For New Orleans, Katrina anniversary is both solemn and festive

Dancing, singing, mourning, and crying mixed throughout New Orleans this weekend as the city showcased the progress made since Katrina and honored those who died.

By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor
posted August 30, 2010 at 12:30 pm EDT

New Orleans — At a ceremony in this city commemorating the five years since hurricane Katrina, a brass band played a final round of music Sunday, and out of nowhere, Mayor Mitch Landrieu sprang from his seat to join the musicians onstage. What he then did would be almost unthinkable for most buttoned-up leaders, but here, it’s as much a part of the job as fixing potholes and cutting ribbons.

He danced.

Dancing, singing, mourning, and crying mixed throughout New Orleans this weekend as the city worked overtime to balance showcasing the progress made since floodwater covered 80 percent of its streets with honoring the 1,836 people who died in its wake.

Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy Team up for "You Are Not Alone"

POWER CHORD: The soul music legend and the Wilco frontman record a new album together

By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Magazine

Mavis Staples has worked with some of the finest names in music: Bob Dylan, The Band, Booker T. and the MGs, Prince. Topping the list are her father, the guitarist and singer Pops Staples, and her siblings in The Staple Singers, the gospel-pop group that produced some of the greatest anthems of the civil rights era. But when she was told Jeff Tweedy of Wilco wanted to produce her next album, the 71-year-old music veteran had one reaction: “Oh, shucks, that’s great!”

You Are Not Alone (Anti-), out September 14th, is a homegrown affair. The seed was planted two years ago at the Hideout, where Staples recorded a live album that would end up nominated for a Grammy. Only 100 or so people were lucky enough to squeeze into the room that night; Tweedy was one of them. Two weeks later, he and Staples met up at a Hyde Park restaurant and shared a meal that stretched over two hours. “He told me about his family,” Staples says.

Would New Orleans levees hold for a second Katrina?

Five years after Katrina, New Orleans is rebuilding. The system designed to protect against future storms is better than before, but questions remain about whether it is fortified enough.

By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor
posted August 29, 2010 at 2:53 pm EDT

New Orleans — Normally, moving to a new house in a new neighborhood is a transition many can feel good about. But for Randy Pratt, an electrician, moving his family into a brick home in this city’s Lower Ninth Ward makes him shrug at the possibility of lightning striking twice.

He now lives a short walk from where a concrete barrier collapsed on Aug. 29, 2005, allowing rushing water to destroy the neighborhood that only recently started to rebuild. Does moving back to what many consider the scene of the crime make him hesitate?

“I’ve been around levees my entire life,” says Mr. Pratt. “I just hope it’s safe, that’s all.”

Hurricane Katrina anniversary: Can New Orleans' new mayor revive the city?

Mitch Landrieu wasn't mayor of New Orleans when hurricane Katrina hit. But he is now, and at the five-year Katrina anniversary, residents are looking to him to move the city forward.

By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor
posted August 27, 2010 at 12:03 pm EDT

New Orleans — Mitch Landrieu now owns the legacy of hurricane Katrina.

He was not mayor then. Moreover, he was defeated by incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin in an election only seven months after the hurricane left 80 percent of the city under water.

But he is mayor now, having taken office in early May, and it is now his challenge to bring to New Orleans the hoped-for post-Katrina renaissance that has never fully taken form in the five years since.

For much of the nation, this month – the fifth anniversary of the storm – marks a moment to chronicle how far New Orleans has come.

BP oil spill imperils Cajun culture

The Cajun culture has a rich tradition with deep ties to the Louisiana bayous. But the BP oil spill's impact on the economy and the environment is straining those ties.

By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor
posted August 6, 2010 at 12:54 pm EDT

Chauvin, La. — Darren Martin is a third-generation shrimp boat operator – and as far as he knows fishing may be in his blood even beyond that. His family has been rooted in the small winding bayous of southwest Louisiana since the 1700s, when the Cajuns of French descent were exiled by the British from their native Acadia, now eastern Canada.

With such a rich connection to the land and water here, it would only be natural for Mr. Martin to want his teenage son to continue the family trade – pulling up seafood from the Gulf of Mexico and selling it at his family's stand across from their ancestral home in this quiet town of just over 3,000 people.

