Slowly, The Big Easy Rises

A new estimate puts the population of New Orleans at 70 percent of its pre-Hurricane Katrina level.

Katrina slammed the Gulf coast in August 2005, sending several hundred thousand Louisiana evacuees to Texas.

Many ended up in the Houston area.

The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, which relies on U.S. Postal Service data, says 138,683 households received mail in September.

That compares to 198,232 households in July 2005.

The rate of growth in September was about half the monthly average of new households getting mail from August 2006 to August 2007.But the center’s deputy director says that was expected and that the population is expected to rise with federal rebuilding aid yet to be paid to some hurricane-affected homeowners.

She was a Legend in her own Right..........

Alice Coltrane, the jazz musician who was closely linked with the music of her late husband, legendary US saxophonist John Coltrane, has died at the age of 69, a newspaper reported.

Citing a spokesman for the family, The Los Angeles Times newspaper said Coltrane died Friday at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in West Hills of respiratory failure.

She had been in frail health for some time.

Though known for her contributions to jazz and early New Age music, Coltrane, a convert to Hinduism, was also a significant spiritual leader and founded the Vedantic Center, a spiritual commune now located in the Los Angeles area, the paper said.

For much of the last nearly 40 years, Alice Coltrane was also the keeper of her husband's musical legacy, managing his archive and estate.

Her husband, one of the pivotal figures in the history of jazz, died of liver disease on July 17, 1967, at the age of 40.

A pianist and organist, Alice Coltrane was noted for her astral compositions and for bringing the harp onto the jazz bandstand, the paper said.

Her last performances came in the fall, when she participated in an abbreviated tour that included stops in New York and San Francisco, playing with her saxophonist son, Ravi, according to the report.

She was born Alice McLeod in Detroit on August 27, 1937, into a family with deep musical roots.

Alice began her musical education at age seven, learning classical piano, The Times said.

Her early musical career included performances in church groups as well as in top-flight jazz ensembles led by Lateef, guitarist Kenny Burrell and saxophonist Lucky Thompson.

After studying jazz piano briefly in Paris, she moved to New York and joined the quartet of Terry Gibbs.

"As fascinating -- and influential -- as her later music was, it tended to obscure the fact that she had started out as a solid, bebop-oriented pianist," critic Don Heckman told The Times Saturday. "I remember hearing, and jamming with, her in the early '60s at photographer W. Eugene Smith's loft in Manhattan. At that time she played with a brisk, rhythmic style immediately reminiscent of Bud Powell."

She met her future husband in 1963 while playing an engagement with Gibbs' group at Birdland in New York City.

Early albums under her name, including "A Monastic Trio," and "Ptah the El Daoud," were greeted with critical praise, the paper said. Her last recording, "Translinear Light," came in 2004.

Angel in New York

Wesley Autrey faced a harrowing choice as he tried to rescue a teenager who fell off a platform onto a subway track in front of an approaching train: Struggle to hoist him back up to the platform in time, or take a chance on finding safety under the train.

At first, he tried to pull the young man up, but he was afraid he wouldn't make it in time and they would both be killed.

"So I just chose to dive on top of him an

d pin him down," he said.

Autrey and the teen landed in the drainage trough between the rails Tuesday as a southbound No. 1 train entered the 137th Street/City College station.

The train's operator saw them on the tracks and applied the emergency brakes.

Two cars passed over the men — with about 2 inches to spare, Autrey said. The troughs are typically about 12 inches deep but can be as shallow as 8 or as deep as 24, New York City Transit officials said.

Relatives identified the teen as Cameron Hollopeter, 19, of Littleton, Mass., a student at the New York Film Academy.

Hollopeter's stepmother, Rachel Hollopeter, said Autrey was "an angel."

"He was so heroic," she said early Wednesday in a telephone interview. "If he wasn't there, this would be a whole different call."

Authorities said Hollopeter had suffered a medical problem, but was in stable condition at a hospital.

Autrey, 50, of Manhattan, declined medical attention.

