Audubon appreciates you

Considering the degree to which Audubon's operations are subsidized by public funds, access to rights-of-way, perks and  privileges written into various management contracts and cooperative endeavor agreements and stuff.. not to mention the general social deference shown to its leadership... well, then, we'd say something like this is well overdue. 

New Orleans residents will get free admission each month to the Audubon Zoo, the Audubon Nature Institute announced Wednesday (Jan. 8). Free days also will be offered each month at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, the insectarium and the planetarium.

Every Wednesday, Orleans Parish residents with a government-issued photo ID will receive free admission with up to four guests to Audubon attractions, rotating each week from the zoo, aquarium, butterfly garden and insectarium and the planetarium at the Louisiana Nature Center.

The current schedule calls for one free day monthly at the zoo and the aquarium. Click here for the full schedule.

The schedule is a little complicated but the concept is very good. The article also notes that SNAP card holders can get free daily admission at Audubon attractions and mentions a separate program for high school students with 2.5 or higher GPAs. Additionally there are Audubon passes available for check out at your public libraries. (They're very popular and supplies are limited so keep an eye out.)

Anyway, all of this was announced a few weeks ago but I saw the mayor tweeted it out again today so I thought I'd mention it.  Audubon is gearing up to get a (kinder, gentler) version of its millage approved by voters in a few months. These new admission policies, while welcome, are also, it should be noted, a transparent effort to build some good will ahead of that election.

As for me, I'm not going back to the zoo until our hero Valerio returns to public view.  Actually, what is taking so long with that?  Back in November, he was supposed to be back "in a couple of week" but there has been no announcement since.

According to this adorable video from his younger days, Valerio's birthday is March 12. This year that is one week exactly after Mardi Gras. Maybe we'll look for him then.

Year of the Jaguar

Nobody knew he could do it.  The enclosure was built according to well established standards. Those standards were "met or exceeded" according to a recent certification.  Everything in the book said he shouldn't have been able to do it. And the book was very thorough.

The Audubon Zoo was last accredited following an inspection last fall, Vernon said, though he declined to release that inspection report. To pass, Vernon said, the zoo must show it meets or exceeds minimum standards. For jaguars, those standards are spelled out in a 128-page manual.

The manual includes specifics on the thickness and width of steel wire barriers where they are used, though it also says that, “If possible, institutions are recommended to completely enclose the top of any jaguar enclosure.”

It is possible, or likely, the zoo officials are overselling us on their preparations.  But let's take them at their word.  Their plan to contain the jaguar was solid. It was certified.  But this jaguar, as is often the case with elite athletes, was just a bit too much to handle.

Pound for pound, jaguars have the strongest bite force of any big cat in the world, as well as “excellent jumping and ambush capability,” according to the manual.

“A major risk to jaguars is the failure to use suitable materials to contain the animals. Jaguars often grasp mesh with their canine teeth, over time damaging or breaking them entirely. … Single-strand wire mesh types like chain link or welded wire can be compromised by animals biting and pulling them apart.”

The cage was made of a woven steel cable that was supposed to handle that rough treatment.  It wasn't good enough on July 14 to handle Valerio, a three year old Jaguar whose name is derived from a Latin root meaning strong, healthy, or worthy.  On that day he was all of those things. Nobody knew he could do what he did. Days later zoo officials were still in awe at what had happened.

We had a lot of ground to cover in this obligatory year in review show. Naturally we covered almost none of it. But we did get some time at the end to talk about the tragic hero of the year... if not the spiritual embodiment of our age.

Valerio's story has it all. It's a little bit about gentrification. It is a little bit about the degradation of nature for profit.  It's a little bit about the way the New Orleans non-profit cabal drains public finances and exacerbates wealth inequality. It's a little bit about the subjugation of the spirit by forces of a scope beyond the capacity of any individual to comprehend or overthrow.

Most compellingly, it is about the surprising power of the will to freedom to defy these forces.  But also it is a cautionary reminder of the tragedy almost certain to result from such defiance.  Our capacity to resist that which oppresses us is limited by our failure to see beyond our individual enclosures and find solidarity with our fellow wretches.  So long as this remains the case Valerio's fate and the fate of his animal comrades is our fate.   Perhaps in 2019, we'll finally teach the jaguar how to find Ron Forman's house.  But we probably won't.  Happy New Year. Anyway, here's Wonderwall.

