Psalm 103

A Psalm of David.

1 Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:
3 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;
4 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;
5 Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
6 The LORD executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed.
7 He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel.
8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.
9 He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.
10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.
14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
15 As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
16 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
17 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children;
18 To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.
19 The LORD hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all.
20 Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.
21 Bless ye the LORD, all ye his hosts; ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure.
22 Bless the LORD, all his works in all places of his dominion: bless the LORD, O my soul.

'F*** 'em all, f*** 'em all, f*** 'em all'

I don't have much use for The Weekly Standard or them what runs it, but this right here by senior writer Matt Labash -- a piece about New Orleans' struggle for survival, centered on the amazing Rebirth Brass Band -- is a damn fine piece of journalism.

Here's just a bit -- it's a long article -- to whet your appetite:

He is called "The General" because he, along with his cousin Big Sexy, likes to make sure everyone hits his parts (Khabuki, too, is a distant cousin). You'd never know that Andrews is self-taught and doesn't even read music. "Wynton Marsalis might say, 'What the hell are you doin'!'" he jokes. But as The General tells me with a gold-toothed grin, "I can go where he plays, but he can't come on our stage where we play. I play something I made up from my heart, y'know." It puts me in mind of something Louis Armstrong said of snooty Creole musicians when he and Kid Ory blew them off the street during a jazz funeral: "Any learned musician can read music, but they all can't swing."

And swing the Rebirth does, especially live. Not to take anything away from their 13 fine recordings, but the difference between hearing them live and on disc is the difference between making love to a beautiful woman and having the experience described to you. Still, I haven't come to New Orleans to sign on as their roadie. I'm here on official business, to take a snapshot of their city a year and a half after Katrina nearly totaled it.

To that end, I bring to the Maple Leaf show one of my old guides to New Orleans, the pseudonymous Kingfish, of whom I've written in these pages twice before. When I first met him, as the waters were still rolling in after Katrina, New Orleans felt like a live adaptation of the Book of Revelation. People were dying in the streets, the desperate became more so, and the lawless were taking over. A good native son whose family goes back to the city's beginnings, Kingfish was one of the last men standing in his swank Uptown neighborhood. He let our visiting crew of journalists clean out his refrigerator and bathe in his pool, since the hotels had long since evacuated.

Before the gig, I stop by his house to collect him. His kids are snug in their beds, instead of in exile in Florida. And there is nobody sleeping on the couch with a shotgun, as was his looter-protection practice back during the flood. There is one remnant of those days, however. In his living room is a trophy case featuring a pair of beat-up Adidas sneakers. In between running humanitarian rescue missions during the storm, Kingfish lost patience with the looters. When he saw one coming out of a linen store with a swag bag--hardly a necessity unless the thief had to have cool fabrics for summer--Kingfish bore down on him with his shotgun. "Scared him clean out of his shoes," he says. "I just couldn't take it anymore."

As he fixes us some pregame Old Fashioneds, Mrs. Kingfish eyes his pressed khakis and Casual-Friday chambray shirt disapprovingly. "You're going to the Maple Leaf," she says, "Don't you have a black T-shirt or something?" He shrugs his shoulders, in a what-do-you-want-from-me fashion. "I probably have a buttoned-down T-shirt somewhere," he says. While Kingfish plays at being the Uptown swell, like many whites in New Orleans who've benefited from three centuries of cultural cross-fertilization, he has more soul than he likes to let on.

We get to the bar before the Rebirth does, and Kingfish eyes the decrepitude approvingly. "You can't reproduce this," he says. "When you go to Joe's Crab Shack, this is what they try to do." The Meters play on the juke, while the bar is the kind of place where you can have enlightened debates as to who was the better piano player, Professor Longhair or James Booker (the late Booker usually wins, since he used to hold down Rebirth's Tuesday night gig). At the end of the bar is a photo of Everette Maddox, who was the Maple Leaf's "poet laureate," at least until he drank himself to death. Maple Leaf owner Hank Staples says that he's buried out back on the patio. At least half of him is. Seems there was a dispute among his friends, and the rest of his ashes were scattered in the Mississippi River. He died as he lived, and his tombstone testifies: "He was a mess."

It could be New Orleans's epitaph, and some would have it that way. But not tonight. Tonight the band takes the stage an hour and a half late (in the Big Easy, start times are mere suggestions). But the Rebirth makes up for it. The Frazier brothers lay down a thoracic cavity-thumping bass groove, and the rest of the band plays like their horns have caught fire and need blowing out. Empty beer bottles rattle on the speakers, while the band sings and spits and croaks out in frogman gurgles its burning-down-the-house anthem, "Rebirth Got Fire! Rebirth Got Fire!" Both black and white and rich and poor and middle-aged and young bob violently like several hundred buoys on a gathering wave.

Talent buyer Stu Schayot of the Howlin' Wolf club sees a lot of great bands, but tells me there's none like Rebirth: "When those guys play, there's a feeling that there's no other spot on this planet where this moment is happening. And if you're from New Orleans, it's like you own it. It's such a New Orleans thing they've created. My philosophy is: If everybody saw Rebirth once a week, there'd be no crime in this city. You go to a show, and every walk is there. You could be standing next to a lawyer, and a guy from the projects. No class, no race. All energy. Just people in unison, having a good time."

Close to me, I watch a freakishly nimble second-line dancer named Ron "The Busdriver" Horn, so monikered because he drives a bus. He moves as though his joints are made of Slinkys. He is black, but he wants me to meet Chocolate Swerve, his white sidekick and understudy. Swerve recently broke his ankle when the crowd got him over-pumped as he was dancing onstage during a Rebirth show at Tipitina's. ("In cowboy boots," Horn says with some embarrassment. "I laughed all the way to the hospital.")

Still, boasts Horn, "ain't nobody can deal with him," as Swerve replicates his moves. "We're brothers from another mother." Horn met Swerve after the former's house got washed out in the 9th Ward. Swerve was a roofer from out of town--one of the rare ones who didn't try to cheat him. They became thick as thieves, and, well, now look, says Horn, like the beaming parent of an accomplished child.

