Flood & Loathing

Two Years Later

2007-08-29T23:02:00.000-05:00

One day, not quite two years ago, while I hauled debris out of my house, a photojournalist from some British paper asked to talk with me. Seeing as how hauling the stinky, rotting remains of my personal affects to the curb alone wasn’t exactly the epitome of happy fun time, I was more than happy to take a break. He asked me what my plans were, and I remember saying something along the lines of “You couldn’t drag me away from here with a bulldozer.” I, in turn, asked him what he was doing, and he said something about covering a single block in New Orleans with the intention of coming back in a year to see how much progress had been made. Sounded like a good idea to me.

Well, two years on and I haven’t seen or heard of him again, so I guess the idea fell through – waning interest in New Orleans on the part of Britain? Editorial priorities? Maybe I just missed him. At any rate, since it didn’t work out with him, I decided to present my own little tour of my block, two years later.

Since my neighbors to the right as you walk out of my house were the first ones back, let’s start with them. I’ve mentioned them before – he grew up in that house; his parents left it to him, and he and his wife lived in it. Since they didn’t have a mortgage, they didn’t have to get flood insurance. They moved back in while rebuilding, which has been quite slow, seeing as how there wasn’t any insurance money and he had to do most of the work himself and he’s old. They have middle-aged couple living in other side, helping with the renovation. They all come out and drink beer out of cans on the plant-covered porch, and if you squint real hard so their front porch is all you see, you can almost imagine everything is back to normal.

A large two-story sits next to them, fronting onto Banks. For a long time, an extensive family of Hispanics lived there on the upper story which escaped the flood. They seemed to have disappeared now, though I couldn’t say why, maybe they found a better place to live, maybe they just moved on, hopefully they didn’t get deported. I do know it wasn’t because they ran out of work.

Kitty-corner from there, Finn McCool’s is of course up and running and has been for quite some time. It’s a real focal point for the neighborhood, and just won Best Neighborhood Bar honors from Gambit, so the block definitely has that going for it. We ambled down last Monday for Pub Quiz night and, while we couldn’t find a table because of the crowds, we did take second place.

Coming back my way, directly across from Finn’s on the other side of the block, the corner house got stripped down to the studs – even the siding was gone. It has plywood walls now, and I assume work is happening, though without any windows or real doors, it still looks rather like a really large child’s block with a roof. A few long four by fours, tilted at an angle, hold the roof of the front porch up.

Next to that is a little shotgun single. Near as I can tell, nothing has been done with it – no gutting, nothing. So it just squats there, home to nothing more than rot, stink, and a large feral cat herd.

The couple next door moved in after the storm, the new young kids on the block. They offered to buy the feral cat cave next door, but the woman who owns it refuses to sell. The single shotgun they live in is all renovated, and I really like that new people moved into the neighborhood, rather than it just getting reoccupied by those with roots here already. That, I think, is a very good sign.

Next to them is a renovated (at least on the exterior) though still vacant single shotgun. No rent sign, no sale sign, so I’m not sure what’s up with it. It looks good, though, freshly painted a nice light blue.

An elderly lady lives next door, and I’m pretty sure she’s back, though I only see her rarely come out on her porch.

The raised shotgun next to her place escaped the worst of the flooding, but – despite the aging “I am coming home” sign on the front porch about eight feet up – the place remains unoccupied. Again, I couldn’t tell you why. Ditto for the two houses directly across the street from me, not raised and completely abandoned. I know they’re gutted because some church group volunteers showed up a couple of months ago and did it but, if not for them, those two places would have remained untouched since the day of the storm.

The adjacent lot has completely reverted to jungle. Seriously – trees have sprouted and grown. You could get lost in there. You could film “King Kong” in it. I would find it rather amusing, actually, except that I’m sure the current occupant of the White House will call it “wetlands” and use its existence as a reason to not restore the coastline.

Right next to that is the house in the best shape on the block, belonging to a gay couple who seemed to renovate and re-landscape before the rest of us even finished throwing out our crap. Unfortunately, they’re moving to Vancouver, and it kills me to lose the best and brightest on the block (not that I blame them). I just hope whoever buys the place realizes how lucky they are.

Next to them on the corner, another abandoned place, nothing happening, no one there, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Across from that back on my side of the street, renovations were recently completed and there’s a rent sign hanging out front. Doesn’t look like there’s any takers yet, but it’s something.

Next to that is the empty lot that borders my place. The insurance company totaled that house, so the ex-Marine/current teacher and his wife that lived there own the empty lot free and clear. I heard they were having trouble getting a loan to rebuild, but just yesterday (yesterday – no joke, no exaggeration) some people showed up with surveying equipment and pounded a bunch of painted sticks into the ground, so maybe soon I will be awoken by the sweet sounds of power tools and salty construction worker language.

Oddly enough, no FEMA trailers mar my block, though several are scattered around the various corners. Not something you really notice – after all, who’s going to think, “Hmm, why aren’t there white ugly trailers ensconced in front of all these houses?” – until you turn the corner and practically run straight into one. Which I do, often, when I go running out to the bayou. No matter how many times I do it, I apparently can’t get it out of my head that sidewalks are for pedestrians, not mobile homes.

Finally, my house. I’ve mentioned before how the inside is pretty much back together, though the outside remains a mess. The plants Dr. A put in have helped immeasurably, but there’s no hiding the black, angry line across our doors, a daily reminder of just how high the water got. We tried pressure washing, but the muck and the stains just go too deep, and the insurance money has run out. The paint job will have to wait, though who knows when we’ll be able to afford it.

Two years ago, I thought fixing the house would be the tough hurdle to get over, but in the end that just took muscle and sweat and will. I could come up with that, but in the meantime, the mortgage shot up four hundred a month, thanks to rocketing insurance rates and taxes, and energy bills more than doubled, thanks to, well, corporate greed. I managed to get my place rebuilt, but what little monetary help I received was used up long ago.

So how are things two years on? Some good, some bad. I thought rebuilding would be the hard part, but it looks like holding onto my home will be the more difficult slog. Turns out, money is more powerful than any bulldozer.

The Joys of Yardwork

2007-03-12T00:27:00.000-05:00

Years ago, I rented half a shotgun with an ex. This shotgun had a jungle for a backyard, weeds literally taller than me. We had a dog, though, so I was determined to make the backyard habitable and spent weekend after weekend clearing everything out of there. Once I got through the weeds, I discovered the trash, a seemingly endless supply of broken bottles and smashed cans, rusty nails, car parts, hypodermic needles, bullet casings (not the best neighborhood), and once, memorably, a pair of XXX-Large blue tiger-striped bikini underwear. I hauled at least a dozen giant garbage bags to the curb.

Once that was done, I laid out flower beds with old bricks and planted bushes and flowers. I uncovered concrete we used as a porch and put down sod over the rest. I even dug up a tree from the ex’s family farm and transplanted it. (Okay, I had help with those last two things.) The point here is that I worked my ass off for that backyard.

Then we broke up. She kept the apartment, and the yard. And the dog.

But that’s okay. The place was a rental, and I considered the work I did on that yard as practice for when I bought a place of my own.

A couple of years ago, I was out drinking with friends and got it into my head to go see that yard, so we found the old house (the ex wasn’t living there anymore), snuck around the back and hauled ourselves up on the fence. We’re very lucky it didn’t collapse. Anyway, the yard was still there, still pretty much as I had left it, all grass and bushes and flowers and the tree was pretty tall. I sincerely hope whoever lives there now enjoys it.

These days, I have been living in my place for a couple of months now, and I finally finished the unpacking last weekend. That’s one less thing to do. The closet still doesn’t have doors or shelves or a rod, but considering I didn’t have a shower when I first moved in (I poured a bucket over my head), I feel like real progress has been made. Unfortunately, though, the insurance money is all gone daddy gone, which means everything else I do is going to have to come out of my pocket, so progress will be pretty slow from now on. And the backyard was a jungle, with weeds above my head, not to mention a chain link fence down the middle.

However, a friend of the housemate asked her what she most wanted to make the place feel like home, and she said a backyard. She has a dog, after all. Next thing we know, last Saturday these guys show up and tear into the yard. They showed up again Monday, and when I got home from work, the yard was completely cleared. Even the chain link fence was gone. Plus, they’re building us a wood fence.

For a second, I felt bummed that I wasn’t doing it myself, but you know what? I got over it, like, real quick. After all the work, heartache, and stress I put into this place (and will continue to, no doubt), I decided I’m all right with someone else handling the yard. I don’t care what goes in back there as long as I can eventually put a kegerator on the porch.

That Voodoo That You Do

2007-03-05T19:55:00.000-06:00

Okay, listen, I’m sorry! I’m really, really sorry. I don’t know what it was that I did to you, but whatever it was, I take it back. I’ll make up for it however I can.

If you’re the person who put a curse on me, whoever you are, I’ll make it right. Just take the curse off, please.

I buy a house, renovate it, and it floods a month later before I can even move in, destroying all my books and most other possessions with it. That’s just bad luck, and I can accept it. Then getting screwed by FEMA and insurance companies and energy companies – well, that happened to everyone so nothing special there.

But then I finally move in, and they finally start knocking down the place next door. And the outer wall, the entire length of it, falls over onto my house, damaging the roof. Even I’m not that unlucky.

And then, when they get the wall off, they’re cleaning up with a big crane, and the guy swings the crane into my house, smashing the roof again. Come on! That’s not right, that’s not normal, that’s not within the realm of the statistically believable. That’s gotta be a curse.

Then the alternator on the car goes. Again. And even my bicycle is acting funny.

Plus, my cat’s kidneys failed and I had to hospitalize him. He’s out now, and acting like himself, after I spent a few weeks jabbing him with a needle to give him fluid. He’s on hormone shots, now. Nevertheless, whatever it was that I did to you, you who have cursed me, fine, what I get back I probably deserve, but going after my cat, too? That’s just plain mean.

So you win – whatever it was I did, I’m really, really sorry about it.

Meanwhile, does anybody know any good anti-curse voodoo?

God's Plan: Colts Annihilate Bears

2007-02-04T13:59:00.000-06:00

So the Saints gave us a hell of a run and got further than we ever could have expected or hoped. Now, intellectually I realize that the success of the Saints isn’t inherently tied to the rebuilding of New Orleans, but it felt that way, and when they lost the NFC championship it seemed all hope died. The whole city was depressed. But then the next day came, and the one after, and it turned out the world didn’t end and there was still all this cleaning and fixing to do, and that’s when I figured that the Saints not going to the Super Bowl (as sweet as that would have been) is actually a better metaphor for rebuilding New Orleans. After all, the rebuild is going to take years of hard work, and it’s only proper that the Saints journey to a dominant football dynasty takes the same.

Meanwhile, I hope the Bears get absolutely destroyed by Peyton Manning and the Colts, because people in Chicago are assholes. I don’t know if word of this reached anywhere else, but down here we all know about the signs Chicago fans were holding up saying things like, “We’re going to finish what Katrina started” and the complete dick who said “Too bad you didn’t drown” to a New Orleanian and his 8 year old boy. So fuck Chicago, its football team, and their fans.

If the Giants had played Chicago, I don’t think people would have held up signs saying, “We’re going to finish what al-Qaida started” or told people “Too bad you didn’t die in the World Trade Center.” So what’s the difference between these two national tragedies that cost thousands of people their lives?

I think the difference is blame. Apparently, people can’t live with the idea that sometimes bad shit just happens. Everything has to fit some kind of divine, universal plan. With 9-11, there was a villain to punish, so that was fine, but hurricanes don’t come with a bad guy. The only one to blame is God, but God would never do something so mean without a reason, so therefore we sinful New Orleanians must have brought this destruction on ourselves. Consequently, it’s perfectly okay to be jerks to us and not help the Gulf Coast recover; in fact, that fits right in with the divine plan.

I’m sure I’m not the only New Orleanian who stands accused of being preachy, but when the president can’t be bothered to mention us in the state of the union address and when we’re confronted with attitudes like those of the people in Chicago, we tend to get a bit defensive. If I’m preaching, it’s because I have to.

Now I’m sure not everyone thinks that way, and I’m sure not everyone in Chicago is a moronic asshole. In fact, I have friends in Chicago. Nevertheless, I’m going to thoroughly enjoy watching Archie’s boy kick Chicago’s asses all up and down the field, because that would be nothing less than divine justice.

And Here It Is!

2007-01-04T18:06:00.000-06:00

My house or, as Gav calls it, Caligula's Palace.

Here's where you'll be drinking.

Mmmm, mantles.

But more importanty, the bathroom chandelier!

A purple-walled office ...

... and a bedroom closet! (Yes, it will have doors soon.)

Stepping Over Lamp Posts

2007-01-03T20:11:00.000-06:00

When I run along the St. Charles neutral ground, I have to step over this fallen lamp post. I'm not sure how long it's been there, but for as long as I can remember a few blocks before I get back to the apartment, it lays there, in the way, and I step over it. You might think I would have to hurdle it, or even jump, but it's pretty low to the ground, and stepping works just fine. I don't even really think about it, which I think is why I don't know how long it's been there. It has just become part of the landscape, one of the nuisances of life in New Orleans these days. I'm aware I'm constantly dealing with stuff that people elsewhere don't have to, but I think I speak for most New Orleanians when I say we just get used to it.

For instance, in the last couple of weeks, the bulk of the work on my house finally got finished. Yes, believe it or not, my house was essentially complete, and the only thing left was to get a final inspection and get Entergy to turn on the electricity and gas. Just one more nuisance. Gav, my contractor, told me that once the inspection was done, the inspector would fax the permit over to Entergy so they could turn my stuff on. However, Gav also told me that when I called, Entergy would lie to me and say they didn't have the permit and getting gas and electricity could take weeks. Problematic, since I wanted to move in, but didn't really feel like doing it without hot water. I know, I'm so spoiled.

Now, while I had no reason to doubt Gav, my fears were deepened when the inspector showed up because he said the exact same thing. Yep, the city inspector said Entergy would lie to me and I would have to spend days on the phone with them, trying to make them find the permit he had faxed over days ago. Needless to say, this didn't bode well.

Determined to find a way to bypass the delays , I figured I would get a copy of the permit myself and take it to some Entergy office somewhere and thus circumvent their lies. I did get a copy of the permit, but couldn't find an address for Entergy anywhere. With growing concern, I called them and ignored all the voice mail options until I spoke with a real person. Unfortunately, when I asked her for the address of an office where I could come by and get my account started, she told me there wasn't one since they do everything by phone. They had anticipated my ploy, circumvented my circumvention!

Despairing, I went about setting up an account with her and she told me I needed to get a permit and get back with them. I saw my opening.

"I have a permit!" I cried. "Right here in my hand."

"Hold, please." A few agonizing minutes later, she came back on and said, "Oh, I see we actually have received that permit."

Success! Unbelievable! Not only that, be we made an appointment and the guy actually showed up. I nearly had a heart attack over finally catching a break.

The upshot of all this is that - one year, four months, and eight days after - I am moving into my house.

Perhaps I need to repeat that with emphasis.

I AM MOVING INTO MY HOUSE!!!! Did you hear the trumpets sound? Did you see the clouds part and the light pour forth?

Of course, I know that any number of problems will still arise, not the least of which will be living in a neighborhood about a quarter occupied and filled with abandoned, rotting housing, as well as the long, slow recovery of the whole city, but for now -

I stepped over the lamp post.

Because Nobody Demanded It ...

2006-12-10T09:54:00.000-06:00

... my band Smuteye has our first official bar gig this Saturday, the 16th, at the Bottletree in Birmingham, Alabama. Our massive winter tour has begun; next stop - world domination!

So if you have a taste for country-punk - and who doesn't? - we'll see you there. Country-punk? What's that? That's what happens when a massive flood drives away a silly country band's banjo player and rhythm acoustic guitarist, who sensibly removed to North Carolina, and the band is left with a bassist who learned to play during the heyday of '80s hair metal, not to mention Schlong's guitarist. The drummer's ocassional attempts to rein us in have, so far, been mostly for naught. Schlong, by the way, is reuniting for a couple of shows in San Francisco for New Year's.

In other music news (because I don't really feel like writing about Dollar Bill's re-election just yet), we recently caught El Vez, the Mexican Elvis, who does one fantastic Christmas show. If you haven't seen his illegal immigrant take on "Run, Run Rudolph," then your life is, as yet, incomplete. Clockwork Elvis opened, and yes, he dresses like Alex from Clockwork Orange and sings Elvis. Plus, he comes with his own burlesque dancers, which Gav and I immediately agreed is the certain je ne sais quoi that Smuteye has been missing and anyone interested in filling those positions should immediately contact us.

Finally, just last Wednesday I left work and spotted a flyer for an Asylum Street Spankers show that very night at Tip's to benefit their foundation helping local musicians recover from Katrina. Now, I don't know how the Spankers snuck in without me knowing it, but combine them with recovery efforts, and I dropped everything to make the show. Grading, what grading?

They played an almost all, um, "adult content" show, including "Shave 'em Dry," "Tight Like That" and "If You Love Me (You'll Sleep on the Wet Spot)" plus stuff like "Wake and Bake" and "Winning the War on Drugs." If you somehow aren't familiar with the Spankers, they play music that sounds like it was written in the '30s or '40s, but with turn of this century content. Plus, their Mohawked fiddler/mandolin player Sick used to be a New Orleans street musician. They also played a new song (at least to me), the hilarious satirical protest song "Stick Magnetic Ribbons on Your S.U.V." I wanted to tell everyone about it, but of course couldn't remember any of the lyrics. Thanks to the magic of web, though, everyone can enjoy the video here. Rabid neoconservatives with tendencies to accuse any and all free speech that doesn't agree with their views as treasonous and threaten dissenters with execution (hi, Ann Coulter!), need not click.

And that, folks, is what some New Orleanians do for fun when not trying to rebuild our houses in time for Christmas.

1 Down, 99 To Go

2006-12-02T16:10:00.000-06:00

Did anybody else notice hurricane season ended? As of midnight, November 30^th.

I missed the celebration at Finn’s (though I’m typing this there), but I did mark the occasion with a humble flip of the calendar page. Actually, to tell you truth, I breathed a quiet, private sigh of relief as soon as September was over. See, everything bad happens in September, at least for me – relationships end, jobs fall apart, disasters strike. I know Katrina and the Flood happened at the end of August, but that’s close enough for me. While I’m sure my belief in the inherent horribleness of the month in between August and October is just coincidence, superstition, and self-fulfilling prophecy, it is true that no major hurricane has ever hit New Orleans after September.

So I wiped the sweat off my inner brow once October rolled into town, and I imagine a lot of other people did too, though nobody talked about it because, I suspect, we didn’t want to jinx it. Now that hurricane season is officially over, though, I think it’s time to mention what happened to the Big Easy this hurricane season, namely…

Nothing. Nada. Zip, zilch, zero. Not a hurricane landfall, not a tropical storm. Not a single evacuation when we had been told to expect six or seven. Not even a scare, those times when we start watching the weather with one eye as we go about our business, not evacuating but tracking a storm in the Gulf. Nothing happened.

I think it’s important to point this out because I’m tired of people (and you know the kind of people I mean) acting like we’re crazy or foolish or both for wanting to live in New Orleans because – as these people never tire of pointing out – “It will happen again!”

First off, not necessarily. The real damage to New Orleans – as I never tire of pointing out – was from the man-made flood, not the storm itself. If we take care of the wetlands and build better levees (both entirely possible), then if or when another Katrina comes, the Flood won’t happen again.

More importantly, as this last hurricane season did a little teeny bit to demonstrate, the odds of another Katrina and subsequent Flood coming any time soon are, well, nothing you would want to bet real money on.

My home is 80 years old and never flooded or suffered significant hurricane damage; I know because they have to tell you that kind of thing when you buy a house. Not only that, but Katrina is classified as a hundred-year storm. If we go another 80 or 100 years, not only will I not be living in my house anymore, I’ll be dead. We all will be. So I’m not sweating it.

Remember the movie version of “The World According to Garp,” when the plane crashed into a house and Garp bought it because what were the chances of that ever happening again? Just call me D. S. Garp. (That’d be Dale Steven, though the S. could stand for Smart or Sad or even Sexy if you want.) What looks crazy to everyone else seems imminently sensible to me.

Could I be wrong? Sure, it’s within the realm of possibility. But if anyone wants to put money on it, I’ll take the bet.

Resistance is Futile

2006-11-07T20:08:00.000-06:00

Polls just closed here, NPR is calling a few things, and I'm not even going to pretend to have any idea what's going to happen, though certainly "Dollar Bill" Jefferson had the money to litter our already too-littered little city with signs.

That said, I do want to pass along my voting story. First off, I should mention that ever since I've been voting in New Orleans, we have always had electronic voting machines, and I've never had trouble before. That "before" pretty much gives the story away, doesn't it?

Here's how the machines here work: the whole ballot appears before you, not on a screen, but on a big piece of paper over, well, I don't know exactly what, but when you touch the little box next to a candidate, a green "X" lights beneath the paper that can be easily seen through it. You hit everything you want, check to make sure your little Xs are all in the right places, and hit the big orange vote button. The machine makes some distinctive clicks, a little read-out at the bottom says "Vote registered," and your little Xs go out.

In I go and stab all my little boxes (a congressional race and a bunch of amendments), and the little Xs came on, but when I looked back, no Xs. Huh. I punched the first one (congress) again and the light came on for a couple of seconds and then went out. Same with all the others. My votes wouldn't stay lit.

So out the curtain I go and tell the poll worker. Happily, professorial scheduling allows me to vote in the middle of the afternoon, not to mention the fact that New Orleans has a third of its usual population, so the poll workers weren't exactly overwhelmed. The poll worker asked me if the upper light was on, to which I responded, eloquently, "Huh?" She pulled the curtain back and pointed at a white light up at the top of the machine and asked if it was on. I admitted that I hadn't actually paid attention.

She did something behind the machine, and it made that distinctive "vote registered" click. The light she pointed out went on, and little Xs lit up all over the board, above all the various choices. This time, when I stabbed my boxes, the Xs above the choices went out, and my Xs stayed on. I hit the big orange vote button, got the clicks, saw "vote registered," and went on my merry way, full of fervor for democracy.

Okay, actually not. While I'm pretty sure my vote registered, I'm wondering about the person before me, and I'm wondering about that distinctive clicking after I'd stabbed a bunch of boxes. Did the person before get their vote registered? Did I get to vote twice? Was it just a minor glitch, and everything's hunky-doory? I don't know, and that's perhaps even more disturbing than the possibility that the voting could have been fucked up. It's one thing to have a fucked up vote that we then spend days or weeks or months arguing about, fighting about, going to court about, etc. That's bad enough, but how about a fucked up vote that we don't even know to fight about? Without a paper trail, without anything to check the machines against, there's no way to look for mistakes. And machines ain't so great at noticing their own mistakes.

Perhaps I jinxed myself, but like I said yesterday "trust the machines ... the machines know what's best ... obey the machines ... "

Hey You! Yeah, You, in the Other 49!

2006-11-06T18:43:00.000-06:00

It's Election Eve, and everybody's talking about a wave of Democrats knocking Republicans out of control of the House and possibly the Senate. Personally, I prefer the term "surge," like the one that broke the levees and flooded my house. More evocative, don't you think?

Unfortunately, I also think the levees that Republicans have built around their indumbents through redistricting are much stronger than the levees around New Orleans. While the country seems to be waking up to all the myriad reasons to run the bastards out of town on a rail, I'm not sure how convinced I am that it'll happen. Confident enough to have twenty bucks riding on the Dems taking the House, but hey, it's only twenty bucks and I have an insurance check coming.

I just re-read that and realized I typed "indumbents." Is it possible to type a Freudian slip? That's too good to fix.

So the buzz is all about the surge, and I want to take just a few minutes and remind everyone who might read this tomorrow that, wherever you are, your vote has a real impact on New Orleans. Here are a few of the ways:

1. Despite the fact that lots of indumbents are claiming to have helped the Gulf Coast with appropriations of "$100 billion," please remember that most of those people are also the ones who decided that Louisiana would be the first state required to pay back federal emergency loans that have always been forgiven in the past. As for what party those people mostly belonged to, here's a hint: they're represented by an elephant. Also, the actual number is $88 billion and only about half of it has made it.

2. Wetlands absorb storm surges. The more wetlands you have in between, say, New Orleans and the coast, the less storm surge makes it to New Orleans. Protecting wetlands falls to the EPA under laws voted on by Congress. Do I have to actually mention that the party with the vastly better environmental protection record is often represented by the color blue?

3. Let's say a storm surge makes it to New Orleans. The last thing we need is a giant canal that funnels it straight into the heart of the city, but that's exactly what the MR-GO is. The people of New Orleans have been trying to get the thing closed for years, but that decision is up to Congress, and oil companies lobby hard to keep it open. Why does somebody from Montana determine if a canal in New Orleans stays open or closes? Beats me, but that's the way it is. I would have really, really loved to see people all across the country asking candidates, "Will you vote to close the MR-GO?" just to witness the befuddlement.

4. Congress will soon be voting on an oil tax revenue sharing plan. The basics: when you drill for oil in this country, the money you make is taxed. If that oil well is on land, half the tax goes to the feds and half to the state the well is in. If that oil well is out in the Gulf and the canals and pipelines servicing it go through Louisiana, all that tax money goes to the feds and none to Louisiana. Not only is that unfair, but we could really, really use that money to fix the damage done to the wetlands.

5. The Senate has approval and consent over the President's nominee to head FEMA. Congress recently passed a law laying out the minimum qualifications for the job, but Bush signed one of his hundreds of signing statements saying he feels free to ignore that law. I'd prefer it if you would vote for the person who would make Bush obey the law rather than just rubber-stamp the next Michael Brown - thanks!

Just a little reminder from F&L that, whether you like it or not, New Orleans is still a part of the U.S.A. and we're still all in this together.

Not that any of this really matters, because the winners are really going to be picked by the voting machines. Trust the machines ... the machines know what's best ... obey the machines ... resistance is futile ...

Saints, Sinners, and Rollergirls

2006-11-02T21:57:00.000-06:00

I tried to get a picture of the skeleton faces and bloody prom dresses as they skated by, bent low, arms swinging, pushing and shoving for position, but the light just didn’t work out. It could have been because I just couldn’t squeeze myself into a decent enough viewing spot to get a good picture, or perhaps I am simply not tech-savvy enough. Either way, I have no Rollergirl pictures from the special Halloween bout for you – my apologies.

Months ago, Gav and I discussed picking up tickets to a couple of Saints games, namely the Washington and San Francisco games. Pre-season hadn’t even started yet. At the time, I even imagined that perhaps the Saints would do well enough to desperately need a win against my utterly dominant hometown team. All I can say about that now is, our predictions are all 100% accurate until the season actually begins. But we waited too long and can’t get tickets now.

So what do these two things have in common, besides physical contact, high speeds, risk of injury, and arcane rules puzzling to the novice spectator? The similarities between roller derby and football are remarkable - as Concerning Pudding’s Brooke drunkenly enthused, “It’s the football I always wanted to play!” Though she now denies it vehemently, we here at F&L know the truth. That aside, what I’m really driving at is the fact that both sporting events sold out, and that’s pretty remarkable.

I don’t think I’m the only one in town who has noticed that everything around town from the big events – Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, Saints games, etc. – to the little ones – Morning 40 at Les Bon Temps, my classes, etc. - have been just as crowded as ever. It is, at least, a definitive fact that the Saints have NEVER sold out a season before. Hell, part of the reason everyone around here hit the bars on Sundays is because it seems like half the time the Saints were blacked out. For those of you who grew up in places like northern Virginia, “blacked out” refers to when an NFL team doesn’t sell out a home game, and then the local broadcast network doesn’t show it on tv. You can, though, catch it on satellite in a well-equipped bar. I know, for folks in the D.C. area this is a foreign concept, but really, even a couple of years ago that still happened around here.

Now, while I can’t prove that all events are just as, if not even more, crowded than they were in prediluvian (I just coined that neologism) times, that will not stop me from hypothesizing on possible explanations.

Certainly there’s something to the idea that, as Spike Lee succinctly put on that Monday night when the Saints first returned to the Dome, “This is all they got. It’s three hours of this and then back to the FEMA trailer.” No doubt, we New Orleanians will take our fun when and where we can get it, no questions asked. As for those who thought we shouldn’t celebrate the Saints coming back to town when so many of us are still homeless and displaced, unless you’re one of us (and I didn’t hear of any New Orleanian complaining) you can go to hell.

It could be that those of us here feel an obligation to drive as much of the economy of the city as possible, to make up for those that aren’t here. That’s a lot of drinking, eating, and partying on everyone’s shoulders, but if there’s any people up to the challenge, it’d be us. Also, there’s nothing like total destruction to light a fire under your butt about doing things. That “Oh, I’ll catch Voodoo Fest next year,” excuse rings a little hollow when nobody around here yet trusts that there will be a next year, at least not as far as our little city is concerned.

But while it’s true that New Orleanians love a good time, there’s more to it than that. Some have suggested that there’s nothing like winning to bring out a crowd, and that’s definitely true, but it’s not just the Saints that New Orleanians are jumping up, getting out and spending money for. Plus, the Saints were breaking ticket sales records before a game had been played.

There’s an old Saints p.r. slogan you still see around town on bumper stickers and the like, back from the days when it seemed the Saints could always find a way to lose: “You gotta have faith.”

You want to know why I think the Saints and the Rollergirls sell out? Why, even though there’s only a quarter (okay, maybe a third) of us that there used to be, we’re still getting what’s left of our city to chug along as best we can? Because we do have faith. We might not have homes to live in or the jobs we had a year ago; we might not have working street lights or decent roads or reliable water service; we might be missing the friends and relatives that used to make up the community of people we saw every day, but we have faith, faith in this city and faith in each other.

(And trust me, it’s not faith in government, be it local, state, or federal. If anything, New Orleanians have even less faith in those peculiar institutions than the rest of the country. Not that I can imagine why.)

No, it’s the city itself we believe in, our dear, odd, eccentric mystery of a city. We believe it will pull itself up, brush itself off, and dance again. Can I explain why I’m sure this will happen, why I know New Orleans will one day be its old charming self again? Nope. Can I point to anything that convinces me that this will happen, despite all the misery I see every day? Not really.

Sure, there are plenty of little things; signs of slow recovery are everywhere, from the pothole around the corner that finally got filled in, to the walls in my house, to the Saints winning in the Dome, but what convinces me that any of it will last, that all the horror won’t just happen again? Nothing, actually, but then that’s the very nature of faith, isn’t it? You don’t know; but you do believe.

Julie's Pics, or I'm A Big Lazy Butt

2006-10-18T21:34:00.001-05:00

My old college bud Julie came to Louisiana recently to volunteer. She spent most of her time down in Buras, which is in Plaquemines parish, a rural and totally devastated part of the state. She stayed in a tent in the wreck of what was a YMCA, doing whatever needed doing, and there's still plenty to be done. The organization she was with, Emergency Communities, sets up to provide food, a laundromat, baby-sitting, internet access, you name it. She did spend a little time up here in the Big Squeegee, just long enough to eat at Coop's, drink at the R Bar, and shop at Winky's. She left yesterday, and already has pictures up, while I, on the other hand, have this faboo new computer and still can't get around to it. In my defense, it is mid-terms around here, which means that from last Friday to next Monday, I will get two classes worth of re-writes, one class of essays, one class of literature papers, one class of literature tests, and two classes of argument analyzes to grade. On the other hand, many of the pictures I intend to put up are over a year old, so really I have no excuse. However, if you want to look at pictures, you can check out Julie's here.

New Orleans Review

2006-10-02T18:05:00.000-05:00

Today, Salon published a (very positive) review of the latest issue of the New Orleans Review, the literary journal Loyola University puts out. The issue came out after the flood, and features New Orleans writers on New Orleans, both pre- and post-K. I'd like to bask in a little of the light coming from that, but I actually didn't have anything to do with it. The credit goes primarily to Chris Chambers, whose office (complete with Ralph Steadman "MacBeth" poster) is right next to mine, though, so I've got that going for me. Since Salon has plugged the New Orleans Review, I don't have to, but needless to say, you should buy yourself a copy. You can order one from the N.O.R. website, or you could, you know, call me.

