X Signs and Obits

This post cross posted at
Back of Town Blog.
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Simon and company's attention to detail, adding a literal t-shirt thread here or there, to put the story together with accuracy and small, almost subconsciously assimilated cues, was very apparent in Episode 3 of HBO's Treme. And sometimes, it's the little things that grab ya.

Sonny and Annie, playing on Jackson Square, right in front of my favorite people watching lamp post at Chartres and Pirate's Alley, are joined by an accordion player. Not just any accordion player, by the way. That was Sunpie Barnes, one of the best to ever squeeze air through pleats, and also a force in our community in so many ways. Sunpie was wearing a tshirt over a long sleeved shirt. The long sleeves were skull and crossbones, the tshirt was an orange "X-sign" on black. If memory serves, the date on the tshirt X-sign was 9/23, but I could be wrong.

Meanwhile, over in Gentilly, Albert searches the obits. His buddy notices and asks if he's looking for anyone specifically. Albert answers in the negative and his buddy remarks offhandedly that the obit section is a lot bigger since the storm.

So what's the big deal? Again, they got it right and they did it in quiet soul wrenching ways.

For those of you who weren't here, the X-sign was and remains ubiquitous. Painted on every single structure in the city, noting which agency had been there, what date, what they found or didn't. I still find myself reading them as I pass by, always hoping for a zero on the bottom, meaning no one found dead there. I've seen some with ones and twos. One in the Lower 9 had a zero with a note: "Possible body."

There's currently a tshirt with that sign for sale on CafePress. I've seen people with X-signs tattooed on their bodies. I've seen art inspired by X-signs. And yeah, folks, they're still on homes all over the city. Some have painted over them, others have left them, almost like a badge. Here at my house, they got sloppy, no X, but the other info is there. Some days I want to paint it over. Some days I feel like putting a frame around it and gussying it up.


Ya know, that is almost a month after the storm hit, and they found a cat here. For anyone who thinks that Albert's finding his Wild Man's body THREE months later is a stretch of the imagination, I'm here to tell ya that it happened. A lot. Sweep after intense sweep and bodies were still found months and months later. Unless you actually saw the scope of the devastation, with houses on top of each other and cars on top of that, you might doubt the plausibility of that story line. I'm gonna have to watch that episode on the On Demand channel so I can pause it as Albert heads into the Wild Man's house. I want to see if there's a zero in the mark.

The X-sign on Sunpie's tshirt in the very beginning was a warning to me in its own little way. Uh oh. Somebody dead. Somebody gonna get found. In a building. In a kitchen. Oh. Under a boat.

Hey, wait, you mentioned the obits! Yeah, I did but poor Wild Man Jesse hadn't made it into them yet.

The post-Katrina death toll was extraordinary. Studies were done showing that the number of suicides and heart attacks per capita in New Orleans was beyond the pale.

Just put yourself in LaDonna's shoes for a minute. Husband and kids in Baton Rouge, roofer being a flake, brother missing, Mama AIN'T leaving, brother-in-law judge is condescending and not returning phone calls, lawyer is working on it but still can't find the brother, husband is dealing with the insurance people, the "good hands" people who are giving them the run around and she kisses him and says, "See ya Sunday." And she didn't even have a funeral to plan. Many did. This was the pattern of life for many many people after the storm, a pattern that pulled apart what was left of their emotional strength. (For those of you unfamiliar with our geography, Baton Rouge isn't that far away, depending on whether you break the speed limit or not, you can get there in a hour and a half easily. But not after Katrina. It could sometimes take people twice that or more to get to Baton Rouge if it was rush hour and they were trying to get back to the rented place in Baton Rouge after checking on the house they were still paying a mortgage on in New Orleans.)

At the three month mark, the obits were full of the names of people just found in the debris of their homes, people who had finally been identified, claimed and released to family from the coroner's office, and the suicides and heart attacks and stress related death people who passed last week. The Obits were a grisly read, but they were regularly searched by people like me who still didn't know where neighbors were.

As late as six months later, March of 2006, I had been sitting on a levee on the Westbank. When I came back I wrote this:

A woman came up to us with some binoculars. . . . We started talking with her. She lives on Powder Street here on Algiers Point, a street that we delivered lots of food and water to in early September. There was an entire family that hadn't evacuated and they had nothing. One of the women we met up there was an elderly woman, about 83 as I recall. She was one of the women who needed her medication refilled and was part of the surreal tea party under the Army tent at Blaine Kern's as she waited with the others for a ride to West Jefferson. Her hair was black, her makeup severe, her laugh raucous and wonderful. I can't find my notebook (been searching all morning, her name is in there), but I think her name was Joy Boudreaux, a very common surname here in New Orleans. She told me that she had been born on Powder Street and had lived on Powder Street her entire life. She was a fascinating woman. She died this week. Evidently she had other ailments, as her list of prescriptions could attest to, but her heart gave out.

The woman we were talking with was probably in her late 50's, also lived on Powder Street. She said she had a circle of girlfriends that consisted of 12 women. They'd known each other for years. Five of them have died since the storm, of heart attacks from stress. Four others had moved out of New Orleans because of their jobs. She just shook her head, still not believing her personal human loss.
~Katrina Refrigerator Blog originally written 3/26/2006~

There are still many people missing, just flat out unaccounted for, some by choice no doubt, others just gone, bulldozed under, grown over. There are still others who were never identified or claimed.

There were about fourteen things I could have written about this week's episode, it was so rich. But it was the X-signs and the obits that kept coming back to me as I went to sleep at night.


Treme David Simon HBO Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

"You had him all the time!" ~Toni Bernette, HBO Treme

This post cross posted at
Back of Town Blog.

Last Sunday's episode of Treme nailed so much about that time in this place that I couldn't decide what to write this week. But I kept going back to LaDonna Williams' search for her lost brother, who, she finds out, had been sighted on the overpass among Orleans Parish Prisoners.

It made me click on stories a friend of mine had told me when he was staying with us shortly after the summer of Gustav and Ike. I sat at the kitchen table listening to him, in his quiet way, tell me what had happened to him in that place. Now and then there would be a flash of anger, but mostly the story was told in even tones of resignation accompanied by shrugs. I will change his name to protect his identity, but the story he told me has haunted me.

Ike Hodgkins is a tall, gaunt, black skinned man with long natural dreads. He is a spiritual man but not naive. He is a musician, a dedicated spiritual seeker, well read. He knows a lot about Buddhism, Rastafarianism, other world religions and reggae music. He grew up in a huge family on St. Anthony Street, just two blocks from the Quarter. The house he grew up in is gone now. It burned down years ago, probably says he with no proof at all, for the insurance money once the old house passed from his family's landlord to the landlord's son. He has travelled extensively with various bands, has seen the world, and observed.

He was in OPP when Katrina hit. He'd been picked up, if memory serves, for a missed court date for an arrest involving a couple of joints in his possession.

Until today I had no real idea how enormous OPP is. Nor did I realize that it houses city, county, state and federal prisoners. Our trashed storage unit was one block down on Tulane, really just catty corner to OPP, but still, the size of the place hadn't registered. When Katrina hit there were 6500-7000 prisoners in OPP, some of whom had yet to be charged with anything at all. Sheriff Marlin Guzman said we needed to keep "our prisoners where they belong," and there was in fact, no plan for evacuation in an emergency. OPP was taking in prisoners from other parish jails. These poor bastards had been evacuated from their parish jail to OPP. What was Guzman thinking? Certainly not about the prisoners, and certainly not about his staff.

Until Ike told me, I didn't realize that those incarcerated were sorted out: violent offenders on one tier, jaywalkers on another. I guess I figured everyone was sort of put in wherever there was room. He explained that most of the violent offenders had been on an upper tier. He was on a lower one. He told me about the staff just abandoning the place and the people in it, at least where he was. We poured hot sauce on our scrambled eggs and he told me about the power going out and the water rising. One of the guys with him had been locked up the night before the storm for failure to pay his child support, another for an unpaid traffic ticket. Ike told me about spending 12 hours standing on his toes to keep his head out of the water. A guy next to him noticed a shorter cousin and held his cousin on his shoulders for those 12 hours as he was tall enough to keep from drowning. Ike kept eating his eggs. I had put my fork down.

Eventually he was one of those ferried to the overpass. No water, no food, no information at all. Only sun. He said he noticed his skin was in bad shape from having been in the water with god knows what else polluting it. Eventually he wound up at Hunt in San Gabriel. There 3000 OPP inmates were put in a maximum security prison (remember, many had not yet been charged or were in for minor misdemeanors) in a field. At this point there was no more sorting. No more protection from the violent offenders. Everyone was dumped in the field. There was a young man who'd never been in jail before near Ike. The kid was panicking and falling apart. Ike got hold of him and calmed him down, explaining that he didn't want to draw attention to himself or he'd be in danger. The young man listened and glued himself to Ike, shaking the entire time. He was shaking not only from fear, fear of the other prisoners and the extremely hostile inmates of San Gabriel, but also from dehydration. He remembers it taking a long time before the prisoners got food or water.

As for the authorities, they had no idea who any of these guys were. No records had accompanied them, not only because of their evacuation but also because most had been destroyed in the basement of OPP. So the authorities now had 7000 people in their custody and no earthly clue who any of them were. Were they violent rapists or a guy who mouthed off to a cop on Frenchmen Street? No idea. Families had no way of finding these prisoners and the prisoners had no way of knowing what had happened to their own families, much less a way to contact them when communications were completely useless at that time. Lots of people just got lost. The public defenders were gone, many just quit, already overloaded with casework before the storm ever hit.

The LaDonna Williams story line in which she is looking for her brother with the help of Toni Bernette, a lawyer rings absolutely true. (I was delighted to see Anwan Glover, who played Slim Charles on the Wire playing the guy they all thought was LaDonna's brother.) I'm guessing that a lot of guys became someone else during that time. Bernette's search through photos and printouts only to find LaDonna's brother in the photos on the overpass, but not in the records, is probably a story that played out hundreds of times the same way. The already tenuous justice system of New Orleans was completely broken down.

I had heard Ike's story. Today I looked into the reports from back then. Once again David Simon and his researchers and writing crew have it right. As viewers sit watching and wonder how such a mixup could happen, and complain that it might be a dramatic exaggeration of things, I'll be remembering Ike's story and pointing them to the links below.

This article, Down by Law, written in 2006 gives a great overview of what happened at OPP and why.

Regardless of your view of the ACLU, take a look here. Lots of links on that page.

And finally, I think Toni Bernette's character may be based in part on a Defense Attorney named Phyllis Mann. This 2007 BBC Documentary, called Prisoners of Katrina, has Phyllis Mann's description of what she was up against at about the 35 minute mark. There is also footage and descriptions of San Gabriel at about the 37 minute mark. It's a tough documentary to watch. The inmates interviewed vary from a death row rapist to a murderer to a guy who hadn't been charged in a drug possession arrest to a guy who never did find out what he had been arrested for.

I'm betting Simon and company have seen all this. I'll be curious to see what happens in the "missing brother" storyline, cuz from what I can tell from the real stories, he could be anywhere.


Treme David Simon HBO
Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

Treme and My Fridges

EDIT 4/18/10: This post cross posted at
Back of Town Blog. I will update my blogroll this week. Also the link to the referenced photo from HBO's Treme has been changed and I have replaced it with the photo itself (HBO photo) generously supplied by the WetBankGuy.
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As most of you know, I have a sister blog called Katrina Refrigerator which was begun on September 12, 2005. (You'll find a link to your right on this screen.) We were here long before the time frame of the new HBO series Treme begins.

I will also, just as a warning, let you know that in this house we are rabid David Simon fans, from his books to his past forays into television. A DVD of the Wire is staring at me from above this monitor with a post it note on which I wrote, "OMG! He killed OMAR!" Mr. Simon laughed and signed it, "Yes, I did! David Simon." It is one of my great treasures. I'm telling you all that so you know that I expect nothing but excellence from Mr. Simon as that's all I'm used to getting from him.

Onward!

I watched the debut of Treme last night, giggling with anticipation. I was not disappointed. Simon and his team absolutely got it right. There were little lines, tell tale lines, of dialogue that were unique to that time and place. Things like casually asking "Did you get water?" and not meaning did you buy a flat of bottles over at the Sam's Club. "How's your house?" followed immediately by "Don't ASK about my fucking house" were dead on. "He went to Irene's. They're payin' $10 bucks an hour." Oh yeah. Ask the folks at Yo Mama's one day how many cooks they went through in the first six months. Labor was hard to come by and if you wanted to open, after you jumped through the hoops, you needed people, but so did every other place trying to re-open. It was a bidding war for dishwashers. What an amazing statement that was to write. In any other context it would be considered an absurdity.

While everyone else picks apart the Magic Hubig's pie, the Bracato's reference, the fact that Jockamo's wasn't made yet (and as my friend and fellow writer mentioned, Restoration Ale WAS all the rage at that time with giant gorgeous blue neon fleur de lis in various shop windows), I will limit myself to the emotional rollercoaster this show took me on in its very first show.

Here in this living room, we alternately went from flashback tears to raucous laughter to shouts of YEAH THAT IS HOW IT WAS to dancing, even after having danced most of the day at French Quarter Fest! We were so proud of the people of this city, we were so proud to BE people of this city, we were so proud of Simon and his writing team. We said we wished we'd gone to Vaughn's again before the show aired as it will now become a place of pilgrimage. Good for Vaughn's though!

The one thing they couldn't do was convey the smell, the all pervasive smell of the houses, the duct taped and subsequently decorated fridges (one corner of the Quarter alone once had a phalanx of fridges, about 20, just lined up next to each other like mute soldiers with trenchfoot), the weird black slimey spider-webby grunge that got into your hair, on your skin, the smell of that, the fear of it---what the HELL was in it?---rumors swirled about a refinery down river leaking petrochemicals in various forms, now dried, now in your hair. No one knew for sure. The changing smell of the mold as it turned blacker and blacker. They did do the mud in the houses justice though. One's foot just kinda sunk in, but the summer sun had baked it til it cracked and looked like the Rio Grande river bed in July. But, the smells. . . .

The look of amazement, shock, horror and despair on Clarke Peters' face as he saw his house for the first time was perfect. I have no doubt it had been my mask many times over those months, and I saw it on hundreds of others.

But it was Treme's writers' powerfully but quietly written moment of defiance in the face of that destruction that got me. I'm still teary.

Two weeks ago I took this photo and 200 more like it:
This photo was taken on a beautiful day, nearly five years after the storm, after the super Super Bowl, after, after. . .

Last night, on Treme I saw this,

this absolutely perfectly shot moment, a uniquely New Orleans moment. I dreamt about it after laying my head on my pillow, wanting to be no where else on earth, grateful that we are still here and that our love of this place and our defiance of devastation was and will always be, worth it.

Treme David Simon HBO
Katrina NOLA New Orleans Hurricane Katrina Louisiana FEMA levee flooding Corps of Engineers We Are Not OK New Orleans Slate Katrina Refrigerator Rising Tide

NOLA Art House a.k.a. Tree House

I heard about the intended eviction of the folks at the Tree House yesterday and couldn't understand why it hit me so personally, so viscerally. An email exchange started on a list I'm on, and out came this:

I have missing outlet covers. Guess I better fix them.

I am clearly getting too old. This whole thing reminds me of, no I'm not kidding, 1969. I was 16. A bunch of us found a fabulous huge old house and the oldest of us (21) rented it, signed the lease and paid the deposits with the money we had pooled. There were ten of us, and believe me it was a house big enough for all of us. We lived there for a year and a half, gorgeous leaded bevelled windows, sweeping staircase. We all had jobs. We even had a milkman. Yes we partied, yes our music was loud. I think there were a couple cars among us, but they mostly fit into the driveway. We did our own repairs (one of us was a carpenter), we mowed the lawn, and yeah we did have some rowdy parties happening now and then, certainly not every night. We were mostly artists and musicians with day jobs. Oh yeah, and we were kids.

One day a knock came on the door. Thinking it was the milkman, we opened it. It was a building code guy telling us we had to leave. That according to codes, you couldn't have more than two unrelated or unmarried people in a dwelling. We tried to fight it, but were told "community standards" were being outraged by unmarried couples living together, etc. The community was trying to enforce its moral standards through use of codes.

We managed to get all of our stuff out in the seven days they gave us, and found new places to live, although pooling our money for food and rent had been a lifesaver and the new separateness was very hard for us to manage. What always baffled me was that while we were young, and a couple of us, me included were indeed minors, we weren't on the street, we weren't in homeless shelters, we weren't hooking on a corner and not a one of us was on welfare, food stamps or any other kind of assistance. Wait, I take that back. One guy was on unemployment after Pier One let him go.

This heavy handedness sticks in my craw on a visceral level. Go after crack houses not artist coops or squats full of kids. I'm also really sick of the word hipster. With each use it's sounding more and more like hippie being spat out of the old folks' love it or leave it mouths.

BTW, that gorgeous house was demolished a few years later after the lovely old fella who rented it to us passed on and his son sold it to a developer. Where it was is now a giant grey stone building full of very expensive co-op apartments and condos.

I don't expect a response. Just venting. I'm wondering at what age and/or property ownership level we get to that we suddenly start muttering "Damn kids!" under our breath. I'd rather go after the purveyors of death in our streets, gun dealers selling guns to 14 yr olds, etc. than some wacky artist kids who got a little too loud and drunk a few nights. But that's me.

Well, that explained my reaction.

It just has this "what's next" quality about it. Cops threatening vocal neighbors. Kids dying in the streets thanks to guys with houses and trunks full of guns selling them to junior high school kids. Crack houses. This stuff gets tossed into the "not enough manpower" column, but ousting a bunch of artist kids who throw parties can be done. Not only done, but with lots of NOPD presence, Fire Department, Building Code folks and possibly Entergy to turn off the power.

The latest news I heard was that the eviction had been postponed but that the power was still off.

There just seems to be a group of people in any given time, any given place, who are determined to homogenize the world. They want it to be a perfect place according to their standards. "Nice" art that has nothing to say but matches their couch. "Nice" literature that floats lovely images but no challenges to their psyches. "Nice" kids with no imaginations, heading off for the MBA that will give them a leg up into their homogenized world (that one's little brother, with his piercings, weird music, strange clothing choices, well, we hope that's just a phase. Christ, he wants to be an ARTIST, no money in that!) "Nice" music, all old. "Nice" theatre, hopefully yet another comfie feel-good musical, Oklahoma maybe. There always seems to be some bunch who thinks the only good artist is a dead artist, then they can mourn his passing with a great show of respect for his work, nevermind he died with an empty bottle of rye in his hand and a some dope stashed in his closet full of sex toys. He was a GENIUS. He was OUR genius. "Our community has lost a great artist today, we are the greater for his having been among us and the lesser for his passing." Oh puh-leeeeeeeze. No way you would have had him over for dinner with your friends, bucko. Well, maybe, as a curiousity or to position yourself as a patron of the arts after you shuffled him into a cab that would take him back to his bohemian hovel. Which probably wasn't up to code and didn't have the proper permits.

I'm just sick of it. Simple as that. Sick to death of the well heeled museum patrons who go home feeling good about themselves, wearing clothes and driving cars that are expensive enough to support an artist for a year. Don't get me wrong. I love museums. They're important. I just don't get why the living artist, particularly the young artist, is so dismissed, not supported, sometimes reviled.

Ah well, enough ranting. Noel Rockmore, a New Orleans artist now revered, said: "Art is not decoration. Art is war." It's sure looking that way for the folks at the Tree House.

Here are some links about all this (they also have a Facebook Page). Please read them. Please keep an open mind. Please, buy that black clad pierced tattooed vegan pitbull owning artist a cup of coffee today. Or better yet, ask them about their work.



NOLA Art House Blog
Gambit NOLA Art House Article
Gambit NOLA Art House Article: Neighborhood Assn Side
Gambit NOLA Art House Article: Fire Department Side

For my out of town friends

I have, in the past couple of days, been asked to define a few things. Things like Who Dat and Crunk. I've also been asked why all this matters so much.

David Letterman said last night, while waiting for Drew Brees to get through the Lincoln Tunnel, that unless you're from New Orleans, you probably don't understand the significance of this game. He's right.

I grew up a football fan, watching Lombardi's Packers with my dad. I then spent a great deal of time in my twenties hanging out with a group of guys who were rabid fans. At the time I was on the East Coast but was a Raiders fan, so much so that I couldn't ever manage to get LA Raiders out of my mouth when they moved. Hey, for that matter, I still call the Colts the Baltimore Colts. I was standing on Mission Street in San Francisco, with fireworks in my hand, when the 49ers won, screaming along with the rest of the hometown fans. And hey, Joe Montana was easy to like.

Then for many years I didn't watch football at all, or only when the playoff teams were really really good. Then I moved to New Orleans before Katrina. I learned that the fans here were unlike any I'd ever seen. Being a Saints fan is NOT like being a generic football fan. It seems somehow to float infectiously through the air, be coded in native's DNA, or grabbed at like Cinderella's invitation to the ball. Say YES, you silly bitch, and count your blessings they asked ya to join 'em.

Then along came Katrina. Nearly five years ago now, but present every day on some street where the foundation is all that's left of a house. Yeah. Still. Yeah. Really. We've spent five years defending our right to exist, heard endless stupid and wrong comments like "natural disaster" and "below sea level." We've eaten it, mostly. We've seen comments sections in national newspapers full of comments about how stupid we are to live here, how sinful we are cuz we know how to have fun, how idiotic it is to rebuild.

Seeing the Dome battered from the outside and filled with pain on the inside was hard for us. That goofy looking building (just my opinion!) became a symbol of enormous proportions. A symbol of a city in ruins, of a people displaced, of a status that was outside what most people take for granted as Americans.

One day the Dome was gleaming again. Sounds silly, but it was hopeful. Some people were upset that the Dome had been repaired and homes weren't. I got that. Nevertheless, that Dome's white top gleaming in the sun seemed to be a first step toward clearing the tears out of that place.

Then the Saints came home to play. We all cried. In 2006 Payton and Brees came to town. And they GOT it. Or got GOT by New Orleans. It happens. They knew they were playing football but that they were doing something else as well, and they gave a shit about that something else. Yeah, I know, I know. Sounds absurd. We even said that as we were sobbing, "Hey, this is really ridiculous, but they're HOME." Someone was home. Always a reason to cry while celebrating.

This year we could feel it. Brees said in the Couric interview that it was destiny. That word was bandied about in bars all over town, in living rooms across the city, said out loud with that tiny doubt unspoken and buried in our shoe. It was tangible hope, and hope hasn't always been in great supply in post-Katrina New Orleans.

So to answer my out of town friends' questions, with enough time to brave the cold and go to the parade <---which is what we do---I am including some videos as definition.

Who Dat: The entire state of Louisiana decided to forego the use of the "th" sound for the last couple of months. Where ya goin'? Dere. Whatcha doin'? Dat. We did keep the "th" sound for the word "they," spat out of mouths screaming under second line parasols as the chant is often tagged onto the end of The Saints Go Marching In. After the NFC championship and now the Superbowl, the chant of the Who Dat Nation can be heard spontaneously on any street corner, in any bar, coming out of car windows, or hollered in a store, at which point anyone within earshot will join in. Here's what it sounds like:



The Dome as Home and Who Dat:



As for Crunk. Well that's a bit harder. The song by the Ying Yang Twins was played everytime the Saints scored. It was played loud, louder than the 100+ decibel fans could scream. It is also blasting through the city as we speak and will be heard another 200 times this evening during the parade. Hell, it's what I've woken up to in the jukebox in my head for the last two days. Crunk is celebrating, posturing, drinking, hugging, crying, screaming, dancing with a little threat thrown in:



Okay, okay, okay, okay. My guess is that the next time someone asks us to defend our right to be here, someone will say, "Tell them that they oughta run."

This is about so much more than a game. It's about determination. It's about hope realized. It's about grinning, real real wide!

Now, where the hell did I put my parasol the other night?

Haiti Relief Links

Having been on the receiving end of so much help during Katrina, I am looking for any way possible to help the people of Haiti. The bodies are piling up in the street. Many people have no place to go, and when I say "many" the numbers are enormous. So far I have found these relief organizations, I'm sure there are more. I will add to them as I find them, but I felt an immediate response was necessary so I am posting these links. We are not rich, but I remember how many reached out to us personally after the storm. Even five bucks will help and I feel compelled to complete the circle of help that I was so lucky to be a part of nearly five years ago.

Planting Peace (orphanages and other worthy efforts)

Yele Haiti This is Wyclef Jean's organization. He has an alternate way to donate, although the system went down last night. It is evidently back up and running, but the website is up for sure. Alternate giving method: •Text "Yele" to 501501, which will automatically donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund. The $5 will be added to your phone bill. You can visit Yele.org and click on DONATE."

Catholic Relief Services Regardless of your view of Catholicism, these folks have been down there for 55 years and their Archbishop died in the Quake. They are still working to do what needs to be done.

Doctors Without Borders These folks lost three hospitals in the Quake. They too, are still working.

As I said, I'll be posting more links as I find them, or readers, please put links in your comments if you can add to this list.

Haiti Relief Haitian Earthquake Haiti Donation Links

What the HELL are you THINKING?

I get asked that question a lot. By a lot of folks, under a lot of circumstances. I decided to oblige them and answer it. Some of what I'm thinking is just plain silly. Some not so silly. These are some of the things I've been thinking about in that time between wakefulness and sleep, when my mind is wheeling around, sorting through all the data input from that day.

1. I dislike Stacy Head, one of our councilwomen. A lot of people really like her, and I should add, she's not the representative from my district. At first I didn't pay much attention to her, but then once during some Fest (no, I can't remember which one but I sure remember her!) I was standing with my daughter and grandson when she and her family arrived. She haughtily pushed my grandson and me aside without so much as an excuse me. At that point I thought she was just some rude woman, then the person to my right leaned over and told me who she was. So as a person I'm not crazy about her. When she put her emails online I thought it was brave but also a tad reckless as some of her comments within the emails were a bit over the line, IMO. Some of it was the kind of thing that one might blurt to a friend over beer at the bar, but talking about some of her colleagues the way she did bothered me. She has also said some things (no, I don't have all the damn links!) that lead me to think she might want to remake New Orleans in San Diego's image. Not crazy about her. Can ya tell?

2. I dislike Police Chief Warren Riley. I was at a meeting in the Marigny a few months back. He had a lot to say about crime statistics, lack of funds, lack of personnel. He discussed cops sitting in cars with a/c rather than walking through the streets they patrol, getting to know the people in the area. All of it sounded good. He had his talking points down. (And yes, I DO have all the notes from that meeting should you want them.) Brian Denzer, a local activist, asked him about the statistics: why couldn't they be posted in real time. Riley's answer was lack of personnel. Last week he said his department really didn't have anything to do with all that. Which answer was correct? NOPD has something to do with posting the stats and doesn't have enough people OR NOPD has nothing to do with it and it's done by an outside entity? Which statement is BS? Not crazy about him. Can ya tell?

3. Now Head and Riley are evidently at loggerheads. In this nola.com article Riley claims Head used a racial slur in an email regarding him. If she did, and that email can be produced, she needs to go, resign, skedaddle, and that right quick. On the other hand, This could be Riley muckraking. I was particularly taken by his comment that a shadow government is trying to ignore all the positive things that he and Ray Nagin have done. Huh? How does Nagin figure into this? I was also intrigued by his comments regarding his future prospects being "profound and lucrative," saving his best comment for last, "I'm not just a Police Chief." Maybe therein lies the problem, Chief Riley. "Just" a police chief? Makes me think you consider your job a bit beneath you, protectin' and servin' all these folks here in New Orleans. Can't remember, but wasn't it you who said a while back that we needed a "better class of citizen" here? Contempt for the people you are supposed to serve doesn't serve at all. As for Ms. Head, there is no way to prove a negative so it will be hard to provide proof that she did NOT use a racial slur in an email regarding Riley. However, if the caller referred to in this article has that email, I'd sure like to see it. Then Head's head should be on a platter and Riley will be gone to his profound and lucrative la la land, at which point maybe we can get some people in those positions who are not busily race baiting while kids are shooting each other in the streets. Just my two cents, which ain't worth a lot.

4. I was sitting in the St. Roch Tavern one night. A bunch of us were eating, drinking and talking over near the pool table. A man struck up a conversation with me as the guy he came in with was playing pool with the guy I'd come in with. Some kids were playing guitar and displaying their ink over to our right. St. Roch Tavern is one of those places where everyone is welcome. Race, age, economic status--these things aren't important there as long as your economic status allows you to buy a beer now and then. The man is a janitor in a building somewhere downtown, can't remember which one. He went to Mac35, which is how our conversation started. We were talking about the band at Mac35 and he said he was in the band years ago. We talked cheese fries, football, kids. We laughed at the smack talking happening at the pool table. We ordered a couple more beers. He mentioned his mother's ill health, and somehow the topic wound up being the Iberville Housing project. Lord knows how we got there. It certainly wasn't planned. We talked about the possibility of it being torn down one day. We talked about the idea of housing projects in general. We talked about the kids growing up in them. We talked about what kinds of solutions there were to economic and educational deficits. I then told him that a friend (and I guess I have to say to anyone who would wonder about the source that this friend was a native New Orleanian, black male, about my age) who had lived with us for some months a year ago had warned me to never, ever set foot in Iberville. "You'll get shot," said my friend. "Just don't ever go there, you'll never make it out." The man at St. Roch started laughing and laughing and laughing. Once he composed himself he said, "You could walk right on through there. No one's gonna shoot you. They'd all be too scared of you." HUH? That was a new one. Scared? Of ME? Grey haired lady on a bicycle and they'd be scared? He said, "Hell yeah. They'd be pretty sure you were a parole officer or a probation officer or a social worker. They wouldn't fuck with you cuz YOU would scare THEM to death."

Mind you I'm not necessarily going to head off to Iberville to try his theory, although me being me I am sorely tempted. I spent the rest of that night horrified that anyone would be afraid of me. Afraid. I hated that. It keeps popping up as I go to sleep. Afraid. Of ME. Bothers me a lot. A quiet little bit of a race issue. Not riots in Watts in the 60's. Uh uh. Little grey haired white lady assumed to be a parole officer. Oh my god.

Then I noticed a comment on a friend's Facebook page. Something to the effect that it's always open season on tourists at Iberville. Bothers me. A lot. Black people in projects assumed to be criminals. Oh my god.

I'm not naive. I know racism exists. I am baffled by it. I grew up with it, but never understood it. Still don't. I also know that criminals exist and that there are some people out there who just don't give a shit, would shoot me standing without a bit of conscience. One of those people might be black. Another might be white. Either way I'm just as dead. Don't understand that killing choice either. Never have. I also can't go around being scared of everyone I see or there's just no point in going on.

So I see an article in the paper today, Riley and Head, did she or didn't she? Possible race baiting all around, then I think about the assumptions made by regular people, little, tiny, quiet assumptions building brick by brick a wall between neighborhoods and people. The walls whispered behind, hidden behind, giggled behind in a joke unchecked by the watercooler or an email meme blasted out willy nilly. No one takes issue with the meme's sender, they just quietly hit the delete button, either giggling or vomiting depending on their bent.

I am naive in this: I want the world to be like the St. Roch Tavern, where everyone's talking with each other not at or about each other, at least on a good day. I want our officials to talk about what needs to be done, not try to divide and conquer. In the doing of that they only manage the divide part, and ya know, we seem to manage that all by our bigoted little selves. We don't need their help.

For today, that's what the hell I'm thinking.

EDIT 1/12/2010: In this article at WDSU.com Riley appears to retract his statement: "Off-camera, Riley told WDSU that he doesn't believe the e-mail is a big deal, that he's never seen the message and he doesn't have proof that Head actually sent it."

Makes the entire thing even more disgusting IMO.

Christmas in New Orleans

This was originally sent out as an email in December 2005. It was then posted with all the others at the Katrina Refrigerator blog. It seems appropriate to re-post it now.

Lately there have been a lot of articles in the Times Picayune about police shootings post-Katrina. Most of them have not been investigated nor were they reported at the time. Here is a report from a person in the Convention Center (also on the Crescent City Connection bridge) who sat in my kitchen telling me about his nephew being shot. I never got to follow up on this story as once Louis went back to Utah and then finally returned to New Orleans the second time, we saw him rarely. We moved, he eventually moved. I haven't been able to track him down to get the entirety of his story. I do know that for the couple of weeks after his second return to New Orleans that he was not the same man. His son, the one for whom he'd been working so hard, died of a heart attack at the age of 30. No drugs found in his tox screen. It was determined that a combination of stress and probable congenital problems were the cause. Louis sunk into himself after burying that boy. As far as I know, no one has looked into the alleged Convention Center shooting, although in the years since I've heard several similar stories.

This is a tough Christmas for some. Economy a mess, money tight, jobs lost. Meanwhile the television continues to blare messages of failure if you don't buy the Missus a Lexus or a giant diamond, or the Mister a big screen TV. Re-reading this post makes me remember that Christmas--decorating friends' trees with the contents of MRE's and Mardi Gras beads, being glad we had power when so much of the city still had none, being grateful that we were still here, by the river, optimistic that we'd make it through anything after having made it through that fall.

So, if you're having a rough time this year, for whatever reason, read this. It was the people, the people with no wrapping paper or bows, that mattered. They still do.

Well there have been lots of articles about Christmas in New Orleans. Some of them about families who came back to spend their holidays together as they always had, others about the evacuees who couldn't get back home.

We have our own little New Orleans Christmas story to tell.

When we first started writing these emails, we sent one out about the people who were missing. These were people we actually knew, not the people of the statistics. As they've turned up, we've let you all know. On Christmas Eve some of those on our personal "missing" list showed up on our doorstep. Gifts.

We were standing outside, the weather was warm for this time of year. Zack and Melissa's folks were here, and they're always a joy. So we stood out there talking, laughing, having a couple drinks. David was due home shortly but was still at work. I had come back in the house for something and the doorbell rang. When I opened it there was a man with a wonderful smile on his face, dressed in a bright Christmas red sweatshirt, black pants, and red hush puppies. It was Louis Towns, our neighbor. All he needed was a bow on his head and he would have been the best gift of Christmas. Before he could get the "Hello Miss Marie" out of his mouth we were hugging each other. Then the phone rang and it was my husband. I told him there was someone here who wanted to talk to him. I handed the phone to Louis and he said, "Hey, Mr. Dave!" David was thrilled and hurried home.

I still don't have the whole story of Louis' odyssey, but I'll give you what I do know. First a little bit about Louis. Louis is one of the most decent and one of the hardest working men I've ever known. A black man, born and raised in Louisiana, very intelligent, not very well educated. He's married, has a son who wants to be an engineer, and he had two grandsons. He may have former wives, other kids, other grandchildren, but we've never discussed any of that. Pre-Katrina David and I met him on the Ferry as it seemed we were usually coming and going at about the same time, all on bicycles. He lives a few doors down on our block and of course we'd seen him, but it was on the Ferry that we made friends. Many nights we'd be coming home from work the same time as he did and we'd talk about lots of things. He worked in a warehouse in Metairie, which is by bicycle a very long way from Algiers Point. Louis is in his early 50's and he rode his bicycle to and from his job in a warehouse every day. If we didn't see him on the Ferry we knew that his boss, who thought he hung the moon, must have picked him and his bicycle up over near the bridge, but usually if the boss did that it was at 4:30AM. Louis, grateful for the ride, would go to work early then ride his bike home. Our relationship was casual. He'd come to our porch to talk, we'd stop at his porch to talk, but we always talked on the Ferry.

About three weeks before the storm, Louis had somehow dropped either a pallet full of stuff or a large 5-600 lb drum on his foot. I can't remember which, I only remember him telling me the story and it was a totally freak accident. His foot had been literally smashed and the doctors had put multiple pins in it just to keep the bones together. One of the pins was sticking out of his big toe. Just looking at it made you cringe because you could imagine, or thought you could, how painful this injury was. David and I had talked back then about how difficult it would be after this accident for Louis to do his daily Algiers to Metairie ride. Louis said he'd find a way to get to work because he was trying to help his son become an engineer, besides, he had said, he'd been saving up some money to buy some old beater car. About a week before the storm, Louis moved up to a friend's house in Metairie, or near there, because it was closer to the doctors who were treating him and walking to and from mass transit wasn't really an option for him at the time. Then came Katrina. We didn't see him again. When his family returned to the flat up the street, we'd ask every time we saw them if they'd heard anything from Louis. They had no idea where he was. They were worried too. We all knew that he had been in a part of the city that had flooded. At least once a week David or I would wonder if Louis had made it. It was one of those vague little aches that we didn't know how to fix, someone once there suddenly gone. We didn't know his last name---he was simply Louis and we were David and Marie, a name that I am not sure how he ascribed to me but he's always called me that and I've never corrected him. We weren't really close with his family so felt like we'd be intruding if we asked for last names and we figured they'd already checked all the various lists.

On Christmas Eve when he showed up on the doorstep we found out what had happened to him. Unfortunately, it's not a particularly unique story. He's just one of many. He had been in Utah. I should have figured that out by looking at the Utah Utes red sweatshirt, but hadn't noticed anything but his smile. How he got to Utah is a story that I hope to get in toto one day. He says he's written some of it down and has warned me that his spelling is no good. I don't care. I got the "short" version the other night and want to hear the complete version. (He said he'd been interviewed several times by the Utah newspapers. I wonder what they made of his story.)

When the storm hit he was lakeside in the City, either in Metairie or nearby. That is the area that the 17th St Canal breached and flooded. His foot still full of pins and in a cast, he walked through waist deep polluted water until someone rescued him and took him to the Convention Center. There he spent five days. Another couple of friends were also in the Convention Center and have told me about the level and degree of filth, including two inches of urine on the floor. He was there with his 19 year old nephew and some other friends or family. His nephew went to get bottled water for some of the elderly people near them at the Center, and somehow he wound up in the chaos of evacuees and police and was shot and killed. Louis stood in my kitchen at one point and sobbed saying, "I watched my nephew die and all he was doing was going to get some water for the old people." He looks utterly bewildered when he says this. There is some anger in him, but his anguish over not being able to help his nephew outweighs the anger. At least for now. At this point his feet and legs were in terrible shape from walking through the water in combination with the injury he had sustained prior to the storm. He left the Convention Center on foot and joined the people on the Crescent City connection. He was one of the people the Gretna police turned back. Remember, he lives over here. He was told that if he could get someone on the phone to come and get him, that he could come through. He didn't have anyone's phone number and no cell phone, so that option was gone for him. He walked back to the other side of the river and through some intervention, not sure whose intervention, he wound up on a Jet Blue to Utah.

When he got to Utah, they put him straight in to a hospital, where he was told that his feet and legs were so horribly infected that they might have to amputate them. Evidently his feet and lower legs were triple the size they normally are. They pumped him full of antibiotics and painkillers, and remarkably, saved his legs. I told him he was actually lucky not to have been allowed to cross the bridge because at that point I'm not sure that there would have been a hospital in the area who could have taken care of him. There was still no power in most places. He spent weeks in the hospital and was so sick and so out of it that he said he didn't realize how much time had passed and he didn't know where the rest of his family was either. Finally he was released, evidently has been set up in some kind of living arrangement, still has medical issues that need to be dealt with so he could only stay here for a couple of days before heading back to Utah. He also found out once he got in touch with his family here that one of his grandsons had died. So his return here was bittersweet, but he was so grateful to be home. He says he'll return home permanently at the end of March, but for now he'll be in Utah not liking the snow but grateful for all the help he's had. He believes absolutely that he was saved for a reason. His emotional pain will take much longer to heal.

As we were talking with Louis and the neighbor/family next door, we see two short people walking toward us. It was two of our "angel urchins" and they had also been lost. Kendrick and Trevonne are brothers. Their mother works offshore on a oil rig, they live with an aunt a few blocks from here, but last we'd heard they were going to move to St. Bernard parish. Gratefully they didn't, but we hadn't seen them since about a week before the storm and we'd worried about them and their cousin Terrence. Kendrick is 12, his brother Trevonne is about 14, Terrence is about 14 too. We were delighted to see them. I grabbed Kendrick and gave him a big hug and we told them how much we'd worried about them. Melissa said she saw Kendrick's bottom lip quiver when I grabbed him. I didn't see it, I was so grateful to see these boys that I had tears in my own eyes and wouldn't have noticed if Kendrick did too. Trevonne stood down at the bottom of the steps til I asked him if he was too big to give me a hug on Christmas Eve. He grinned and came up and hugged me. They told us they had been in Napoleonville, "the country" as they call it, and were glad to be home. Terrence is in another little town "in the country" and probably won't be coming home. Kendrick and Trevonne will start back to school sometime in January.

So we got to chalk four people off of our personal "missing" list. It was a lovely Christmas!

Others won't be so lucky. You've all seen the death toll numbers, which I'm still not really convinced of. (Does that number include people like Louis's nephew?) But no one's talking about the "missing" numbers. As of last week, according to I believe it was an Associated Press story, these are the statistics so far:

-80% of New Orleans was under water
-284,000 homes were destroyed
-81,000 business were destroyed

Horrible stats, but the following statistics are rarely mentioned:
-6644 people are still listed as MISSING, and this number includes 1000 children

Where are they? Is someone doing anything to find them? With over 1000+ confirmed dead, what about the 6600 missing people?

Seems to me this needs to be looked into, not just reported and dismissed. We are lucky. Most of our missing people are turning up. I cannot imagine not knowing where my daughter and grandson were for all these months. Wondering if they were under a building somewhere dead and still not found, or had been sent three states away but not put on any list. Them being so untrackable would be torture. This is the reality for many people in this region.

I am so grateful that our Christmas gifts this year were on two feet walking up our steps and giving us peace of mind as far as their well being was concerned. We couldn't have asked for more.