I ask Horn if this stuff matters, in the grand scheme of the greater disaster that has become his city. He looks at me as if someone had jumped me with a stupid stick. "It's all that matters." After the storm, he says, he left "a wonderful lady" back in Atlanta "who I dealt with for 11 years" because he had to get back. "This," he says, pointing to the Rebirth, "is what makes the culture keep living. I came back for my kids and the culture." Now 41 years old, he used to play trumpet in the same junior high band as Tuba Phil, and his son now plays trumpet in one of the best marching bands in New Orleans. "She's got the house now," he said, speaking of his woman. "But I came back for my culture. I told her if you ever need me, I'm there. But we're fighting here. Ain't gonna give up. I got to help rebuild."

I grab the Kingfish to introduce him, but the second he catches The Busdriver's eye, he exclaims, "Hey baby!" and they embrace. Years ago, Horn used to work for Kingfish. "This is New Orleans," Kingfish explains. "We all know each other." Kingfish doesn't tarry for long, however, as a pretty black girl innocently and wordlessly grabs his hand while the Rebirth plays "Feel Like Funkin' It Up." He spins her around the dance floor, or at least the two feet of it that are available to him. He smiles an isn't-this-place-great smile.

"Why do you think I put up with all the bulls--t?" Kingfish says.

There are plenty who said New Orleans wouldn't come back after the storm. But it's back, all right--back as the murder and mayhem capital of the United States. According to one Tulane demographer, in 2006, there were 96 murders per 100,000 people--68 percent more than in 2004. And 2007 is off to an auspicious start with 37 murders as of mid-March. It's an impressive effort from the bad guys of New Orleans, who are putting up big numbers even though there are fewer people around to kill. The population has dwindled to 191,000 from its pre-storm 467,000. With New Orleans's notoriously overstretched and feckless police force and DA, about two-thirds of the homicides are going unsolved. So many criminals have been released without charge that the term "misdemeanor murder" has gained wide currency.

While city spinmeisters would have it that the murder rate entails black-on-black drug-related killings--which is largely true--they're by no means all that's going on. In just one recent week, a female filmmaker and the Hot 8 Brass Band's Dinerral Shavers (who frequently sat in with Rebirth) were both killed in front of their own children, causing an outraged citizens' march on City Hall.

On some days, the Times-Picayune reads like good crime fiction with a southern gothic twist. There were the star-crossed lovers who met the night Katrina hit, and who ended up cohabiting over a voodoo temple in the Quarter. They came to a bad end when he calmly strangled her, dismembered her, then jumped off the roof of the same hotel in which I'm staying, but not before leaving a suicide note that detailed his handiwork: Police found parts of her in a pot on the stove next to the chopped carrots and more in the oven on turkey-basting trays. "He may have in retrospect seemed a little troubled," said his landlord.

Then there was the bizarre murder allegedly committed by renowned radio talk show host Vincent Marinello, who police suspect shot his wife in the face twice, made it look like a robbery in a parking lot, then rode away on his bike. The tip-off was the to-do list found in his FEMA trailer, with checkmarks beside incriminating tasks like "mustache and beard" and a reminder to get rid of the weapon. He appears to have remembered everything except to throw away his list.

None of this, of course, even addresses the post-Katrina toll or the frustration New Orleanians feel with federal, state, and local officials. Even many of those who voted to reelect Mayor Ray Nagin have taken to calling him "the invisible mayor." And after George W. Bush rejected Louisiana's Baker Plan to help speed rebuilding, and failed to forgive the state the matching 10 percent it must pay for all federal disaster assistance as he did New York after 9/11, and neglected even to mention New Orleans in his State of the Union address, many New Orleanians were unclear during his recent visit, when Bush promised that they hadn't been forgotten, whether he was reminding them or himself.

At a Rebirth show at the Howlin' Wolf one night, I watch as trombonist Stafford Agee takes the mike and improvises a lament in which he name-checks everyone from FEMA to the mayor to the president, with the sing-a-long refrain, "F-- 'em all, f-- 'em all, f-- 'em all." The crowd joins in lustily. It doesn't feel like disaffected youth spoiling for a fight, either. It's not angry, so much as weary: the song of a city that's given immeasurable joy to the rest of the country with its music and architecture and food, but that feels like it's getting erased.

The Katrina Index, put out jointly by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and the Brookings Institution, and which might as well be called the Misery Index, tells the story in numbers. Less than 1 percent of those who've applied for assistance through the state's Road Home Program have received their home-repair grants. Public transportation has hardly improved in a year, with the city still at 17 percent of its buses. Though Orleans Parish schools were a disaster before the storm, with educational standards reportedly below those of Zimbabwe and Kenya, 56 percent of schools remain closed, and 69 percent of child-care centers do as well. The mass exodus of doctors might have to do with the fact that only 12 of Orleans Parish's 23 state-licensed hospitals are still in operation.

Then there are the things that statistics can't measure--the weirdness quotient. One afternoon, I take a spin around the city with another old friend, Joe Gendusa, a tour guide I met during Mardi Gras 2006. When he's not giving the Southern Comfort cocktail tour, he gives the Katrina Disaster tour for the Gray Line company three times a week. Gray Line is a bit of a disaster itself. Before the storm, it had 65 local full-time employees. Now it has four.

I took Gendusa's bus tour last year, but this year, as he drives me around in his car, I'm shocked at how little has changed in neighborhood after mostly abandoned neighborhood: Lakeview, Gentilly, the 9th Ward, St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans East. The only appreciable difference is that most of the debris has been cleared and many of the houses gutted. Now the place has the eeriness of one of those Rapture movies evangelical youth ministers show their charges to scare them into the Kingdom. Except nobody's been called up to Heaven. They're all in Baton Rouge or Houston or God-knows-where. Many old friends and neighbors still haven't found each other.

