Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be in New Orleans Saturday as part of Tavis Smiley's State of the Black Union symposium on education, health, housing and other issues affecting African-Americans.

The State of the Black Union 2008 (SOBU) is held today, Saturday, Feb. 23rd, in New Orleans. SOBU is gathering volunteers to work on six projects in the area, Build a Home, Beautify a City Park, Build a Playground, Demolish a Home, Beautify a School Yard & Donate Books, and Build Shelves for Public Library and Donate Books.

Good for her! Not enough is being said or done to help the Gulf Coast recovery. She needs to keep this issue in front of voters. Good for SOBU for doing good work in New Orleans.

For people who are being introduced to George Ohr's pottery on PBS'"Antiques Roadshow", there is much more to the story. George Ohr was known as "The Mad Potter of Biloxi" as much for his unorthodox and innovative pots as for his egocentricity and bizarre appearance.

He won a silver medal at the Louisiana Purchase International Exposition in St Louis in 1904; but he was not able to make a living from his pottery. In 1906 he closed his pottery and started repairing cars and motorcycles. He died in 1918. His pottery was sold in 1960's to a art dealer in New Jersey. Artists, curators, and collectors such as Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg, and David Whitney started buying Ohr's work.

The former mayor, Jeremiah O'Keefe 3rd, donated money and acquired state funding to build the Ohr-O'Keefe Art Museum. After a long fundraising process, world-famous architect, Frank O. Gehry who designed the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, was announced in 2001. The building started just short time before Hurricane Katrina landed. It was delayed for two years in struggling with (who else) the insurance company to pay their claim. Settlement was finally reached so the the building process could continue.

All of the Ohr pottery and other museum ceramics collections including those of Joseph Meyer, Ohr's mentor and father of Newcomb pottery, as well as photographs and archives from the Reed House, remained safe in the storm. Most are in storage at a vault in north Mississippi. A small collection of Ohr pottery is on permanent public display at the Swetman House, a historic house loaned to the museum by the City of Biloxi as a transitional location.

The Ohr-Okeefe Art Museum is the centerpiece of rebuilding for the Gulf Coast two years after Hurricane Katrina. It is designed to be a national even world tourist destination point. It is another in a series of art museums with fantastic architecture that are works of art in themselves.

"The erection of the Ohr pods will serve notice to the people of the Mississippi Coast that the Ohr O'Keefe Museum of Art is alive and well, but maybe more importantly, the raising of the Ohr pavilion will tell the nation and yes the world that the Mississippi Coast is moving forward, rebuilding and moving toward a future that will be the envy of every tourist destination in the country," said Larry Clark, President, Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art Board of Trustees. "We have a unique opportunity to show that a museum can be about the arts and about economic development by being a world-class attraction."

You can see a picture of the Pods on the Ohr-O'Keefe Art Museum page on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...). The museum has a full range of artworks and exhibitions in addition to the Ohr collection. That is only a part of what the Ohr-O'Keefe Art Museum is about. It is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Museum.

Just as an aside: Art is a much bigger tourist draw than college and pro sporting events (including NASCAR) combined. This isn't speculation. It is based on census data, museum and art fair attendance records. Biloxi really understands that art tourism is a major source of economic development. Support your museums! They are economic engines for your communities.

Sherrie

Facing South has an excellent guest commentary regarding the reluctance among leading candidates to make Gulf Coast recovery a central issue of their campaigns, and how debate moderators aren't pushing them to take a stand on the issue.

I just recently saw video on the news. I'm disgusted. Why don't they care about the people?

Read more at Facing South...

Also at Facing South, more background here and here.

Army Corps of Engineers recently released flood risk maps "showed that the improvements made to the city [New Orleans] canals' drainage systems would reduce flooding during a major storm by about 5.5 feet in Lakeview and nearby neighborhoods. "
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But in a report released Nov. 7, Corps scientists estimated that the actual benefit the system would provide would be just 6 inches.

Tami Do, a local resident rebuilt in Lakeview with initial confidence in the Army Corps of Engineers. Now Ms. Do may have second thoughts, "But these kinds of things put doubt back in your mind. If they got this wrong, what else have they gotten wrong?"

I fear our country and government have lost major abilities to maintain and build the necessary infrastructure for 300 million people. What's wrong? Have we outsourced so much of our intellectual property we have no one left to get the work done?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is barring employees from entering thousands of stored travel trailers over concerns about hazardous fumes, while more than 48,000 other trailers continue to be used by hurricane victims in Louisiana and Mississippi.
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Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., accused FEMA of using a double standard, and said it "defies logic" that occupied trailers are safer than those in storage.

"I don't really buy that argument," she said in an interview. "It makes no sense, in that most of these (occupied) trailers are closed up and locked during the day."

Can they get any more callous? Are they trying to increase the number of Katrina victims? The policies of this administration are horrendous. Move along. No problem here. Go shopping.