Snow in New Orleans!

Yup.
Palm trees covered with snow.

Hangin out at WWOZ this morning, I got to watch the snow erupt outta the sky and obscure both the Mississippi River and the Westbank.





Snow stickin to the slate roof tiles.
Snow stickin to the palm fronds.
Snow on bougainvillea leaves.
Snow on the still-blooming roses.
Neighbors wandering the snowy streets at 9 a.m., wielding childlike grins and bottles of champagne.
People making ridiculous snowfolks on tiny tabletops.
People making towering, teetering snowpeople on the sidewalks.
Neighbors outside makin friends, sharing coffee and good spirits.

Welcome to my little Magic Town.

Letter to the Healthcare Team

I wrote a tiny letter to President Obama's Healthcare Team today.
You should try it.
Writing a letter, I mean.
I used to write letters to my senators and representatives all the time and then realized they weren't really listening at all, just sending automatically generated "We Care About You!" form letters that only got more and more depressing.
And, y'know, this may still be the case with the new administration.
Howevah.
I watched some videos from the Environmental Team the other day, and the speaker actually read several people's letters and commented on them.
It was amazing!
I mean, maybe this whole democracy dream might actually be able to solidify a little bit within the rotting corpse of our stinky old U.S. plutocracy.
How cool would that be?!
So, yeah:
Write em a letter.
Tell em how you really feel and why.
There might actually be somebody listening.

_______________________________
Healthcare Team's Query:
"What worries you most about the healthcare system in our country?"

RumDoxy's Reply:
My concerns about the U.S. healthcare system are rooted deeply within my much larger concerns about the U.S.' food systems. For those of us who cannot afford any medical care whatsoever (not even the "affordable" $44 per month, per couple plan my employer generously offers), medical attention for our illnesses is nowhere near as important as preventing those illnesses from occurring in the first place. Many people have commented on our current medical ideology needing to refocus on treating the whole individual, as opposed to treating (and creating and treating) symptoms. I wholeheartedly agree with this holistic view and, at the same time, do not believe it digs deeply enough around the colossal taproot of our overwhelming crises.

We absolutely must adamantly disallow myriad Big Business' tyrannical dictation of our options when it comes to caring for ourselves and our families. In the interests of Big Business, consumer-oriented labeling was deregulated in the 1970s to begin allowing imitation foods to be advertised as equivalent to the "real thing," which they certainly are not. It is Big Business that promotes (by)products as nutritious and healthy (like false fats and false sugars), (by)products that are now recognized as being actively toxic to human health. It was/is/has been Big Business that has promoted the ludicrous excesses of meat and dairy consumption that are now destroying not only our health (increasing risks of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and etc.), but are destroying our environment, our very planet, at an alarming rate.

Powerful people in business suits, in offices, in any environment not directly connected to the living environment they claim to serve, have absolutely no pragmatic ground on which to stand when they claim to be able to determine what is best for us. Not where our health is concerned.

I would suggest incorporating farmers - not agribusiness giants, you understand, but Real Farmers - into the fold of our healthcare brain trust. Farmers know, better than anyone, that what is good for the planet is also good for us. They understand the connections between the health of the soil, of the grass and fruit and vegetables that grow in it, of the animals that feed on and fertilize the plants, of the humans that, ideally, function as caretakers of our cyclic planet. Leaving out the people who daily struggle to lay the very foundation of our food chain, putting the creators and keepers of our preventative medicine out of the healthcare loop would be, inarguably, a terribly grave mistake.

I also suggest the new Healthcare Team give some serious thought to consulting with Michael Pollan on the U.S. food system. He has done more research, has put his findings more accessibly, than perhaps any other academic author. He is a valuable resource, and should not be taken for granted.

Thank you for allowing us this space to speak directly to/with you.
I hope you are truly listening.
It means everything.
Everything.

biological initiative

Guilt.
Fear.
Anger.
...meet the men that rule the world.

They are so deeply entrenched in our primordial DNA that we don't have much chance fighting them hand.to.hand. We don't stand a chance trying to reason with them. They are part and parcel of our early evolutionary iterations and cannot, unfortunately, just be convinced away, out of their cozy first.class cabins, just over from Fight and Flight.

Instead of bashing skulls with our troglodytic instincts, we must boldly craft internal alternatives, related to the original instincts only in their completely antonymical qualities.

Of all the natural world, humans are the Kings and Queens of the Pendulum Swing. We have contradicted ourselves in almost every way possible, thereby adding to (and not destroying, as so many fear) our species' complexity and consequent ability to adapt. It is time, while we have a chance, to Step Up and Save Ourselves, to willfully shape our evolutionary progress. We must, without any dependence on outside forces, learn to Hope where we have feared, to acknowledge Joy where we have before seen only anger, and to holyholy most important replace our hideborne guilt with openarmed and openminded Love.

These changes require us to be active in our species' progress.
They require us to take initiative, take the first step, take a second to look around with open eyes and say, "What we've been doing for the last aeon hasn't worked, has given us ulcers, and has made us suspicious of anything that has tried to help us. We need Something Else."
This new evolution demands that we look at our current path with an unflinching eye toward its past and future misery, that we look at the possibilities before us and are open to their opportunities, and that we effectively say, "Ah, what the hell? What's it gonna hurt to not be frightened and pissed off, for a change?"
We need to plunge headlong, with the determination of centuries of our forebears, directly into the path of Something Better.

All the evil in our world is based upon perceptions rooted in Guilt, Fear, and Anger. While our countries' powerful may still believe themselves bound by these invectives (and even President Obama is talking continued militarism), we here at the Low End have got the leeway to make our lives, our leaders, our loves...Different.

We are not bound by pretension and protocol.

We are bound only by our biological initiative to survive.

Guilt, Fear, and Anger are no longer tools we need.
They are antiquated.
Backward.
Obtuse.

We need Hope, Joy, and Love.
We need em like we need fresh air.
Like we need sunshine.
Like we need real food.
Like we need to Live.

Truth and Power

(1/one)

Meet The Kid From Brooklyn.
While I strongly disagree with some of his obviously post-911, NYC propaganda-infected views, his balls-out take on the injustices in his world are fuckin beautiful.
These days, when we so obsessively obsess about politically correct speech, when we pretend so hard that we Really Do Care whether or not we hurt other people's feelings, it's a wonderful thing to see a guy so joyfully, fuckin gleefully! sink his teeth into so many fleshy flanks. Not because he's afraid (as so many evangelicals and propaganda anchors are), but because he does not shy away from the sight of what he sees as injustice. He does not hesitate, at least in this instance, to speak truth about power.*

...And he totally says "fuck" way more than I do.
Color me impressed.

(2/two)

Concerning Truth and Power:
While Speaking Truth to Power is incredibly important,
I believe it is even more imperative to Speak Truth About Power.
To wit,
Power already has a pretty good idea how corrupt and malicious it is. I mean, it can dance the Verbal Justify all it wants; at the end of the day, it knows that both Side Effects and Results of its blind pursuit of questionable priorities are Remarkably Shitty for whatever's on the sidelines of its goals. Speaking Truth to Power is only so effective when Power knows the story already and has decided it doesn't give a shit.

Speaking Truth About Power, on the other hand, is actually starting to have some positive effect again. There was a time in 'Merican history when muckraking was viewed as a valuable service to the public.
Muckrakers went where the vast hordes of the public could not;
they exposed injustices and indecencies to which the public might not otherwise be privy;
they saved a lot of fuckin lives, when it comes down to it, and should have statues and plaques and fawning Thank Yous plastered all over every town square left in the corporation-infested, rotting corpses of our country's once diversely wealthy towns.
However,
since the early 1970s, I would say,
since Watergate,
folks speaking Truth About Power have become just another form of entertainment. They have been manipulated into just another tool of the 'Merican School of Instigatory Mockery. It's another part of what is now the Same Old ('Merican) Story: the Big Guys have finally figured out that fighting the Little Guys head on, hand to hand, isn't very effective. There's way too many of us Little'uns, and, really, there's only so many of us they can kill before we go all Freaked Out Angry Mob on their asses and start marching to our local Wal-Marts and houses of corrupted Government with torches clenched in our vilified and vitriolic fists.
Y'know?
Big Guys found out, most obviously during the 1960s and early 70s, that the best way to fight us is to delegitimize us between and amongst ourselves.
Single us out and make us appear to be crackpots with no discernible grasp on Reality (another thing they've recreated for us).
Turn us into clowns.
Into fools.
Into entertainment.

It's a divisive device that's been working for the Rich and Powered since the foundation of this country. ...Well, it's worked for lots of empires, large and small, for milennia before our inception, but the U.S. really has polished it up, made it shiny and marketably legitimate.
Divide and Subjugate was the big tool used to keep 'Merican slavery in place for so goddamned long. It's what keeps wage slavery in place now.
It's the prybar between skin colors and political parties and religions and all the town-to-country regions of this vast tract of land.
It is the smoke screen between Us and the Truth.
It is what makes and keeps us poor.
It is what destroys our communities.
Our neighborhoods.
Our ways, our means of living.
Our food.
Our health.
Our lives and our children's lives.

