the rix mix

Tony Blair: Prime minister, Labour leader, punk icon.

"It sounds unlikely but how else could you explain Mr Blair's choice of walk-on music for his big party conference speech on Tuesday? Not the vaguely uplifting soft rock anthem normally chosen for these occasions, something by The Lighthouse Family, perhaps, or U2, but the sound of angry young London circa 1978: Sham 69."

Ronald Reagan's '84 campaign strangely tried to use Born In the U.S.A. (Springsteen stopped that fast) which has these uplifting morning-again-in-America lyrics about my Jersey neighborhood:

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go
I'm a long gone Daddy in the U.S.A.

Fall didn't arrive until autumn this year. We got through all of August
& most of September without a single cool breezy night,
the kind that shakes leaves loose, strums the tall dry weeds,
pushes the warmth out of the outside walls,
slows the chirping of crickets, bringing to mind images of jack-o-lanterns,
the oranges & browns of October & the first frosted marigolds,
& even premonitions of gray December,
put the comforter back on the couch.
fold it up tomorrow.
Summer gave us every possible hour & then some.

No Direction Home reminded me of how much & why I loved Bob Dylan when he was a young rocker. There was no one in rock & roll comparable, or quite as beautiful, in 1965 & 66. I was in high school. I didn't care about Dylan the folk protest singer, I was just a bit too young for him to matter. Had I been a few years older, I'm certain I would've enjoyed that manifestation also. Dylan was telling the truth when he said to his disappointed critics, "They're all protest songs. "

Young Dylan clearly loved working with a band behind him. He was the leader & frontman, it was his band, his songs, he had the spotlight, yet it all sounded so loosely collaborative. It comes across even on the Nashville studio Blonde On Blonde recordings. The live performances are a treasure. This was magic of the highest order. Only a handful of artists & records of all the many thousands I have heard reach that lofty a category. Allen Ginsberg accurately called him a shaman, describing a "column of air" completely focused on breath.

Even as I became uninterested in Bob's later recordings, he held on to my respect. Music traveled on & so did I. Whether or not he wanted to put all of himself into it again was his business & his decision. I assumed he was doing what he was moved to do. Nor did I expect him to explain himself in whatever way it was people kept demanding from him. Because, naively perhaps, I've always thought of him as a friend I met as a teenager. He spoke to me, it wasn't necessary that he also speak for me. I write my own words. The cypher qualities of his art & personality didn't put me off, & they still don't. They didn't put off Martin Scorsese, either.

Fine old poets are uncommon. Poets go crazy. They commit various forms of suicide. They find they prefer growing roses in the backyard. They get paid for showing up somewhere at a certain time & everyone applauds. They become prosaic reactionaries trying to pass themselves off as honest journalists. One can hardly bring oneself to blame them. A few poets keep working at it right to the end.
* Photographer's request for a pose.

Steven Hart takes a balanced look at the documentary at Salon.com

Labels: music

A short wire story like this: School expels lesbians' daughter brings out the silly indignation in liberals. PastorDan at Street Prophets notes the "exclusivist tendencies among some parts of the Christian body." Robert Reyes at American Chronicle wonders if the school would "expel a student if one of his (my italics) parents is a tax cheater, adulterer or drunkard.." To Reyes I say, "Probably not, but the church would surely expect & even pressure the parent to make some efforts at reforming behavior. " To PastorDan, I ask, "How inclusive does a part of the Christian institutional body become before it loses its identity (say, as Presbyterian) or even ceases to be Christian?" I'm not defending the Episcopalian school in Ontario CA. I expect - demand - that public schools be inclusive, & that the broader this inclusiveness, the more prudent a public school has to be about exhibiting, promoting or endorsing religious viewpoints. Which is why I'm a secularist in regard to public education. I'd rather (with some nostalgic regrets) that a public school close the door on Nativity Christmas carols than risk opening the door to creationism in science class.

What happened to the young woman is sad & regrettable. We have a long way to go. But I hope her parents don't fight the decision. Better to shake the dust of that place from one's sandals & go. I want those unenlightened Episcopalians & their school to be separate & apart: They represent something old & disreputable that will eventually shrivel away & disappear. That is my faith.

