They claimed the children were not to be put up for adoption, a contention contradicted in the very first paragraph of their rudimentary mission statement, linked in Marc Lacey's New York Times article about their indictment, below.

Certainly they went around town painting a pretty picture of their hypothetical new orphanage in the Dominican Republic. In the NYT article Marc Lacey reports that "several of the 33 children had at least one living parent, and some of those parents said that the Baptists had promised simply to educate the youngsters in the Dominican Republic and said the children would be able to return to Haiti to visit their families." (It seems to me that Lacey's failure to directly quote any of the parents involved should be grounds for him to be recalled and reassigned to reporting on bowling matches, but maybe that's why I'm not an editor at the New York Times. Imagine for a moment that thirty-three American children had been kidnapped, or absconded with or whisked off or whatever you choose to call it. How long would it take the major media to locate their parents and barrage us with quotes? Does Mr. Lacey think the Haitian parents are incapable of explaining how this all came to pass?)

One nasty thing about this whole story is that well-meaning people who might otherwise consider adopting actual Haitian orphans, without any religious strings attached, will now think twice about getting involved. But the Idaho baptists are driven by a noxious agenda, and they should be punished; their primary interest is in attaching those very strings. According to this article in the Associated Baptist Press, the saving of souls through adoption is now a "movement," and one which might be damaged, "given a black eye," or made the object of "derision" in the wake of this mass abduction. No kidding. When you let your evangelical zeal for promoting your own faith go against the sanctity of the family, universally fundamental to all the cultures of the world, it is time for a major rethinking of your belief system.

I know it is a cliché of political correctness to turn the tables in these scenarios, but let's imagine for a moment what the reaction would be in middle America if after hurricane Katrina a group of well-meaning vodouists from Haiti had come over to New Orleans and gathered up a couple of dozen stray and desperate children before setting sail for their home island. Should we be surprised that Haitians are outraged? Marc Lacey leads his story by saying that "the case has become a flashpoint for Haiti’s fears of foreign encroachment." That sounds like a more than reasonable reaction to me.

Demand Accountability from the Recipients of your Haiti Aid Donation

Often, our desire to feel better about ourselves drives our decision to make gifts to aid organizations and other kinds of charities. Having written the check, or clicked the shopping cart button, we relax into a feeling of self-satisfaction. Instead of basking in our good deed, helping in crises like that unfolding in Haiti today demands that we also aggressively follow-up with aid organizations to make certain that they are actually performing their function and spending our money wisely. Charles Arthur of the Haiti Support Group just sent out this letter he received from Haiti. Don't weep after you read it, get angry.

Just received this email from Ryan McCrory, co-director of the Haitian Sustainable Development Found.
What an outrage!
Charles
__________

Hello tout moun,

It has been an interesting experience sitting here in Port-Au-Prince being part of a coalition of 25 non-profit organizations coming together to coordinate the dispensation of food, water, and medical supplies. It hasn't been easy because of the extreme difficulty of passing through the myriad loops that the large NGO's require before anything will be given out. There is a 100 question form that they are passing out to communities to fill out and bring back in order to receive aid. This alone can take a week or so. The questions they ask are very difficult to answer and explaining locations in Port-Au-Prince is nearly impossible. Often Haitians use directions such as, "next to the large tree around the corner from so and so market." The UN wants GPS coordinates because many streets are not marked here and navigating the city has proven to be difficult.

After the one riot that took place in the worst part of the city, they are only sending out non-food items at first to see if the communities can function without a disaster taking place. I understand their concern for safety, but it seems to be quite a long process to go through before any nutritional needs are met. It has been nearly three weeks now and communities all over the place are living on minimal amounts of food, if any.

The Haitian government has been completely bypassed in all of this. The president has thrown his hands up in the air because he is not being included or informed about anything that is happening involving this process of bringing aid relief to the people.

Boats full of goods are being redirected to pass through the Dominican Republic (DR) which is a very lengthy process as well. We actually have a boat waiting in the DR which hasn't received any clearance by the port of Jacmel to debark.