And now,
we're catching on
and we're getting pissed off.
We're finally starting to realize how much we've been lied to.
We're dying of the things we were told would save us.
We are beginning to wonder if maybe there's something to some of those crazy doomsayers and old-wives' quacks.
We're maybe, hopefully beginning to remember that,
no matter how vociferously anyone claims to have the corner on Truth,
Truth is always found in the eyes.
It is found in the bones.

::: And where are the bones of Propaganda? :::
::: Where are its shifty eyes? :::

Instead of listening to the Experts, to the Majority, to the Scientists,
we must listen to each other.
Instead of telling the corporations that have invaded our countryside and our cities, instead of telling them how much their practices are hurting our communities,
we must tell each other how we and our communities are being hurt and
we must take action to protect ourselves.
In this age of demonization of anyone who would stand up to power, we are finally beginning to revalue the Muckraker.
We are remembering that the Muckraker is fighting for us.
That the Muckraker is one of us.
Is
us.

Speak Truth About Power
between ourselves, between each other.
Where we can do something about it.
On a scale we can manage.
Speak Truth where it will count.
Where it will truly matter.
Where it will make a real difference.

Mindjyer Own Bizniss, Whitey.

Read this marvelous and disturbing article in The Guardian about Pakistan rejecting "America's War" on extremism.
Basically, the Pakistani parliament is asking that we put the brakes on this whole murderous-intent thing (a.k.a. our "War on Terror"), and that everybody calm the fuck down, set the missiles aside, and pull up a chair at the negotiating table. Pakistan is being/has been "bulldozed" (Rabbani) by the U.S. for the past 4 or 5 years and the Pakistani are, y'know, sick and tired of it.
Understandably.

Of course, the U.S. had a typically dismissive, supercilious, and hypocritical reaction.

So, check it out:

The Pakistani resolution stated that, "Dialogue must now be the highest priority, as a principal instrument of conflict management and resolution," and "the nation stands united against any incursions and invasions of the homeland, and calls upon the government to deal with it effectively."

Okay? Like, pretty similar stuff to our own constitutional and diplomatic ideals, right?
So, we agree, right?
Say to Pakistan, "Y'know, that's actually a really good idea,"...right?
Nope.

US officials said they considered it rhetoric for domestic consumption.
Fodder for the swine,
which is obviously how they look at not only the Pakistani, but at pretty much everyone else on the planet who's not rich, white (or at least high yella), and, y'know, Them.

Now, here's the funny part, according to the Guardian's endnotes
(not funnyhaha so much as funnygroaningandgnashingteeth):

Backstory

Pakistan's tribal territory, formally known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), is a legacy of the Raj, a 10,000 square mile sliver of territory that has become central to geopolitics and the homeland security of the US, Britain and Europe.

The laws of Pakistan do not extend to the tribal belt, which is run under its own punitive laws and tribal custom, a system developed by the British. Fierce customs mean that men all carry guns, and guests, including al-Qaida militants, must be protected.

Al-Qaida's leadership and thousands of Taliban escaped the US war in Afghanistan after September 11 2001 by slipping into the tribal area, which runs along the border.

Under a treaty with the tribes, the Pakistan army was not allowed to enter the Fata, but the accord broke in 2004 under US pressure calling for al-Qaida bases to be disrupted. This sparked a tribal insurrection and pushed the locals towards extremism, creating a Pakistani Taliban. Taliban militants killed hundreds of traditional leaders and now control most of the Fata, imposing a rough and ready Islamic law, though it is believed that most tribesmen remain moderate.

Yup.

Y'all better stand back if ywanna get a get a full view of that paleface ego.

Hey, Whitey?

Mind yer own bizniss and seriously:

Go The Fuck Home.

High Winds of Frustration

(this is what happens when you ask me about the weather while I'm stirring hurricane frustration in my coffee:)

A little windy, incredibly humid, off&on rainydeluge.
During the blowover, it was so fuckin humid that our hardwood floors were damp.
Didn't realize it until I walked across and saw my footprints in dewdrops.
That was odd.
Otherwise, the weather is sniffin around the skirts of Autumn, and I am jittery with anticipation.

No one's really exhaled yet, watchin Ike and Josephine do their Atlantic buildup.
We've got another month of hurricane season left, y'know.
Got friends staying at the house until they've got power.
Gotta get back to town to start workin as soon as possible, but then
the conditions at home are often pretty unearable.
Weather gets like this, and the termites start swarming,
the palmetto bugs running,
the fleas and mosquitoes laying and hatching in diabolical droves.
Got no electricity, got no air conditioning, gotta leave the doors open...y'know?
There's only so many bugs that bug spray repels.
And without electricity, there's not even a fan runnin to break the turbid air.

Coy says most of the cooks and servers are back at work,
but that the utility folks (dishwashers and the like) were largely shipped out by the state,
and thus,
must wait for the state to ship them back in.
Our friend T is in a shelter in Memphis right now
(after bashfully declining our offer to stay out the storm with us).
He lives in a shelter here, regularly,
so had to leave town without any clothes or toiletries or anything after the shelter
locked down for the storm while he was still at work.
Y'know?
This is a guy who makes obvious what debaucherous losers most 'Merican people really are;
he doesn't drink or smoke, he works hard, he's kind as can be, and truly honorable.
But, he's also poor.
Thus, his few belongings are locked away while he is off working to better his situation.
After helping Coy haul home a truckload of perishable food from the evacuating restaurant,
T is packed onto a school bus for the evacuation, with no recourse.
At the shelter, apparently, he and most other folks are being given things like sauerkraut (& nothin else) for supper.
Yes, at least there's some kinda food available, but really...
We Can Do FAR Better Than That.
He's been calling Coy every day to check in, to make sure he'll still have a job when he gets back (not understanding, I believe, that Coy would sacrifice part of his own meager salary to keep our friend employed. Easy). T was surprised when we told him Mayor Nagin had reopened New Orleans. No one bothered to tell the people in the shelters there, even as late as 10 hours after the fact, with Memphis only 6 hours away by car. All those folks sittin caged and hungry and worried, not having any idea what's happening at home, and the people with access to that information refused to share it. I know why they did it. Y'know? People in power, however great or meager that power may be, are always always freaked the fuck out by the thought of their "charges" gettin riled. Like they're mindless reptilian hydrophobes. Like they're not real people who can and will behave honorably if given the information and the opportunity.
Dirty dirty dirty. Just fuckin dirty.

So, the weather here is lovely.
Nice break from the shinythick dog days right before the storm.

Tell you what, though:
you know how fuckin frustrated I get over injustices, especially against poor folks.
You know how tear.myself.apart Angry.
I am ever more so here.
The obviousness of rich vs. poor,
of corruption on a hundred thousand levels,
of overt racism in the most intricate patterns I have ever seen,
everything everything is so unbelievably unfuckinFAIR!
Especially for those who deserve a break of Fate.

But Here,
Here I have a chance to do something about it.
It might not be much, and it might be everything.
Y'know?

So, thanks for askin after us.
It's actually really cool to know other people in the world are keepin an eye on this magical place.

bashful, maybe.

So, we're still alive.
New Orleans made it past another hurricane with little else but wind damage and mild flooding. Not so the parishes west of here. Not so the fishing communities, populations whose primary means of transportation is boating the waters in which they dwell.

Now the city is opened,
but our people are scattered all over the place,
many unable to get home.
People in faraway shelters,
shipped out of hurricane's path on school and touring buses,
unaware they can return,
at the mercy of state transportation.
Losin money so far away from their jobs,
hopin they still have jobs when they get home.
Without their own means, they are
waiting for the city to bus em back.
Wonderin why this reopened metro has not yet given them a turn to return.
Wonderin, sometimes, if they're gonna get a real turn.
Ever.
People in Mississippi, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Delaware, and on.
We've got a friend staying in Alabama, holed up in a hotel room with 12 other people.
Twelve.
People.
In one hotel room,
for several days.
He's desperate to get the hell outta that situation, but unwilling to come back until he's got electricity for his family's home. Understandably.

People left outta here knowin that, if Hurricane Gustav hit those shoddyass levees, they were gonna lose everything anyway, from food to furniture.
That in mind,
they don't have gennys full of petrol waitin at home;
they don't have emergency food supplies to last until the grocery stores open;
they don't have water stockpiled with which to bathe and hydrate;
and they certainly don't have any goddamned air conditioning to battle the brutally humid, inescapably torrid New Orleans September.

All they've got is a fridge full of noxious stank and, with these weather conditions, likely some sort of insect or vermin outbreak.
Fleas. Roaches. Rats. Y'know:
the regular denizens of the world's waterfronts and subtropic climes.

Fuck. That.

While it was nice to have the town to ourselves for a few days (skatin that longboard down Decatur, dodgin trees and wavin to folks), New Orleans is not itself without its autochthonic denizens. Ain't the same without its heart and breath, without its sacred and profane, its far out ends and its everything but the very middle.