Ramblings on Returning

2006-10-02T17:48:00.000-05:00

A year ago today I got home.

Of course, my home was a horrible mess, but I got into it. After dropping Darv off at his car, I met Arwen at Molly’s in the Quarter and then we went to check out the house. We weren’t supposed to be back in our neighborhood, as Mid-City wasn’t officially opened until Oct. 5 (my birthday present last year), but nobody stopped us. They didn’t seem to care where we went in the city as long as we did it before curfew.

We had to kick in the doors because they were all swollen shut and, after five weeks of trying to figure out just how bad the flooding was from blurry satellite photos – “Is that a hole in the roof, or just missing shingles? Does it look like the water is to the roof of the back porch or is that the railing?” – I finally got a first-hand look at it. You can see those pictures here.

I still had a key to my old apartment, and my furniture and clothes were still there, so even though I hadn’t been able to get in touch with my old landlord, I just moved back in. At the time, I didn’t think I’d still be living in this apartment a year later, but so it goes.

A few weeks ago, I was flipping through the notebook I had with me in those days, trying to find a FEMA registration number or something, and I found this scribbled in it. I’m not sure exactly what day it was written (second night back? third?), but I figured I’d type it up just to give people an idea of where we were a year ago. I decided not to edit it (beyond spelling errors) to keep it more accurate to the moment.

Here it is:

I don’t know where to begin – anywhere seems inadequate. Besides which, I can barely scribble legibly. I’m in my apartment with AC, and yet my house is a wreck. I’d like a drink of this J.D. but I have no glass I trust. There are glasses here, but they are packed away and dusty, and I can’t trust the water rinsing them off, so out of the bottle it is. On the one hand, Gavin conjured up a fabulous pasta dish from thin air tonight (keep in mind his refrigerator is currently duck-taped up on the curb awaiting removal. My refrigerator is disgusting but I’m still considering popping open bottles of Pilsner Urquell in there – hey, they’re cold. I’ve heard, by the way, that refrigerators are, of course, impossible to come by, but also that insurance will pay for the food that rotted in the fridge, but not for the fridge itself – it’s the “storm vs. flood what’s covered” debate, which is clearly going to be the debacle of this disaster.)

Anyway, after having a fabulous dinner at Gavin’s, I then had to take off to get home by curfew. Writing about the house is impossible at the moment, but the apartment is in fine shape – I have a perfectly good bed to sleep in. I can listen to the radio, and they keep telling me to look at some website to get updates on the city and services. “If you are re-entering the city, you must be aware of the warnings and regulations, especially the curfew, which are available at www.cityofno.com.” Fair enough, but granted nobody in New Orleans has web access, how about giving us those rules and curfew hours?

Meanwhile, the radio station continues to simply broadcast anyone who can call them, which ranges from people wondering if they can come in yet, to people looking for people either to a – reconnect with families, or b – hire people to clear junk. Whatever it is, they seem to be doing the best job of getting info. out to folks actually in N.O., which I mention because how odd it is that the oldest technology (radio, tv, internet) is the only one working. Currently people are calling in to complain about not being able to get help from the Red Cross or FEMA. I have no idea if that’s typical or not. I’ve heard everything from impossible to fantastic job. I’ve apparently dropped back into the zone of “no good info” which the entire country was in a week or two ago.

So I came home and surveyed the damage, both house and apartment, but found myself incapable of doing anything today clean-up wise. In fact, I filled my bathtub with water (theoretically uncontaminated) before Katrina but I have no idea if the rather greenish and dirty water in my tub is safer to bathe in than the stinking of chlorine water that comes out of my faucet. So that’s what my life is down to, but as soon as I think that, I remember that at least I have a life to have stuff to get down to, so no complaints.

And that’s where it stops. Not the most coherent thing I’ve ever written, but I wanted to share anyway. Reading it now, what mostly strikes me is the stuff I didn’t bother to explain, like the curfew time (8 pm) or that only one radio station was broadcasting or that the water was unsafe for bathing and drinking. I had forgotten how quickly the completely fucked up aspects of being in New Orleans in those days became standard, assumed, normal.

Anniversary Wine & Air-Conditioning

2006-09-13T21:50:00.000-05:00

A year ago today I was in Virginia at my parents' house, the place I grew up in, with no idea of when I would be able to live at my home. All I knew about my new house was that it was still sitting in fetid water (assuming it was standing) and at the time government officials were telling us that it would take months to pump all the water out of New Orleans. My rather half-baked plan involved living at my parents' place (exactly what any college teacher fast approaching his 37th birthday wants to do) until I could find a job and a place to live somewhere relatively close to New Orleans, like Jackson or Baton Rouge, where I would stay until the time in January or May or who knew when that I could move back home. Or until whatever was going to happen to the house happened to it - knocked down, repaired, set aflame? In the meantime, I spent all my time on the phone talking to FEMA, Loyola, two different mortgage companies, two different insurance companies, and various credit cards and banks, all in an effort to get my little life in order. When not doing that, I sat on the phone with whiskey in hand, tracking down friends.

Obviously, things worked out better than that, in most ways at least. Plus, I have a new computer, officially entering the 21st century. My last computer ran (if you could call it that) on Windows 98, and I must say that so far, I’m enjoying this new-fangled, futuristic 21st century technology. Like most people, I’m using this technology that was near-unimaginable when I was a child to post pictures online for all to see.

First off, anniversary wine. When I mucked out my house, I found three unopened bottles of wine. Since they had been sitting underwater and in 90+ degree heat for a month and a half, I had my doubts about them, but since no grocery stores were open and the curfew was 8 and I knew I was going to want a drink later, I took them back to the squatter apartment. I opened one (Menage a Trois red) and discovered it tasted just fine. That night, I decided to open the other two on the Katrina anniversary and on the first night I spent in the house. I popped the next one (Sin Zin) on the anniversary, and it too tasted deee-licious. So I filled my glass and held it up and said a hearty "fuck you!" to Katrina, floods, and governmental incompetence.

Two bottles down, one to go.

Here, just about a year later, is the living room. Doesn’t look like much progress, but remember, at this time last year, nothing there but disintegrating books floating in three or four feet of water.

Another view. I’m hoping for walls soon.

Here’s the bar. You can see the new wiring. Should be dancing on it anytime now.

My new closet. Shotguns don’t come with closets (everybody used wardrobes in those days, I guess), so I took advantage of the opportunity and had Gavin build me one.

The attic – not a great picture, but there’s insulation and central AC/H units there – very exciting; very, very exciting.

Tales of the Couchless

2006-09-05T21:42:00.000-05:00

I finally saw "A Love Song for Bobby Long" the other day. If you don't know, the movie is set in New Orleans, based on a novel called "Off Magazine Street" (hey - I live off Magazine Street!) and stars John Travolta, Scarlett Johansson, and Gabriel Macht. Now, of course, seeing any movie with Scarlett Johansson in it is a moral imperative, but additionally did I mention this one is also set in New Orleans? It finished filming here shortly before The Thing.

The movie starts with Travolta walking through New Orleans, a meandering wander that makes no sense geographically but beautiful sense architecturally and aesthetically. It was actually a bit spooky watching him make that walk and seeing all those places in the background, most of which I recognized. Hell, I even recognized a tree. Yeah, a tree. As in, "Oh, I know where that tree is." Live oaks grow awfully individualistically. It's easy to forget just how gorgeous a city New Orleans was - the most gorgeous in the country - when too much of it is still dirty and brown and stained, but if you want to see how beautiful this place can be, watch this movie.

The three live in a beat-up old house, which I knew immediately, with its wood floors, high ceilings, rickety porch, and door-sized windows. Even if I didn't know this particular house, I knew so many like it that it feels like home. The house is mostly full of books, with lawn chairs serving as the furniture.

A couple of months ago, I went out of town for a week, which Albus the Wonder Kitty didn't take to too well, a message he communicated to me by peeing on the couch. Now, understand, I hated that couch. I got it for free when I first moved here from a friend of a friend and the damn thing has been with me since, from my first French Quarter apartment to Esplanade Ridge and even out to the dark days in Alabama and then back to New Orleans. Many people have crashed on that couch, including me, but any sentimental value could not overcome its essential identity as ugly and uncomfortable. I truly hated that couch, but I really hoped it would last another few months until I could move into my house. Therefore, when I discovered its new role as litter box, I was less than pleased. I spent a good week soaking it with anti-odor and disinfectant sprays, and finally seemed to defeat the smell.

So I'm sitting on my couch again, reading something with the tv on, and Albus jumps up on the couch next to me - no big deal, he's allowed. He seems to sit, but his posture seems a bit odd out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head and look, and lo, he is peeing right in front of me. "Albus!" I cry, "No!" and I swat him (very lightly, just to get his attention). He slowly turns his head to consider me, giving me that disdainful look that cats have that somehow says "I will kill you in your sleep" and then turns away and resumes peeing. I swatted Albus again, and that finally got him off the couch, but I knew the couch's days were over. Since the couch was too big to get out the door of the apartment (we had to take a door off to get it in, and that was when the apartment was empty - no way the thing was getting out now that the apartment was full), the next day I attacked it. It's amazing how you can tear apart a big, solid piece of furniture with nothing more than a hammer, a pocket-knife, and a little pent-up rage. Before too long, I had reduced the thing to rubble that easily fit in the dumpster out back.

All of which is to say, I now have no couch which puts me on equal footing with the majority of New Orleanians, and watched "A Love Song for Bobby Long" from my floor, sitting on a couple of pillows, and I know how it is when lawn chairs are your furniture. But I also knew these people, the people portrayed in the film, writers that drink too much, but also people that sing old blues songs sitting on the levees, that will do every meager thing they can to help someone from down the block or down the bar, that are deeply attached to the city they live in.

It's not giving anything away to say that Travolta's walk is echoed by Scarlett at the end of the movie; she walks down the streets and through the neighborhoods and past the buildings and the trees that I knew and loved and it all looks just as it did Before, before the levees broke, before the flood, before everything. I was only gone for five weeks and I've been here for over eleven months, but watching that made me realize how much, how terribly, terribly much, I miss New Orleans.

We Are Not OK

2006-08-29T11:14:00.000-05:00

click here

My Last Normal Days

2006-08-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is The Anniversary, which seems a strange way to refer to it, anniversaries generally being good things. Certainly there isn’t anything much to celebrate, which is what we usually do with anniversaries, unless you want to celebrate our continued survival, though with hurricane season only half over and a flood control system held together with duct tape, spit, and desperate hope, that feels a bit premature yet. No, this anniversary will be a day to remember and mourn, though I can’t recall any day in the last year when I forgot for even a second.

Still, I thought I’d go back over a year ago and try to remember those last normal days pre-K, maybe to recall what normal was, maybe to understand a little how and why things happened like they did.

On Tuesday, August 23rd, the tropical depression that would become Katrina formed east of Florida, around the Bahamas, not that we were really aware of it. I was furiously trying to accomplish two things before the next week came – get ready for my first full-time year at Loyola and finish renovating my house enough so I could move in at the end of the month. I’m pretty sure I spent Tuesday shopping for floor tile while letting the newly sanded and sealed wood floors cure.

Finding the tile proved difficult. Nobody had what I wanted in stock and ordering would take weeks, but I only had one week to move in, which required an installed bathroom, which required a bathroom floor. Finally, I found a store with some hexagonal white tile someone else had ordered and never picked up. I was disappointed with the lack of color or pattern, but Gavin came up with the brainstorm to get a pottery store to glaze and fire some of the white tiles for us. We found a place willing to give it a shot, though it was something they’d never done before and didn’t know how it would turn out. We left them some tiles to experiment with overnight.

Sometime in the morning of Wednesday the 24th, the tropical depression turned into a storm and got named Katrina, the eleventh named storm of the busiest hurricane season on record. It headed northwest.

Meanwhile, Gav and I liked the tile results and ordered a bunch more, which would take a day. I, no doubt, worked on my class syllabi since every summer, no matter how many times I swear it’ll be different, I’m always scrambling to get ready at the last minute. New Orleans went about its usual business, not really concerned about a storm that wasn’t headed in our direction and had to cross Florida still.

Sometime in the morning on Thursday the 25th, Katrina turned west, heading for southern Florida. Gavin and I picked up the tile, and my mom and stepfather flew in to help me pack and move. I was in a panic over this because I hadn’t even started. Less than a week before I was to move out of my crappy apartment and into the first house I had ever bought, and I was completely unprepared, so my mom and stepfather were coming to my rescue. I excitedly showed them the house for the first time, the newly painted walls and shiny floors, and then showed them the plans for the kitchen laid out all professional-like on graph paper. About the time I was doing this in the bar of their hotel, Katrina became a Category 1 hurricane a couple of hours before making landfall in southern Florida. It rolled over the Everglades and only briefly returned to a tropical storm before hitting the Gulf of Mexico six hours after its initial landfall. At this point, early Friday morning, it was still expected to turn north early enough to land somewhere along the Florida panhandle or perhaps Alabama.

So Friday Gavin and I laid tile, or, to be accurate, Gav laid tile and I cleaned up behind him. We carefully arranged the gray and red tiles in the pattern we had decided on, making only one mistake. (If I can save the floor and you can spot the mistake, you get a shot.) My parents, meanwhile, packed up my books, cds, kitchen things and a whole bunch of other stuff and moved it all over to the house. By the end of that day, with most everything moved but furniture and clothes and the tile laid, I was feeling like moving was something I could manage, especially since my parents weren’t leaving until Monday. As for the rest of New Orleans, everyone went to school and work while Katrina spent the day hanging out in the Gulf and not doing much of anything.

Saturday morning, Gav and I went back to the house to grout the floor. Once that was done, the plan was to get the bathroom fixtures installed and hook up the brand new stove that had been delivered the day before. The house would be livable, though lacking cabinets and a refrigerator and a kitchen sink, just in time for me to move in on the 31st. By the time we finished grouting and I got back to my apartment and turned on the news, Katrina had doubled in size and become a Category 3 hurricane now expected to strike close to New Orleans, and Nagin called for a voluntary evacuation. I told my parents to get to the airport and try to get a flight out. They tried all day, but in vain. They were either going to have to stick it out or find another way out. I went to Les Bon Temps with some friends for beers. This had, by the way, worked before. I remember sitting there drinking when another hurricane turned aside and headed east and a cheer went up around the bar, but no such luck this time. I woke up on Sunday to a mandatory evacuation.

I grabbed Albus the cat and set off to get my parents, packing maybe three days worth of t-shirts, the standard evacuation gear. We spent the day driving east out of New Orleans and then turned north and back west until we ended up in Jackson, Mississippi. During the drive, Katrina went from a Cat 3 to a Cat 5 in less than 12 hours, and grew until it was about 400 miles across. It was after hearing this that I called Brooke and left a message that went something like, “Well, it was a nice city to live in for a while.”

My mom called ahead to every hotel she could to get us a room for the night. I knew Gav and Allison were evacuating to Jackson, but I couldn’t get through to them to find out where exactly. By the time we got to a hotel that night, Katrina looked as big as the Gulf itself.

Monday morning, the outer bands of Katrina were lashing water and wind across Jackson, but I finally heard from Gav and Allison. I drove my parents to the airport where they picked up a rental car to drive to Memphis to catch a flight back to Virginia. Albus and I found Gav, Allison, Oscar and Vato (their dogs), Pele (their cat), and Little (the kitten they found while driving). By this time Katrina had weakened to Category 3 and come ashore near the mouth of the Pearl River at the Louisiana/Mississippi border. We all hunkered down in a lake house with a generator and watched the news.

As it turns out, Katrina did turn aside a little and we were spared the direct hit we feared. In fact, on the news New Orleans looked dry and seemed to have dodged the bullet yet again, through some combination of prayer, voodoo, and the luck of drunks. Little did we know that the levees had already breached and water was flooding into the city. That night, exhausted, relieved, and a little drunk, I went to bed vowing to go home the next day and “make sweet love to the levees,” which I thought had held.

The next morning, Tuesday the 30th, less than a week after the beginning of what would become Katrina formed in the Atlantic, we got up to find out about the flood, and then all the horror after. I never wrote about the before part, because I only started writing about this after that point. Until then, there wasn’t a reason. It was just another normal evacuation from a storm, perhaps a little more stressful than some but still not truly remarkable. The levee breaches shoved everything out of normal, though I didn’t know it until almost 24 hours later, and everything has stayed out of normal since.

Incumbents Don't Need No Stinkin' Democracy

2006-08-14T14:53:00.000-05:00

We love big choices here in New Orleans. Fast on the heels of the mayoral election, we have a nice, round baker's dozen of candidates for Dollar Bill Jefferson's seat. Twelve people have officially declared against him, which is good news. The investigation/indictment/appeal process could easily stumble forward through election day, and Dollar Bill's determined to run again; so much so, I think he'd do it even if he did get indicted. At any rate, he's on the ballot now, and I don't think he can pull himself off at this point (see the whole DeLay thing for an example of those complications).

Anyway, I was beginning to worry that I was going to have to run myself if we were going to have any choice beyond the Republican who declared against him early, but happily a whole slew of Democrats, independents, Libertarians, and who knows what all else have jumped in the fray. Since we do run-offs instead of primaries, clearly we will be getting our choice of the top two after election day in November. Given the number of candidates, and the near impossibility of unseating incumbents, I would not be surprised if Jefferson is one of those two even if he is indicted in between now and then. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he won.

On the flip side of the coin, up in Connecticut, Joe Lieberman lost his primary run and declared himself an independent candidate for his Senate seat (and is ahead in current polls, by the way). Oddly enough, two other incumbents lost their primaries, too, (in the House - one R, one D) a pretty unprecedented development, indicating a fairly serious anti-incumbent feeling among voters. Which, by the way, is I think about the only meaning to be derived from the Lieberman loss. Everyone seems to want to spin it one way or another, especially the right-wing and their media mouthpieces with lots of talk of the Democratic party being hijacked by the extreme anti-war left-wing. Considering that the majority of the country and the vast majority of the Democratic party now favor some sort of planned withdrawal from Iraq, anti-war sentiment is either the very definition of "mainstream" or the administration, with its bungling, incompetence, and refusal to learn from its mistakes, has turned most Americans into pot-smoking, patchouli-scented, hippie pinko peaceniks. Either way, Joe's loss looks like good ol' fashioned democracy in action, also known as "majority rules."

But what do these two things, Dollar Bill's determination to run and Joe's independent candidacy, have in common? Politicians nakedly trying to cling to their power for no other reason than their own greed. Clearly Dollar Bill is no use to New Orleans, Louisiana, and the country while fighting the inevitable indictment, and just as clearly Connecticut Democrats have said they don't want Joe. Despite their similar protestations of running to serve the people they claim to represent, those people are really, really hoping these guys won't represent them anymore. So why do they continue? Greed, for both money and power, and the fact that they are very, very likely to succeed.

How likely? If you're an incumbent, your chance of getting re-elected is better than 99%. Condoms are more likely to fail than incumbents. Looked at another way, since Katrina and the levee failures caused a "hundred-year" flood (as in, a flood that bad only occurs once every hundred years), an incumbent losing is an event as momentous as Katrina.

As Louisiana's favorite ex-governor and current convict Edwin Edwards put it, he wouldn't lose unless he was caught in bed with a "dead hooker or a live boy."

What keeps incumbents in power? Money, obviously, since the money all flows to those who can grant the favors as opposed to those who promise to grant favors while assuring voters they won't do any such thing. And money rules politics. With campaign costs long since rocketed out of the sky and currently heading beyond the solar system, legislators raise money full-time, while actually governing the country is more like a hobby. They noodle around with it in the garage in order to get away from their wives.

But even worse than the money is the gerrymandering. Again, see DeLay as a perfect example. The people in power, usually the representatives and/or their parties, arrange districts block-by-block to construct inviolate Republican or Democratic voting communities. Combine that with a two-party stranglehold on our elections, and we have congressional districts that resemble monarchies, little medieval fiefdoms, more than democratically elected offices.

So what do we do about it? Solutions abound, though given that the only people who can change the rules are the ones in power, and they have no desire to change the rules that got them that power, the chance of any of the solutions getting enacted are remote at best.

Getting the money out of the election equation is a good first step. There has been some campaign finance reform lately, but it's just a start, and some of it has been derailed by the courts. (A Supreme Court that doesn't believe money is the same as speech, and thus unregulable, would help, but that would take replacing at least two or three of the conservatives with moderates.) Leaning on the broadcasters could also make a difference. After all, they were granted access to the public airwaves under the requirement that they air a certain amount of content for the "public good." That all got de-regulated with Reagan and further deteriorated under Clinton, but forcing them to show political ads for free during election season in return for broadcast rights would strip away a lot of the necessity for campaign money.

However, given the rise of cable, the web, and other media sources, I'm not sure how much difference jumping on the broadcasters would have. Not to mention the fact that if the money is there, the politicians will find a way to spend it. Personally, I'd like to see political ads completely outlawed and/or strict public funding of campaigns, though both risk running afoul of the First Amendment.

Term limits could help, too, though again trying to get those elected to sign off on their own eventual ouster is damned difficult. Remember all those Republicans that came in with Gingrich, taking the House, advocating term limits, and promising to leave after they had served a term? Most of them are still there, and none of them quit of their own volition, and nobody has said squat about term limits in ten years.

All of that would help, but none of it would address gerrymandering. I re-read the Constitution, and it doesn't actually lay out how Representatives and Senators are to be determined; that's left up to the states, so theoretically the states could put the district-mapping process in neutral hands, like California is trying to do by leaving it to judges. That, however, only works if judges are actually neutral, which is asking a lot, especially in states like Louisiana where judges are elected.

It also doesn't say anything about dividing states into districts, though; it only mentions population, so I'm wondering when and how districting became the law of the land. Because I think we need something more radical than finance reform, term limits, and altered district-mapping processes. I think we need to re-do the way we elect officials entirely. I think we need proportional democracy rather than our current winner-take-all system.

Sidenote: I also think we need to re-structure the Senate. Why do the 100,000 people in Montana get two Senate votes the same as the however many millions in California or New York? It violates the basic democratice principle (1 person = 1 vote) besides currently tilting the country towards rural and conservative interests. And I think we need to directly elect the President. A majority of Americans think we should get rid of the electoral college, though talk of it died almost immediately after George II's initial election, despite the obviously debatable nature of that election. Both of those work against one person, one vote, which is actually exactly what they were designed to do. Despite their obvious smarts and vision, the founding fathers were distrustful of the common man, even the white males they restricted voting to when they wrote the Constitution, so they created buffers. That said, I'm going to try to stay focused on gerrymandering, though you guys know how hard it is for me to focus. ("Oooh, shiny! Hey, do I smell beer?")

In a proportional democracy, you would vote for a party's slate of candidates statewide, which makes sense given that these Representatives are supposedly representing the state to the nation. Then, given the percentage each party has, that determines how many of their slate goes, so if the Democrats get slightly more than fifty percent in Louisiana (for instance) then 4 Democrats go and 3 Republicans. I know, that's actually who we have right now, but bear with me anyway. This also avoids the possibility of one party getting slightly less than fifty percent of the vote in every district, leading to a nearly evenly split electorate being represented by just one party. District-by-district winner-take-all voting definitely defeats true democratic representation.

Plus, by making people vote for a slate of candidates from a party, it would de-emphasize the person, and elections might actually be about issues instead of a bunch of Brie-eating Republicans raised in privilege buying a pair of cowboy boots and accusing Democrats of not being in touch with the "common man," whoever the hell that might be.

This would also, by the way, allow third parties to do more than act as spoilers, because if they got enough votes, they'd get a representative, too. Imagine a Louisiana that sent 3 Democrats, 3 Reps, and a Green or Libertarian. Politicians might actually have to learn to work together instead of simply bashing everything the other party wants.

With sincere apologies to John Lennon, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm really not the only one. Besides, I say dream big. If I'm going to advocate and hope for reform that will never happen because the Joe Liebermans and Bill Jeffersons of the country only care about staying in power and will never change the system that put them there and keeps them there, then I might as well advocate for the reforms I really want.

Finally, while I'm on the subject of incumbents clinging to power for no discernible reason (and to return to New Orleans, since that is F&L's supposed raison d'etre), what's a guy gotta do to get mayor recalled in this town?

Promises, Promises

2006-08-02T13:17:00.000-05:00

Four weeks from the anniversary and we still don’t have a plan. In fact, until a week ago we didn’t have a mayor. Now our mayor has re-appeared to announce that, at some point in the near but still non-dated future, there will indeed be a Plan!

Forgive me for being under-whelmed.

After getting re-elected, C. Ray Nagin virtually disappeared. Sure, we would hear reports that he was showing up at the Essence Festival and other, farther-flung events and happenings, making speeches about how New Orleans was “on the right track,” but if we had thought the Mayor of New Orleans would appear around town with actual, real, solid plans for rebuilding, well, we were sadly mistaken. Perhaps it was too depressing around here, what with not much getting done and all.

Now apparently back from his good will tour, last week C. Ray held a big press conference to trumpet the exciting news that New Orleans is, in fact, “on the right track.” He also informed us that he would soon appoint a Rebuilding Czar to oversee the rebuilding effort. He didn’t name this Czar, mind you, but told us that there will be one. But that’s our Sugar Ray – he promises everyone everything, but doesn’t understand why we expect him to actually keep those promises. Eleven months after and this city still doesn’t have anyone in charge of its recovery, and no, I never bought C. Ray’s assertion that he was performing that function, even before he spent the first two months after being re-elected everywhere and anywhere but New Orleans.

Did I mention being under-whelmed?

The other thing Sugar Ray wanted to trumpet was that people are “tending” to get rebuilding permits in higher spots in the city as opposed to the low-lying areas, which he used to defend his “market-driven” rebuilding process as opposed to government telling people where to rebuild. But a tendency isn’t a plan, and the one house per block in the Lower 9th or out East is going to want water, electricity, sewage, fire and police just as much as those clustered Uptown, and they deserve it, too. But how much is that going to cost this bankrupt city? Not to mention the question of where the promised improvements – the parks, the commuter trains, the “big-box” retail district, the Cat 5 sized levees – will go, and what happens when one of them goes where someone’s “market-driven” rebuild happens to be, the rebuild that they have spent the last year and thousands of dollars on. What then?

Proclaiming the debatably positive effects of not planning isn’t the same as leadership. New Orleans needs leadership now, someone to make tough decisions rather than empty promises; in fact, we’ve needed it for eleven months.

New Orleans needs a plan, not the promise of one. We need someone to tell us where services will go, where we can rebuild with the knowledge of levee protection and what kind of protection it will be. We are about to (finally!) receive billions of dollars in aid and New Orleanians and all other Americans have a right to know how that money will be spent. We need a leader who will lay that out in detail.

Unfortunately, instead we’re stuck with Sugar Ray Nagin.

F&L on the Radio

2006-07-27T14:43:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: Because time ran out today (those chatty Rollergirls!), I'll be on next Saturday, somewhere between 8 and 10. I know, I know - I'm going to have to set my alarm, too.

Because I know you are all dying to hear the dulcet tones of my voice...

Schroeder over at People Get Ready got in touch with me the other day about putting my post "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" on the radio. In his other life, he djs for WTUL (that'd be Tulane's radio station) and does "Community Gumbo" for them, and he liked that post and wanted to broadcast it.

Somebody wanting me to read something I wrote? No problem, anywhere, anytime. I'm easy like that.

It should be on sometime between 9-10 am this Saturday the 29th, at WTUL, 91.5 on your radio dial. He may even play a Smuteye song, though I don't guarantee it, nor do I guarantee you'll enjoy it if he does.

"But Dale," you say, "I don't live in New Orleans, and I will simply die if I don't hear you."

Not to worry Gentle Reader, for there is a simulcast. Just go to WTUL's website, listen in and don't be left out.

"But Dale," some others protest, "I live on the West Coast and, while I love you more than life itself, that's 7-8 on Saturday morning our time, and I'm only up that early if I've been partying all night."

Never fear, for Schroeder plans on putting the recording on the Community Gumbo blog called, appropriately enough, "Community Gumbo."

So check it out. I'll probably even listen myself, but mostly for the stuff about the Big Easy Rollergirls that's on the show too.

GMAC Mortgage Comapany is Stupid and Annoying

2006-07-20T14:19:00.000-05:00

Lately we’ve been struggling with the mortgage company. We got stuck with GMAC after the mortgage company we made the deal with immediately sold, within a month, our mortgage to them. Okay, fine, not unusual. Our first mortgage payment, by the way, was due September 1st, 2005. Yeah, three days after. Obviously that didn’t happen, and we were told that payments didn’t have to be made for three months, which only meant that in January we owed them everything we hadn’t paid all at once. I’m not sure exactly how that was supposed to be helpful.

After much wrangling, everything got re-negotiated and we had a new payment plan, slightly higher than the old payment plan. We sent payments off to them and then they called us saying we had to re-negotiate again or go into default. Apparently, they rejected one of the payments because they said they didn’t realize it was part of the same payment.

Okay, fine, so we re-negotiate again. Now the payments have really jumped, much higher than our original payment plan in order to get everything we owe them from the last half a year paid off within a year.

Meanwhile, every time I call I have to go through the same routine, changing the address because for some reason they never know the new address, despite the fact that I have told them again and again not to send anything to the house address because there is no mail delivery there. The phone conversations always started the same way, “We mailed you the blah-blah-blah weeks ago.” Then I explain I never got it, ask where they sent it, and give them the new address again.

So we send off our re-re-re-negotiated payment. The money disappears from my account just as it should. A few days later I get a phone call saying we were going into default unless we made the payment. I call and explain how we sent the payments. She asks for the address. Then she asks if anyone is living in the house.

“No, it was wrecked by the hurricane.”

“Well I have no way of knowing that.”

Really? No way? GMAC keeps its employees on a news blackout? The fact that I’ve changed the address a million times didn’t clue you in? Or how about this – how about that the company you work for is holding onto my insurance money?

Now, I understand that GMAC is an unbelievably large corporation, but I still think such a large corporation with billions of dollars and thousands of employees would be able to make some kind of notation on our account indicative of the hurricane damage, not to mention that they’re holding our insurance money.

After I count slowly to ten, I find out they have a record of my portion, by not Dr. A.’s, and I have to make a payment immediately or we will go into default the next day. I mention that this has happened before, and we’re making payments, and could she explain why they won’t take our money. She tells me the payments have to arrive “at the same time.”

“Okay, what does that mean?”

“At the same time, they have to arrive at the same time.”

“We scheduled them for the same day.”

“No, at the same time.”

The conversation pauses here while I bang my head against the wall a few times.

“Okay, so two electronic payments from different accounts on the same day doesn’t count?”

“No.”

“Okay, so what does count?”

“They have to arrive at the same time.”

I then spend five minutes running through every possibility I can think of, electronic payments, checks, same day arrival, to finally get down to what “at the same time” means – one electronic payment, or one envelope. Apparently, two checks in one envelope is okay, but two checks in two different envelopes is too confusing for GMAC to match them to one account. This would have been useful information for them to pass along to us, say, six months ago.

I point out that one envelope will be difficult given that Dr. A. and I are two different people, with two different checking accounts, living in two different places. She understands, but is adamant – one electronic payment, or one envelope.

Fine, I make a payment over the phone and call Dr. A. Dr. A. checks her account and, sure enough, they took her payment as well. In fact, she over-paid a little to get us closer to the time when we go back to regular payments, so they not only got more than enough money up front and on time, but then asked us for more money which I gave them. Naturally, we call back the next day to get this straightened out.

We ask the woman on the other end of the line (Dr. A. having arranged a three-way call) what happened to our money, and she proceeds to tell us a lot of stuff we know, like we’re in a re-payment plan, none of which answers the question, and finishes with “You received an insurance payment, so you’re capable of paying off what you owe.”

Now, how is it that she knows this, but other people don’t know we got wrecked by a hurricane?

“No,” I say, “actually we don’t have an insurance payment because you’re holding onto that money while we rebuild.”

At this point, she hung up.

To be fair, we could have just been cut off somehow, but that timing sure is something, isn’t it?

So we call back again, get bounced around a little bit, and finally talk to someone who tells us we owe them a little less money next month.

What?

