Angelina Jolie Has a Vital Voice

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/capital/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1207718490292830.xml&coll=1
(Universities and Schools need help in New Orleans)

Bill aims to launch rebuilding of SUNO
State would initiate $30 million fund
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
By Bill Barrow

BATON ROUGE — Southern University System officials and a New Orleans lawmaker are asking for an infusion of state cash to launch the rebuilding of Southern University at New Orleans, where most of the school’s 11 buildings sit virtually unchanged since the city was pumped dry in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Rep. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, with the support of system President Ralph Slaughter and SUNO Chancellor Victor Ukpolo, has introduced House Bill 961 to create the SUNO Rebuilding Fund with a $30 million opening balance.

“We’re not talking about a private school” with endowments and other resources, Peterson said. “There is no other place for a state university to go than to us. . . . I’m begging for somebody to pay attention. Why would this take so long?”
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Jerry Jones, the state facilities director, said the real culprit on the delayed recovery is continued disagreement between Louisiana officials and the Federal Emergency Management Agency over how much aid is due the campus.

With an enrollment 2,847 students — about 80 percent of its prestorm population — Southern is operating out of 45 modular buildings on its Lake Campus, on Press Drive. Of the 11 flooded buildings on the former main campus in Pontchartrain Park, Ukpolo and Slaughter told lawmakers that only the first floor of one structure provides usable office space.

The rest of the buildings still need mold remediation and repairs.

Jones said it will take at least $45 million to rebuild the main campus, which would include millions of dollars in improvements that are not eligible for reimbursement under FEMA’s Public Assistance program for government entities.

FEMA pays only to restore a structure to its predisaster condition.

Jones said he could not immediately offer a breakdown of how much he thinks FEMA should pay for SUNO, where buildings took on between 1 and 7 feet of water. But he said FEMA is offering about a third of what the state thinks it is due.

Jones said Louisiana Recovery Authority Director Paul Rainwater and members of the state’s congressional delegation are pressuring FEMA to reconsider its damage estimates.

Slaughter and Ukpolo, meanwhile, told lawmakers that the FEMA dispute will not matter without Peterson’s bill because otherwise the school would not have its own money to finance projects before seeking federal reimbursement.

bdj @ 04/15/2008 at 8:14 am

Thanks for the news this beautiful day. I look forward to your posts when I get home from work. Hope you have a great day. :)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/11/bfgeeks111.xml
(Entire article at link)
Why geeks are the new action heroes
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 11/04/2008

As Hollywood’s most bankable tough-guy heroes are pensioned off, they are being replaced by a very different breed of young actor. John Hiscock reports

Instead of dashing, swashbuckling heroes who can beat up and outshoot any bad guys who come their way, the new breed of action star is more likely to be skinny, awkward and studious-looking.

advertisement”Now the geek is god in Hollywood,” declares the veteran publicist and Oscar campaigner Tony Angellotti. “Every generation redefines its heroes and the heroes of today are slight of stature and geeky looking.”

That is why this summer’s big-budget blockbuster movies are being driven by less-than-muscular actors such as Shia LaBeouf, Emile Hirsch, James McAvoy and the as-yet unknown Ben Barnes.

http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/austinmovies/entries/2008/04/16/the_giving_tree.html
The Giving Tree

(Sweet, touching story)

By Chris Garcia | Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 02:55 PM

As you can tell with all those kids and ambassadorial trips, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are dedicated philanthropists.

So it’s not so surprising that Pitt, in the Austin area shooting “Tree of Life,” granted a child a Make-A-Wish Foundation wish. With help from MAWF board member Barbara Ann Allen, the wish child got to meet Pitt and, according to Allen, “act in a scene with him.” Pitt and producer Sarah Green “provided the wish child with two days of filming and being part of the cast on location.”

Smiles all around.

http://blog.nola.com/susanlarson/2008/04/james_nolans_stories_capture_w.html

(The Pope visit to America- Entire article at link)

The pope also commended Americans for their generosity following the terrorist attacks of 2001, the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. He ended his remarks to the church leaders by offering a chalice as a gift to Archbishop Alfred Hughes of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/library-145/1208323380243710.xml&coll=1
(Entire article at link)
Our music, architecture are linked
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Lolis Eric Elie

It seems like little more than a quaint coincidence: some musicians are also carpenters.

You could easily imagine similar kinds of connections that are more whimsical than substantive. And, were you so inclined, you could have a panel discussion on each of them.

But the discussion and musical performance slated for Friday are more than coincidence.
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Our music and our architecture are both emblematic expressions of the soul of our city. That’s well known. What is less known is that the building trades have been important to the development of our music.

Some musicians might claim that their sense of structuring a song, or a solo or an ensemble is somehow influenced by architecture. It is far more common for musicians to say that work in the building trades allowed them to put food on their tables on a more regular basis than would have been possible if music gigs were their only source of income.

Neighborhood sound

There are lots of inaudible factors that have made our music possible. For instance, I once wrote a column detailing the ways in which the urban plan of old New Orleans was crucial to the maintenance of second-line culture.

There are no second-lines outside the older sections of the city. This is true despite the fact that many musicians have moved to these areas in recent decades.

The design of those newer neighborhoods, the distance between houses, the prevalence of automobile traffic, the lack of mixed use planning, all these factors work against formation of parades.