Tourists who only travel from the airport to the Quarter or the Garden District would never know anything's wrong. But the rest of the city? "It's a disaster, and will be for the rest of my lifetime," the 66-year-old Gendusa says. "You're talking about rebuilding an entire city." As we drive down a boulevard in Lakeview that once boasted large houses and oak canopies, but that is now desolate and destroyed, the lifelong New Orleanian, whose Italian immigrant grandfather helped start the Gendusa bakery empire that invented Po Boy bread, is gobsmacked. As he drives, here's a verbatim transcript of his reaction: "I don't recognize it. Oh my god! Look at this! Oh my god, look at this! Oh Jesus! Un-bel-leeeev-able!" Keep in mind, he sees this wreckage nearly every day, since he is paid, in essence, to feed off the cadaver.

And yet it never ceases to shock him. Nor does the behavior of some of the citizenry. "They're looting FEMA trailers!" he says. "What a bunch of scumbuckets!" He tells a particularly galling story. One woman who'd recently had her mother cremated was saving the ashes until she could have a proper burial at one of the city's storm-damaged cemeteries. "Her trailer was broken into, looted, everything was stolen out of boxes," Gendusa says. "Guess what they stole? Her mother! These stupid asses looted the mother! She's on television crying, saying you can have whatever you want, just bring my mother home. We won't ask any questions, just put her on the steps."

We look at each other for a beat, then both start laughing uncontrollably. Sometimes, there's nothing else to do. I've always loved New Orleans, because life comes at you here faster and stranger and more darkly beautiful than it does in other places. Sherwood Anderson called it "the most civilized spot in America"--a place where there is "time for a play of the imagination over the facts of life." These days, however, the imagination can't keep up.

Dear Diary: Of porn and blue jeans

EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.

* * *

THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2002

Dear Diary,

Well, now. From today's newspaper: Father Bob Kolfrier didn't actually POSSESS the kiddie porn, his lawyer says in entering a not-guilty plea. Now, if he hadn't been wearing SHOES when he said Mass at the Pope FM chapel Tuesday of last week . . . .

Yes, that's right. Said Mass at our chapel. My boss told me FIVE MINUTES before he showed up to say Mass for some station staff and Spirit Fire adult leaders.

You see, "He has been hurting to say Mass for people, and he's in a state of grace." The chancery approved of the whole thing. But it was kept strictly on the QT so reporters wouldn't "hound him."

I understand compassion for the sinner and redemption. I do. But the recklessness of it all is deeply weird, deeply disturbing and deeply shocking. It just WAS NOT APPROPRIATE. If he absolutely, positively had to say Mass for a congregation, do it at somebody's house. NOT AT THE RADIO STATION.

I got the hell out of there and tried not to see him. But he was there eating pizza with the charismatic Spirit Fire folk when I got back and was still there when I left.

Yes, my boss has compassion for priests into kiddie porn but not for lapsed Catholics who show up for Mass on September 12, 2001. Or for the people at what she described as "the grunge Mass" she ended up attending at St. Mark's last Sunday.

Grunge Mass? Yes, people were mostly wearing blue jeans and were just sooooooo lukewarm, don'tcha know?

Psalm 133

A Song of degrees of David.

1 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
2 It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;
3 As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

Izvestia, Pravda & Granma sharpen knives for Hagel

Book it.

The Republican radio counterparts to yesteryear's Soviet "newspapers" Izvestia and Pravda -- not to mention to the still-the-same Cuban party rag Granma -- are about to aim the big guns at one of their own. Again.

Only now, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are going to break out the nuclear bunker-busters for Nebraska's senior U.S. senator, Chuck Hagel.

Hagel used the I-word in public. And "I" is for Impeachment. As in, if President Bush continues to flout the will of the people and their Congress to persist in his catastrophic adventure in Iraq, impeachment is one option for dealing with the problem.

Sounds reasonable. And they're gonna kill Hagel for statin' the obvious . . . .

Here's the deal, according to The Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - With his go-it-alone approach on Iraq, President Bush is flouting Congress and the public, so angering lawmakers that some consider impeachment an option over his war policy, a senator from Bush’s own party said Sunday.

(snip)

GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent critic of the war, stopped short of calling for Bush’s impeachment. But he made clear that some lawmakers viewed that as an option should Bush choose to push ahead despite public sentiment against the war.

“Any president who says, I don’t care, or I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else, or I don’t care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed — if a president really believes that, then there are — what I was pointing out, there are ways to deal with that,” said Hagel, who is considering a 2008 presidential run.

The White House had no immediate reaction Sunday to Hagel’s comments.

The Senate planned to begin debate Monday on a war spending bill that would set a nonbinding goal of March 31, 2008, for the removal of combat troops.

That comes after the House narrowly passed a bill Friday that would pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year but would require that combat troops come home from Iraq before September 2008 — or earlier if the Iraqi government did not meet certain requirements.

On Sunday, Hagel said he was bothered by Bush’s apparent disregard of congressional sentiment on Iraq, such as his decision to send additional troops. He said lawmakers now stood ready to stand up to the president when necessary.

In the April edition of Esquire magazine, Hagel described Bush as someone who doesn’t believe he’s accountable to anyone. “He’s not accountable anymore, which isn’t totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don’t know. It depends on how this goes,” Hagel told the magazine.

(snip)

“We have clearly a situation where the president has lost the confidence of the American people in his war effort,” Hagel said. “It is now time, going into the fifth year of that effort, for the Congress to step forward and be part of setting some boundaries and some conditions as to our involvement.”

“This is not a monarchy,” he added, referring to the possibility that some lawmakers may seek impeachment. “There are ways to deal with it. And I would hope the president understands that.”

AT THE END of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman asked delegate Benjamin Franklin what kind of government he and his confreres had wrought. His response: "A republic . . . if you can keep it."

Unfortunately, when a chief executive starts to behave like a monarch, sometimes there is only one way -- short of bloody insurrection -- to keep it. Keep our republic.