When did it occur that our society got so disorganized? Where paperwork and numbers are given priority over bringing actual aid to the people? Smaller organizations all over the place have given up trying to deal with the larger NGO's and the UN because there still has been scarcely any sign of the goods being distributed. They have warehouses full of boxes and can't organize their dispensation to the country. The small organizations have given up and are buying local food to distribute and/or taking trips to the DR and driving truck loads of good back to the communities they are working in.

I understand that indeed this is quite a difficult project, but how could it be so disorganized? I hope that there will be a reflective inquiry into what made this all such a mess, so in the future aid relief will arrive and actually be given out to the people in a timely manner and (we can) avoid watching the population diminish every day while groups run around like a chicken with its head cut off, staring at piles of papers and computer screens, forgetting that behind the numbers are real people in dire need.

This has been a huge disaster, not only with the earthquake, but with the response. I only can hope that we get it together before more and more Haitians perish because the loads of aid aren't quite ready because they haven't been given the go by those in charge. If this doesn't reflect the depth of our Orwellian times, and not wake us up from this great mess we have gotten ourselves into, I am not sure what will.

Luckily the Haitian people are used to not eating and have a high tolerance for pain. If this was to happen in the US there would have been hell to pay.

With great hope and determination we will overcome this all and Haiti will revive itself.

Thank you,

Ryan McCrory
Co-Director Haitian Sustainable Development Found

The Grand Rue after the earthquake

Georgia Popplewell visits the Grand Rue, so recently the site of the Ghetto Biennale.

American Born

The term "American-born" for me recalls populist, protectionist slogans like "Buy American," used back in the distant '80s to urge people to support Detroit. As if Americans created within the nation's borders were in some way superior to other kinds of people in general, and other kinds of citizens in particular. There is, of course, an actual legal distinction between naturalized citizens and native-born ones; it has frustrated Governor Schwarzenegger's presidential aspirations. But "American-born" somehow makes me think of the more suspect songs in the Bruce Springsteen and John Cougar Mellencamp repertoire.

The notion of citizenship and its meaning came up over the last couple of days because the #haiti twitter feed has been full of links to this article, wondering why the US media is not up in arms about the staggering statistic that 4,000 Americans are missing in Haiti. This figure is comparable to the total loss of life as a result of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and significantly greater than the total loss of life in the destruction of 9/11. For now I'll leave aside the evident and absurd presumption that lost American lives are worth more than others. The original twitterer expressed his fear that the lack of media coverage "is due to racism." By the time Huffpo ran their story about how little coverage these 4,000 deaths have gotten, Andrew Rasiej had either come up with a few extra possibilities ("Is this being under-reported because it's too painful? Is it because of racism? Is it because of lack of information?") or he was misquoted. Either way, I'm afraid his very first tweet nailed it. Certainly visiting diplomats, aid workers and consultants of various races, holding US passports, were among the victims of the earthquake. But the vast majority of the American dead, I'm afraid, will prove to be those of Haitian origin who had navigated the long and arduous legal quagmire that is the United States' naturalization process, particularly the version of it typically confronted by the dark-skinned and the kreyol-speaking. Others will be the sons and daughters of those immigrants, born in America, but not often considered "American-born." No matter what kind of American you are, being of poor, black, and Caribbean origin still diminishes the meaning of your life, and death.

Then, this morning, in the venerable New York Times, I encountered a usage of the "American-born" term quite different from the one I thought I understood. The Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, a wanted fugitive who has stashed himself somewhere in Yemen, was described in both the first graph and the photo caption as an "American-born cleric." Al-Awlaki was allegedly pally with many nasty and misguided people: three of the 9/11 bombers, murderer and renegade army Major Nidal Malik Hasan and, most recently, underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Someone please help me: what does "American-born" mean in this context? I can't see any good reason why the NYT shouldn't simply use the word "American" here, unless this comes from a secret in-house style-sheet code and is meant to let the cognoscenti know that Al-Awlaki renounced his citizenship. Do they describe all Americans resident in foreign lands as "American-born?" Perhaps. Two weeks ago James Thompson was described as "the American-born author, who lives in Finland." But in the Al-Awlaki case it seems to me to be some sort of patriotic face-saving distancing technique, the other side of the populist coin, as in: he may be American-born, but he's no American.... Help me out here, I'd really like to know.