Autrey had been waiting for a train with his two young daughters. After the train stopped, he heard bystanders scream and yelled out: "We're O.K. down here but I've got two daughters up there. Let them know their father's O.K.," The New York Times reported.

While spectators cheered Autrey, hugged him and hailed him as a hero, he didn't see it that way.

"I don't feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help," he told the Times. "I did what I felt was right."

The Godfather will Live On........

Director Spike Lee has signed on to shoot a movie about James Brown, the late "Godfather of Soul," Daily Variety reported on Wednesday.

The authorized project is being developed for Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures by Brian Grazer, the Oscar-winning producer of "A Beautiful Mind," the trade publication said, adding that production would likely begin in 2008.

Brown, the self-proclaimed "hardest working man in show business," died of congestive heart failure on Monday, aged 73. The energetic singer of such soul anthems as "Sex Machine" and "I Feel Good," invented funk music, inspired the dance moves of Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson, and helped pave the way for hip-hop.

In recent years, posthumous movies about soul singer Ray Charles and country outlaw Johnny Cash have scored at the box office and won Academy Awards.

Daily Variety said Brown played an active role in the project's development, and granted access to his music rights.

"Like everybody, I was surprised and saddened that James Brown died," Daily Variety quoted Grazer as saying. "Having known him well, and after spending lots of time with him and researching his life, it's somehow not surprising that he died on Christmas Day. He was the ultimate showman, all the way to the end."

Lee, the director of "Malcolm X," was most recently in theaters with the thriller "Inside Man," which Grazer produced.

The Passing of a Trailblazer

Ed Bradley, the award-winning "60 Minutes" correspondent who grew up in the tough streets of Philadelphia, was wounded while covering the Vietnam War and later became CBS's first black White House correspondent, died Thursday. He was 65.

Bradley died of leukemia at Mount Sinai, CBS News announced.

Bradley joined "60 Minutes" in 1981, 10 years after he started with the network as a stringer in Paris.

Producer Don Hewitt, in his book "Minute by Minute," was quick to appreciate Bradley's work once he joined the "60 Minutes" crew.

"He's so good and so savvy and so lights up the tube every time he's on it that I wonder what took us so long," Hewitt wrote.

Bradley's consummate skills as a broadcast journalist and his distinctive body of work were recognized with numerous awards, including 19 Emmys, the latest for a segment that reported the reopening of the 50-year-old racial murder case of Emmett Till.

He was honored with the Lifetime Achievement award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Three of his Emmys came at the 2003 awards: a lifetime achievement Emmy; one for a 2002 "60 Minutes" report on brain cancer patients and for a "60 Minutes II" report about sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

Bradley grew up in a tough section of Philadelphia, where he once recalled that his parents worked 20-hour days at two jobs apiece. "I was told, `You can be anything you want, kid,'" he once told an interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."

After graduating from Cheney State College, he launched his career as a DJ and news reporter for a Philadelphia radio station in 1963, moving to New York's WCBS radio four years later.

He joined CBS News as a stringer in the Paris bureau in 1971, transferring a year later to the Saigon bureau during the Vietnam War; he was wounded while on assignment in Cambodia. Bradley moved to the Washington bureau in June 1974, 14 months after he was named a CBS News correspondent.

He later returned to Vietnam, covering the fall of that country and Cambodia.

After Southeast Asia, Bradley returned to the United States and covered Jimmy Carter's successful campaign for the White House. He followed Carter to Washington, becoming CBS' first black White House correspondent — a prestigious position that Bradley didn't enjoy.

He jumped from Washington to doing pieces for "CBS Reports," traveling to Cambodia, China, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. It was his Emmy-winning 1979 work on a story about Vietnamese boat people, refugees from the war-torn nation, that eventually landed his work on "60 Minutes."

Say Goodnight to a Classic

The Stardust, the neon-wrapped casino with a mobbed-up past whose 1,065 rooms once set the standard for size on the Las Vegas Strip, witnessed its last roll of the dice Wednesday.

Wistful longtime employees and loyal gamblers gathered for a last farewell to the iconic 48-year-old institution, which is to be razed early next year to make way for Boyd Gaming Corp.'s planned $4 billion Echelon Place resort.