A Day at LSU Clinic

I was just shy of my tenth birthday. I was standing in the basement, washing doll clothes in the giant laundry sink, rinsing and hanging them on a little clothesline. Off in my childish fantasy land of domesticity (that fantasy SOOO didn't last!), I wrung out each tiny dress. I was pulled out of that fantasy by my mother's scream of "Oh NO." I remember running upstairs to find out what had upset her so. "The President has been shot." I sat with her and the black and white tv flickered the images that are burned into our collective brain. The car, the onlookers sobbing, Jackie climbing over the trunk, the funeral, little John-John's salute, Jackie's veil, the long tailed jackets of his brothers.

I was just about out of eighth grade on June 6, 1968. Robert Kennedy had been shot. By then I knew this was a big, big deal, and I'd already hung my hat on what he was saying. It made sense to me in a way that the grownups around me didn't seem to get. But hell, I was in eighth grade. Maybe they were right and I was wacko. What did I know? I knew for sure that after watching the Vietnam War play out on the nightly news, yes, still in black and white, that the war didn't make sense and that what RFK was saying did, at least to my eighth grade mind. I also knew that it was horrific that such a thing had happened to this family, so soon, so familiarly, so fast. Boom. He was gone.

Now the youngest boy of that generation of Kennedy's is gone too. Yes, he was "SENATOR." Yes, he was "PARTY GUY." Yes, he was the one walking both coffins to the grave, holding the enormous family together, a role he that he had not signed up for and didn't expect, having been the youngest of all the kids. But somehow he was always "Teddy." Not like a Teddy Bear, although he bore a certain resemblance in his later years, but just "Teddy." One writer, forgive my not remembering who, said he was the only one of the boys who actually knew the end was coming. That struck me as profound.

He, who came from a family which could afford the best of healthcare, no matter how dire the circumstances, always, always thought about the little guy and his lack of access to that same healthcare. Now we have townhall meetings and the constant use of the word "socialist/socialized" and people getting laid off in droves, losing their healthcare benefits in the process. People who knew him are saying the one thing he wanted to finish was a quality healthcare bill.

Today I saw amazing things that put it in stark, sharp focus.

Ironically the old Lord and Taylor department store on Poydras, a store full of things, has been turned into an outpatient clinic, full of people. And I really mean FULL of people. My husband broke his arm last week and needed a followup--more xrays and probably a real cast as opposed to the heavy plaster and padding thing he's been lugging around. He had been given a piece of paper saying he had an 8AM appointment, a term I learned is loosely used in this situation. So off we go arriving at 7:30AM. We didn't leave there until nearly 3PM. What I saw in the interim was astonishing, desperate, inspiring and terrifying.

Upon arrival (don't get me started on the parking--which was a constant concern all day) he was sorta checked in. We are told to sit in the chairs to the right of the desk. Various staff members, apparently from different departments of the clinic, come out with hands full of papers shouting numbers and an occasional name--F47, F48, F49, Camille Shaw. People come out of the chairs and are told to follow these people. They do. Mostly. We are told he doesn't have a number yet, that they will call his name. Okay. We wait. We sit. I look. I realize the system of number calling and escorting people to their proper destinations makes sense. It cuts down on endless "Where is. . . .name the department. . ." questions and keeps people moving.

An elderly man, using a walker with a basket filled with his medications and a water bottle puts his walker aside to push the wheelchair that his wife currently occupies. She is wearing a terry cloth dress of sorts, her right leg stuck out at 90 degrees from her body, covered by a towel. He gets her checked in, pushes her out of the line of traffic, leaving his walker over near the check in desk. She says her leg was shattered in a fall last year. It was so shattered that they could only deal with a few of the bone fragments at a time. She currently has about 12 "pins", which are actually rather large diameter rods sticking out of her leg five inches tall, placed there to help the next few fragments mend to the first. No angst, no feeling sorry for herself, it just is.

People are coming and going. All manner of walking-with-crutches wounded and unable-to-walk rollers in old style wheelchairs. (I see a sign saying there is a shuttle from the parking lot next to the Superdome to the clinic for those who are totally immobilized, except on Thursday when there is a Saints game.) So many are by themselves and are walking on casts not meant for walking on. I finally broke them down into the "hardwares" and the "castes"<---yup, I meant that spelling--and their spouses, helpmates, significant others, children, whoever was there to help them if they were lucky enough to have someone like that.

One kid, no older than 23 had what looked like a cookie sheet on steroids, bent like a rain gutter attached to his heavily fiberglassed foot with rods of remarkable geometry coming out of his lower leg, into the upper foot, coming out the back. He's swinging along on his crutches, his pants cut off roughly to accomodate the cast. He was by himself.

In front of us sat a couple. He was wearing a cast, much like my husband's. She sat next to him. Both waited. I hear the man say, "That's it. I need a job with real health insurance so I can see a REAL doctor." She listens, not saying anything. Clearly this man is angry. Angry at his circumstance, angry at being there, angry that these "other" people have, in his opinion, more screws and more teeth loose than he does. He is unlike them. He doesn't belong here.

The check in desk has a line around it. It's the fifth line of its length I've seen. I started counting. They had processed about 500 people, placing them in their appropriate clinics by 11AM. These were the people lucky enough to have an "F" number. Everyone with a "G" number, or folks like us waiting to hear an actual name, had to wait. There were no arguments, no voices raised by either patients or staff. We were lucky enough, lucky being a relative term, to be in a position to see the Price is Right on the monitor above us. A monument to American acquisition in the midst of people who no doubt were dreaming of that $25,000 cash out if only they knew how much that washer/dryer combo cost to the nearest dollar. Whoa, check that! A diamond and sapphire bracelet. Wonder what it's worth? Wonder if it would fit around my cast? No problem, I'd just wear it on the other wrist, or maybe sell it on eBay and pay my rent, or part of it.

The man in front of us says in a voice heavy with judgment, "These people are the dregs," referring to the other patiently waiting patients. One woman had had the temerity to show up in her pajamas, nevermind she was clearly in pain, clearly couldn't put her foot down, clearly couldn't have showered and dressed to suit him in her condition. THAT man was obviously special, superior. These "dregs" were unsuited for civilized society, and besides a great many of them were what he termed, and no doubt some doctors termed, "obese." Outrageous. Truly. It never dawned on this man that the woman in the pajamas, in pain, might have been a brilliant woman, a Rhodes Scholar perhaps, who had unfortunately majored in Anthropology and was now a laid off professor with no health insurance, a house about to be foreclosed on thanks to that ARM they talked her into, and with University cutbacks, no employment prospects in sight. And ya know, maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was a welfare queen, or a trailer trash girl, assaulted at 11, three kids by 18, used to a vicodin and malt liquor cocktail used to ignore all that. Maybe she was. But some of those not "REAL" doctors were gonna take care of her. She was near tears as she sat in those chairs.

We are summoned. We go answer the questions asked and are given a "G" number. We are told to go back to the chairs someone will call us. G15. Please call G15. A woman comes out, she calls G12, G13, G14. (Perhaps we're playing Bingo, I wonder.) Those folks follow along on their crutches, with their hardware sticking willy nilly out of various limbs, with their casts, dirty from walking on them when they should be keeping them up, in wheelchairs, casts perched precariously on the ill fitting leg rests. Another man comes out calling G34, G57, G58, Melissa Washington? No rhyme or reason in the numbers, but maybe we have Bingo. Nope, no G15.

The man in front of us, also still waiting, makes another derogatory comment about the other patients. The woman with him says, "Well unless you're a neurosurgeon, or in some other enormously high paying----" "OH," he says, eyes glinting with a gotcha spark, "You're saying that shitty care is what we deserve if we're not in the right class?? That's classist. That's elitist. I can't believe you sai---" "It might be classist, but that's the reality of the healthcare system. It's not an indictment of the people here, it's an indictment of the sytem," she responds. He doesn't like that answer. "I've noticed a racial component as well," she says, trying to engage him. "Oh yeah? What?" says he, not knowing that I'm listening. "The black folks here seem not at all upset by the wait." "Well, I guess they're used to being treated like shit," he responds.

A little girl in pigtails wearing a perfect Sunday-go-to-meeting sailor dress, much like I wore when I was little, with perfect tiny Mary Janes is holding her mother's hand. Her mother has walked the length and breadth of these halls to keep the little one from being bored. The baby dances holding on to her mother's arm, smiling widely, not seeing color or class or gender--okay maybe gender vaguely, she's barely two. She doesn't care that the guy on Price is Right is trying to act as though he's enthusiastic about a dining set and lawn furniture when the OTHER guy got the showcase with the dune buggies. The lawn furniture guy wins. He proposes to his fiance on Price is Right. Hell, why not. It's not stuff he WANTS but it's STUFF. How cool is that? She says yes, hugs all around, no tears from the folks in the chairs, balancing their casts, their hardware, their anxiety, their circumstances, their aloneness on very precarious edges.

Elderly woman, clearly in pain with a cast on her left leg, in the old timey wheel chair being pushed by her son or grandson, it's hard to gauge the generational gap there. She's trying everything to alleviate the pain, folding the cast over her other leg, putting it on the leg rest that's just a smidge too short, letting it hang down. The son is wearing a tshirt reading, "I only wear this tshirt when I'm a grouch." So much for bucking up Mom! She waits with the rest of us. At first he pushes the wheel chair dutifully, later in the day I see him pulling her around like bricks in a Radio Flyer. So much for compassion. She was, at that point, merely a duty. One he resented. But he didn't say so, he just dragged her around, sullen but blessedly silent.

People with canes helping people with crutches. The escalators of the once fancy department store still run in the distance. The woodwork and trim is still there amidst the cubicle dividers of grey fabric, the signs in large letters pointing the way to the pharmacy, the rest room. Just follow the little arrows on the floor, red for THAT way, green for THIS way. Keep the traffic flowing just like the cars on Poydras Street outside. "Lady, there's a chair over here. You can't sit on the floor."

My husband goes and asks about G15, the ever present deli counter number slip held tightly to the ream of other papers in his hand. Within seconds the wonderous number is called and off we go to XRay and another set of chairs. Jeopardy is on. Best category, Oscar winners. I have it cold. Still no arguing. Still no raised voices. We've all been there for five hours waiting to answer this Final Jeopardy question. We are conservative in our wagers.

An older black man stands near the back wall on a three legged cane. He's struggling. I point out a chair, upset that the younger folks haven't gotten up to offer him a seat. He smiles and says, "Thank you ma'am, but I'm just waiting on someone," and ambles off slowly. A couple of young Turks, in spanking new Timberlands, go past. One wearing only one as the other leg is in a cast up to his thigh. Both wear dreadlocks, obviously brothers, the younger two legged one spurring the other on, "Hey, dog, maybe you should use that THIRD leg you always talking about." The Timberlands still have the tags on. I'm wondering if that's intentional. A white man, plaid shirt, blue baseball cap, cast on left lower arm, explains to a friend that he's cut off his fingers with a table saw. They reattached them, but one didn't take. Now he fears the other one is failing. Later I see him in the chairs, him with a cast on his left arm, patting a guy on the back to encourage him, the other guy's cast is on his right. Fingerless guy was a contractor.

I went out for a cig. The steps outside were another scene from this opera. One guy teeters on his crutches coming down the steps. I tell him to be careful. He says, "You shoulda told me that a WEEK ago before I screwed up this knee that I'd already screwed up and it was healing!" He laughed. He had fallen off a ladder. A white guy, about 40, with paint covered shorts and white paint on his fingernails, wearing a cast on the left arm, bums a cig then starts complaining. They lost his paperwork, these people are assholes, it's outrageous he's spending his entire day here, his eyes are pinned from the Vicodin the "assholes" gave him. I listen to him complain for a bit then say, "You need the help, these people are helping. How can you fault them for doing what you need done?" "Well it should be faster. All this waiting around."

I lost my patience at that point. He was acting like an entitled jackass. Hell, he's a working man, he's white, he believes in justice and duty and has worked hard all his life, why aren't they jumping to just for him? I opened my mouth, never a good thing I've learned. Out comes, "What? You were planning on doing a lot of painting today were ya?" He looked at the ground and the rest of the smokers snickered a little. Welcome to the world, little man. THIS is the current reality. Sorry, truly, about the cast on your arm. Sorry you're worried about the rent. So is everyone else here.

Of all the people I spoke with, patients I mean, all but one were working people with no insurance. The one who was not a working person was a woman in her early 60's who clearly HAD worked for a long time in an office somewhere. None of these people were what some would and did call the "dregs."

Not one patient got nasty, no matter how impatient they were, no matter how frustrated. I was amazed. Many of the staffers helped without eye rolling when asked, all of them worked hard to make sure everyone got where they needed to be. I was and am still amazed by that. No slackers that I saw in the staff. No unfortunate incidents in the chairs. Everyone just trying to get through, trying to get along through the red and green arrows, everyone seeming to understand that their arms, their legs and the system was broken and needed to be fixed.

As I waited for them to put the new cast on the husband's arm, an excruciatingly skinny woman wearing a wig came up to me outside. "Excuse me, ma'am, can you tell me where the Charity pharmacy is?" "Yes, ma'am, in through security and a sharp left." "Thank you." Ten minutes later, she returned. I asked if she had found it. She said yes, thank you. She was clearly a chemo patient, clearly getting toward the end of her fight. She turned and walked her tiny self across the lanes of Poydras and LaSalle, away from what was a department store for them that had, now a haven for them that ain't got. She was alone.

I kept wondering why we have a department store as a clinic when Charity Hospital is sitting there just waiting to be updated, rehab-ed and used? I kept wondering why the "dregs" were somehow thrown into a weird caste system of healthcare? I kept wondering how healthcare workers keep going without completely losing it in frustration. I kept wondering how all these people in pain, physical and psychic, managed to not take it out on the staff or each other. I kept wondering what would happen to the man with no fingers, the old grandmother with the cast, the boy with the rods bigger than my currently well attached fingers (hey really, ya never know when THAT could change). I kept wondering how we'd pay the rent. I kept wondering about the skinny little lady, casting a shadow of strength and courage on Poydras Street. I kept wondering how anyone in their right mind could have an issue with a public option in healthcare. I also finally understood that those opposed were having issues with accepting they ARE the little man, not some master of industry, commerce or trust fund.

I kept wondering if Teddy was looking down saying, "Yeah, THIS is what I was talking about."

Rising Tide 4

God, Guns, Guts and American Pickup Trucks

I know, I know. I haven't posted much lately, but this was pointed out to me earlier today and I just can't get over it. I'm really curious whether this guy has decided that he believes in the Second Amendment more than the Fifth Commandment. It's the strangest juxtapositioning of beliefs I've heard in a long time.

He's right, there is a lot of evil in the world, and I think he needs to look in a mirror.

Oh yeah, and Jesus would have carried a sword except he was so powerful.

L Follows M

I've been thinking about this for days now, quietly, alone in my house, occasionally finding myself weeping for what would seem to be no reason. Crazy, menopausal bitch. Probably too much or too little estrogen.

Then it hit me.

After Katrina, I wrote emails to friends and family about the state of things here at that time. Using a shared generator for one hour a day as long as the gas held up and using a dialup connection to AOL via a New Mexico number. Those emails got forwarded and forwarded until the email list was completely outrageous with people asking to be added, sending wonderful encouraging letters, telling me to keep sending them. I did this in a vacuum. First the vacuum of no power (the phone line worked), then the vacuum of National Guard roadblocks. Polimom, in Texas, became my liason to others in this area. I knew nothing of blogs.

Finally in March of 2006 I sent out the last email, transferring my communication to the blog format, in great part thanks to Poli's urging. I had no idea what I was doing. So I just started writing whatever came to mind. I also had no idea that there were other New Orleans bloggers, at least not then. I started a second blog, and reposted the emails under the Katrina Refrigerator blog banner (although lately some others have shown up and remain unposted.)

Little by little other New Orleans bloggers found me, sent comments, communicated in email, but they were all just screen names then. I was invited to the first Rising Tide conference. Feeling entirely out of my depth, I ante-ed up the fee and went. I took a steno pad and pen, sat on the floor, surrounded by a sea of laptops and people spouting tech terms. I was a fish out of water, but intrigued.

As I walked in the door, a man who struck me as a human Tasmanian Devil approached me. He introduced himself to me as Loki. He talked rapid fire, told me he'd read what I was writing, told me about himself. We found out we had similar backgrounds in music production. He did six things at once, talking all the while, making me laugh and laughing with me. I told him I wasn't sure I belonged at that conference. His response: "Oh bullshit. You signed up, you paid, you're here. You're kinda stuck with us now." I was stunned and laughing. "I'll catch ya later and buy you a drink or two," he said and kinda shoved me into the sea of laptop room. He whispered, "And we GOTTA talk about the music stuff! We'll share stories!"

There was now a breach in my little vacuum. And it was cool.

I met several other local bloggers that day, tentatively smoking a cigarette outside, finding out which screenname went with each human face, trying not to be too obvious as I stared at their name tags putting the screenname/face and their writing together in my head. Lots of them knew me already from what I'd written. They were so welcoming.

The panels continued, the boats outside the yacht club were still sunk in the water, and there was a threat of another hurricane. There was a beautiful young woman who seemed to have something to do with the organization of all this. She looked very serious, her dark hair to her shoulders, her eyes on her laptop, her fingers flying on the keyboard and she was wearing a really cool skirt. She certainly wasn't a stodgy geeky woman, that was for sure.