Labels: Atlantic City, jersey shore, postcard

The Vatican is worried over "intrinsically disordered" celibate gays being tempted in the seminary shower room, or perhaps later in the church robing closet. Concerns have been expressed about seminarians who don't yet realize they are gay. So, no more priests who have, had, might have or are rumored to exhibit homo tendencies. I'm just a protestant, but I'd rather accept the priests who might have sex with each other & kick out the ones who want sex with children. As for celibacy, no one is suggesting that some priest candidates are insecure heterosexual men resigned at a young age to never getting laid much less married, so they choose a secure career that provides a home, a car, health, vacation & retirement benefits, & the diverse responsibilities of managing a community business called a "parish." These men may not be aware that becoming a priest actually increases their chances of getting it on with a female. That's the situation in which many now-married priests found themselves, & it took them out of the vocation for which they had vowed chastity, poverty, & obedience & into domesticated life they'd earlier rejected.

I knew very well a Catholic woman who was let's say unusually impressed by the priestly collar. Her deeper fantasies alternated between tall, intellectual Jesuits & randy pirates. If they could play tenor sax, all the better. There's still women like her in the pews, raised strictly to respect priests as fatherly authority figures - stronger authorities in important ways than their own fathers, who deferred to priests & needed the sacramental powers that were dispensed by this higher order of men in black. When these women are intelligent & educated, it's easy to understand why priests fall in love with & marry them. (A good argument for allowing married priests.)

The Roman Church has determined that the best way to restore itself is by pushing the rewind button. It's quite interesting to watch the movie Boys Town (1938), particularly the peculiar character of Dave Morris, pawnbroker pal of Father Flanagan. Now, if they can only find Father "Chuck" O'Malley. Better fey than gay?

Meet a real priest who was both gay & celibate, & a very great person who even after his death continues to prove that love unifies.

Willie Hutch, talented songwriter, movie composer, performer & producer, died Tuesday in Dallas. He was only 59. I'm a fan. A decent obit hasn't shown up online yet.

Dear Mrs. Bush:

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House. (The rest of her excellent letter is here)

Nat Hentoff points to something that makes John Roberts a very poor choice for Supreme Court Chief Justice, & it ain't his conservative views, it's his inexperience.

BAGnewsNotes analyzes photos from the Katrina Prayer Day service at Washington National Cathedral as a White House attempt to "spiritually reframe" the disaster.

My pre-WWII apartment building, in a working class neighborhood, has roaches, ants & mice. The ants are a very tiny variety that according to pest control websites feeds on dead roaches. The landlord makes half-assed attempts at control with an indifferent exterminator, but even if he had a competent company the building is of an age that makes it "incurable." I don't see many of these vermin anymore. Long ago I taped up a lot of cracks & openings, spread around boric acid. I use spraycan poison only occasionally around the bathroom sink & behind the fridge. I use roach "motels" not as control but to ascertain how well my efforts are working. Roaches can go weeks without food but only a few days without water so dry sinks & no dripping taps are the rule. I keep the kitchen area crumb free (but for unavoidable coffee grounds, which bugs seem not to like), no unsealed food containers or edible garbage in bags, which is just common sense housekeeping. So the only attractive area is around the computer, where I tend to snack. My strategy is to force vermin to seek out other apartments, the ones with damp bathrooms, dirty ovens, children, open garbage cans & sloppy cooks.

I'm not bothered that mice & voles move invisibly all around me in the outside world, but indoors they freak me out. I don't know one is here unless I see it, hear it, or find it stuck to a glue trap. Fortunately, they have been very infrequent visitors (knock on wood). Yesterday I heard a mouse scratching behind my makeshift CD shelves, so I moved enough stuff around there to be sure it had run, probably to the radiator by a front window - the place they seem to enter from no matter what I tape up. Now I was on guard. Later, while here at the PC, a movement caught my eye - it was a little dark gray mouse advancing cautiously across open floor between radiator & me. If I had a cat, the mouse would have had only seconds to live at that point. I chased the mouse back under the radiator, noticed another possible floor crack entry & taped that up, Then I arranged glue traps around the radiator in an unpredictable (to a mouse) way. I don't use baited live or snap traps because I want the mice to stay away, not be attracted.