Come home soon, y'all, and stop by my place for a bite to eat if yr hungry.



...Just come home.

Shifty-Eyed Gustav

Okay, I'm starting to get a little nervous.
I can feel the atmospheric changes getting started.
Temperature's dropped from sweltering to "I need a long-sleeved shirt."
This does not look like it's veering westward.
It's headed right for us, which, for reasons I've stated before,
does not necessarily mean we're in for it.

Me and Otter, I mean.
Here.
In our specific abode.
Surrounded by 200+ year old brick, several feet thick,
here on the second and third storeys, above the carriageway,
with a generator,
propane and charcoal setups for afterstorm cooking,
with two refrigerators worth of food for ourselves +.
With gobs of water and plenty for the kitties.
I'm starting to really worry about everyone else that's still in town for Gustav.
I'm starting to get a little anxious about the aftermath.

Not so worried about the storm, really.

But the aftermath....



...Please don't let there be too many dead people.

Please don't let these beautiful people lose what they have left,
the birthright crafted so perfectly,
so magically,
from their own blood and history.




...please?

Be Safe.

Hurricane Gustav is about 7 hours out from New Orleans. This is what it looks like now.
We took a brief bicycle ride, intending to wind through the Quarter for a few minutes before the winds started gusting. We came around the corner, from Chartres onto Dumaine, looking toward the River, and Lo, the sky hath opened in a deep whale maw! Dark slatey blue, iced with 10 progressively icier.looking layers until the top fastmovers, the fluff before the fissure, moved across space in soft, swift surety. Unstoppable DustBunnies of Doom.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has just issued a dusk to dawn curfew, emphatically reminding anyone considering for a moment looting anything from anywhere that if they are caught with (perceived) covetousness in their eyes, they will be hauled directly to Angola Prison.
Seriously.
Fuckin Angola.
The worst prison in the country.
So, y'know,
you a black man?
Stay the fuck outta the banquettes in the Quarter, darlin,
at least just until these fuckers with the big guns back off.
It's gonna be just as fuckin racist and violent as an episode of COPS.
People gonna end in Angola before they know what happened.

...Betcha theyn't too many white folks get hauled in.
Betcha a dolla.

That soapbox aside (T minus ? until total power loss), the people that are staying, here in the Quarter, folks all kinds of colors and dispositions, are makin eye contact and sayin hello and be safe. It's like we're all kinda takin notes on each other, lookin out for each other. Markin eyes and smiles and generosities. Keepin an eye out for where to pass along a little lagniappe, when the time comes.

I love it here.
I couldn't leave my heart,
now that it's finally found me.

Be safe,
have fun,
relax,
and enjoy the hell out of
Mama's hurricane show,
an event far more grandiose than anything we can imagine.

Under the Gun(s)

Where y'at, darlin?

Yesterday, Otter saw guns changing hands at work, at the oh.so.normal day job.

People got 10 guns at home
+
they wanna make sure their compatriots are protected when the shit goes down
=
"Lemme Loan You a Piece, Podner."

Otter saw or knew of at least 13 fireable weapons changing hands within a matter of hours.
A greyhaired, well educated, shark of a gentleman, who had always impressed Otter as being incredibly levelheaded, offered Otter a .22 pistol.

~Uhm, no, thanks; we'll be alright.
*(cue eyebrow hike) In the Quarter? It's just a little gun; no big deal.
~Nah, man, I got a machete, a 2-foot pipe wrench, and a crazylady at home.
*Too close! Too close! You can't bring a machete to a gunfight! Please take it?
~I don't wantchyer fuckin gun!
...I mean, thanks and everything....~

Then all these kitchen folk started exchanging gunshot scars, talkin "I got shot five times! Once in the leg, three times in the torso, and once in the arm, but I just kept breathin, y'know?" These guys talkin about all the guns they got, how you better be packin if you wanna try and go outside after this weekend.
And maybe they're right.
They'd know better than I would.
Maybe.
However:
instead of buying the (inherentinvisible)propaganda, I've done the research. Gun might protect you when you need it. Way more likely it's gonna hurtchya, though. And, I mean, I used to be a crack shot, used to have deadlyass aim, but I haven't fired a gun in over 10 years, y'know? It'd be pointless for me to have one, unless I were going to use it as a bludgeon. And Otter? Forget it. Ain't no way that mammal needs to be holding an explosive device. No. Way. My territorial aquapod is a menace with a knife, and ninjafuckinfast. Work with whatcha got, baby.
Remember that bad shit sometimes happens to good people, and there maybe ain't a goddamned thing you can do about that. Also remember that the majority of people can still hear their hearts beating in their chests. There are far fewer deadeyes than there are living folks; far more people willing to be kind and helpful than there are people willing to fuckin stab you for your bottle of water.
Of course, there's also an additional 1400 National Guard in town, as well as New Orleans' own overzealous, undereducated, overcorrupted police force, totin automatic weapons in the neighborhood...
It's not the normal people I'm concerned with;
It's these big guns with even bigger egos behind, with godzilla-sized Fear behind that.

Remember, it wasn't, repeat, WAS NOT Hurricane Katrina that fucked over New Orleans last time.
It was the flooding caused by the Army Corps of Engineers.
It was the in.over.their.heads military pointing big fuckin guns at very traumatized, very innocent people.
It was the Federal Government turning its back on the city.
Completely.

Hurricane didn't do more damage than normal.
People of the city didn't go crazy tryin to kill each other so much as tryin to protect each other from the people with the guns, from the results of the Federal Government's laissez-faire policies concerning poor people.

We're gonna be just fine.

Just fine.

Hurricane Hoodoo

New Orleans is gettin busy, y'all.
Holdin its panic in its teeth.
Gustav is on its way, draggin its little sisters and brothers behind.
They've just issued a mandatory evacuation for Lafourche Parish, just downriver from us. St. Charles is up, too. As are Vermilion, Iberia and Saint Mary Parishes. I'm sure Orleans isn't far behind.
The storm's still a ways off, but, y'know, folks are a little paranoid around here.
Justifiably so.
Since we're in a pretty good spot to avoid flooding and the worst of the wind (downtown/riverside of the Vieux Carre), we're planning on staying put. We're gonna go get the generator and the propane setup out of storage for cooking. We're grabbing what we can. We're looking at losing a bunch of stuff that's in storage out in Arabi. Losing our truck if the flooding creeps up past the 400 block of Chartres. All our family, though, seems to be pretty well prepared. As much as we can be.
Otter's brother is an Air Force commander, most closely associated with the Cajun Militia of F-16 pilots, and has already been deployed to a little town just down from Baton Rouge. Ready to go where needed. Knowing how kind and levelheaded Otter's brother is, how empathetic and just, I can only hope he will have a large measure of influence among his troops. People in distress don't need fuckin guns pointed at 'em. Not like last time.
Last night, we weighed and discussed evacuation. Since we're so well located for the moment, we figure we might be pretty well placed to feed people if they need it, to provide extra sleeping room for folks, to do whatever the hell we can to assist those in more dire circumstances than ourselves. We also don't want to risk leaving and then not being able to get back, stuck watching everything unfold on television. Since there's risk involved with both leaving and staying, we'd rather take our chances here and maybe be able to actively participate in ameliorating the aftermath. Lord knows there's never enough people around for that.
We've pretty much got NOAA's hurricane preparedness setup, y'know, set up. Now, I'm listenin to the beautiful Ms. Caux Caux Robicheaux' recommendations for hurricane preventative hoodoo:
Take any water glass,
Fill it with any kind of water,
Place the waterglass in any windowsill,
Place any pair of scissors, open, across the top of the glass.
This cuts the hurricane in half.
Now, as long as the casement windows don't blow violently closed and knock everything off the windowsill, I'll get to see how well this works. I wonder if there are laws of saturation, or some such, concerning hoodoo's efficacy. Like does this work for Caux Caux because she's on a far less populated island? Would it still work if she were the only one among hundreds of thousands, as opposed to just plain ol' thousands? Is it something that works better with a higher ratio of hoodoo workers to people just expecting the storm to come on in and destroy everything?
We're as prepared as we can be.
Now we're just a city full of folks holdin their breath.

Funny how things you've been kinda expecting have such a habit of kinda sneakin up on you.

Gustav's A-Comin

I read this AP article entitled "New Orleans Repeating Deadly Levee Mistakes."

Hey, that's news now? ...Nice of y'all to catch up.

Despite what this article purports, the people of New Orleans have not forgotten the Federal Flood of August 2005. Neither the hurricane that had fallen to a Cat-3 by the time it reached these eroded shores nor the shoddy post-Betsy engineering that caused the worst of the flooding. New Orleans has not forgotten how our hands were tied after Betsy, much as they are now.

