Exactly two people are going to kill me for this, but I got a scanner and like Ashley I just can't help myself.
Franklin band trip to Orlando, 1980.
The hottie on the right in the red shorts is Robin Kemp of Every Poet Needs A Patio. It would figure that the only photo taken inside the Magic Kingdom that survived was an ass shot:
The surprised young man on the band bus with the fashionable afro and Sonny Rollins glued to his ear is Delfeayo Marsalis:
After my desperate plea went out when I found out I'd missed the deadline to order a pre-cooked turkey from Langenstein's, Ashley said "hell, I'm frying one, and once you've got it all set up and the oil hot, doing two isn't any extra effort".
Which is how I got to spend most of Thanksgiving afternoon away from the hubbub in my own kitchen, instead hanging around Ashley's back yard with Ashley and Liam and my brother in law Jara drinking beer (n.a. for me) and trying to outdo each other's rock star encounter stories. I had the best Ramones stories (although I left off the ending of the Dee-Dee drug story that involved a friend of mine), but I think Ashley wins with his L7 story just because they're a chick band.
The secret to a fried bird is to not try too hard to flavor the bird, but to flavor the OIL. So we cooked two pounds of bacon in the oil before frying the dry rubbed birds.
Ashley is the fucking man.
There are some signs of hope in gutting land. I think Road Home money is hitting enough people that things are slowly creaking to life. I talked to Shannon (ex-AWK, now at Common Ground) and she sees the same in the Lower Nine. And when things start happening, they seem to happen in clusters.
Case in point: I took some of my pictures from my last post on one of the "Godot" nights in the Lower 9, and while driving around I took one last swing down Urquhart near Andry, the place I mentioned last week as being bereft of life, where Common Ground had their block party near the first anniversary. And fuck if there weren't at least three houses being worked on. I just drove through, didn't take any pictures, but right at dusk there were two houses being attacked with tools and another house with a stack of new building materials on the porch.
Just like that, overnight, this block is creaking back to life.
My son's music teacher is one of the Jordan clan, and during teacher conferences a few weeks ago I told him how I'd worked on gutting his dad Kidd Jordan's house, and asked how they were getting along. He says the house is still gutted, they've got their money but haven't decided yet what to do with the house. They now have an apartment in Baton Rouge and a trailer at SUNO where Kidd is on faculty, and they go back and forth. It was a sad loss because they had just finished a nice remodel right before the storm, but I get the sense that they are empty nesters now and aren't sure they still need the big house where all the Jordan kids were raised. At any rate, Kidd spends more time in Europe than in New Orleans anyway; his style of jazz is too "out" for local tastes, whereas France has knighted him, and the very far out experimental jazz scene where Kidd fits in is centered in places like Paris and Berlin. And there are still Jordans in the neighborhood...one of the daughters is back in her house a few blocks away from the parents.
And Lisa's house, which we helped her gut this summer, will be occupied one of these days. Although it's still in contractor limbo, the gutting was major progress made possible by Lisa's stubbornness and the help of a few blogger friends.
And then there is Morwen.
Morwen, Morwen, Morwen.
I have never seen a bigger "FUCK YOU" to the Federal flood and all floods that may follow it than Morwen's castle, currently being reborn in Gentilly.
Before:
After (or at least in progress):
Morwen is using green building techniques, thermal wells, and a strong flood and windproof foundation, and she's WAY above the floodline now, as you can see.
This one to me is a miracle, because as everybody knows the day we started the gutting, this house was a bitch to knock down. I didn't tell Morwen at the time because she was in a low place and I didn't want her spirit to take any unnecessary knocks, but at the end of that day Sheik actually pulled me aside and said "are you sure you want to keep working on this? are you sure they're coming back? because this house is a mess and it's going to be a huge job to gut it out". She ended up getting a professional team to finish the job but I'm still proud of the work the bloggers and readers did, with the help of the Arabi Wrecking Krewe. We put a good-sized dent in it, and seeing that house way up in the air above the floodline, visiting with Morwen a couple of weeks ago while contractors of three or four varieties clambered all over the house in various places...that's the payoff.