Krewe du Vieux

The parading Mardi Gras revelers of the Krewe du Vieux Carre, generally referred to as the "Crew do voo," marched last night through the Marigny and French Quarter of New Orleans, slinging beads, sexual innuendo, and satirical political commentary along the route of their parade. Unseasonably chilly temperatures inspired some of the fastest parade marching I've ever witnessed, but the climate could not chill the revels. It kind of reminded me of a party in Antarctica.

 

  

  

  

  

Reading: William Christenberry by William Christenberry (Aperture)

Some regular readers of this blog may have begun to wonder whether its temporary transformation into a clearinghouse for updates on the grave situation in Haiti risks becoming permanent. Although I will do my best to continue the flow of Haiti news, especially once the major media has inevitably turned away from what will certainly be a very long story, I want to assure you that I will never abandon antarcticiana's core mission, which consists in large part of posting long and generally unread reviews and remarks about books I'm reading, regardless of their publication date.

It is always a delight to discover a great artist about whom you were totally ignorant, despite the embarrassment. For instance, I keep wondering how a cultured fellow like myself, interested in photography and sculpture, can have lived forty-six years without the name William Christenberry ever having registered in my consciousness? It's mortifying.

On the drive to New Orleans, Laura and I made a detour, a sort of pilgrimage, through Hale County, Alabama, a couple of counties south of Tuscaloosa, off the interstate. It is one of the state's poorest, and Alabama is one of the poorest states. In a couple of arenas Hale County might even be considered an icon of American underdevelopment. Many of Walker Evan's photographs for his depression-era collaboration with James Agee, Let us now Praise Famous Men, were taken there, of malnourished back-country folks living in grinding poverty. Christenberry's work in Hale County, so near his home town, was in part inspired by his discovery of that book when it was reprinted in 1960.

And in the 1990s, Hale County became the favored petri-dish for the late MacArthur genius architect Samuel Mockbee's Rural Studio, a unique effort to put cutting-edge avant-garde architecture at the service of the poor. Our intention was to go and see some of the houses his students have built there, at extraordinarily low cost, for marginalized families more accustomed to living in rotting single-wide trailers than in Dwell-Magazine-like splendor.

I'm now working on a story about what we can learn from Mockbee about architecture, so often an elitist profession (how many in the middle class, let alone the poor, have the resources to hire architects?). It was while researching that I discovered Christenberry, who was born in Tuscaloosa in 1936 and began taking strangely intimate photographs of buildings, trees and objects in Hale County in the early 1960s. A multi-disciplinary artist, Christenberry first began using photography as a kind of notational system to feed his other work, but fifty years into his career, the photograph seems to me to be at the center of his enterprise.

Returning to Hale County again and again, perhaps annually, he has photographed and rephotographed structures and locations and vistas in decline, evolution and transformation. His work also sums collectively into a kind of catalog of vernacular typologies, of farm structures, churches, and collapsing houses. (This links his work directly to the aesthetic and approach of the rural studio. The small green barnlike structure on this page--I coincidentally took this photograph of it before I had come across Christenberry via Google, a day or so after arriving in New Orleans--is one of his favorite and most photographed structures. It is right next door to the patchwork of rusted tin roofs that make up the cladding of an adjacent Rural Studio building).

Christenberry's images are in some ways conceptually similar to the work of other photographers I number among my favorites: Bernd and Hilla Becher, Camilo José Vergara, and Eduardo del Valle and Mirta Gómez. I've written here about the Bechers, whose rigorous (dare I say Germanic?) adherence to consistent, repetitive compositional strictures is essentially clinical. There is nothing elegiac or emotional about their collections of dozens and dozens of water towers, framework facades, or grain elevators. Considering their choices of subject matter as a whole it seems clear that they are interested in artifacts of human endeavor and industry that will one day inevitably fade into obsolescence, but there is no lament to be found in their clean compositions. In Christenberry's work, however, I sense a deep and abiding longing for the landscape. His revisitations are not an exploration of architectural form so much as a plumbing of his own memory and imagination. He returns again and again to Hale County, to dip his bucket into the well of inspiration.