After much questioning, we find out that first, they did indeed get all the payments including the extra one I made, and are in fact capable of matching payments that don’t arrive “at the same time” to one account, and furthermore, already made the recalculations to reduce our payments over the rest of the year by the amount we over-paid this month. Which is awfully sweet of them if you ignore the idea that we arranged the payments that we did because we could afford that each month and not the extra they squeezed out of me.

Plus, since they reported the non-payment to credit companies already, they’ll send us letters saying it was a misunderstanding and not our fault that we can show to people for the next year when they refuse us credit because our credit rating is screwed because GMAC Mortgage Company is stupid and annoying.

I feel this is somewhat akin to getting knocked in the head with a cast iron skillet and bequeathed with a Band-Aid.

It’s enough to make me wish I could just take the house back to the store and return it because it’s broken, but houses don’t come with 30-day guarantees. Not to worry, though, because I won’t give them the satisfaction. There is no hoop they can devise that I can not figure out a way to jump through it, not to mention that I get to bitch about them here, and there’s nothing they can do about that.

The Unbearable Heaviness of a Dollar Bill

2006-07-13T19:32:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I’m a little behind the news curve on this one, but unfortunately I think we’re going to be stuck with U.S. Rep. “Dollar” Bill Jefferson in the news for some time. Actually, that fact is something I want to write about.

I won’t go into all the details of the bribery scandal here. If you don’t know them, search, uh, anywhere. Actually, Dangerblond gave a pretty good run-down on the whole sordid family and friends way back when, which I think was called “Fuckheads from Fuckland.” The latest juicy bit concerns ousted Council Member and Jefferson protégé Renee Gill-Pratt using an SUV donated to help the city as her personal vehicle. Jefferson arranged to have the vehicles put under her control. A couple of days before she lost her election, she donated the one she had been using to a non-profit, which hired her immediately as soon as she left office, and - ta-da! – she has the SUV again. She, by the way, attributes this lucky coincidence to the largesse of God. Oh, and speaking of Pratt, can I somehow cite her for still having a campaign sign littering the St. Charles neutral ground a block from my apartment? Is there some sort of citizen’s campaign violation fine I can impose as a good New Orleanian? Or how about just plain littering?

Okay, back to Dollar Bill. I do have to say I almost wish the $90,000 had been in his New Orleans freezer instead of his D.C. one, because I have sweet visions of him facing five weeks worth of refrigerator rot and trying to decide if getting the money out would be worth it. $90,000 under pounds and pounds of veggies, chicken, beef, shrimp and oysters all melting together in a small space for over a month in constant 90+ temperatures – what to do, what to do? By the way, if you’re ever faced with this question, the answer is “forget it.” Not only would it be unspeakably disgusting getting it out, but nobody would accept the money because of the stanky stankitty stank. Of course, that never would’ve happened because Dollar Bill has no problem with commandeering military vehicles, including a helicopter, to get a briefcase out of his New Orleans house (the last $10,000?) in the first chaotic days after the flood, vehicles which should have been rescuing people off roofs or at least helping restore order (And isn’t that illegal somehow? Since when do members of Congress have military authority?). Not to mention that said helicopter blew bricks off his house and rained them down on my friend’s car, thereby wrecking one of the few vehicles in New Orleans still unflooded and serviceable.

I was glad to see Dollar Bill removed from his position on the Ways and Means Committee. He argued that he needed to stay because the people of New Orleans need him on the committee these days. Would it help us recover to have influential people on important committees? You bet, but somehow I don’t think people whose own party is trying to oust them really have all that much influence. Another argument he made was that nobody else had ever been removed from a committee before being indicted, to which I was like “Whaaaa?”

Now, I’m all for innocent until proven guilty, but if someone is being investigated for stealing chickens, you don’t leave them in charge of the henhouse. Dollar Bill used his position in Congress and on the W&M Committee to bring in at least one bribe – the way I figure it, he’s suspended. Besides which, they found the marked money in his freezer before Katrina even struck – if he wasn’t in Congress, does anybody believe he wouldn’t have been indicted by now? Charges of racism surrounded Dollar Bill’s removal as well, to which the only real answer is to see what happens next time. Now that the precedent has been set to remove members from positions of power if they are being investigated for abuses of those positions, let’s see them stick to it.

Hooray, by the way, to the Democrats for doing it, even if they did it just to help them in the upcoming elections by way of contrasting themselves to the Republican’s “culture of corruption.” Since Congress usually does the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, I’ll take doing the right thing for the wrong reason any day.

Which brings us to this point – why am I not surprised the only time Republicans come to the defense of one of their Democratic colleagues is the time when it is completely and totally wrong to? House Republicans got all up in arms over the search of Dollar Bill’s office, finally having second thoughts about His Moronic Majesty George II’s abuse of executive power.

Could somebody explain to me why warrantless wiretaps of any old average American are hunky-doory while the warranted search of a Congress member’s office is an offense to truth, justice, mom, apple pie, Superman, and the Constitution?

Unless, that is, members of Congress get to play by different rules from the rest of us, even though I thought we were all created equal and nobody is above the law. And, to misquote a favorite talking point, if the members of Congress have done nothing wrong, then they have nothing to hide.

And as for those Democrats who also bitched and moaned about the search of Dollar Bill’s office (Pelosi, I’m talking to you) – shame on you, too. Again, just like removing him from the committee, part of the uproar was because it had never been done before, as if doing something stupid for hundreds of years is reason to keep doing something stupid.

Anyway, they're all wrong, at least for now. A judge ruled that the search of Dollar Bill’s office does not violate the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution. (A Reagan appointee, by the way, before anyone starts in on “activist judges.”) Now, I’m no Constitutional scholar, but I read that clause and it’s pretty clear to me that it’s about protecting members of Congress from harassment over legislation and has nothing to do with criminal investigations, as Dollar Bill and his lawyer claim. In fact, to make that claim would, in the words of Judge Hogan, “have the effect of converting every congressional office into a taxpayer-subsidized sanctuary for crime.”

Dollar Bill is, of course, appealing the decision, which brings me back to my first point, that we’re going to be hearing about this for quite a while. The first appeal goes to a three-judge panel of U.S. District Court, and then the Supreme Court, and you can imagine how long that will take. Until then, the material seized in the search remains sealed, which means the grand jury doesn’t get to see it, which means they have to wait to indict Dollar Bill. What that means is I’m stuck with a worthless representative for the months (years?) it takes for this to work through the court process. Then, finally, there will be an indictment or not, and Dollar Bill will get his day in court. That’s an awfully long time for New Orleans to be stuck with him.

So, William Jefferson, let me appeal to you directly. If you really want to help the people of New Orleans as you keep claiming, don’t appeal. If you’re indicted, then you can give us your “honorable explanation.” If you’re indeed innocent, you can have your old job and position back and we can get on with the process of recovery. If you’re guilty, we can get you out of the way and get someone in who will help us.

Until then, you’re dead weight, an anchor, and we don’t need anything dragging us further under the water.

Shameless Self-Promotion (Mostly, Anyway)

2006-07-11T19:55:00.000-05:00

A very short piece – and I mean really short, as in only a page long - of mine will appear in Louisiana in Words, a book coming out from Pelican Publishing in the spring.

Not too long ago Pelican put out a submission call for the book, looking for writers to describe the real Louisiana, minute by minute. The book will collect them together, giving people a snapshot of a day in the life of Louisiana. They specifically asked for some stuff not set in New Orleans and not about the hurricanes, and believe it or not I managed to come up with something, and I recently heard mine got accepted. I have to say I’m quite excited and proud to be in the book, not just to be included but also because of the company I’ll be keeping.

Also accepted was Kelly Wilson, my friend and office-mate from Loyola, as well as John Biguenet, also from Loyola and author of the books The Torturer’s Apprentice and Oyster. There are some other heavy hitters in there, too, like Andrei Codrescu, as well as other friends of mine from New Orleans, Charles Cannon, Joe Longo and Sarah Inman, but the one I’m actually most excited about is Linda Rigamer. See, I gave the call for submissions to my Intro. to Creative Writing class as an assignment and encouraged them to submit; Linda did, and she got accepted, and that’s just really cool. If you want to see the full list of authors, go here.

The book should be out in the spring sometime, at which point I will remind everyone about it again, here and in emails and phone calls and possibly by running around for Mardi Gras wearing nothing but my page like a fig leaf. Here’s hoping the book isn’t pocket-sized.

Nine Months, One Week, and Four Days Later ...

2006-06-28T17:27:00.000-05:00

… I got my insurance money. I mentioned in the last post that my blue roof is among the many in New Orleans that are, officially, gone. The roof was the first thing to get fixed because fixing anything else only to get it leaked on really sort of defeats the point.

For all this time, the first question most everyone asked me whenever we spoke was, “How’s the house?” Still, I’ve been putting off writing about it because first, there wasn’t much to say, and second, it’s boring, mostly a tale of bureaucracy and regulations, minutiae and percentages, inspections and waiting on hold, oh, so much waiting on hold. In short, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, more often than not signifying nothing. Still, things are finally happening, so here goes.

First, history:

The Good Dr. Arwen and I bought the place together – it’s a shotgun double which, for the non-New Orleanians, is a traditional style house here with two front doors that both open to a long row of rooms one after the other, with no real hallways. They say the name derives from the idea that you could shoot a shotgun through the whole house, front to back, if you wanted.

We bought it “as is” from people who weren’t finished renovating it on July 29th, and spent the next month finishing renovations. In fact, we worked right up until evacuation – Gavin and I grouted my new bathroom floor on Saturday, then evacuated Sunday, and Katrina hit Monday, August 29th. Actually, the house survived the hurricane pretty much intact, losing only a handful of shingles from the roof, which resulted in the leaks that were the first things to be fixed. The failure of levees – thank you government and Army Corps of Engineers – wrecked it, though.

The three feet of water that sat in the house for about three weeks pretty much destroyed everything inside. If you doubt that, take a yardstick around your house with one end on the floor and imagine everything within its length soaking in water for almost a month. Then imagine mold growing up the walls and over everything else straight to the ceiling. Pretty much does it, doesn’t it? Plus, since I was just moving in, everything was packed up in boxes on the floor. If you haven’t read “Operation Bass Save” from way, way back in October, it’s got a quick description of the results of that particular misfortune.

So the first thing I had to do was shovel all the moldy, stinking trash out. Wearing big rubber boots, a respirator, and gloves, I tossed to the curb, oh, almost every book I had ever read, along with hundreds I hadn’t gotten to yet, and somewhere in the gluey, slimy, largely unreadable mess, my copies of the journals that had published my short stories. Since I’m a writer and English professor, I did that first because I knew, for me, that would be most upsetting – the books themselves are of course replaceable for the most part, but all the scribbled notes in the margins were not, nor were the signatures and dedications from all the writers I met, nor were the first editions and antiques, like the complete Poe in ten volumes published in the late 1800s. They made a pile about ten feet long, a couple wide, and three or four feet high.

On top of that went photos and posters, the hand-made “7 Deadly Sins” sign my friends and I carried around for the Greatest Mardi Gras Ever, all my notebooks and papers from college, not to mention costumes and toys and videos and kitchenware and beer-brewing equipment and all the other little knick-knacks that clutter up our homes because they remind us of who we are. That took a long, lonely week in early October (happy birthday to me!). At the end of every day, I would go back to the old apartment and shower, even though we weren’t supposed to bathe in tap water those days, but I couldn’t live with the sweat, stink, and muck on my skin.

Meanwhile, my neighbors, who had actually lived in their houses, threw out even more.

It’s an odd thing to have your whole life rotting on the curb for all the neighbors to see, waiting to be picked up by the garbage collectors. I felt totally exposed. My friend John said to me one day, “I saw your Tank Girl down the street,” and I wanted to cringe because it’s a comic book and it’s embarrassing to still be reading comics at my age, especially one called “Tank Girl” and this despite the fact that I knew John would hardly hold it against me, in fact had read them himself. But what of everyone else? The piles sat there for quite a while, weeks in fact, plenty of time for anyone who cared to learn about my reading habits, or to note the Star Wars toys that came out of the house of a single thirty-something non-parent. It’s also plenty of time for you to remember that “adult novelty” tucked away deep in a box and think, “Oh gee, I hope that’s on the bottom somewhere.”

I did rescue three bottles of wine that had spent those five or six weeks in the house. One I drank the night I rescued it, with a hearty “fuck you” to all that had happened and all that had caused it. I saved the other two, the first of which I plan on drinking my first night back in the house, the second on the anniversary of Katrina, though the way things are going that order will probably be switched. Either way, both will be drunk with some sorrow but with more defiance and determination, and don’t worry, if they’ve turned to vinegar, I’ll have back-ups.

After that came the gutting. I got help from my dad, as well as my friends Gavin, John, and Karl. As soon as we pulled the drywall down, we discovered the mold covered the plaster underneath, since the previous owners had put drywall up on top of the original plaster and lath. If you don’t know, lath are narrow thin boards nailed horizontally on the studs all the way up a wall, with maybe a half-inch of space between them. Cover that with plaster and ta-da! Wall. At least that’s how they did it around here in the days before drywall. Preservationists insist the plaster should be cleaned of mold because it’s part of the history of the house and whatnot, but I was too busy getting that moldy shit out of what was left of my house to listen.

And what a nasty, dirty job it is – first of all, the plaster crumbles into small chunks and powder which gets up your nose and into your eyes and ears no matter what kind of mask and goggles you wear. They help, but the stuff is insidious. So you break the plaster with a hammer or crowbar (I called mine “Big Max”) and it flies off in all directions, and then you pull the lath down with Big Max or your bare hands. You would be surprised at how much of a house you can pull down with only your hands. I just imagined that rather than plaster and lath, I was pulling Brown’s vapid stare and Bush’s smug smile off their bloody, shrieking skulls and the rest was easy. Pretty good therapy, actually.

After getting all the walls down, then I just had to spray the whole place down with bleach, which makes all the dried mold puff out in clouds of powder. Even with the respirator, this doesn’t feel exactly healthy. All of that – the trash, the gutting, the bleaching – was done before October was out, and then all I had to do was wait for the insurance money to come so I could start rebuilding.

Did I mention that I finally got the insurance a couple of weeks ago?

For the seven months in between, the house sat – gutted, bleached, ready – waiting. So when you all asked me what was going on with the house and for months I said “Nothing,” it wasn’t that I was being rude, or didn’t want to talk about it, or didn’t want to bore you with the details, it was because literally nothing was happening.

During that time, I spent an awful lot of time talking on the phone, working my way through endless bureaucracies, inching toward that ever-elusive, apparently mythical goal – rebuilding money.

For those with a tolerance for financial minutiae, here’s how it works: the insurance adjustor comes out (this happened in October) and works up an estimate of damage. This then needs to be okayed by a gazillion cubicle-dwellers in a gazillion offices around the country if not the world. All of these people need to weigh in with their opinion, even though they’ve never been anywhere near N.O. and haven’t taken one look at my house, as far as I know. Once they all decide that the adjustor knows what he’s talking about (or haggle out the differences), the insurance company actually cuts a check. In our case, two of them – homeowners’ and flood. Homeowners’ covered the minor roof damage, flood everything else. Luckily, homeowners’ didn’t try to blame everything on flood (a common problem around here that leads to court cases and even more delays). Both checks arrived sometime in May.

Here’s where it gets fun. The flood insurance comes in two parts – contents and structure. We easily maxed out the contents coverage, so when they tell you most people go with $25,000 – don’t listen. It won’t even begin to cover everything, and we didn’t even live there. Then, the structure check was made out to us AND the mortgage company. Apparently, we’re not to be trusted, though how it could possibly be to our advantage to run off with an insurance check that doesn’t cover what we owe in mortgage in an age when running from your debts is practically impossible, that eludes me.

So the money to repair our house passed briefly through our hands, only there as long as it took us to sign it, and then off it went to work it’s way through the mortgage company bureaucracy. That only took several phone calls (“Yes, I swear we’re fixing the house. No, we’re not living there – there’s no power, no water, no nothing. No, I didn’t receive that – please don’t send anything to the house because there is no mail service there.”), as well as many signed documents, all of which had to be signed by both me (here in N.O.) and Dr. Arwen (3 hours away where her job has gone since New Orleans’ version of a psychiatric hospital is an emergency room set up in the old Lord and Taylor’s). One of those documents had to be notarized, requiring we were both present at the same time. Lastly, they wanted a signed, detailed estimate from the contractor. After all that, the mortgage company consented to send us a third of the money.

Yep, just a third. We get the second third after the mortgage company has sent out an inspector who confirms that half the work has been done, and the final third when an inspector determines that 90% is done. Interesting how we’re supposed to get 90% of the work done with only 60% of the money.

Again, that check stuck around just long enough to get signed and then off it went to the contractor. Gavin took maybe a week and a half to get to my place, which is remarkably fast considering the amount of work in this town, but then if I hadn’t been a good friend with a contractor, I probably wouldn’t have considered buying a house in the first place.

In the last few days, the roof has been fixed, a floor torn up and redone, a couple of closets torn down and another two put up, and the egregious errors of other renovators fixed (they took out a load-bearing wall, which John discovered while walking in the attic and almost falling through). Gavin said it could take as long as six months before I can live in it, an estimate not based on the amount of time the actual work takes, but rather on waiting – for an electrician, for inspections, for getting appliances delivered, and for money. We’re hoping for better.

All that said, and it was rather a lot – anyone still with me? – I do a little jig every time I think about how the work has finally begun, even if it was 9 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days later.

I try to go by everyday and see if anything needs doing. I’m probably more in the way than anything else, but when we started renovating back pre-K, it was Gavin and John and Karl and me – I ran wire, I knocked down a wall, I laid tile – and that’s the way it’s going to finish (with a little help from some more friends). So far, this house has claimed my blood, my sweat, and my tears, and probably will get a few more things before it’s done, but when I’m home that first night and I uncork that bottle of wine, well, nothing will be sweeter, and everyone’s invited.

In Which Our Narrator Discovers the Recuperative Benefits of Travel

2006-06-23T20:31:00.000-05:00

I went on vacation, got out of town and visited Brooke and saw some other friends. (Here comes the annoying shout-out to people you don’t know – hi Sarah, Brandon, Laura, Benjamin, Jennifer & Jennifer’s funny drunk friend!) I meant to blog from there, but not surprisingly that didn’t happen. I should have put up a post like newspapers run, explaining their columnist is on vacation and will return and here’s a greatest hit from a couple of years ago. Though I suppose to deserve that, I would need a regular schedule like newspaper columnists …

At any rate, this was the first time I had left New Orleans since December. Everyone I mentioned this to agreed that six months is a REALLY long time to spend in this town without a break, and they’re probably right. One tends to forget what it’s like to be somewhere where everything works and the streets aren’t constantly lined with trash. Places where firefighters don’t have trouble putting out fires because the water lines are all broken and leaking or where restaurants and bars don’t have hand-written signs on their doors proclaiming their “temporary hours,” and it’s important to remind ourselves of stuff like that because if we do forget, then we don’t mind. We accept that things are just that way now, and we don’t stay angry, and we don’t turn that anger into resolve, and we don’t demand change. (Our ability as a species to adapt to just about anything is a double-edged sword.) The long march to a repaired New Orleans, that “bigger and better” one we kept hearing about several months ago, is a very long one, years long in fact, and we have to fight exhaustion and depression every step of the way.

So here are a couple of the things I got excited about while visiting Jersey and New York – no blue roofs! Flying in to Newark, the only blue visible was the light, translucent blue of swimming pools. Someday, I thought, New Orleans will look like that again from the air. Also – working public transportation! Not that New Orleans ever had great public transportation to begin with, but I really miss the St. Charles streetcar. Also, taking the train from Jersey to NYC got me really hopeful of the plans to expand the streetcar lines and add some lightrail commuter lines to Baton Rouge and the Gulf Coast. Just being where those things actually exist and work was a good reminder along the lines of, “Um, hey, we could do that, too.”

Here’s a funny thing about people that live Out There – they’re not obsessed with New Orleans. I know, I know, totally crazy but true. Don’t get me wrong, they do care; they’re just not obsessed with it to the exclusion of all else. People would ask how things are here, and I would launch into what surely would be an absolutely fascinating lecture of several hours full of telling detail and perceptive observations and strident recommendations, and then people would tune out after a couple of sentences. It was shocking and a little upsetting (why isn’t everyone totally centered on MY problems?!?), but it turns out they have their own problems. (Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to ask a cab driver if he or she thought we should rebuild New Orleans, but I really wanted to.)

Brooke took me to this musical, “Spring Awakening,” which I’m not giving too much away about by saying it was all about sexual repression, teen suicide, and death from illegal abortion. It was based on a play written in 1891 that was banned for seventy years. Not only was it very well done and extremely well-performed, but it was a good reminder that all sorts of old problems and fights are still here, that many things haven’t changed significantly, an idea they underlined by punctuating period scenes with songs with contemporary lyrics and music. (Some of the recent legislation passed by the Louisiana legislature also reminded me of the same old fights, but more on that later.)

I’ve been pretty tunnel-visioned lately, and it was good to shake that off a bit. A broadening of horizons, if you will.

In a kind of opposite directioned connection, there’s a production of “Waiting for Godot” up in New York that takes place on a roof surrounded by floodwater, where the implication is that the Godot the characters are waiting for is FEMA. If anybody’s seen it, I’d like to hear about it, because I like the idea of connecting the disaster in New Orleans with something beyond the disaster itself.

Here’s one last observation from my trip Out There: as we flew into New Orleans, I watched out the window as we soared over Lake Pontchartrain and came in over the suburbs. The last couple of times I did this, New Orleans was Blue Roof City, but this time, they were actually few and far between. I was so surprised I kept staring, looking around, trying to find all those blue roofs I had seen in December, but they just weren’t there. (Including my own, by the way, but again more on that later.)

From the ground here, while in the middle of it, I just couldn’t see much progress. In fact, I came back to a city where five teenagers were gunned down several blocks from my apartment last Saturday and the National Guard has returned, which looks and feels more backwards than forwards. That expanse of repaired roofs was the best evidence of progress I have seen in six months, and if I hadn’t gotten anything else out of the trip, that alone would have been worth it.

"The corps is responsible"

2006-06-05T23:38:00.000-05:00

That's from Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, on the failure of New Olreans' hurricane protection system. For the full quote, see this Times-Pic article from last Friday that I'm linking to because I suspect the rest of the country didn't get the story.

In short, the article relates the results of an eight-month Army Corps of Engineers-sponsored study of New Orleans' hurricane protection system that concludes that the blame for the catastrophic failures lies with the United States' inherently flawed flood control planning.

Links

2006-06-05T23:30:00.000-05:00

Added some more. Most of them are New Orleans related to some degree, though not all. I considered slapping up every New Orleans related thing I could find, but quickly realized that, first of all, that's really tedious, and more importantly, other people have done it for me. So instead, it's just stuff that I've enjoyed and/or felt was important lately. Hopefully, there will be more in the days to come, so you too can spend your entire life reading everything on the web, every last page.

Nothing Works, and My Apartment is Slowly Killing Me

2006-06-05T21:15:00.000-05:00

My car has been in and out of the shop so many times in the past two weeks I can't even remember what I originally took it in for, and it still has a nail in one of the tires (the fifth or sixth since my return) and has developed a mysterious clunking noise it didn't have before. Everytime it goes in, it comes back worse.

Meanwhile, my computer is crashing in slow motion. I took it in for help and the guy told me he could recommend a few good places to buy a new one. It can't even handle routine maintenance anymore - any defrag attempts always end in seizure. I waste so much time everyday waiting for it to catch up with my typing, and don't even ask about trying to read everybody's blogs. Every day feels like Russian roulette - will today be the day of the Black Screen of Death?

Then this evening I stuffed my clothes in the only washer the apartment building has, fed it my quarters, poured in the detergent, closed the lid and got ... nada. No amount of turning switches, checking plugs, or switching fuses achieved anything. When I tried to call someone for advice or at least an ear to vent in, I got a "we can't place this call" recording and flipped.

I think I can at least partially blame my perhaps inproportionate fury on PTSD - that recording took me right back to the days immediately after when phones were useless, so naturally I flipped out. I did what I usually do when I'm angry and lacking anything or anyone to righteously take it out on - pace up and down the apartment muttering angrily about why the religious right are evil and unAmerican. A few minutes of that usually works the anger out of my system.

Also for the past couple of weeks, I haven't been able to shake this annoying phlegmy cough, which I finally figured must be allergies even though I have never had allergies before. I started paying attention to when and where it was at its worst so I would know what to avoid if possible, and discovered that it's worst at night and first thing in the morning. It always gets better when I go outside. The conclusion: I'm allergic to my apartment.

This isn't nearly as far-fetched a notion as it sounds. My apartment is in this old mansion that has been chopped up into oddly shaped little units, and it is slowly but surely disintegrating around us. The landlord takes exactly zero care of it, so I've always been plagued with leaks and other annoyances. One time I found a mushroom growing out of a crack in my wall. This was even before the storm, and I'm sure it has only gotten worse. No doubt there's some sort of horrid mold growing in the walls, giving me and my cat mutant black lung or something. My flooded-but-gutted house is probably healthier to live in, and it doesn't come with loud downstairs neighbors trying to drive me crazy, like in "The Tell-Tale Heart" except I didn't kill anyone, not yet at least.

Hmmm ... apparently I wasn't entirely done venting.

But hey - maybe this is a sign that I'm returning to something akin to normal. Even as I write all this, I can't help but realize how trivial it all is, but perhaps that's a good thing. Getting all worked up over this stuff is actually a nice change of pace. Maybe I've really turned a corner here - it's okay to hate the neighbors and the landlord and the mechanic again. Ah, sweet, sweet normalcy!

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

2006-06-01T10:54:00.000-05:00

And so it begins … hurricane season, that is. Not that hurricanes haven’t been known to happen outside the borders of the official season, but nonetheless today’s date – June 1st - has been tying my stomach in knots for months. Now it’s here and you know what – I don’t feel any better.

It’s all we talk about around here. Conversations used to all start with “how’d you make out?” and now they all start with “you staying or going?”

A lot of us have already left – students have decided now’s a good summer to do that whole off-campus program/European vacation thing. Families are heading off to visit relatives in places inland, preferably ones that have just finished thawing out from blizzards and the like. Those of us still here walk around all jittery and suspicious, like kicked dogs.

Because we’re scared. We’ve seen what happens when the Big One hits, or rather, when the Not Actually that Big but Big Enough near-misses, and as they keep telling us It Could Happen Again. So, yeah, we’re a bit spooked.

Maybe because the city hasn’t made enough progress, maybe because they’ve been telling us to expect four or five evacuations this year, maybe because last week one of the new levees “slumped.” At least, that’s the word the media seemed to have agreed on using to describe how a large section of levee just dropped several feet. I guess “slumped” sounds better than “collapsed” or “broke” or “fell the fuck down.” Slumped has a kind of casualness to it, as if the levee was just feeling a little lazy and decided to kick back on the couch and crack open a beer for a bit.

Maybe because those new levees are being built by the same people that built the last ones, the same people that told us the old levees would hold.

My father the other day told me the new levees were being built higher. I opined that kinda didn’t matter since the levees weren’t over-topped, they breached. I think he got my point.

So why am I staying?

Last Saturday, some friends and I met up at the Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo. Billed as the “first annual,” it took place on the Bayou St. John that winds through my neighborhood – or, to be more specific, the neighborhood my gutted house stands in. Picture a canal surrounded by green space curving through little shotgun houses, schools, restaurants, a couple of bike shops, a funeral home, an old factory turned into apartments, and one ugly gas station/convenience store and you have the general idea. Now imagine a bathtub ring on everything and you have it exactly.

The Boogaloo featured all the standard N.O. fest treats – food, art, drink, music. Nearby restaurants, many still closed, set up booths and provided Mexican, pasta, Middle Eastern, and good ol’ N’Awlins cookin’. The Mid-City Art Market – a venue for locals to show their stuff and make a buck – moved from its usual City Park locale for the occasion and a wine shop sold a quite nice rose for $9 a bottle (and if you don’t know about the rose revolution, get yourself to a decent wine store; it’s not that sickly sweet stuff you’re expecting). We sat by the still water sipping wine and watching the fish jump while listening to the music, a fabulous eclectic mess that I’ve come to expect in N.O. and know I can’t get anywhere else – jazz, blues, folk, rock, funk, reggae, Caribbean, Brazilian, and the uncategorizable Mardi Gras Indians. One friend wore a Big Easy Rollergirls t-shirt (“We skate come hell and high water”), and I briefly considered knocking him down and stealing it, but he assured me there were more where his came from.

Keep in mind, this is a neighborhood that remains mostly empty, a neighborhood with little going on besides planning meetings, where nine months after there still isn’t enough of the hopeful drone of power tools. Where that same day, as my friends and I enjoyed the Boogaloo, firefighters found a body, not a new one – a Katrina body, in what was left of a bathroom, in a bathtub.

So why am I staying?

The next day, I threw a party in the gutted remains of my house – the Festage in the Wreckage, very definitely not billed as the “first annual” but rather “first and hopefully only.” I never expected to have to rent a portable toilet for a party at my house, but such are the times. I filled my bathtub, currently resting comfortably in my bedroom, with ice and beer and water and invited people over in the afternoon while the light lasted. A bunch of friends and some strangers came over, stories were exchanged, gossip relayed, bad jokes told, and all the beer got drunk. One friend spun fire out on the street, which I recommend for any good party. We fired up a generator and made everyone listen to our band Smuteye for a half hour, ‘cause it was my party and I was gonna play if I wanted.

Afterwards, I spent an hour or so closing the place up as the light died and I had to lock the windows by flashlight, and then I walked half a block to Finn McCool’s (“Rebuilding Mid-City 1 Pint at a Time”), open since St. Patty’s Day, all bright lights and cold beer. Inside, I found my friend Miss Amanda and her guy, deep in conversation with a couple of women I didn’t know. I grabbed a beer and introductions went around; soon we were all chatting like old friends. I asked one of the women how they knew Miss Amanda and she smiled and said, “We just met five minutes ago.”

So why am I staying?

I keep hearing about people who don’t think New Orleans should be rebuilt, that we simply got what we deserve for living here, though I have yet to talk to any of these people myself. Perhaps because the people who don’t think we should rebuild are people who have never talked to a New Orleanian, I don’t know. Perhaps the Chris Matthews of the world assume they exist without bothering to find them because the news isn’t any fun unless you argue about something. Perhaps the President and I live in our own exclusive bubbles. I don’t know why I haven’t talked to anyone who doesn’t think New Orleans should rebuild and more to the point, I don’t care. I don’t care why I haven’t talked to them and I don’t care what they think. Personally, I don’t think we should be in Iraq, and yet there we are. Theoretically, a democracy is run by the majority, not the nut-jobs on the fringes. Theoretically.

Way back when, we needed a city at the mouth of the Mississippi to serve as the port to move goods and people in and out of the heart of the country, so we built one. We built one on the highest ground we could find at the bottom end of one of the world’s biggest rivers, on land that wouldn’t even exist if the river hadn’t carried silt here over thousands of years. At the time, New Orleans faced plagues, wars, hostile natives, river floods, ever-changing colonial allegiances, a fire that burned down the entire French Quarter, and even the occasional hurricane, but we endured because the country needed us, and it still does.

85-90% of this city got out. Of those that didn’t, the vast majority were either unable to or, like many of my friends, taking care of those who couldn’t leave. Many of them made their way to the Superdome where help was supposed to be on the way; they were following the plan. The Army Corps of Engineers had told them that the levees would hold. Their government officials (local, state, federal, all of ‘em) told them help would come.

When your house floods for the first time since 1923 when it was built, when you have to chop your way through your ceiling with an axe, when your entire life just washed out into the sea and you’re sitting on your roof with the rats, snakes, and alligators also looking for high ground, there just ain’t much to do besides wait for help.

Nevertheless, most of us didn’t just wait for help. We got out, we got friends and family out, we helped those who couldn’t get out. We loaded bed-ridden patients onto helicopters, we rowed canoes from rooftop to rooftop, we trucked in clothes, food, whatever we could get our hands on. We re-opened schools, we gutted houses and rebuilt them, and while fighting with insurance companies we used our own money to hire local contractors so they could use that money to fix their own places while fighting with their insurance companies. We’re still doing all those things, and we’re telling stories, and playing music, and yes, sometimes we help by throwing a party. Most of us didn’t wait around for the feds to help then, and we aren’t waiting around for them now.