That's the elephant (no pun intended) in the parlor that Chuck Hagel, wounded twice in Vietnam, dares to point out. And all the GOP's Imperial Guard wannabes are gonna make him pay for that bit of candor.

Psalm 131

A Song of degrees of David.

1 LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.
2 Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.
3 Let Israel hope in the LORD from henceforth and for ever.

Psalm 132

A Song of degrees.

1 LORD, remember David, and all his afflictions:
2 How he sware unto the LORD, and vowed unto the mighty God of Jacob;
3 Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed;
4 I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids,

5 Until I find out a place for the LORD, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob.
6 Lo, we heard of it at Ephratah: we found it in the fields of the wood.
7 We will go into his tabernacles: we will worship at his footstool.
8 Arise, O LORD, into thy rest; thou, and the ark of thy strength.
9 Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness; and let thy saints shout for joy.
10 For thy servant David’s sake turn not away the face of thine anointed.
11 The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne.
12 If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for evermore.
13 For the LORD hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation.
14 This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.
15 I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread.
16 I will also clothe her priests with salvation: and her saints shall shout aloud for joy.
17 There will I make the horn of David to bud: I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed.
18 His enemies will I clothe with shame: but upon himself shall his crown flourish.

Of all the governments, in all the countries, in all the world, he had to walk into ours

Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! [a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]

Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.

Captain Renault: [aloud] Everybody out at once!

* * *

AND WE ARE SUPPOSED to be somehow surprised that the man who played so large a role in making torture not "torture" anymore so we can keep doing it to detainees in the "War on Terror" might have lied through his teeth about his role in the firing of "troublesome" U.S. attorneys?

Yeah, right.

From MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - President Bush is standing firmly behind his embattled attorney general despite Justice Department documents that show Alberto Gonzales was more involved in the decisions to fire U.S. attorneys than he previously indicated.

Gonzales said last week he was not involved in any discussions about the impending dismissals of federal prosecutors. On Friday night, however, the department disclosed Gonzales’ participation in a Nov. 27 meeting where such plans were discussed.

That e-mail only added to the calls for Gonzales’ ouster.

Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, said Saturday that Bush continues to support Gonzales despite the latest disclosures.

Bartlett also said he was not aware of any negotiations under way between the White House and congressional Democrats over how current and former Bush aides could provide information about the firings to lawmakers.

At the Nov. 27 meeting, the attorney general and at least five top department officials discussed a five-step plan for carrying out the firings, Gonzales’ aides said late Friday.

At that session, Gonzales signed off on the plan, drafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week.

A Justice aide closely involved in the dismissals, White House liaison Monica Goodling, also has taken a leave of absence, two officials said.

The plan approved by Gonzales involved notifying Republican home-state senators of the impending dismissals, preparing for potential political upheaval, naming replacements and submitting them to the Senate for confirmation.

Six of the eight prosecutors who were ordered to resign are named in the plan.

The department released more than 280 documents, including e-mails, calendar pages and memos to try to satisfy Congress’ demands for details on how the firings were handled — and whether they were politically motivated. There are no other meetings on the calendar pages released between that Nov. 27 and Dec. 7, when the prosecutors were fired, to indicate Gonzales participated in other discussions on the matter, department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said.

Scolinos said it was not immediately clear whether Gonzales gave his final approval to begin the firings at that meeting. Scolinos said Gonzales was not involved in the process of selecting which prosecutors would be asked to resign.

Gonzales told reporters on March 13 that he was aware some of the dismissals were being discussed but was not involved in them.

“I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers — where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that’s what I knew,” Gonzales said. “But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That’s basically what I knew as the attorney general.”

Later, he added: “I accept responsibility for everything that happens here within this department. But when you have 110,000 people working in the department, obviously there are going to be decisions that I’m not aware of in real time. Many decisions are delegated.”

The documents’ release came hours after Sampson agreed to testify at a Senate inquiry this coming week into the prosecutors’ firings.

Asked to explain the difference between Gonzales’ comments and his schedule, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the attorney general had relied on Sampson to draw up the plans on the firings.

“The attorney general has made clear that he charged Mr. Sampson with directing a plan to replace U.S. attorneys where for one reason or another the department believed that we could do better,” Roehrkasse said. “He was not, however, involved at the levels of selecting the particular U.S. attorneys who would be replaced.”

Gonzales has directed the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the circumstances of the firings, officials said. The department’s inspector general will participate in that investigation.

Democrats pounced on the latest revelations.

“Clearly the attorney general was not telling the whole truth, but what is he trying to hide?” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who is heading the Senate’s investigation into the firings, said, “If the facts bear out that Attorney General Gonzales knew much more about the plan than he has previously admitted, then he can no longer serve as attorney general.”

Infamous last words

Before Katrina struck . . . he and fellow researchers had found sagging levees. He enlisted his students to ask the corps about them . . . the agency responded . . . "'These were federal levees built to federal standards and they're not going to fail"' . . . .

THE "TEAM LOUISIANA" REPORT on why the levees didn't hold -- and why New Orleans drowned -- came out this week, and it pretty much told us what everybody but the Bush Administration already knew:

The Army Corps of Engineers screwed up. Bad.

Here are a couple of tidbits from a report by The Associated Press:

The report also said the corps never used a storm surge model released in 1979 by the National Hurricane Center. "If they had, they would have realized that their levee system wasn't high enough for a Category 3 storm at all," said team leader Ivor van Heerden, a Louisiana State University professor, deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center and a corps critic.

Additionally, he said the corps ignored its own models that suggested that the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a navigation channel completed in the early 1960s, would funnel storm surge into St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans.

The corps also should have known two canals would fail when water levels reached 10 feet. Van Heerden said that "a back-of-the-envelope calculation" would have alerted engineers to a problem with one of the canals, and that a soil strength analysis available since the 1950s would have highlighted flaws in the other.

