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Speaking of, are you thinking of ditching your old cellphone for an Apple iPhone? Before you take the plunge to AT&T, buy a ton of iPhone apps, and upgrade to iPhone 1.1.4 takepart and donate your old phone to for recycling. It’s the green way to get dispose of your phone and all proceeds go to charity.

Everyone is abuzz about Barack Obama’s win in the 2008 presidential election over rival Republican John McCain. How much of everyone, you ask?  We won’t answer that, because we won’t dignify your question’s bad grammar and strange syntax with an answer. In lieu of an answer, takepart click on the image above to check out over 700 newspapers’ coverage of the Obama victory. Enjoy!

In anticipation of the upcoming film Food, Inc, we’ve been busy blogging about issues of food safety, intensive farming, organic farming methods, and other food issues in our Hungry for Change segment. Part of sustainable agriculture practices is knowing where your food comes from (”sourcing” in food circles). While we’ve covered how to find where your food comes from, have you ever thought about where your wine comes from? Beer, wine, and liquor are all based on agricultural products - just like the things you eat.

Last weekend I took a day trip to the Santa Rita Hills in Santa Ynez wine country to pick pinot noir grapes at the exemplary Clos Pepe Vineyards. A lot of smaller vineyards and winemakers in wine country contact volunteers to help them harvest and crush. This provided a great opportunity to meet with other wine enthusiasts, get close to the land, and see how much of wine production is still handled by hand.

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Baton Rouge is slowing recovering from the paralysis caused by Hurricane Gustav damage. The photo above is of a dear friend’s house. He and his wife are back at work, his children are back at school, but they won’t be moving home for quite some time. The rental market in Baton Rouge (particularly for families) is incredibly tight right now, and the surrounding areas are further behind with recovery and have even fewer options.

The city is in the transition phase from the sprint to get life functioning again and the marathon to getting life back to normal. For instance, commute times are close to twice as long as normal becuase so many street lights remain either completely out or blinking. My family said that the feeling around town is very strange: you’re happy to have your electricity back, but you’re saddened to see the brush piles, destroyed homes, tarped roofs, and food lines. Updates below:

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Hope is back to coming once a day

The Hurricane Gustav saga continues, but there are signs of hope around Baton Rouge. My brother sent me this photo and I thought it was pretty funny, so I called him. He was trying to make the point that life is slowly returning to Baton Rouge and the hope is contagious - even if it’s just the mail being delivered to houses without power. Hurricane Ike is moving into the Gulf right now; while no one would ever wish a disaster on someone else, the thought of another hurricane pounding the area is keeping things in Baton Rouge tense. In classic Louisiana fashion, locals are jokingly calling it “Hurricane Yikes” and hoping it fizzles out. The revised path has the storm barely missing Louisiana, but no one is taking any chances.

If you look closely in the photo you can see the now-ubiquitous brush piles lining the road and the iconic blue FEMA tarp on the roof in the upper right corner. Lines at FEMA sites are still long (photo below), but more and more people are returning to work or settling into temporary accomodations while their homes are repaired. Photos and updates about traffic, gas stations, schools, and more after the jump:

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Delivering meals to shelter evacuees in Plaquemines, LA

There are still thousands of Hurricane Gusav evacuees living in shelters in and around the Baton Rouge area. My brother Jordan (if you’ve been following our coverage, he’s becoming quite the online content creator) sent me these pictures from the front lines of the relief effort. Feeding evacuees, relief volunteers, and first responders in from other states to help is a huge part of the relief effort. Churches, companies, and NGOs work to keep everyone fed throughout the weeks and months they’ll be on the ground helping or in shelters waiting for electricity to be restored or homes to be rebuilt.

The pictures are from a feeding shelter in Plaquemines, LA across the river from Baton Rouge. Dow Chemical employees prepared 500 meals that were sent to evacuees in Point Coupee parish northwest fo the city. Even in dreary times like this, Louisiana’s spirit and culture shines through. The meals prepared today were jambalaya and red beans and rice, classic staples of Louisiana Cajun/Creole cuisine. Most Louisiana food has the advantage of being scalable to cook for large (or in this case, VERY large) groups of people very easily. Additionally, if you’re in a shelter with your family worried about rebuilding your home and Hurricane Ike in the Gulf, some Louisiana comfort food goes a long way.

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It’s been one week since Hurricane Gustav made landfall and devastated south Louisiana. We apologize for the brief interruption in posts; TakePart will continue to do our best to cover the effects and relief efforts from the storm, even if the national media won’t. As you can see in the video above, cleaning up all the limbs, trees, and debris remains most people’s daily routine, and desperately wishing you had your electricity (aka air conditioning and perishable food) back remains a popular past time. Brush piles up to 10 feet high line most streets in older Baton Rouge neighborhoods.

Just how much debris did Hurricane Gustav create in Baton Rouge? The parish created a 30 day plan for removing all debris. However, with Hurricane Ike looming just outside the Gulf of Mexico, the parish has speeded up the plan to less than a week. If the piles were to remain uncollected, they could turn into dangerous projectiles if Baton Rouge were unfortunate enough to be hit with another deadly hurricane. More updates and pictures after the jump.

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Life in BR now: trees down and traffic in the rearview

In addition to the news update I posted earlier, I wanted to post a few Hurricane Gustav photos taken today from the Southdowns neighborhood in Baton Rouge. Southdowns is one of Baton Rouge’s older neighborhoods and is graced with beautiful old trees, classic Louisiana and architecture, and a great Mardi Gras parade. While most roads have been cleared for traffic, debris still clutters road shoulders, including all of the taller or older trees toppled by Gustav.

The images below are from my youngest brother Tucker on Lee Drive south of Perkins Road.

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The video from my brother’s cell phone is of the family cleaning up the branches and trees damaged by Hurricane Gustav in Baton Rouge, LA. My father was lucky this time around; while there was a lot to cleanup, no trees fell on any of the house (as they did during Hurricane Katrina). This will be a familiar site over the next few days as people take advantage of breaks in the weather to clean up.

We’ve gotten lots of comments over the last two days - thanks everyone for their input and concerns… similarly, if you had a question we’re doing our best to get back to you as soon as possible. It’s really inspiring to see how our blog is helping keep people connected and help create social action. Also, a lot of the comments have noted that because New Orleans didn’t flood, the national media seems to have traded in the still devastating disaster for the Republican National Convention. Let’s be clear - while New Orleans fared well, normal life in Baton Rouge and surrounding area has ground to a halt and won’t be back to normal for quite some time. Updates after the jump including hospitals, areas with no clean water, and Southern manners…

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The 2 hour wait for gasoline...

Our coverage of Hurricane Gustav continues with more updates from locals on the ground. Power has only been restored to 10% of the city of Baton Rouge and rain continues to fall (check out the sky in the photo above). Governor Bobby Jindal says that the lack of electricity is the greatest concern for the state, as it threatens residents who are sweltering in the heat and running out of food and also keeps vital businesses closed.

In particular, gasoline remains in very short supply as stations are closed, people are driving long distances to check on evacuated homes, generators have been running nonstop, and most stations were sucked dry before the storm. Lines for home improvement stores, FEMA ice distribution stations, and gas stations are getting very long. Some text message updates about conditions on the ground after the jump:

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