‘Tis the holiday season, and dirt-rave-goers know that Buy Nothing Christmas is the best way to spend the winter solstice — giving mutual gifts of togetherness, experience, action, pay-it-forward-ism, and all that other fuzzy stuff which lasts forever and won’t be tossed aside and end up in a landfill.

Burners Without Borders is throwing its support behind the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana. If you have been following the Oilpocalypse story at all, you’ll know that Kindra Arnesen is one of the most furious angels in this whole dealio, blowing lids off coverups and using every available microphone and rally to alert the American people that this thing is so far from over, it may not have even begun. Her own health issues are well-documented in the media too; the breaking news, however, is that her brother is in the hospital — after trying to tough out the Gulf Blue Plague like self-sufficient Cajuns are wont to do, he submitted to the need for IV fluids and critical care. Doctors on the Gulf Coast, see, they don’t want to treat patients who utter the words “oil spill” or “BP.” They don’t want to spend the rest of their lives testifying in court, lose their jobs, and/or end up getting Matt Simmonsed. Anyway.

watch Kindra’s first public speech (and she hasn’t slowed down):
watch?v=jkYJDI8pK9Y

Kindra and her homegirls in Plaquemines Parish got together the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana as a way to alleviate the pressure caused by the Oilpocalyse. Their ancestral homeland, crops, income stream, and way of life have been destroyed, their health is seriously compromised, and these women dropped everything and transformed their living rooms into clearinghouses in order to facilitate the needs of their threatened community. They need medicine — natural healers and clinical herbalists out there? it’s time to rally — and they also need food (gift cards are lighter to mail than cans o’ beans) and toys for the kids this holiday season. It’s not really that big of a deal to organize some sort of effort in this direction, is it? Or maybe calling up the churches or Rotary Clubs in your area to see if they’d like to help? … We leave it up to you. Burners Without Borders IS you.

mayday. m'aidez

In this age of being careful not to toot one’s own horn, I still think maybe I should point out this writer (Summer Burkes) will be on the radio this Thursday Dec. 16 at 2pm. I’m not a scientist, a geologist, an oil-industry executive, or even a longtime New Orleans resident. I’m just an art freak who was there, trying to help, settling into my new Ninth Ward paradise and rolling with Matter of Trust on behalf of the Lower Ninth Ward Village and Burners Without Borders in the days after the Oilpocalypse began. I saw a lot of stuff they still don’t mention on the news, and I know people who have seen even more, and if you haven’t been following the Gulf debacle because it’s truly too horrific to keep up with, then here’s your chance to hear a sum-up.

checkin' the water for oil, testin' hair boom on behalf of Matter of Trust, and gettin' carpet-bombed with a faceful of Corexit, after which I went home to the Ninth Ward and laid on the couch for 5 days, unable to open my eyes, with irregular heartbeat, numb extremities, gut-wrenching cramps, bleeding out my ears, falling in and out of painful consciousness, and Toxicant-Induced-Loss-of-Tolerance hallucinations. Corexit: It's like LSD, except instead of awakening, it makes ya sleep with the fishes

Why should you listen to me? No reason, really, except I’ve been following this story closely, ever since the first of 4 or 5 times I got carpet-bombed with Corexit by my own federal government … I’ve also metaphorically been beating up bullies my whole life and getting my ass in trouble because of my big mouth. I used to write the lead A&E column for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, too, so I’m familiar with how journalism works (or is supposed to work), even if I mostly used my journalistic training on music, art, and spectacle. I’ve only got an hour to try to encapsulate my Gulf experience for the concerned citizens out there in radioland, so I hope I don’t choke completely.

Here’s the link about the show, and you listen here. It’s for the Progressive Radio Network, but I don’t consider myself a progressive or anything else besides an anti-bullshitter. The Gangster Party runs everything anyway, and we’re slowly learning to stop all this Democrap / Republican’t infighting and ignore the ego-driven, fear-based jingoism and to look for the men behind the curtain. The men behind the Gulf Coast murder-curtain are some scary, scary folks. Can you feel it? I can feel it. Anyways. Tune in, if you can figure out how to listen to the radio on the Internets.

xo
Summer.

me standin' in my Lower Ninth Ward house, which I used my life savings to pay for in cash, and worked on really hard for a year and a half. I decided to abandon ship, and postpone the idea of fixing it up, until they stopped spraying Corexit, which they HAVE NOT, because the OCEAN FLOOR IS STILL LEAKING, plus the rumors of synthetic-genomics bio-engineered oil-eating microbes which may catastrophically alter life on Earth, starting with the ocean. Whatever the reasons they

photos by Craig Morse and Wick Sakit, respectively. Thanks fellas!

Phoenix Rising from the Gulf - your best bet at a hard-science update on the reason this ain't over. If you like Cajun food and music ... well, ... it's time to prevent the Elves from having to leave Middle Earth, if ya know whum sayin'

Hi there,

Greetings from New Orleans, where it’s not quite hot yet, the French Quarter Fest is raging, and all around the Lower Ninth Ward, the idea of sustainability and locally-grown vegetables is sprouting up like a mess o’ collard green seedlings.

Please take a minute to read the repost below and vote for a friend of Burners Without Borders NOLA — Jenga Mwendo — to win the $5k necessary to restore the blighted cottage next to our neighborhood community garden and transform it into an education center (and storage). It’ll be your good deed for the day!

Thanks,

Summer / BWB NOLA

Jenga and Mama Patsy cleaning up the garden in the early days. That's the cottage in the background. Git 'r dun!

