Ray in New Orleans

April 5, 2008

Later, homey. Not goodbye. See ya later. I promise.

I knew Ashley by reputation in the months after the storm. The first words I ever saw by him were:

You do not want to fuck with pissed off New Orleanians. We're the murder capital, bitches. We will rain that shit down on you.

and I thought this might be a man I need to get to know better. And we got acquainted at Geek Dinner I the first night I moved back to New Orleans after 25 years in exile.

But I think the day Ashley Morris and I became friends was during the first Rising Tide planning party at Dangerblond's house. The group hadn't yet thought up the "all agenda items must be addressed before the wine is opened" rule at that meeting, and conversation had degraded into a confused meandering mess, so I got up to go to the kitchen for a break from the madness and Ashley followed me. He dug in the fridge and pulled out an Abita Restoration Ale for himself, and dug out one of my giant bottles of sparkling water and held it out to me by the neck of the bottle, as if to say, "here, you look like you need this". There was something in his manner, like an understanding. There was none of that awkwardness of the drinker around the teetotaler that those of us in recovery are used to dealing with. He just treated me like a normal guy and hefted the bottle towards me knowing it was my drink of choice. He treated me just like a drinking buddy, with no acknowledgement or sense of the difference between what he drank and what I had to drink, not knowing how much I had yearned for the past three years to have somebody treat me unselfconciously like just another drinking buddy.

And so we sat in the kitchen, he with his beer and I with my fizzy water, and we shared our very first of many "JEEZUS, what a clusterfuck this is" rants with each other. We like to rant. We like to curse. We got along great.

I knew I had found a true friend.

We did a lot of stuff together. Not nearly as much as I would have liked. We both had kids to raise, we both worked long hours and had to leave town regularly to work. We both jokingly called ourselves "roller derby widowers" when our wives were at practice leaving us home to watch the kids.

But the memories we do have feel legendary to me. We ate Dooky Chase's takeout on the steps of the Lafitte Projects, in the rain, and no Michelin 4-star white tablecloth crap from out in the world could ever top that experience.

He took me to my first ever Thursday night Kermit show at Vaughan's.

We spent a Mardi Gras day hefting kids up and down ladders, sharing food with total strangers, swapping my gumbo for some pork ribs on the neutral ground on Napoleon, and crashing out on my couch listening to the Treme brass band, feeling fat and happy with the world and with the feeling that many happy Mardi Gras lay ahead of us. The corner of Napoleon and Prytania is our standard spot; it's going to feel empty next year.

I helped him get his first tattoo. I didn't think it would be his last.

We fried turkeys together. We joked about the gay porn that was a running gag in the blog circles, and half-joked about our moral unsuitability to teach at a Catholic girls school.

When I lost my friend Evan to suicide, and I needed to get out of the house and scream and cry and rant at somebody, there was only one person I could call, and it was Ashley, and he dragged himself to Carrollton Station after midnight on a weeknight and stood me rounds of O'Doul's while I stood him rounds of Abita and Jameson, and he patiently let me tell stories and laugh and cry and yell about a guy he'd never even met before. Because he was that kind of friend.

The last time I saw him, two Sundays ago, we spent a chilly afternoon at the Maple Leaf, planning a crawfish boil for the high school volunteers coming down from Maine in a few weeks, and drinking and kvetching and flirting with the bartender, as if two 40-something overweight happily-married geezers from the neighborhood had anything but harmless flirting to offer to a hottie with a pierced navel who liked to flirt back at middle-aged men. When I got home I stunk like cigar smoke. I hate cigars. But with Ashley, I didn't care.

When I broke the bad news about Ashley to my kids, they were both upset, but Liam is taking it kind of hard. He idolized Ashley ("Big Ashley", we called him, to distinguish him from all the girl Ashleys we know). Both he and Ashley were drummers and hockey goalies. Liam bought himself a bad-ass skateboard for his birthday last week:

decorated with a picture of a Mardi Gras Indian Spy Boy, and I said, "Man, you gotta show that to Big Ashley, he'd love it." But he never got the chance. He's still got the hockey stick Ash gave us, an adult size one so that I could do slapshot practice with the kid in the driveway. And he had his NOCCA jazz auditions today, electing to play "St. James Infirmary" as his prepared piece. Last night he couldn't play it, said the song reminded him of the words and the words reminded him of Ashley and he got sad. I told him, "Just remember, buddy, that song is the blues. It's supposed to be a sad song. It's a song they play at jazz funerals, and Big Ashley is gonna have a jazz funeral, so if you feel sad when you play it, then play it sad and that will make it sound even better." Reports are that he blew the judges away at his audition today. That was Ashley pulling strings to keep that reed from squeaking, I bet.

Last night I remembered something from Wednesday. Somewhere in the middle of the day Wednesday, the day Ashley died, before I knew he was gone, I got a weird tight pain in my chest. It started on the left, and slowly spread across my breastbone. I spent a tense 15 minutes trying to decide if it was just something I did to myself at the gym, or if it was something more serious.

Now I know. It was Ashley. He was on his way Home, and he stopped by where I was working and punched me real hard in the chest, just to be funny, just to let me know that I can't go around thinking that he's not going to be making things happen down here on Earth just because he's up there with Zevon and Shavers and Satchmo. He's gonna show up here and pull some strings here and there when he feels like it. Like my grandmother does with cardinals. Like she did with the 2004 Red Sox the year she died and they swept the Cardinals in the World Series in four games.

Watch them Saints this year. You'll see.

His earthly self is going to St. Louis #3 some time next week, the cemetery right behind the Fairgrounds. His soul is going to a righteous place somewhere else. But I have no doubt that every year when Jazz Fest rolls around, if you hang close to that end of the neighborhood, you'll hear an extra drumline coming from somewhere and maybe the whiff of Jameson and a Cubano. You won't be able to see him, but you'll know he's there, drumming like mad and laughing his ass off.

Posted by ray at 3:35 AM | Comments (27)

February 19, 2008

Me neither, H

I just don't wanna.

When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothin' ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up
How do you move in a world of fog
That's always changing things
Makes me wish that I could be a dog
When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up
I don't ever wanna be that way
I don't wanna grow up

Seems like folks turn into things
That they'd never want
The only thing to live for
Is today
I'm gonna put a hole in my TV set
I don't wanna grow up
Open up the medicine chest
And I don't wanna grow up
I don't wnna have to shout it out
I don't want my hair to fall out
I don't wanna be filled with doubt
I don't wanna be a good boy scout
I don't wanna have to learn to count
I don't wanna have the biggest amount
I don't wanna grow up

Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinking all night
And I don't wanna grow up
I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old Tomb
On Grand Street

When I see the 5 o'clock news
I don't wanna grow up
Comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up
Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get me a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float a broom
Fall in and get married then boom
How the hell did I get here so soon
I don't wanna grow up

Posted by ray at 11:39 PM | Comments (3)

December 6, 2007

Guided

Good days are not a guarantee. They are a blessing.

Single-parenting it for a few days. Brother-in-law in town, thinking of staying. He and I and the boy and the girl dined at Vincents. Talked about movies old and new, skateboarding, pranks, music famous and obscure, sazeracs properly and improperly made, homework done and homework still to-do, and ex-girlfriends, recent and long-ago.

On the drive home the boy said "If you re-arrange the letters in Food Mart, you get Doom Fart." Ten minutes later we were still laughing and he said "I feel smart!" and we laughed some more.

By the time we got home we all agreed that "The Official Ironmen Rally Song" rules the fucking universe.

Everybody should have more good days.

bitter fish in crude oil sea
you don't have to bother me
you just have to join in on this song

crawling people on your knees
don't take this so seriously
You just have to hum it all day long

to dine alone
to build a private zone
or trigger a synapse
and free us from our traps

you won't see me turn my back
with my head against my stack
spitting teeth and breaking open skin

official ironmen you are free
champions officially
but you won't catch me on an open chin

to dine alone
to build a private zone
or trigger a synapse
and free us from our traps

save your knock-out punches for the freaks
happy little babies with red cheeks
you will rock them gently out of sync

confirmations through the wire
spitting gas into the fire
am i also worthy of a drink?

to dine alone
to build a private zone
or trigger a synapse
and free us from our traps

Posted by ray at 7:12 PM | Comments (10)

October 24, 2007

Oh, hardee har har

The other day I had myself a doofy little accident that involved me basically falling on my ass for no good reason at all being attacked by ninjas and thrown to the ground. X-rays indicate no fracture, just a bone bruise, so today I took the day off work since my pain meds are incompatible with debugging Java.

While I was snoozing, the wife leaves a message on the machine: "How's your bum'n'nem?"

Ha ha. It is to laugh.

[For my readers from America and other foreign lands, "mama'n'em" is local vernacular for "your immediate family", as in "how's your mama'n'em?" or "how much water they get by your mama'n'em's in the storm?"]

Posted by ray at 9:33 PM | Comments (4)

August 3, 2007

Stay Bamboocha

The part of Nairobi where we're staying, in the Thigiri area, is populated by many ex-pats and embassy staff. It's stunningly beautiful.

It's also hell on my white settler guilt.

We live in a beautiful house in a gated compound, with full-time security guards. We have a cook/housekeeper named Mary, a driver/groundskeeper named Adams, and other staff coming and going. All the properties on this side of Nairobi are gated and have security. Security companies are huge employers of native Kenyans. We only have a simple seven foot stone wall, though; some of the neighbors have razor wire or electric fences. The security is not borne of needless paranoia; crime here is bad, but in the past it has been horrific. This house had two armed home invasions in the early 90's, so even inside there are iron gates that can close one section of the house off from another.

I hate having a domestic staff. At any time of the day I can have food prepared for me by Mary, if I just ask, which means I fix myself cereal and PB&J a lot because I just cannot get past the idea that I am imposing.

We're able to drive ourselves to nearby destinations, but driving is a little intimidating because they drive on the left here, the roads are narrow, there are lots of pedestrians and bicycles, and you have to dodge all these aggressive matatus, which are little minibusses, kind of a cross between public transportation and a group taxi. Like jitneys, I guess. I haven't figured out exactly how they work yet.

The matatus are decorated with stickers and slogans expressing the personality of the driver, kind of like the Latino car clubs do back in Texas, but stranger. The motif is a mix of American hip-hop, reggae, African nationalism, and the odd born-again Christian. My favorite is the "Jesus Peace Biggie Smalls" dude:

The Kenyans also love their Fanta orange. It's more popular than Coke. I love the Fanta billboards, I've been taking pictures of them everywhere we go:

"Stay Bamboocha. Drink da Fanta".

"Stay Bamboocha" is now my favorite phrase. I have no idea what it means, but I say it all the time. And I drink lots of Fanta. Because I want to stay bamboocha.

Posted by ray at 9:02 AM | Comments (7)

Heathrow

Sorry if the last post alarmed anyone. We're just out of town for two weeks in a place with sketchy internet.

We're on a trip to Kenya to visit Gina's brother's family (he's a political officer in the US Embassy there). I figure it's worthy of at least a few blog posts, but I've only been able to write them here, not post them, because internet service in Kenya is hella slow and uploading pictures is pretty near impossible. So you're getting these all in a bunch at a later date after I've arrived home. Just like Tivo!

On the trip over, we had a long long layover at Heathrow, and the news there is all flood, all the time. Seems the UK has been experiencing flooding on a historic scale recently, and so the images on the news are all water rescue teams launching from the water's edge, people on cars needing rescue, and historic row houses under six feet of water. Remind you of anything? Wait, it gets better.

The government response to the flood has been inept, and preparations were apparently woefully inadequate. Critics are clamoring for investigation and reform. And new Labour Prime Minister Gordon "Brownie" Brown was quoted thusly:

The prime minister said the flooding had been "an emergency that no-one could have predicted".

"One of the issues that will arise is how co-ordinated the services are between the Highways Agency and the Environment Agency, in this particular instance, where people have been inconvenienced using transport, whether it's the roads or the railways," Mr Brown said.

Tory leader David Cameron said a hardship fund should be set up to help those without insurance who had lost possessions.

"Of course, people should have insurance, but many don't and may be left with nothing, and a hardship fund is one way of helping these people," Mr Cameron said.

The Liberal Democrats claimed the government's response had been slow and uncoordinated.

Environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: "We do not even know the areas at greatest risk, and responsibility is dangerously split between councils and water companies."

I wondered (not seriously) if I could leave the airport during the layover and help with cleanup, since I gots experience, or even a little light search and rescue, since I gots light training, but I didn't have anything dry to change into. Still, it would beat spending thirteen hours sitting around Heathrow.

Anyway, they're stupid for living there.

Thirteen hours at Heathrow is something invented by Dante. We had originally thought about taking the Tube into central London and roaming about for a while, but the Tube system was a commuter nightmare due to so many stops being flooded, so instead we used some of the money we'd saved by choosing such a shitty itinerary and spent it on a room at the Heathrow Hilton. Check-in 9am UTC, check out 4pm. Beats sitting around the terminal all jet-lagged.

The last leg of the trip was a 9 hour flight to Nairobi, then an hour getting bags and figuring out what day it was and where we were going, then an hour-long car ride through rush hour traffic. 2.3 million people in a city with no freeways can make a lot of traffic, even if the vast majority of them walk to work.

We left our house in New Orleans at 8:30 Saturday morning. Arrived at the bro-in-law's house 8:30 Monday morning. Fortunately he lives in white settler splendor.

More Nairobi next post.

Posted by ray at 8:41 AM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2007

The Wall

Wake up at 3:30am. Drive to Mississippi. Prepare for battle:

Goalie Liam (CCHL #30) channels Jim Craig (USA #30):

56 seconds of fun. Five blocked shots (at 0:04, 0:08, 0:16, 0:20, 0:29). They ended up tying the game 2-2.

The coastal rivals Mississippi Beachdogs have cool uniforms:

Final game, lost 7-0, despite 32 saves(!) from the boy. Being a human wall can really wear a kid out:

Roller derby tonight. Good thing we have skates, or how would we keep up?

Posted by ray at 3:19 PM | Comments (3)

May 3, 2007

May 3rd

13 years ago today, Cassidy poked her head out for the first time, looked around, and decided to stay.

One of my mother's first thoughts upon learning of her new granddaughter was "Her birthday is May 3rd. Just like the May 3rd flood."

May 3, 1978. At this very moment 29 years ago I was paddling a pirogue around a flooded Algiers with a bunch of other junior high delinquents. Da water never got into our house.

Sadly, this will be the first time in Cassidy's life that James Brown is not celebrating along with her.

Posted by ray at 6:01 PM | Comments (12)

April 18, 2007

It ain't all bad

In fact lots of times it's pretty damn good.

I know I tend to bitch and moan a lot, and even though my lunch at Mandina's did fall through at the last minute, I had a damn fine weekend.

Friday French Quarter Festival and riding the Triumph around the city all afternoon with Cassidy.

Saturday brunch at Elizabeth's (Eggs Florentine...creamed spinach, potatoes, poached eggs and hollandaise with the best fried oysters I've had all season), then Gina's birthday dinner at Manale's (way more oysters at the oyster bar than we paid for, then I had the ribeye which was splendiferous).

Sunday, I took Liam over to the weekly music workshop at Tipitina's, where he got to jam onstage with the New Orleans Saxophone Quartet, and where I got confirmation that he knows enough about the sax to play along with the big folks, with a little coaching:

and then found out much to my surprise that he fucking jams on the drums when somebody asks him to "just lay down a groove":

We celebrated his jazz debut by hitting opening day at Hansen's (strawberry with condensed milk for me...it's a tradition) and right after I took this picture:

the crowds who'd been in line behind me came out looking all sadfaced, and we find out that the ancient motor on the custom sno-bliz machine had burnt out, and they were closing. I got the last sno-ball. Judge Hansen says he'll hopefully have it fixed by next Thursday so cross your fingers. Sorry. It was a really good sno-ball, too. Heh heh.

Posted by ray at 12:22 AM | Comments (9)

February 28, 2007

Baseball photos

A couple of photos sent by my Uncle John. The first is of him and my grandfather presenting a Jimmy Fund check to Ted Williams. Taken next to the Red Sox dugout at Fenway right before a night game against the Yankees, September, 1954.

The second picture was taken right after World War II. Nobody knows who the sailor on the right is, but the guy on the left in the Air Force uniform is my great uncle Billy. The guy in the middle is some dude who used to play for the Yankees. I think he, like, hit a lot of home runs or something.

Posted by ray at 2:23 PM | Comments (8)

January 28, 2007

Snow! Weeee!

It seems like all I do any more is go back and forth between travelling or being sick at home. This week's adventure brings me back to Boston for my Uncle Eddie's funeral. The obituary says nothing about biker, hell-raiser, or fantastic storyteller, but I guess the paper has to maintain a certain air of dignity about the whole thing.

My memories of Eddie from childhood are pretty fuzzy, but my best memory of him is from my grandmother's funeral about 11 years ago. I crashed at his house in East Boston, and after the wake, the night before the funeral, he and I had a couple of beers at his little kitchen table and he told stories about the family, about East Boston in the 40's and 50's, and a couple beers turned into a couple more and a couple more and before you know it, it's the wee hours. We weren't exactly fresh-faced for Mass the next morning, but the stories were great.

So it was 19 degrees when I got off the plane yesterday. There's snow on the ground today. I've had my chowder, my fried clams, my steamed clams, and my proper Irish breakfast. But Dunkin' Donuts has lattes now, and doesn't sell crullers any more, which means the End Times are upon us. My Boston accent is already creeping back, which sounds weird when combined with "y'all". I have to remember not to say "y'all" up here, because they really really look at you like you're speaking Wuluf or something.

Posted by ray at 9:08 AM | Comments (6)

January 1, 2007

A Postmodern Holiday Retrospective

shopping shopping shopping family family shopping shopping cooking cooking cooking cooking family family presents presents cough presents presents cough casino family family family family work stress stress stress cough cough work stress stress stress cough cough cough 99 99 100 101 102 102 102 102 103 touro touro touro touro touro touro touro touro touro touro touro xray xray walgreens drugs drugs drugs drugs sleep sleep sleep sleep twilight zone cough cough cough twilight zone cough cough cough twilight zone cough cough cough sleep cough cough sleep cough cough twilight zone cough cough....

Apologies to Philip Glass. And God bless the SciFi channel's Twilight Zone marathon.

Posted by ray at 2:36 PM | Comments (18)

November 23, 2006

Slaughtering the fatted redfish

Got field reports via text message from Loki and Maitri regarding the relentless turkey genocide going on in the city. At our house, the bird was safe, as instead we vanquished our seagoing enemies, feasted on their flesh and heard the lamentations of their women.

Then we had pie.

Posted by ray at 11:19 PM | Comments (9)

November 22, 2006

Killing the feast

I've been meaning to take my kids on a serious fishing trip for years, but being landlocked in Austin made it difficult since the ocean was four hours away. Now that we're back near the coast where normal people live, it seemed like a good time to introduce them to The Art of The Angler. With a guide, of course, because I'm inept in that department. I can cook 'em, but somebody has to help me catch 'em.

I made the reservation a month ago, when the temperature was in the 80's and the AC was running. November being "anything can happen" month, of course the first big arctic front of the season blew in two days before our fishing day, so at 7:00 AM yesterday we found ourselves out in the wetlands near Lafitte with both the temperature and the wind gusts somewhere in the 30s.

It was still great fun, and reasonably decent fishing. The minimum size limit for redfish is 16 inches, and we caught a ton of 15-and-a-half inch ones, and every time we did Cap'n' E.J. made the same joke: "Smart fish, he knows just what size to be!" and then tossed him back in.

A decent haul:

and the monster on the left (caught by Liam) will be the big dead animal in the middle of our Thanksgiving table tomorrow.

Posted by ray at 9:40 AM | Comments (5)

November 1, 2006

Peectures

I don't have so much to say this week. I have lots of new flickr sets though.

Liam is playing inline hockey these days. He's got this gladiator streak in him, and when he found out that every kid on the team gets to wear more gear than a baseball catcher, he fell in love with the game. When he found out that the goalie gets to wear even more gear...

A couple of weeks back, the Carries kicked those sissy bitch Rinkwraith's asses. Some guy behind me was really taken with Little Miss Ruffit. "Yo, Ruffit, kick some ass, baby". Dangerblond says to me, "Ray, do you know that guy?" and I said "No, but I imagine I'll get to know him soon"...

Liam had to pick a historic figure to do a report on at school, and since he'd heard me talking about Buddy Bolden a few weeks back when we wrecked Ms. Cora's house, he decided to do his on Bolden. So we got to go around the city taking pictures of some of the places in Bolden's life, many of which still exist and are sadly not marked with any kind of historic plaque or anything. He's buried in an unmarked grave in Holt Cemetery, which is where people who are too poor to be interred in above-ground tombs go to be buried in the ground. It's a neat place...sad in a way to see it in such disrepair, but fascinating to how people without a lot of money honor their deceased...

Pictures from Voodoo Music and Halloween when I get some time.

Posted by ray at 6:26 AM | Comments (10)

October 14, 2006

Sugar Daddy

Sugar Daddy died in his sleep last night.

We got Sugar years ago after Foamy and Bootzilla died, because we didn't want Doriella du Fontaine to be the only kitty in the house. Gina and the kids picked it out at the shelter because it had messed up ears from earlier mistreatment. They were told it was a girl and needed to be fixed, but after we named it Sugar, we found out from the vet "actually, it's a boy and he's already fixed". Silly us. We tossed around various drag queen variations on the name Sugar before giving up and finally settling on Sugar Daddy.

Sugar hasn't really been very happy since Doriella died last spring. He's had kidney problems for a long time now and stopped eating and started having seizures on Wednesday morning. By Friday morning we took him in expecting to have him put to sleep, but the vet thought that with some anti-seizure meds and another change in diet he might do OK for a while, but it wasn't meant to be.

At least he died at home, with a full belly, with Beezus the pooch keeping a 24 hour vigil outside his room.

Liam is taking it very hard. After Doriella died, while we were crammed into that tiny apartment in Austin while our house was on the market, Liam and Sugar got to be close and slept together every night. It's hard to lose two pets in one year when you're that age.

Posted by ray at 11:22 AM | Comments (22)

September 14, 2006

Ann

In July of 1992, Gina and I flew into Austin from San Francisco for some job interviews. The city life in the Bay Area was starting to wear us down and we were both homesick for the heat we grew up with.

In the Dallas airport, we ran across this issue of Texas Monthly:

and we were ecstatic. Despite what everybody back in SF thought about Texas, we knew we were moving to a liberal oasis and we were going to have the coolest Democratic governor in the country.

Even after she left office in 1995, Ann would pop into our lives from time to time. She lived in our neighborhood in Clarksville so every once in a while we'd see her at the Fresh Plus buying groceries in her gym suit. Her hair was always perfect.

Gina once stood next to her at the Fresh Plus deli counter (where Cippolina is now) with toddler-age Cassidy; Cass was completely grubby as only toddlers can get, with a runny nose on top of it all, and Ann turned around and said "Oh, how cute". Gina is still embarrassed that she was really thinking "bad mom".

We'd see her sometimes at her regular booth at Las Manitas. I thinik I heard she always ordered the migas con hongos, which are indeed spectacular.

Later near the end of my drinking years, I saw her on Dennis Miller's show talking about her own history of drinking and sobriety, and she was one of the first people to really plant the idea in my head that you can be sober and still be funny and interesting. And coincidentally, when I finally found my AA sponsor, he turned out to be a friend of both Ann and Liz Carpenter, the two most famous Democrat ex-drunks in Texas.

Ann is the last elected official that ever represented me that I was really truly enthusiastic about.

I've been saying it since 1995, and I will keep saying it. Ann, you're still my governor. You'll always be my governor.

I won't say "rest in peace" because I can't imagine that a little old thing like dying is going to make you want to rest. I'm sure you're still givin' them hell.

Posted by ray at 10:47 AM | Comments (7)

June 30, 2006

Houseless, but not homeless

Today we closed on the sale of our house. The Walker-Stiles house was our home for six years, and a few years back we were able to get it declared a City of Austin historic landmark. But now a new family moves in.

We haven't lived in it since February, and we've got big adventures waiting for us in our new home in New Orleans, so I'm not as broken up about it as I thought I'd be, although I got a little choked up doing a last pass through last night making sure we hadn't left anything behind.

Liam was a pre-schooler and Cassidy was just starting first grade when we moved here. We've had many crawfish boils in the back yard. We've lost many a baseball down the storm drain on the corner. In the early summer, we could catch enough fireflies in the front yard that you could make a lantern jar like they do in Disney cartoons. We could skate on the pine floors in our socks. Liam once did a spectacular face plant in the dirt from the swing in the front yard that made lots of blood, but he came through it OK. When you'd yell up to call the kids for dinner, you could hear the thump-thump-thump of running down the stairs. And every once in a while you'd catch the kids out on the back porch roof where they'd climbed out from Cassidy's bedroom. We had a pair of cardinals make a nest in the corner bush every year. We had tons of pecan trees, but the squirrels always got all the pecans. And having pecan trees and live oaks meant it was raking season 9 months out of the year.

It was a great old house.

Life goes on.

Posted by ray at 2:16 PM | Comments (9)

May 26, 2006

Walkin'

...And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in and say "Shrink, I'm leavin' here today, yes, I'm goin' back home to stay, yes, I'm walkin' to New Orleans."

And walk out.

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both queer and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin' a bar of "Walkin' to New Orleans" and walking out. They may think it's an organization.

And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin' a bar of "Walkin' to New Orleans" and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement.

And that's what it is, the Walkin' to New Orleans Anti-Hurricree Sippiana Blues Movement, and all you got to do to join in is sing it the next time it comes around on the piano...

Gina has taken a job as Director of Architecture at a New Orleans company heavily involved in the rebuilding of the education infrastructure. She's also made the team as a new skater on the Big Easy Rollergirls.

Cassidy got into Lusher. Liam got into Audubon.

My current company will let me work long-distance for as long as I want.

And we're signing a lease on an apartment Uptown.

Meaning I am officially joining Mark and Ashley in the ranks of ex-pats who are crazy enough and homesick enough and optimistic enough to want to move back to New Orleans after Katrina, despite Katrina, because of Katrina, when we didn't even live there before Katrina.

That makes three, which like the song say, means it's an organization. Anybody wanna make it a movement?

See y'all in mid-July.

Posted by ray at 5:08 PM | Comments (17)

May 14, 2006

Happy Mother's Day

[Thanks to Gina from Chicory for the link.]

Posted by ray at 12:26 PM | Comments (2)

May 7, 2006

Paralyzed

My life is like this right now.

Work. School. Kids. Housing. Moving. Staying.

By the end of May there will likely be clarity, but right now there is nothing but fog and nothing I can do but wait for it to dissipate. And I can't blog about any of it until it is decided because there are personal and business risks involved with doing so.

I. Fucking. Hate. This.

Posted by ray at 9:53 PM | Comments (4)

April 15, 2006

Dye another day

We dyed Easter eggs today. Or at least, the family dyed Easter eggs. I was feeling impatient and lazy, so I took the road less travelled.

Posted by ray at 6:51 PM | Comments (6)

April 14, 2006

Gina the birthday girl

If you see this little one walking around today, give her a few birthday whacks on the bootay.

Posted by ray at 11:24 AM | Comments (3)

March 17, 2006

Dia de San Patricio

I could barely manage to acknowledge St. Patrick's day this year.

Everything lately has been an effort. All the frantic activities of the past three months are taking their toll. I'm just fucking tired.

The family is split up. Gina is off to Santa Cruz to visit our friend Amy who is undergoing chemo for breast cancer, so I'm single-parenting until Monday night. Cassidy is being all teenagery and didn't want to leave the house. All my CDs are boxed up and in storage. No Pogues, no Chieftains, no Floggy Molly.

But still, I did my best to fake it. I pulled on my green t-shirt from Doyle's Pub in Boston. I took the boy to the Dog & Duck to hear the bagpipes. For some reason all that Guinness around me aroused the voices in my head, the voices that have been gone for over a year. I was almost thinking they'd gone away for good, but nope. They're still there. They're weak, they don't scare me, but they're still there, and I can't turn my back on them.

It was almost boring. It was almost not worth doing. Until Liam and I got us a basket of fish & chips and a Coke and sat down in the parking lot next to the music tent, and finally, finally, St. Patrick found me. Fingers all greasy, ketchup stains on my jeans, sitting on the pavement next to the trash can, in the cool cloudy March afternoon with the pipes playing and the kids running around and the happy drunk people in their green hats having their happy drunk fun, with the smell of cigarettes and spilled beer and Irish stew and fried fish. It was hard to feel it, but it was there, just barely. It felt like St. Patrick's day.

And the pipers finished piping, and we finished our chips, and we headed home to watch "March of the Penguins" until the kids fell asleep in front of the TV.

And it ain't so fucking bad, y'know?

Posted by ray at 9:50 PM | Comments (9)

March 5, 2006

You will see the Zulu king...

Ain't no place to pee on Mardi Gras Day
Ain't no place to pee on Mardi Gras Day
No matter what you say
No matter what you pay
Ain't no place to pee on Mardi Gras Day

Stuff about Mardi Gras this year that was as good or better than years past:

Everybody agrees that this Mardi Gras felt like the good old days, like the Carnival season as it was before the 80's when it started being overwhelmed by tourists. The family vibe up on the Avenue was tremendous. People barbecued, kids watched the parades on ladders, people shared beads and joked with total strangers. It was splendiferous. It was like a giant reunion, a huge homecoming party.

The throws were spectacular. Cassidy got two (two!) Zulu coconuts at her very first Zulu parade. Liam caught four spears. Even traditionally stingy krewes like Iris were throwing gobs of stuff. On Saturday the air was so thick with beads that nobody was bothering to pick any up off the ground. If you didn't make a fair catch, you didn't even bother to bend over because it was more lucrative to just watch for the next bundle to be thrown, and the ground was so littered with beads that it was dangerous footing if you had a kid on your shoulder.

Somebody came up with the brilliant idea of packaging beads in these non-disposable bags with zippers on them, so when the bag was empty, it became a valuable throw itself. We brought our entire haul home in these bags. How cool is that?

We didn't make it to the Quarter on Fat Tuesday, but Uptown was still thick with people masking, and most of the costumes were political humor. Granted, Katrina has made for a target-rich environment in that respect.

And racial harmony. There was a definite lack of muttered comments from the white folks about "the bruthas" or "that element" or how "dark" the Claiborne side of St. Charles is. And the mostly black crowd down around Melpomene was just as sweet as can be. It was a big frickin' love fest. It was just...different. I can't describe it. And I hope it lasts.

And if I hear another idiot say something stupid about how New Orleans is a whiter city now, or how Mardi Gras was just for the white people, I'm gonna put a boot up their white ass.

But a few thing about Mardi Gras that were different and sad:

Some parades were short. The truck parades after Rex were really short. Mid-City was only about three floats long, with no bands (this from a krewe that was once renowned for having the best marching bands).

The bands that were there fucking rocked. But a lot of them were from out of town. The legendary bands of St. Augustine, St, Mary's, and Xavier Prep combined to form a single group called the MAX band, which was clearly the biggest hit of the season. All of the schools of St. Bernard parish combined to form one small band, and they got the kind of respectful teary-eyed applause that's usually reserved for WWII vets. St. Bernard doesn't exist any more. Every damn one of those kids is homeless, and still, they represented.

Restaurants were hard to come by, or packed, or closed without warning. You couldn't just go to a place away from the parade routes, because the only parts of New Orleans with functioning restaurants are the parts of New Orleans with parades. We went by Drago's on Saturday when Endymion was rained out, and it was just closed, with no explanation, even though it reopened back in November. We ended up at Franky & Johnny's along with about a thousand other people. Monday we wandered the Quarter looking for a muffaletta, but Central Grocery was closed, Napoleon House closed at 6 (during Mardi Gras!), and we ended up at a strangely deserted Cafe Pontalba.

The saddest thing, though, was the north breeze on Saturday when the cold front came through. Every once in a while, the breeze would carry with it a hint of the smell of Lakeview, Mid-City, Broadmoor, and the other neighborhoods on the lakeward side of the Avenue. And you could still detect "that smell"...the decay, the mold, the rot...the stench of Katrina.

I hear the Mardi Gras Indians were out in force in the Lower 9. We only saw one Indian that day, running by on Melpomene, looking like he was late for the meetup. Head to toe in orange feathers. Later that night I heard a stellar live version of "Indian Red" on WWOZ, and the thought of the Indians defiantly dancing through the wreckage of the Lower 9 singing that song brought me to tears.

We won't bow down
We won't bow down
Down on the ground
Down on the ground
Oh how I love to hear him call my Indian Red

All my pictures are in a flickr set here.

Posted by ray at 2:31 PM | Comments (4)

March 2, 2006

Doriella du Fontaine, 1988-2006

Our oldest cat, Doriella du Fontaine, has gone to be with her brother Bootzilla in funky kitty heaven.

She had some sort of stroke on Friday before we left for New Orleans, but the vet reassured us that it was probably minor since her blood work was all fine. Then yesterday while driving home we got a call from the mom-in-law that we should hurry, because Doriella was sinking fast, having multiple siezures and refusing to eat. (I drove fast enough to warrant a polite conversation with one of Texas's finest, but oh well.)

Dory slipped into a kitty coma a few hours after we got home last night, and Gina had the vet put her down this morning.

Man! I pulled through,
Like all damn studs do,
But I know I'll never be the same
Cause there'll never be another Miss Doriella Du Fontaine.
That's her name,
Miss Du Fontaine.
I'll never be the same
Cause there'll never be another Miss Doriella du Fontaine

Posted by ray at 10:04 PM | Comments (13)

February 5, 2006

Random Mardi Gras Memory II

Most of my parade watching as a kid was at the Algiers parades. Alla, Choctaw, and Cleopatra were the real high points of the season for me. When you're little, they're great because you don't need a ladder, the crowds aren't as big as the Uptown parades so you can run loose, scoot around between people and stay low to the ground to get doubloons.

I remember one year when I was probably 10 years old, my grandparents came down from Boston for their first Mardi Gras. We explained to them about how you don't ever reach down to pick up a throw off the ground, you have to step on it first to mark it as yours. Still, the first time we got showered in doubloons I think they were a little surprised the way all the people automatically flocked like crazed seagulls around the sound of coins tinkling on the cement.

My grandfather Tony (actually my grandmother's second husband) was a sweet old Italian guy raised in the North End of Boston. And I remember one time a float rider tossed a huge handful of doubloons right in front of us. The crowd scrambled, stepping on anything shiny, anything that moved, the kids all crawling around reaching the stuff that the grownups couldn't see. And when it had calmed down a little, I heard Tony saying, "Raymond! Raymond! Come here a sec!"

I got close and he looked around to make sure nobody was listening, and he leaned over to me and whispered, "I think...I got one. Let me lift my shoe and you get it out before anybody sees." So he lifted his shoe, and I fetched him out a gold Choctaw doubloon.

I remember him turning it over and over in his hand with a big goofy grin on his face, saying, "For crying out loud. Will you look at that? For crying out loud...."

Posted by ray at 9:17 AM | Comments (3)

February 4, 2006

Moving day

We moved out of the house today. We decided that moving out to fix it up and sell it empty was the way to go, so we've got the whole family and the pets crammed into a very nice 2-bedroom apartment over by Central Market.

I'll never sleep in the old house again. And I'm really going to miss it.

When we moved here, Cassidy had just finished kindergarten, and Liam was only three. I was still giddy from the tech bubble IPO rollercoaster. We could walk to the Crown and Anchor. Ten minutes to downtown by bus. Surrounded by Democrat neighbors.

I suppose I should be really sad right now, but I've been too busy today and I'm too exhausted right now. Tomorrow when I go to transfer the kids height measurements marks from the corner wall to a little roll of paper tape, it'll hit me.

This morning when I went out to take the picture of the house, the first thing I saw was a cardinal. Actually, a pair of cardinals; a male and a female. I've written before about my grandmother and cardinals, and about how cardinals have a way of always showing up right around important inflection points in my life.

I'm going to take this as a good sign. As sad as it is leaving behind all these memories (and leaving behind that badass kitchen), it's going to be better wherever we end up. 2006 seems like it's going to be a year of adventures.

And we're already packed.

Posted by ray at 7:20 PM | Comments (3)

January 17, 2006

Stuff. And more stuff. Oh, and look over here. More stuff.

Thanks for all the kind words. Stepdad got out of the hospital on Sunday evening, with orders to rest, so they won't be getting back on the road to Louisiana for a couple more weeks and are quietly napping in a temporary apartment here in Austin.

Meanwhile...moving sucks. Trying to figure out how to sell this house empty while not using up all the money we would make from the sale...sucks.

Last week I was thinking that maybe it's time to part ways with my vinyl collection...until I started packing it up and getting a look at records I haven't heard or even seen since the last time we moved. Now I don't want to get rid of it all, I want to digitize it so that I can listen to it on my ipod. Great, another project.

So 1,100 records and 1,200 CDs are now inaccessible for the foreseeable future. I was forced to listen to the Electronica channel on Time Warner Cable for entertainment.

I'm almost up to 10 boxes of books. My God, where did I get all this stuff?

All those Philip K. Dick books that I read after surgery in a codeine haze many years ago, and then couldn't remember once the drugs wore off.

Some great Vonnegut, and then a big pile of Vonnegut that I barely remember touching. I know I read them all, but fuck if I know what they were about.

Two copies of The Franco-Prussian War. Two copies of Clauswitz. Two copies of Six Armies in Normandy. Why do we have two copies of so many classic war-fighting tomes? Because Gina and I first met in a "History of Warfare" class at Rice. Twelve people in the class: 10 Marine ROTC students, me with my mohawk, Gina with her leather jacket and bleached hair. You'd think we would have become best buddies in that environment, but a strange combination of shyness and feigned arrogance had us not even speak to each other the entire semester. It wasn't until we met again a couple of years later that we both said, "Oh, I remember you."

The only other stuff we have two of is a lot of Bowie and Elton John records. Which are now in boxes.

Big pile of 80's comics, graphic novels and collections. A former hobby of mine. V for Vendetta. Love and Rockets. R. Crumb. American Splendor.

Big pile of black history books. A former hobby of mine. Malcolm X. Bobby Seale. Stephen Biko.

Big pile of Irish history books. A former hobby of mine. Tim Pat Coogan. John Conroy. Bernadette Devlin. Gerry Adams.

I have Pierre Boulle's classic Planet of the Apes. I also have the admittedly less-than-classic novelizations of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes. I move these books everywhere I go. For some reason.

Loads and loads and loads of stuff that I don't ever see except when I'm moving, but which I can't bring myself to throw away.

Posted by ray at 9:36 AM | Comments (16)

January 14, 2006

Life intervenes

Apologies for the lack of content lately. I'm not even able to keep up with most of my daily reading, much less write anything. Life events have intervened.

My stepfather was admitted to the hospital late Tuesday night. I'll spare you the details, but it involves internal bleeding, so every day he is supposed to get discharged, and every day they look at his blood counts and change their minds and decide he needs observation for one more day. Life-threatening diseases have all been ruled out, thankfully, but when you're approaching 70, even the less-severe stuff has its risks, and besides, it doesn't take much to wear out my mother emotionally.

And this event comes right in the middle of our other big adventure. We're selling our house. No, we're not moving to New Orleans (yet), but we've finally decided that the equity we have in this house that we bought at the peak of the tech bubble would be more useful to us in the form of cash, so we're downsizing a little bit. We've decided that financial flexibility is more important to us than sentimental attachment to a big old historic landmark in a cool old neighborhood.

Yeah, it hurts a little. Some of it is pride; every once in a while I get these twinges of feeling like I failed, like I'm being forced to retreat. Which is nonsense, when you think about it. I'm more fortunate than most of my friends, even most of my coworkers.

Anyway, my posting here will be somewhat spotty for a while, as I'm more concerned with packing and remodeling and visiting the hospital. And, y'know, job and all. When I have time.

Posted by ray at 2:09 PM | Comments (13)

December 31, 2005

First Night

Unless you've been sleeping under a rock, you know about Austin's first First Night celebration going on today and tonight. I have no idea what to make of it...it's huge and it's complicated and it's the first year so who knows.

At the very least, we will take in the Grand Procession from 5:30-6:30 since our kids are part of "The Pink", an art car they've been working on for the past few months. And the Flaming Arrows Mardi Gras Indians, recently emigrated from New Orleans, will be performing at City Hall later in the evening

Have fun, and don't drink and drive ('cause now that I don't drink any more and can get a good look at you people, you drive like idiots, man, and you're way easier to spot than you think.)

Posted by ray at 8:13 AM | Comments (1)

December 28, 2005

Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

I got a lot of cool stuff for Christmas this year. But nothing as good as the music that everyone in my family knew I needed to have. Music that is at once uplifting and bittersweet.

Yeah, it's all New Orleans music. Duh.

The Benny Grunch 12 Yats of Christmas CD is mostly novelty tunes. Things that are hilarious to a native, but probably meaningless to anybody else.

"...A dozen Manuel's tamales,
Eleven Schwegmann bags,
Tenneco Refinery,
Lower Ninth Ward,
Ate by ya mama's,
Seventeenth Street Canal,
Dix pack o' Sixie,
Frrrriiiiieeeeeed Onion Riiiiiiiiings,
Before ya drive me nuts,
Three French Breads,
Tujague's recipe,
For the crawfish they caught in Arabi"

The whole Benny Grunch phenom happened long after I moved away, so it didn't have a huge pull on me like it did other people who had to hear "The 12 Yats of Christmas" on the radio every frickin' year, but any guy that can write a song lamenting the closing of the old Bridge Bowl in Algiers...that guy gets it, y'know?

But the other two items are heartbreaking in the way that they recall what was lost, they way they focus your grief for the New Orleans of old and fear of the New Orleans that may come.

Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens is the four-disc box set that was designed by Chuck Taggart of The Gumbo Pages. I hinted around last Christmas that I wanted it, but I didn't get it. This Christmas, the family just knew. It is superbly packaged, immaculately researched, and thorough in both breadth and depth, capturing every nook and cranny of New Orleans music old and new, from Sidney Bechet to Galactic, from piano professors to Cajuns to pub rockers to New Orleans-style klezmer. The music, the book, the pictures are a joyous, raucous, soulful feast for the senses.

And taking it all in now, after what has transpired...your heart breaks right in two. Just splits right down the middle.

So much of it is gone. So much of what remains is in tatters.

Which is where the third gift comes in. Our New Orleans is the jazz funeral to end all jazz funerals. A benefit CD recorded in the weeks after the storm, featuring probably the greatest collection of living Louisiana artists ever assembled. Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Buckwheat Zydeco, the Wild Magnolias...

There is a small thread of hope here, but honestly, there is mostly grief, and pain, and loss. It's still too early to party.

Allen Toussaint plays "Tipitina" in a minor key and the angels weep. Davell Crawford does what all of us have been thinking, taking a gospel song about the river and the water and making it a song of sorrow rather than baptism and renewal. The Dirty Dozen's "Feet Don't Fail Me Now" is no longer about dancing, it's about fleeing your home.

Everything about this CD is perfect. I've cried twice listening to it. I'm feeling a little teary right now just talking about it. Even the title. Our New Orleans. Not the media's New Orleans, or the tourists' New Orleans, or the politicians' New Orleans. Our New Orleans. The one we loved, and lost, and will rebuild.

Posted by ray at 11:44 PM | Comments (3)

December 18, 2005

Papa's got a brand new scanner

The out-laws bought us a new printer/scanner, so I'm finally going to get to torment all of you with pictures from the pre-digital past.

Here's a sample. Rice Class of '86, Gina's second degree, my first.

While you're giggling at that goofiness (I had to clean up for mom for graduation, obviously), I found a bunch of Berlin Wall pictures, so hopefully a post about that in the next day or so.

Posted by ray at 6:17 PM | Comments (6)

December 12, 2005

Santa's hideout at chicken fried heaven: a family tradition

Every year we go out to Elgin to cut down our Chrismas tree. And every year we stop at the Cafe 290 in Manor to get their heart attack appetizer, the Chicken Fried Universe: fried green tomatoes, onion rings, and deep fried zucchini, green beans, and mushrooms, with bowls of ranch for dipping (and I guaran-damn-tee you, Karl, this ranch was not homemade):

And every year, we see somebody who looks suspiciously like Santa, sitting at the breakfast counter in civilian clothes, drinking his coffee and reading the Sunday paper. I realize this is as blurry as a Bigfoot photo, but I didn't want to spook him by using a flash...I swear to God, it's really him:

And every year I say we are going to get a tree tall enough to touch our 9'3" living room ceiling, and every year the family overrules me and picks out a tree based on shape and aesthetics instead of pure height:

Six-and-a-half. Sigh.

Cassidy tells me "size isn't everything, Dad." And you know, a lot of smart-ass responses immediately come to mind, but none of them are ones you want to say to your 11-year-old daughter.

Posted by ray at 10:25 PM | Comments (10)

Dinner party, old friends and new

Last night was a big dinner party at our house. Some random old friends and family, and some new friends from New Orleans. Twelve adults, five kids, two new twin babies. A big pot of redfish courtbouillon with lots of sides and snackies and red wine and Ellen's peppermint brownies for dessert.

The folks from New Orleans were evacuees from the neighborhood around the Fairgrounds. I first met this woman at the Speedway Grocery, said hi because she was wearing a sweatshirt from Tricou House. We got to talking, naturally mostly about Katrina and moving back vs. not moving back, we swapped phone numbers, and one thing led to another and they ended up coming over for dinner: wife, husband, son, and their other friend from the 'hood who was in Austin taking a break from cleaning up.

The friend is moving back. He's single, no kids, was renting, he works with underpriviledged kids and wants to be there when they start moving back.

The family is staying in Austin. They just can't handle the instability in New Orleans right now with a four-year-old. They don't have power yet in the house they own there, they don't have jobs there any more so they don't have a lot to move back for, they can't imaging moving away for 3+ months every time another hurricane hits, they have no idea what will happen with schools and levees, and Austin has been good to them. So their house in New Orleans is up for sale, and they're rebuilding their lives here in Austin.

They're fantastic people. We hope to see a lot more of them. And I gave them directions to Gene's for a sloppy roast beef, dressed.

A few food pics in the flickr page. And here's what I had for dinner tonight...leftovers:

Posted by ray at 12:08 AM | Comments (2)

December 4, 2005

The great Louisiana vegetable migration

We took this picture in Metairie a couple of weeks ago.

My nephew planted some pumpkin seeds for the fall planting season in late summer, and look how they've flourished, after spending over a week under four feet of water.

But the weird thing is, he didn't plant them here. He planted them at the other end of the yard. The flood moved them, then nourished them. We took pictures, we laughed about it, we wondered about whether it was safe to eat anything growing in their yard this year (they also have an orange, a lime, and a satsuma tree), and then I forgot about it.

Well, night before last, I was listening to WWL in my car, and apparently this sort of vegetable migration has happened all over the city. One caller said she saw dozens of healthy-looking watermelons growing by the side of the road in St. Bernard. I wish I had pictures of that.

I will try, really try, to think of this as a metaphor for something. Something nice.

Posted by ray at 12:24 AM | Comments (5)

November 26, 2005

Disney in 4.0 megapixel splendor

Our Disney trip is all collected in a Flickr set here.

At some later date I'll pull out a few that deserve anecdotes, but right now my own bed is calling me.

Posted by ray at 11:09 PM | Comments (3)

November 24, 2005

Giving thanks

"I like Animal Kingdom more than Epcot."

"Yeah, Epcot is too...too..."

"Disneyfied?"

"Yeah. Too Disneyfied."

The nicest things about Epcot were the young women taiko drummers, and the Norwegian girl gift shop staff, and our lovely Italian waitress Valeria who very sweetly taught me to pronounce "salsicce alla griglia e fagioli".

Wild boar with fennel italian sausages on white beans.

Halfway through the meal, I realized that whoever put this particular menu item together has a sense of humor and was making a double reference about one character in a particular Disney animated feature, but it's buried pretty deep until it's pointed out to you.

Today I gave thanks for my family not fighting and in fact being very sweet to each other. For being able to play on water slides after sundown in November. For having a home and jobs and schools to return to, when so many others don't and many more never had it to begin with. For chocolate chocolate-chunk Haagen-Dazs. For having so many lovely friends who read my shit even when I'm just running off at the mouth, and who run off at the mouth themselves just so I can read their shit. And for the fact that I don't actually have to get out of bed to watch the fireworks in the Magic Kingdom.

Posted by ray at 9:23 PM | Comments (4)

November 23, 2005

We wants the redhead!

Thirteen hours at the Magic Kingdom and I my feet are bloody stumps.

The kids behaved. Everybody behaved, in fact.

Some of the classic rides are still classics. The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean are still brilliant even if they've evolved slightly over the years.

Liam was so scared of Splash Mountain while we were waiting in line he was shaking, he was near tears, but when he finished, he wanted to go back and do it again. He wins the bravery award.

The gift shop at the Pirates exit now has primo swag, and not all of it is of the "I Heart Captain Jack Sparrow" variety.

But the disappointments: Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is long gone. 20,000 Leagues is gone. And the Enchanted Tiki Room is "Under New Management". Gone is the charming Martin Denny 60's tropical kitsch, replaced by Iago and Zazu and a bunch of hip-hop and Gloria Estefan songs and screeching Gilbert fucking Godfried and the typical modern "smart-ass insults as comedy" form of entertainment that Hollywood thinks we all want.

The Tiki Room sucks now. Lifetime boycott. I will never set foot in there again.

After having read Cory Doctorow's Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, I see this place in a whole new light, and I'm probably gonna reread it again as soon as I get home. And if anybody knows of any other Disney-oriented cyberpunk/sci-fi, please let me know (Doxy?).

Pictures coming soon, but I forgot my USB connector for my camera.

Posted by ray at 11:17 PM | Comments (1)

November 22, 2005

Disney bound

We're headed for Disney World for the next few days, so blogging may be spotty during that time.

Two kids, two grandparents, lots and lots of family drama.

May God have mercy on our souls.

See ya!

Posted by ray at 1:13 PM | Comments (12)

November 2, 2005

FEMA is clueless

This morning Gina got a frantic call from FEMA, telling her they were faxing her paperwork and she needs to start right away and can she be in Orlando by Monday to start training. All very excited and rushed and needing immediate response.

And Gina said, "Well, wait a minute. I haven't even seen a job description or an offer or anything yet."

They were surprised by that, so they gave her the number of the person to call about the offer.

Jayzus, what clueless dorks.

Now, I had seen job ads from a year or so ago for FEMA Mitigation Architects to work out of DC offices for 85-110 K annual salary with full government employee benefits.

But that's not what they're doing for Katrina. No, for Katrina, the salary is half that, with no benefits. For architects with 10-20 years experience. You get called up for a month, you stay the complete month, you don't get to leave the job region to visit home, you work seven days a week with no overtime, and at the end of the month they might either require you to stay another month or terminate your employment and possibly call you back two or three months later with little notice.

And I'm thinking, the only architects who would want to work under those conditions are ones who are unemployable in their home job market, who have no job prospects and no business of their own to run. In other words, the last people you'd want to have to work with under those kinds of conditions. The last people you'd want to be in charge of rebuilding a major metropolitan area.

Needless to say, Gina turned them down. It would be way too hard on the kids for not enough in return, and all to work for an organization as badly run as FEMA.

Somewhere out there, there might be a way for small businesses to get rebuilding contracts, but apparently you need to be sucking Halliburton's dick to be privy to the bid information.

People are getting beaucoup rich off this rebuilding, but it's not the small businesses and it's not the people who want to get in there and do the right thing for the city. It's the usual suspects, the cronies and the carpetbaggers.

So we sit in Austin, and we wonder what to do. Can't move back...no place to live and no schools, even if we could find jobs in our chosen fields. But they desperately want people to move back. It's a bitch of a chicken-and-egg problem.

Posted by ray at 8:58 PM | Comments (2)

October 4, 2005

Considering New Orleans again

Much to my surprise, Gina is pretty gung-ho about the possibility of moving back to New Orleans for a year or two. She's driven partly by professional interest ("the architecture there is just too juicy"), partly I think by wanting a change, partly (and she won't say so, but I'm guessing) because maybe she thinks this is the lever that will finally pry me out of the software business.

So it's not a serious thing, yet, but not necessarily a complete fantasy either. My brother has connections in town which he can work to help me find me a job. Gina is trying to get on either with FEMA or through other architect contacts. I have high school friends I can talk to about which Orleans Parish schools are still viable (the Algiers schools were a bright spot when I was a kid), or whether private school is the way to go. At least until high school, when I know the kids can go to Franklin, my alma mater.

So Gina keeps looking up rental properties, both Uptown and in my childhood neighborhood of Algiers. Unfortunately, rental rates in the non-flooded areas have doubled since Katrina, making it just about as expensive as Austin for renters. And I don't think buying right off the bat is a good idea because the market there is going to be absolutely psycho for a few years.

It's a very weird time. Many monumental choices. Karl probably remembers 12 years ago when Gina and I just up and decided overnight to move from the Bay Area back to Texas. But now there are kids. You don't just up and do things when there are kids involved. But neither should the kids be an excuse for inaction, for stagnation.

I just don't know.

Posted by ray at 9:21 AM | Comments (6)

September 25, 2005

Random hurricane stuff

Brother Bill reports that the bayou in his neighborhood in Prairieville was flowing backwards yesterday as the last of the rain bands passed over head. After Katrina he needed some roof repair. After Rita, he now needs a completely new roof. No power, but his best friend is a building contractor so he's set up with generators and is reasonably comfortable.

"Dude, Baton Rouge just sucks right now."

Poppy seems to have no patience for people who don't want to move back. I don't know, seems to me that the experiences of somebody who makes her living sitting in her house writing books and whose loved ones are all accounted for might not give her the perspective to judge a person who drives a bus, or works part time at Popeyes, or collects welfare, and who has dead family members who they haven't even been allowed to bury yet.

Some people are going to land on their feet, some people are not. And for somebody whose biggest problem in exile has been "where can I recharge my laptop" and "oh dear, I lost 13% of my cats" to pass judgement on other folks who are in MUCH worse shape and who are choosing survival of their families over some kind of New Orleans culture fetish...I don't know, I just expected a little bit more compassion.

New Orleans will be rebuilt. I applaud the people who will do it. I hope to help rebuild it myself somehow. But demanding a loyalty oath out of people whose families are in tatters shows a lack of class which rivals that of those who think New Orleans should be abandoned.

Eh. I'll still buy her books, though.

Finally, Austinite Larry Archer has some pictures in Flickr of Dick Cheney's visit to the Austin Katrina shelter. I like this one here, at the public computers where we volunteered, of Dick Cheney feigning interest while a volunteer explains to him that FEMA's web site is a pile of shit.

Posted by ray at 11:46 AM | Comments (1)

September 19, 2005

How I Spent Talk Like a Pirate Day

"You must swear, legally swear that you will not kill that shark, or whatever it is, if it exists."

"I'm going to find it, but I'll let it live. What about my dynamite?"

I can't believe that once in my life I actually thought Bill Murray was a Chevy Chase wannabe.

In celebration of Talk Like A Pirate day, we all sat down to watch The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, since it has, like, actual pirates in it. Although they're all Filipino and carry machine guns, so not a lot of arrrrrr.

This movie is indescribably awkward and charming and funny and sad. Almost reminds me of Boogie Nights, in the way it portrays a grouchy but loving father-figure running a dicey business venture with a bunch of eccentric strays who he treats like family. Including a guy whose main activity consists of sitting in the background singing old Bowie songs, in French, with an acoustic guitar. Bowie does for this film what Kevin Shields did for Lost in Translation. Bowie is good.