In a project with comparable elements, José Vergara photographs the same stretches of inner-city blight again and again, over years. Camden, Detroit, Newark and Harlem are some of his favorite haunts. He has, I sense, a love-hate relationship with his subjects. He cannot live without his beloved ghettoized landscapes of collapsing, humble buildings and transitional shopfronts, for they are his constant inspiration. But taken as a whole, his photographic catalog of devastation is as incisive a critique of racist political attitudes, unequal resource distribution and failed urban policy as any written sociology. He is little concerned with lighting and composition and the other niceties of the medium, all of which would distract from his rush to capture the enormity of the wasted landscape, lest we continue to forget it, continue to avoid it. No one single Vergara image stands alone as an artistic masterpiece; instead, his work's power resides in its breadth and totality. The website Invincible Cities presents only three of Vergara's subject communities, but contains hundreds of images of each, like a personalized google map charting decades of wanderings in the ghettos of America. There is nothing relaxed, or relaxing, about this, in contrast to the work of Christenberry, which finds the author returning to the spiritual home of his imagined and remembered landscape. In the Hale County revisitations the maniacal creepings of the kudzu are like the fond but suffocating embrace of an old friend. The slowly collapsing sheds and old barns have a humanity to them, a sedate and tranquil mortality. His objects and structures slide over the years into a dignified decline. Their destiny is a gracious death by natural causes.

Del Valle and Gómez are more directly concerned with death and decay, primarily in Mexico. Their multiple photographs of the same modest Yucatecan structures document an evolution from wattle and daub Mayan building techniques to the supremacy of the economical and convenient but aesthetically inferior cinderblock. This work isn't about architectural progress or regression, however, so much as it is a meditation on the passing of culture. (Had the palm-frond huts of Haiti never been "improved" by cement, the loss of life there would have been diminished by magnitudes). The Cuban-born couple also owe something to Hollis Frampton, who once filled a developing tray with Spaghetti-O's and photographed it daily as the strands mouldered, shriveled, and dessicated, an experiment much more sublime than it sounds. In contrast to Del Valle and Gómez, when Christenberry goes back again and again to Hale County, he often chooses different angles and vantage points from which to capture his subjects. Rather than documenting change, it seems to me that he is always trying to find something new in those familiar places, something he missed before.

I'll be leaving New Orleans soon, and I'm thinking I'll pass back through Hale County myself, to see what else I might find.

Let's be clear: I took all the photographs here before I had even come across Christenberry, so at best they are an idiot savant's homage.

Tragedy in the Grand Rue

It seems almost impossible to contemplate that only two months ago I was in Haiti to write about the Ghetto Biennale, an international art event whose very existence I interpreted as representing a moment of comparative optimism for the country. My various blog postings on that brilliant spectacle, with links to some of the media outlets I covered the story for, are HERE.

The Grand Rue was exactly the kind of neighborhood worst hit by Haiti's ongoing series of earthquakes, a place dense with shoddy cinderblock construction, wholly ignorant of building codes. Building after building sprouted ersatz bits and extensions, tacked on into a dense cement patchwork, to house expanding families and country people driven to the city by the neo-liberal plan's near-total undermining of the agricultural sector. It was a claustrophic experience to walk this warren of nerve-wracking construction even without the most distant thought of hurricane or earthquake in one's mind.

BEFORE photo: Chantal Regnault

Is it good news, or bad news, that "only" one of the four Grand Rue artists was killed last week? Louco, whose portrait is just visible atop the right-hand column of this inviting entryway to the Ghetto Biennale, perished. May he rest in peace.

AFTER photo: Leah Gordon

Report from Petit Goave: No Aid getting Through

This is a list of facebook posts by Ed Lockett in Petit Goave, Haiti, which has been devastated by the earthquake. It was emailed to me. Because not everyone has access to facebook, I've reposted it here.

From: Joel Goldstein

These are the Facebook messages from Ed Lockett this morning. The situation
where he is in Petit Goave is deteriorating fast and growing more desperate.
Most recent messages from this morning are first:

Edwin J Lockett Jr Here's an article from the news I just found.
http://newsblaze.com/story/20100118171449zzzz.nb/topstory.html

Edwin J Lockett Jr The longer they wait to help, the harder it will be to
help... and the fewer there will be to help.

