Mardi Gras

Today is Fat Tuesday, the last day to eat, drink, and make merry before Ash Wednesday and the start of the Lenten fasting season. In most Catholic countries (and in Louisiana, which might well be a Catholic country) this is a holiday called "Carnival" or, in the U.S., "Mardi Gras", where the only people who are at work are the people selling food and drinks to the revelers. And, I might add, this is an official Louisiana state holiday -- don't try to contact any Louisiana state or local government offices today. They're all closed.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans today is but a shadow of what it was before the Federal Flood in the aftermath of Katrina destroyed most of the city, but it is still "the" U.S. Mardi Gras celebration. For all those who made your way to New Orleans today, cheers.

-- Badtux the Louisiana Penguin

Ike didn't just hit Texas

Ten to fifteen feet of water also slammed into the South Louisiana coast as Ike sideswiped Louisiana on its way to Texas, with flooding in some areas worse than Katrina and Rita.

An interesting article about Terrebonne Parish. Terrebonne Parish is a parish that is literally disappearing -- over the past forty years, most of the parish has gone from being above water, to being below water, thanks to the oil companies dredging canals into the swamps that let salt water in to kill the plants that kept the swamp together, but most importantly because they pumped out all the oil from beneath the parish and then the ground subsiding into the now-empty basin along a slip fault that was previously undetected. The few places still above water are only three or four feet above sea level and are close to flooding even with a normal high tide. But it is also the last holdout of the swamp Cajuns, and the swamp Cajuns have little liking for anybody telling them they can't stay. So they live on their boats, or they raise their houses higher on stilts, and one day they'll all be washed away...

-- Badtux the Louisiana Penguin

Washing away

I just spent a couple of hours looking at satellite pictures of what used to be Terrebonne Parish in Louisiana. I remember... but it's all water now. All the land except narrow strips, all the land I remember south of Houma. It's all water now. The land... it's just gone.

But the music remains. For a while, anyhow.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin