Blogging, Blogging, Blogging On The River

The Rifftides staff offers a belated welcome to Larry Blumenfeld, a new artsjournal.com blogger who recently launched Listen Good: Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and other sounds. Blumenfeld, a New Yorker, has established a three-months residency in New Orleans. He is covering efforts of the jazz community--and the city at large--to make a comeback in the face of daunting odds dealt more by man than by nature.

Anyone in New Orleans will offer stern correction should you refer to Katrina as a "natural disaster."

And anyone involved in the city's culture will point out the many unnatural barriers that have popped up in Katrina's wake.

You'd think that New Orleans would welcome back the communities and establishments that anchor its culture.

Not so, Blumenfeld says. To read the whole thing, go here.

Cynthia Joyce has been blogging for artsjournal.com from New Orleans a little longer than Blumenfeld. Her Culture Gulf (an inspired title) can be read as a companion piece to Listen Good. As a former Orleanian whose heart still beats in the bend of the river, I frequently visit both, wishing that I were there.