At four a.m. (an active mouse hour), as I was about to shut down the PC, I heard - over the Russian classical music in my headphones - the telltale squeak a mouse makes when it is hopelessly stuck. It was the little gray mouse - lucky for it & for me, since they are doomed by their struggle if mired for more than an hour or two. I put on my sneakers, got a small bottle of vegetable oil, picked up the trap, carried it & the mouse outside & up the street a few yards, drenched the critter in oil & shook the trap until it fell/slid into a pile of leaves. Of the six mice I've trapped over the past year, three got out alive. & when I catch one, there's another soon to follow, & then hopefully there's none for while.

Telling others about this, the yuck & eeeeuuwww reactions come from apt dwellers & antiseptic suburbanites. People living near parks, fields & woods have to fight mice, ants, chipmunks, squirrels, hornets, wasps, & other critters year round according to season, & most of these folks take a dead or alive preferably dead attitude. In their wars, the second thoughts of human sentiment are as useful as Gen. George Patton worrying about German soldiers having clean socks.

Greetings to everyone I met today at Asbury Park Howard Johnson's for the Glen Jones broadcast. Glen & X-Ray were "on." The closing "Liquor Dance" was highly entertaining. Great swimming weather. It was my fourth consecutive trip to the shore when there wasn't any sea breeze. Riding my bike down the boardwalk to Ocean Grove later in the afternoon, the ocean only a few steps away yet it might have been 5 miles for the cooling effect it had. So I headed to OG's Main Avenue, there's ice cream on that shady street. & there was bike storage space & empty seats on the trains home. A late Sunday train during the summer can be an unpleasant experience; crowded with squawling babies, children doped up on sugar, luggage & diaper bags in the aisles, & people very grumpy over the next day being Monday. Thanks also to DJ Joe "Three Chord Monte" Belock for complimenting my Jonesy fillin' show of a couple weeks back. Good to be reassured by one of the masters that I can still roll over the Beethoven. I told Joe - cause I knew he'd unnerstand - how Fats Domino flipped my little kid lid back in the mid-20th Century as a total package of class, cool & talent (also Buddy Holly & paradisical doo wop) & how relieved I was that Fats had made it through the storm.
Today was the Greek Orthodox Holy Cross celebration in Asbury, a major event for that Jersey religious community. Hundreds came by bus & car. A long procession paraded past Howard Johnson's during the broadcast, across the beach on temporary boardwalk where a wood Cross is tossed upon the water & adolescent boys & girls dive in to retrieve it. The swimmer who comes back to shore with it is especially honored, but it's a good-natured competition & happy day, all are blessed. More pix of the event here (scroll down) .What the tradition is all about is something I need to learn. I thought it was done at Epiphany, in January, with only male swimmers. September with both sexes is much more reasonable & fair. It was a strange vision, the robed priests, religious banners, old ladies carrying flowers, & a few feet away, observing it all, kids building sand castles, bikini'd women tossing frisbees & buff gay men lounging beneath beach umbrellas. If this is the future, I like it.

Labels: Asbury Park, boardwalks, jersey shore, WFMU

"They took everything — all the electronics, the food, the bikes," said John Stonaker, a Wal-Mart security officer in New Orleans. "People left their old clothes on the floor when they took new ones. The only thing left are the country-and-western CDs. You can still get a Shania Twain album."

I seem to have missed something, some crucial step in George Bush's journey. Not the part of his trip from a distracted, indifferent, insulated, boozy young manhood to a distracted, indifferent, insulated, dry drunk presidency. It's the section where he's transformed into Franklin Roosevelt Builder of Human Hopes & Public Projects that's blank. Could this have really happened in the space of two weeks, from the absurdity of "You're doin' a great job, Brownie" to last night's "..we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives." Quite a promise. Of course, he's made similar ones to the People of Iraq. But now he's telling America that we can rely upon the very Federal agencies & services that he & his fellow true faith believers have been dismantling for years through cronyism & neglect. & I thought we had to elect a different president & congress to receive blessed political assurance & the annointing of renewed committment to the poor & disadvantaged.

"So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday and let us rise above the legacy of inequality." Who is this guy? Is he also possessed by the spirit of Lyndon Johnson circa 1964? You have to pardon me if I have doubts. Only a small portion of the President's core political base was hurt by the hurricane, & not everyone can get a job with Halliburton. It won't be long before the Republicans are jawing about more tax cuts for the rich folks at home & griping over the expense of rebuilding a Democratic city in a swing state they may not need to win in 2008, & the Christian mullahs demanding Jehovah Not Jazz in the Ruins of their American Sodom. & if lame duck President Bush (& Dick Cheney looking forward to a Chesapeake Bay retirement) cannot maintain the will to buck that resistance, because he doesn't really believe in what he's being forced to do, will we be surprised?