There are many in New Orleans who refer not to Hurricane Katrina but to the Federal Flood, and rightfully so. The devastation that gripped New Orleans (not to mention the entire Gulf Coast) in the wake of the 2005 hurricanes was a direct result both of the Army Corps of Engineers' notoriously faulty design and of the avaricious contracts that funneled federal money...where? To whose pockets? Not to needy Gulf Coast folks, that's for sure. Gulf Coast in general, New Orleans in particular, didn't see any government money, any preventative help where we needed it. Not from any U.S. governing body. Certainly not from any of those so-called engineers whose job it is supposed to be to protect this inimitable city.

The Army Corps of Engineers has done more to ensure the absolute destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast than any other single factor, except maybe their Big Oil Buddies. Between these two plutocratic helpmeets, virtually every scrap of natural storm-protection we possessed has been destroyed. We have lost almost all of our storm-barrier wetlands to oil company interests; we have lost, and continue to lose, the very land beneath us, thanks to the Corps' egotistical attempts to control the Mississippi River's natural ebbs and flows with what amounts to a Geological Straightjacket made of mud and concrete, hillocks and speedbumps.

We also know, from past experience, that our government is truly corrupt, from local to federal levels, and that these same governments are interested only in rewarding their wealthy and/or powerful compatriots with more money and/or power, often in the form of contracts and appointments awarded to the least qualified people for the job.

New Orleans knows what's happening. We know our prospects and odds. We know we're being set up. Again. We know that the rich people, the ruling bodies will be okay, and that the rest of us are just going to have to figure out how to survive. Again. We know that no one in office will listen to us. We know that the Corps is far more invested in salvaging its fragile ego than in being truly effective. And we know that, when it comes down to it, We the People are the ones who will bear the full weight of this staggeringly large burden.

We also know, again from long years' experience, that there's really nothing we can do to lessen these powerful elites' corruption, nor to increase their empathy, increase their devotion to making honorable decisions. We know our hands are tied, just as we know that theirs overflow with ill-gotten gains.

We also know that we are capable of saving ourselves. We gotta be. We would love to be a welcomed part of the USA, but, if the US insists on turning its back on us (indeed, on making things worse for us), then we must become self-sufficient. We must form community bonds amongst ourselves that will get us through the next imminent disaster, ideally without loss of life and with minimal suffering for all our residents. We are doing it now. We have been doing it for some time. You won't see us in the news too much, but we're here. Watchin out for each other. Blessin every other heart around the world that might be watchin out for us. Gustav, that depression baby hurricane, is on its way to meet us.

We'll see y'all on the other side.

*Even though I haven't lived in NOLA nearly long enough to pass myself off as local, I write here in the first person for its strength of perspective, and to remind y'all that these are real real people down here. Really real.

muddy morphology.

Hangin at Schiro's small smoky bar one 8 o'clock evening, makin kissy.eyes at the haggardly dragged.up barkeep, waitin for bright veg curry to accompany my black.bottle voodoo, eavesdropping on the trio next down, who were stuff.fussy peacocked in poly.blend banality: obvious Modern 'Merican Professionals. A ridiculous frilly blouse of anemic salmon, of transparent dacron sashimi, with truly titanic mouth attached somehow above, booming pontificated that,

"As a Degreed Linguist and professor from New York, I declare New Orleans 'Hopeless.' This people's speech is atrocious! Is not even English! Is rife with mismatched modifiers and made-up words; is a rotting melange of slipshod conjunctions and subject.verb deathmatches and wretched, illiterate mispronounciations; it is completely unintelligible, to the point of utter gibberish."

And a number of things raced ears, eyes, nearly mouth in me:

(this:) Hey, I wonder if she can feel the twenty.odd bleary eyes' glaring her stiff spine;

(and:) She sounds kinda uncomfortable, sorta strident.

...Or maybe just pompous, terrified, and out of her depth.

(and, and:) And, really, I'd love to know

how the hell this froofy bitch got a degree in linguistics without

grasping the most basic assumptions and principles of,

y'know,

linguistics?

(and:) That's so funny: she thinks New Orleans is part of the U.S.

Where's she been the last few hundred years?

New Orleans (and southern Louisiana, in general) does have its own languages. Yeah, plural. Languages. In this teeniny little wetland. Its got its own code. Its own Cajun, Napoleonic, Plantation Society French; its Yat; its Louisiana Creole (tongues sticky with rooted Spanish, Native American, West African, and French); its Isleño and Brule Spanish; its urban rich white, poor black and poor white. And more. Oh, more. I cannot think of another place in this country that can boast such a rich tureen of language in which to dip one's linguistic ladle.

A Creole gentleman explained to me, "People come down here and can't understand what we sayin when we talk. Say we don't know English and stuff, you know? We know howta read. We understand how things are sposed to be pronounced. But we got our own waya sayin things, and we don't care what anybody thinks about that. It's our own thing. Nobody in the world talks like folks from New Orleans."

What a beautiful, enviable thing.

Silly bitch got no idea what she's missin.

Baby, Stir That Pot!

Streetcar back to the Quarter from City Park, and I get off a stop too soon,
lured by big brass sounds.
I've been vibrating, craning my ears, for the last two blocks the music's been in earshot.
At Bourbon and Canal, a gathering crowd, and the To Be Continued Brass Band (a sousaphone, 3 trombones, 3 trumpets, 1 tenor sax, two bass toms, and a not-quite-ukelele-small acoustic guitar) makin noise, y'all.
Fuckin noise!
And there are young white girls just outta their day jobs dancin in the street with old black men,
gettin down to the pavement,
leanin in and back and shakin what they got.
I keep waitin for her top and bottom halves to come apart;
didn't think bodies were meant to jive just like that.

Suddenly occurs to me this is what the (puritan-derived) churchies get so upset about.
Like maybe they see this dancin, hear this music, and think,
(1)god didn't mean no body to move like that; it's gotta be the devvil, and
(2)(maybe way back in the backa they heads) if that's what livin really is, if that thing, that alien and unknown and (un)holy, is what god did intend, then i.
then i....

Yeah.
Then you been missin out
and fuckin up
and makin a joke and a travesty outta everything you've been given.
Ain't that a damned shame.

Right behind that sad and tiny epiphany,
I realized that that's what it is with this city,
this place,
this magicallyrealcenter that doesn't have any business existing in stodgy, uptight ol'Merica:

'Merica, specially places like New York and D.C. and other financial/political powercenters, don't seem to ever have much to say about the South that isn't pompous, patronizing:

South is racist
(like the this entire country ain't,
to the grey grey bones),
it's backward,
it's inept,
it's still hanging on solely because their northern brothers stepped in an "saved" em (again again again).
...just like we're all "savin" Iraq.

And then they come down here themselves,
these hegemonic holier-than-thous,
and they see New Orleans.
They see...New Orleans!
Merica's Bottom, baby, and all the Juicy that that implies.
Even if these monocled and moneyed don't make it outside the French Quarter,
they see that this city's a mixup,
that it's an anomaly,
that it's everything everybody ever said the South could not be.
This city that embodies what the powerful been fightin to destroy since the country's inception:
folks workin together across all kinds of manufactured barriers.
This city that just keeps coming back grinnin, sayin,
"That all you got?"

Don't that piss off power like nothin else?
Seriously.
Beat down the disadvantaged and watch em get up again.
Leave em for dead and find em later knockin on the kitchen door,
grinnin,

"That all you got?"

Comin down here and hearin this music?
This joy?
This pain and willful
prosperity in terms much more powerful than money
could ever hope to be?
Like the amber cockroaches that patrol its streets,
this city is undeniable.
It keeps on and keeps on and keeps on keepin on.
New Orleans is everything Pops embodied,
everything he preached,
every grin and growl and grimace and grandiose.
New Orleans' been beat down a thousand times in ways most people can't dream,
and still it's gettin up off the mat,
still ain't layin still.
still grinnin out one side of its head askin,
"That all you got?"

The big guys in D.C. started a false war on terrorism for what happened to a single city block in New York.
Wouldn't it be cool if they started a war on poverty and willfully ignorant, inarguably faulty engineering for what happened to the entire fucking Gulf Coast?
To an entire region of the U.S.,
as opposed to one little block of egregious financial hubris?
Wouldn't that be just?
Or at least pseudofair?
Much as this city's denizens wish the rest of the country would care for em,
would take care of New Orleans the way they did New York,
would see this place as the Heart o'Merica it surely is,
they're not layin down,
not givin up.
They know what they got.
They know what's worth carin for.
What's worth fightin and cryin and lovin for.

New Orleans is evolving, always.
Always reinventin itself along its own peculiar lines.
It is a mystery.
An anomaly.

You still breathin?
Your house and all evidence of your past is gone,
Got dead bodies in your dreams, in what usedt'be your yard, but
you still breathin?
Well, then.

Well well.
.....

New Orleans ain't typical 'Merica, y'all.
New Orleans embodies this country's very sweetest dreams of itself.
New Orleans is better than the rest of the country put together.
Period.
And maybe that's why New Orleans gets shit on and left behind so often:
they remind the rest of us how much we're not livin.
...And lord we are the jealous kind, even if,
especially if
it's our own damned fault.
New Orleans reminds us how, if we'd push aside the thin, weakass broth,
that farce of consumerism marketed as the 'Merican dream,
and get ourselves to the kitchen, where the action is,
we surely could help ourselves to the fine rich thick gumbo that the 'Merican dream maybe started out as.
Hell, New Orleans may well be the only place where the 'Merican dream still lives big and mighty,
always changing,
renewing,
recrudescing.