Mary Shelley's Ron Forman's Monster

It is my greatest regret of the year that I didn't have time to finish typing up an overlong post to preview this Saints' season.  It ended up, like so many of these big ideas I never have time to develop anymore, getting thrown up at the last minute as a bare bones twitter thread.  This is a thing that happens a lot and I'm starting to think I need a word to describe it.  FailTweets isn't really adequate since every tweet is a kind of failure in the first place.

Anyway I said the Saints would win 10 games. That's still looking like a good bet.  But I didn't get to tell the story I wanted to tell in the unfinished post. I'm keeping the draft because I think it's an important story which may come up again later. It is a story about Valerio. That tragic hero of this summer's incident at Audubon already has my vote for New Orleanian of 2018 for a number of reasons I'll be happy to go into when the time comes. The point, for now, is I think about him a lot.



I posted that photo of my little gourd tribute to our boy and his fallen animal comrades to social sites last night.  It didn't take long for people to recognize the image.  Its creator certainly got it anyway.

Never thought a graphic of mine (In this case, the escaped Audubon Zoo jaguar’s killing spree in July) would be turned into a jack-o’-lantern. My work here is done. Happy Halloween, y’all. (H/T  @skooks) pic.twitter.com/0q1qsb7UGI

— Dan Swenson (@NolaGraphicsGuy) October 31, 2018

But, while there was obviously some humor intended in the reference, I noticed some reactions from people who inferred a gratuitous or even exploitative vibe there.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  There is a natural humor in Valerio's story, for sure. But humor is closely related to tragedy, subversion, and catharsis. All of these are part of the story.  They are also elements of horror which is why this is a Halloween story.

Valerio's story is a story about doomed resistance. It is about the hubris of our attempt to tame the natural world.  It is about the thin, uncomfortable line that exists between order and chaos; particularly when that order is built on suppressed injustices. It is a tragedy born of righteous defiance gone awry.  There are themes present which hint at the inescapable consequences of colonialism, of the despoiling commodification of nature, and of the capitalist exploitation that drives it all. To contemplate the tragic horror of Valerio and his (I hesitate to use the word victims. Really they are all victims) we are forced to question our own role in its creation. The scariest monster stories aren't really about monsters.

Well, Happy Halloween. Here are some pictures I took this year at the St. Charles Avenue Skeleton House and later at the Magazine Street "Ghost Manor" Clever stuff but I didn't see any jaguar pumpkins.

Can we call it the Palmer Purge?

Maybe that's a little dramatic since today she only got one out of the twenty four Audubon Commission members. But it's alliterative and therefore valid.  It's not clear what Kristin Palmer's overall purpose is in combing through every municipal board's makeup but following it should make for an interesting civics lesson.

Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, chair of the council’s governmental affairs committee, is examining all of the city’s 75 boards and commissions regarding their composition, attendance and other structural issues. Starting alphabetically with the Audubon Commission, Gisleson Palmer said she found that the 1886 act of the City Council establishing the 24-member Audubon Commission specifically required that all of its members be “citizens and property-tax payers.”

That requirement, however, was apparently lost at some point in the commission’s 140-year history, so Gisleson Palmer proposed restoring it, updating the archaic “citizens and property-tax payers” to the more modern standard of city residents. The Audubon Commission’s own handbook, she noted, also says the members must be 24 registered voters.

“What we’re doing today is in line with how the commission was first formed, and how it acts today,” Gisleson Palmer said during the Aug. 30 governmental affairs committee meeting. “It logically flows that members should have inherent interests in this city and be stakeholders in New Orleans.”

The updated rules forced one resignation today. This was not because of the residency requirement but because the new rules make it clear that only the mayor can appoint members and it turned out one guy was chosen by the Commission itself as a mid-term replacement.

Riveting stuff, I know. But these boards really do have a lot of power. Regardless of what Palmer thinks she's getting out of it, it's a worthwhile exercise to take a close look at who they are and what they do. 

A broader issue — not included in the ordinance, but easy to address through future appointments — is the lack of geographic diversity on the Audubon Commission, Gisleson Palmer said. Her office identified 20 of the commissioners as living “above Canal Street,” with only one in Algiers, one in New Orleans East and one in Gentilly — even though the majority of the commission’s holdings are well outside of Uptown, such as the Aquarium and Insectarium, the new parks along the wharves, and the wildlife center on the Westbank.

In the meantime, there is an opening on the Audubon Commission. (Current members include such luminaries as Boysie Bollinger, Olivia Manning, and Gayle Benson)  I'd nominate Valerio but he's just another Uptown resident so that might not be wholly in the spirit of all this.