The corps was preparing a response, spokesman John Hall said Wednesday.

Van Heerden said almost all the problems could have been avoided if independent engineers had reviewed the corps' plans before construction started.

Before Katrina struck, he said, he and fellow researchers had found sagging levees. He enlisted his students to ask the corps about them, and the agency responded by saying "'These were federal levees built to federal standards and they're not going to fail,"' he said.

Psalm 101

A Psalm of David.

1 I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O LORD, will I sing.
2 I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.
3 I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
4 A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person.
5 Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I cut off: him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer.
6 Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me: he that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me.
7 He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight.
8 I will early destroy all the wicked of the land; that I may cut off all wicked doers from the city of the LORD.

Why Arabs eat with their right hand . . .

. . . and waiving at someone with your left hand might get your block knocked off.

From The New York Times' Home & Garden section:

Dinner was the usual affair on Thursday night in Apartment 9F in an elegant prewar on Lower Fifth Avenue. There was shredded cabbage with fruit-scrap vinegar; mashed parsnips and yellow carrots with local butter and fresh thyme; a terrific frittata; then homemade yogurt with honey and thyme tea, eaten under the greenish flickering light cast by two beeswax candles and a fluorescent bulb.

A sour odor hovered oh-so-slightly in the air, the faint tang, not wholly unpleasant, that is the mark of the home composter. Isabella Beavan, age 2, staggered around the neo-Modern furniture — the Eames chairs, the brown velvet couch, the Lucite lamps and the steel cafe table upon which dinner was set — her silhouette greatly amplified by her organic cotton diapers in their enormous boiled-wool, snap-front cover.

A visitor avoided the bathroom because she knew she would find no toilet paper there.

Meanwhile, Joseph, the liveried elevator man who works nights in the building, drove his wood-paneled, 1920s-era vehicle up and down its chute, unconcerned that the couple in 9F had not used his services in four months. “I’ve noticed,” Joseph said later with a shrug and no further comment. (He declined to give his last name. “I’ve got enough problems,” he said.)

Welcome to Walden Pond, Fifth Avenue style. Isabella’s parents, Colin Beavan, 43, a writer of historical nonfiction, and Michelle Conlin, 39, a senior writer at Business Week, are four months into a yearlong lifestyle experiment they call No Impact. Its rules are evolving, as Mr. Beavan will tell you, but to date include eating only food (organically) grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan; (mostly) no shopping for anything except said food; producing no trash (except compost, see above); using no paper; and, most intriguingly, using no carbon-fueled transportation.

Mr. Beavan, who has written one book about the origins of forensic detective work and another about D-Day, said he was ready for a new subject, hoping to tread more lightly on the planet and maybe be an inspiration to others in the process.

Also, he needed a new book project and the No Impact year was the only one of four possibilities his agent thought would sell. This being 2007, Mr. Beavan is showcasing No Impact in a blog (noimpactman.com) laced with links and testimonials from New Environmentalist authorities like treehugger.com. His agent did indeed secure him a book deal, with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and he and his family are being tailed by Laura Gabbert, a documentary filmmaker and Ms. Conlin’s best friend.

Why there may be a public appetite for the Conlin-Beavan family doings has a lot to do with the very personal, very urban face of environmentalism these days. Thoreau left home for the woods to make his point (and secure his own book deal); Mr. Beavan and Ms. Conlin and others like them aren’t budging from their bricks-and-mortar, haut-bourgeois nests.

Mr. Beavan looks to groups like the Compacters (sfcompact.blogspot.com), a collection of nonshoppers that began in San Francisco, and the 100 Mile Diet folks (100milediet.org and thetyee.ca), a Vancouver couple who spent a year eating from within 100 miles of their apartment, for tips and inspiration. But there are hundreds of other light-footed, young abstainers with a diarist urge: it is not news that this shopping-averse, carbon-footprint-reducing, city-dwelling generation likes to blog (the paperless, public diary form). They have seen “An Inconvenient Truth”; they would like to tell you how it makes them feel. If Al Gore is their Rachel Carson, blogalogs like Treehugger, grist.org and worldchanging.com are their Whole Earth catalogs.

Andrew Kirk, an environmental history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose new book, “Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism,” will be published by University Press of Kansas in September, is reminded of environmentalism’s last big bubble, in the 1970s, long before Ronald Reagan pulled federal funding for alternative fuel technologies (and his speechwriters made fun of the spotted owl and its liberal protectors, a deft feat of propaganda that set the movement back decades). Those were the days when Stewart Brand and his Whole Earth writers, Mr. Kirk said, “focused on a brand of environmentalism that kept people in the picture.”

“That’s the thing about this current wave of environmentalism,” he continued. “It’s not about, how do we protect some abstract pristine space? It’s what can real people do in their home or office or whatever. It’s also very urban. It’s a critical twist in the old wilderness adage: Leave only footprints, take only photographs. But how do you translate that into Manhattan?”

(snip)

Since November, Mr. Beavan and Isabella have been hewing closely, most particularly in a dietary way, to a 19th-century life. Mr. Beavan has a single-edge razor he has learned to use (it was a gift from his father). He has also learned to cook quite tastily from a limited regional menu — right now that means lots of apples and root vegetables, stored in the unplugged freezer — hashing out compromises. Spices are out but salt is exempt, Mr. Beavan said, because homemade bread “is awful without salt; salt stops the yeast action.” Mr. Beavan is baking his own, with wheat grown locally and a sour dough “mother” fermenting stinkily in his cupboard. He is also finding good sources at the nearby Union Square Greenmarket (like Ronnybrook Farm Dairy, which sells milk in reusable glass bottles). The 250-mile rule, by the way, reflects the longest distance a farmer can drive in and out of the city in one day, Mr. Beavan said.

Olive oil and vinegar are out; they used the last dregs of their bottle of balsamic vinegar last week, Mr. Beavan said, producing a moment of stunned silence while a visitor thought about life without those staples. Still, Mr. Beavan’s homemade fruit-scrap vinegar has a satisfying bite.