I’m actually still waiting on the insurance and mortgage companies, on the wonderfully efficient magic hand of the free market.

So why am I staying?

What else am I supposed to do? Insurance is supposed to give me enough money to fix my house, not pay it off. If I don’t fix it, the money goes to the mortgage company, and I owe $70,000 on a hunk of junk I have no money to fix and couldn’t sell for $30,000. Maybe other people can walk away from that, but I can’t. Us new professors don’t exactly rake in the big bucks, and this house is pretty much all I have.

Well, that and I have a job I love. Sure, Loyola and I have our differences, but I’ve taught at seven universities so far and Loyola is easily my favorite. I have friends here; not as many as I used to, but still plenty, and new ones come along all the time. I have a band, a loud, obnoxious, rude, silly punk band that people seem to actually enjoy, much to our surprise. I have writers around me that are smart, encouraging, and talented. I have the Bayou Boogaloo and the Festage in the Wreckage.

And finally, I have a city of suffering people, and the U.S. is supposed to be the kind of place that doesn’t turn its back on suffering people, whether halfway around the world or in its own backyard. But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps those that think we shouldn’t rebuild, those that think we got what we deserve are right, and the U.S. isn’t that kind of place anymore.

But I’m still that kind of person.

So why am I staying?

Who wouldn’t?

Driving Chris Matthews

2006-05-18T16:18:00.000-05:00

I was going to bitch about Chris Matthew's ignorance and uselessness as moderator of the nationally televised mayoral debate, but Mark over at Wet Bank Guide did it for me.

Just for fun, everybody ask their next cab driver if they think New Orleans should be rebuilt - send me the results and I'll put 'em up.

Ending FEMA

2006-05-18T15:23:00.000-05:00

Money quote of the week:

In reference to FEMA plans to put cameras into disaster zones for live feeds back to headquarters -

"If CNN and Fox can do this, we should be able to do it." - David Paulison, acting FEMA director.

Really? Ya think?

Though I love that qualifying "should" - as in "but perhaps not"? - so heartening.

Anyway, after much study and many hearings, after deeply examining and analyzing all the things that went wrong with FEMA's response to Katrina and its aftermath, some members of the Senate have come up with their fix - doing away with FEMA altogether and replacing it. Considering how much hell I've given FEMA on this blog, you might be surprised to learn that I think this is a really bad idea.

The dismantling of a government agency and replacement of it with another (intended to do the exact same job) is an incredibly time-consuming and costly process. Considering on one hand our record-breaking deficits and continuing tax cuts, not to mention spendy little things like wars, we simply can't afford it. More importantly, hurricane season is two weeks away (and if you don't think that has me all kinds of paranoid and jumpy in a PTSD-way, you haven't been paying attention). Not that I think anyone is suggesting we do it now, but if they really wanted to replace FEMA, they should have done it sooner. Like it or not, FEMA has to get us through this next season, and after that, the inherent resistance to change all bureaucracies have will take over and it will never happen.

But furthermore, let's be realistic here - replacing FEMA with the Super Agency to Deal With Really Bad Things or whatever it would be called is going to add up to firing a bunch of career government people, along with all the bureaucracy and money that involves, only to turn around and re-hire most of them, just issuing them different stationary. If you think I'm just being cynical, remember what the Department of Homeland Security's first big announcement was after spending millions of dollars and months on reorganizing: "Here's our logo!" Followed shortly by the vague and useless terror color code alert and recommendations to stock up on duct tape. X-raying airplane baggage and screening shipping containers? Not so much - that would be hard, you can almost hear them whine.

Also, keep in mind who would head up this fabulous new disaster agency - yet another Bush appointee, and we all know how wonderfully those have worked out in the past.

Simply put, replacing FEMA with something else is just standard bureaucracy "let's rename it and shuffle the organization chart to fix the problem" crap. Sure, it beats the Bush administration's usual "Problem? What problem?" approach, reluctantly replaced with the "Pointing out problems is supporting terrorism" fall back position when problems can no longer be denied, but it doesn't actually fix the problem.

Under the Clinton administration, FEMA went from an ineffectual and expensive boondoggle rife with cronyism where big campaign donors were to sent to suck from the public trough to a model of government efficiency, effectiveness, and reform. It doesn't surprise me that FEMA returned to its bad old ways under George II, but it doesn't have to be that way.

The lesson here - renaming FEMA isn't going to fix it. To do that, we have to elect a smart, competent President that appoints experienced, capable professionals to head up essential agencies rather than viewing them as highly paid positions to reward campaign contributors. Alternately, we could elect Senators that take their review and consent powers seriously rather than rubber-stamping anyone their boss nominates.

Otherwise, all we get is Michael Brown by another name.

Rats! Only Four Days of Yard Signs, Pre-recorded Phone Calls, Flyers, TV Ads, Debates, and Campaign Calls Disguised as Polls Left

2006-05-16T13:51:00.000-05:00

The Most Important Election Ever plays out on Saturday, and you know I just have to weigh in on it. Other New Orleans blogs try to avoid politics because they, quite sensibly, don't want to alienate people of certain political persuasions which could interfere with getting our fair city's post-apocalyptic story out. We here at Flood and Loathing, on the other hand, just can't seem to help ourselves.

But before trying to make a call on the Mayoral choice, let me first say that way back before candidates were even declaring themselves, I knew who I was voting for. See, I wanted the candidate who was going to be honest, the candidate who was going to call the tough choices we all know we still have to face. I wanted the one who was going to come out and tell us what parts of town were coming back and which weren't; I wanted the candidate who would articulate a vision of our city's future without pandering to everybody, without promising the impossible, without trying to convince us that New Orleans would be back just like it was before the flood. I believed that in the brutal Post-K reality we live in, at least one candidate would dispense with the bullshit and hit us with the truth straight, and the one who did that was my guy. Silly me. Of course nobody was going to do that - it would be political suicide. After months and months of this, now I think I'll just vote for the guy whose campaign staff gives me the fewest annoying phone calls.

Since my man Manny didn't make the run-off (though I'm proud my vote netted him triple digits), we have instead the contest of the follicly-challenged, the bald C. Ray Nagin and the not-quite-bald Mitch Landrieu. Not that's there's anything wrong with having less than a luxurious mane of head hair; at least, we here at Flood and Loathing hope not as we're not really ones to talk. In fact, three people so far have pointed out to your humble servant (that's me) that I bear a striking resemblance to potential-Mayor Mitch, no doubt because of our boyishly good looks and not our nearly-but-not-quite-nonexistent hair. I'm hoping to parlay this resemblance into getting accepted into the Landrieu family as a long-lost relative, or at least into a lucrative side career as a Mitch body-double (writing for F&L doesn't come with a real hefty salary). Perhaps - dare I dream? - even a "Dave"-like situation where I actually get to be Mayor someday.

Assuming I don't cast my vote on who I resemble more, I have to figure out other criteria on which to base my participation in the democratic process. Unfortunately, the difference between the candidates on the issues is pretty tiny. Both maintain all neighborhoods should be rebuilt though admit the city doesn't have the money to provide services - fire, police, etc. - to everywhere. Neither acknowledge that what gets rebuilt really isn't going to be up to the mayor. Both agree the city must aggressively pursue taking over houses the owners don't rebuild. Both agree the mayor should have more say and control over public schools.

In order to draw a difference between the two, Nagin is doing his best to portray Landrieu's political dynasty as a negative - the "politics of the past" - since Mitch's father Moon was mayor. Also, he's touting his experience as mayor and the fact that he's been building relationships with the feds and the POTUS.

In response, Landrieu points out how little progress said relationships have gotten us and how little help we've actually received from the POTUS. He's also playing up his ability to get things done, to work out agreements between people from different sides of the aisle. His support seems the most biracial, while Nagin's might be more bipartisan, probably because Nagin is a bit more conservative (though we're talking relative terms here) and he did switch from Republican to Democrat while the Landrieus are a Louisiana family of the old and very influential Democratic persuasion. That switch of Nagin's, though, does have a whiff of political expediency, since no Republican is going to get elected mayor in this town, no matter how many floods come through and how many residents are displaced.

And there is the basic gut reaction of "Nagin had his chance and blew it; let's get someone new." That's tempered a bit by my thinking that anyone would have been in over their head Post-K (a perhaps too-apt metaphor), but it's still there.

In the end, however, I think the really important quality in the city's next mayor is going to be his ability to squeeze money and services from the feds and the state. That, put bluntly, is what New Orleans needs more than anything these days. Given that Landrieu's sister is a Senator and he serves as Lieutenant Governor under Blanco (who isn't up for election until 2007), he has the advantage in that department. It's rather sad that the primary responsibility of our mayor is now begging for cash, but that's the reality. At least, for once, a candidate's ability to run a campaign actually equates to the job they're running for. So I guess we here at Flood and Loathing are throwing all of our considerable political might behind Mitch.

At least for the next four days until he actually gets elected and starts doing stuff that pisses me off.

The endorsements are more ubiquitous than nutria around here these days, though nobody wants to try and call the election yet; probably because all the usual indicators like polls and such are all wonked up what with everyone scattered hither and yon. About the only thing everybody will predict is that this one is going to be a nail-biter. More important than endorsing any particular candidate is encouraging the vote, so we here at Flood and Loathing urge every New Orleanian, whether returned home or not, to get out there, vote early, and vote often. Sure, democracy is a crappy form of government that doesn't actually work, but it's better than any other option.

The Center, Still Holding

2006-05-12T12:03:00.000-05:00

The last couple of weeks have been pretty much dedicated to Jazz Fest. While the Fest itself only occurs on two weekends, those who have been or live here know that it really extends throughout the week leading up to it and the week in between. All the music venues are packed with talent, often splitting into a full early show, a standard time, and the late night show that doesn't even begin until two or three and ends sometime after sun-up. I think it was especially good getting out and seeing shows around town this year because a lot of displaced local musicians who weren't on the Fest line-up made it back to play shows around town. I, for one, was glad Lynn Drury showed up, though I only managed to get to one of the several performances she had. It's a long but glorious haul, and it's no wonder that I've been feeling a little under the weather the past couple of days.

The weather, by the way, was fanstastic the entire time - cool, by New Orleans standards, which means warm to everyone else, as in not unbearably hot. Even when it poured rain on the last day, nobody really minded. We took our shrimp po-boys and huddled under one of the little picnic tables by the food booths. Besides, the mud makes the hippies happy. After eating in relative comfort, we made a dash for the Gospel Tent and Pilsner Urquell.

Yes, along with the crawfish Monica, the crawfish bread, the shrimp etouffee, and the soft-shell crab po-boys (to name a few), I can get my beloved Czech beer (on draft, even!) at Jazz Fest, but it's only in one spot. Otherwise, it's Lite and Foster's in cans. And no, I'm not telling you where it is - the line is bad enough already.

The shows around town aren't the only extension of Jazz Fest, though, because it draws so many tourists, and that always means friends visiting from out of town, and this year that meant a few Tours of Destruction. I'm glad all the tourists come and spend their money on our hotels, restaurants, bars, and taxis, but unless they get away from the Quarter and the Sliver by the River, they come away thinking everything's normal. The Fairgrounds (where Jazz Fest is held) and its surrounding neighborhood did get flooded, so Fest attendees got a glimpse of what it's like, but it's nothing compared to the truly devastated parts of town.

Not until people get out and see The Suck (Lakeview, the Lower Ninth, East) for themselves do they realize just how bad it is. So I take them. Sometimes I show them my house and 'hood first, as a kind of warm-up, or I might finish with that, as a way to soften the blow at the end. People only truly grasp it when they see whole bent and crooked houses crushing over-turned trucks beneath them, and block after block of nothing but rubble where an entire neighborhood used to be, and a line of concrete stairs that used to go up to front porches leading to empty space, and a muddy, broken doll trapped thirty feet up in the branches of a grey and leafless oak. It's important, even necessary, that people see and understand it because, as I've tried to point out again and again, New Orleans can't rebuild itself on its own. It's going to take all of us - every American - to do it, and whether we manage it or not (and that's still a question) will prove, or disprove, our worth as a country and a people.

That's the context that we go to Jazz Fest with. While we're grooving to the music, to Coolbone, Keb' Mo', Eddie Bo, John Boutte, Dumpstaphunk, and Allen Toussaint (with a little Elvis Costello thrown in for good measure), or welcoming back Cowboy Mouth, World Leader Pretend, Galactic and Ani DiFranco, or catching people we might not see anywhere else, like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, we're doing it all with The Suck in the back of our minds. Whether the people on-stage acknowledge it or try to give us a break from it, it's always there.

And we're all there, too. That's another thing about Jazz Fest; even if I don't arrange to meet people, I run into everyone I know anyway. I guess that's what happens when you cram an entire city into a horse racetrack. Even so, strange and magical coincidences happen. A few of us were searching for the spot some more intrepid friends had staked out for Bruce Springsteen, a seeming impossibility in a crowd of thousands and thousands, an expanse of people so vast and so packed we had to wind our way through them like one of those hedge mazes.

We weren't worried, though, because we had the usual Jazz Fest kind of directions, "Close to the sound stage. There's a pole with a bunch of panties hanging on it. We're back and to the right of it."

When we finally found the spot, we discovered a different set of friends, unknown to the first, had staked out the spot right next to them. And then I glanced around and saw my neighbor not twenty feet away. Then followed much toasting and drinking while waiting for the music to start. Oh, and lots of raucous cheering when the plane trailing the "Impeach Bush" sign flew overhead.

I have never been much of a Springsteen fan, perhaps because I first became aware of him with "Born in the U.S.A." which got co-opted by knee-jerk nationalists before I actually listenened to the lyrics and realized how smart and even liberal they are. Nonetheless, I couldn't really pass up the chance to see him at the Fest, and he was amazingly good.

First off, the music was folky and all new to me, and he has that ability to make it feel intimate despite the huge crowd. The songs and his voice are so raw and real, you can't help but get caught up in it. He played one or two songs with a great zydeco sound, which I loved - bring on the accordions!

The show was fun, and true, and moving, and then he played this quiet song My City of Ruins and everyone's hands went in the air. He sang about destruction and despair and then faith and hope and exorted us all to "Rise up!" I looked around. The people in front of me extended so far I could barely see the stage, and there was no making out the edge of the crowd in any other direction. An immense number of people, endless, and each and every one of them, hands in the air, taking in the music and the message, and I was in the middle of them, of Jazz Fest, of New Orleans. The center of the country, even the world, the universe, everything good and right and true, had moved to that very place, and all the doubt and fear went away; in that moment I knew, truly knew, for the first time in eight long, bloody, exhausting, hellish, damned months, that New Orleans, that everything, would be okay.

I leaned over to my friend and said, "If he makes me cry, I will never forgive him."

So I drained the last couple of drops of whisky from my flask and blamed the tears on that.

It's the Levees, Stupid

2006-05-03T18:26:00.000-05:00

I have been meaning to post about a few important announcements for about a month now, but stuff kept happening. Anyway, now that classes are over and all that's left is the grading, I figure I'll put off actual work that I'm paid for and do this instead. Clearly I have fully embraced the Big Easy's general rejection of that Prostestant work ethic thing.

So, first, in a story that got under-reported in the national news, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that the 17th Street Canal levee breach was due to design problems.

Shortly after that, they also announced that rebuilding the levees properly would cost billions of dollars more than they originally estimated.

And then, finally, some seven months after the flood, FEMA announced the rebuilding rules for New Orleans, saying the flood maps wouldn't be significantly changed assuming the levees are built according to the new, improved plan.

In other words, my house (oh yeah, and everyone else's, too) got flooded because the federal government built craptastic levees, but I don't have to raise my house assuming the federal government approves the money so it can build levees it assures me won't be craptastic.

Oh, I'm just brimming over with happiness, gratitude, and confidence!

But do you see where New Orleans stands? It's ALL about the levees, and the levees aren't in our control. How the levees are rebuilt determines whether or not rebuilding is possible, and that's all up to the federal government. We just went through this big mayoral election during which one of the big questions was who and where gets to rebuild, but nobody was pointing out that the mayor no longer has any say in such decisions. The feds have made the decision, and they have decided to write off huge swaths of the city.

I'll try to give you the short version of why. The new FEMA rules also announced that houses in certain hard-hit areas should be raised, because apparently they're assuming there will be flooding even with the levees. Raising a house will cost (depending on its size) at minimum $50-60 thousand. FEMA has promised grants of $30,000 to raise houses, though I don't know anyone who has gotten one yet, but that still leaves a sizable chunk of cash that insurance DOES NOT cover. And I'm sure the poor black residents of the Lower Ninth Ward have that money hidden under their mattress. Oh, wait. Even if they did, it got washed out to sea.

Put another way, if I had to raise my house (still a possibility, for arcane reasons I'm not going into here), I simply couldn't do it. I guess I would have to hand over the insurance money to the mortgage company and still owe a bunch more money on a house I couldn't live in or rebuild. That's what these rules do for people.

In a different kind of example, the Corps isn't getting all the money they requested. Bush didn't request it all from Congress; he and his people decided not to pursue the money necessary to rebuild the levees in lower Plaquemines. Now, granted, lower Plaquemines is mostly rural, a lot of shrimpers and the like - think Forrest Gump and Lt. Dan - and represents a tiny portion of New Orleans' population. At the same time, the $2.2 billion the Senate just approved (and Bush is threatening to veto) doesn't include levees for Plaquemines. Meanwhile, that bill includes another $90 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. No levees, no Plaquemines.

So despite all the promises that New Orleans would be rebuilt "bigger and better," it's clear that the feds actually are erasing large parts of a great American city from the map.

Election, Shmlection

2006-04-25T15:14:00.000-05:00

As unbelievable as it is, my man Manny did not make the run-off. In fact, he only got 100 votes, which is a suspiciously round number - I mean, really, did they actually count the votes or just make a reasonable guess? He did get one more vote than James Arey, though, proving for all time that pot and prostitutes are indeed cooler than classical music any day. Or, at least, that New Orleanians prefer aficionados of the former as mayor compared to aficionados of the latter. He did finish 10th out of 22, which ain't bad, and I think lays a solid foundation for next time.

Let's see, what else? Wilson, despite getting national attention and invites to all the debates between the "magnificent seven" finished eighth behind Butler, proving that if you want to get elected mayor in New Orleans, it's better to be just plain bat-shit crazy rather than a right-wing reactionary nut-job. The I Quit ticket pulled off one straight-out win, and got in the run-off in two more, which is promising. There's a whole bunch of city council run-off action and some guys named, like, Landrieu and Nagin or something made the mayoral run-off, whoever they are. I guess the one guy is related to some famous people, and the second sounds vaguely familiar but I can't quite remember why. Anyway, they made the run-off and Manny didn't, so power to the people and all that.

The good news is the election itself went off about as well as could be expected. No major problems with polling places and machines and whatnot. I strolled in, showed my card and ID, walked into the booth and was out of there. Total elapsed time at polling station? Less than five minutes. The number of people voting was only a little less than usual. The African-American vote was slightly smaller than usual (30-something percent of eligible voting as opposed to just over 40% last time), which is probably due to the fact that so many African-American New Orleanians are still out of town, and perhaps planning on staying out. It does seem, however, that on the whole the measures taken - contacting everyone displaced about absentee ballots, polling places set up around the state, early voting, etc. - were enough to get the vote of most everyone who wanted to vote. It doesn't hurt that most of the votes weren't particularly close. So it seems the vote will stand and we won't go through long, protracted court battles and recounts. Take that, Florida! We kick your participatory government butt any day!

After voting, I was all full of the democratic spirit, so headed down to the French Quarter for some Festing. For those not in the know, the French Quarter Fest is this big free music festival we throw every year, and I was glad to see so many people voting for New Orleans with their appearances - the place was packed. I met up with the famous Dr. A. who brought a family of friends with her, so Dr. A. and I pushed a stroller around the Quarter for a while, and everyone thought we were this happy, pierced, tattooed, bohemian couple with child, which was quite amusing. After that, we went to a free crawfish boil/birthday party at the R Bar, where I ate all the crawfish in Louisiana. Every last one. Then it was on to Handsome Willy's to watch election returns and partake in more democratic spirits, and let me tell you, democracy can give you a mean headache if you over-indulge.

Anyway, I'm just glad that that's over with - no more signs, no more pre-recorded robo-calls, no more anguishing over platforms and positions. I have had enough of that for quite some time.

Oh, wait. Run-offs. Nooo! NOOOOO!!!!!!!

The P&P Ticket

2006-04-21T14:14:00.000-05:00

Election day is tomorrow, kids, heralded by everyone as the most important in New Orleans history. So as the eyes of the nation, nay, the world, focus once again on the Big Squeegee, I give you, right in the nick of time, because you know you gotta know, the Official Flood and Loathing Election Endorsements! (Plus a few anti-endorsements thrown in for kicks and grins.)

First off, let’s talk assessors. New Orleans has to be the only place that elects the people that determine the value of houses for tax purposes. That’s right, the guys who say an abode is worth half a mil or perhaps just several thousand or so need to go out and get campaign contributions from the very folks that own said houses. Not to worry, though, I’m sure there’s absolutely, positively no temptation whatsoever for just a little bit of fudging on the house values of those contributors. And we have not just one of these assessors, but seven. Chicago and New York City get by with one, but we need seven. There’s a bill in the Legislature right now to consolidate the assessors, though the last time it was tried shortly after Katrina, it was killed in committee by representatives Jeff Arnold and Alex Heaton, who – I shit you not – just happen to have close relatives that are assessors.

By the way, at the moment I could tell you exactly what 80% of the houses in New Orleans are worth without even looking at ‘em. Like my flooded and gutted skeleton, they’re worth jack squat.

Which brings us to the “I Quit” ticket, seven people who have pledged that, if elected, they will immediately quit and use their salaries to hire a professional assessor. Only in New Orleans would you get seven people running for office on the simple platform of quitting the job they’re running for, AND where that’s clearly the best choice. For that reason, Flood and Loathing endorses the whole “IQ” ticket: Maria Elliot, Jackie Farnsworth Shreves, Errol George, Chase Jones, Ron Mazier, Nancy Marshall, and Charlie Bosworth.

Consolidation is the all the buzz in New Orleans these days, so there is also a bill consolidating our criminal and civil courts, which currently are separate. We have both a criminal sheriff and a civil sheriff, and a court clerk for both, all of which need to be elected. Now, for three of these offices – both sheriffs and the civil court clerk – Flood and Loathing has no endorsements. Since we haven’t heard much about them, as in no scandals, apparently things are going fairly well with them. These people haven’t made the news, and that’s a good thing. We do need to point out, though, that one candidate for criminal sheriff, Frank Gerald DeSalvo, made the news because, as part of his campaign, he has accused the incumbent, Martin Gusman, of covering up the deaths of a couple of deputies. This made the news mostly because DeSalvo has absolutely no evidence for this. Here at Flood and Loathing, we believe that making wild accusations of heinous crimes for personal gain is NOT something we want in a sheriff, so for that reason, DeSalvo earns an anti-endorsement. Don’t vote for him.

The criminal court clerk, however, did make the news. The two essential responsibilities of the criminal court clerk are to take care of trial evidence and oversee elections (no, I don’t see the connection, either). Kimberly Williamson Butler first made the news when she bungled the last election, failing to get voting machines to polling sites. She then made the news again when she asked for help with cleaning up the evidence after the flood, got it, then complained the mayor was trying to usurp her job, disobeyed court orders, went into hiding, and was finally arrested. Happily, after she got out of jail, she announced she wasn’t running for re-election. She did, however, announce she is running for mayor. No, I’m not making that up. She made the news again when a photo of her in a nice, spruced-up looking French Quarter on her campaign website turned out to have not been taken in the French Quarter, but rather the New Orleans themed area of Disneyland. No, I’m not making that up. Needless to say, KWB is NOT Flood and Loathing’s pick for mayor. After going through the 11 candidates vying to replace her, Flood and Loathing picked two – Paul Massa because he’s the Green Party candidate, and Nick Varrechio because he’s focused on and experienced in running elections. The others we eliminated for reasons like being a Republican or having “suing the city” as part of their platform.

Next, we come to the city council, five district council members and two “at-large” members. To start off, the current council has been feuding with the mayor over all kinds of stuff like where to put trailers, which has led to our current situation of very few people having a trailer and a moratorium on any new ones. The council members blame the mayor, the mayor blames the council. Flood and Loathing has decided to act like an elementary school teacher – we don’t care who started it, everybody’s getting detention. Therefore, we’re against every incumbent council member. They’ve all earned a time-out.

The luxurious offices of Flood and Loathing (both apartment and house) are located in District B, so that’s the only one we have an endorsement for (cut us some slack – there are a lot of candidates to shift through). Of the six candidates, we eliminated Renee Gill Pratt because she’s the incumbent, and while we admire the spirit behind Quentin Brown’s hand-written “No More Bullshit” campaign signs, they don’t exactly inspire confidence in his ability to get the job done. Stacy Head seems impressive, and also appears to be the front runner, but Michael Duplantier gets our nod – he’s a retired lawyer, he’s volunteered and worked for lots of organizations we like, and in the recent televised debate he seemed to be the one who most understood just what a council member can and can’t do.

Similarly, for the at-large candidates, we were able to eliminate some of the eleven candidates because they don’t seem to understand what a council member does. For instance, while we agree that the minimum wage should be raised, if you’re running for city council on that platform, you’re running for the wrong job. We were also able to eliminate two more, Oliver Thomas and Jackie Clarkson, because they’re incumbents who have been obstacles to getting New Orleanians, particularly working class New Orleanians, back. A couple more went because they’re Republicans and stand for things Republicans stand for, which left us with five candidates for the two spots: Arnie Fielkow, Carlos Hornbrok, David Lapin, Leonard Lucas, and Roger Wilson. We like Fielkow because he got fired for telling Tom Benson, the Saints’ owner, that the Saints needed to commit to returning to New Orleans. He and Lapin both seem to have a lot of support, and Wilson was in the movie “Porky’s,” but beyond that, we here at Flood and Loathing are throwing up our hands and saying “pick two of these guys.”

Which brings us to the headliner, the mayoral race. Now, as with most of these elections, we no doubt have a run-off coming, so Flood and Loathing will have a sequel endorsement when we get there, but these here are our picks for now. In all likelihood, the run-off will be between Mitch Landrieu and C. Ray Nagin, but we will deal with that later. There are a lot of candidates we’re clearly NOT for, like Butler or Peggy Wilson, who years ago led the fight against integrating Mardi Gras parades. Apparently, the city had no business telling parade krewes that if they wanted the cops to block off public streets for them and clean up their mess, then they couldn’t exclude African-Americans. And she continues that kind of divisive rhetoric as part of her campaign, so hopefully the public will plant its collective foot firmly in her reactionary, right wing, Republican, racist ass.

There are also some candidates we like but aren’t officially endorsing, like Virginia Boulet and James Arey, who not only plays classical music on our NPR station, but is focusing his campaign on pushing the arts in New Orleans. That almost got him the Flood and Loathing nod, but not quite.

But who gets the Official Flood and Loathing mayoral endorsement? Isn’t the suspense killing you?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a troubled man for troubled times, a man’s man, ladies’ man, man about town, and my man for mayor:

Manny “Chevrolet” Bruno!

Why him, you ask? Because he wants to legalize pot and prostitution and we here at the Flood and Loathing offices are all for it. Actually, when we were considering a run for mayor ourselves, that was going to be our platform, so it seems only right that we throw our considerable weight behind the candidate who stole our thunder.

You think I’m kidding about this, but I’m actually not; I do really think we should legalize both, regulate them mightily, tax the bejeesus out of them, and rake in the dough. I have been to Amsterdam, I have seen the promised land, and, from what I’m told, I apparently had a really good time.

New Orleans should legalize pot in the same way as Amsterdam. I suggest zoning it into the French Quarter and the Marigny, and only making it legal to be sold and smoked in hash bars, just like in Amsterdam.

I can hear the protests now – how will we keep it out of the hands of kids? I ask you, who’s more likely to card someone, the owner of a licensed hash bar or the sixteen-year-old dealer on the corner? But won’t it make the Quarter more dangerous, even more unfriendly to families and tourists? Compare a bunch of drunks to a bunch of stoners – the drunks are loud and belligerent and screaming for women to flash for beads, but the stoners, if they can be motivated to move at all, will only do so because they have the munchies. When you’re high, you don’t puke and piss on the street. I think a stoned Quarter would actually be a nicer place than a drunk Quarter.

As for prostitution, we have riverboat gambling, so how about riverboat brothels? It would still be illegal on land so we won’t have streetwalkers or even women in windows like Amsterdam, but instead patrons would just board a riverboat and set sail for a quick trip down the Mississippi. There would be required medical check-ups and no more pimps and lots of tax dollars. Everybody wins.

So there you go, because he has the cojones to run on the P&P ticket, and because I can’t resist the opportunity to back someone who is actually advocating some of the crazy liberal schemes I believe in, Flood and Loathing urges everyone to get out on Saturday and vote for Manny “Chevrolet” Bruno.

God, Loyola, and Getting Let Go

2006-04-13T20:29:00.000-05:00

If you happened to have read Sophmom's comments to the last post then you already know that Loyola announced it's big re-organization plan on Monday. You can read the plan here and read about student and faculty reaction here.

The (selfish) good news - the English department still exists, and I still have a job. The plan doesn't call for letting all adjunct faculty go, which I half expected it would. The bad news is that part of the reason I still have a job is that the English department lost professors who didn't come back after the flood and is losing more this summer. People are retiring and/or getting the hell out of this city, and I can't blame them. The worse news is that other departments, programs, and majors got the ax, including education, communications, and computer science, as well as City College, which is our adult education night class program.

Leading up to this, students had asked me about what was going on or what I would be teaching in the fall. I'd tell them I honestly didn't know the answer to either question, and didn't even know if I would be at Loyola come fall. Since Monday, many of my students have gone out of their way to ask if I would still be around in the fall, and I'm glad I could tell them I will (though I still won't entirely believe it until I have that signed contract in hand). I even got a relieved hug, which almost made me cry. Teaching college is a job like no other (at least no other I've ever had, and I've had more than my fair share) and I am only too aware of what a profound effect my college professors had on me. I can't imagine what it must be like for the tenured and tenure-track professors who have been at Loyola for years and years and intended to spend the rest of their careers there only to lose that because our government is too inept to build adequate levees and maintain wetlands. That the one has led to the other is just too cruel and absurd, and if I believed in God, I would have to conclude that He, She, or It has a seriously sick sense of humor. (I know, I know, an atheist teaching at a Jesuit university, that's absurd in and of itself, but that's part of what makes Loyola so cool.)

So not a good day for Loyola. Even though I still have a job, I left the "Black Monday" I had written into the 10th on the big wall calendar in our office. I don't know if this will be good for the university or not - maybe I'm too close to be objective, and it's hard to know if their plan will work in the long run. Change always sucks to a certain extent and I'm not against it in principle, but it's hard for me to see these changes as anything but harmful and even unnecessary. First off, enrollment isn't down that much - the new class next year is around 700 instead of 850 or so. Significant, but not deadly. Also, if we're trying to position ourselves as a national liberal arts institution, how does cutting programs contribute to that? Finally, what's so awful about running at a deficit for a year or two? The government has been doing it for much, much longer and corporations do it all the time. Why can't we? And if it's that bad, why not dip into the endowment? They say it's "the future of the university," but what kind of future are we planning when we cut programs and fire tenured faculty?

So as far as this goes, today I'm all questions, no answers, a state that seems to be pretty perpetual these days.

This Semester Has Kicked My Butt

2006-03-31T14:54:00.000-06:00

Only three weeks left and I can't wait until it's over. I was walking across campus the other day and ran into another teacher who asked, "Are your students getting as lazy as mine?" And indeed they are, but the truth is, so are we. I, in fact, am writing this during class while I have all my students working on their web pages. Apparently, I have done all the teaching I'm going to do this semester.

I have four writing classes this semester, which really isn't that big a deal because I almost always have four writing classes even though everyone agrees four writing classes is probably two too many. Plus, two of them are classes new to me, so I have all new preps added to the two classes I have done before. For those non-teachers out there, trust me, four classes and three preps is a lot of work. Not to mention the grading, the grading, the grading, the endless endless grading ...

All of this while struggling with a multitude of bureaucracies including, but not limited to, two separate insurance companies, two mortgage companies, FEMA, the electric company, the water company, the USPS, as well as a multitude of city and state departments of this, that, and the other, all of which want stacks of paperwork signed in tripiclate and stamped and dated and verified and endorsed and notarized. My life has been reduced to a constant struggle against red tape in an immense bureacracy I can't even begin to understand. I am K.

Meanwhile, the almost-not-metaphorical Sword of Damocles at Loyola is preparing to descend. The scuttlebutt around here is that in the next two or three weeks the great "re-organization" plan shall be announced, and the next round of lay-offs shall begin. Word is, they plan on dumping entire programs, and nobody seems to know just what will happen with non-tenure track faculty like me. So in the next couple of weeks I could be told I'm out of a job. Again. It's really hard to motivate myself to grade and teach and all that stuff when I've spent the entire semester at least half-convinced I'm about to be let go.

All of which is a really long way of saying I'm sorry I haven't been updating this blog as much as I would like. I'm way behind on adding links and pictures, not to mention responding to comments, which I really appreciate, or acknowledging all those out there who apparently read this (yes, I have a counter and yes, I'm pretty surprised at the numbers - hi everyone! And thanks!) and there is a whole host of things I've been meaning to write about.

Sigh.

So, yeah, this semester has kicked my butt, and as much as I have actually loved my classes, I'm so done, though really, it's not the classes that have kicked my butt, it's all the other stuff. Unfortunately, classes actually have a end point, while it seems that the rebuilding bureacracy just stretches on endlessly into the future, never to end, so I'm in this weird position of looking forward to end of something good so I can concentrate on dealing with the crap.

Sigh.

But enough self-pity - at least I'll have more time to blog.

The First Mardi Gras Post-K

2006-03-18T14:45:00.000-06:00

Here was the plan for Mardi Gras: wear costumes, wander around the Quarter, see everyone I know, and party all day. I'm proud to say I accomplished every aspect of the plan.

Anyway, I have to say this was one of my best Carnivals ever. I already wrote about the parades, which only got better despite the fact that many of the krewes lost their floats in the flood. On Mardi Gras itself, we headed down to the Quarter in the morning and arrived in time to march with the St. Ann's walking parade, which was the usual collection of funny, sexy, and satirical costumes, everyone half-dancing, half-marching down the street to the horn blasts and drum thwacks of the brass band. Many costumes made fun of the government and the Thing (hurricanes, floods, apocalypse, etc.), though we chose not to focus on that ourselves. Besides, I did a Katrina Kostume for Halloween. Plus, I wanted to wear a silly hat, because what's the point of Mardi Gras unless you get to wear a silly hat?

Brooke had a costume emergency in that her boot was attempting to cripple her, but that was solved with a $15 pair of sandals and an extrememly large vodka tonic.

Once that was taken care of, we returned to careening around the Quarter aimlessly, which, if you've never been to Mardi Gras, is essentially like attending the biggest costume party ever that lasts all day, and I really did run into just about everyone I know since we all hit the Quarter and tend to congregrate at some point near Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop. I swear I have friends I only see during Mardi Gras. There's never really any telling who you will end up hanging out with as people come and go, everyone on these crazy, looping trajectories intersecting each other, then splitting, only to come together again later - you run into someone you know dressed in a fairy costume who knows someone throwing an apartment party in the Quarter where a complete stranger convinces a handful of people that you absolutely have to bar hop down Decatur which leads you to Frenchmen where you meet up with a colleague dressed as a superhero and then ... well, you get the idea.

I know this is a strange word to apply to Mardi Gras, but it was really nice this year. Very casual and stressless (even considering the near-disaster of the boot) and a good time. Everybody was happy, and while it was definitely crowded, it was never overwhelming. Later, the city announced that arrests were way down, even taking the smaller crowd into account, so it wasn't just me. So, yay, New Orleans! Even when knocked on our ass, we can still throw one hell of a party, and if people don't think that's enough of a reason to love, cherish, and rebuild this place, well, they have no joy and no soul. Unfortunately, I think that's exactly the reason why so many people don't think New Orleans should be rebuilt.

Sure, Hastert and others like him continue to say it's because it's dangerous - we're below sea-level, after all, but that's true of most port cities located on big rivers, and it's not like other places don't have similar dangers. Yet, I don't remember there ever even being a question about rebuilding Charleston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, etc. And while our damage is much more extensive than those places, since when has the difficulty of a task been a reason not to do it?

But if it's too much for Hastert, we'll do it without the wimp.

We do have a not-undeserved reputation for corruption, but name me one place that doesn't? If corruption were a reason to abandon a place, then given the millions of dollars the feds have wasted on useless trailers, overly expensive blue roofs, and no-bid Halliburton contracts, D.C. should be razed. Or perhaps just those neighborhoods housing the federal government, since they clearly would be best returned to green space.

But I don't think the "don't rebuild" argument is about any of the stated reasons of danger, difficulty, or corruption. I think it's actually about the unstated reason that we're a city that knows how to have a good time. We refuse to get with the American work ethic program, apologize for our hedonistic ways and come to Jesus and a life of self-denial and hard work.

Over in England, the Puritans banned the performances of plays, bringing to an end one of, if not the, greatest play cultures of Western civilization and ensuring that Shakespeare lived out his latter days and died in a place where none of his work could be seen. The British quite sensibly kicked them out, but unfortunately, they sent them here, and most of the country has been trying to throw off those self-imposed shackles ever since. Most of it.

New Orleans is the only American city I've lived in where people actually seem to work to live, rather than live to work, where we not only don't feel guilty about shutting the city down for a week to throw a big party, but celebrate it. We even have the audacity to brag about it.

We're the charming, ne'er-do-well brother that most people shake their heads over but are really a bit jealous of, but who really angers some others, like Hastert and Bush. After all, he had to give up booze, cocaine, and going AWOL, so New Orleans should, too. If we don't, we'll just see about that help we need. It's a little more subtle than the idea that God punished New Orleans for our sinful ways with Katrina, Rita, and the floods, but it boils down to the same attitude.

I'm tired of defending New Orleans with other reasons why we should be rebuilt, the oil and gas, the seafood, all the grain that goes out and coffee that comes in - the hell with it. Why should New Orleans be rebuilt? Because we throw the best party this country will ever see. Without us, you're England without Shakespeare, no joy and no soul.

Media Darlings

2006-03-08T18:41:00.000-06:00

Okay, one last note on the media coverage of New Orleans, and then I promise I'll write about Mardi Gras and even put up pictures, and then return you to your regularly scheduled rants and venting.

Anyway, Dave Walker wrote an article in the Times-Pic today that reviewed the national media's coverage of Mardi Gras. Now, I have to admit that I actually didn't see much of the national media's coverage because I was, well, here. Dave Walker, on the other hand, as the Times-Pic's tv reporter, clearly watched a ton of it. His conclusion - they "got Mardi Gras mostly right." The article goes on to detail the nuanced reporting New Orleans got during Mardi Gras.

So bravo, people. Apparently you didn't live up to our worst fears and presented a picture of New Orleans in all our weird complexity.

Full disclosure: I get named in the article. I'm pretty sure it's the only time my name will appear in print in the same sentence as Harry Connick, Jr.'s and Mayor Nagin's, and yes, when I read it (and was completely surprised by it), I jumped up and down and shook my booty, but strictly in the privacy of my own apartment.

All that said, I'd like to mention just a few more things. When Jacki from CNN asked me what the media was doing wrong, I got in my only half-way witty moment of the interview by asking, "Before, during, or after?" I didn't get a chance to elaborate on all those, but I'm taking it now.

As for Pre-K, at a recent panel discussion at Loyola on the media and Katrina, some members of the local media criticized themselves for not hammering local politicians enough, that while we all knew the levees could fail and that New Orleans could drown, they didn't demand answers from council members, levee board members, mayors, governors, and on up, and thereby force them to address the problems we all knew were there. I would agree with that, and extend the criticism to the national media. For far too long, they have been merely passing along news briefs from politicians and not investigating enough, not pushing for answers. And that has real world consequences. In a democracy, only the public can ultimately hold politicians accountable for their corruption, lies, or simple incompetence, but the public only knows to do that if the reporters get the stories to them. And pre-K, they simply didn't ask enough questions nor demand enough answers.

I don't know if it was because of worries of being perceived as unpatriotic in the wake of September 11th, economic pressures and dwindling profits, fears of being labeled as liberal, or perhaps a combination of all those and other factors, but the media as a whole (and not just that news channel that starts with "F" that shall not be named) have been pretty toothless lately. And trust an unabashed liberal on this: there isn't a liberal bias in the media; there's a conservative one. Perhaps you could argue that if a liberal perceives a conservative bias and a conservative perceives a liberal one, than the reality is pretty neutral, but really it means I'm right and they're wrong.

Did everyone catch Jon Stewart's joke during the Oscars, the one about how both "Capote" and "Good Night and Good Luck" are stories of journalists doggedly pursuing the truth and therefore, obviously, period pieces? Good stuff.

During the disaster, everyone succumbed to hysteria and sensationalism. Granted, I'm sure it's mighty hard to cover a story in the midst of such confusion, but we're talking people that have covered war zones, genocides, and tsunamis; I think we can expect a little more than relentless repetition of the same shot of one National Guard truck driving into the city. It's true that all the misinformation about the rampant murders and rapes was coming from the usually reliable sources (city officials and the National Guard), but I wish I could see some tapes from back then and check to see how much caution was taken in passing along that misinformation. There's a huge difference between reporting "murders and rapes" and reporting "completely unconfirmed rumors of murders and rapes." How it's phrased makes all the difference in the world, and there was plenty of human suffering and tragedy without concentrating on what turned out to be untrue.

Since the disaster, everyone I know can relate the same conversation with some well-meaning friend or relative, the one that includes the friend or relative saying something quite close to, "So it seems pretty much back to normal now." Clearly there's some disconnect between what people are seeing in the news and our reality here, because we aren't anywhere near normal.

The Times-Pic has, for one, improved by leaps and bounds in my estimation. What had been a rather bland local rag that I turned to for listings of music, art, and other cultural events, has become an absolutely essential conduit of vital recovery information, and they have really come through. If you want to get some coverage of New Orleans, hit nola.com and read the Times-Pic online. NPR has kept one eye on New Orleans over the past six months, and the additional attention we have received lately because of Mardi Gras can only help.

Finally, the treatment of our leaders, both local and national, has been more hard-nosed of late, and I know it's not because the politicians suddenly turned corrupt, mendacious, and incompetent. They always were; we're just hearing about it more now. Perhaps it's just a pile-on effect, but if Katrina in some way emboldened the media, then (while I won't say it was even close to worth it) at least they learned something. Here's hoping the Mardi Gras coverage is an indicator of things to come.

Next Up: A Rain of Frogs

2006-03-07T21:19:00.000-06:00

It's the apocalypse: Newt Gingrich and I agree on something.

My favorite fun fact from the editorial he wrote with John Barry, author of Rising Tide -

In the past two years, we've spent more on restoring Iraq's wetlands than Louisiana's.

Iraq's wetlands. Restoring them.

Who the fuck even knew Iraq had wetlands!!??!!?!

God, I hate Bush. I mean, I really, really hate him. Really.

The Heart of Media Darkness

2006-03-05T17:00:00.000-06:00

So it’s been a hectic couple of weeks for me, what with an out-of-town guest, house- and pet-sitting, teaching, and all the parades, parties, and general pomp and frivolity of Mardi Gras. As if that weren’t enough, I was also on CNN.

Yep, CNN found out about this here blog through channels that remain somewhat murky to me, and called for an interview. Seems they wanted someone to provide a New Orleanian’s perspective on what the media has done wrong (and right, I suppose) in covering Katrina and her aftermath, and I’m absolutely not going to pass up a chance to criticize CNN on CNN. Not to mention the chance to get the blog out to a much, much, much wider audience, which I’ve already noticed has made a difference (hi, CNN people!).

They mailed me out a web-cam, which I had to hook up to a friend’s computer because mine is a wheezy dinosaur incapable of supporting such technology, and had me on-hand for an interview during a taping of “On the Story” the Friday before Mardi Gras. This, by the way, while parades were going by and I was missing out on incredibly valuable beads and other throws, but these are the sacrifices I’m willing to make to get New Orleans’ story told.

Let me tell you how surreal this whole experience was. First off, once I got the camera working, it put a picture of me up on the computer that I could watch. After spending a good twenty minutes getting me placed correctly, all I could think while looking at this utterly unflattering close-up of my face was, “Wow, I am so fucking bald.” I had a good forty-five minutes of sitting there waiting for my turn to think about that. Plus, that close-up eliminated any chance of showing off my extremely cool "Defend New Orleans” sweatshirt.

Also on the computer was a shot of the woman interviewing me, Jacki Schechner, who could not have been nicer, all in this weird blurry, jumpy, slightly-delayed web-cam view. The thing about this, though, is that all the action takes place on the computer screen, while the camera is down below it, and even though I tried very hard to look at the camera while talking, I kept glancing up at the computer screen, which I could tell made it look like I was staring off into space somewhere above the audience’s heads, perhaps at the lovely art they have hanging over the back of their couch at home.

After the wait of forty-five minutes, they hit me with three questions, and I did my best to answer them intelligently, but of course I felt like I was saying all the wrong things. It’s incredibly hard to say something articulate, thoughtful, and meaningful in three minutes. All that waiting, and then bang, it’s over. Off-camera, Jacki gave me a look that was either a reassuring smile or a sign that she was a little disappointed, hopefully because we didn’t get to talk more and not because I sucked it up, though it’s hard to read expressions on a computer screen. I asked her if I did okay, and she assured me that I did, though then admitted she hadn’t been able to hear any of my answers because her producer was constantly talking in her ear. I did not find this reassuring.

Nothing against Jacki (sounds like it was more her producer's doing), but I also don’t think it’s particularly good journalism. Shouldn’t the journalist be listening to the responses given? The producer should shut up and let her listen. As a counter-example, I have been interviewed by NPR twice since the disaster. Once, when “Day by Day” talked to me and some friends about the State of the Union address, and again when I ran into an NPR reporter at a Mardi Gras party. Both times, they spent way more time talking and listening to me. During the State of the Union, Audie Cornish arrived well before the address, recorded us for at least half an hour, kept recording us during the whole speech, and interviewed us again after. It lasted for over two hours, and got edited down to about five minutes. Trust me, that five minutes is much more packed and articulate than the three minute CNN blab and dash.

That said, I actually have no real idea how I did because I couldn’t bring myself to watch it. And I certainly didn’t tell anyone else when to see it. By accident, I caught a bit of the show right before my last answer and suddenly realized that not only did they show me when actually asking me questions, but also when just referring to me, which they would do without warning. This I did not realize at the time, and I assumed I was off-camera. I can only imagine the nose-picking, beer-drinking, and crotch-scratching that went out on national television.

Oh, the horror, the horror.

As for what I said, you can read a transcript. I talked about the way New Orleans is portrayed as a polarized city – black and poor vs. rich and white – which misses a lot of complexity. Not that it doesn’t have truth to it, but it would take way more than thirty seconds, and way more space than I have on this blog, to properly discuss race, poverty, and the way those intercepted and interacted with Katrina and the on-going recovery. That’s a book I hope someone more expert than I is working on. I also talked about the portrayal of Mardi Gras as just a big party, though didn’t have time to explain what it really means, and had no chance to mention the obsession with sensationalism, the insistence on controversy, the determination to strip everything down to two opposing views. Hopefully, I’ll elaborate on all that later on this blog.

Ms. Strawberry asked me how it went, and I replied with a shrug and “eh.” Without further explanation, she said, “It lasted two minutes and they asked all the wrong questions.” Yep, pretty much.

So, if you really want my ten-second sound bite on what the media, by which I really mean television news, did wrong before, during, and after Katrina (or any story), it’s this: despite their unbelievably massive resources and serious responsibility to a properly functioning democracy, they never take the time to get the story right.

Still too long? Then I’ll give you one word: over-simplification. That’s the theme of everything I said to CNN. But then, I guess that’s why I keep blogging.

Throw Me Something, Mister!

2006-02-19T21:48:00.000-06:00

In the immediate aftermath of the storm – by which I mean October, five or six weeks later – while phones were still sketchy and nobody had internet access, people started communicating by refrigerator. As the broken, stinking, duck-taped refrigerators appeared on streets all over town, people began writing on them. Despite the near-constant attention we were getting in the news those days, people still didn’t feel their voices were being heard, and so turned to graffiti on dead refrigerators to speak.

Some typical examples:

FEMA Director inside
Mail to George W. Bush c/o White House C.O.D.
Cajun Coffin
Michael Brown – Free Buffet
Decent levees: $20 million, Hurricane damage: $200 Billion, Refrigerator full of maggots: priceless
I looted after Katrina and all I got was this lousy refrigerator

New Orleanians trying to be heard by the only means available.

Similarly, right after the flood “Nagin for President” shirts popped up at a store on Magazine close to my apartment. Lately, they’ve changed to “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate City” and “No Mo’ Nagin.” Again, New Orleanians expressing ourselves perhaps because we felt our authentic voices weren’t being heard through the static of media coverage.

After Nagin made his admittedly stupid comments, a friend of mine sent a one-line email to the affect that he was worried New Orleans didn’t have the leadership it needed. In and of itself, that’s fairly innocuous, though I think only New Orleanians have the right to complain about and insult our elected officials. We earned it.

But the thing is, that was apparently the whole impression my friend had of Mayor Nagin, because that’s what got reported about him outside of New Orleans. Stupid as the comments were, they certainly aren’t the sum total of what C. Ray has done (and not done) as Mayor both before and after the deluge.

What does this have to with anything? Well, you might have heard that it’s Mardi Gras season around here, and if you haven’t – what the hell’s wrong with you? It’s Carnival, people, get on it. There has been a little controversy over whether we should have Mardi Gras or not, as if it’s something that even could be called off if we wanted, but nevertheless, it’s on. Since this is the first Mardi Gras after that other little event that put New Orleans in the national spotlight for a moment, we have more reporters than ever descending on us to send out missives to all of you about it.

I can imagine those reports now: pictures of drunken frat boys screaming for bared breasts on Bourbon juxtaposed with shots of annihilated Ninth Ward homes, accompanied by some no doubt well-meaning reporter shaking his head over our irresponsibility and hedonism in the face of disaster. In fact, according to the Times-Pic, it’s already started.

Let me tell you something – those drunken frat boys and the “Girls Gone Wild” hopefuls paired with them? Tourists. Locals don’t bother with that crap. Every time people come and visit for Mardi Gras, they inevitably ask about going to Bourbon Street, and I always tell them it will be stupid and annoying, and they always insist, so we go, and you know what? It’s stupid and annoying and packed with tourists.

Today I went to some parades. I met my neighbor up at the parade route who had a few friends with her, including one who just had a baby. The baby mostly hung out in her stroller sleeping, though she would occasionally laugh at the floats. We all yelled our heads off to get stuffed animals for her, and got plenty, and none of us had to bare any breasts to do so. We waved at neighbors as kids ran around everywhere, grabbing any beads that nobody managed to catch. Of my friends, I was the only one drinking anything, but that whisky from my flask was strictly for medicinal purposes – it was damn cold today. We also cheered mightily for the marching bands, particularly the MAX band, a combination of students from St. Mary’s, St. Augustine’s, and Xavier Prep because the schools individually don’t have enough returned students to march alone. Their parents and friends walked along next to them, no doubt many of them coming in from Baton Rouge or Houston or wherever they evacuated to just to support their kids, and one carrying a tray of hot chocolate, much appreciated by the cop standing guard on our corner.

You might think I’m laying it on a bit thick, but I’m not exaggerating even a bit. Just as the “Chocolate City” comments aren’t the sum total of Nagin, the frats boys and wild girls aren’t the sum total of Mardi Gras. New Orleans is way more complex, way more intriguing, and way more soulful than those snapshots. Just try and keep that in mind when you see the simplistic report from a journalist who hasn’t bothered to take the time to get it.

You could even print this out and magnet it to your refrigerator.

Union? What Union?

2006-02-09T15:47:00.000-06:00

We’re going to start today with a historical pop quiz (don’t worry, I’m a teacher – licensed to quiz).

First question: While Emperor of Rome, Nero was at war with which countries/empires?

Second question: What did he do while Rome burned?

Answers will be at the end. In the meantime, let me talk about Bush’s State of the Union for a bit.

I’m going to start with the numbers: out of over 5,300 words, a scant 134 addressed the devastation of the Gulf Coast and my home. Back in early December, I wrote that living in New Orleans felt like being “forgotten, and left to rot.” Nothing Bush has done since then has changed that feeling, and his State of the Union address certainly emphasized it quite nicely.

Since it won’t take long, I’m going to take a close look at those words:
“A hopeful society comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and emergency …”
Society, American and foreign, did indeed come to our aid during the emergency, and we are deeply grateful for it, though I don’t think I need to point out that the federal government was a tad slow in responding itself.
“… and stays at it until they're back on their feet.”
I guess that’s what a hopeful society would do, but the federal government is apparently only interested until everyone in the rest of the country gets Katrina fatigue.
“So far, the federal government has committed $85 billion to the people of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.”

True, though he didn’t bother to mention that the vast majority of that was required by law. We actually have laws that dictate what the federal government MUST do in response to disasters, and the Bush administration has indeed obeyed the law (for a change).

“We are removing debris …”

Actually, most of the debris is still here, over five months later. A lot of what has been “removed” only got shuffled around. There’s a neutral ground in the city that FEMA turned into an impromptu dumping ground. The trash there has piled up to about 4 stories and extends for block after block after block – it’s become quite the tourist attraction. Also, FEMA will stop removing trash before the month is out, and we had to beg them to extend their time to get that.

“… and repairing highways …”

The rebuilding of the twin span is the only repair that has been completed and completed ahead of schedule, so I do have to give the federal government props for rebuilding … a federal interstate highway. Uh, thanks.

“… and rebuilding stronger levees.”

At best, he is entirely misinformed here, or he’s just lying. The Army Corps of Engineers has told us again and again and again that they are only mandated to rebuild the levees to the (clearly inadequate) strength they had before the storm. We have asked repeatedly for stronger levees, and been denied every time.

“We’re providing business loans …”

The SBA is apparently doing this, though after some guy showed up and spent a long time measuring my house and assuring me they would get money into my hands quickly, I have yet to hear from them again or been able to get a straight answer when I call them. At this point, I wish they would just tell me I’m not approved and get it over with.

On a less personal note, the farmers of Louisiana have yet to receive assistance, while in 2004 the farmers of Florida received assistance two weeks after Hurricane Charley. Two weeks vs. five months, though I’m sure that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the president’s brother being governor of Florida.

“… and housing assistance.”

Is he referring to the assistance I finally got a week ago? Or the assistance that I’m not going to get in the future? Or the way FEMA kicked people out of shelters last month? Or how it took a court order to get FEMA to pay for hotels? And that ran out two days ago and those people are now on the street? Did I mention that at least 80% of New Orleans is still uninhabitable?

“Yet, as we address these immediate needs …”

In nothing remotely resembling an immediate manner.

“… we must also address deeper challenges that existed before the storm arrived. In New Orleans and in other places,”

Thank you for using the annihilation of my city as a way to talk about problems elsewhere. How deeply respectful.

“… many of our fellow citizens have felt excluded from the promise of our country.”
Actually, at this point I’m less concerned with the country as a whole keeping its pretty vaguely defined promise, as I am with one person keeping the promise he made in Jackson Square not too long ago, the one that mentioned doing “whatever it takes” to rebuild New Orleans. Anytime he wants to keep that one is okay by me.

“The answer is not only temporary relief, but schools that teach every child, and job skills that bring upward mobility, and more opportunities to own a home and start a business.”

So to achieve that, Bush is opposing the Baker bill, the only piece of legislation aimed at actually helping the people of Louisiana with that home-ownership vision thing.

And that’s it. No mention of the nearly two thousand (so far) people who lost their lives, no serious mention of the 2 million Americans that can’t get back to their homes, and obviously no mention of anything resembling some specifics of what is to be done.

Human-animal hybrids – that demands legislation. The recovery of the Gulf Coast? Not so much.

But besides counting words or proposing legislative specifics, there are other ways of weighing the importance of the various issues Bush mentioned. For instance, you ever notice that news stories start with the most important aspect and go from there? Standard journalism style - you start with the most important thing because that’s as long as anyone can be expected to listen, and then blather on to the least important thing at the end.

By that measure, the devastation of the Gulf Coast is not the last thing that Bush wants to deal with, just next to last. Absolute last place belongs to African-Americans with AIDS. So we have that going for us, though I’m not sure where that puts African-American New Orleanians with AIDS.

Bush mentioned history a lot in his speech, and clearly was trying to put the war with Iraq into the sweep of history. After the speech, the commentariat blabbed quite a bit about Bush aiming for his place in history.

For the record, Nero warred with Britain and the Parthians, expensive conflicts that, combined with his ever more tyrannical domestic policies, so turned the Senate and the people against him that he had to commit suicide to avoid execution. The Parthian Empire, by the way, was based out of the Middle East, not that anyone but ancient history majors remembers any of that.

But despite the fact that Rome didn’t have fiddles, everyone knows Nero fiddled while Rome burned. He actually sang, but the idea is remembered.

So don’t worry, George W. Bush, your place in history is assured – you just keep fiddling.

Katrina Fatigue

2006-02-09T15:43:00.000-06:00

I know, I know – so what if the terror of Mr. Tumnus ranks higher on Bush’s to-do list than New Orleans? I understand – you all have Katrina fatigue. You’re tired of hearing about it and you want to move on.

You know what I’m tired of? I’m tired of waking up somewhere that isn’t my house everyday. I’m tired of waiting forever for insurance money and spending all my time sitting on hold trying to talk to FEMA, the SBA, mortgage companies, and banks. I’m tired of driving across town and standing in line for half an hour to get my mail. I’m tired of paying “estimated” electricity bills for a house that hasn’t had electricity since Aug. 29th out of fear that if I don’t pay, then when I get the wiring replaced they won’t flip the switch for me.

I’m also tired of non-working stoplights, like the one on St. Charles that constantly showed green while blinking yellow – what does that even mean? We all took it to mean we could go through the intersection, just really, really slowly. But hey, at least it’s one of the 5% of stoplights in the city that work at all. I’m tired of downed power lines and dirty water lines. They’re on everything – houses, streetlights, cars, trees. I’m tired of trash piled high on every curb and I’m tired of everyone having Katrina Kough.

The smell. Jesus, I’m sick to death of the smell.

I’m tired of bouncing between relief I have a job now and worry that next fall Loyola will have a freshman class of 5 and I’ll be out of a job. Again. With a mortgage.

I heard another grocery store was opening up, and I was so excited I dreamed about it, literally dreamed of wandering down aisles of fully stocked shelves, kicking my heels up as I rounded a corner heading from orange juice to whole wheat bread. I woke up joyous, and the truly pathetic thing is that was one of the Absolute Happiest Dreams I Have Ever Had in My Entire Life Ever.

I’m kinda fatigued over things like that.

Here’s what else I’m tired of – using September 11th to justify everything. Bush didn’t get around to mentioning the Gulf Coast until an hour into the address, but he got 9-11 in there in three minutes and then went on to brag about Iraq for an hour, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with September 11th, had no ties to al Qaeda, and no weapons of mass destruction to sell to them even if he did. And yes, I’m tired of pointing that out over and over again, too. I have September 11th fatigue. Or, I’m sorry, is that in bad taste?

I’m tired of it still looking like September around here.

Everyone I know has had the conversation with some well-meaning friend from some other place who says something along the lines of “Well, sounds like everything’s pretty much back to normal.” No, it’s not back to normal. It’s so far from normal we’ll never be normal again. It’s not that the work isn’t done yet – it won’t be done for several years. It’s that the work hasn’t even really started. Despite what Bush claimed a while back, New Orleans is not a “nice place to bring your family.” There are plenty of New Orleanians who don’t want to move their families back because they’re worried their children will get sick, and I don’t blame them.

I’m tired of everything, from the beer I drink (Abita Restoration Ale – a buck from every six pack goes to the recovery effort) to the classes I teach to the small talk with strangers, absolutely everything being about the recovery. I long for the day when every conversation doesn’t start with, “So, how’d you make out?” And I’m tired of the fact that there’s no need whatsoever to explain what that question refers to.

So don’t mention Katrina fatigue to me, not unless you enjoy the feeling of my boot up your ass. I don’t have Katrina fatigue – I have Katrina complete and total fucking exhaustion. I would give anything for the luxury of having Katrina fatigue.

Baker Update

2006-02-09T14:00:00.000-06:00

Reconstruction czar Donald Powell defends the administration's opposition to the Baker bill here, a defense he didn't even have the courtesy to send to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. They had to pick it up later from the Washington Post.

The Times-Pic explains why Powell is dead wrong here and here.

I actually find this encouraging. Powell wouldn't bother trying to defend the adminstration if they thought the Baker bill was dead. Clearly they're worried it might pass.

Of course, it hasn't passed yet, and there are more hurdles, namely a unified levee board and off-shore oil revenues. More on those later.

"You're Either With Us, or Against Us"

2006-01-26T20:55:00.000-06:00

Months ago, Bush dropped in on New Orleans to assure us that the country would do “whatever it takes” to rebuild New Orleans “bigger and better.”

Fact is, we don’t even want “bigger,” just “better.” Every New Orleanian knows our beloved city is going to be half its former size, but we want what comes back to be in better shape than the whole we had before. I wouldn’t think that’s too much to ask, but apparently it is.

The White House has decided to oppose the Baker bill, a homeowner bailout bill that is essential to Louisiana’s recovery. Republican Representative Richard Baker’s bill is pretty simple: it would set up a governmental agency to buy flood-damaged homes for resale to developers. It’s meant to ensure that rebuilding is given some direction and that, despite the fact that only about half of New Orleanians are coming back, we’re not going to be surrounded by abandoned, rotting homes.

(For more on the bill and it’s history, go here, here, and/or below.)

Bush and Donald Powell, the administration’s head of hurricane recovery, maintain that the bill isn’t necessary because Louisiana is receiving block grants to address the problem. They say Mississippi is making do with the block grants, but that ignores the fact that less than half as many homes were affected in Mississippi, and the damage to hospitals, schools, businesses and other infrastructure in Louisiana is exponentially higher. And yet, the block grants are approximately the same. They say that money should be more than enough, but their math is way off.

In Louisiana, an estimated 80,000 homes without insurance were damaged by Katrina and Rita, another 140,000 with insurance. However, Bush and Powell think the block grants should be concentrated on owner-occupied homes outside the flood zone, or about 20,000 homes. Sure, if you’re limiting yourself to helping out 20,000 instead of more than ten times that, absolutely the block grant should cover it. Never mind my friends Gavin and Allison that own rental property, or my neighbors that have owned their house since it was built more than 80 years ago but live within the flood zone.

I guess the administration doesn’t want to help people that lived within the flood zone but didn’t have flood insurance because that would be rewarding people for not doing what they were supposed to. But the federal government, and flood insurance is a federal program, only requires people to have flood insurance if they have a mortgage. My neighbors, for instance, paid off their house a long time ago. They played by the rules. You want to require everyone to have flood insurance, mortgage or no? Fine. But that’s not the way it was before the federally built levees gave way.

During a press conference, Bush claimed that Louisiana needs to agree on a plan, and that’s the problem. Not to put to fine a point on it, but that’s complete bullshit. We have agreed on a plan, and the Baker bill is it. It’s a Republican bill that Democrats back. The Urban Land Institute agrees a homeowner buyout bill is necessary, and the Governor’s commission and the Mayor’s commission both came out with plans that incorporate the Baker bill. People have already started rebuilding their homes and neighborhoods with the understanding that the Baker bill, or something very much like it, would be passed. Baker has been negotiating with the administration over the bill since October, and for the administration to have allowed us to believe in this for months and then jerk it away isn’t just irresponsible and bad governing, it’s cruel.

However, it’s not sunk yet. Just because Bush doesn’t back it, doesn’t mean the bill can’t pass anyway. The bill passed a house committee last year 50-9, and has received positive feedback from House leadership. The House ran out of time before the recess last year, but Baker is bringing it back this year.

That’s where you come in. Everybody has been asking me what they can do to help, and this is it. I wish that the recovery of New Orleans, and the rest of the Gulf Coast for that matter, was something we could take care of locally, but unfortunately we need the help of the whole country. I need you to write or call your representatives and senators and urge them to pass the Baker bill. Send this to everyone you know and ask them to do the same (there’s a little email icon at the end of this – it’s so simple!).

Why do I want you to do this? Because when you come to visit, I don’t want you to be sitting in my house in the middle of stinking, dangerous, deserted blight. That would make for a pretty crappy Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. Don’t make me beg, people.

This goes double for everyone in Virginia. Rep. Tom Davis (Republican) is chairman of the Select Committee on Katrina (for other committee members, go here), and he’s skeptical. He wants “market forces” to dictate rebuilding, but market forces will lead to exactly what we don’t need – homes rebuilt here and there, surrounded by abandoned, foreclosed rot. This guy needs to be leaned on, and let him know that if he won’t help, you’ll vote him out.

Recently, I’ve decided to be a one-issue voter. Plenty of people spend their entire lives voting on one issue, so I figure basing all my decisions on the recovery for four years is pretty reasonable. As Bush said, “You’re either with us, or against us.” And when he came out against the Baker bill, Bush demonstrated that despite his rhetoric, he’s against us.

The Baker Bill

2006-01-26T20:50:00.000-06:00

The whys and wherefores, as simply as I could do them:

First, it prevents mortgage companies from being saddled with defaulted mortgages on hundreds of worthless homes. If homeowners don’t have flood insurance and can’t rebuild, many of them will simply default and mortgage companies will be left with block after block of stinking messes.

For some homeowners, it provides them with a way out of an unwinnable situation, namely a wrecked house and no insurance money. The government would pay them no less than 60% of their equity, and pay off the mortgage. Nobody gets everything, but everybody gets something.

Additionally, since everyone agrees that New Orleans’ population is going to shrink by about half, we need to shrink the city’s size as well. If we don’t, people are going to be stuck in blighted neighborhoods, with a rebuilt house in the middle of nowhere, which would also require the city to rebuild infrastructure like roads, sewer lines, and flood prevention for an area twice the size as needed with half the tax revenue. This bill gives people who want to return to New Orleans a way to get out of unsafe, low-lying neighborhoods and into neighborhoods on higher ground.

For people like me - who have insurance, want to rebuild, and live in a relatively high, safe neighborhood - the bill assures us that we’re not going to rebuild into a blighted neighborhood. Even if all my neighbors don’t come back (and I know they’re not), this bill means something will happen to those houses and they won’t just sit next to mine and rot.

Aside from rebuilding homes, New Orleans needs to strengthen its levees, and return some land to wetlands to act as a natural hurricane barrier and flood absorber (might as well do something with those unoccupied neighborhoods). Plus, it wants to put in a light-rail commuter train that would run to Baton Rouge and Mississippi, providing a cheap, quick evacuation route. All of that is going to take land, land that homes are on now. The government would have to seize this land through eminent domain, which would entail potentially hundreds of court cases, thousands and thousands of dollars to fight those court cases, and years to settle them all. The Baker bill would hopefully speed and simplify the process.

Lastly, whenever a natural disaster hits, the feds write some checks. None of that is ever repaid. On the other hand, this bill actually will give the federal government a return on its investment when the properties are resold.

In short, everybody wins. That usually means that a bill doesn’t have the proverbial snowball’s chance in Hell, but how about, just this once, we buck tradition, give the finger to history, and make it happen anyway?

What Nixon and I Have in Common

2006-01-26T20:29:00.000-06:00

I am a “Daily Show” addict. I don’t mind admitting it’s where I get most of my news, and that I trust Jon Stewart more than any other newscaster. Sure, it’s the “fake” news, but it’s also more honest than any of the “real” news programs out there. We live in postmodern times, folks. The revolution already happened, but nobody noticed.

Anyway, so I’m watching it on Monday, and Jon Stewart was interviewing this guy Fred Barnes, a man who has apparently written a book that ranks Dubya as a president barely one step below George Washington in the Greatest President Ever Sweepstakes. Needless to say, the man’s judgment is seriously impaired. He tried to defend this position by explaining what a rebel Dubya is, bucking the Washington establishment and whatnot, to which Jon Stewart asked in what way is a sitting President, with his party in control of both houses of Congress and the judiciary as well as lobbyists and money, NOT the Washington establishment. The guy mumbled something about conservatives disagreeing with him on immigration and trailed off with some vague mention of “liberals,” who apparently are still somehow in control of everything even though nothing has gone the way liberals would have wanted them to in, say, about thirty years. Normally, I wouldn’t bother with Fred Barnes, since Dubya-fandom in and of itself isn’t a sin. Stupid, yes, and kind of sad, but not evil.

On the other hand, he referred to some “bumps in the road” that Bush has weathered through in the past year, bumps that led to otherwise inexplicable low points in his polls, and for which clearly Bush should bear no responsibility whatsoever. With a deprecating chuckle and a dismissive wave of his hand, he enumerated these “bumps in the road” – namely Katrina and Harriet Myers.

A Supreme Court nominee who failed because she was completely and totally unqualified, and a natural and man-made (them damn levees again – no, I’m not going to stop mentioning them) disaster of unequalled proportions in the history of our country - what exactly would be the points of similarity there? Leaving that aside, I would never refer to the deaths of well over a thousand people, the complete devastation of a major American city, and the annihilation of the Gulf Coast as a “bump in the road” of anyone’s presidency.

Fred Barnes did, however, articulate a view that I’m afraid is shared by too many conservatives and Republicans in this country. Specifically, the idea that the worst outcome of Katrina and Rita is that it unfairly reflected badly on Dubya. “Unfair” because how could he have possibly known that something so bad would have happened even though he received a memo explaining just such a bad thing happening shortly before it did? (And why does that sound vaguely familiar?) And “worst” because what could be worse than anything reflecting badly on our sainted leader?

Let me think – watching your family home getting tumbled into a canal and floating away comes to mind, or perhaps clinging to the roof of your house as your wife gets washed away and drowned while you can do nothing. Or even this one – your mother gets evacuated from the Superdome and five months later you still can’t find her. Just to name a few off the top of my head.

For a while now, I have been considering the necessity of compiling (to borrow an idea from the now-he-doesn’t-seem-so-bad Nixon) an Enemies List. An enumeration, if you will, of those that stand opposed, either directly or through inaction, to the recovery of my city and the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Because of his utter insensitivity, his complete lack of compassion, and his total incomprehension when confronted with tragedy, Fred Barnes has moved me to finally do so.

I would give him the top spot, but really, Michael Brown worked way too hard to deserve that honor.

It is a list that I’m afraid isn’t going to take too long to grow.

Don't Drink and Blog

2006-01-24T12:26:00.000-06:00

You (by which I mean the untold hundreds, nay, thousands of faithful readers of my blog) might have noticed the addition of a link list over there on the right headed "Students." Perhaps you even thought Hmm, what's that about?

At Loyola this semester, I'm teaching a class called "Writing: Technique & Technology." As part of our investigation into the impact that technology has on writing, I have them all writing blogs - thus, the list. With the blogs, they'll get first-hand experience in what it means when the traditional avenues to getting writing in front of a potential audience are removed: no submitting, no editors, no publishers, no reviews, no long wait for a book to appear, no trying to get people to shell over 20 bucks, just write something, post it, and zing! it's instantly available for the entire to read for free. So head on over and find out if they'll learn anything besides this immortal advice I passed along on the first day of class:

Don't drink and blog - it's like drunk dialing the whole world.

February 28th

2006-01-07T14:16:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was the 12th Night of Christmas, which, if you didn't know, also marks the beginning of the Carnival season that leads up to Mardi Gras. The Phunny Phorty Phellows, unable to ride the traditional St. Charles streetcar costumed and throwing beads, instead rode the Riverfront line - in the New New Orleans, you adapt.

Lately there's been some talk about not having Mardi Gras. Mayor Nagin was for it at first, then some New Orleanians in Atlanta protested, and he backed off a little. The celebration was shortened from twelve to six days, many parades were cancelled, and the parades had to follow the same route, but then Zulu announced they wouldn't roll if they couldn't follow their traditional route. Now nobody seems to know what the hell is going on, so I figure I might as well throw in my two cents.

Mardi Gras will happen.

I understand the folks who say the city shouldn't throw a party when many of its citizens can't get back. New Orleans does need to get its folks home. I also understand the people who say we need to have Mardi Gras to show the world we can rebuild, because we also need the tourists to come back. But they're all missing the point.

Allow me to let you all in on a little secret: New Orleans doesn't put on Mardi Gras, and by that I don't just mean that the parade Krewes are private organizations. That's true, but the parades aren't Mardi Gras. Likewise, the city does pick up all the trash and provides police security at the parades, but that's hardly all there is to Mardi Gras, either.

Back in the 1700s, the Puritans managed to get Christmas outlawed. (Yes, Bill O'Reilly, the only people who ever actually did declare a war on Christmas were fundamentalist Christians.) I guess they were worried that if they had a little bit of fun, they wouldn't be able to stop. The U.S. government didn't put up a fight at the time because Christmas was seen as a British holiday and the Brits weren't really in favor in those days. But guess what happened?

If you've ever watched "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas," you know - Christmas came, just the same. People still put up their trees, and ate and drank too much, and snuck kisses under the mistletoe, and said the hell with those stuffy Puritans outlawing Christmas. Mardi Gras will come, too.

Mardi Gras - Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. The last chance to get our ya-yas out before we are reminded that from dust we all come, and to dust we all will return, not that we down here need much reminding these days. Not a day goes by that spray-painted Xs don't snatch at our eyes and whisper oblivion in our ears. Some believe it's not right to party yet. Too mnay friends and neighbors died too short a time ago. I understand them, too. But this is the city that invented the jazz funeral. After the coffin is brought out of the church and the dirge is played, the snare drum snaps and the trombone blares and everyone dances on down the street, toasting the departed and celebrating what was rather than mourning what isn't anymore. For everything else it is, Mardi Gras at its heart is about celebrating life in the face of the death that comes for everyone and everything eventually, and if there ever was a city that knows how, with a little glitter on its eyes, to not only laugh in Death's inevitable face, but also to turn around and moon him as well, it's New Orleans.

Death came for New Orleans hard a few months ago. Almost got her, too. Almost. But she is picking herself up and knocking the mud off her dress and trust me on this - she's ready to dance.

Mardi Gras means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For some its the balls and pageantry, for others the parades. Everyone likes the music, whether its their child marching in a school band or their favorite trumpet player still going in a dingy Marigny bar at 4 in the morning. For some its just about boiling crawfish and kicking back with their family. For me it's always been about dressing up in a silly costume and running around town with my friends.

So here's my suggestion for all New Orleanians, whether real or just at heart, who can't be here on Mardi Gras - wherever you are, put on a silly hat and feather boa, cook up some gumbo, dig out that jazz or brass band or Cajun or zydeco cd, eat and drink too much, and dance with your family and friends. Just this once, let's celebrate Mardi Gras everywhere and make it a national, even an international holiday, so everyone sees and knows and feels what it's like here. Because no matter how many Katrinas come, Mardi Gras will happen. Even if no parades roll and nary a bead gets thrown, even if their aren't any balls and no band marches, we will still be out there, dancing and laughing with glitter on our eyes. Hell, we might even moon someone.

What Runs on St. Charles

2005-12-27T21:16:00.000-06:00

Lately, in an effort to get some sort of normalcy back into my life, I’ve been running again, using the old route, up St. Charles towards Audubon Park across from Tulane and Loyola and then back. The first thing I learned was that along with everything else, Katrina has taken whatever modicum of physical fitness I had been able to achieve. I guess no exercise during 5 weeks of evacuating will do that. However, when not gasping for air, stumbling in pain, and wanting to die, I have been watching the changes on one of New Orleans’ main thoroughfares over the past three months.

(Has it really been that long? I still feel like life is frozen at the beginning of the school year and here it is the end of the non-existent semester. Einstein was more right than he knew.)

When I first went running back in October sometime, the stench was pretty pervasive, even Uptown. The French Quarter stank of the raw sewage we were dumping in the Mississippi, and the flooded places reeked of mold and death, but even Uptown smelled of rot, mostly from the duck-taped refrigerators lining the streets, including St. Charles. Even though I ran on the neutral ground (median to you non-New Orleanian uncouth masses) and the refrigerators squatted and leaned on the curbs, I would still get whacked with the smell as I passed. It was always present, but when I approached a group of dead Sub-Zeroes it would suddenly become overwhelming and I would have to hold my breath until I got by.

Most of the mansions, huge old Southern homes of columns and tall windows, that line St. Charles had plywood over all their windows, and I had to jump over tons of dead branches, downed power lines, and broken poles. The huge oaks didn’t provide the shade they usually did, stripped and broken as they were. The police had taped off several spots, so I had to run off the neutral ground and into the street. No problem, though, because there were very few cars around. Mostly I saw Humvees, camouflaged green at first, then more and more tan ones as people and equipment came back from Iraq. I waved at all of them, and they all waved back.

By Thanksgiving, the smell was mostly gone, as were most of the refrigerators. The majority of the plywood was gone, too, telling the story of who had returned and who had not. I still had to avoid tree limbs and power lines, though I pretty much ran through the taped-off spots, going over or around the fallen and forgotten tape. A lot more cars zipped up and down St. Charles, many with out-of-state plates and not much regard for speed limits or understanding of how to negotiate a 4-way stop intersection (still common here in the city of little electricity and few working stoplights). We had all mostly stopped waving at the National Guard. A FEMA/Red Cross station had opened up in the Jewish Community Center, and I wiggled through the cars and trucks that constantly crowded onto the neutral ground there. The streetcar tracks, unused since Aug. 28, had disappeared under dirt, grass, and overgrowth.

These days my biggest obstacles are the deep divots and mounds of mud left by the heavy trucks driving and parking on the neutral ground, providing runners with a path that couldn’t be better designed to twist an ankle. They’re mostly repair trucks, though plenty a Hummer or SUV driver has decided that staying on roads is a law that doesn’t apply to him in Post-K N.O. The only limbs I have to jump over or run around are the ones cut down by repair crews and I haven’t smelled rot in quite a while. Of course, St. Charles didn’t flood and marks the border of what I think of as the operating corridor of New Orleans these days – the swath of town between St. Charles and the river that is the only part of town really up and running.

The streetcar tracks remain overgrown, so much in some sports that if I didn’t know where they were, I wouldn’t be able find them. Streetcars have started running limited service on the Canal and Riverside lines already, but transit officials say they won’t be rolling past the mansions and under the oaks of Uptown for at least a year. Until then, I’ll keep running along, watching the plywood come down and the trash get hauled off as the city comes back to life, inch by slow, painful inch.

Catch 8/29

2005-12-20T17:41:00.000-06:00

Met with the homeowner's insurance adjustor today - a very nice man, whose constant references to my "wife" were too amusing and sweet to correct, and because explanations are, well, tiring and tiresome. As we wandered around the dirty, ravaged, gutted shell of the house, he snapping pictures of a busted window pane, me trying to think of any other damage caused by wind, he asked me where we were staying and I explained I was in an apartment in the Lower Garden while she was in Alexandria, where her patients had been sent.

"Ah," he said. "A weekend marriage. I've had to do that before. It's hard."

Indeed. As Dr. A said to me later, "Maybe we should just get married. It would make things easier."

Which is as good a reason as any, I suppose, except that it really wouldn't because nothing makes anything easier around here.

Anyway, the sympathetic insurance adjustor did his best by us - they'll pay for our roof damage and window, of course, as well as for replacing and painting the ceiling in my kitchen/dining room, and he even went in for the walls there, too, because you can't really replace a ceiling without messing up the walls, not that I have walls anymore. Unfortunately, no loss of use money.

Loss of use money is meant to cover stuff like travel costs, as well as the rent you're paying while your house in uninhabitable. I've spent the last three months trying to get this from someone, anyone, to no avail. Homeowners won't cover it because what rendered the place uninhabitable was not an "insured event" - in other words, the flood, not the hurricane. FEMA won't cover it because we have flood insurance, and flood insurance won't cover it because loss of use is covered by homeowners.

Follow that? Ah, bureaucracy. Kafka would have loved it.

Catch 8/29 - everyone's run into it in one way or another. Homeowners insurance won't cover it because the flood caused it, flood insurance won't cover it because it was caused by the hurricane, and FEMA won't cover it because you have insurance - it's perfect. Feel free to scrounge up the money somehow to take somebody to court.

I have a thought - since the flood was caused by faulty levees, not the hurricane, levees built by the federal government, I think the head of the federal government should just fork it over to me. Screw all that grant/loan/taxes yadda-yadda-yadda - let's simplify this. I'll shut up if Bush and/or Cheney just peels off the lousy two or three thousand it will take to cover my rent while my house is rebuilt. For me, that's a staggering amount of money, but they're both multi-millionaires; they probably have that much lost in the cushions of their couches.

Mind Vs. Muscle

2005-12-20T16:57:00.000-06:00

So I’m sanding this floor when my cell rings (no, not my floor – we’re nowhere near that stage with our house yet). No, Gav was paying me to sand someone else’s floor. See, I met this couple in a bar and they loaned me a saws-all to use for gutting my house. They needed a contractor, so I gave them Gavin’s number, then I lost my job and since there’s not much call for teachers in New Orleans these days but plenty for construction workers, that’s how I ended up sanding their floor.

Let me toss in some advice here – if you ever find yourself sanding a floor, use an edger with wheels. The one I used on my place didn’t have wheels, and an edger weighs a good 15 or 20 pounds. Imagine crawling around your walls holding that up for hours while it has a big spinning disk of sandpaper on it that wants to catch and drag off across the floor so you have to hold it up enough that it doesn’t gouge and burn the floor, but not so much that it doesn’t scrape the crap off. And all this time it’s kicking sawdust in your eyes and up your nose. What I’m saying is – get the one with wheels.

Anyway, I’m doing this when the phone rings, not that I hear it because those sanders are loud, too, but I feel it. I don’t answer because starting and stopping the edger is something of a chore, but the next chance I get, I listen to the message and it’s the English chair from Loyola offering me four classes if I want them.

I think for a minute, considering the sander in my hands, the dust in my eyes, the satisfaction of a job well done, and wondered if I really wanted to give it all up for teaching.

OK, no, I didn’t. Not even for a millisecond. The hell with that – I will do my work in my ridiculously well-trained and horribly expensive head, and not just because I’m still paying for the education I crammed into it, but because physical labor is hard. You know that half-hour you spend at the gym every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and sometimes Sunday? Now do it everyday, all day. Yep, it’s the life of the mind for me.

I went by campus yesterday for the first time in a couple of months, and it’s much the same – mostly undamaged, but empty. Giant military vehicles still squat all over our parking lots, and the elementary school kids still run around for recess at the Catholic school on campus, though there are more of them now. Right across the street from their playground is the entrance to the human resources building with the sign on the door reading “All weapons must be cleared in the clearing chamber before entering,” whatever that means, though this time I didn’t have to show my I.D. to a helmeted, heavily-armed and camo-wearing guard to get in. The camo, by the way, is surprisingly effective in New Orleans these days – it fades right into the mud and debris.

Oh, and the other difference was I went there because I had a job, not to make arrangements because I had just lost it. So that “college English teacher” answer under “profession” in my profile is accurate once again, and when people ask me what I do, I no longer say, “Pre or post-K?” That’s about all I can ask for these days.

Nicknames & Slogans

2005-12-16T18:28:00.000-06:00

Okay, so everyone knows we call New Orleans the Big Easy, right? ‘Cept, sometimes when we call it the Big Sleazy? Okay, here are some variations I’ve heard lately that I’d like to share:

The Big Stinky

The Big Queasy

And of course the Big Uneasy, ‘cause ain’t nothing easy in this town these days.

And my personal favorite: The Big Squeegee

We’re also called the Crescent City, except the paper called us the Anti-depressant City. Heh-heh. By the way, the cover of Gambit (our alternative weekly, publishing again) this week screamed “Wigging Out!” which is what New Orleanians are doing these days. I enjoyed the anti-depressant thing because when I was describing my alternation between not sleeping and being unable to stay awake, as well as nightmares about hurricanes and waking up in a panic convinced I have to evacuate RIGHT NOW, not to mention the mood swings, depression, and sudden eruptions of fury, Arwen and Holly (both psychiatrists) told me I have classic, textbook Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (it’s not just for war veterans anymore!). So Arwen scored me a shopping bag of Zoloft from a drug rep – sometimes it’s handy to buy a house with a doctor, even if we’re not actually living in it at the moment. It’s sitting in my cabinet right now, because I haven’t had one of Those Nightmares in about a month and I’ve been sleeping pretty well, so clearly the alcohol is working.

When I first came back to New Orleans, I took Darv to pick up his car in this abandoned parking garage. We drive into the garage, past the half-up and twisted gates and into this completely dark and empty garage. We drive up a few stories and, because we’re in a garage, the radio goes all white noise, “ssssssssssss.” We drive past all these clearly abandoned cars, and there are no other people to be seen anywhere. Plus, since the electricity is out, no lights shine. Let me tell you, nothing says post-apocalyptic United States like a dead parking garage. So, there I am, in the dead parking garage, the radio going “ssssssss,” and as Darv gets out to try to start his car, I’m thinking, “If Darv’s car doesn’t start, the zombies are coming.” I was absolutely expecting zombies to come out from behind cars and around corners, all stumbling and decaying and hungry for brains, but fortunately Darv’s car did start, so no zombies.

All of which is to say, I’ve come up with a new tourist slogan for my beleaguered city, something that focuses on the positive, something that will really bring the people and their money back to the city. You ready? Okay, how about:

New Orleans – Still No Zombies!

What do you think? It’s snappy, and works with the whole voodoo thing we got going on. Clearly my talents were being wasted in academia and I really belong in advertising.

Here’s some others I came up with:

New Orleans – Now It All Smells Like Bourbon Street!

Or how about:

New Orleans – Like the Third World, But You Can Drink the Water!

I think I’m on to something here.

Death of an American City

2005-12-14T21:42:00.000-06:00

A damn fine NY Times editorial can be found here.

And a pretty good one by Senator Landrieu that runs down the money we're talking about here.

Three Months Later

2005-12-06T01:06:00.000-06:00

Meant to put this up a while ago, but I've been having access problems ...

November 29 marked three months since Katrina hit, August 29. Three months ago, those of us lucky enough not to be here saw pictures of some of the worst devastation to hit this country. Bodies floating in the streets, an old woman in a wheelchair, dead, and covered in a blanket. Three months on, it seems only appropriate to take stock of how far we’ve come.

They estimate that 100,000 New Orleanians, or one-fifth of our pre-Katrina population, have returned. Nobody knows how many more, if any, will come back later. I'm sure you’ve heard stories (I know I've told some) of restaurants and bars and stores reopening, but what isn’t mentioned is that they are all in the 20% of the city that didn’t go under water, and still only maybe half of those are going. We want you to hear how we’re coming back, but truth be told, we’re still on life support. The businesses that do open up find out awfully quickly that with only one-fifth of their customer base and none of them with disposable income, there simply aren’t enough people to buy the “New Orleans, Still Proud to Call it Home” t-shirts, now matter how much we all want to. Most businesses still limp along, but many have reopened after Katrina only to have to close down again a couple of weeks later because they can’t make any money.

Without any tax base for three months, the city is bankrupt. We want to have Mardi Gras as usual next year, because as stupid as it may be, we take pride in throwing you all the world’s biggest free party. But we can’t do it without money to pay cops overtime and garbage collectors to pick up the literally tons of trash left over, and nobody is coming forward to help. We’ll get something scaled down going, which is really too bad, because it is going to be the 150th Mardi Gras celebration, and it should have been a blow-out.

Along with the city, the energy company is also bankrupt. Entergy says it will have the whole city re-lit by New Year’s, but nobody believes them. Even if they could be prepared to turn the lights on in the 80% of the city that flooded, everywhere it flooded has to be re-wired and inspected before getting power back. And even if you can find an electrician able to schedule you in during the next year, it will cost you more than twice as much as it did three months ago.

Of course, with nearly half our housing stock destroyed or currently uninhabitable, prices have soared so people can’t afford to return. Perhaps they could if they could get their hands on the trailers or rental assistance that FEMA has promised, but for most of us, these things remain rumors or urban legends. Whenever we meet someone who has come by one of these mythical things, we surround them and pepper them with questions, trying to figure out what voodoo they worked to be so blessed. We reach out to touch them, hoping whatever magic they possess will somehow rub off on us.

Those of us with houses to rebuild wait on insurance companies that know that every day they delay paying us means more money for them. FEMA comes by and promises us loans to see us through, but then they disappear as well. I have yet to be inspected by my homeowners insurance, which is weird because surely they have less damage to worry about than the flood people. And even if the money does come through, do I have to lift my house or not? Will there be new flood levels or not? Nobody knows. Will I get to rebuild at all, or is my neighborhood going to be demolished? Nobody knows. Or if we do rebuild, will we be the only ones, a lone outpost surrounded by blight, stuck with a house in a neighborhood forgotten and left to rot?

Three months on, I still open the Times-Picayune everyday to find the “Katrina Lives Lost” column, a short biography of someone who died in the storm that runs on the front page of the “Living” section everyday. I’d call that ironic, but true irony requires a certain amount of self-awareness that the editors seem to be lacking. At any rate, there’s a new one everyday. Sometimes there’s a picture, sometimes not. Sometimes I can read them, sometimes not. At this rate, if they plan on doing everyone, they should be done in about three years.

Three months ago, the President said the country would do “whatever it takes” to rebuild the Gulf Coast. $200,000,000,000 was the price tag thrown around at the time, a number conveniently close to the amount we have spent on rebuilding Iraq. As of now, the Gulf Coast has received a $75,000,000 loan.

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, though. After all, the administration and Republicans in Congress are reeling from scandal to scandal and hardly have time to deal with us. If one isn’t admitting to taking $2.5 million in bribes, another is worried about being indicted for it. I’m sure it keeps them all busy trying to spin their way out an indictment for campaign fraud and money laundering or an indictment for lying to a grand jury, not to mention dealing with failed Supreme Court nominees, bringing forth specious Iraq war votes, and calling war veterans cowards. And I know the Vice President has his hands full making the case for torture.

Sorry if anyone is upset or offended because I pointed out that all these people are Republicans. It’s just that, well, they are.

All of this is happening while everyday in New Orleans we learn more that tells us Katrina’s devastation was less an act of nature, less God’s punishment on us wicked sinners, less only what we deserved for living below sea-level (doesn’t that sound an awful lot like the “she’s a slut who wore a tight skirt” rape defense?), and much more a man-made disaster. Leaving aside the criminally negligent governmental response, we have also been treated to more tidbits from the news lately. There’s a canal that cuts through New Orleans called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, or MR-GO, that everyone has said would worsen storm surge damage unless it was closed, and yet the Army Corps of Engineers continued to dredge it deeper. Sure enough, most of the levees that failed and flooded the city were on the inner ends of the MR-GO. The storm surge got channeled up the canal and boom! Also, the Army Corps of Engineers has been telling us that the flood walls had pilings driven 17 feet into the ground, which they claimed was enough but many other engineers disagreed. Now that those pilings are not so much in the ground anymore, turns out they only went 10 feet. Plus, letters have been found from the construction company hired to build the floodwalls to the Corps of Engineers saying the plans were inadequate, and yet the Corps insisted on their designs anyway. Then, back in the 90s when the Corps wanted to revamp parts of the levee system, the levee boards said no. As if that isn’t enough, it turns out the levee boards regularly cut short levee inspections so that they could go eat lunch.

What is it with government officials and eating? First Michael Brown, now the levee boards. Is it really that fucking hard to pack a damn sandwich?

In short, New Orleans wasn’t flooded by Nature, or God, or even simple bad luck. New Orleans was flooded by incompetence and corruption.

About a week ago, our legislators started talking about calling on New Orleanians to march on Washington to demand that Congress wakes up and pays attention and the President fulfills his promise. Why should we even have to consider that? No other major city has ever had to beg for help like this after a disaster.

Three months after there were bodies floating in our streets, how does it feel to be in New Orleans? Like we’ve been forgotten, and left to rot.

A Can Opener, Bay Leaves, and a Corkscrew

2005-11-30T08:57:00.000-06:00

About a month ago, I decided to take a road trip to Baton Rouge to acquire a can opener. My old can opener, along with many other things, rusted in the flood, and even if I could have turned the gears, I didn’t really think I wanted to eat anything coming even close to touching toxic flood rust. Besides, can openers are cheap and easy to come by. Weeks later, every trip to the grocery store ended the same – no can opener, no bay leaves, no corkscrew. All sold out. I’m not sure why bay leaves were the only thing in the spice aisle that was impossible to come by (they don’t come out of New Orleans, do they?), but after three weeks of only twist-off beer and wine, I’d had enough.

How ironic, by the way, that all those canned food drives wouldn’t have done me any good for lack of a simple, straight-forward, everyone owns at least two or three, can opener. What had cost a couple of bucks was now apparently worth its weight in gold. Not that I lined up for the free food handed out by the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and the hippies camping out in the park, passing out lentils to all comers because I can still afford my own food and there’s undoubtedly someone who could use it more.

So I drove the hour to Baton Rouge in quest of a can opener, bay leaves, and a corkscrew. When driving west from New Orleans, shortly after the airport, you will find yourself in the midst of a swamp. Normally, this means you drive down the unending low bridge cutting a lonely straight line through an impenetrable curtain of trees hung with Spanish moss. This time, however, it meant driving through bare sticks as far as could be seen. All the trees had been stripped of foliage and most of their branches by the winds of Katrina until nothing was left but nearly bare trunks with a few broken-off branches vainly trying to stretch out.

The I-10 is also generally a pretty busy stretch of road, since it is the only highway heading west from New Orleans. It still was busy and is also now a stretch of road without speed limits. Obviously, the state troopers have better things to do than hand out speeding tickets, and so, while I tooled along at a completely rational 85, people blew right past me, doing at least 100. The only thing that slowed us down slightly was the incredibly thick fog that engulfed me about halfway through and rendered the water and trees off the highway nearly invisible and trucks in front of my car unspottable save for their rear lights. While searching our way through that, we kept to an average velocity that somewhat resembled the speed limit. If you ever wanted to drive the Autobahn without the trouble of leaving the country, hit the I-10 between N’awlins and Red Stick.

Thanks to a combination of my “Dukes of Hazzard”-like driving skills and pure, miraculous dumb luck, I arrived alive in Baton Rouge in something slightly over 30 minutes. I took the opportunity to see “Serenity” (movie theaters have only just started opening in N.O.) which was really good and since I know you didn’t see it in the theater, rent it. Character-driven, action-packed, funny sci-fi western makes for a good movie – whoda thunk it?

Traffic in Baton Rouge these days is awful, no doubt because the number of New Orleanians now living in Baton Rouge at least equals but probably exceeds the number of New Orleanians living in New Orleans. Despite this, I persevered and eventually found a grocery store. I made my way straight for the utensil aisle, only to be met with empty pegs, lines after lines of them, a whole aisle of empty pegs, their useless labels declaring “blk cn opnr $7.99” or “rd crkscw $5.99.” The spice aisle had no more love for me. I did, however, secure the last available corkscrew in all of Louisiana by venturing to the wine aisle and grabbing the last one hanging there, which, all-in-all, made for a pretty successful 5 or 6 hours in current New Orleans time. Nothing’s easy in the Big Easy these days.
My mom dug up a can opener, and after hearing of my plight, Brooke assembled a box of emergency supplies and FedExed them to me. After said supplies spent two weeks languishing in a warehouse outside of town, I finally tracked them down and spent 3 hours driving around, talking to FedEx on the phone, and waiting in line. My patience was rewarded, though, and I got my excited little hands on the box. Now, I am proud to say that after 59 days back in New Orleans, I have a can opener, bay leaves, and a corkscrew.

Bourbon Street

2005-11-26T19:59:00.000-06:00

A Saturday morning not too long ago, I was on my way to meet up with Arwen in the Quarter to get some papers signed or talk house stuff or some official blah-blah-blah like that, and I figured I’d wander down Bourbon Street while I was at it. Not that anything ever happens on Bourbon before noon except for drunks stumbling out of bars, wincing at the sunlight, but these days we’ve still got the 2 a.m. curfew, so there wasn’t even that. No, I just wanted to check it out. So I’m wandering past the Cat’s Meow and the Funky Pirate and whatnot and I get hit with the overwhelming stench of stale beer, puke, and piss, and the first thought that popped into my head was, “Well, things are finally back to normal.”

See, the French Quarter has stank of sewage for weeks. You would have thought I had my face buried in roses I was so happy.

Shortly after I got back in town, some friends and I wandered down Bourbon Street at night, just to see how it fared, and basically it’s the same – at least, it’s still a bunch of people wandering up and down, getting drunk, trying to see inside the strip joints before committing to going in; it’s just a lot less crowded than usual. Well, plus there’s National Guard standing around, which is admittedly unusual, but if the cute blond one I gave my number to reads this, call me.

See, John stopped to take some pictures, and these four National Guard people were standing around, carrying very large weapons. As I’m waiting for John to finish the photos, this cute blond National Guardsperson catches my eye and sorta nods and calls out a hello. Imagine us standing about twenty feet away from each other, which is about as close as I wanted to get because did I mention the large weapons? Our conversation went something like this:

She: Hi.

Me: Hello.

She: How you doing?

Me: Okay. Well, as okay as can be expected considering all this.

She: Yeah.

Me: How about you?

She: I’m good.

At this point John finished and walked over.

Me: See ya.

She: See ya.

Me: I’m Dale, by the way.

And then I yelled my phone number at her. Slowly. Twice.

I would have scribbled my number on a napkin and given it to her, but I figured shouting my number was safer than actually approaching within, say, five feet or so.

Have you ever seen three large men in combat helmets laugh their asses off? It’s something to see. Also, I would have thought that a woman carrying a machine gun couldn’t actually blush, but I was wrong. At that point, my friends, also laughing hysterically, pulled me on down the street.

She still hasn’t called, but I remain optimistic.

Thanksgiving

2005-11-26T00:24:00.000-06:00

First off, sorry I've been M.I.A. for awhile. I've been meaning to update for some time, and it just keeps not happening. For instance, posting this has been on my to-do list all day, or all yesterday to be accurate because it's currently 22 minutes into tomorrow, but there was all this tv to watch so it has taken me some time to get to it. For a guy without a job, I'm a terribly busy person. However, in an effort to get some semblance of structure back in my life, I'm making a resolution to post everyday, at least until I get all caught up with the stuff I'm planning on putting here, and if I don't, feel free to send digitally bitch-slap me. Clearly, I just need a little discipline.

Anyway, recently I had to work up a depressingly extensive list of everything that I had lost to the flood for the insurance company, and I was planning on posting it here as well to record it for posterity or something like that. On the other hand, we just passed Thanksgiving, so in the spirit of that holiday and for the sake of naming every new post after a holiday, I've instead decided to post a list of things that either didn't get lost to the flood or I was able to salvage, so here it is folks -

Dale's Official List of Things He's Thankful Didn't Get Lost to the Flood

My motorcycle boots. I know I mentioned them earlier, but you just can't appreciate a good pair of boots enough, especially when you spend a fair amount of time wading through muck, mud, and trash.

The bass, of course. Where else could I get an '80s Def Leppard black Ibanez with custom spray paint and stickers, a buzzy A string, a blown pick-up and a cord jack in desperate need of replacement? Nowhere, man, nowhere.

Four original works of art. I have two paintings by my friend Laura (hi Laura!) that lived with me in the French Quarter. When she left, I begged to keep her paintings she had hung on our wall and she let me! I've had them ever since and they didn't go to the house and are fine, and the same goes for the paintings Drew and Kristin gave me.

All my wine and liquor glasses, especially the brand new martini set from Brooke and the hand-painted wine glasses from Kate. I honestly don't remember if the boxes they were packed in got left behind somehow, or if they were on top of the pile and I grabbed them and moved them back, but for the five weeks of evacuation I assumed they were lost and yet when I got back to my unflooded apartment, there were the still taped-up and perfectly fine boxes. Should I be concerned that among my prized possessions are the glasses I drink booze out of? Perhaps, but that's a worry for another day.

Speaking of booze - my old Soviet Union flask with the symbol of the Russian equivalent of the National Guard on it and a bust of Lenin on the cap. I wouldn't drink out of it, 'cause there ain't no cleaning that I would trust after it floated in toxic flood water for three weeks, but I did clean it off and it makes a good mantel knick-knack.

Boxes of pictures. For some reason when I was moving everything from the apartment closet to the house, I didn't move the boxes of pictures. Why I do not know, but while I did lose some pictures, most of them are perfectly fine.

My computer. Oh, sweet sweet laptop, how I love thee. I just threw it in a bag and brought it with me, so all my writing survived. I know writers who lost more stuff than I want to think about, including one who was always so sure to back everything up, but it doesn't matter how many hard drives and disks and cds you have stuff on if it all ends up under water, and he lost a whole novel. I get nauseous just thinking about that.

Albus, the super kitty. Well, actually he's a full-blown cat by now, but he evacuated with me and only just got back. I didn't bring him with me when I first returned because I didn't know what shape things would be in and it's one thing to return home myself, and another to subject an innocent, unsuspecting cat to who knows what kind of flooded-out, zombie-ridden disaster.

New Orleans. Seriously, I am so thankful I had the opportunity to live in this most glorious city before the flood. So many little unique things about the city survived (though just as many were lost) and I'm thankful for each and every one of them, which will all hopefully get dutifully recorded here as the weeks and months go by. Now I get the chance to rebuild this wonderful, magic place and make it stronger, faster, better, and for that I am truly, deeply thankful.

Okay, so there you go, things I'm thankful for. For the next post, I promise we will return to our regularly scheduled anger and bitterness. Until then, try not to eat too much leftover turkey.

Halloween

2005-11-14T17:44:00.000-06:00

New Orleanians will take any opportunity to dress up in costume and parade around the city - it's just something we do. So, obviously, Halloween is a pretty big deal around here, and when I heard that a couple of parades were planned, I jumped into action. For the first parade, I just grabbed the costume stuff that didn't get ruined and wore that; you know, your standard tux with tails jacket, funky purple pants, and a boa. For the second, I was a little more organized and spelled out FEMA on my chest with white tape and then wrapped myself in red tape - many, many people took pictures of that costume. Along with the usual sexy nuns and witches and whatnot, a lot of Katrina-themed costumes were on hand. Duck-taped refrigerators strolled down Bourbon Street, as well as Mold Man, FEMA checks, and the Ninth Ward Swim Team. One of my favorites was a woman dressed as the water line - a fuzzy black line across her chest, and then dirt and mud and yuck below. My friend Charles wore a tail and ears and drew an SPCA "X" on his chest, and Anne dressed as a sexy Red Cross nurse complete with pill bottles of various anti-depressants attached to her belt (if only the Red Cross were really so helpful). I ran into a lot of friends and couldn't actually ever walk very far without getting stopped by someone I knew and then we would have to have the conversation we all have these days - how'd you do, what did you lose, staying or going? It was good to see so many people and hear everyone's plans for staying.

So both walking parades wound through the Quarter, stopping at a few bars along the way, though one was longer and actually started in the Treme (lakeside of the Quarter) and ended up in the Marigny (downriver from the Quarter). There weren't too many of us at first, but our numbers quickly swelled as we stumbled along. It probably took us about three hours to wander the entire route, and I was quite glad I wasn't wearing, oh, high heels or swim fins. (I was in my trusty motorcycle boots - happy feet!) The Soul Rebels brass band played, which was very cool of them because they're too big to do street parades anymore, but they made an exception for us. Our King was an older gentleman dressed as a skeleton whose name I didn't catch, but he never evacuated, at all. Been in New Orleans the entire time.

I should explain here that, along with Mardi Gras Indians and the Mardi Gras parades, there's another tradition in New Orleans. African-American New Orleanians dress up as skeletons and walk the streets in the wee hours of the morning banging bones and shouting. It's often a family tradition passed down from fathers to sons. Anyway, our King was a leader of this tradition, and it was very cool to have him.

We also had a Queen and a Princess, Katrina & Rita, of course, though since we didn't have floats, they just got pushed around in shopping carts. They were dressed in full bondage gear, armed with whips, and mean. My ass was whipped too many times to count, and that was before we even got to Mimi's where the parade ended. We were there for all of five minutes when a transformer right on the corner exploded in a shower of sparks and the bar lost power, not that it stopped them from continuing to fuel us with booze. Let's see, what else happened? I kept running into this woman named Liz in drink or bathroom lines all night because we clearly had similar priorities, and she gave me some purple and black lipstick to replace what I had left on plastic cups throughout the Quarter because clearly we have similar tastes in make-up, though unfortunately it was immediately lost again when the Princess kissed me a few minutes later. Then I got to brag about being kissed by the Princess for awhile. Our Queen jumped up on a military Humvee and gave an impromptu speech about taking our city back and not letting even the worst natural disaster in our country's history keep us down, and we all cheered and applauded like crazy, and then she grabbed the nearest National Guard guy and made out with him, wrapping her legs around him and dragging him up on the hood of the Humvee and we all cheered and applauded all the more. And then the party really got going.

Man, I love this town.

[Insert Extremely Foul Language Here]!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-11-08T16:36:00.000-06:00

I finally got internet access at home again (though Cox has sent me bills for a couple of months, which I have ignored), and I was looking forward to adding a bunch of posts about some good things from the past couple of weeks, like Halloween and Bourbon Street and running down St. Charles for the first time in two months, but then ...

I lost my job.

It was apparently a complete culling of all faculty not tenured or tenure-track. In the English department, it wasn't just me, but also people who had been at Loyola for 30 years. All of us, laid off, let go, fired, shit-canned, choose your euphemism. I suppose I should've seen it coming, but when I went to the meeting called by the Dean a few weeks ago and he assured us that the faculty were the heart of the institution, I made the error of believing him.

So now I join the vast majority of New Orleanians who didn't just lose homes and all their stuff, but their livelihood. I quite honestly don't have any idea what I do from here because it's not like any of the other universities in New Orleans are hiring. Go back to waiting tables? Secretarial work? That made me want to put a bullet through my brain; that's why I quit.

When I came to New Orleans seven years ago, I realized within a month or two that the place I wanted to teach here was Loyola. I did everything people do in order to get the job they want - I worked other schools and other places to get the experience necessary, and I worked as an adjunct at Loyola to get my foot in the door and turned down other job offers in order to keep it there, and I finally got the dream job.

And it's not just that. It's also that - I also saved and did without and kept my credit ridiculously clean so I could buy a house, 'cause that's what we're supposed to do, isn't it? Go to college and get an education and work hard to get the good job and buy a house and welcome to the American Dream, right? I even went into education, which I love doing, and even usually bit my tongue while lawyers and doctors and whatnot waxed eloquent over how noble my profession is when all I really wanted to say was, "Noble-schmoble, just buy me a drink, ya rich jerk." And I finally get there.

For all of a month.

I know, I know, you're thinking I should stop the self-pity. I'm actually not feeling that; it's more a sense of betrayal, though who exactly betrayed me I don't know. The American Dream? Some sort of nebulous societal promise, like hard work equals success? God? (Though having my house swamped because of an "act of God" stings less than having my house swamped because of incompetent levee building and management, and losing my job because of an "act of God" would sting less than losing it because of the actions of extremely well-paid administrators at a Jesuit university, though why I continue to expect Christian institutions to act, oh, Christian, I don't know.)

Okay, sure I'm something of a trouble-maker and I should probably learn to keep my mouth shut every now and again, but I basically played by the rules, and this is what I get. I mean, I want to stay in the city and help it re-build, but damn they're making it hard. It makes me want to sell everything, buy a big van, and go on the road with a stinky punk band. Or go out into the middle of nowhere and live in a tent. Or squat in some abandoned building and steal electricity, water, food, and cable. Or figure out how to hack computers and steal credit information and live off that.

Anyway, so that's why I'm not telling you about Halloween and other cool things today. Maybe tomorrow. After I figure when and where and how to sign up for unemployment.

Fuck me. It'll get funny eventually, right?

Every Little Tit Helps

2005-10-26T15:28:00.000-05:00

So this terrible disaster happens to New Orleans and you consider helping but you ask yourself, “What has New Orleans ever done for me?” Certainly a legitimate question. In the broad scope, that question asks, “Why rebuild?” Yes, we’re below sea level – why the hell would you even consider rebuilding a city below sea level stuck between a huge lake and the biggest river in the country, not to mention it’s right off the hurricane-prone Gulf?
Let me offer a couple of answers. Assuming Dennis Hastert’s state of Illinois wishes to continue to enjoy the benefits of gas, he damn well better consider rebuilding New Orleans, because the pipeline that feeds the entire Midwest comes right through here. If you want gas in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, etc. than you have to talk to us. So, Dennis, if you don’t think it’s worth rebuilding us, then perhaps we’ll shut down the pipeline and leave you without gas. Suck exhaust fumes, ya jerk.
Another reason to get New Orleans back to its old self again – food. We’re a port city and tons of the produce from the Midwest goes through, oh, I don’t know, let’s guess, New Orleans? Bingo! It gets shipped down the Mississippi and out from here. Plus, fully one-third of the coffee in the U.S. comes in through New Orleans and we will cut you off from your Colombian super dark French roast double latte if you’re not nice.
If that still isn’t enough, if it isn’t enough that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast gave us jazz and the blues, we have one last thing that we have given you, and that’s women showing their breasts for worthless plastic beads. I know this rather dubious practice has spread from here to many places in the U.S., not to mention other countries (ever been to Cancun?), as I have witnessed it in many places. Why people hand out beads when it isn’t a Mardi Gras parade is beyond me, but whatever. I think every male I’ve told I live in New Orleans at some point or another leans in and asks me, “So, do women really show their tits?” Yes, I tell them, yes, they do. Think of it what you will, but if you’ve ever seen it, if you’ve ever hoped to see it, if you’ve ever displayed yourself for plastic baubles or intend to some day, or if you’ve ever seen pictures on the web, you have New Orleans to thank for that, and now it’s time to give back.
There is a website, Boobs for Bourbon Street – no, seriously, I couldn’t make this up - that is asking people to donate to various charities and in return for doing so, grants access to pictures sent in anonymously of women and men displaying their chests for charity. All you have to donate is 5 or 10 bucks, and the last I saw was that the site had raised over $30,000. A drop in the bucket to be sure, but appreciated nonetheless. Their goal is $100,000. So what has New Orleans given you? Nakedness, my friends, nakedness. While I certainly don’t condone this behavior in any way, I do condone giving to charity, and if it takes boobs to get there, then I’m all for it. In that spirit, Gavin and I went to Bourbon Street the other day, stripped off our shirts, and took a picture beneath an actual Bourbon Street sign. I sent it in to the site, but to see it you will have to give. So go and donate, my friends, be it money, boobs, or better yet both, because every little tit helps.

It Takes a Village to Get a Refrigerator

2005-10-26T14:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a day all about refrigerators. First off, my friend Lucia found an apartment, and the landlords had even purchased a new refrigerator for it, though it was sitting in a store and needed to be picked up. Lucia doesn't have power at this point, so the refrigerator is sorta theoretical, but we didn't want to take the chance that someone else might come along and offer the store twice as much money so they could have it. Also, Gavin and Allison had ordered one and it was ready to be picked up as well. They tried to have it delivered, but when they asked when that would happen, they were told, "Uh, December?" Okay, so, no delivery, no problem, just assemble the troops and go to it. We spent all day driving around in this rental truck that Gavin and Allison drove in from Houston picking up refrigerators, which were unbelievably heavy to put on the truck, and unbelievably heavier to get off, since we didn't have the help of the guys at the store at that point. Nonetheless, it was very exciting and all the neighbors would come out to offer help and marvel over the working refrigerator, like we live in the Third World where the whole village would come over and throw a party because some tribal elder managed to get his hands on one.
As if that weren't enough, yesterday I ordered a whole pizza at Slice on St. Charles for myself because I wanted the leftovers. The waitress was boxing it up for me and said, "So, you've got a working refrigerator?" I told her I did and she told me about how her landlord expected her to deal with the old one AND to buy a new one, which is just an unbelievably crappy move on the landlord's part. There wasn't much I could do, so I gave her a seven dollar tip on an $18 bill. Lucia later told me that what the landlord is doing is illegal (and she's a lawyer, so she knows), so if I see that waitress again, I'll tell her to call the bar association.
Here's a fun science project for the kids - unplug the refrigerator and leave it that way for five weeks. No fair emptying it out first; that's cheating. Then, open it up if you dare, and see what's grown on the inside. I recommend wearing a respirator and heavy gloves, and arming yourself with some serious bug spray. Discover wonderful new smells! Next, take samples and try to identify all the different kinds of molds and fungi that now call your refrigerator home. It's fun for the whole family and you'll learn all kinds of interesting stuff! Bonus points if you duck tape it closed and put it out in front of your house for three more weeks and live out of a cooler for that real New Orleans feel.

FEEBLE

2005-10-26T14:09:00.000-05:00

FEMA sucks. Now, I know I'm not as bad off as some, but it's been what - four weeks? five? - since they promised us rent money and I still haven't gotten it. I'm okay without it for now, since my mortgage is deferred until December and my landlord didn't double my rent or evict me (an all-too common situation around here), but once December comes, I can't afford both the mortgage and rent, so FEEBLE better get their act together. A couple of weeks ago, I tried calling (it took hours to get through) and the woman on the other end of the line didn't know what I was talking about when I asked about the rent assistance, then complained that I kept cutting out and told me to stop moving or call back on a land-line. I explained I was A) sitting quite still on my porch and B) no land-lines were working in New Orleans. She had no explanation for why I wasn't getting the assistance, though I don't really think she ever understood what I meant, and when I kept asking questions, she told me to write a letter to FEMA. I then had to explain to her that there was no mail service in New Orleans. To this, she brilliantly responded, "Oh." Since she had absolutely no answers to any of the questions I asked, I said, "Thank you for being no help whatsoever," and hung up. My friends have had no better luck. One was even told that if she got angry, FEEBLE wouldn't help her at all. But she got his name and his supervisor's name, so I hope the son-of-a-bitch gets fired.
Speaking of FEEBLE sons-of-bitches, if you didn't see in the news the latest on Michael Brown, let me inform you. This FEMA representative, Marty Bahamonde, testified before Congress last week and was the only person from FEMA in New Orleans during the hurricane. I'll let the fact that he was the only FEMA person in New Orleans as the hurricane was approaching, which directly contradicts Brown's claims to have had teams of people here, pass without comment. Anyway, Bahamonde repeatedly sent Brown news of just how bad things were on a Blackberry (apparently the only line of communication that worked). Brown never responded to any of them, though Bahamonde did produce an email he got from Brown's press secretary saying that Brown needed time to dine at a restaurant "of his choice" (I particularly love that part) and that since traffic in Baton Rouge was so bad because of evacuees, it would take longer than usual. Bahamonde sent a response that read "tell him I just ate an MRE and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome with 30,000 of my close friends," so Bahamonde could certainly understand Brown's worries over dinner.
In all seriousness, can't we arrest Brown and charge him with something? Negligent homicide springs to mind. I know it won't stick, but I'd at least like to see him arrested and charged so he would have to defend his actions in court, and in the meantime hopefully he'll get some choice of food in prison before crapping on camera with thousands of his close inmates.

The Stick and the String

2005-10-26T14:03:00.000-05:00

So my friends Kate and Dominic moved from Alabama to San Antonio for Dominic's military training, and now they're heading to Nebraska where he's going to be stationed. They started up this blog, The Stick and the String, to keep connected with their friends and 'cause I don't think Kate had a lot to do and was kinda bored. Anyway, I pretty much got the idea for this from them, so go and check out their blog sometime - it has a lot more pictures and stuff, plus they're funny and not nearly as pissed off as I am.

I Got Mail! I Got Mail! YAAAAY!!

2005-10-15T13:07:00.000-05:00

Okay, perhaps that doesn't seem terribly exciting to you, but actually coming back to the apartment and finding mail waiting in the mailbox was pretty damn exciting for me. After five weeks of exile, and another week and a half of life in the recovery zone, those bills were one of the sweeter sights of my life. A couple of days ago I went to pick up some mail from the house, and all these people from my area were standing in line, comparing notes. It was actually pretty heartening, seeing all these strangers from Mid-City getting their mail, making plans, seeing each other for the first time in over a month, just coming back. Plus, the cute and very armed postal inspector woman talked to me. By the way, why are all postal inspectors women? Every one I've seen, literally, has been a woman. It's a bit odd. Not that I mind, since this is a heavily, heavily male city these days. Think about it - we're a city of military and construction workers, so if you're single and a woman, New Orleans is the place to be right now.
New signs of life in New Orleans show up everyday - more restaurants open, more businesses get up and running, more people come back. Gavin and Allison have phone, cable, and high-speed internet, so I spend a lot of time at their place these days. It is entirely possible to live an almost normal life here these days, though the grocery stores close at six (and the meat section still kinda smells, underneath the sting of cleansers - yay for vegetarianism!). They just extended the curfew to 2 in the open parts of the city, and I was able to get my car towed this morning. It wouldn't start last night, and today she's off to the mechanic. Now, I have really enjoyed my cars, the Karmann Ghias, the Mustang, the motorcycle, but I'm not exactly a car buff. Still, evacuate for your life in a car, spend five weeks basically living where she can take you, and then the sight of her being towed away can be a little bit heart-breaking, though I'm really, really glad the city is up and running enough so that I could get her towed and fixed. Of course, there's still police problems, money problems, politician problems, but those will wait for another post.
By the way, I'm going to add some photos to the other posts, so check 'em out when you get the chance.

Republicans - Stupid, Mean, or Both?

2005-10-15T13:03:00.000-05:00

I consider myself a fairly equal opportunity ranter. While some have accused me of attacking Republicans, I think if you look back at my actual attacks, they’re pretty even. I think by name (and I didn’t go back to check), I have blamed Blanco, Landrieu, Bush, Rice, Brown, Nagin, & Hastert, which makes for a Democrat, another Democrat, a Republican, another Republican, an I-don’t-know-but-presume-Republican, a third Democrat, and an asshole that happens to be a Republican. But now, I have to attack the one party because they have gone beyond the pale.
First off, the Republican leadership in the House pushed through an energy bill which was rightly criticized as a big hand-out to big oil that stripped away environmental regulations and did nothing to lower gas prices at the pump. For me, right now, in particular terms, that means that the environmental regulations that were slowing, not stopping, not even close to stopping, but at least slowing a little bit the wholesale destruction of the wetlands -- which act as a buffer between the coast of Louisiana and New Orleans that slows down and greatly decreases a hurricane’s strength -- are gone. It was the oil companies dredging, stripping, canaling, etc. of these wetlands that made us so particularly vulnerable. There’s a reason that the levees were designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, and that’s because when we had the wetlands, the storms would weaken before they got to us. Tennessee doesn’t worry about Category 5 hurricanes because there’s a hell of a lot of land in between them and the coast. Land does wonders to suck the strength from a hurricane. There used to be a hell of a lot of land between New Orleans and the coast, too, but now – not so much. So the Republican leadership in their infinite wisdom kept a five-minute vote open fifty minutes until they could, I don’t know, whip and batter or whatever it is they do two Republicans into changing their votes on a bad energy bill that has guaranteed Louisiana will lose more wetlands, all while the government is supposedly preparing to send us millions, if not billions, of dollars to fix those same wetlands. So, let’s get this straight. You’re spending billions to fix the hurricane damage that was worsened by the environmental damage already there while making it easier to cause further environmental damage. Um, what? That ain’t nothing but stupid.
And it’s one thing to screw us over because you’re stupid, it’s another to screw us over because you’re mean, and that’s the only way to look at what the Republican leadership in the Senate did. Let’s see, after a disaster, the federal government loans money to the affected regions with the understanding that they will try their best to pay it back, but if they can’t, the loan will be forgiven. Always has, and moreover, always will. Well, except for this once. Just this once, the Gulf Coast MUST pay it back, no chance of forgiveness. Miami wasn’t required to do that after Hurricane Andrew, New York wasn’t required to do that after 9-11, New Hampshire isn’t going to be required to do that after those floods, just us. Landrieu was right to protest as strenuously as she did, though she could have finessed it better politically, but Vitter just proved himself a lapdog of his party by rolling over and letting his state get screwed. (Side criticism – Vitter - it’s one thing to win, and then it’s another to go on and criticize your fellow Senator after the fact. First off, it’s unhelpful, when a united front is desperately needed in an unprecedented disaster. Also, in football it’s called “taunting” and draws a flag. In elementary school, it’s called being a bad sport and gets you a time-out. So Vitter, grow up already.) And I won’t even mention the apparently non-existent (and Republican) Senators of Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama who apparently think the appropriate response to a spanking from the leadership of their party is to say, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
Not to mention the Senators that are saying we shouldn’t get any money because Louisiana is too corrupt to handle it. Specifically, I’m talking about Larry Craig (Idaho Republican), Tom Tancredo (Colorado Republican) and Susan Collins (Maine you-get-the-pattern), all of whom have said something along those lines. Now, I’m not going to defend corrupt Louisiana politicians, of which we’ve had more than our fair share, but I am going to point out that fears of corrupt Louisiana politicians absconding with money are just plain stupid. First off, because most of our corrupt politicians are currently in jail. Secondly, because accusing all Louisiana politicians of being corrupt is simply stereotyping, and stereotyping for any reason (racial, gender, whatever) is self-evidently ignorant. And finally, because FEMA has whole squads of auditors that track what happens to the money, except for when they’re handing out no-bid contracts to Halliburton. Oh wait, sorry, that’s corruption on the federal level by Republicans, which is clearly totally different. Speaking of corruption, let me throw out just a handful of names here that you may be familiar with – Delay, Frist, Libby, and Rove. Let’s see, besides being indicted or investigated, what else do they all have in common besides not being from Louisiana? And one last word for Craig in particular, who echoed Hastert when he said we should abandon whole sections of New Orleans. First off, who the hell does he think he is to tell us what to do? And secondly, he singled out the Lower Ninth Ward when saying it, which as you might have heard, is predominantly poor and black. Now why would he single out that neighborhood as opposed to Lakeview, which flooded just as bad but happens to be predominantly middle class and white? Not that I’m saying Larry Craig the Republican Senator from Idaho is a racist jerk, I’m just implying it.Which is all to say, the balance of the criticism has definitely shifted. Nevertheless, if at the next election you think to yourself, “You know what I want to do with my vote? I want to fuck Dale over,” then by all means, vote Republican. But you had better be prepared to defend that vote, and you better have a better reason than because boys kissing makes you feel icky.

Proud to Swim Home

2005-10-02T15:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, actually I just drove my car, but I couldn’t resist. For those non-New Orleanians, we’ve got bumper stickers down here that read “New Orleans, Proud to Call it Home.” I’ve seen lots of variations, my favorites being “Proud to Crawl Home” and “Proud to Brew at Home.” Speaking of which, I’m hopeful that my beer brewing equipment will be able to be bleached safe. We shall see.
Drove in with Darv on Saturday. He needed to be picked up because he and Amy got evacuated from Tulane Hospital so they were without a car or their cat. Luckily, their landlord stuck around and kept the cat fed. They were stuck in the hospital for days. At first it was great – a chef was there and cooked them a fabulous meal on Monday night and everyone had wine, but then the water came up and they couldn’t leave. The generator got flooded so they lost power and were stuck in the dark with desperately ill patients and little ability to care for them. It’s best to not even think about the bathrooms. They could see people wading through the water below, and the private security guards broke out the machine guns and kept anyone going by at gunpoint until they passed. They were told they were being evacuated on Thursday and were taken to a parking garage where they waited all day until the helicopters stopped flying. So they had to spend the night on the parking garage under guard. That was the night the refinery blew up around 3 in the morning, which, well, woke them up. They got out Friday, got decontaminated somewhere, and eventually ended up with Darv’s family in North Carolina.
Anyway, I grabbed him and saw Amy for the first time since this all began – it was good to see familiar and much-missed faces, but Darv and I had to keep going. About the time we hit Mississippi we started seeing the devastation. Whole stands of trees, a cluster of twenty or thirty, would be on the ground. We saw giant trees ripped up by the root and others snapped in half. Highway signs were blown off or broken so we had to count exits on the map to figure out where we were. We’d occasionally pass towns where houses were knocked over and walls torn away, and saw a lot of “blue roofs,” the temporary tarping job the Corps of Engineers is doing. When we got about halfway over the Lake Pontchartrain causeway (actually a bay, for the geographically persniketty), New Orleans appeared in the mist. We could see buildings standing, and I said, “Well, she’s still there, so there’s that.” There’s a hotel right where the Causeway hits the Orleans side and half of its windows were blown out. As we drove into New Orleans proper, it just got worse and worse. We saw the ripped up Superdome and all the tall buildings with their windows gone, not to mention the trash, the branches, and the downed power lines everywhere.
It’s anything but a ghost town, though. Their were military and cops everywhere, plus everyone there to clean up and the returning residents. I dropped Darv off at his car in the garage near the hospital. That was very creepy – no lights, nobody there, just all these abandoned cars. I don’t think anything says post-apocalyptic U.S. better than a dead parking garage. Darv went to check on the cat and I went to Molly’s.Yes, Molly’s was open and I met Arwen there. I had a cold beer and chatted with people – the place was packed. Coop’s next door wasn’t open, which was too bad, but I’ve heard it’s since opened up. Two or three other bars on that street were open, and people were everywhere on Bourbon Street. They even had the rainbow balloons up. The whole place stinks of sewage, though. Some places are worse than others, but whiffs of it reach everywhere. On our way out of the Quarter to see the house, I paused to take a picture of the bra hanging on one of the horse-hitches, ‘cause hey, the Quarter lives.

Table One

2005-10-01T18:40:00.000-05:00

After the house run, I made my way to my apartment, which was fine. The ceiling leaked a little in one spot and some leaves had been blown in under the door, but that was pretty much it. The lights came on and the water ran, though I couldn’t drink it. The refrigerator was another story. I was very lucky because I had nothing left in it except some leftovers, so it was basically salvageable. Also, it was running, so all the mold died when the refrigerator kicked back in and it didn’t get very far. Nevertheless, I just shut the door and figured I would tackle that later. Most other people aren’t even opening their refrigerators, which I definitely recommend. Don’t open it. Ever. You can tell who has come back when you drive down the streets and see the duck-taped refrigerators on the curb. I cranked the air conditioning and flushed the toilet, not that it needed it but it gave me great joy just because I could. So the apartment is fine and I just moved back in.
After that, I headed off to Gavin and Allison’s, who had come in from Houston and were cooking dinner. So I’m driving down Magazine Street, which is lined with restaurants, shops, and bars, all boarded up, and I see this woman. I think, “Hmm, she’s pretty,” which goes to prove Allison's theory at least one reason why being back home is soooooo good; namely, the poeple in New Orleans are prettier than the ones in Houston. Sorry, Houston, I haven't been and so can't opine one way or the other, but that's what Allison says.
Then realize the woman standing outside the restuarant is Kelly who teaches at Loyola with me. I couldn’t believe it, screamed out the window and pulled over. Turns out, she and her husband live nearby and the restaurant, Table One, was open. The bar Kelly’s husband Colin managed got about nine feet of water, so they walked in and he asked if they needed help. Not surprisingly, they needed a lot, so he’s got a job. We went in, had a drink and caught up. I’ve been back almost every day because you can get a salad, and you have no idea how exciting a salad is when there aren’t any open grocery stores. There are a couple of other places on Magazine open (the Balcony, the Bulldog, the Rendez-Vous, Les Bon Temps Roule), but they just have bar food if they have food at all. And you can get a pancake, eggs, and bacon at Slim Goodies, but they don’t have liquor and believe me, liquor is very important these days. Since I don’t like driving far, partly because there’s still an 8 o’clock curfew, my life in New Orleans these days is pretty much kept to the stretch of Magazine between my apartment and Gavin and Allison’s house, but that stretch is hopping. Anywhere that’s open is constantly packed, so hopefully other businesses will hurry up and get back here.