We can look forward to a great 2006 Mardi Gras. The problem might be holding down the number of people who want to help the recovery by traveling to New Orleans from all over the world & partying as hard as they can. All the Bush Family kids are gonna do their part.

"You have more security at a McDonald's than at some of these facilities,"

Richard H. Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist, on the disappearance of three Bubonic Plague infected mice from the Public Health Research Institute, Newark NJ.

I've got an alligator claw and some booby dust
So you better do what you know you must
I got a lock of your hair and a bullfrog's eye
And if you break my heart you better say "Goodbye"

I got a yoka mata huba bakwa Juju Hand
This yoka mata huba bakwa sure is grand
Makes your eyes turn red and your tongue turn green
It's the strongest mess that you've ever seen

Mojo hand used to be real strong
It kept you straight when you did me wrong
As time went by you just got so mean
But the yoka mata huba bakwa is the thing

I've got a yoka mata huba bakwa Juju Hand
This yoka mata huba bakwa sure is grand
Makes your eyes look red and your tongue turn green
The yoka mata huba bakwa makes you scream

First two books I checked out of Elizabeth Public Library (Elmora Branch):

Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson. "The birth, high times, and corruption of Atlantic City." Mainly for central chapters on three of Jersey's most infamous, powerful & successful "pay-to-play" political bosses (all Republicans); Louis "the Commodore" Kuehnle, Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, & Frank "Hap" Farley.

Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammett. Mostly early stories from Black Mask magazine, most of which are new to me. In the title piece, the "hero" unwittingly lands in a town in the Nevada desert that could have been modeled on how Atlantic City conducted municipal business.

Beginning next Monday, the online New York Times is placing Op Ed & apparently a lot of other stuff on a subscription service, TimesSelect. Those inclined to complain need only recall (if old enough) when one had to actually purchase the newspaper or go to the library to read it. The big carrot of the new service is access to up to 100 articles per month from the archives, which the Times insists will soon extend back to 1851. An open question is how well Times columnists (including one great, Frank Rich; some hit-or-miss writers like Maureen Dowd, Robert Kristof & John Tierney; & then there's David Brooks & strange Thomas Friedman) will weather the change. Fact is, the Times doesn't have an especially distinguished, interesting stable right now.

Today is my Virgoan sister's birthday. One year she threw a party for herself, hired a clown, invlted the neighborhood kids. Grownups couldn't attend unless accompanied by a child.

Jim Wallis: What the Waters Have Revealed
"This week, we all saw it; and so did the rest of the world.
And it made Americans feel both compassionate and ashamed."

This week is hosted by The Nightfly.

Sitting on the bulkhead at Manasquan Inlet last week, thinking about Hurricane Katrina, couldn't help but look around with a storm in mind. The place was surrounded on three sides by water, "Luxury" condos on the most vulnerable northeast corner with a large asphalt parking lot behind them. Nearby was the memorial to fishermen lost at sea.

I recalled a spring day about two decades ago,
I was almost trapped on Sandy Hook when the rising tide began
bringing ocean breakers & bay water together at the narrow
southern neck, Route 36 to Sea Bright already flooded as waves
pounded against the high rock wall.

Wildwood has the widest beaches on the Jersey coast but they are
extremely flat; I remembered a gray August day, a hurricane
spinning away over a hundred miles offshore, the entire beach to
the boardwalk covered with about 6 inches of water.
A storm surge surely would have flooded large sections
of the city itself.

At Point Pleasant Beach, a raw, windy saturday evening,
great surf, a huge wave suddenly crashing in, chasing me
& about 50 other onlookers nearly all way back to the boardwalk
as the foaming water churned toward us across dry sand.