The Stardust opened July 2, 1958, as the world's largest hotel and catered to middle America with $6-a-night rooms and low-minimum stakes gambling.

But as bigger, classier casinos sprung up around it in the late 1980s and '90s and patrons began shelling out more for rooms, food and drinks, its luster began to fade.

"I'm really going to miss this place," said Jimmy Kunihiro, a 60-year-old Honolulu resident, as he took a last pass at the craps table. "It's a home away from home."

The resort became as famous for its familiar friendliness as its mob connections. In the 1995 movie "Casino," Robert De Niro played a character inspired by the finely tailored Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who ran the hotel-casino in the mid-1970s.

"He truly was Cadillac sharp all the time," said Mickey Jones, a drummer and actor who appeared as a guest on Rosenthal's television broadcast from the hotel. "When the mob ran this town, everything functioned like clockwork."

Cocktail waitress Emma Houston remembered how Rosenthal sent money to make her mortgage payment when she was hospitalized for surgery in 1974.

"They knew everybody by name, not by badge," she said. "It was different back in that day."

In its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, Elvis Presley would drop by. Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown co-hosted a radio show from the sports book.

One night, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin showed up at the "Moby Dick" restaurant in the Stardust, just as chef Frank Perkins, now 60, was closing. He reopened in a hurry.

"Sinatra said, `You can cook for me anytime,'" Perkins said. "So I will never forget that."

With the 1980s came a crackdown by Nevada regulators on organized skimming from the casino cages. Boyd was brought in as an operator in 1983, and bought the Stardust in 1985 when the mobbed-up owners lost their gambling license.

While the explosion of upscale resorts — starting with The Mirage in 1989 — reinvigorated Las Vegas, it wasn't long before Boyd chairman Bill Boyd realized Stardust's best days were behind it.

"We saw a new wave of Las Vegas reinventing itself," he said. "We saw many new properties with new amenities that we didn't have. We started to realize before too many years that we would have to implode the Stardust and start over."

The property's decline could be charted in more ways than one.

In its last throes, Boyd signed crooner Wayne Newton in 2000 to a five-year deal to become its headline performer as the company focused its marketing on the older, nostalgic crowd.

But even its frequent players list was losing steam as the clients simply aged. For the past several years, the Stardust has resorted to a swinging couples convention, "Lifestyles," to fill its rooms for a week in the summer.

The new resort, Echelon Place, is expected to open in mid-2010 with more than 5,000 hotel rooms, two theaters, a shopping mall and more than 1 million square feet of meeting space.

Stardust memorabilia will not be lost.

The company is auctioning off equipment, photos and other mementoes beginning Nov. 17. And its famous 18-story Stardust sign is being donated to the Neon Museum, a local nonprofit group that hopes to restore it.

Hall of Fame coach Red Auerbach dead at 89

WASHINGTON (AP) -- His genius was building a basketball dynasty in Boston, his gift was straight talk, his signature was the pungent cigar he lit up and savored after every victory.

Red Auerbach, the Hall of Famer who guided the Celtics to 16 championships -- first as a coach and later as general manager -- died Saturday. He was 89.

Auerbach died of a heart attack near his home in Washington, according to an NBA official, who didn't want to be identified. His last public appearance was on Wednesday, when he received the Navy's Lone Sailor Award during a ceremony in the nation's capital.

Auerbach's death was announced by the Celtics, who still employed him as team president. Next season will be dedicated to him, they said.

"He was relentless and produced the greatest basketball dynasty so far that this country has ever seen and certainly that the NBA has ever seen," said Bob Cousy, the point guard for many of Auerbach's championship teams, who referred to his coach by his given name. "This is a personal loss for me. Arnold and I have been together since 1950. I was fortunate that I was able to attend a function with him Wednesday night. ... I am so glad now that I took the time to be there and spend a few more moments with him." Tom Heinsohn, who played under Auerbach and then coached the Celtics when he was their general manager, remembered his personal side.