The television, a flat-screen, high-definition 46-incher, is long gone. Saturday night charades are in. Mr. Beavan likes to talk about social glue — community building — as a natural byproduct of No Impact.

(snip)

The dishwasher is off, along with the microwave, the coffee machine and the food processor. Planes, trains, automobiles and that elevator are out, but the family is still doing laundry in the washing machines in the basement of the building. (Consider the ramifications of no-elevator living in a vertical city: one day recently, when Frankie the dog had digestive problems, Mr. Beavan, who takes Isabella to day care — six flights of stairs in a building six blocks away — and writes at the Writers Room on Astor Place — 12 flights of stairs, also six blocks away — estimated that by nightfall he had climbed 115 flights of stairs.) And they have not had the heart to take away the vacuum from their cleaning lady, who comes weekly (this week they took away her paper towels).

Until three weeks ago, however, Ms. Conlin was following her “high-fructose corn syrup ways,” meaning double espressos and pastries administered daily. “Giving up the coffee was like crashing down from a crystal meth addiction,” she said. “I had to leave work and go to bed for 24 hours.”

Toothpaste is baking soda (a box makes trash, to be sure, but of a better quality than a metal tube), but Ms. Conlin is still wearing the lipstick she gets from a friend who works at Lancôme, as well as moisturizers from Fresh and Kiehl’s. When the bottles, tubes and jars are empty, Mr. Beavan has promised her homemade, rules-appropriate substitutes. (Nothing is a substitute for toilet paper, by the way; think of bowls of water and lots of air drying.)

NOW I HAVE NO PROBLEM with being environmentally conscious, trying to live more simply, eschewing extravagance -- or even television! -- and all that. But (or should I say "butt") . . .

I. DRAW. THE. LINE. AT. TOILET. PAPER.

'Nuff said. End of debate.

And forgive me if I don't shake hands with Colin Beavan or Michelle Conlin.

Psalm 143

EDITOR'S NOTE: Just in case you forgot, we continue today with Revolution 21's "Psalms for Lent" series.

A Psalm of David.

1 Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.
2 And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.
3 For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead.
4 Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.
5 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands.
6 I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah.
7 Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit.
8 Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee.
9 Deliver me, O LORD, from mine enemies: I flee unto thee to hide me.
10 Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.
11 Quicken me, O LORD, for thy name’s sake: for thy righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble.
12 And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant.

Love in the ruins, Part 2

Remember Phoebe Snow? Well, unless you're middle aged (or close to it), maybe you don't.

Phoebe Snow was The Next Big Thing. Her song "Poetry Man" was all over the radio. She was all over television, too.

Then she disappeared. In the Fox411 column on the Web, Roger Friedman tells us why:

Valerie Rose Laub died on Sunday. She was an astonishing 31 years old. You don’t know who Valerie was, but I’ll tell you: she was Phoebe Snow’s daughter. Valerie was born with such a confluence of injuries in 1975 that no one knew what was wrong. Truthfully, I don’t think to this day anyone ever did figure it out.

Phoebe Snow was 23 years old when Valerie was born. Let’s say that she was as big as Norah Jones, Joss Stone, Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan and two dozen other female pop stars all rolled into one.

She had a huge hit, called "Poetry Man." She had a monster self-titled album. She was the voice of her generation. You can see pictures of her with other stars of the time on her Web site. She was going to be the next big thing, a jazz, pop and R&B singer of singular magnitude.

And then Valerie was born.

As Phoebe remembers it, everyone told her to have Valerie institutionalized. They said she wouldn’t live very long. For a minute, Phoebe gave in. But then she came out of her shock, and reclaimed her child. By then, she owed her record company, Columbia, albums and money. She would never "recoup" as they say. She would always be in debt. She missed sessions and fought with record executives. She wouldn’t tour because she felt she shouldn’t leave Valerie. She declared bankruptcy.

There were occasional signs that Phoebe might make a comeback. All of them failed. She had a hit single with Paul Simon, "Gone At Last." But nothing further came of it. By 1979, she recorded a terrible album for an Atlantic subsidiary. Her career was really, completely sunk.

Two things happened that helped in the mid '80s: Charles Koppelman heard her on TV singing a Bloomingdale’s jingle. He signed her to an album, and it became a minor hit.

"Something Real" should have relaunched Phoebe Snow, but she was so wigged out from life with Valerie by then, it wasn’t possible. Later she won a malpractice suit against the hospital where Valerie was born, and the money made life a little easier. Just a little.

Valerie was 16 in 1991, the year I remember Phoebe announced that her child walked for the first time. It was a miracle.

With no real diagnosis, and no precedents, Valerie was a medical anomaly. Phoebe talked about doctors in Mexico and alternative treatments, but whatever it was, it was a miracle. And that’s the way things have been since then.

Phoebe and Valerie lived in a small apartment in Fort Lee. Phoebe did occasional gigs, and they would sell out. To say she became kooky is a kind of way of putting it. I don’t know what she was like before all this, but life devoted to Valerie was not easy no matter how much Phoebe loved her.

The child's physical deficiencies were severe, and daunting. Her communication skills were a challenge. At this point, as Phoebe continued to care for her child, the mystery of Valerie became almost spiritual. There was no explanation for why or how she had lived so long, except that Phoebe had willed it.

When I heard that Valerie died, my first thought was relief. She had been released into the cosmos, where her beautiful spirit could roam without the encumbrance of her physical deficiencies.

Valerie did and was able to laugh. She had a sense of humor. But she couldn’t share it with many people, just Phoebe, a few close friends and a caregiver. She was warm, she knew and gave love easily and loved to hug people she trusted. If there’s an afterlife, and just for right now let’s say there is, Valerie Rose is lighting up the stars.

GOD BLESS THEM BOTH, mother and daughter. May Valerie Rose dwell in peace in the arms of God, where she will run, and dance, and talk up a storm.