I remembered, as I often do, visiting Atlantic City a week
after the "Ash Wednesday Storm" of March 1962, a stalled
northeaster that wrecked hundreds of miles of coast & nearly
wiped out Long Beach Island. Pacific Ave. in front of my
grandmother's place was packed with debris, TV sets mixed
with the splintered wood. Long sections of the boardwalk were
torn up, the midsection of Steel Pier gone, an apartment building
on Absecon Inlet half collapsed, toilets & bathtubs
sticking out, colorful wallpaper waving in the breeze,
made an unforgettable impression on a 13 year old. That summer,
hearing my father's reaction to new construction as we drove
through Longport; "That's crazy." By no stretch was dad an
environmentalist. You had to fix the boardwalks, he said,
but don't rebuild the private homes, don't put houses on beaches,
don't fill in any more marshes. He'd been around the shore
all his life & he'd seen enough destruction. It had happened
before & sooner or later it would happen again. He was a true
conservative: Stop throwing good money after bad. But those
houses on sand have survived for over 40 years. The next
great storm is overdue.

Jersey shore can break your heart. Not just the development
but that so much of it is by & for wealthy people who tear down
modest old shingled houses & plant large McCottages in their place..
Beachfront condo construction that literally cuts off the ocean view
& the sea breezes from families who have lived there for decades.
& the long stretches of dredge-&-fill beaches, courtesy of the
Army Corps of Engineers & taxpayer dollars; true, these offer
a buffer against storms, but it takes some doing to plant one's own
umbrella & blanket on them; many are in effect private strands.
Ocean levels have been rising since the last ice age. No matter what
the cause, we're into a more active storm cycle. But we're humans.
we'll never sound retreat. We want the government to butt out
when we're driving in pilings for new building & yet we expect
subsidized flood insurance for all. Come on storms, do your worst,
we'll be back with our decks, chaise lounges & cocktails.

Emily Messner at Washington Post looks at the rules & regulations; "who had the power to do what" when a State of Emergency was declared.
Facts and Rumors: Federal Power in a State of Emergency

Rutgers Institute of Marine & Coastal Sciences has five of a six part Philadelphia Inquirer series, Crisis on the Coast, published in 2000. Timely, recommended reading,
Part One Along the water, disasters waiting for their moment
Part Two Amid a fury of construction, a grace of hurricane quiet
Part Three Uncle Sam, insurer of first resort
Part Four A flawed program facilitates building in hazardous areas
Part Five In defense of Jersey's shores

I don't remember Bob Denver so much as Gilligan than as Maynard G. Krebs, the young beatnik caricature on Dobie Gillis, an intelligent sitcom for that era (1959-1963). Denver's character was gentle, clownish but not stupid, a devoted friend. It had to take a certain amount of imagination & guts for Maynard to maintain as a teenage hipster / slacker in Central City, against the high school conformist greasers & jocks. At age ten, I already wanted to hang out with The Beats. But before I could do it, beatniks (a word created by Time magazine) had given way to hippies, & I never thought hippies were all that cool.

A few years ago as a goof I submitted a few rhymed verses about Krebs to the Bad Poetry Contest at Maynard's Coffeehouse on the Bob Denver website, & won an autographed copy of Gilligan, Maynard & Me!

From an ISDR report (International Strategy for Disaster Reduction):

"Our Cuban Institute of Meteorology is one pillar of our prevention system. We have 7 radars that cover the whole country and are linked to the main meteorological satellites. Our institute was designed by the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR); it functions as part of the WMO and the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami for hurricanes issues.

Civil Defence is another pillar. It mobilizes people and organizes the measures that will be taken at the local level. 48 hours a hurricane approaches, all the local heads of provinces and municipalities implement the emergency plan and organize a massive evacuation. Schools and other buildings are converted into shelters. The vulnerable population is specially taking care of. Committees know who is at risk and needs assistance or special help. During the hurricane, everybody has a specific role to play and acts accordingly. Thanks to the reaction of the people, we can evacuate 100,000 people in less than 3 hours."

Jose Rubiera, director of the Centro Nacional de pronosticos del Instituto de Meteorologia de Cuba and the weather forecaster for the main Cuban TV channel.

