A blanket covers the body of a woman who died in a wheelchair, and another body is wrapped in a sheet Thursday at the convention center in New Orleans. [CNN caption]

If we actually were to be the victim of a major deliberate attack any time in the near future it's now certified that we have no plan, no defense, no means of recovery. This was just a big storm, a very big storm, but just a storm, and there's no radiation or poison weaponry involved, yet it's been five days and virtually no help of any kind has arrived for our good neighbors, the people of New Orleans. They're dying in the attics, on the roofs and in the hell of the "shelters."

This time even the major commercial media can't keep quiet about the incompetence of what passes for government today in our benighted land:

New Orleans hospitals desperate as food runs low

The Associated Press

Doctors at two desperately crippled hospitals in New Orleans called The Associated Press Thursday morning pleading for rescue, saying they were nearly out of food and power and had been forced to move patients to higher floors to escape looters.

"We have been trying to call the mayor's office, we have been trying to call the governor's office ... we have tried to use any inside pressure we can. We are turning to you. Please help us," said Dr. Norman McSwain, chief of trauma surgery at Charity Hospital, the larger of two public hospitals.

. . . .

Earlier, McSwain described horrific conditions in his hospital.

"There is no food in Charity Hospital. They're eating fruit bowl punch and that's all they've got to eat. There's minimal water," McSwain said.

"Most of their power is out. Much of the hospital is dark. The ICU (intensive care unit) is on the 12th floor, so the physicians and nurses are having to walk up floors to see the patients."

Dr. Lee Hamm, chairman of medicine at Tulane University, said he took a canoe from there to the two public hospitals, where he also works, to check conditions.

"The physicians and nurses are doing an incredible job, but there are patients laying on stretchers on the floor, the halls were dark, the stairwells are dark. Of course, there's no elevators. There's no communication with the outside world," he said.

"We're afraid that somehow these two hospitals have been left off ... that somehow somebody has either forgotten it or ignored it or something, because there is no evidence anything is being done."

Hamm said there was relief Wednesday as word traveled throughout University Hospital that the National Guard was coming to evacuate them, but the rescue never materialized.

"You can imagine how demoralizing that was," he said.

And here is the Reuters lead headline at this moment (try to get past the racist analogy and digest the substance of the story):

Bodies, gunfire and chaos in New Orleans' streets

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Rotting bodies littered the flooded streets of New Orleans on Thursday and mounting violence threatened to turn into all-out anarchy as thousands of survivors of Hurricane Katrina pleaded to be evacuated, or even just fed.

The historic jazz city has fallen prey to armed looters since Katrina tore through and it now more closely resembles Haiti or another Third World trouble spot in a refugee crisis than one of America's most popular vacation centers.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco warned rioters and looters late on Thursday that National Guard troops were under her orders to "shoot and kill" if needed to restore order.

"These troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded," she said. "These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will."

Police units, rescue teams and even hospital workers came under gunfire on Thursday and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded for urgent help in getting thousands of evacuees to safety. "This is a desperate SOS," he said.

People became increasingly frustrated at the slow pace of rescue and evacuation efforts a full three days after Katrina tore up the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Elderly people in wheelchairs braved flooded streets in search of help, and entire families were trapped on elevated highways without food or water in sweltering heat.

"We want help," people chanted at the city convention center, where thousands of evacuees were told to seek shelter only to find woefully inadequate supplies of food or water.

Several corpses lay in nearby streets. The body of one elderly woman was simply abandoned in her wheelchair, covered with just a blanket. Officials feared thousands of people were killed but they could still only guess at the death toll.

And all the suits and uniforms seem to be thinking about is how to put down "looting" by desperate people reduced to nothing. Fifty thousand troops have been promised, no, threatened, and they have orders to shoot, but still there is no sign of food, nor water, nor rescue, nor means of evacuation from the city, nor decent shelter once they get out.