Yet after years of hardships ranging from hurricanes to floods to shrinking prices and now an oil spill, Martin has determined that commercial fishing, a cornerstone of Cajun identity, is dying

The Big Easy bounces back with its own hip-hop beat

Dance-oriented bounce music, a hip-hop variant unique to New Orleans, is tapped by hitmakers.

By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor
posted July 22, 2010 at 1:41 pm EDT

New Orleans — New Orleans is known as the birthplace of jazz, a percolator of the blues, and where the early pioneers of rock 'n' roll recorded songs that have since crisscrossed continents, cultures, and generations.

All this music is still accessible on the streets where it was born – just stroll down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, visit its many festivals throughout the year, or tune into WWOZ, the city's cherished community radio station, to hear how much.

Yet as much as the city thrives by looking backward, the music that has served as the greatest economic engine of its residents of the past 20 years is hip-hop. Bounce, a hip-hop variant that evolved from the city's housing projects, has produced some artists who – unlike their better-celebrated elders such as Allen Toussaint and the Neville Brothers – sell millions of albums and whose music is sampled and recycled by mainstream hitmakers, including Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Lil Wayne.

Robbie Fulks Reinterprets Michael Jackson’s Music in New Album, “Happy”

By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Magazine

When Michael Jackson died last year at age 50, the published, broadcast, blogged, and Tweeted tributes rehashed the sordid details of the King of Pop’s saga: Bubbles the chimp, the nasal surgery, his bleached skin, and so on. But all Robbie Fulks could think about was the music. “With Michael Jackson, the celebrity factor is such a distraction,” he says. “Removing that aspect and treating his music as just music is probably kind of a weird gesture, right?”

Answering that question is the newly released Happy: Robbie Fulks Plays the Music of Michael Jackson (Boondoggle). The 14-track album snatches the songs out from under the TMZ microscope to reveal the many dimensions of Jackson’s catalog, from playful to paranoid, and filters them through multiple styles, including country soul, bluegrass, power balladry, and art rock.

Fulks, one of Chicago’s most musically dexterous performers, planned to release the album in 2005 but got sidetracked

Dead Weather comes alive shopping new music around

May 24, 2010

BY MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times

The Dead Weather may be on tap to play some of the biggest music festivals in North America and Europe this summer, but on Saturday the band played for free to 500 people in a renovated carriage house in the West Loop.

The unusual setting was courtesy of Microsoft, which is staging several impromptu concerts this month to hype the KIN, a new mobile phone. Like five other concerts taking place in San Francisco, New York City and elsewhere, the Chicago concert used social networking to target fans and let them spread the word virally once the location and time was revealed late Saturday afternoon.

The hype delivered a line of fans that stretched outside the Marquardt Trucking Company, down Aberdeen and continuing west down Monroe. People showed up as early as 4 p.m., three hours before the doors opened and five hours before the band hit the stage.

As BP oil spill fight continues, more areas closed to the public

As efforts continue to stop the flow from the BP oil spill, areas used for recreation and fishing are being closed to public access. It's a blow to recreational and commercial fishing businesses.

By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer | Christian Science Monitor
posted May 7, 2010 at 7:10 pm EDT

Robert, La. — With confirmed sightings of oil across a 50-mile chain of islands that line Louisiana’s Southwestern coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has ordered the affected area closed to public entry. The agency also expanded an earlier ban on fishing in the area east of the Mississippi River.

Last Sunday, NOAA announced a ten-day ban on all recreational and commercial fishing between the mouth of the Mississippi River and Florida’s Pensacola Bay. That set off alarms for the state’s fishing industry, which is the second largest in the US, producing up to 25 percent of the total domestic seafood in the lower 48 states. Commercial fishermen harvested more than 1 billion pounds of finfish and shellfish in 2008.

Gulf oil spill: Questions unanswered, residents try legal action

State attorneys general, commercial fishing organizations, and environmental groups are pressing BP to provide more information on the cause of the massive Gulf oil spill.

By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor
posted May 6, 2010 at 8:04 pm EDT

New Orleans — In the wake of the Gulf oil spill, rig operator BP has produced apologies, jobs for local fishermen to aid in the recovery efforts, and a promise to pay for all cleanup costs.

