The lower Ninth Ward & Holy Cross lost a strong advocate when Pam Dashiell died the other day. I knew Pam because I was a journalist in New Orleans after Katrina, and we all knew her. She was formidable, and Katy Reckdahl does a lovely job of honoring her.

A month after the storm she was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation with Lynn Neary, talking about the 9th Ward’s desire to come back home. A little later, she tried valiantly to get traction for concerns she had about soil contamination after Katrina from Industrial Canal flooding. But concerns about soil contamination were shooed away by the Lousiana Department of Environmental Quality, and the EPA data didn’t help much either. Soil contamination remained (and remains) nothing more than a metaphor for a generalized distrust in the institutions that shape peoples’ lives: I talked to so many people who stuck with a general conspiracy-theory ideeer about it. I know it’s messed up, but they’ll never do anything about it. (cf. William Jefferson: He mighta had 90 grand in his freezer, but damned if the white guys ain’t got a hundred and ninety.)

Pam stuck with her neighborhood and kept it stuck together. The 9th ward kept city planning in the public eye, too: if any of that sticks, and New Orleans itselfsticks together, it’ll be because of the hopeful acts of individuals, who made up groups, who made the difference. People like Pam Dashiell.

Heather Booth and Jacob Brancasi are doing a genius little project. And what I like an awful lot about it is that you can do it with them.

Open Sound New Orleans asks you – in what is a slightly evolving and definitely getting easier manner – to put a sound up from the city. Not a story; a sound. Raw and rough is how they like it.

So I added a sound. It’s one I’m looking forward to hearing in a month or so. And there will be others. Sounds, I mean. Real and mapped.

Also, po-boys.

When I lived in New Orleans I paid $14 bucks a month for recycling. (Phoenix Recycling gives a discount if you belong to a neighborhood association, and they picked up plenty.) I love Phoenix Recycling. But the City of New Orleans used to recycle, and could again.

Now I live in Los Angeles, where the city lets you recycle every darn thing under the sun. It is almost possible if you think hard about it to skip the black bin entirely. You can recycle styrofoam here.

Anyway, New Orleans is doing a survey. Except apparently it’s a guerrilla survey; nobody seems to know about it. So, you know, I thought I’d mention it where I could.

You can do it in a bunch of ways. The easiest is to call the 311 number to do the survey over the phone. Also that is the fastest. And you can print it from the city’s site.

It was in the T-P, last Sunday, page A26 too. Dig through the pile and find it in there.

In a civilized world, in a city New Orleans can be again, recycling can and should be an option.