Two Years Later

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

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

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

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!

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

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 ...

... 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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

click here

My Last Normal Days

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

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

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.