We are truly fucked, and next time it won't be mostly just the poor, the old, the sick and the powerless.

[image, photographer uncredited, from CNN]

[spotted this flock on York Street in the new DUMBO late this afternoon, just steps from a large pack of black Town Cars waiting for their masters to leave the office]

Subcommander Marcos

Well, maybe not, but he sounds really good, and he still looks wonderful.

His words, especially since they're from the mid-90's, won't be news to many out there, but I tripped over this powerful quote from Subcommander Marcos while trying to get more information about the Mexican rebel this morning. I had just read this piece in the NYTimes about his current campaign to move his great nation to the Left. It was accompanied by this attractive photograph. After more than ten years of news accounts and imagery, I was immediately smitten all over again. The reporter himself was not immune to his attractions, for he wrote that Marcos "may be the only man in history to make a ski mask and pipe look sexy."

Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a gang member in Neza, a rocker in the National University, a Jew in Germany, an ombudsman in the Defense Ministry, a communist in the post-Cold War era, an artist without gallery or portfolio.... A pacifist in Bosnia, a housewife alone on Saturday night in any neighborhood in any city in Mexico, a striker in the CTM, a reporter writing filler stories for the back pages, a single woman on the subway at 10 pm, a peasant without land, an unemployed worker... an unhappy student, a dissident amid free market economics, a writer without books or readers, and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains of southeast Mexico. So Marcos is a human being, any human being, in this world. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalized and oppressed minorities, resisting and saying, 'Enough'!

[image by Adriana Zehbrauskas from the NYTimes]

I cry for New Orleans.

And I don't want to see another photo with a caption screaming about folks "looting," when they are in the midst of an unprecedented disaster where there is no food, no water and no help. Only people with real resources could have afforded to leave before the hurricane hit: For the many who stayed, everything they ever had was in their homes. They could expect no protection, and almost certainly no insurance compensation.

[UPDATE: I've just learned that in fact many people who were mobile and who wanted to leave just couldn't, as there was no public transportation. Our blindered media doesn't point out that since this is America if you didn't have a car you didn't get out. The Greyhound station was closed before the hurricane hit, and of course there are no trains. Similarly, there's also no media discussion of how the sick and the aged were expected to leave.]

Also, I hesitate to dignify their status by even mentioning the network, but this morning FOX "NEWS" includes a discussion asking seriously whether this city and these stricken people should get any disaster funds from the federal government. I guess they should all have known better and chosen to live in a less vulnerable area, say . . . Florida(?), where there's always government disaster relief available. Not heard explicitly, but perhaps implied here, and certainly to be found along the long, rough road ahead, is the voice of racism - and even that of the hellish "Christian" Right: Colored folk don't deserve the help, and for its sins this entire great, irreplaceable city itself should go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah.

We must save these people and this city, and of course we must do what we can to reduce the impact of the next storm. Just for starters, we should have the National Guard and skilled Army and Navy engineers here now, when and where they could make a difference.

The enemy is here, not in Iraq.

[images, in descending order (all via YAHOO! Photo) by Chris Graythen for Getty Images, Rick Wilking for Reuters, James Nielsen for AFP, Bill Haber for AP Photos, and Rick Wilking for Reuters]

United Architects World Trade Center Proposal Project 2002 Plexiglas [detail of installation]

It was my favorite when I saw it in a magnificent exhibition organized by and presented at Max Protetch now more than three years ago. It may have been the only proposal which looked like a work of art as much as it looked like it would actually work. I think that suggests great architecture. Apparently MoMA now agrees, since the model of the United Architects study for the site of the World Trade Center has entered the collection. [see the architects' site for more]

Yes, I know that in recent years, because of the stupidity and the chaos which has accompanied discussions since this structural model was first shown, and the banal or junky designs which have been advanced in its stead, I have argued for a big green lawn or, more recently, a grand pedestrian plaza.