New Orleans, in all its metaphorical forms, still stirs the soup,
shakin its booty to the music in the kitchen.

payback.

I've been reading up on the Jazz Foundation & their pro bono emergency medical services for musicians, about their provision of elder care in exchange for old jazz artists mentoring young musicians. My heart swells with joy:
finally, FINALLY it looks like people are trying to care for each other, starting to show how much they value what's really important (music+love+food+life).

As I'm reading up on the JF's myriad beautiful services, I'm listening to WWOZ's live broadcast from Satchmo Summerfest, right down the street, and somebody up & starts in with "When It's Sleepytime Down South,"
& my chest is tight
& my limbs go soft
& I cannot believe how much LOVE there is
outside my body,
within my ribs, and I am so grateful.
So goddamned grateful.

This music SAVED me.
Kept razors from my wrists & pills from my mouth & now...
O christ, really? Finally?
Do I get to start repaying this debt?
Do I finally get to really say THANK YOU in some sorta way that's really, truly meaningful?
Do I finally get to love the people who so loved me, whether or not they were aware?

Bless Bless Bless this city.
Bless these musicians.
Bless the Love that makes this & all things possible.

Lo, I am grateful & overwhelmed.

Rich.

you don't have any idea how rich,
how deep
this place is.

you can't.

i do not and maybe never will,
though i watch it hawkeyed,
dredging my guts up off the floor,
calling up everything i've ever felt ever
in an effort
to understand.

Culture + Place = Home

Back after the Federal Flood of 2005, when I was still in Seattle,
when New Orleans was too obvious to be ignored and too far away to be real,
I heard a lotta people askin,
"Why do Those People stay when they know the potential consequences?
"Just move!
"Just leave!
"Just find somewhere Else,
"somewhere New,
"somewhere Safe.
"Secure."

And they
They don't get it,
those lovely, young, volcano-enclosed people.

Don't get the thick history in the blood of every child.
Don't get the breathing of the streets.
Don't understand that
Culture
is cumulative and that,
when it has built itself sturdy and
rooted down dirty,
that Culture
Is
Everything.

Everything.

It's not just a street number or a gathering of buildings or parades or parties.
It's a Breath and a Scent and something
so unnameable, so irreplaceable,
tied so implacably to the very personal nostalgic heart of a thing,
that to sever one's physical ties with that Culture would be to cut out one's own heart and place it,
still beating,
gently on the windowsill for the birds' last supper.

Bull Cook Homemade Caviar

If you can possibly find a copy, grab "Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices" (Herter, 1960*) off the shelves and dig right the hell in. It's a brilliant collection of old-fashioned everything, including photographs, restaurant reviews, and local information about Seattle, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and god help us, Disneyland.

To give some indication how totally cool this book is, just to let you know just what kinds of antiquated, obscure, and dubious information are to be gained within its eroding covers, behold the very first subheading of the very first chapter of the book: MEATS. How to Make Real Corned Venison, Antelope, Moose, Bear, and Beef. Yuh-huh. Bear. The book also contains instructions for Jefferson Davis' Southern Chicken ("a man who liked food well prepared and saw to it himself that his cooks knew how to cook"), a brilliant method of pressure-cooking raw chicken, then lightly breading and pan-frying it in butter. The Herters instruct, "Save money any way you can, but do not try to save it by using margarine or cooking oils or fats to pan fry chicken. Chicken can only be fried in butter." (italics mine)

"Doves Wyatt Earp," a recipe developed by the real man, is listed after a comparatively lengthy and unquestionably sympathetic history of Earp's gunslinger days. According to Herter, Earp was an "outstanding cook," and "his Wyatt Earp breakfast consisting of a half inch thick slice of beef or buffalo, eye of a rib steak with thinly sliced onions on top put between two slices of buttered bread with the butter well sprinkled with salt and served with two fried eggs on both sides was very popular and justly so." The brief biography ends with Herter's assertion that "(W)e need men today like Wyatt to put law and order in today's Hollywood and New York's television area more than we ever needed him in Dodge City or Tombstone." One shudders to think of that much belligerent firepower loose among such misunderstood heathens.

Within this invaluable and endlessly fascinating tome are also offered descriptions of Catherine de Medici's fabulous legs and her subsequent invention of ladies' panties (so she could ride and show off her gams) as well as recipes for "Birds Saint Thomas Aquinas," "Prairie Dog Bat Masterson," and "Swedish Muskrat." A subchapter is entitled "How to Make Liverwurst of Duck, Goose, Deer, Rabbit, Squirrel, Pheasant, Moose, or Calf's or Pork Liver by Johannes Kepler."

In the Herter's instructions for making caviar, carp is listed as having the finest-tasting caviar, though its flesh constitutes some "very poor eating" and is, indeed, poisonous, according to them. I'd never seen instructions for making caviar before this book and thought the method worth reproducing, though I am unconvinced of its end results:

"Here is the original and best caviar recipe:
"Take one gallon of water. Add 2-1/2 cups of salt. See if an egg will float in the solution. If it will not, add more salt until the egg will float. Add 1/6 of an ounce of sodium nitrate. Add 1/32 of an ounce of sodium nitrite. (Get both from your druggist, it costs practically nothing)

"Add one level teaspoon of powdered ginger. Add one level teaspoon of dry mustard. Wet mustard will do if you do not have dry. Stir well. Then take the carp egg sack and cut it open and squeeze out the eggs into the solution. Leave stand at room temperature for five days. Then strain out the carp eggs and place them in glass jars and keep them under refrigeration or frozen until used. If you have no refrigeration put the eggs in mason jars and put on mason caps. Sterilize them as described elsewhere in this book and store in a dark place until used."

I'll be posting more from Bull Cook, as well as myriad other antiquated cookbooks, at later dates. This information, colloquial or otherwise, is too good, too woefully obscure, to exist solely between these fading covers. It should be shared and loved, if not outright canonized.

And if anyone tries out the caviar recipe? For the love of Food, lemme know how it comes out and whether or not anyone dies of it.

*"Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices," written by George Leonard Herter and Berthe L. Herter. Published by Herter's, Inc., Waseca, MN, 1960.

Tales of the Extemporaneous Luncheon

Had Key West bartender friends in town this week for Tales of the Cocktail.
After an entire week of missed connections, we finally managed to get Dave, Al, and Terry over to the house for our own Southern-style Lazy Sunday Afternoon Suckerpunch-to-the-Duodenum. Afterward, we popped off to Tujague's and the Spotted Cat for drinkies and abbreviated lessons in New Orleans' history.

However.

We worked up to those history lessons with this lesson in Why You Should Come to Our House Hongry:

(...and smokin a bowl first couldn't hurt...)

Cornmeal-Tempura Fried Green Tomatoes with Horseradishy Remoulade Butter.
Dirty Rice with Locally Farmed Vegetables, Cajun Cow Sausage, and Melty Brie.
Smothered Local Sweet Corn, Onions, and Creole Tomatoes.
Blackberry-Mustard Barbecued Chicken Gams.
Butter-Fried Bread Pudding with Steen's Cane Syrup.

...'Cause we secretly can't stand these guys.

Thanks for lettin us feed y'all.
Come back and see us sometime.

Heat Ghosts

New Orleans mid-July?
It's 84 degrees at 6:30 in the mornin.
How'd people ever survive these summers in layers of petticoats, whalebones, and wool?
In hats and bonnets and 30-eye boots?
In dockworker muslin and loose-virtue satin?
I mean, at least their bloomers didn't fill the bend, makin easy peein,
allowin a little breathin.

Long bfore electric fans and air conditionin, fore summer ice, fore sno-balls were a glimmer in anybody's eye, those heavy, torrid ghosts started pilin up, started pushin their gossamer elbows into heavy draped corners, makin it so stuffy y'could hardly breathe. Not sure when their voices gained such body. Grew corpulent. Insistent. Not real sure when they figured out they were more 'ghost' than most ghosts.

They thick out here, too. Ain't just a few of 'em,
mutterin outta boredom or feelin sorry for themselves or even grumblin vengeance (though those kind are t'be found everwhere). Ghosts round here, most of em been watchin the livin so long it seems like they forget they're on th'other side. Chattin you up while you're tryin to mind y'own business down by the river at sunrise. Y'think maybe it's a coupla people behind j'yuh, talkin soft and slow, but then realize they answerin the thoughts inside y'own head.
Think maybe it's just people behind j'yuh.
And it is.
Sorta.
If y'look at it a certain kinda way.
______________
Heat used't piss me off when I was a kid, made me angry.
Angry!
Still does a lot of people, I guess.
I figured out a while ago idn't anybody to get mad at. Can't up and punch anybody and make y'self feel better, make the heat stop. Best to just start workin nights if y'can, stay outta the sun, stay outta groups of other hot bodies. Stay in the cool where the cool is. Stay outta them dead people's air. Most people think ghosts just mostly come out at night, but I dunno. I dunno that at all. I think mebbe, in the summer, mebbe those ghosts talkin more than uzhul. Mebbe that's why it feels like walkin int' somebody's mouth when y'go outside.
Mebbe.