From Jenga:

Greetings! On behalf of the Backyard Gardener’s Network, the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association Garden Committee and the entire Lower Ninth Ward community, I ask for your help to win the Cox Conserves Heroes contest. Please go here and vote for me, Jenga Mwendo! Cox Conserves Heroes is a contest that awards an “environmental hero” $5000 to his/her charity of choice. If I win, the money will go towards renovating a blighted cottage next door to our community garden for use as a storage/education garden center. I am the only contestant representing a project in the Lower Ninth Ward, the community devastated most by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Vote Now! Spread the word! Vote as many times as you want!! Thanks!

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So I always thought that Mardi Gras equaled Girls Gone Wild. Period.

I was so, so wrong.

I would get mad, working at the Burning Man festival, when others more wet behind the ears than I and my dusty cranky faction would say, “Yeah, Burning Man’s great! It reminds me of Mardi Gras!”

You don’t know what you’re talking about, my subconscious would scream. Have you any idea what it takes to live in a van for 2 months out of the year, in one of the harshest environments on Earth, laboring like a hard-time prisoner and eating nothing but Pabst Blue Ribbon and bacon? … Do you have any inkling as to the effort involved in building a fantastical city out of THIN AIR for FIFTY THOUSAND PEOPLE, and that we have to TEAR IT ALL BACK DOWN TO NOTHING?

(The subconscious, you see, can become quite the Bill Hicks-level righteous aggravationist when faced with 10-hour days under the hot sun in hangovery dust storms.)

But you know what? On Friday and Saturday nights? When we’ve built the city infrastructure and every-thousand ticketholders have come and added the bells and whistles and finally put down the tools to suit up in their finery and go out on the town and look at what other people have been working on all year in their spare time? It DOES remind me of Mardi Gras. Now that I’ve been to Mardi Gras as a New Orleans resident, I get it.

dear Pan, please bless the proceedings and continue scaring the little children. Amen

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Mardi Gras in New Orleans, like the Burning Dude, is impossible to explain during just one cafe conversation. Like the Burning Dude, too, a newcomer needs to remember EASY DOES IT: enjoy the first year, don’t be too ambitious, focus in on one or two aspects, and branch out from there. Mardi Gras is a lot to swallow, and me, I’ve only just begun to chew.

For a good history of Mardi Gras: read here. Zulu parade: Here. And Mardi Gras Indians: Here and here.

(Mardi Gras Indians = feather envy)

Someone asked me yesterday what I was going to wear for my first Mardi Gras as a New Orleans resident. “Do I NEED a costume?” Yes!, they said. Ohhhhh crap. Another lesson learned quickly: This is the high holy holiday in New Orleans, and even if thou art just walking down the street, thou shalt style thyself accordingly.

I’m not the kind of girl to show up un-costumed to a costumed event. In fact, quite the opposite. A friend offered to loan me her costumes from last year … but that just didn’t … feel … right. For our kind, costumes must be hand-crafted, filled with the spirit, and wearable post-event — not store-bought, forgotten about, and donated to the community center along with the bridesmaid’s dress and the fondue set. My threads won’t be anything fancy — but they’ll be mine. Even at this late date, I’ll get it done.

Preparation for the fete is the spell you cast; costume, the pre-battle warpaint. As I make black-and-gold streamers for the Saints Superbowl game-day party at the Village, I wish on the Saints to win. As I cobble together the effluvia found during my Year One in NOLA, in hopes of crafting a costume that doesn’t suck … my fabric, my spirit, my memories, my treasures groundscored and laid aside for occasions just such as this, and for that one other burning dude in August … I reflect and ponder and plan for the future. I’m positive many folks in New Orleans — especially the Mardi Gras Indians — are doing the same.

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Evolver.net and Burners without Borders present:
Evolver Spores: Give It Up

Thurs Jan 21st
Swan River Yoga Downtown
2130 Chartres St, in the Marigny
8:30-10:00

Debt-based currencies controlled by closed syndicates of private banks are not the only way that humans can make an economy. Many tribal cultures have organized themselves around an entirely different way of exchanging value: The gift. Where our financial system expertly moves resources from the many to the few, gift-based cultures like to share what they have – as writer Lewis Hyde noted, “The gift moves toward the empty place.” At a time when billions are enslaved by passionless work while inequity reaches new historic heights, we are seeing a postmodern revival of sharing and gifting, with examples ranging from the open source movement to the annual Burning Man festival.

In this Spore, we explore the abstract theory and practical dynamics of gifting, the challenges of implementing this innovative, yet archaic, way of getting what you want and wanting what you get. We invite fellow Evolvers to bring their precious gifts – whether it be witticisms or wood-carved totems to the Spore and spread them around. Local Spores can screen “Burn on the Bayou,” a mini-documentary chronicling Burners without Borders gifting efforts during seven months of relief work in the Katrina-battered Gulf Coast towns of Biloxi and Pearlington, MS. Since that time, BWB has grown into an international, grassroots organization whose projects are based on the principle of gifting.

We will have Summer Burkes as a presenter. She is a longtime worker for the Burning Man festival outside Reno, Nevada, moved to New Orleans on April Fool’s Day of last year. Anyone who toils in the hot sun for three months at a time — staying in a van / tent / trailer in a landscape so harsh it harbors no living things — to help build and strike a temporary city of 60,000 people … learns a peculiar skill set, to say the least. Inspired by her crowd’s “Do Stuff” philosophy, and interested in seeing how the things she learned at That Place In The Desert could translate into the real world, Summer chose to migrate back home to the South to see what was up in the Lower Ninth Ward and how she could help. Currently, she has started working with Burners Without Borders and the Lower Ninth Ward Village to initiate a program called “Where’s Your Neighbor?”… and they need volunteers!

More info here. Be there or be L-7.