"He was exceptional at listening and motivating people to put out their very best," Heinsohn said. "In my playing days he once gave me a loaded cigar and six months later I gave him one. That was our relationship. We had a tremendous amount of fun and the game of basketball will never see anyone else like him."

Auerbach's 938 victories made him the winningest coach in NBA history until Lenny Wilkens overtook him during the 1994-95 season.

"Beyond his incomparable achievements, Red had come to be our basketball soul and our basketball conscience," NBA commissioner David Stern said, "the void left by his death will never be filled."

Auerbach's nine titles as a coach came in the 1950s and 1960s -- including eight straight from 1959 through 1966 -- and then through shrewd deals and foresight he became the architect of Celtics teams that won seven more championships in the 1970s and 1980s.

Phil Jackson matched those record nine championships when the Los Angeles Lakers won the title in 2001-02.

"Red was a true champion and one whose legacy transcends the Celtics and basketball," Sen. Ted Kennedy said. "He was the gold standard in coaching and in civic leadership, and he set an example that continues today. We all knew and loved Red in the Kennedy family."

Auerbach was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1969. The jersey No. 2 was retired by the Celtics in his honor during the 1984-85 season.

"He was a unique personality, a combination of toughness and great, great caring about people," said author John Feinstein, who last year collaborated on a book with Auerbach on the coach's reflections of seven decades in basketball. "He cared about people much more than it showed in his public face, and that's why people cared about him." With the Celtics, he made deals that brought Bill Russell, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale to Boston. He drafted Larry Bird a year early when the Indiana State star was a junior to make sure Bird would come to Boston.

"Red Auerbach was one of the most influential people in my life," Bird said. "Not only was he an inspiration to me throughout my career, he became a close friend as well. There could only be one Red Auerbach and I'll always be grateful for having the opportunity to experience his genius and his dedication to winning through teamwork."

Auerbach coached championship teams that featured players such as Russell, Cousy, Heinsohn, Bill Sharman, K.C. Jones and Sam Jones, all inducted into the Hall of Fame.

After stepping down as general manager in 1984, Auerbach served as president of the Celtics and occasionally attended team practices into the mid-1990s, although his role in the draft and personnel decisions had diminished.

"Red was a guy who always introduced new things," Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca told The Associated Press in an interview this month. "He had some of the first black players in the league and some people didn't like that, but you've got to do what's right for the fans."

When Rick Pitino took the president's title when he became coach in 1997, Auerbach became vice chairman of the board. After Pitino resigned in 2001, Auerbach regained the title of president and remained vice chairman. When the team was sold in 2002 to a group headed by Wyc Grousbeck, Auerbach stayed on as president.

Through all those changes and titles, Auerbach didn't lose his direct manner of speaking, such as when he discussed the parquet floor of the Boston Garden shortly before the Celtics' longtime home closed in September 1995.

"The whole thing was a myth," Auerbach said. "People thought not only that there were dead spots, but that we knew where every one was and we could play accordingly.

"Now, did you ever watch a ballplayer go up and down the court at that speed and pick out a dead spot?" he asked. "If our players worried about that, thinking that's going to help them win, they're out of their cotton-picking mind. But if the other team thought that: Hey, good for us."

As Celtics president, Auerbach shuttled between Boston and his home in the nation's capital, where he led an active lifestyle that included playing racquetball and tennis into his mid-70s.

Auerbach underwent two procedures in May 1993 to clear blocked arteries. He had been bothered by chest discomfort at various times beginning in 1986.

Auerbach was also hospitalized a year ago, but he was soon active again and attended the Celtics' home opener. Asked that night what his thoughts were, he replied in his usual blunt manner: "What goes through your mind is, 'When the hell are we going to win another one? I mean, it's as simple as that." Auerbach had planned to be at the Celtics' opener this season, in Boston next Wednesday against the New Orleans Hornets.

In his 16 seasons as the Celtics' coach, Auerbach berated referees and paced the sideline with a rolled-up program in his clenched fist. The cigar came out when he was sure of another Celtic triumph.