Edwin J Lockett Jr I am venting these feelings with the hope of sharing more of
the human element involved here. People here have felt abandoned for years. The
world goes by as they wait to die.

Edwin J Lockett Jr It is unnerving to hear so much noise in the night. All of
this in the pitch black. If not for the Lord, we would perish with fear. Danger
in the streets from gangs and thieves, danger by the water, the mountains
continually rumble, and danger IN YOUR HOME. Where? Where do you go?

Edwin J Lockett Jr The hungrier people get, however, the more they will start
doing anything they need to to survive. There is also an anger boiling that
nothing is being done here in this area. We hear of PAP and all the help there
while we whither away here. There is enough for everyone, but it is clogged up
in politics and poor planning in PAP.

Edwin J Lockett Jr The house is standing but we do not trust it yet. I'm also
very concerned that the longer we go without help, the more people will start
roaming in gangs and looking for food and things to take. Right now the
population is ready to, and will, kill any thieves that get caught. There is no
jail now. Several thieves have been killed in PAP and some in this area.

Edwin J Lockett Jr Imagine a world where taking a nap on your bed has the very
real possibility of killing you. Praying to live through each shower.

Edwin J Lockett Jr We have enough food for ourselves for a few more days. We're
not eating real healthy, just eating. I have yet to get my appetite back. The
kids are all pulling through. The Happy House is still standing with what
appears to be not too much damage. But the continual tremors make it a scary
place.

Edwin J Lockett Jr So where are, the Happy House folks at? We have been helping
a few hundred people by giving rice, beans and medicine. We have sent a
continual flow of money and food to several families, groups, and
neighborhoods. We had a bunch of rice and beans in the school for our feeding
program and have given all of that away.

Edwin J Lockett Jr Each night that goes by, sleeping in the streets, dealing
with tremors, running out of food, no help coming, all of this puts everything
closer to the edge of a population earthquake. There are more and more thieves
at night. Gunfire at night. Dogs everywhere bark all night long. The nights
here are not restful but keep getting noisier and more dangerous..

Edwin J Lockett Jr Eight days after the quake, helicopters pass over head but
do not touch down. No soldiers or police in the streets. People's nerves are
getting thinner because many feel we are not on the help map and we are just
waiting to die. The tremors keep everyone on edge and they feel if death
doesn't come by another earthquake, it will come by starvation.

Edwin J Lockett Jr Here is what is happening on the ground in Petit Goave. The
population, all of us, continue to sleep outside. Food supplies are going down.
Gas is at best very hard to find. When a little comes in, there are long lines
and fights at the gas station. Needless to say the price has gone up
considerably. We get NO news her...e of any kind of a schedule or of plans for
help to start arriving.

Edwin J Lockett Jr Tuesday 8:11 AM Still here. Still waiting. I am truly amazed
at the lack of communication and lack of coordination in this relief effort. We
have a UN base here in town but there is no activity coming out of there. No
police in the streets. A building full of rice was looted right up the street
from here yesterday.

The Mayor of Jacmel describes the Destruction and Challenges

More coverage of the situation in Jacmel from my students at the Sine Lekol, Haiti's only film school:


New Video - "Decembre" - from Ciné Institute in Jacmel from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

An eBay auction with a Conscience

Get your Pat Robertson commemorative voodoo doll here.

We have to take the auctioneer's word for it that all proceeds will go to help Haiti. Also, since these sorts of auctions have a tendency to spiral out of control and often end up being canceled by the 'Bay before they have run their course, I thought I had better post an image:

My dear friend David Belle's report from Port au Prince

via Charles Arthur's Haiti Support Group email list:

Ciné Institute Director David Belle reports from Port-au-Prince:

"I have been told that much US media coverage paints Haiti as a tinderbox ready to explode. I'm told that lead stories in major media are of looting, violence and chaos. There could be nothing further from the truth.


"I have traveled the entire city daily since my arrival. The extent of damages is absolutely staggering. At every step, at every bend is one horrific tragedy after another; homes, businesses, schools and churches leveled to nothing. Inside every mountain of rubble there are people, most dead at this point. The smell is overwhelming. On every street are people -- survivors -- who have lost everything they have: homes, parents, children, friends.