Can't hardly hear the cathedrul bells in this weather, either.
Sound tiny.
Far away.
Like they tryin t'find y'underwater.
Or in a bubble.
Or across a Divide.
Like mebbe you the one slipped over.
Sometimes it's hard t'tell.
________________
I never been wunna those people knew f'sure I was always alive. Got labelled "bipolar" cause of a lotta things stemmin from that. Like when I know I'm alive, when I can feel all my fingers and toes and feel m'blood movin the right way, that's kind of a rush, feelin Alive down t'the cells and feelin each an evry one uh them cells, too. I got that certainty that I'm one place or thuther. They say that's the "manic." But when it's sure I'm dead, or should be, but my body's still here, stiff and forrin, I feel like a damn criminal. Feel like I done somethin bad and m'gonna get caught any second and gonna be in a worlda pain like my daddy never dreamed of showin me. Can't trust anybody when y'hidin from Death herself. Even if y'don't know why y' hidin, or whether y'care to keep at it.

Nice little label, though, innit?
7 letters and an image of both our planet poles, penguins and polar bears, for explainin away this weird doorway to somethin we suspect but don't understand.
A door our bones believe but our prayers say ain't so.
Well I say it's so,
even if I do say it kinda quiet 'cause I don't always like feelin like Cardinal Richelieu caught me eatin pussy while hostin the Heretic's Hen Party. It's funny how somethin so simple and true can get so many people mad. Like tellin em their dad gives shitty blow jobs.

Even if it really is true.

I figure science is about a thousand generations away from catchin up with any single part of our intrinsic knowledge, the stuff we know without knowin how we know it. I mean, there's the backwater reptilian stuff, the fight or flight thing that's kept us alive for long enough to kill most everything else on earth, but that ain't knowledge at all; it's instinct, despite what the tv's been tellin y'. I reckon there's lotsa people in lab coats wanna check into how we connect with ghosts and th like, but most people seem too scared to really let 'em have a go at it, includin other people in lab coats. Mebbe mostly those people.

Eitha way, those things the Real Smart People say don't exist?
Well, those things seem to like it just fine down here.
This town.
When the air gets all thick, when y'can't hear god's bells a block away, y'can hear a few more voices than there're people on the street. If y'gotch y'ears rilaxed. Pretty much all y'gotta do t'do that is just turn off that ninny in y'head that's got her fingers in her squeakyclean ears, glazey wide-eyed, scream-singin "jesus loves me this i knoooow!" or some other igneurnt, off-key shit like that. Sounds like a small thing, turnin her off. Like turnin down a volume knob or somethin. But that little bitch got some lungs and she gets freaked the fuck out if you try to lookit things she don't wanna see.

I'm just sayin.

Might be more trouble n y'think is all.
But, mercy! is it worth it.
I been led to honeybees when I'uz losin hope I'd see any ever again.
Been told to stay way or to leave where I was and'm still livin b'cause of it.
Been brought to pain I cud help in healin so's to ease another's sufferin.
Been shown wondrous things I couldn't ever share cause ain't nobody'd see it or undestand it if they did.
Had a hand put on my shouldr, stoppin m'mouth when somebody else needed t'talk bfore he went batshithomicidalcrazy and hurt more'n just my ears.
Been comfutted more often than I mebbe deserve, balm f'my heart when my body was ailin and torn.
Met long-dead grandmamas that seem now, in retr'spect, to've been leadin me to New Orleans, leadin me twhere I mebbe meet mself.

Yeh that heat's suh'm else.
Gets miragey out there and if y'din know bettuh, yd swear yjust heard yr own voice callin from cross the Square.
An mebbe y'did.
Or mebbe that granma ynever met akshally sound a lot like you.
_________________
Those doors?
Those doors to th'other sides?
They got well-oiled hinges in this town.
This town built so high on dreams, the dreams become the city and the city become its dreams.
Sometimes I think we all ghosts.
You get down here to the Bottom, and we all down here.

We all down here.

First Second Line

Seen a lotta Death in the last few years.
Lotta Death.
And suddenly,
I find myself in a town that understands how that is.

Got invited, a couple weeks ago, to participate in the second line of a jazz funeral for someone I'd never met. I was concerned about participating in what was such a personal event without prior knowledge of the deceased. Didn't want to intrude where the heart is so tender.

I'd been told, within my first night or two in New Orleans, that one of the bartenders at Harry's Corner was sick, hospitalized shortly before I moved to town. Three weeks later, one of the other bartenders, with that dazed look I now recognize a mile off, told me,
"Well, you heard about Freak, that he's been in the hospital."
"Yeah, of course! How's he doin?"
"He's dead."
"Oh jeezus.
"...Oh, jeezus, darlin, I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, y'know...
"I'm just tired of this shit.
"After Katrina, with all the death there, afterwards seemed like people just kept dyin. Had a friend...y'know, we couldn't get the things we needed, things were still so fucked up with the city. Had a friend who had a seizure one night. Had a seizure and died cause the ambulance couldn't get there for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes and she was dead. Of a seizure.
(and in a small, tired voice:)
"...I'm just sicka people dyin...
(*...sigh...*)
"So, look, we're gonna try and get together a second line for him this Sunday.
"Y'all should really come.
"Come down for it. Really."

Now, I'd bowed out of a lotta goings-on since I'd been in town; just didn't feel like bein in-the-swing-a-things social. But, I wasn't about to miss this. Not when the grieving, red-eyed and exhausted, had personally asked me to attend. Not when an hour of my time, an hour's worth of participation might provide a little comfort, put a tiny bit of fill in the gaping hole of Loss. I know how much those little things mean, even if you can't always remember 'em later.

Sunday, I dressed up purty, grabbed a parasol to combat the sun, and a nearly transparent hanky belonging to my dead father-in-law. Wasn't quite sure what to do with the hanky, but Otter told me, "You'll want it." Went down to the bar where people were gathering, where the Treme Brass Band was warming up, where heavy hearts and love were beginning to swell. I felt an emotional break coming soon; the air was thick with its impending eruption. One of the other bartenders from Harry's, squinty unaccustomed to the midday sun, spied me and came over to hug me. I was still a little unsure. My own experiences with Death in the Public Eye had not exactly been pleasant.
"Are you sure it's okay if I'm here? I mean, I never even met the guy."
"No, no, sweetheart, it's good you're here. You'll see.
"...You got an extra parasol upstairs?"

The band started playing on Chartres and Dumaine, right in front of the bar, and began to walk slowly down the street. The dirges with which they began, though written slow and heavy, did not weigh on us as much as elegies are wont to do. Notes deep slow sad respectful mournful, but somehow not feelin sorry for themselves. From the first bass drum shuffles, the first sousa-brass-bottom, it was obvious that this crowd understood to the bone how intractably Life goes on, with or withoutcha.

I stayed back as far as I could, bringing up the end of the line, mostly outta respect for the grieving, partly cause I wanted to see and hear as much as possible. The procession wound through the Vieux Carre, motorcycle cops on either end, and made its way slowly to the home of the deceased. People held hankies in the air, half-steppin to the beat. Soft. Comforting each other. When we reached the front door of the house, Freak's sweetheart took his ashes inside for a last tour, and then brought them back out. The crowd stilled while the bandleader, the diminutive bass drum player, began to sing in a faded, beautiful tenor,
"Just
a closer
wawk with theee..."
Some heads bowed. Most looked up and around, as if greeting the new ghost while bidding his body farewell. As the sweet threnody came to and end, the briefest of silences hung over around among us. Brief and pregnant. Like the pause at a rollercoaster's apex.

And when we began again to move?
Oh, that's when it became...
That's when I began to understand how Death lives in New Orleans: differently from any other place in this country, fer damn sure. The bass drum kicked up the tempo. The Sousaphone, improbably, became light on its feet, bouncing fat notes to the heavens and, progressively, every booty within ear shot right along with it. People clappin on those downbeats. Wavin hankies and twirlin parasols. Sweet dancin the second line, twirlin little circles, laughin mouths open to the sky.

As we wound through the tight neighborhood streets, we stopped at every bar the late lamented had worked in his many years here in the Quarter. At every bar, we stopped and payed respects. Former coworkers stepped out onto balconies and banquettes, grieving and glad they had had a chance to spend some of this man's life with him. One of the tavern owners brought out glasses of cold beer for the band and mourners, and lord was it welcome in that heat! We headed down Decatur for a few blocks; tourists staring, locals waving and grinning and dancing on the sidewalks as we passed. They knew we carried the dead, and so they danced. And danced!

