Natural Disasters

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Two sides to Guy

Boston Phoenix letters, June 25, 2010
I’m a delegate at the state Democratic convention and I didn’t vote for Guy Glodis for auditor.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | June 24, 2010

Teach the controversy

Idiot Box
An Iranian cleric says immodest women are the cause of earthquakes
By MATT BORS | June 16, 2010

Still life

Disfarmer at the ICA
Nobody knew very much about Mike Disfarmer. Even his name was a fabrication.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 18, 2010

At the Cable Car: The wind-lashed and sea-worn

Surf’s Up
On a recent Sunday, the usual grad school crowd at the Cable Car Cinema in Providence gave way to something different — the wind-lashed faces and sea-worn hands of Rhode Island’s oft-ignored surfing community.
By ABIGAIL CROCKER | May 12, 2010

After Fort Thunder, the zine lives

Media
Last week, friends of the zine Taffy Hips gathered at Ada Books on Westminster Street to celebrate the sixth issue: robot comics, prints of giant tsunami waves, and an interview with Chicago-based cartoonist Anya Davidson.
By ABIGAIL CROCKER | February 03, 2010

Department of conjecture

Letters to the Portland Editor, January 29, 2010
The Haiti disaster will not serve to turn a state from toss-up to safely Republican as the George W. Bush Administration's calculated response to Hurricane Katrina did in Louisiana.
By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | January 27, 2010

Covering a tragedy

How does a small local paper cover the world's biggest story?
The earthquake that ravaged Haiti on January 12 posed a major challenge for the Boston Haitian Reporter , the lone English-language outlet focused on Boston's sizable Haitian community. The quake and its aftermath were of vital interest to the Reporter 's core audience, but local, national, and international media were already tackling the story with resources that the Reporter simply didn't have.
By ADAM REILLY | January 20, 2010

Aftershock

More than 1500 miles from the epicenter of the Haitian quake, its effects rippled through Boston's teeming Haitian community
From the second that the Richter scale registered at 7.0 in Haiti, a desperate grief rippled through Hyde Park, Dorchester, and other corners of this region, which is home to the third-largest Haitian population in America.
By CHRIS FARAONE | January 20, 2010

Water, benign and fierce

Sailing photos at Moses Brown, Katrina’s aftermath at Brown
In Onne van der Wal's sailing photos, it seems the weather is always balmy and the golden sun always setting. The Jamestown resident's exhibit at Moses Brown School's Krause Gallery (250 Lloyd Avenue, Providence, through October 2) depicts a world that's forever at its endless summer, can't-get-any-better-than-this peak.
By GREG COOK | September 15, 2009

Looking back to climb forward

Katrina's aftermath
It's been four years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Its causes and ramifications, though, extend much farther into both the past and the future. So say Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman, Brooklyn-based spoken-word and multimedia artists known together as Climbing Poetree.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | September 09, 2009

Down in the flood

Politics and other mistakes
A few years ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (motto: Cornsistently Rong Abowt Everyting) informed me I was buying a house in a flood zone. FEMA had a map that showed where the waters of the semi-mighty Carrabassett River had surged over its banks a decade or so earlier and inundated my property.
By AL DIAMON | August 19, 2009

Quake and Shake

Company One meshes Murakami; Orfeo compacts the Bard
A tenderhearted yarn spinner tells an anxious little girl a story about a talking bear hawking honey. A nerdy young debt collector comes home to find a six-foot amphibian bent on recruiting him to save Tokyo from a natural disaster. Both scenarios emanate from the brain of award-winning Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.
By CAROLYN CLAY | July 22, 2009

Review: Mine

Watch, animal lovers, and be stupefied.
Early in Geralyn Pezanoski's documentary, a news clip shows George Bush proclaiming, "The world saw this tidal wave of disaster descend upon the Gulf Coast, and now they're gonna see a tidal wave of compassion."
By BRETT MICHEL | April 15, 2009