I'm looking forward to the housewarming party.
Probably the one place in the city where it was close to impossible to get a po-boy today was Oak Street.
I should have realized when I was walking up at 2pm and there were bigger crowds leaving than there were showing up that it was not gonna be the neighborhood block party love fest that I imagined.
Lines for food were worse than the worst I've seen at Jazz Fest, and when the crowds got to be shoulder-to-shoulder shoving-room-only between Dante and Dublin, I started having "Bourbon Street on Bacchus night" flashbacks, said "fuck it" and walked home and nuked a big slab of leftover eggplant parmagiana that we made last night.
I'll pop by next year to check it out if they have it again, but if they haven't made it a more enjoyable experience by then, well, I'll just get my po-boys where I normally get them on Sundays: Calhoun Superette.
See you at the derby tonight.
Ashley and I both received this in our email last night from State Rep 95 candidate Walker Hines, and I am posting it with his permission.
Whether or not I vote for him (at this point I am still on the fence), I think it displays a lot of character for a person to personally reach out like this to two people who have trashed him publicly in the fashion that Ashley and I and our commenters sometimes do.
It was personal contact from Percy Marchand that eventually led to me supporting him in the primary, and I do think it's important that there be continual dialog between a representative and his or her constituents.
I'm also willing to post anything that Una Anderson has to say if she wants to write me. My address is in the "About Ray" link over there on right.
Ashley and Ray,
Although I never respond to your blogs primarily due to time constraints and the vast misinformation and straight up lies by many of the posters, I do read your blogs and want to address and clarify a couple of points and major differences between my opponent and I. I think you will be very pleasantly surprised by my voting record and most importantly, accessibility while in office. Lets make sure you and the other bloggers have the facts straight about Una Anderson: She was endorsed LABI whom has also contributed over $20k to her campaign. LABI is all conservative big business that opposes workers compensation, collective bargaining, the minimum wage, expanded health care, environmental regulation, labor organization and just about every single democratic principle. They met with me for over an hour and after interviewing both candidates chose Una as the most pro-business candidate. She also won the endorsement of All Children Matter, a political organization dedicated to school choice and in favor of private school vouchers. They also interviewed me. I do NOT support private school vouchers. According to Una's campaign finance reports, Ned Diefenthal, a member of the Louisiana Committee For a Republican Majority, contributed $5k to Una's campaign. In the interest of full disclosure (I'm not trying to spin you 100% my way but I do want to provide an explanation) I have also received some money from members of the LCRM, however these are merely friends of my parents, nothing more or less. I've never met any of them in person. I know you and everyone else in the blogosphere thinks I'm just some spoiled brat that doesn't understand nor relate to anyone outside of my socio-economic status. I challenge you to give me a chance. Your perception of me is completely incorrect. I'm a down-to-earth, honest, and direct person. Ashley, you should have witnessed that when someone mistakenly wrote your address down on my sign list. My opponent is an elitist. She's completely removed from the people she governs. I'm also willing to bet she's not reading bloggers comments nor giving you any time of the day. I can take criticism. I want to be a public servant because I want to give back to my community. I feel a moral obligation to give every underprivileged child the comforts that I was provided growing up. I would not be here today if it wasn't for my loving, stable family. Due to a poor economic and education system, many do not have unconditional love and stability in the home. I will do everything in my power to prove to others that I have never overlooked where I came from and why I am where I am today. I spent a lot of time to write this e-mail and am seeking your support and endorsement. You will be pleasantly surprised by my passion, personality, background, and voting record. Unlike my opponent who tells you whatever you want to hear, I will never sacrifice my principles for popularity. I'm a progressive Democrat who believes in the Catholic values of social justice. Please work with me.Sincerely,
Walker Hines
Candidate For State Representative, District 95
This afternoon somebody ran across my blog by googling the following search terms:
what kind of clubs do milfs go to in new orleans
Sadly, I don't have the information he's looking for, but I sure would like to. Please help us both out in the comments.