I had brought a flask of rum, not realizing there was a fully stocked bar for afterwards. Once the conference officially ended, she looked tired, frazzled. She came over to where all the soft drinks were, and started pouring a coke. I asked her if she would like to add some rum to it. "Oh thank GOD," she said, and we mixed a couple of whoppers. She said her name was Maitri, but I'd figured that out already.

Now some years have passed. These two people, the first two I met, have become friends, colleagues, partners in crime. We've grieved together, partied together, annoyed each other, and sent stupid jokes to each other. We've kept track of each other during subsequent evacuations. I've learned so much from them both.

And I cannot forget their respective spouses. The wonderful patient D, always driving often intoxicated women around looking jaunty in his hat and dimples, laughing at us but never judging. Maitri chose well. Alexis, a beautiful sensitive woman, who along with Maitri, encouraged me to get over my shyness and read OUT LOUD to actual PEOPLE. Loki also chose well.

The loss of the four of them to the Yankees, although for good reasons, will leave a void in our little group. Maitri's counting of days and Loki's tirades will evolve. Their generousity with their time, their cheerleading, will be a loss to the motley group that is the New Orleans blogger community.

But for me, the loss will be greatly and deeply personal. These four people have become friends, took me out of the vacuum. I will miss hearing their laughter for a block before I open the door to the bar, making me smile because I'll find them inside ready to tell me my lipstick needs to be redder or "I totally NEED that Star Wars Christmas Special!"

Maitri and D will leave first, followed by Loki and Alexis. I wish them the best, will await their visits home, and be forever grateful to them for being the first two people to show me that I wasn't alone in my anger, my grief and my frustration during that time. Their gift of themselves was one of the best gifts I've ever received.

Now I'm putting on my tshirt that reads, "Be a New Orleanian Wherever You Are" knowing that they will be, I'm throwing the kleenex away (I'll just get a new one if I need it, and I probably will), and I will await the photostreams that will no doubt show all four of them in bizarre get-ups being stared at by Hoosiers who've never experienced anything like these four people.

I hope those Yankees appreciate what they're gaining.

Absinthe and Cran Please

In response to a fellow blogger, I am posting this here. It started as an email but the comebacks were just too good not to post. Below is the original followed by the comebacks:

Last night my husband and I were going to go to a play. The play was postponed until April 1. So having a night free, actually with each other, we decided to go to Vaughan's. First we went to the Joint for some faboo BBQ, then on to Vaughan's. It was decidedly empty but a couple hours passed and the "let's get seriously dressed up in spike heels" young crowd started to arrive passing in and among the rest of us schlumps. A group of three young women, either tourists or college students, we're still arguing over that, push their way up to the bar with one standing right next to me. She's getting drink orders from her two friends and hollering them to the bartender. "I need an Abita, a screwdriver and an absinthe and cran please."

I spun around like Linda Blair's head, watching as the bartender, clearly as astonished as me repeated it incredulously. Yup, that was the drink order. I kept thinking of Folse. We would have had to get the paddles out if he'd heard it. I thought they were gonna need them for me. I'm still laughing at that combination.

BTW, while we were there (Kermit never showed but of course his band rocked, and we heard one girl tell her friend the name of the band was the BBQ Sauce), Steve Zahn stood next to me at the bar. He was having a great time, ordered some Buds, I asked if he had tried any of our locally beloved beer. His response was, laughing, "I like shitty beer!" We asked if he was working, he said yes on Treme. We got to talking about life here after K and he said there was a lot about that in the show. We told him we were excited to see how Treme turned out and told him we thought the writing would probably be top notch. His response was, "It's the best script I've ever seen." He really gave it high marks and said he is loving working on it. We were delighted to hear it and it was clear that he's loving being here and loving the show. Bodes well I think! The way he spoke about it was interesting. I think he is not only enjoying his work as an actor, but from what he was saying, I got a feeling that he felt he was doing something important, worthwhile, something that mattered to him. It was great to hear that. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Response #1: "Absinthe and cran? She must be shot on the Esplanade neutral ground."
Response #2: "I think the stocks will be sufficient."
Response #3 (by a local writer for whom we all have high regard, known as KA by those on our list): "Oh, great. And the Hipsterpolitan was born."
Response #4: "Girls like that give girls a bad name."

And as we're big on giving credit where credit is due, Response #5: "Perfect, let the record show it was KA who named it! Hipsterpolitan, brilliant!"

Perfect name for a perfectly horrible combination. I've gotten private emails about this, asking how old the girl was (probably about 22), was she a tourist (as I said, we're still arguing about that, although that wouldn't make it any better), and from a long time friend and devoted absinthe drinker, WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP HER?

Well, because she had to drink it and I thought that was punishment enough.

EDIT: As of last night a new name has emerged for this abomination, the Crabsinthe. Just keeping you up to date!

LePetit Theatre-Social Media and Activism

We've all heard talk about the social media revolution. We've probably all noodled around looking for our favorite video to post, or found an article that outraged us and quickly hit the Facebook post button on the bottom. We've wasted time yacking about nothing, posted weird photos, commented on someone's status. No doubt about it, some social media can be a time suck.

I saw something in the last two days, however, that really showed me how fast social media can make a real difference.

Each morning I check Twitter, just to see what my miscreant friends are up to. Day before yesterday, The Gambit tweet was about a breaking story regarding the firing of the Le Petit staff. I quickly checked the Times Picayune, nothing there.

Within in hour on Facebook, a note was written on a friend's page. He outlined what had happened, to whom, why and who would be taking it over. He also layed out some of the ideas that had been floated for the use of the LePetit Theatre building over the years: everything from a new shop to a parking lot. The comments were rolling on that note. People remembering working at the theatre, getting their start there. Others noting the theatre's remarkable historical value.

The original note writer monitored the comments and continued the lively conversation, explaining that the Solomon Group, who has taken over the running of the theatre, isn't the bad guy. In fact they're doing it pro bono (he had put in parentheses "that means FREE"). The conversation continued through the night Tuesday night and into yesterday with many of us offering to volunteer in order to keep the theatre open.

By yesterday afternoon, this group, Volunteers for LePetit Theatre, had been formed by the Solomon Group. As of this morning there were 104 members.

Remember, all this happened in less than 48 hours.

While I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of the finances or all the reasons the incumbent employees were let go, I was nevertheless amazed at the speed with which social media helped get the word out that a local and national treasure could be in real trouble. That speed, that rallying of the troops to save the theatre, was amazing to watch in real time.

For anyone who thinks saving the theatre is frivolous when there are so many really huge problems in this city, I would just point out that they too can rally troops quickly and efficiently the same way. How powerful is that?

LePetit Theatre NOLA Social Media

Slumdog Reality

I've never been lucky enough to visit India. I haven't seen the movie either.

This has been bugging me for days. First I read this article at CNN. It bothered me a lot. Then I saw this picture:



A couple of days passed, and I saw this picture of Azharuddin Ismail the Thursday after the Oscars:




It was accompanied by this article. about his father having just hit him for refusing to talk to reporters. (The same article was published in several other places, both online and in print.) To his father's credit, he apologized. I mean he's not used to this kind of scrutiny either. But the whole thing upset me a lot. He's just a kid. He'd been under a lot of pressure. I was furious at his father for hitting him. I was furious with the reporters for hounding him. He's a little boy, not much older than my grandson. He was tired, he was overwhelmed. It pissed me off. And the sensationalism of the reporting pissed me off. The incredible judgmentalist tone of the piece written, no doubt by someone sitting comfy in a chair in a warm house. Someone not in that reality.

I could only compare his reality with mine, as it's the one I know. It still bothered me. I knew the producers had made sure that these kids' education would be covered and that they were trying to do right by them. Views on parenting might be different there than mine are.

Then I started thinking about all the OTHER kids in those slums and found a reasoned comment on the CNN article. Donations can be sent to Pratham.org to help all the other little ones who were not at the Oscars, who were not in the movie, who are used to living under plastic sheeting.

All that was followed by how many kids a block, four blocks, 20 blocks from my house are in the same situation: living in poverty, getting the back of a hand, maybe going hungry.

The whole thing broke my heart. I can't get Azaruddin's little tear streaked face out of my head. I'm going to keep him there to remind me of all the others in Thailand, in Africa, in India, and yes even here in America, who are hungry and overwhelmed.

It's not just an Indian problem. I compare these impoverished kids reality with an AIG executive's reality and it pisses me off.

Sometimes the whole world seems cockeyed.