On the Web: Phoebe Snow's official web site

Love in the ruins

Elizabeth Edwards' cancer is back, and it can't be cured. And John Edwards' presidential campaign goes on.

What?

The New York Times fills us in on today's stunning events:

John Edwards, the North Carolina Democrat, said today that his wife’s cancer had returned, but that his bid for the presidency “goes on strongly.”

“The campaign goes on, the campaign goes on strongly,” he said, with his wife, Elizabeth, at his side.

Mr. Edwards said he learned earlier this week that the cancer had reappeared in his wife’s rib cage. He said he and his wife recognized that it was no longer curable, though it could be managed with treatment.

Asked by a reporter whether recurrence of the cancer would cause him to suspend any campaign activities, such as fundraising or travel, Mr. Edwards said no. “We know from our previous experience that when this happens you have a choice, you can go cower in the corner and hide, or you can be tough and go out there and stand up for what you believe in,” he said.

“Both of us are committed to the cause and we’re committed to changing this country that we love so much and we have no intention of cowering in the corner,” Mr. Edwards said.

He said that after the news conference they would leave together for New York and Boston, and then to California on Friday.

Mrs. Edwards said she had the energy to continue the campaign. “I am absolutely ready for that,” she said.

Her doctor said at the news conference that Mrs. Edwards had metastatic, or stage four, breast cancer, meaning that it is an advanced stage that has spread beyond the breast and lymph nodes to other organs. Mr. Edwards said that because the tumor was relatively small and because there was a relatively minimal presence of cancer in other places they were optimistic.

“The bottom line is her cancer is back,” he said. “We are very optimistic about this because having been through some struggles together in the past, we know that the key is to keep your head up and keep moving and be strong.”

“We intend to do exactly that,” he said.

According to statistics from the American Cancer Society, 26.1 percent of patients with stage four cancer live five years or more. By contrast, patients whose cancer is confined to the breast and has not spread to surrounding tissue or lymph nodes have a five-year survival rate of 98 percent.Mr. Edwards said many patients have lived many years, managing their condition in a way he likened to someone with diabetes who rely on insulin treatment.

“I intend to do the same thing I have always done with Elizabeth,” Mr. Edwards said. “‘We have been married for 30 years, known each other longer than that. We will be in this every step of the way together.”

In the hours before the announcement, there had been widespread speculation that Mr. Edwards would suspend his campaign today or withdraw entirely. A few news outlets and political web sites carried what proved to be incorrect reports to that effect before the Edwardses spoke in North Carolina.

So Mr. Edwards’s announcement that he would remain in the race surprised some political insiders, and word of it was relayed quickly across Capitol Hill, with aides telegraphing the news by Blackberry to their bosses. Others crowded around televisions in the House and the Senate, watching Mrs. Edwards speak.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Elizabeth Edwards and the whole family,” Senator Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat who also is seeking his party’s presidential nomination, said in an interview as he walked from the Capitol. “She’s a strong woman of great character and she’s a fighter.”

Mr. Obama, whose mother died of breast cancer more than a decade ago, added: “Obviously, all of us can relate to a family member being sick. I just want to make sure that they are doing O.K. and their family is doing O.K.”

The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, himself a cancer survivor, expressed his support.

“When you have cancer, it’s very important to keep checking,” he said. “She’s being aggressive. She’s living an active life. And a positive attitude, prayers and people you love are always a very good addition to any kind of medicine you have.”

“So for Elizabeth Edwards, good going,” he said. “Our prayers are with you.”

IT'S TEMPTING, AND EASY, to second-guess Edwards' decision to soldier on in the face of a -- sooner or later -- death sentence for his wife of 30 years. But I think it would be wrong.

See, I know a little something about this subject. My wife had cancer. Fortunately, it was a highly treatable form, through surgery and radiation, and so far, so good almost nine years out from her diagnosis.

Here are the steps you go through -- or at least I, as a spouse, went through: First comes the shock. You know how people talk about others "walking into walls"? It's true.

My wife told me the news on the phone. At first, I thought she was joking. She wasn't. And after I hung up the phone, I walked right into a wall.

After the shock comes borderline panic as you start to wrestle with the unthinkable . . . or, more precisely, the unpalatable. Then come desperate prayers. Then a long sitdown with the doctor, who explains everything and offers whatever hope and optimism he or she can.

Praise God, there was reason for optimism in my wife's case.

Then friends and family rally around you as a couple. Metaphysically, it's kind of like being put in your La-Z-Boy, given a warm comforter and being plied with chicken soup and hot tea.

All the while, you're still offering up those desperate prayers. And alone, late at night, when your sick spouse is asleep and can't see you, you cry.

But the funny thing is, when the shock wears off, you quite literally start to feel the prayers of others holding you up and renewing your strength. And, as a couple in this whole mess together, you live.

You live, because what's the alternative? And you live by taking one day at a time. You can deal with today, and you'll deal with tomorrow when it becomes . . . today.

You live, and you love.

And if keeping their presidential dreams alive is how John and Elizabeth Edwards keep putting one foot in front of the other, how they take one day at a time . . . how they go about the business of living, then more power to 'em, God bless their hearts.

Psalm 121

A Song of degrees.

1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
2 My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
8 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

Mother's Best presents Joe Rumore!

Here's a special audio presentation from Revolution 21 -- don't worry, the regular podcast will post as usual Friday. I thought you just might want to hear this . . . a ghost in the machine, as it were.

What it is, is a recording of legendary Alabama radio host Joe Rumore from Oct. 28, 1949, on WVOK, Birmingham. And it's an extraordinary look back 58 years across the tidal wave of change and cultural revolution that radically transformed America.

But you know all that; it's in the last post, The Tale of the Tape.

Click on the button below. And enjoy.

The way we were, 1949

IF YOU'RE an audio freak who's also a history freak -- maybe an anthropology freak, too -- you know it's a good thing when you're at an estate sale, and you find a bunch of old reel-to-reel tapes.