Operation Bass Save

2005-10-01T18:00:00.000-05:00

Operation Bass Save

Okay, so the house. First off, while most of the houses around us had the spray-painted “X” ours did not. They must of looked in, saw we were renovating and nobody lived there and moved on. Thankfully, all the “X”s had a 0 in the body spot. If you don’t know how those work, I’ll pass it along, ‘cause I’m now someone who does know. Generally, and it varies a bit, the idea is the left side of the X carries an abbreviation of who checked the house, the top is the date when the house was checked, the right indicates if the house was entered or not and if there are structural problems, and the bottom is the number of bodies found. Again, a big “0” at the bottom of the “X” on all of the houses on my block.
We could see the water line on the front of the house. There was six or seven feet of flooding and it had peaked about two or three feet up from the floor level. I couldn’t get the key to turn in the front door lock, so I went around the back of the house. From my backyard I could see some houses that had been opened up by falling trees – you can see right into one because its back wall no longer exists. A tree came down in the backyard of the place next to mine, but thankfully (for me) it fell the other way. I got the key turned in the back door, but the water had swelled the door shut. After much kicking, I finally got it open.
So I was in the midst of moving from my apartment to the house, and had boxes and boxes and boxes of books and cds and dvds and kitchen stuff in the house. All on the floor. If you’ve ever wondered what happens to books when they spend a couple of weeks floating in toxic water, I’ll tell you. They turn into sludge that glues itself to the floor and then grow so much mold you can no longer tell what book they used to be. And they stink. Wow, do they stink. Of course, all the boxes and bags the books were packed in totally disintegrated, so the books, the cds, everything, floated about the house and came to rest wherever they were floating when the water finally receded. I put most of the boxes in the front room, and yet there were still books and bottles in the back rooms.We weren’t really equipped to spend any time there, so Arwen and I tromped through the house, quickly taking pictures. Since everything was on the floor, everything seemed ruined. The last thing I had done before leaving locking the house (five weeks and a day before I was able to get back) was to put the bass guitar on the stove which had just been delivered the day before and wasn’t even out of its box. The bass case was covered in mold. I opened it right there and, unbelievable, the bass was fine. Perfect. I grabbed it and we got the fuck out of there.

Evac 6, or Going Home 1

2005-09-19T20:40:00.000-05:00

Hey folks,
(Written on 9-18-05)
Okay, I admit it, I’ve been hiding for a week. Brooke brought me up to Jersey for a time, and I’ve been using it to chill. It’s been good. Everyone has been wonderful, and nobody seems to mind if I spend my time talking about this, which has been good. Therapeutic, I guess would be the word. Anyway, it’s been a week with as little stress as possible in this time. The deep breath before the plunge, I guess. So now the plan is, such as it is, to get back as soon as possible. Yes, I know, it’s dangerous, there isn’t any infrastructure or power or 911 service or potable water, yadda yadda yadda, I don’t care, I want to go home. I’ve spent enough time twiddling my thumbs. Eventually I have to go home and start cleaning up and the longer I wait, the worse it will be. So I’m going to head to Virginia over the weekend and load up on supplies – you know, rubber gloves and boots, respirators, that kind of thing – and then work my way back to New Orleans. I actually am pretty sure that my apartment has power – Gavin said Jackson Avenue has power, and I know there was a working traffic light at Prytania and Felicity, which puts my apartment one block east and three blocks west of power. Hell, I can power up with extension cords from there. My zip code isn’t one of the ones called for return by the mayor, but Gav and Allison’s is, and they are planning on returning on Wednesday for a recon mission. I’m FedExing them keys so they can check out my apartment and house, if they can. If all goes well, I should be back in about a week and a half or two weeks, just in time for my birthday, which I plan to spend at Molly’s trying to chat up the new bartender with the hurricane K. tattoo on her back.
(Written on 9-19-05)
See, it’s so impossible to make plans when they keep changing things on you everyday. Or, I should say, the weather. Hurricane Rita has thrown plans in disarray. I don’t know if Gav and Allison are still planning on trying to get back (still lots of “all circuits are busy” phone trouble, you know), but since the mayor is suspending his repopulation plan until Rita no longer threatens us, I don’t know what I’m doing. By the way, I checked the hurricane center’s website yesterday and they were tracking 7 storms – 7! Usually, it’s one or two. All I can say is, I’m so glad we have a president wise enough, smart enough, and brave enough to stand up to those silly 95% of scientists saying global warming is a serious problem and tell everyone that we need more study before we even know if global warming is happening let alone having an affect on the weather. Hurrah!
Anyway, hopefully my plan stays basically in place. Brooke and I went by the Red Cross today (she to volunteer, me to ask about volunteering, but the gov’t. won’t let the Red Cross into New Orleans yet). So instead of letting me volunteer to do whatever in N.O. when I get back, they gave me money, which I intend to use on those afore-mentioned rubber boots, gloves, etc. – whatever it takes to get the muck out of my house and gut it, which, assuming the foundation is still sound, is I’ve been told the only way to stop the mold from taking over. So, I guess the plan remains essentially the same, though possibly delayed.
Meanwhile, Brooke doesn’t have cable so I’ve been getting all my news off the web. Speaking of which, nola.com is putting out the N.O. Times-Pic, and I definitely recommend it as a news source, especially an article titled “Needs and resources out of sync.” I know everyone is a little sick of the bitching, but it’s a good run-down of who was supposedly responsible for what and where things went wrong. Similarly, Salon.com has a pretty extensive timeline of the disaster. Good resources for everyone. For the locals, or those interested, Gav mentioned that MSNBC has some flyover pictures. Very detailed pictures of the flood that you can search by street. Believe it or not, beyond the photos of the devastation, they have a photo centered on my house. On it you can focus on my house to the extent that I can see my back porch and how the water (at the time the picture was taken) covered the floor of the porch but not the railing. So hey, I got that going for me. Seriously though, I’m one of the very, very lucky ones, so I have no personal complaints. Complaints on behalf of those not so lucky – that’s a-whole-‘nother story.
So I’m going to try to send shorter emails more often, and to that end, I’m bringing this one to a close, which has absolutely nothing to do with my desire to watch the Saints whup some N.Y. Giants butt.
Red beans and ricely yours,
Dale

Evac 5: Still Moving

2005-09-09T02:28:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,
Sorry it’s been so long since my last email. I had some busy days – first off, driving to Nashville and then on to Virginia, and then slogging through the bureaucracy of everyday life – calling the mortgage company, the insurance company, registering for FEMA, talking to credit card companies. “Putting my life back together,” as we call it, though honestly it seems like so much meaningless nonsense when I consider how many people can’t put their lives back together. Ever. I hate waking up. For a second or two, I don’t remember where I am or why I’m there and then it all comes back. It’s like it happens all over again every day. And then I just have to go on with my day anyway.
Which I do – the good news is Loyola got their website up and running and I found out I still have a job. Classes are cancelled until January, but they intend to reopen then. The campus is relatively unscathed.
Side note – as I write this, U2 just started playing the best song ever on the hurricane relief concert on tv.
So I’ve gotten through the short-term. I’m fed and sheltered, and yeah, it’s surreal that I needed to focus on that for awhile. Now I’m moving on to the middle-term (the long term being rebuilding New Orleans), which is what I’m going to do until January. What I want to do is get somewhere close so I can help. I know this is a longshot, but if anyone knows of an apartment I can rent for three months, maybe starting in October, somewhere nearby (Jackson, Nashville, Memphis, Houston, whatever), please let me know. Anyway, I’m going to be working on that for the next week or so. Gavin and Allison are in Houston or heading there (I haven’t talked to them in a couple of days – connecting isn’t easy). They’ve got an apartment and are going to see what they can do. Speaking of which, how is my cell phone working? I can call out but I don’t really know if calling in works – it’s XXXXX, by the way. Arwen’s in Nashville, and she’s getting in to New Orleans later this month to be a doctor.
Morgan Freeman quoting Faulkner – man will not just endure, but prevail. Very nice. Interesting to write this with the tv on – clearly I need some kind of real-time blog set up or something. “George Bush hates midgets.” Is that funny? I laughed, but I’m not sure. Jack Nicholson singing into a phone – that’s just weird. Hey, there’s the Foo Fighters – thank you, Dave. Ugh – Mariah Carey – where’s the mute?
Of course, what I really want to do is just go home. I found a website with maps and satellite photos and flood information which said my house had 6.3 feet of water – not sure how accurate that is, if it’s peak flooding, or updated information taking the receding into consideration. Here’s the site - http://mapper.cctechnol.com/floodmap.php. That gives hope for my bass guitar – my last gesture at hurricane preparedness was to put the bass on top of the brand-new stove not even out of the box, and then I locked the boarded-up door and left my house. That said, I know my apartment didn’t flood and while I know security was a serious problem, now it seems that’s under control, water is flowing (though undrinkable), and it seems like they could start letting us in sometime soon. Rebuilding is ultimately going to be a matter of all the residents getting back in and tackling their homes one at a time (we certainly don’t want New Orleans to get Wal-Marted and Disneyfied).
That’s something that I haven’t heard on the news, so I’ll mention it – the unbelievable amount of renovation that has been going on in New Orleans over the last seven years or so. The list of friends that have bought houses and renovated them – Gavin and Allison, Jen and Cesar, Janet and Monty, Erica, Gina, Gloria and John, I could keep going - that list is practically as long as my list of friends. The majority of us have done it, and now we have to do it all over again. But that’s what it’s going to take to rebuild New Orleans the way it should be done, with an understanding and love for what makes it special, so let’s get back in as soon as possible.
That said, the list of people that I know that aren’t coming back is also growing, and that makes me sad. Not that I blame them – it makes perfect sense – but I will miss them. Smuteye is a trio now, not a five-piece, but Smuteye still exists, and Darv promises he will keep sending us lyrics from North Carolina.
The strangest things hit me, like when I heard Coolbone’s version of “Keep on Using Me” (is that the right title?) as the background for a commercial and I had to stop what I was doing and just sit for a few minutes. Or today when I wanted to get a haircut. Normally, I’d call Jeni at Aidan Gill, which is this old-fashioned barbershop on Magazine right around the corner from my apartment where they give you Guinness or whisky while you’re waiting and still do hot shaves, which I always meant to do, and Aidan and the other men wear bowties. Plus, he’s Irish and throws a party every St. Patrick’s Day and the parade band makes a point of stopping and saluting him. And now I have no idea what happened to Jeni and her baby boy and so getting a haircut was clearly out of the question.
Meanwhile, Brownie is no longer in charge of the relief effort, which is a relief. They should just fire him, but now he’ll be in charge if Ophelia hits Florida – you have my sympathies, Florida. It’s infuriating to watch all these people (Bush, the Two Stupid Michaels, even Bush the First) saying not to point fingers and then in the next sentence pointing fingers at the state and city government, as if there isn’t plenty of blame to go around. Right, because we have to focus on the now, instead of what somebody did or didn’t do before the hurricane hit, before a disaster was declared and FEMA took charge (also before the hurricane hit, by the way). As if Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama aren’t in a constant struggle to see which is poorest and has the fewest resources. As if Mayor Nagin isn’t the only person, the only person, I’ve seen go on the media and take personal responsibility and admit he should’ve done more. Methinks people don’t want to cast blame because they are to blame.
I guess this is what happens when you put people who don’t believe in government in charge of the government. What was it Norquist said? A federal government so small it could drown in a bathtub. Fairly apt turn of phrase now, isn’t it? Oh, how I long for the days when the worst abuse of power, the thing that brought the government to a screeching halt in scandal, was a blow-job from an intern.
There I go again, ending on a sour note. I’ll try to avoid that next time. When I’m not feeling anger, or depression, or all those other stages of grief, I really do feel hopeful, and determined, and sure that we will get through this, and that maybe, maybe we’ll actually be a better nation and people because of it. But on that last part, probably not.
Anyway, thanks again for all the phone calls, emails, well-wishing and help. My love and appreciation go out to each and every one of you. More later - Dale

Evac 4: Bricks and Bouquets

2005-09-04T02:25:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,
Finally some good news is coming out of New Orleans, but it's still out-weighed by the bad. At least they're finally getting some people out of there, though again we've lost so many lives just because of the slowness of the help. Our airport is turned into a triage center, and I've heard that they're losing about a dozen patients a day while waiting for evacuation. But you don't need me to relay that, it's on the news. I have to send some thanks to CNN especially and the rest of the media for covering this, though also some criticism as today some anchor (blond & pretty - like that narrows it down - I don't remember the channel) saying something like "Help will arrive in New Orleans as early as tomorrow." AS EARLY? AS EARLY? There's nothing early about that. It's probably just a bad choice of words, but it does indicate some of the spin already going on and I want to make it clear that it's absolute bullshit. I saw some guy from FEMA saying today that nobody anticipated mutiple disasters at once, meaning both a hurricane and a levee breach. Absolute bullshit. We've been saying for years that if a major hurricane hit, the levees would breach. Don't believe it, and don't let them get away with those lies - it simply isn't true. Shortly after Ivan last year, the Times-Pic ran a seroes of articles detailing exactly what would happen, it I have to say it's remarkably similar to what is happening right now. As I was driving my folks out Sunday, I was saying, "Well, this is it - this is the one that leaves the city under 20 feet of water." If I knew it, the government and disaster planners damn well knew it too. So don't let them excuse the inadequacy of the rescue efforts with "we couldn't anticipate this" lies.
That said, I'm immensely relieved that they are finally getting people out of there. And I don't mean to minimize the tragedy in Biloxi and Bay St. Louis and everywhere else hit, it's just that New Orleans is what I know.
On a personal level, we still don't know exactly what we're going to do. Right at the moment, we've discovered that Danny Cupit, who owns this house we've been staying in for a week, has a tree down in his yard and can't get power back until the tree is gone. We've got power here, and he doesn't have power in his own home, so tomorrow we're going to go over and get rid of the tree. At this point, that's as far as plans extend. Gavin and Allison want to figure out a way to stay around here and help, as do I. How exactly, we don't know. Arwen is planning on making it back towards Baton Rouge or somewhere so she can be a doctor again. Today we sat in a gas line for about an hour and Salvation Army folks came by and gave us bottled water. At the moment, we're the people taking bottled water, but we want to become the people handing out bottled water. That said, we're not sure how to make that leap. My first thought is to do what Loyola needs me to do, be it mopping out dorms or what, but they can't get any word out. If anyone knows of a way to contact some of the people in charge at Loyola, please do so and have them contact me or relay a message.
I think I'm headed to Nashville soon, and from there on to Virginia. I don't know if I can make Nashville to Virginia in one go so if anyone is along the way and can put a refugee and his cat up for the night, we'd appreciate it. I'm going by Nashville because Arwen and I have to apply for FEMA help, because we're suddenly the people that do that. But the long term plan, such as it is, is to somehow get back here within striking distance of New Orleans so that first, I can volunteer and help in whatever way possible, and second, be on hand to get in and rebuild as soon as possible. Somewhere down the line I'll need a place to live around here, so if anyone knows of any possibilities, please let me know.
Gavin and I found some satellite photos of New Orleans on-line, and they're amazingly detailed. Here's the good news - Gavin and Allison's place looks okay. There's something we can't quite make out in the back corner of their house (a fallen tree? a trick of the light?) but their street is dry and their roof is there. We can even see Allison's car, which wouldn't start the morning they were evacuating. We also found my apartment - again, it looks okay. Assuming those places haven't been looted, things should be fine. Here's the bad news - my and Arwen's house appears completely flooded (sorry, Arwen). We can't see any sign of cars on the street anywhere near, and I think it's because they're entirely submerged. The house directly across the street from ours has a lower roof than ours and it appears to disappear into the water. All that said, it's just stuff. It can be replaced. There are no official reports of casualties from Louisiana, but the last estimate I heard was ten to fifteen thousand. That's so unimaginably bad, I can only hope it's wrong.
Oh, man. And now Rehnquist has died. It's not the straw that breaks the camel's back - the camel's back is already broken. I guess I feel like a dead horse getting beaten.
I don't really feel like going on with this email, but there are a few things that I promised myself to record, so I'll keep going.
First off, everyone from New Orleans knows Gambit, our weekly alternative newspaper, and knows how they had a weekly bit of "Bouquets and Bricks," where they reported on those who got thrown bouquets and those who got thrown bricks. By the way, Darv recently got a bouquet for helping the UNO newspaper get back up and running. So in an effort to keep that tradition going, here are my bouquets and bricks (probably more bricks than bouquets):
Bouquet: All of you. I have never, never, never seen such an outpouring of support in my life. I can't thank you enough, and I'm afraid I will probably have to call in all those offers of help on behalf of my city and the surrounding region.
Brick: The one-third of the New Orleans Police that basically deserted. New Orleans has always had a problem with corrupt and worthless police officers and now I guess we know who they are.
Bouquet: The two-thirds of New Orleans Police that have stayed through what can only be described as a hell beyond their worst imaginings. I have no idea what it would be like to be beseiged in an police station at night with no lights or water while getting shot at and then to have to go out and try to restore order. Why is it that the police officers and the soldiers on the front lines get paid so little while the politicians protected by those people get paid so much? Shouldn't the person taking the bullet get paid more than the person the bullet is being taken for?
Bouquet: Houston. As much as I hate Texas, you have apparently gone above and beyond in taking in and helping out those displaced by this hurricane.
Brick: Whatever college teams were playing their football game in the stadium next to the Astrodome when the Astrodome had to start refusing anymore refugees. Universities and colleges have been wonderful in their offers to take in students from New Orleans, but perhaps you should also consider cancelling your damn football games so people have shelter for a night.
HUGE BIG FUCKING BRICK: Condelezza Rice, for shoe shopping on Fifth Avenue yesterday. I read a report from a New York newspaper that said she was laughing it up at "Spamalot" Thursday and then spending thousands of dollars on expensive shoes Friday. I count myself unbelievably lucky to be the living owner of a single pair of shoes. (Why didn't I save my cherished motorcycle boots? they're just boots, but they have stomped the terra with me for a dozen years - it's a little thing, but damn I loved those boots.) As far as I am concerned, she should be drummed out of office for gross negligence. Apparently when Bush said "everyone is working around the clock" he wasn't referring to his Cabinet. Rice's next job should involve a paper hat and include saying "would you like fries with that?" That's apparently about the responsibility she can handle (no offense to fast food workers).
Bouquet: Harry Connick, Jr. He got in and organized a benefit. I hope you all saw it. It was nice to know that somebody was attempting to do something.
Brick: President Bush. Harry Connick Jr. beat you into the city. The guy got in a car and drove into the city before you could get off your ass and call in the best resources available to the world and stop by. And you show no embarassment. Your shamelessness in the evidence of your own incompetence knows no bounds.
Brick: Dennis Hastert. Again. When Congress is voting on emergency relief funds for the Gulf Coast, you're in bumfuck Illinois passing out over a million dollars in pork money saying, "Illinois is finally getting their fair share."
Brick (sorry, I've run out of bouquets): Congressional Republicans who got back from their vacations for an emergency session faster for one brain-dead woman than they did for this. No offense to the late Terri Schiavo but you people can get going faster for one white woman on life support than you can for thousands of black folks starving, drowning, and getting raped and shot?
I'll stop there. Tomorrow no doubt I will have some more. In the meantime, everybody has been asking me how to help, so I want to make some suggestions. First off, send donations to the Red Cross. They're way more on the ball than the government is, so start there. Secondly, if you have any spare room in your homes, we have millions, literally millions, of refugees that need housing. It's unlike anything the U.S. has seen before. There are places on-line where you can list your spare bedroom as a place for, well, people like me. MoveOn.org is a place to start.
Next, raise taxes. I know nobody likes their taxes upped, and it probably seems like a stupid thing for me to say considering I've been criticizing the government for the last ten minutes, but it's got to be done. The money to save the Gulf Coast has to come from somewhere, and it would be the grossest kind of irresponsibility to lay that cost on our children or grandchildren. If you want a war in Iraq and you want to save the millions of Americans affected by this hurricane, than you're going to have to pay for it. Tell your representatives and Senators you're willing to sacrifice for the greater good. I know Bush doesn't understand sacrifice and wants to continue to run his private little war while shovelling money at himself and his friends, but it can't go on.
Another way you can help - stay angry. Find some way to take all the anger, disappointment, frustration, and disgust you've been feeling and sending to me in emails and keep it. Write it down in a notebook, save it on a computer, videotape an hour of CNN, whatever, and then when the next election comes around re-read it, re-watch it, re-live it and then get up and vote. In the large scale, that's the only thing that will make a difference.
Finally, five months from now when despite everything we've rebuilt my beloved New Orleans and Mardi Gras rolls around, when the reports are rolling out about "New Orleans Parties On," come on down and have a good time.
Take care everybody -
Dale

Evac 3: Walking the Earth

2005-09-02T02:42:00.000-05:00

Hello again,
Thank you everyone for all your messages – I’ll try to get back to everyone individually as I can. We lost our internet connection for awhile, but then we got the phone back. Again, the land line here is XXXXXXX, though getting through is not easy. Keep trying if you can because getting calls is really great. More and more word is coming in from people we know about how they’re okay, though at the same time we’re getting stories that are much, much worse. Arwen worked at Charity Hospital and knows people that are there. Yesterday she got a text message saying something like “They know we have food and drugs and they have guns.” They apparently locked themselves in, and we heard the National Guard finally arrived there sometime this afternoon, but right after that we saw on CNN that they were still waiting for evacuation, so we just don’t know. Gregory, a friend who was renovating Arwen’s side of the house while Gav and I were working on mine, had to crawl out his roof and wade through two miles of water to get his grandmother, but now they’re in the Astrodome. We’ve heard from many, many people, but others are still not accounted for. There’s a woman staying across the street with her two daughters; her husband is an EMT for New Orleans and we hoped that with Arwen’s hospital connections we could give her some news, but we couldn’t. She hasn’t heard from him since Monday.
Meanwhile, here a grocery store is open and surprisingly calm, so we have food. Plus beer and liquor. Unfortunately, there is no gas available, so we can’t get out. I have enough gas to get maybe a hundred miles but I don’t know if that’s far enough to get to more gas. I’m sure some will arrive soon, but meanwhile we’re stuck. Arwen and Cayne stayed here last night, along with Arwen’s dog and Cayne’s cat, and now they’re trying to make it to Nashville. We siphoned some gas out of an ATV like something out of “The Road Warrior” and got them on their way. We can’t believe how we’ve suddenly become those people you see on tv fleeing a disaster with nothing but a bag of clothes. It’s turning us into Buddhists – no attachments, living just day to day. Gavin found a large aerial photo of New Orleans online and we were able to find my house on it by comparing the photo to a map. It looks like I still have a roof, though clearly all the streets around me are flooded. There was a little white dot in front of my place that we think might be the taxi cab that’s always parked right in front of my house for some reason.
We don’t know what we’re going to do. When we arrived here, we wanted to stay a short time and then get back to the city, but that’s not possible. Obviously, we’ll have to move on as soon as we can and figure out where we’re going. Allison and I haven’t heard anything from our universities; they can’t get any messages out and we don’t know if we have jobs anymore. I hate it that that worries me given the scope of the devastation, but it does. To paraphrase Sam Jackson in “Pulp Fiction,” I guess we’re just going to walk the earth. Wander around, itinerant migrant college professors going from town to town, asking if they need teachers and getting in adventures, like Caine in “Kung Fu.” But with cats.
The offers of places to stay and money and everything keep pouring in and I can’t thank all of you enough for them. We’re actually in pretty good shape here and believe me, I’ll let you know if I need to take you up on those offers. In the meantime, there are so many people in much, much more desperate situations than me, so do what you can for them, too. I’ve heard MoveOn.org is organizing some sort of spare bedroom list so people can offer hurricane refugees a place to stay for awhile, so if you can you could check that out (and why is it MoveOn.org is apparently more on the ball than the government?).
There’s nothing I want to do more than get back to my city and rebuild it, single-handedly and brick-by-brick if necessary, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to. The people theoretically in charge aren’t taking control. Not to harp on this, but where’s the help? They keep saying it’s on the way, but where is it? Where are the swarms of helicopters? Why can’t we manage to air-drop in food and water? Why is the ship that’s supposed to be the command center only leaving Baltimore today? Why are the troops arriving tomorrow (hopefully) instead of last Tuesday? I just saw Mary Landrieu on cnn thanking and congratulating Bush and the rest of the government for their wonderful job, and I just wanted to scream – what wonderful job? There are bodies floating in the streets, there are more people dying by the minute. Not to single her out, but the politicians need to stop kissing each other’s asses and get something done. She said she didn’t want to cast blame, but I will. I blame her. I blame Bush. Especially him, actually, but there’s plenty to go around. I blame the mayor, the governor, senators, representatives, I blame the whole damn government. We knew this was coming. We’ve been saying for years that if the big hurricane hit it would be worse than we could possibly imagine, and nobody did anything. Bush cut the meager millions for fixing Louisiana’s coast and levees while spending 200 billion on Iraq, and Congress let him. But it’s not about what could have been done before, it’s about what should be done now, and so far, that’s virtually nothing. Why? Because the people suffering are poor and mostly black? The FEMA director, whose name I don’t know but when I find out I will burn it into my brain so I can hunt the bastard down, said on tv he wouldn’t judge those who chose not to evacuate, as if those dying and starving in New Orleans and elsewhere deserve what they get. He clearly has no concept of who he is supposed to be saving. New Orleans is full of the desperately, desperately poor, and they didn’t have a way to get out. Choice had nothing to do with it. Not every American owns a gas-guzzling, terrorist-supporting, wildly expensive S.U. fucking V. There was no plan for getting the poor out of New Orleans. Evacuation plans amounted to “get in your car and leave,” and now those who couldn’t are apparently left to die. Nobody can prevent a hurricane, but for everyone that has died since Monday night and for everyone who will die from here on out, that responsibility, that blame lies squarely on the people in charge.
I’m disgusted by the behavior of the looters, but I’m more disgusted by the behavior of the government. We pay them a shitload of money (what? ten times what I get paid? more?) to handle things like this, and they have completely and utterly failed. They sit in their mansions on the hills and say they understand, but their paychecks keep coming while all the waitstaff and bartenders and temp workers and shrimp-boaters, they’re fucked. They’ve been fucked by nature, and now they’re getting fucked again by the very people who are supposed to take care of them. Turns out the politicians have been looting the people for far longer than the last few days.
On a completely different note and tirade, if I hear one asshole like Pat Robertson say anything along the lines of this is God’s punishment on the wicked sinners of New Orleans, then it’s also God’s will that I beat the fucking shit out of him.
I have never lived in a place that had so little and yet offered so much as New Orleans. There are so many things that really are unique to the city that I have only known for a brief time and love dearly and now it seems those things are gone and nobody in charge seems to care. I’m beyond mad, I’m devastated, I’m heart-broken, I have lost all faith, I’m sad beyond words.
Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone for all your offers of help. I will get back in and rebuild my city. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to be “shocked and awed” by the scope of the rescue effort.
-Dale

Evac 2, or News Arrives, Rants Begin

2005-09-01T04:07:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,
Email update number two. I’m still in Jackson, and don’t imagine I’ll be going anywhere anytime soon. I think Danny Cupit, the guy who owns this beautiful house we’re holed up in, won’t be kicking us out anytime soon, which is good because it will be at least a week, if not longer, before I can even get back into New Orleans to get the last of my stuff out of the apartment I’m no longer renting.Most importantly, while there are some people I haven’t heard from, everyone I have heard from is okay, even those who didn’t evacuate. Darv and Amy, the married couple who make up the other two-fifths of Smuteye, stayed at Tulane University Hospital because Amy works there. Gavin got a text message earlier that read something like “We’re okay. Evac am. May need ride.” We’re also getting lots of messages from various friends telling us they are okay.Things are opening up in Jackson, and yesterday we even found an open liquor store, which was a very good thing. We’re still boiling water, but food is available. We’ve got power back, though the phones have gone out completely. Gavin’s cell phone works every now and again, though mine is useless. Currently, email is the best way to communicate. Does anyone have an instant messenger? I think I’ll try to download one. We have cable, too, so news is coming in. I won’t go into what is on the news since you can all see that for yourselves, and I really can’t even begin to describe what it’s like watching it except to say we’re absolutely devastated. It feels like we’re going through all those stages of grief psychologists talk about at once and constantly since the bad news just keeps coming.
To give you an idea of our situations, Gavin and Allison’s house is Uptown towards the river, which by all accounts is dry, so that’s good. The apartment I was in the middle of moving out of is also Uptown and on the second floor, so unless either of those simply got blown over or into, they should be okay. If you’ve been paying attention to the news and heard that the 17th Street Canal levee broke, flooding the city, that is unfortunately right near my house. If you look at a map of New Orleans, the canal runs down from Lake Pontchartrain towards the Mississippi right to the west of City Park, and then it splits in two. I’m at Telemachus and Banks, which is several blocks east of the eastward extension of the Canal. If you’ve seen shots of the jail that they evacuated, that’s about fifteen blocks from me. If you’ve seen shots of Xavier University, that’s maybe ten blocks from me. Flooding changes block by block, so there’s really no telling, but I’m afraid my earlier guess that water is up to my roof is probably about dead on. Right at the moment, I’m taking that in stride – it’s just stuff, and I’m alive – but at other times I’m overwhelmed. Allison said it’s like getting your hand chopped off and being told you’re lucky it wasn’t your arm. You know that’s true, but it’s a little hard to think of it that way at the time.
Anyway, my friend Arwen is headed here tonight – she’s the one I bought the house with. It’s a double shotgun, which I can only describe by saying it’s kinda arranged like a double-barreled shotgun. There are two front doors and then each side heads back room after room in a line. Anyway, she’s got one side and I’ve got the other. Or we did. She’s on her way here with some friends before they go on to Nashville to stay with Gunnar Nelson. That would be one of the Nelson twins from that pop metal band Nelson in the 80s. I mention that just because it adds to the whole surreal unreality of this whole situation.
On a totally different note, can I just rant here for a minute? I have to say I am completely underwhelmed by the response of our so-called leaders to this disaster. From Mayor Nagin on up to the idiot in the White House, the response could be charitably described as stupid. They keep telling us help is on the way, but we don’t need to hear that, we need the help. Whats-his-fuck tells us it’s the worst disaster ever – I knew that, I want to know when you’re sending in the fucking Marines. Or rather, when does the National Guard arrive. Perhaps they would have already been there, preventing the absolute worst people in New Orleans from looting the Wal-Mart seven blocks from my apartment of all its guns (and what the hell is Wal-Mart doing selling guns?) if they weren’t dicking around in Iraq and instead, oh, I don’t know, guarding the fucking nation! We’re in the absolute worst natural crisis of our history here and our leaders are wandering around with their thumbs up their asses. I’m supposed to be thankful that Bush cut his vacation short by two days so that he could wander across the Rose Garden lawn carrying his damn dog? I’d rather have the fucking dog in charge. My city is under water and armed gangs are ruling the streets and that’s what I have to deal with when I finally am able to make it back to my home – I don’t want to hear help is on its way, I want to hear we have the Guard on every corner restoring order. I want to hear our president considers Iraq worth spending 200 billion dollars on, and he considers millions of Americans and Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama worth spending that kind of money on.
Okay, deep breath. Here’s the good news – when you get the chance, do a web search on Jen, Cesar, and Claudio. You should find a news article about my crazy friends. In the meantime, we’re again all physically safe - more when I have it.- Dale

Evaced, or Life Before the News

2005-08-30T10:31:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,
Sorry about the mass email, but it's the most efficient way to get the news out, what news I have. I evacuated to Jackson, MS with my friends Gavin and Allison and all the animals - my cat, their cat, their two dogs, and the kitten they found by the road while they were evacuating.
We're all physically fine, but emotionally not so much. The power is out here, but we're running on a generator (it's a nice house, so there's that). Cable is out and it's hard to get news, so you all might know more than us. We've got phone, but I can't get any cell service. The land line number here is XXXXXX, but it's hard to get through and right now I'm using it for this email. We heard this morning that the levee broke and the water from Lake Pontchartrain spilled into New Orleans. The house I just bought and spent four weeks renovating is no doubt under water, though how much is hard to say. To the roof wouldn't surprise me. I have no idea when I'll be able to get back into the city - it could be weeks. I'm okay, though. New Orleans people - send news of yourselves and let me know you're okay. -Dale