Filling in for Glen Jones today at WFMU provided a fun challenge
to tweak his style toward my tastes, indulging myself a bit
while hopefully keeping his large regular audience contented
on a beautiful late summer afternoon. But it was bad news week,
so I wanted to get that behind me by playing upfront a 1/2 hour of
New Orleans stuff. But almost subconsciously - given how I set up
free form shows to allow some spontaneity - the storm seemed to
keep popping up in song titles: Morning Rain, Rain Day Women,
Where Were You When I Needed You, Pumping My Heart, Ray-O-Vac,
I'm Stranded, Let's Submerge, even a happy summer song, Shambala
has "wash away my trouble, wash away my pain". A few of these
songs have been in my notebook backlist for months, some were spot
choices. Usually, I'm very glad when I find these threads & themes
afterward in my programs - It means I was operating on a deeper
creative level, but I wish I'd tried more today to keep them out.
I can't fault the songs themselves. It's impossible to really forget;
New Orleans is at the heart of American music. I finally surrendered
in my way, in the two closing selections.

Traveled via train to Point Pleasant Beach yesterday, not so enjoyable as last Friday's trip but better than staying home. NJ Transit schedules an extra train from Newark on 9/2, that train broke down & the passengers got on my train along with the holiday/commuter crowd & I stood in the vestibule all the way to Long Branch where I had to make the "Long Branch Dash" across the platform to the Bay Head Local for a seat, ending up next to a dull couple who discussed hormonal research all the way to Spring Lake, a pretty town nearly as dull they were. If they stayed on the train two more stops they could've gone to Martell's Tiki Bar, a fav of guidos & guidettes that's usually thick with hormonal excretions. More about Point Pleasant Beach & boardwalk later...

At this point every possible take on Katrina/NOLA/Biloxi is being spit out across blogdom. I've tried to work through a what if scenario that places President Bush - or any president - on Air Force One rushing back to D.C. about 9 pm last Sunday, when I posted a GEOS satellite photo on this blog so alarming (along with ocean buoy & coastal station feeds) that I was unable to write anything about it. He then spends most of Monday in the crisis room kicking ass & being, well, competently presidential.

The New Orleans/Biloxi disaster is different. Unlike 9/11, when the impact was immediate - we watched it on TV, & response was swift & surprisingly effective even when improvised, the worsening tragedy on the Gulf Coast has been unfolding for over four days, & Americans are becoming more & more shocked, frustrated & outraged by what is happening. It is outrageous to witness what the media is showing us, the places & predicaments - & now, Friday for cripessake, we finally begin seeing a federal response of some quantity & hopefully increasing quality. It's too late to put on a Stetson, smile, & shout, "Don't worry, help is on the way!" The PR can't be turned around on this one. The grim work goes on. We called for you yesterday, & the day before yesterday. & here you are today.

A fitting test for this cowboy President would be to drop him off on Fats Domino's roof with a promise to pick him up in Houston.

FEMA boss Michael Brown was the goat du jour on Nightline. He made a disgraceful appearance. Brown began passing off blame on New Orleans for lacking buses, but Koppel cut him right off mid-sentence. Then Brown started to say Convention Center refugees were being fed & Koppel had to stop him again - Nightline had just reported the misery there a few hours ago at sunset. It's a disgrace all the way up & down the leadership ladder. The aid workers & military on the ground are doing what they can with what they have. Most of what was accomplished today could have been done yesterday, & what was done yesterday on Tuesday. Where was that 24 hours of disaster response lost? Right at the very top, with the only person in America who had the power & resources at hand to coordinate it. He also had the warning. Instead, he chose 24 more hours of vacation. In an interview this morning he said "They didn't expect a breeching of the levees. They didn't didn't expect such a serious storm." Italics are mine. Remind us again, Harry. Where does the buck stop?

Update: DJ Dave The Spazz reports Fats was seen at Superdome, but Alex Chilton & Ernie K. Doe's widow are still unaccounted for.

From Roger Friedman at Fox News
Antoine "Fats" Domino, has not been heard from since Monday afternoon. Domino, 76, lives with his wife Rosemary and daughter in a three-story pink-roofed house in New Orleans’ 9th ward, which is now under water.On Monday afternoon, Domino told his manager, Al Embry of Nashville, that he would “ride out the storm” at home. Embry is now frantic.

Also not heard from by friends through last night: New Orleans’s “Queen of Soul” Irma Thomas, who was the original singer of what became the Rolling Stones’ hit, “Time is On My Side.”

Last night, Allen Toussaint was one of the 25,000 people holed up at the New Orleans Superdome hoping to get on a bus for Houston’s Astrodome. I know this because he got a message out to his daughter, who relayed to it through friends.