And you know you've stumbled across a very good thing, and maybe an astounding thing, when you find what looks like brown film canisters.

Brush Sound-Mirror tape. Brown metal reels. From the late 1940s, used with some of the very first consumer tape recorders. EUREKA!

I walked away from that estate sale last weekend with several cans of tape. They came from the Sparrow Advertising Agency, 700 Farley Building, Birmingham, 3, Ala. And they ended up here in Omaha, in this old house. Lord only knows how.

The label on the tape-can lid said to "return immediately." I guess not even an ad agency could afford to throw around such a precious commodity, which audio tape certainly was in the 1940s.

After all, Americans knew next to nothing about tape recording until the Army "liberated" a number of the magical machines from captured German radio stations in 1945. Back then, if you wanted to make a recording, you cut a phonograph record or got a newfangled wire recorder.

But neither of those 1940s options sounded half as good as this marvel of German engineering.

For whatever reason -- Sloth? Forgetfulness? A telegram that said "Never mind"? -- no one bothered to return these tapes to Birmingham "immediately." Or at all.

I am so grateful.

THE TAPE LABELS identified the tapes mostly as being 1949 recordings -- "airchecks" in radio parlance -- of Joe Rumore, a popular host on station WVOK in Birmingham. There was Joe Rumore and Jean Foster, who did WVOK's cooking show. There was Joe Rumore doing the morning "Musical Roundup." There was Joe Rumore with "Hi, Neighbor Time," and there was Joe Rumore broadcasting live from the Alabama State Fair.

All sponsored by Mother's Best flour and corn meal.

I was more than a little stunned that these tapes played . . . and didn't break or shed copious amounts of oxide. Just two spices came undone after six decades, which I repaired using about four times the usual length of . . . get this . . . 50-year-old splicing tape I came across a few years back.

Amazing.

Voices from almost 58 years ago suddenly filled my home studio. Voices of people long dead. Ghosts of a way of life -- of a country -- long lost to "progress" and our Cult of the Autonomous Self.

I LISTENED to these ghosts' whispers. Whispers -- that's what they were. Today, we shout; we scream. We mock and we laugh -- at people, not with people.

I listened, and I found myself acutely aware of what we've lost in broadcasting . . . and as a society. WVOK in Birmingham, "The Voice of Dixie," was about public service, homespun humility, professionalism and good cheer. Listening to the late Mr. Rumore is to experience what only can be described as a certain "sweetness," one I almost had forgotten existed on the airwaves once upon a time.

It was so bittersweet -- given what radio, and we, have come to in these times -- to go back 58 years and listen to Joe Rumore, a good man being kind to people over the radio. Back then, listeners were "friends and neighbors." And that's what Mr. Joe was always saying, "friends and neighbors."

Joe Rumore's interjection, "friends and neighbors," was almost punctuation. Maybe an exclamation point.

Radio (not to mention television) does not deal in "friends and neighbors" today. Yesteryear's "friends and neighbors" are today's targets. And that's tragic.

THESE ESTATE-SALE GHOSTS, rising from between the magnetic particles on rolls of mylar tape -- and even paper tape -- also reminded me of the deep, deep contradictions of the South in which I grew up. I was born in 1961, so the Deep South of 1949 wasn't all that removed from the one I remember -- a place of deep humanity and Christ-haunted culture co-existing, somehow, with its demons of racial hatred, violence and intolerance.

Fortunately, Joe Rumore and his studio full of visitors singing along -- on air -- with a gospel record brought back, for me, memories (to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln) of the better angels of the South's nature.

Which, of course, are the better angels of our American nature.

IS IT TOO LATE? Or can these better angels be coaxed to come back and sit with us a spell?

Maybe they could sing along with us to some old gospel records, then retire with us to the porch swing for a cold glass of sweet tea.

* * *

Have I piqued your interest? Here are some websites you can go to:

WVOK Memories

The Life and Times of Joe Rumore

Birmingham Rewound

Psalm 61

To the chief Musician upon Neginah, A Psalm of David.

1 Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.
2 From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
3 For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy.
4 I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever: I will trust in the covert of thy wings. Selah.
5 For thou, O God, hast heard my vows: thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name.
6 Thou wilt prolong the king’s life: and his years as many generations.
7 He shall abide before God for ever: O prepare mercy and truth, which may preserve him.
8 So will I sing praise unto thy name for ever, that I may daily perform my vows.

The latest on Kristy

Well, here is the March video installment chronicling the struggle of Kristy Dusseau back toward health and normality from a two-year encounter with a rare, virulent form of leukemia -- and the aftereffects of her life-saving treatment.

What Kristy has been through, you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. You wouldn't.

And while racking up $5 million-plus in medical bills, Kristy also has lost her home, car, job, etcetera, etcetera.

So, in this Lenten season of alms and penance, go to www.kristyrecovers.com and give what you can, eh?

BY THE WAY, here are the two latest updates from Kristy's brother Rob, posted after he uploaded this month's video.

Saturday, March 17

Well, ironically, as I post this, Kristy is getting readmitted to hospital again. This morning she was overwhelmed with uncontrollable vomiting (like the times before), and they want to keep her for a least a few days to make sure nothing is wrong. The video shows how much better she has been doing, but this is the way it's been for the past three years now. It swings back and forth like an old clock.

Sigh. Every time this happens it breaks my heart a little. I really thought she was out for good this time.

I'll let you know more when I do. Thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers.

Sunday, March 18

My brother and I drove out to spend the day with her this afternoon and she didn't appear to be doing too bad. She has some sort of virus. The doctors don't know which kind, but they do seem very confident that after a few days of antibiotics they will have home again. My brother and I joked around with her for a bit and then just watched her sleep.

Her mood was little low, but not too bad. Dr. Yanik (another favorite) was there with her. He told the three of us that Kristy was the healthiest person on that floor, and that she could expect to be back home in just a few days.

Not too bad.

Thanks everyone for your concern.