Hurricane Katrina 6th Anniversary

Today is the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the New Orleans area in 2005.  The Category 4 hurricane submerged 80% of the city with a 20 foot storm surge, killed 1836 people and triggered the events post landfall that have had profound effects on the city of New Orleans, the region, its politics and even affected American history and culture with shows like Treme.  

Hurricane Katrina triggered the largest relocation of African Americans since the Great Migration with Atlanta, Houston and Dallas becoming the biggest beneficiaries of the permanently relocated population.

Its political effects include probably being a factor in the 2006 Democratic congressional midterm landslide, resulted in Texas and Georgia picking up congressional seats and Louisiana losing one in the 2010 reapportionment, delaying Louisiana becoming a majority minority state population wise since most of the people displaced were African American, and as a consequence of losing much of that African descended population, Louisiana becoming more conservative and a reliably red state instead of the swing state it was prior to Katrina's landfall. 

Since I lived in the New Orleans are for two years, I have friends in the area and my godsister still lives on the West Bank with her family, I took it very personally the failures of the Bush misadministration to aid the people of New Orleans in the aftermath of this storm.

Katrina Plus 2

Katrina Third Anniversary


Katrina Plus 4

Hurricane Katrina 5th Anniversary

In addition, the Katrina name was permanently retired by the World Meteorological Association from the Atlantic hurricane naming lists in 2006.

I'm not going to forget the over 1500 people in the New Orleans are who lost their lives to this storm and the others who are still trying to put their lives together years later.

Loving Tremé

I first started hearing about this show after reading Dr. Kaila Story (miss you Dr. K) raves about it on her FB thread one day.  I tuned in and fell in love with it since I spent two years of my childhood living on the West Bank, visited the city a lot during the late 80's-early 90's and have a godsister who still lives in the area.


The show I'm talking about is HBO's Tremé (trah-may) that's produced by the same creative team that gave you The Wire.    It's set in post-Katrina New Orleans and it comes on at 10 PM ET on Sundays.    And good news for you Tremé fans, it has been renewed for a third season.

The series takes its name from the Tremé neighborhood, one of the oldest in the city of New Orleans.   It's the neighborhood where free people of color congregated in the city's early history.    It is also the center of African-American culture and Creole culture and where the brass band tradition was born

Season one was set three months after Hurricane Katrina's August 2005 arrival and began with an 80 minute episode.   Season Two picks up 15 months later. 

Interestingly enough, one of the characters, trombonist Antoine Batiste, is played by New Orleans native Wendell Pierce, who is also busy rebuilding low cost housing in his old Ponchartrain Park neighborhood.

The series is also filled with New Orleans references since the writing team likes to be as accurate as possible.  New Orleans Times-Picayune writer Dave Walker also does a Tremé Explained column in which he breaks down all the New Orleans speak, cultural references, and local locations where the series is shot.

So yep, I'm impatiently waiting for tomorrow's episode.  
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Katey Red On Treme

I've been getting hooked on HBO's drama Treme, which is set in post Katrina New Orleans.

Season 2 action is set ten months after Hurricane Katrina blew through town and has been pretty interesting in terms of following the various characters in the series in addition to associating them with the real life people woven into the story.

This week's episode is entitled 'Does Santa Claus Get the Blues?' and in addition to seeing Christmas post Katrina New Orleans style, one of the real life people that was woven into this episode was sissy bounce rapper Katey Red.

I understand she appeared in a Season one episode and was just following along with the action when I saw the recording studio scene and an artist texting on her cell phone in it as the producers are imploring her to start rapping.

As they panned in had an OMG moment when I realized it was her.




See, told y'all we Black transwomen can do anything we set our minds to. 

Hmm...definitely staying tuned to Treme.