It’s that time of year: Mardi Gras. It may just be the best party in the good ol’ US of A. And while we’re glad the beads will be flying and booze will be flowing, we want to take a look at some of the stories of recovery, of desperation, of unity and of community. Monday we’ll have a piece on The Field of Dreams in the 9th Ward, Tuesday a piece from Mark Newberg focused on policy, and Wednesday a look at what’s happening in Galveston, the tiny Texan island devastated by Hurricane Ike.

We also wanted to highlight a several of our previous posts in anticipation of Fat Tuesday:

• Hurricane Ike Aftermath: Inconvenient Truth of the Day
• “The Axe in the Attic” Shows the Natural and Human Costs of Hurricane Katrina
• Permanent Link to Hurricane Gustav in New Orleans, Reality Show Donates Green Home To 9th Ward

Come back early next week and check out our original pieces on the stories we think matter in the Gulf Coast region. ‘Til then, enjoy the weekend.

Last month’s Human Rights Watch International Film Festival featured “The Axe in the Attic,” a poignant and thoughtful documentary about both the natural and human costs of Hurricane Katrina. Filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small spent 60 days on the road exploring New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky in their efforts to collect post-storm footage and interviews, but broke with documentary tradition by deciding to include themselves in the story. “When you’re two white northerners heading South,” they said in their directors’ statement, “remaining behind the camera just doesn’t feel like an option.”

The title of the film is a gloomy reference to those who sought refuge in their attics from the flood, but had to chop their way through the roof when the water failed to recede. The documentary itself focuses on how evacuees have had to adjust to their new environments, some achingly alien to them, as both subject and filmmaker take on such controversial topics as class, race, and the government’s failure to provide for those who have lost everything. Read the rest of this entry >>