But what it hasn’t yet produced are answers to why the explosion happened and how exactly it plans to compensate local fishermen – unanswered questions that, three weeks after the explosion, are frustrating all those affected by the disaster, including leaders of gulf coast states and fishing operators.

“All these fishermen here are really uncertain of what the future holds,” says Lance Nacio, who operates a four-person shrimping operation in Dulac, La. “What I would like to hear is some kind of contingency plan for lost revenue compensated for damages now and into the future.”

Town where Katrina made landfall now braces for BP oil spill

Waveland, Miss., still bears the marks of Katrina in trailers, unfinished construction, and a closed waterpark. Now, the BP oil spill is threatening its coast. Residents wonder if the town can survive.

By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor

posted May 3, 2010 at 7:36 pm EDT

Waveland, Miss. — The brand new fishing pier of this Gulf coast city is virtually deserted, and it is no wonder why. “All you hear on the radio is oil, oil, oil,” sighs Gabe Stockfleth, the pier’s manager.

Southeasterly winds are pushing acre upon acre of oil-darkened water from the BP oil spill toward Waveland, depriving the pier of its usual complement of fishers of red snapper, speckled trout, and wahoo. But the winds are also bringing something else: a sense of déjà vu.

This is the place where hurricane Katrina first touched land in August 2005. Now, it again stands as a literal beachhead for forecasts of catastrophe – a community whose needs are so dire that President Obama has given the mayor a special phone number to reach him directly.

Museum would sing praises of gospel

Facility would open this fall in birthplace of rhythmic religious music

April 9, 2010

By MARK GUARINO | Special to the Chicago Tribune

A South Side minister is hoping to create a museum to honor Chicago's gospel music heritage in Bronzeville, the neighborhood credited with the music's birth 80 years ago.

The museum is the dream of the Rev. Stanley Keeble, who is pulling from his personal financial reserves in hopes of opening it on Oct. 26. That would have been the 99th birthday of Mahalia Jackson, gospel's greatest star, who made Chicago her home at age 16.

A number of others in the music community support Keeble's efforts to call attention to such people as the man who put gospel on the map: Chicagoan Thomas Dorsey, a blues pianist, composer and later reverend. He took the fervency of the rhythm and blues he played Saturday night at the clubs to the church choirs he conducted Sunday morning.

Could rescue chambers have saved West Virginia miners?

Mine rescue chambers have been required since 2006, even though federal authorities could have required them as far back as 1969. But it's still unclear whether miners in this week's explosion in West Virginia could have reached the chambers.

By MARK GUARINO, Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor

posted April 9, 2010 at 7:55 pm EDT

Chicago — Monday’s explosion at a West Virginia coal mine is becoming a possible test case for the benefit of rescue chambers, which federal legislators mandated all mine operators have installed four years ago to save lives underground in case disaster strikes.

“Mines in this country really haven’t been tested. This is the first test where chambers had been installed,” says Patrick McGinley, a professor of law at West Virginia University who enforced mine safety laws in Pennsylvania as a former special assistant attorney general.

West Virginia disaster: Will Congress take on coal mining companies?

Mining companies have been slow to adopt new safety requirements. Critics say the West Virginia disaster shows that Congress needs to step in. The industry says it needs clearer guidance.

By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor

posted April 7, 2010 at 6:10 pm EDT

Chicago — The deaths of 25 coal miners in West Virginia Monday in what is considered the worst mining accident in a quarter century is raising questions about whether a congressional overhaul of mine safety four years ago went far enough.

The Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act, passed in 2006 in response to a disaster in Sago, W.V., that killed 13 miners, was intended to improve miner safety by mandating the installation of preventive and emergency technologies.

Casablancas' quickie concert doesn't quite satisfy

April 7, 2010

By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times

He could be dabbing his morning oatmeal with a fork. He could be waiting at a bus stop by himself at 3 a.m. He could be asking a waitress which way to the men's room.

Or he could be headlining the Vic Tuesday on a solo headliner tour. Does it matter? Whatever motivates Julian Casablancas to walk onstage to perform, it never appears to be an interest in walking onstage to perform. The guy is simply b-o-r-e-d.