Dig it. I can walk to this. I'm looking for a volunteer to roll me home afterwards though.
New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival
November 18, 12 noon - 6:00pm
Oak Street at South Carrollton
Fill yer belly then head out to the BERG derby that night.
Holy fuck. Who is this woman, and what has she been doing looking around inside my skull all this time?
Case in point: On a recent evening, Columbia University held a well-attended workshop for young academics who feel like frauds.These were duly vetted, highly successful scholars who nonetheless live in creeping fear of being found out. Exposed. Sent packing.
If that sounds familiar, you may have the impostor syndrome. In psychological terms, that's a cognitive distortion that prevents a person from internalizing any sense of accomplishment.
"It's like we have this trick scale," says Valerie Young, a traveling expert on the syndrome who gave the workshop at Columbia. Here's how that scale works: Self-doubt and negative feedback weigh heavily on the mind, but praise barely registers. You attribute your failures to a stable, inner core of ineptness. Meanwhile, you discount your successes as accidental or, worse, as just so many confidence jobs. Every positive is a false positive.
[Via Ms. HX, of course, who is so much less of a fraud than me it isn't even funny.]
I don't know if Cora Foster's house has been torn down yet, but I know that Karen saw Mrs. Cora's daughter getting the demo permit approved a few weeks back, and Karen said it was obviously a painful moment for them.
The feelings I got from seeing the house and neighborhood in the state they were in got me thinking about all of the other houses I've gutted in the past 18 months, and whether any of them had shown any progress at all. I think I've had a hand in doing around 17 houses. Surely one of them would be a success story. Surely at least one of those backbreaking days would not have been in vain.
So the past few weeks I've been driving around looking for these houses to see what's going on with them.
At first I really wished I hadn't. At first I found nothing but stagnation. This post is about those houses.
There was the first house I ever gutted, in the Lower 9 on Andry Street near Urquhart. We did this one as part of a Common Ground block party. All the CG volunteers worked in the same area, we had the neighborhood residents and activists out, people pitched in food and the ladies from the neighborhood cooked that good New Orleans food for us, beans and rice and sausages and chicken and yaka mein. And the goal was to do an entire block of houses in one day. We didn't hit the goal, but it was still an uplifting experience.
Well, the house on Andry is now fully gutted. The family china I had set carefully to the side on the front porch is broken and the pieces scattered around the overgrown yard. No sign of progress.
A house around the corner on Urquhart which I pulled nails out of for Common Ground last December is finished, gutted, open, and untouched.
In fact, when I first drove by that block where the block party was, it looked like nothing was happening. Just a row of empty, gutted, silent shells of homes.
Another house I helped de-nail for Common Ground in November, on N. Villere, I can't find anywhere. I think there is an empty lot there. Same for the house I gutted with the Rice MOB with the Mardi Gras Service Corps that same day. I can't find it anywhere. Did we gut these houses just so they could be bulldozed?
And this one, on N. Villere at the end of the road by the canal levee, that we gutted with Common Ground the day I met Darrell. The weeds are higher than the house. The house hasn't been touched since the day we left it. It's wide open to the elements. Looks perfect inside, but nobody is doing anything with it but let it rot.
Even our wheelbarrow ramp is still there on the front steps, being swallowed up by nature like everything else on the property.
The house on Sere Street in Gentilly that we gutted last spring with ACORN and First Draft Krewe is not much different. The flooded car has been towed from the driveway, and the valuables we salvaged (including the old blue wheelchair) have been moved inside, but other than that, this is a house being consumed by flora and fauna.
I think this doesn't come as a surprise, really, knowing the story of the owner and seeing how termites had eaten away at the core of the house. But still...what did we really accomplish that day?
A house I gutted on Charbonnet with ACORN a couple of weeks after that seems in limbo. It has good bones, and we met the owners while gutting, they were a sweet young married couple who were working their way through the Road Home process back in March, so I had hopes for this one. But from the looks of things, they are still working their way through the process.