He had a 938-479 regular-season coaching record and a 99-69 playoff mark.

Auerbach had a reputation as a keen judge of talent, seemingly always getting the best of trades with fellow coaches and general managers.

In 1956, he traded Ed Macauley and Cliff Hagan to St. Louis for the Hawks' first-round pick and ended up with Russell -- probably the greatest defensive center of all time and the heart of 11 championship teams.

In 1978, he drafted Bird in the first round even though he would have to wait a year before Bird could become a professional.

Before the 1980 draft, the Celtics traded the No. 1 overall selection to Golden State for Parish and the No. 3 pick. The Warriors took Joe Barry Carroll. The Celtics chose McHale.

In 1981, Boston chose Brigham Young guard Danny Ainge in the second round. Ainge was playing baseball in the Toronto Blue Jays organization at the time, but was freed after a court battle to play for the Celtics.

In June 1983, another one-sided deal brought guard Dennis Johnson from Phoenix for seldom-used backup center Rick Robey.

Born Arnold Auerbach in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Sept. 20, 1917, he attended Seth Low Junior College in New York and George Washington University. His playing career was undistinguished. In three seasons at George Washington he scored 334 points in 56 games. He would often attend games at GW's Smith Center, where the court is named in his honor. As a coach, he was an instant success, posting the best record of his career in his first season. He led the Washington Capitols to a 49-11 mark in 1946-47, the NBA's debut season, and took them to the playoff semifinals.

The Capitols had winning records the next two seasons under Auerbach, who moved on to the Tri-Cities Blackhawks for one season in 1949-50. They had a 28-29 mark, Auerbach's only losing record in 20 years as an NBA coach.

In the NBA's first four seasons, the Celtics never had a winning record. But Auerbach changed that dramatically when he succeeded Alvin "Doggy" Julian as Boston's coach for the 1950-51 campaign.

They went 39-30 that year, and the Celtics never had a losing record in his 16 seasons on the bench. Boston's lowest winning percentage was .611 in his last 10 seasons.

His last game as coach was on April 28, 1966, when Boston edged the Lakers 95-93 in Game 7 of the finals to win the NBA title. He was just 48 years old, but ready to move on.

On Feb. 13 of that season, Auerbach was honored at halftime of a loss to Los Angeles at Boston Garden.

"They say that losing comes easier as you grow older," he said after the game. "But losing keeps getting harder for me. I just can't take it like I used to. It's time for me to step out."

Russell became player-coach the next season, while Auerbach concentrated on his job as general manager. Russell was the first of five Boston coaches who had played for Auerbach.

Auerbach is survived by his two daughters, Nancy Auerbach Collins and Randy Auerbach; his granddaughter, Julie Auerbach Flieger, and three great-grandchildren.

RIP J- Dilla

On last week, real Hip Hop lost one of the greatest producer/ beatmakers ever. musician James Yancey -- also known as J Dilla and Jay Dee -- was one of the music industry's most influential hip-hop artists, working for big-name acts like De La Soul, Busta Rhymes and Common. But after just a brief career in the spotlight, he died Friday at age 32 after battling an incurable blood disease and lupus.
The young producer's reputation for bare-bones, "old-school" production and rap styles earned him quick respect in the hip-hop community during the last six years. But his exposure to music came much earlier.
His mother Maureen Yancey, a former opera singer, says her husband was a jazz bassist and their home was filled with music. So it was no surprise when she saw in her son the first signs of a budding disc jockey.
"Dilla's interest in music started at age 2," his mother says. "Dilla carried 45s on his arm and turntables to the park every day, to spin records -- and this was in downtown Detroit."
Yancey got his start working in the studio for A Tribe Called Quest. When his own rap trio Slum Village found a hit with their album Fantastic, Vol. 2, Yancey quickly became one of hip-hop's most sought-after producers.
A year later he put out a solo disc, Welcome 2 Detroit, featuring some of Detroit's underground rap talent. The follow-up album was slated for June. Rest in peace Dilla, you will be sorely missed, especially since the industry has given in to popular bullshit.....