All eyes were on New Orleans as the powerful Hurricane Gustav blew ashore this weekend, but due to an extensive, we-can't-let-Katrina-happen-again evacuation plan and the fact that Gustav had weakened by the time it reached the area, the city, and, most importantly, it's residents made it through. Next up: Hurricane Hannah, which appears to be on track to hit the East Coast.

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The Superdome sits empty this weekend — a stark contrast to what it looked like exactly three years ago, when New Orleans officials stuffed it with Hurricane Katrina refugees. Rather than shelter residents from the coming onslaught of Hurricane Gustav — now a Category 4 with winds expected north of 70mph when it hits the city — officials are moving forward with what may actually be a well-organized evacuation plan. Voluntary evacuations are already in place for many areas, with bus service offered to residents to transfer them to northern Louisiana to wait out the storm. A mandatory evacuation is expected Sunday morning to prepare for Gustav's expected landfall on Tuesday, though Mayor Ray Nagin is encouraging residents to get a head start to get out of harm's way.

Might they get things right this time around? And to those who decide to stay and suffer through Gustav, refusing to leave the city — how much sympathy should they be afforded?

If you're on the ground in New Orleans, or have friends and family there, how much does reality differ from press reports about what's going on?

Hey! Wouldja look at that! It's a "Katrina Relief" donation option below the tip line on a dining bill.

This is a cool thing they're doing at otherwise so-so NYC restaurant Tabla. Making the charity even nicer is that it's not a three-year anniversary, limited-time-only addition; reportedly, Tabla's been doing this since December of '05.

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This week marks the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which ranks among the most tragic domestic events I've witnessed in my lifetime. We can't stop the storms — although we can do our parts to help thwart global warming — but we can make sure that what happened after Katrina never happens again. We can never forget.

Bon appetit, refugees! Three years after that one rainstorm in the South, everyone's finally agreed that enough time has passed for them to stop pretending they care that poor peoples' shanties blew over. So now, instead of using all their manpower to produce story after story about things like how rampant misappropriation of federal funds has created shameful, unnecessary housing shortfalls, Nawlins media folk can get back to real news, like which restaurant has the best lobster.

Now the question is whether or not the Times photo editor got how wry she was being by making the black waiter – the only person of color in the photo – blurry.

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Supporting the Arts is a Stereohyped series dedicated to your creative works. Send your artwork, poems, short stories, photography, music, short films, etc., to lauren AT stereohyped.com, subject "Supporting the Arts."

Aichlee Bushnell is an interdisciplinary poet and a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Counting Sonia Sanchez and Tracie Morris among her mentors, Aichlee has performed her work on various stages in Philadelphia and New York City. An aspiring teacher, she is the creator of the Brave Star Collective, a writing mentoring program for high school girls in West Philadelphia. Aichlee is also the author of several blogs including Brave Star. Although Philly born and bred, Aichlee is currently living and writing in Salvador, Brazil.

She wrote the poem Elegy After the Flood on the first year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, because she felt deeply disappointed and frustrated by the forgetfulness and lack of initiative on behalf of the government and the American people to respond to the needs of a community that was still struggling to rebuild. She wrote the poem in honor of those voices that have been hushed and pushed to the back of the nation's memory.

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INCOMPETENCY AT ITS FINEST More than $85 million worth of household materials — from kitchen goods to sleeping necessities — meant for Hurricane Katrina victims sat in a warehouse for two years before FEMA finally "gave it away" to federal and state agencies this year. While FEMA is downplaying it as a non-story, non-profit workers in New Orleans are shocked and appalled, not only that FEMA had this items available, but that the agency game them away. "These are exactly the items that we are desperately seeking donations of right now — basic kitchen household supplies," said Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans. "These are the very things that we are seeking right now. FEMA, in fact, refers homeless clients to us to house them. How can we house them if we don't have basic supplies?" Reps from FEMA said they offered the items to state agencies nation-wide. Louisiana was one of the states that passed on the free supplies. [CNN]

*Thanks, Butterfly!

LAURA BUSH CRITICIZES HER HUSBAND FOR THE WAY HE HANDLED HURRICANE KATRINA MYANMAR GENERALS FOR THE WAY THEY HANDLED THE DEADLY CYCLONE "Making an unusual foray into foreign policy, Mrs. Bush, an outspoken critic of Myanmar's generals, also accused the junta of failing to warn its citizens in time about the approaching cyclone that has been blamed for at least 10,000 deaths."

Trouble the Water, a gritty documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, was amazing enough to win the grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, but, oddly enough, isn't amazing enough to get picked up for distribution. Why? The rumor is that the film is just "too black." Execs are nervous that there aren't more white people in the movie, which was called "one of the best American documentaries in recent memory" in the New York Times. According to Defamer, this isn't the first time a Sundance winner has had trouble getting distribution because it was deemed too ethnic. Last year's Padre Nostre was considered by industry honchos to be "too Mexican" for mainstream distribution. Meanwhile, there continues to be no such thing as "too white."

Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves

An article in the New York Times today tells the story of young Kierstyn Cyrus, a former resident of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and her quest to find a beloved scrapbook she lost in the storm. The point: sometimes the small keepsakes are the hardest things to lose.

I'm just a single girl who lives in a small NYC studio, but the things I would have to bring with me if I had to evacuate quickly are my puppy, my laptop (of course!) and my photo albums. What are the things you wouldn't be able to leave behind?

A year ago in New Orleans, city officials announced a grand plan to rebuild the hurricane-torn city, with dreamy promises of "Parisian boulevards," new parks and playgrounds, and hard-at-work cranes on site within months. Knowing what we know about the way things have gone down in NOLA since Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city as we knew it back in 2005, none of those promises have been kept. Not in the 17 areas referred to in the plan as "target recovery zones." Not anywhere.

On their one-year anniversary, the designated “zones” have hardly budged.

“To my knowledge, I don’t think they’ve done anything to any of them,” said Cynthia Nolan, standing near a still-padlocked, derelict library in the once-flooded Broadmoor section, which is in the plan.

“I haven’t seen anything they’ve done to even initiate anything,” said Ms. Nolan, a manager in a state motor vehicles office who has painstakingly raised her house here nearly four feet. “It’s too long. A year later, and they still haven’t initiated anything they decided to do?”

The people in charge blame "bureaucratic hurdles," and defend themselves by saying, "It took us 11 years to do Oakland." Way to give the good people who stuck around hope, guys.

Attendees of the most recent annual Gridiron Club press dinner got quite a surprise when President Bush donned a cowboy hat and a shit-eating grin before breaking into harmony with some other assholes. Literally a swan song, Dubya's tune cracked wise about "Brownie," the man who contributed greatly to the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of poor people, and about how it's wonderful that the prosecutors are finally off Scooter Libby's lying ass. Basically he crooned that he and his friends are total fuck-ups who have ruined the world. Funny, right?

If the song alone doesn't fill you with rage, note that the POTUS performed this ditty in front of many of the most powerful people in journalism today; people whose job it is to inform you when our President is giggling about horrible tragedies behind our backs.

At the end of the performance, Bush received a standing ovation.