11. Bobby Jindal

PAGE BOY
In delivering the Republican response to Barack Obama’s first joint-houses speech as president in February, the governor of Louisiana and erstwhile 2012 presidential hopeful was deemed a resounding flop — by members of his own party. His lack of charisma and gee-whiz oratory (as well as his dorkiness) quickly drew unfavorable comparisons to Kenneth the Page from NBC’s 30 Rock , whose political career now seems to have a higher trajectory than Jindal’s. Bonus hurricane-chutzpah points for bringing up Katrina in his speech criticizing government-funded economic-relief programs, for which his state took in billions of federal dough.
By Boston Phoenix Staff | March 24, 2009

Year in Film: Risky business

Films whose aspirations are more than Academic
Every year the studios hold back their best until the end of the year, but this year they let us down.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 24, 2008

On street level

As Katrina hit New Orleans, filmmakers went to work
It is impossible not to wonder how Louisiana might have fared after Hurricane Katrina, had Barack Obama been in office a term sooner. There are so many questions about what went wrong and how it could have been handled differently, which have gone unanswered for more than three years.
By SONYA TOMLINSON | November 19, 2008

Blown up

Shoney Lamar proves there’s life after Florida
Lamar’s voice both ravages and exults in the past 10 years of the Pained Male Pop Singer.
By MATT PARISH | October 08, 2008

Let the rabble eat cake

The economy is in shambles, and McCain doesn’t get it
Isn't it comforting to know that Dubya II McCain’s top economic advisors are Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina?
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | September 24, 2008

Trouble the Water

A raw and emotional look at Hurricane Katrina
The direct, artless footage conjures a real-world Cloverfield , except with people who are resourceful and worth caring about.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 11, 2008

Backed the f*** up

‘Rock The Bells’ 2008
I wasn’t the only one held back from “Rock the Bells” by fleets of ugly persons driving Chevy Avalanches.
By CHRIS FARAONE | July 30, 2008

Crescent City health report

The New Orleans Jazz + Heritage Festival buoys a wounded community
“Is much better! The tourists is coming back !” That was our cab driver from Louis Armstrong Airport into New Orleans — a transplanted Haitian from Jefferson Parish.
By JON GARELICK | May 06, 2008

Time after time

The De C ordova Annual, New Orleans after Katrina, ‘Superartificial,’ 19th-Century Leisure Travel, and El Chango Verde
The DeCordova Annual has been going strong since 1989, indefatigably showcasing work by New England artists chosen each year for the quality of their individual work.
By RANDI HOPKINS | April 30, 2008

Shaping the Crescent

The making of New Orleans
Even before Katrina wreaked its havoc on New Orleans, a popular T-shirt proclaimed the city “Third World and Proud of It,” and numerous more-literary types have long referred to it as the “northernmost Caribbean city.”
By CLEA SIMON | December 22, 2008

Post-Katrina tales of the real New Orleans

Aftermath
New Orleans is back in business — if you’re a conventioneer or a tourist.
By RUTH HOROWITZ | March 05, 2008

Earthquake!

The threat is real. It could happen here. Is the city ready?
Picture buildings from Southie to West Somerville reduced to rubble. Dozens of three-alarm fires all over town. Tunnels flooded with seawater.
By MIKE MILIARD | February 27, 2008

Casting ballots

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival on the campaign trail
Some believe democracy can save the world. Others wonder whether it can even work in America.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 08, 2008

Goin’ Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino

Vanguard
This packed two-disc set gathers all the usual suspects and more for a Tipitina’s Foundation project to rebuild Domino’s Ninth Ward neighborhood in New Orleans.
By CLEA SIMON | October 22, 2007

Perfect Tenn

Jeremy Lawrence’s one-man show Everybody Expects Me to Write Another Streetcar
When Tennessee Williams summered in Provincetown in the early 1940s, Eugene O’Neill was the playwright most associated with the tip of the Cape.
By CAROLYN CLAY | October 04, 2007

NOLA’s arc

Extreme circumstance
On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we’re all looking for easy answers, barometers of recovery, and people to blame. Simplistic messages of hope.
By VANESSA CZARNECKI | September 12, 2007

Police take notice

Papa don’t allow no fluffy pickin’ here
This article originally appeared in the April 17, 1979 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
By KIT RACHLIS | July 25, 2007