'Stop The Bop' To Raise Katrina $$

...Delone Catholic High School in McSherrystown, Pa., has a fun fundraising program called "Stop the Bop."

Suggested by a few members of the student council, the school is playing Hanson's 1996 hit "MMMBop" through the loudspeakers before classes begin, between periods and during lunch. The idea? Annoy students into donating; have them pay to stop the music.

The goal is $3,000, which could be reached if each of the 659 students donates $5.

"MMMBop" has been playing [for the past five days], and the school has raised about $2,300 so far.

..."Kids have said, 'If I give you a blank check, will you stop this music?' " Students' Council President Meridith Cox says. "People are just, like, some people give twenties. You say, 'Thank you very much.' They say, 'No, we just want it to end. Even though it's for a good cause, we just want it to end.'...

By the way, if you now have "MMMBop" (cheesy synthesized MIDI file link) relentlessly stuck in your head, I'm sorry. ...Well, not really. What a great 90's song.

But there's nothing technically wrong with having a city built below sea level. (Slate ran a good piece about the whole sea level business.) Heck, a large part of The Netherlands is below sea level (including Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft, and Leiden -- check out the Dutch Foreign Affairs website). And the Netherlands provides a good case study of managing the geographical resources in the area. To counteract the obvious flood-prone nature of the country, the Netherlands have implemented a massive series of storm barriers (the "Delta Works" or Deltawerken).

No, Amsterdam hasn't been recently hit by a Category 4 hurricane. But that doesn't mean that the technical projects of dikes, levees, or what-have-you aren't worthwhile. They say that Venice, Italy is sinking -- does that mean that we should get rid of Venice? What would Winnipeg be like without the Red River Floodway?

Furthermore, if we talk about "relocating" New Orleans, we have to realize that we're talking about people's homes. We can't clinically ignore the emotional and psychological impacts that result when people are forced to move. In the New York Times, the executive director of the American Planning Association comments on this debate:

The toxic soup, as it has been called, is touching every square inch of the flooded areas. The issue of... environmental cleanup is one that we have not typically faced with other disasters. It's not just the structural integrity of the buildings, but it's the whole issue of contamination: contamination of buildings, contamination of yards.

[But New Orleans] is one of our more stable cities in terms of a population that has stayed. It's not a city where people leave in large percentages or arrive in large percentages, except as tourists. So I think you're going to see a very strong impulse among the people there to rebuild.

Statistics seem to corroborate this. The NYT notes that 79% of Americans were living in the same county in 2000 as in 1995. In New Orleans, that proportion is more than 85%.

I certainly don't think that we should give up on New Orleans. Its people and society have shown such a richness of class and culture. Yeah, the images on TV are terrifying. And it certainly hasn't been a textbook case of disaster management. But beyond all that, there is still so much potential and promise (and "soul"?) in the citizens of NO.

In 1718, the site of New Orleans was chosen because it was a natural high ground along the flood-prone banks of the Mississippi. It's sad to see how circumstances change.