If you’re one of the many New Orleans residents to have signed up for SDT Waste & Debris Services’ recycling program online (Uptown & Carrollton ‘hoods have more than 500 and 800 requests, respectively), expect a contract in your mailbox very soon. 

SDT is serious about getting things started and anticipates a Mardi Gras kickoff, according to SDT’s Julie Tufaro.

The program will provide a 35-gallon container per household and will collect mixed paper, plastics and cardboard twice a month with regular garbage pickup (Wednesday or Saturday). Still no glass collection, but that’s not just a Louisiana problem.

Interested recyclers or would-be recyclers should visit SDT’s sign-up page and subscribe to their clean and green newsletter. 

Or hey, while you’re at it, how ‘bout a beer coozie?

It’s a testament to the depth of feeling we all have for Michael “Heckuvajob” Brown that three of us here raced to the blog to share the news that he had to be evacuated due to the wildfires outside Boulder.

Brownie’s okay, but he’s sleeping on a friend’s couch at the moment. Won’t you sign his card in the comments?

Courtesy of Wonkette, former Arabian horse association president and FEMA director Michael Brown is caught up in another disaster. Thankfully, he was evacuated on time. But his nose for disaster is almost biblical in nature. The Colorado Independent has the story. On a side note, the story mentions the figure of Hurricane Katrina causing $81 billion in damages. Too bad Katrina couldn’t wait. That’s just the ante for what the federal government now drops on failing financial institutions (Lehman Bros. excluded) that are victims not of nature, but of their own bad management.

Via Clay at Nola-dishu:

Ex-FEMA head Brown evacuated in Boulder wildfire

Hurricane Katrina victims take note. Michael Brown is safe.

A series of wind-whipped wildfires north of Boulder, Colo., have forced the evacuation of more than 11,500 residents — among them vilified ex-Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown.

Here’s Brownie discussing the horrifying ordeal, which ends with Brownie sleeping not in a trailer for 3 years…but on a friend’s couch. “We hope you can get some rest!” says the concerned interviewer to Brownie.

“No worries on that count!” thinks New Orleans.

The headline reads: Ex-FEMA head Brown evacuated in Boulder wildfire

And it’s not even from The Onion.

There has to be a way to insert this into every English dictionary under the word ‘irony’. There just has to. Heck of a job, cosmos.

Silence is Violence, the activist group that led the Jan. 11, 2007 march on New Orleans City Hall, is trying it again tomorrow with a series of events that acknowledge what we all know: 2009 in New Orleans has gotten off to a particularly crappy start. More info on SIV’s Web site, but here’s the schedule:

Tomorrow, January 9, 2009, we will Strike Against Crime, voicing community-wide condemnation of violent crime in New Orleans and memorializing those whom we have lost to the violence. We call upon citizens, businesses, and city government to pursue policies and programs that spread peace through our neighborhoods and our city as a whole.

Community-led efforts and activities will be going on across town throughout Friday and Saturday. The following major activities will bring coordinated peace and social justice messages to downtown, uptown, and City Hall:

10am: Peace Motorcade, beginning at the intersection of North Claiborne Avenue and Gov. Nicholls Street. Nakita Shavers will lead this motorcade in memory of her brother, Dinerral Shavers, and Helen Hill, the two artists whose 2006 murders led to the founding of SilenceIsViolence.

12 noon: Victims memorial, steps of City Hall. We will read the names of all New Orleanians lost to homicide during the past year. Citizens and elected officials, including District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, will participate in the memorial reading of the names. We invite any New Orleanian who mourns the loss of our citizens to join us in this annual memorial.

6pm: Procession and Vigil for Ja’Shawn Powell. Led by the city’s Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs. Gather at New Hope Baptist Church, 1807 La Salle Street, at 6pm for prayer; walk to the corner of Jackson Avenue and Danneel Street; candlelight vigil in Van McMurray Park.

In addition, please WEAR RED on Friday to show your respect for victims of violence and your pledge to work toward peace in New Orleans.

I don’t know. I admire the work of Silence is Violence, and this is no disrespect to them, but it feels like thousands of people marched on City Hall two years ago, demonstrated and organized … and, through no fault of theirs, nothing changed. I guess we have to keep trying, but the Ja’Shawn Powell murder seems to have thrown some pretty battle-scarred friends of mine for a loop, and the murders and the marches and the murders and the marches are all beginning to feel like Groundhog Day.

Did you know that the official City of New Orleans Web site had a “Media” page? Me neither. But it makes total sense, given the zillions that have been invested in the city’s super-high-tech technology budget under the stewardship of great men like Greg Meffert and Anthony Jones, our own Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. After all, back in 2007, Jones told New Orleans City Business:

We will provide as much access to information and data as possible to our citizens and visitors through our Web site.

So it makes sense that the official city Web site would have a “Media” page! Totally makes sense! And here it is:

Now that’s what I call a comprehensive look at New Orleans media for “citizens and visitors alike.” I love The Louisiana Weekly (truly), and I think it’s peachy that 6 out of the 7 publications they list are from Renaissance Publishing, Inc., the province of Errol Laborde & Co.

But, New Orleans City Hall: no Gambit? No Times-Picayune? No CityBusiness? No WWL, no WVUE, no ABC26? Hell, no Antigravity? (We appreciate your acknowledgment of WDSU, but let’s face it: the Mackels can’t do it all themselves.)

Are we not your media children too, New Orleans City Hall? Do not citizens and visitors benefit from our fine reporting and commentary about the state of the city? Do we not shine as brilliant a light on our vibrant recovery and thriving business community as does New Orleans Bride?

Sheesh. Unloved, party of one? That’s us. We may not be as relevant to the civic pulse as is On Stage: New Orleans’ Guide to the Performing Arts; we may be Laborde-less and Mackel-less and small Brabant potatoes to you, but we are humble scriveners too, intermittent pulses of information across the great information superhighway, and dammit, we’re here.

One of my pointless hobbies is taking pictures of unusual signs (and grocery items - did you know that they sell Budweiser pre-mixed with Clamato juice at Rouse’s?) to text to my friends. This one, for a dog groomer on St. Claude Avenue near Press St., I had to share with a wider audience.