"NOT ONCE have we witnessed a single act of aggression or violence. To the contrary, we have witnessed neighbors helping neighbors and friends helping friends and strangers. We've seen neighbors digging in rubble with their bare hands to find survivors. We've seen traditional healers treating the injured; we've seen dignified ceremonies for mass burials and residents patiently waiting under boiling sun with nothing but their few remaining belongings. A crippled city of two million awaits help, medicine, food and water. Most haven't received any.

"Haiti can be proud of its survivors. Their dignity and decency in the face of this tragedy is itself staggering."
David Belle, January 17th, 2010

Jacmel Film School survives to film Earthquake aftermath

I'm desolated to report that despite the comparative optimism of a message from Jacmel indicating that all students of Sine-Lekol had survived the earthquake, one of my students, Rose Laure Charles, is unaccounted for. She is last known to have left Jacmel on the Tuesday of the earthquake to go to Port au Prince for a doctor's appointment. So far there is no further word.

Nonetheless, there is some good news from Jacmel. The students of the Sine-Lekol, using whatever equipment they could salvage from the wreckage of their facility, have been filming and are providing the only substantive news I have seen coming out of the decimated and now-isolated town.

Here is a report from Simeus Fritzner:

Report from student: Fritzner Simeus from Jacmel from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

And one from Keziah Jean:

The Victims In Jacmel : Keziah Jean reports from the field (subtitled) from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

One of the best things I've ever seen on television

Why I'm not going to Haiti today: "More doctors, fewer journalists!"

From ABC News, via the Haiti Support Group:

"We hear on the radio that rescue teams are coming from the outside, but nothing is coming. We only have our fingers to look for survivors," said Jean-Baptiste Lafontin Wilfried.

Despite the launch of the massive aid operation, there is no sign of heavy-lifting equipment among the rubble even as tons of material and badly needed supplies flooded the airport.

The rapidly decomposing bodies are also posing a major problem.

Port-au-Prince resident Jacky Dodard says corpse disposal has been random and chaotic.

"What is happening is that there is no help in the streets. Personally, I haven't seen any help," she said.

"So everybody is trying to drop their dead bodies somewhere. They don't know what to do with the dead bodies."

Haitian officials have warned the overall death toll may top 100,000 as a result of the powerful quake that ripped across the poorest nation in the Americas.

The International Red Cross said the quake, the largest in the Caribbean island nation in more than 150 years, has killed between 40,000 and 50,000 people.

"If international aid doesn't come, the situation will deteriorate quickly. We need water and food urgently," said Haitian survivor Lucille, still dazed by the scenes of devastation and carnage.

"More doctors, fewer journalists," one man yelled angrily, shaking his fists at a foreign media crew.

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Episcopal Relief and Development

Partners in Health

The Lambi Fund of Haiti

Partners in Health report from Haiti

I'm recopying in full the email I just received from Paul Farmer's Partners in Health NGO. You can donate to them HERE.

The tragedy in Haiti is more dire than we could have ever expected it would be in the hours following the earthquake. But thanks to your support, we're already making a difference.

We received a report from Cate Oswald, one of our staff in Haiti, who traveled through the Central Plateau to Port-au-Prince yesterday with two truckloads of meds and supplies. She described the scene:

"We started seeing destruction from Mt. Cabrit (where big rocks lie in the middle of the road) through Croix de Bouquets where it doesn't seem as bad but lots of walls down. Then the scene gets much, much worse. Tonight, everywhere throughout the city, as we drove by the national plaza, there are thousands of people sleeping outside. While I was in Port-au-Prince, there were still aftershocks being felt. I didn't venture into other parts of the city, but as you all know, koze sa pa jwet menm [Haitian saying literally translated as "this is not a game"]."

The trucks met up with PIH staff, including Dr. Louise Ivers, at the UN's logistics base in Port-au-Prince. Louise was one of two doctors attending at the time, and they had nothing but aspirin until our trucks showed up.

Our leadership is in Port-au-Prince now determining the best location to establish a base of operations. Their assessment includes laying out all the next steps for getting supplies, equipment, and additional staff to the people most in need.