They had come all the way down from Atlanta that weekend to meet the volunteers who were doing their house, and they seemed like they really want to come home.
This house we did in Gentilly with Arabi Wrecking Krewe and Iraq Veterans Against the War has no remodeling work being done on it. The gutting is done, they're storing furniture and belongings in it, but there's no progress on moving back in. This house belonged to a Vietnam Vet who grew up in the house and then raised his own family in it. At least it doesn't feel abandoned.
And one final shred of something that might be called progress, so that it won't seem like this post is all bad news. This house on Gordon St. in the Lower 9, which I helped gut with the Mardi Gras Service Corps, now has a mowed lawn and a storage unit in front of it, and the "For Sale By Owner" sign is gone and could that possibly be construction debris at the curb? Is something about to happen here? Some neighbors are back, so one can only hope. Really, that's only what one can do.
Next post will tell a few stories of halting progress.
Paul Chan is presenting "Waiting for Godot", starring Wendell Pierce and J. Kyle Manzay, premiering last weekend at a streetcorner in a neighborhood of empty lots in the the Lower 9, and continuing this weekend in the front yard of a gutted house in Gentilly. Admission is free, but arrive an hour early if you want a seat, because they are turning people away.
Cass and I saw the Saturday night showing of this in the Lower 9, along with Alan and Becky, and it is f-ing fantastic.
"Waiting For Godot" is the story of two men, Estragon and Vladimir, who wait on a country road by a small tree at dusk, as they waited yesterday, and the day before, and as they will wait tomorrow, and the day after, for a man named Godot. They're unsure who Godot is, or why they wait for him, and they question whether they are supposed to wait, or whether they have missed him or whether they are possibly in the wrong place. For a while they are distracted by the antics of the arrogant Pazzo and his slave/pig Lucky, but mostly they wait, and talk, and sometimes contemplate suicide, and sometimes contemplate just leaving, and they wonder.
Godot has many interpretations, but it's the existential one I find the most appealing. It seems to clearly mirror the human condition of wondering why we are here, whether there is a reason that we are here, and whether or not there is a mysterious God(ot) who will arrive to explain everything to us. Pazzo and Lucky are the master/slave, boss/employee representation of daily workaday chores and interruptions that continually distract us from wondering about the real reason why we are here.
And the practical reality of the existential question is made crystal clear, seeing it in the Lower 9th Ward, surrounded by overgrown empty lots, with a half-collapsed house behind us, and behind the stage one block distant the brightly lit FEMA trailer of lone neighborhood resident Robert Green, Sr., flying his American flag as barges quietly ply the canal waters behind the patched levees beyond his home. Why is Robert Green here, still, today, and why will he still be here, tomorrow? What does he wait for? What lies in store for him in his solitary existence on a (now) country road, near a tree, in the evening, waiting for a Godot who may never come, wondering what will come, will anything come, while the Pazzos and Luckies careen about and argue and posture and distract us all from the big nothing that transpires daily on that country road, Tennessee Street and North Prieur, Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans.
Where is our God(ot), and when will he come? Or have we missed him? Or are we waiting in the wrong place?
For the past nine days, the Tabasco region of Mexico has been suffering a flooding disaster on the scale of Katrina. As of yesterday, 60,000 people were still trapped on their roofs awaiting rescue.
As in our own flood, you can find the best information on the blogs, most notably Root Coffee, authored by Sol Orozco Hernandez, a native of the region who now lives in California and normally blogs about coffee and pastries, but who has family living in the disaster zone.
This quote of hers hit me right where I live:
My husband means well when he tells me I should get some sleep and gather strength to keep helping tomorrow; but the anguish eats at me, I can't feel comfortable, it's my hometown, my people, the place I grew up in, I can't just let it go.
She has many links to the latest news, how you can help, where you can donate, etc.
Please spread the word and help any way you can.
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