"Blue Velvet"

I continue to be amazed by the number of projects about New Orleans that few New Orleanians know about. This one was brought to my attention by a woman in Spain! I'm still trying to figure out why this project is called Blue Velvet - it's a dense and multi-layered piece about New Orleans post-Katrina in an online multimedia interactive journal called Vectors, out of the University of Southern California. I learned many things, for instance "redlining," a technique of mapping desirable and undesirable areas in a city that would then influence mortgage lenders. Also, there's a bit of academ-speak for some of us to catch up on, but it's worth some study. I can't do much better than the statement by the editors, which speaks of capturing "complex histories interlaced in what our government would have us believe was simply an act of nature."