On the sidewalk, I see a group of kids, aged maybe 10 to 15, hands full of shiny music, watching us and talking rapidly amongst themselves. They quickly come to a concensus and run, horns and drums in hand, to the front of the line, exchange a couple words with the bandleader, and then join the musicians, playing bright and joyful and fulla love. A block down, from the opposite side of the street, yet another band of kids joins the procession. The music has tripled, quadrupled in volume, and people are really startin to get involved.

Wellwishers and friends drift in and out of the cortege to hug each other and swap favorite stories about this beloved human. There is laughter everywhere. Two lovely girls on tallbikes ride close past us, moving air against my body, and shout joyous "Yeaaa! We love yoooou! We loooove yooou!" A young couple joins the end of the promenade, taps me and asks,
"Hey, what's going on?"
I am ebullient; I am full of greasy, bubblin goodwill. "It's a second line for a longtime bartender here in the Quarter. Come on in and dance with us fo'while, darlin!"

Christ, there is music everywhere! I have never seen a life so supremely celebrated! Never seen so many people get it, that we are so damned fortunate to be able to count among our living blessings Friendship, Laughter, Love, and a hell of a lot of good Food and Dancin. As we make our way back to Harry's, back to where we started, folks are flatout cheerin!, whoopin and hollerin and shakin bootys to beat the devil. A couple of obviously-local guys step in line directly behind me and put their hands on my shoulder, nod & grin, grills all shinin, and start singin with the band, shoutin themselves bloody and loved. "Yeh!Yeh! When I layhay...mah burden dowowown!" The crowd's Joy is palpable, is a natural Force beside within between around us, and,
and I have not been in a nexus of Love like this in a very, very long time.

While I watch my new friends carry their compatriot's ashes down the street, dancing and pumping parasol points toward the sky, while I watch these people who've buried so many, who have more cause to grieve than most anybody in this country, I am so very, very humbled by their strength, by their staggering Love. I can't help but think of the last people I helped lay to rest, and today, today! I finally feel like I am bidding farewell to them in proper style.

Oh, you who call yourselves America, you UStians! Take a lesson from the beautiful people of New Orleans: Death is an ending. Not The End, mind you, for Life goes on and on and on, with or withoutcha.

With or withoutcha.

Come
join the Caaaab-aaaaa-raaaaaaaaay!

Anticipatory Letter to Mama.

Mom.
Seriously.
I've been packing 7-10 boxes a day for the past week;
I haven't made a dent, not even a shoveled dimple, in the vast mountains of Otter's belongings.
(I'm not freaking out
I'm not freaking out
I'm not freaking out)

But I am freaking out.
Just a little.

We may have a super-awesome two-bedroom place in the Vieux Carre: high ceilings, bathtub, courtyard, owned by a nice semi-retired pharmacist-southern-gentleman; old old old building. We're second in line for the place (second line?) after a couple who lived there a few years ago, who are moving back to town, who may or may not (not! NOT!) want the old place. We'll see after the first of the month. Four days from now.

Time is growing short, and I feel like there's too too much to do.
I feel the next week or two will be absolutely beautiful and love-filled, a wonderful closure to our time here, and I am still anxious as all hell to get on the way.

Oh, Mama, there's so much to do, so much to tell, so much that I really haven't got time to relate because I need to actually be packing instead of quacking about how much packing I have left to do.

I can see the alligator eyes above the water line, and they are waiting for me,
putting an eye up for me.
Mockingbirds are flocking,
are following me around the cemetery,
are chatting up clouds of thick magnolia anticipation.
I am so sure I am doing the right thing,
the very air hangs heavy with promise and portent.
This dream into which I walk is preordained,
latent in my old and secret bones.
Here live the visible graves' nocturnal dancers,
keeping their Buddy Bolden beat in phalanges tapped on stone;
Here live tree flowers with once-human faces,
emitting the sweetest scent of putrefaction imaginable;
Here is where humans crawled back outta the drink
(the second time)
and where they may return.
Here lives and has lived the most inevitable girl in my head,
inscrutable and sweetscary.
Here is where I am validated.
Here is where I am supposed to be.
For now.

It is raining to beat hell here. Finally. We've been over 60 days without a drop, and our plants have suffered somethin awful. I am spending this blessed rainy day inside packing packing packing, maybe baking bread, definitely drinking tiny pot after tiny pot of cafe au lait (whose subtle flavors I am quickly mastering), and listening to as much music from my new home as I can stuff in my ears. Looking for as many renditions of "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" as possible, and there are many many. Listening for subtleties of longing and devotion.

I miss you terribly.
There is so much happening to/with me on so many levels that I do not feel I can communicate any of it without eye and skin contact.
I am dancing with the thunder and dreaming the dreams that are my life, however or whyever these dreams have so blessed me.
Thank you for somehow identifying this dreamreality early and allowing me to see how I need to see, allowing me to grow within my own sacred ground, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense very often.

The Thunder is great today, showing off its lane domination and sporting its new bowling shoes.
Thunder gets all the turkeys.

The closer I get to New Orleans, the more nonsensesense my head makes.
I am evolving, or I am just now noticing.
I am doing what I am supposed to do.

I am calm in my deep parts,

...the parts that do not have to pack.

*sigh*

I love you, Mama.
I'm dreamy in my head, making costumes outta cobwebs, but my heart is large and sure, and I know I love you love you love you in ways I can never love another human being.
Thank you for choosing me (even if you didn't know you chose).

I love you.

-rd-

First Kiss New Orleans

This is my first trip to New Orleans.

I find every bit as much Oxymoron as I expect,
but
not always where I expect to find it.
I also
find Serendipity,
Felicity,
and Coincidence,
and I realize,
beyond any skin or bone or flesh at all,
that this city is waiting for me,
that it can go on limpidly waiting and
will not be bothered in the slightest
if I should take a thousand years
or even
forget to come at all.
Its ghosts will remain and are willing willing willing
to tell all manner of Stories in form of Secrets, in form of Tall Tales, in form of involuntary Nightmumblings.

There is a strange Beauty about this city, beyond its romantic architecture, beyond its great moss-weeping trees, beyond everything that draws Dreamers & Seekers & Scalawags to its plumply velveted, jasmine-scented lap. I begin looking for a name for this ambiguous Beauty at the Jazz and Heritage Festival, when New Orleans' heart is purported to be at its finest.

*******

DAY 1.

First thing in, Thursday morning, right as the gates open at 11 a.m., I'm devouring Ms. Wanda Walker's Cochon de Lait po'boy with wet slaw, served up on a crusty third of a baguette; pork so sweet and soft, I could eat it toofless. Oh, it's so perfect. It's just what babies should taste like. I also manage a bite or two out of Otter's softshell crawfish po'boy, shells softer than kettle-fried chips, with fried sour gherkins and cabbage; crawfish never tasted so wickedly delicious. After breakfast, we're set for a day of music and food and music
and food and
and let's get it goin already, y'all.

On the Jazz & Heritage Stage, Red Hawk Hunters Mardi Gras Indians, resplendent in thousands of ostrich feathers, hand-beaded headdresses and chestplates, left to right, orange yellow fuschia green.

Kelly Guidry's sculptures (Breaux Bridge, LA) of elongated female forms. Beautiful winged mermaids, giant bugs, and the loveliest giant fishing lures. Dreamy whimsy. Romantically menacing.

Pirogues hand made by Tom Colvin, whose Cajun-French accent is thick enough to make communication difficult to my uneducated ears. The boats are joined without aid of screws or metal parts. They are flawless. I shed my first Fest Tears at this astoundingly skillful demonstration of a Beautiful and Dying Art.

New Orleans Rhythm Conspiracy at Congo Square.
Squirrel Nut Zippers meets Gogol Bordello.
...That about sums it up.

Panorama Jazz Band at Gentilly. Sousaphone, Potosa accordion, clarinet, awesome (girl) tenor sax and trombone, drums, banjo. New Orleans/Island/Latin jazz outta the 1920s-40s. Danceable, mysterious, nostalgic, ultimately joyful.

A man with a tie-dyed prosthetic leg sits in front of us on the lawn, tapping his fingers against his personal rainbow.

Timbuktu Art Colony out of Ellenwood, GA. Silversmiths who make The Most Amazing Jewelry I have ever seen. Turquoise and amber and silver in sweeping, gracefully organic designs. Yum.

Strawberry cream sno-balls and strawberry lemonade.

Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers. Kermit singing "What A Wonderful World" makes me feel the magnolias in my hair. As the band plays and swings and jives and invites everyone listening to Up and Enjoy all that Life offers, the band is slowly joined by family members, children, everyone playing some instrument or another, everyone dancing. When they play "When It's Sleepytime Down South," Otter and I get all teary-eyed.

Randy Newman. "God bless the potholes down on Memory Lane." Funny as all hell, to my surprise. "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country." Watch a guy camping next to us, who had set up his site early just to see Randy Newman, fall asleep about 15 minutes before the show starts, skin burning in the alcoholic afternoon. Newman has the quote of the day, about New Orleans: "It's important that America has a place like this, that knows what's important." When he sings "Louisiana 1927," a song about the worst river flood in U.S. history, there isn't a dry eye as far as I can see.