Your donation is already providing critical relief to the people of Haiti - but we have a long way to go. Please tell your friends about the critical work Partners In Health has done in Haiti for more than 20 years, and the urgent support we need right now:

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Another of our Haitian colleagues, Patrick Almazor, reported today that he and several other doctors have set up mobile clinics in the Delmas section of Port-au-Prince.

"We have a lot of fractures," he wrote in an email. "We are running out of meds, I'm on my way to St. Marc [a PIH facility] for supplies."

Importantly, given the patients already flowing out of Port-au-Prince to St. Marc and our other facilities outside the city, we cannot leave our hospitals understaffed.

So we are recruiting surgeons, anesthetists, nurses, and other medical professionals to travel to Haiti in the next couple of days to help with staffing, particularly as many of our staff have lost family members and friends.

There's still so much that needs to be done for the people of Haiti. Your help in spreading the word can make a tremendous impact:

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A handful of our colleagues remain unaccounted for - we continue to have every hope that it is due to lack of ability to communicate via telephone and the lack of electricity for computers, but we do not know.

Our staff has more or less been working around the clock in Boston and Haiti. I am incredibly lucky to work with such a passionate and committed group of individuals who will not stop unless their job /task /mission is done.

Thank you for your solidarity during this crisis,


Ophelia Dahl
Executive Director

I want the US Navy to collaborate with the Cuban medical profession, now

Is it too much to ask that Obama immediately give orders to get a 5,000 bed nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Haiti and have it fully staffed with medical professionals and standing by offshore within a two-minute helicopter flight from downtown Port au Prince?

I don't have the heart to post more of the devastating photographs that are coming out of Haiti. Daniel Morel, who I met in Port au Prince during the politically dark fall of 1993, is the professional photographer I know who has the longest and most intense commitment to the country. He has lived there for most of the last twenty years. Apparently he was on the Grand Rue when the earthquake hit and emails that André Eugene of the Grand Rue artists is alive and okay.

His photos from yesterday are here. But there have been no new ones for the last eleven hours, and aftershocks continue this morning, despite fifteen powerful ones last night. This is likely due to worsening communications infrastructure.

Richard Morse, the proprietor of the beloved Oloffsson Hotel in Port au Prince, and the leader of the band RAM, has a twitterstream here. Much news amidst much repetition can also be sifted from the twitter hashtag #haitiquake. Apparently the Oloffsson Hotel is intact, presumably because it is a rickety old building made of wood, rather than a brittle building made of concrete and block.

From the Jacmel Film School, the Sine Lekol, where I taught sound recording this last September and the year before, reports are that students and staff are safe, but all facilities are destroyed and that the beautiful and historic town has suffered major and widespread damage.

I'm feeling totally impotent at the moment, and wondering what I can constructively do to help. Reading tweets and posting updates is an interesting experiment in comprehending the power and limitations of new instant crowd-sourced media like twitter, but at the moment my attempts to find out what is going on, and even to spread the word, feel onanistic.

What I would say is that this is clearly a massive humanitarian disaster. The non-existent public health infrastructure in Haiti means that yesterday's death and horror will be compounded in the days and weeks to come by outbreaks of cholera and typhoid as ruined buildings and whole neighborhoods remain unexcavated and even unsearched. Within days, and possibly within hours, depending on the "competition" from other news stories, the major media will move on from its coverage of these multiple earthquakes and it is then that we need to maintain our own compassion and sustain our own efforts to assist, whatever they may be.

The following charities have been suggested:

The Lambi Fund of Haiti is helping in rural areas and as a long-term goal addresses the environmental degradation that radically intensifies the destruction caused by natural catastrophes like these earthquakes and hurricane flooding.

Oxfam America.

As the comments point out I neglected to link to Paul Farmer's excellent Partners in Health I have been to his operation in Haiti's Plateau Central and can wholeheartedly endorse, and just gave to them myself.

My father suggests
Episcopal Relief and Development.

UPDATE:
Also, although collaboration with Cuban doctors may be too much to ask, the USS Vinson aircraft carrier is en route to Haitian waters, and two Canadian naval vessels are departing, or have departed Halifax, Nova Scotia, to aid in relief efforts.


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