Yet, the singer, best known as the lead vocalist for the Strokes, is kind of the Peter Falk of rock: a disheveled, meandering, clumsy boho from Soho, who, when backed by the Strokes' machine-gunning rhythms and jackknife riffs, suddenly and unexpectedly comes alive. The tension created between their precision and his aloofness helped refresh the rock mainstream 10 years ago and has a grimy energy that holds up today.

Could the Hutaree militia have spawned a Timothy McVeigh?

One of the prosecutors who helped convict Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, says militias like the Hutaree are most dangerous when they create lone wolf terrorists.

By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor

posted March 31, 2010 at 8:52 pm EDT

Chicago —  A former federal prosecutor who helped convict Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh suggests that the great risk of America's growing militia movement is not necessarily in the militias themselves, but in their capacity to spark rogue actors like Mr. McVeigh, whose 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building killed 168 people.

Aitan Goelman was a member of the Department of Justice team that helped win convictions against McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma case. Speaking two days after nine members of the Hutaree milita in Michigan were indicted on charges of conspiring to attack police officers and "levy war" on the United States, he says that there are parallels between 1995 and now.

Hutaree: Why is the Midwest a hotbed of militia activity?

Michigan is second only to Texas in the number of 'patriot' groups, including militias like the Hutaree. It has a long tradition of spawning antigovernment groups.

By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor

posted March 30, 2010 at 8:22 pm EDT

Chicago — Michigan, the home base of the Hutaree militia, has one of the highest concentrations in the United States of militias and other extremist groups that see the federal government as the enemy.

Only Texas, with 57 so-called "patriot" groups, outstrips Michigan's 47, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit civil rights organization in Montgomery, Ala., that tracks hate group activity.

Nationwide, the patriot movement has grown dramatically since the election of President Obama. Between 2008 and 2009, the number of such groups increased from 149 to 512, SPLC numbers suggest.

Hutaree militia arrests point to tripling of militias since 2008

Federal authorities arrested nine members of the Hutaree militia, a fringe Christian group in Michigan, this weekend. The indictment alleges that the group was planning to kill law-enforcement officers as part of a plan to 'levy war' on the United States.

By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor

posted March 29, 2010 at 3:42 pm EDT

Chicago — The arrests of nine members of the Hutaree militia, a Midwestern Christian militia Hutargroup, are illustrating a rise in militia activity, which had been relatively quiet during the term of President George W. Bush but has shot up dramatically since the election of President Obama, experts that track militia groups say.

The FBI conducted raids Saturday and Sunday in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and suburban Chicago to round up senior members of the group, which a federal indictment released Monday calls an “anti-government extremist organization” intending to “levy war against the United States.”

The group is charged with five counts, including seditious conspiracy

Richer Norah Jones concert comes with strings attached

March 21, 2010

By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times

When Norah Jones sat down to play piano, people whooped. No big surprise — after all, in 2003 the subdued mood she and it created on a debut album raked in multiple Grammy awards, sold millions of copies and ensured placement on Starbucks counters until the Columbian bean fields run dry. Like all mass successes, a franchise was born, which resulted in two follow-up albums over a subsequent three-year run.

Except this time, for this tour, for this album, Jones did not get to the piano right away. The whooping for the old reliables had to wait until eight songs into her sold-out show at the Chicago Theatre. Before that moment, a new, and evolved singer stepped onstage: She strapped on a guitar and before long, melted into a new band of stylists who presented songs that involved textures and grooves more layered and deeper than she had ever tried before.

For Jones, this is a fortuitous move.

Classy Jay-Z shows why he has staying power

March 19, 2010

By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times

In the remaining half hour of his show at the United Center on Thursday, Jay-Z thanked and excused everyone in the audience who came to hear his most recent hits and then announced it was "overtime" — a chance for him to return to songs from "Reasonable Doubt," his debut album circa 1996.

Fourteen years is a generous sprint for a rock band, but for a hip-hop artist, it's an eternity. Shawn Carter, a 40-year-old rapper also known as a record executive, entrepreneur and Beyonce's husband, represents his own category — a hip-hop artist who not only is enjoying hit songs in his middle years, but who can still fill basketball stadiums when he wants to hit the road.

Yet on this tour, Jay-Z wasn't a wizened veteran or protective mentor -- two roles he could have played if he wanted.