"It's not what you look like when you're doin whatchya doin!" is shouted over a thousand sunburned bodies by Tower of Power. It's their first time playing Jazz Fest, surely through some gross oversight. You wanna talk about some heavy bass- and horn-powered Funk, this is where it's at. Bootys shakin everywhere. Emilio Castillo shouting, "Let's see how many laws we can break tonight!" gives me the happy energy boost I need.

Fais-Do-Do stage has all the best dancers from across Louisiana. Swear. You can tell the natives by the movements that actually complement, actually belong with the music of CJ Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band.

And...and I'm dragged over to see,
to see...
Dude.
Deacon John.
Seriously.
Old New Orleans style is Original Cool.
Slow Fluid Graceful.
A seizure carved outta butter.
No segue, from the Crescent City to the (rock-infused) blue Delta with its flesh-palpitating rhythm and shake.
Sexagenarian duckwalking across stage.
Breaks a string playing so hard.
Plays his guitar with his teeth.
Whole band in black suits, white shirts, dark ties.
Moved from Sweet Slow Slide "Amazing Grace" into half-fast "Shake Your Moneymaker."
Sky full of sunset, lovebugs, and bubbles.
No metaphor.
Best act of the day.

This evening, walking around Faubourg Marigny, our friend Jay exclaims, "If you're anti-porch, you're antisocial!"
I am inclined to agree.

DAY 2.

Second of May, Friday, promise of rain from drift-cloudy skies.

Photography of Jerry Moran, his Jazz Titanic series. Patina'd and rusted clarinets, case after case, ghosts of the River.
Brienne Joubert's surreal Cities of the Dead.
Ghosty New Orleans, pre and post, of Libby Nevinger's eyes.
Christopher Porche-West, his full-sized doors home and history assemblage, hold us rapt and overwhelmed with its layers of meaning and innuendo. Tiny essay on the importance of teaching history to our society's children: what it means, how it affects us, how it shapes us and teaches us and connects us to something greater than the sum of our lives.

The Driskill Mountain Boys coulda been Grandad and his buddies gathered together to accompany a Saturday dance. Pure bluegrass untainted by pop country or rock & roll. I cry like a baby, missin my grandad's fiddle.

Joseph 'Zigaboo' Modeliste, original Meters drummer, brings the funk, as well as an injunction to every musician to include at least a single track, on any album they record, that is positive, constructive, and encouraging to folks who're listening. He said it was an obligation of artists to do their part to lift up their audiences, their communities, to spur them to Love and to Action.

...And goddamn, this man shakes a stick like no one but the King of the Funky Drums can!

The pomp and ego and pure fuckin skill of Trombone Shorty is a wonder. Straight up New Orleans Funk all over Congo Square. He and his tenor sax and trumpet players leave the stage and snake through the crowd for several minutes, blowin and struttin and makin a joyful noise. As soon as they return to the safety of the canopy, the sky lets loose the first of its baggage, and we begin to drink the rain. It lasts just long enough to cool our backs from relentless sunshine and warm, just long enough to begin softening the interior of the racetrack and turning everything to mud.

The photographs of Frank Relle catch our eyes; they emit some measure of the light and spirit we feel around us in this city. Nightphotos of old New Orleans houses.

We head over for a bit of Stevie Wonder before heading back to Congo Square for Michael Franti. Stevie gives a shout-out for Obama, asks for a moment of silence for Katrina victims, dead or displaced, a moment of silence for all loved one lost (cue crowd tears). There appears a rainbow in the still-wet downpour-threatening sky.

Michael Franti + Spearhead. Ohhh, goodness, this is the most wonderful show. It pours, in vehement fits and sporadic spurts, down and down and down; Franti leaves the stage, cordless microphone in hand, to share the deluge with us, to sing among us, with us. He sings "I Got Love for You," and we feel it, we love them and each other and ourselves. The water comes harder, and we outdance it. We are soaked, grinnin, full of love and rowdy exuberance. We are ready to heal all wounds with our lightnin feet. This show is a blessing. A perfect end to Friday at Jazz Fest.

Later, on Magazine, we take a friend's recommendation for an awesome taco spot and are happy, happy, happy with what food finds our mouths. Everything, down to the plain ol' black beans, has intense, creamy, adventurously homey flavors. I'm not telling what or where the place is; they looked like they had plenty of business and, honestly, I don't want to have to fight another ogling tourista for a spot for dinner. Our lagniappe happens to be our server, Sunshine, who is a charmingly petite competitive eater; she proudly pronounces that she can put away a 17-ounce burrito in under a minute. We are impressed.

DAY 3.

Traversing the city today, checking out neighborhoods, performing our own odd surveying. I am glad for the break from Jazz Fest's sea of mammals.

Tonight we check out Rebirth Brass Band at the Rock 'N' Bowl, a second-storey bowling-alley-concert-dancehall that shakes to beat hell when it's full of people dancing like the devil's after 'em.
Oh, Rebirth, thy name is Joy!
Goddamn, we have the greatest time here, for any number of reasons:
talkin with two septugenarian ladies about Atlanta strip clubs and the joys of pot-smoking;
dancing until we shake the house, top to bottom;
eatin turkey and andouille gumbo in the middle of all that jostlin and dancin;
fascinated watchin the lady behind the merch counter embroidering bowling shirts to order;
looking over at the lanes and realizing everyone bowling is dressed as some sorta royalty, from Disney's aryan-nations Cinderella to ye creepy olde Burger King, and they are drunk and dancin and ludicrously beautiful;
watching six burly guys (including one of our own drunk, kind-hearted, built-like-an-appliance friends), sweatin and strainin, maneuver a 400-pound man in a wheelchair backward down a storey-and-a-half flight of steep stairs, depositing the gentleman into a wildly applauding crowd. No one knows how the wide giant got up the stairs to begin with, and he is not exaclty forthcoming about the matter.

End the night with joyfully circuitous conversation in an untopped convertible,
arms of grand oaks and
lights of New Orleans
stretching around
and above
us.
Perfect.

DAY 4.

Jazz Fest again;
the Final Day,
the most ridiculously crowded day.

The fairgrounds overfloweth with people, with mud, with mud that smells a lot like horse-and people-shit combined, with trash, and with unbelievably good spirits, considering how fuckin tired and hungover everyone is. I spend my own suffering dreaming of eating more Houma fry bread than my tummy has thus far been able to accommodate, and I also repeatedly dream of eviscerating my mother-in-law. When distracted from that, I get to dig on

Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, bass-directed supercool funk, which helps shake off a lot of the previous night's party. We catch the beginning of Dumpstaphunk and the end of Galactic, those new grandaddies of N.O. funk, playing a high-energy set featuring some supagroovin tuba solos.

The only band I sit through, unattached, is The Raconteurs, though the sidereally related maternal hurricane is sitting next to me, which colors everything a little resentfully. Still, the band was pretty good altpoppowerrock, if you're into that sort of thing. They sorta sound like the Mars Volta if MV were, say, in junior high, recording in their parents' garage, praying for the experience and wisdom that will one day make them such an amazing band to watch and hear.

While waiting for the set to finish, we notice that dozens of birds are coordinating a grand mass of sticks and fluff atop several of the stadium lightposts. And the birds appear to be...parakeets. We later find out that New Orleans is home to wild Quaker parrots, indigenous to Argentina, now comfortably settled here, as well. Apparently, no one knows exactly how or why they're in New Orleans, but there are a hell of a lot of 'em. ...Huh.

The last day of Jazz Fest 2008 means:
We've gotta see the Neville Brothers.
Just gotta.
It's their first year closing Jazz Fest since 2005.
Apparently, there was some local ambivalence about the Brothers' belated performance:
"What took you so long?" and
"We're family; where you been while we need you like we do?"
seem to be the basic (painful) questions at the root of any popular hesitance.

Tell you what, though...
soon as that family opens their mouths?
soon as the first beats ride out on the humid evening air,
soon as the bass moves the mud,
soon as the keys color the clouds,
the entire crowd is one great embrace, one grand family, with its beauty and nasty and bicker and joy, these people are astoundingly happy to be together,
today,
right now,
doin what they doin.

And y'know, that kinda sums up the whole experience of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival: there's thousands of different people with different agendas and ideals, crammed into one blazingly hot, pretty grossly messy area for seven hours a day; there's a million-billion ways this thing could go wrong, wrong, wrong, but...
It doesn't.
I do not see a single argument while I am here.
I do not see any angry people.
I do not see a single person trying to meddle or control or interfere.
I do, however, see a lot of smilin, a lot of laughin
...a lot;
I see a lot of old-fashioned courteousness and instinctive lagniappe;
and I see a hell of a lot of people
happy to be together
today,
right now,
doin what they doin.

Welcome to New Orleans, baby.
Where you been?


Thanks to Internet Archive for the gorgeous live and 78rpm music that accompanied this transcription and translation. Ma Rainey, King Oliver, Michael Franti, Ethel Waters, and on and on and on. Thank you for making these available to the world.