Joining forces

http://blog.nola.com/susanlarson/2008/04/james_nolans_stories_capture_w.html

James Nolan’s stories capture who we were — and are
Posted by Susan Larson, Book editor, Times-Picayune April 16, 2008 4:43AM
Categories: Book Reviews, Living: Books

Poet, translator, essayist and fiction writer James Nolan has said that when he writes about New Orleans, sometimes he has “to tone it down a bit,” that he might be called “a reverse magical realist.” That’s how rich the city is in stories and characters. Some of those characters — and you will recognize them immediately — work their magic in Nolan’s first collection of short fiction, “Perpetual Care.” They will make you laugh and they will break your heart, as only a true New Orleanian can. (And those San Franciscans, featured in two stories, can hold their own as well.)
Poet, translator, essayist and fiction writer James Nolan latest work, ‘Perpetual Care.’

In the title story, there’s Miss Estelle Arceneaux: “As the last of the Arceneaux women who could both walk and see, she took her family duties seriously.” What a surprise Miss Estelle finds in a cemetery an Easter Sunday — the sound of a voice coming from inside a tomb. Of course, it will be the voice of WWOZ FM. The circus that ensues is vintage New Orleans, complete with a cameo by a Transylvanian writer and faxes to the pope.

One of the most moving stories is “Why Isn’t Everything Where it Used to Be?,” which features Miss BouBou Glapion, “the first person in her family to purchase an automobile and learn to drive.” Her retirement to River Ridge is not what she imagined, and she has reached a future “both longed for and dreaded,” where things are “ultra-modren.” When she takes a trip into the city, she finds it irrevocably and tragically changed. “Take it back, I don’t want it, take it back,” she thinks, surveying a Canal Street — and a reflection in a window — that is unrecognizable.

In true New Orleans fashion, death is all around in these 16 stories, but so is teeming life. Three of the stories begin in cemeteries, and the devil — beating his wife or flexing his biceps — is lurking somewhere. Catastrophe and humor go arm in arm. Only in New Orleans might one find the “La Vie En Rose Construction Company” repairing “toe-mice” damage, or a retired funeral director in active protest against the vampire tours that interrupt the peace of his dream retirement in the French Quarter.

The city’s long conversation with itself has never been louder or more insistent than it is in these stories, with all their exuberance, despair and wit. In the only post-Katrina story, “What Floats,” a man returns to the city after the storm only to confront the most painful memory of his past: the death of his mother. Confronted by utter desolation, he wonders, “What in the world must it feel like to stay on in the pure abandon of this place?”

And thanks to James Nolan, we know. We know why we stay.

Book editor Susan Larson can be reached at slarson@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3457.

http://www.iberkshires.com/story/26782/That-s-Life-Love-Is-All-We-Have-to-Give.html
(Beautiful story. Entire article at link)
By Phyllis McGuire - April 16, 2008
iBerkshires Columnist

A misunderstood Brad needed understanding love.
I enjoyed the film “A River Runs Through It” when I saw it in a movie theater in l992 — and developed a crush on Brad Pitt.

Since then, through the magic of TV and videotapes, I have watched that film many times, not only because I “love” Pitt but because I like the moving story and the spectacular scenery as well. “A River Runs Through It” was nominated for three Academy Awards and won an Oscar for cinematography.

In the film, Pitt plays the role of Paul, a rebellious free spirit whose behavior is of great concern to his father, a Presbyterian minister. When Paul meets a violent death, his saddened-but-accepting father delivers a sermon that tugs on my heart. As I remember it, it goes:

“It is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or more often than not the part we have to give is not wanted, and so it is those we live with and should know who elude us, but we can still love them … love them completely without complete understanding.”

Those words came to mind one day when my daughter, Jennifer, and I were talking about raising children. Now that Jennifer is the mother of two teenagers and is well aware of the complexities and responsibilities innate in motherhood, we have much in common as parents.

Right Thing To Do

“Though I love you and your brother more than anyone else in the world, I did not believe in treating you in exactly the same way when you were children,” I said. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, as they had different needs and desires.

One example of these differences revolved around clothes. My son, Christopher, three years Jennifer’s senior, was content wearing sneakers I bought in a variety store in our neighborhood. His general lack of interest in fashion, etc., worked in my favor - moneywise - as the generic brands he did not mind wearing were cheaper than famous name brands.

Whatever I saved on inexpensive apparel for Christopher, however, was spent on Jennifer, pleasing her fetish for brands popular with her peers.

But, as children are wont to do, Jennifer best remembers the time her father put his foot down and said “No” to her entreaties for a pair of jeans that cost more than three weeks’ groceries. “Guess who is not getting ‘Guess’ jeans?” he had said

Christopher and Jennifer were also unlike as far as their attitude about education. He was an eager learner and an avid reader. He always earned excellent marks, yet was never satisfied that he had studied enough for a test or had done enough research for an assignment.

http://www.makeitrightnola.org

Good Morning all. New Orleans is a special city and holds deep memories and joy. It is full of history, culture, food and music. That is why it does my rusty heart good to see Brad Pitt and others help in rebuilding this great city. Have a great day and make it a MIR day. Thanks for a great web site and your indulgence Just Jared. Peace to all.

bdj, Thanks for the articles and links this morning. Hope the day is good for you. :)

Why is her face still so thin????
Will she never be beautyful again?