But if build we must (this is still New York) my heart would still be with this gorgeous proposal, in spite of its size. It somehow remains the least monstrous, on account of its elegance and its irregularity. It may be the safest structure, because of its structural connectors and its multiple exits; and, oddly, it comes off as the most humanist, for its anthropomorphic shapes and the suggestion of an organic community within.

Every one of the extras which have been suggested or promised for the site since this model was built could fit within its mass. At this point I'm even willing to do without those two holy holes, although the United Architects design actually does contemplate keeping those areas clear and the combined segments of the building actually embrace them.

Also because this is New York however, this great proposal is likely to stay just where it is - a work of art.

Chris Kannen Chris Making Out with Bigfoot 2005 oil on canvas 12" x 10" [large detail]

Emily Lambert They Called Him a Wildman 2005 acrylic on canvas 10" x 8" [large detail]

Peter Caine Untitled mixed media 8' x 5' x 4' [detail of animated installation]

Tricia McLaughlin The Nazca Lines Explained 2005 2 min. animation [still in video installation]

Like so many of my species, I really would like to believe in these creatures, but the only thing I'm certain about right now is the quality and great fun of the group show at Sixtyseven gallery, "Sasquatch Society," devoted to Bigfoot, Yetis and other hominoids.

There's enough interest out there in stories about wilderness sightings of large, hair-covered, man-like animals to inspire dozens of young artists to jump at the chance to each produce one or more remarkable works illustrating our often quite intimate relationships with an elusive beast which remains stubbornly remote to [most of] us. The majority of the works in the show were created this year, but the fact that there was already a reserve of pieces which pre-dated the gallery's Sasquatch call suggests that interest in these stories was not just something induced for our summer amusement.

in the Channel Gardens, Rockefeller Center, on Thursday

up the wall

He's back! I'd seen nothing since last July, but there were two sightings of our roof garden lizard this morning, both on the wall above the planters. Barry thinks we actually saw two separate little creatures, one a bit larger than the other. Hmm. When do we get to see the kids? And are they going to want to come inside when it gets colder?

Sorry for the quality of the image, but she or he's really tiny, and I didn't want to frighten the little guy away by getting too close.

Fernando Campagna and Humberto Campagna Corallo Armchair 2004 steel wire and epoxy paint [detail of installation]

It's MoMA's new aquisition, not ours, but it sure is an exciting chair.

For a few seconds I fantisized that I'd found the perfect sculptural seating for our roof garden. Orange on green. Fantastic. It could accomodate two very good friends at once, but we'd probably have to commission a nice cushion or two and it would need a cover for bad weather. None of this is a problem however, since I'm sure we can't afford it anyway. This piece is handmade, and since according to the label it was donated to MoMA by its Chairman, billionaire Ron Lauder [presumably for the Architecture and Design Collection], even if it isn't unique it had to cost a bundle.

Fernando Campagna and Humberto Campagna Corallo Armchair 2004 steel wire and epoxy paint [installation view]

Maybe if I could locate an old innerspring mattress . . . .

Gebrüder Thonet, company design Vienna Café Chair (no. 18) 1876 bent beech wood 33.5" x 17" x 20" [detail of installation]

One of my favorites in MoMA's Architecture and Design Collection is this simple chair.

Thonet patented the bentwood process, but their patent expired a few years before this chair was manufactured. D.G. Fischel Sohne was one of several Austrian firms ready to imitate their success with seductively-curved wood. Years ago, while acquiring modest colonial and federal Rhode Island furniture for my old house in Providence I managed to pick up a simple Fischel side chair very much like this Thonet for only a couple of dollars.

I appreciated its simple beauty from the beginning, but In Providence it had to wait upstairs in a small back storage room for years. In New York it has been able to join the very eclectic collection of stuff I've spread throughout our 1930's apartment. Now I admire its simple dignity every day, although I have to admit that it wouldn't have looked at all odd if I had mixed it with the skinny windsors in the little 1760's house from the start.