I am now suddenly consumed with the desire to rent every single movie Bill Murray has ever made.

This was the second R-rated movie for each of the kids...Cass has seen Lost in Translation and loved it, and since when I first watched this one the other night it seemed obvious the R was mostly for the rare naked boobies and liberal cussing, we figured it was OK for her to watch. Liam just kind of tagged along because there was popcorn, but after we figured out that he was totally bored with the movie and only hanging around for the novelty of all the unbleeped F-bombs, I yanked him out and took him upstairs to watch some baseball.

The Astros were playing....

...wait for it....

the Pirates.

A complete day.

Posted by ray at 9:07 PM | Comments (6)

Rita

I'm not sure I'm ready to do this all over again.

Yesterday this storm was predicted to hit the lower Texas coast, and I was OK with that. OK, I feel guilty for saying that, I don't wish a hurricane on anybody, but it's a little more sparsely populated, and there aren't a ton of those poor Katrina evacuees down there. And so maybe we could focus our prayers on keeping it a category 1 or 2 storm, instead of the predicted category 3. Maybe Austin could get a little rain out of it to cool off ACL. The power of positive thinking, all that.

But now it's drawing a bead directly on Houston. And Houston contains the largest population of displaced New Orleanians anywhere, outside of Louisiana. Houston is where my brother's family now lives, while he spends his days ripping moldy sheet rock out of his house in Metairie.

And for it to avoid Houston, it would have to pull farther north, closer to Louisiana. Mayor Nagin says today that the battered levees could be breached by as little as a 3 foot storm surge, so Rita wouldn't need to strike anywhere near New Orleans to cause a flooding repeat.

And I don't have enough positive thinking left in my arsenal. I'm wrung out.

Really, what are the chances of Camille and Alicia repeating themselves within weeks of each other?

And from the "Coincidences Too Tragic To Contemplate" department, the Austin Convention Center shelter is closing on Friday, just in time for Rita to make landfall.

FEMA, don't send engineers, don't send architects, don't send insurance adjusters. Send vast truckloads of Valium.

And send the Coast Guard. Put them in place now, please. You have almost a whole week to not fuck this up.

Posted by ray at 4:37 PM | Comments (6)

September 16, 2005

Demolition, opportunity, and hope

I'm at 90% now, healthwise. Being held back from the shelter by Gina, since she rightly points out that if I go down there again without a rock-solid immune system, I'll have a relapse and then I'll be sick for ACL, which would break Cassidy's heart since we have been planning this father-daughter rock-fest weekend for a year.

Work, believe it or not, has eased up a little.

Bill and Mark are back at the Metairie house this week. The water has receded, but there is a fast-growing field of mold extending about a foot above the high water mark. They spent yesterday ripping out sheetrock trying to get a jump on some demolition contractors that are going to pull apart the ground floor to see if the house needs to be razed or if they can just redo the bottom story. Mold is bad, though.

Austin CERT sent us all an email about a hiring frenzy that FEMA is going through, looking for temporary employees with expertise in a variety of fields, including architecture and historic preservation. Gina went ahead and sent them an application. We're thinking creatively right now...if the money and travel reimbursement are enough to make months away from the family worthwhile, then this would satisfy Gina's urge to get in there and contribute to the rebuilding while at the same time giving her a lay of the land and a feel for whether moving back there is a good idea for the family. Meanwhile, I wait for people to start posting actual job ads at places like Tulane and Loyola. A relaxing instructor position in a Comp Sci department almost sounds like a vacation right now.

I found a great blog of a guy who rode out the storm in New Orleans, with lots of pictures of areas where the damage isn't bad at all. Major areas of the city are close to perfectly habitable. The idea that the whole city is a wasteland that the nation should consider abandoning defies the reality on the ground.

Seriously, to all residents of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes whose zip codes have been selected... You are really not going to notice a difference from when you evacuated... other than no crime, roadblocks, soldiers with machine guns walking around, and having to go to the Convention Center (Orleans Parish only) for maybe a week until the Winn-Dixie's are open; everything physically is almost normal. The only thing we're missing is people, the community.

Seriously again, large parts of Jeff Parish are already back online. The streets are clean, the neighborhoods safe and everything is under control. Heck you can even go buy a car now if you want. Orleans is NOT far behind.

Moreover, despite the losses, there are still some MAJOR misconceptions about what has happened down here. I drove throughout Uptown and the Garden District again today, and then I ventured my furthest downriver to date. I hit the CBD, Marigny and the French Quarter. In all areas, yet again I was shocked by the lack of damage and looting. I expected rampant lawlessness and trashing of buildings. The L.A. riots were probably much worse. The real looting happened on Canal St. and at several bars - seeking cash from the video poker machines. I can't say it enough, it is not what I understood as portrayed by the national media.

Click through to Gulfsails to see heartening pictures of the Marigny and Commander's Palace and other bright spots.

Posted by ray at 9:12 AM | Comments (1)

September 8, 2005

Metairie family update

My brothers Mark and Bill went into Metairie yesterday to survey the damage and salvage what they could from Mark's house. I had a very brief talk with Mark yesterday (brief because he was breathing hard from working) and a longer talk with my sister-in-law Anne today.

Miracle of miracles, I reached Anne on her 504 cell phone. Shitty connection, but enough to talk.

The report is they got 3-4 feet of water in the house, but it dropped a couple of inches while they were there. Mark believes the house will have to be condemned. They met a neighbor who had a flat boat so they were able to ferry a fair amount of stuff from the house to the U-haul truck on the highway without having to carry it blocks and blocks through the water. They salvaged clothes and toys from upstairs, most of the pictures from the walls, and the wedding silver from upstairs. The wedding china got wet, it was downstairs in a sideboard, but they packed it up and will think about the right way to clean it later.

Anne thought that maybe once the power comes on and the AC comes on, they can get in there and do more work, and I pointed out to her that the AC units have been sitting underwater for a week so they're, uh, not high-functioning machines anymore.

My nephews had two rough days at their new school in Houston, lots of tears, so today they're taking a sick day. They slept really really late. All parents know this, but for those of you who don't: when a 7 year old and an 8 year old boy both want to sleep past 10:00AM, you know they're hurting.

Mark and Bill are back in Baton Rouge now, but I haven't talked to them yet. Dialing a 225 number gets you the "Due to the hurricane, all circuits are busy" message 99 times out of a hundred. Mark told me Bill fell into the water, so I'm worried about him getting sick, but other than that, everybody is safe again.

Posted by ray at 11:22 AM | Comments (2)

September 3, 2005

My day

I spent the afternoon at the Red Cross warehouse in South Austin, setting up communications gear which will be shipped to field teams in the hurricane region. About half my time was spent packing radios and accessories into heavy-duty shipping containers and filling out inventory forms. The other half we spent unpacking pallets of brand new Thinkpads donated by IBM and stacking them up so the techies could reimage them with the standard Red Cross configuration.

The radio stuff at first was intimidating. You're so afraid you're gonna fuck up and leave some rescue worker stranded in the bayou with the wrong kind of coax connector or a missing antenna or something, but as is typical with volunteer work, unskilled people quickly rise to the level of expert. By the time I left, I was teaching other people how to fill out the inventory forms and how to pack hardware bags..."two big clamps, two little clamps, two M-F coax connectors, 1 F-M connector, 2 green 30A fuses"...I could do that shit in my sleep now.

The laptop work was fabulously mindless. Exactly what I needed after the stress this week of shipping a software release while my mind was in New Orleans. I left the Red Cross center with my mind a blank and my lower back aching slightly. Feeling like I'd done something useful, finally. It was perfect.

The kids, meanwhile, sold lemonade and cookies and brownies to UT fans to raise money for the Red Cross:

$45 in a little over an hour, and most people just gave money and didn't take any food. Meaning that we've got this problem now of what to do with all these brownies. *burp*

The other great news is that Mark and Anne have brought their family to Austin for a couple of days. If you've been reading here since the beginning of Katrina, you know about their evacuation and about the scare we had with Anne's family. We took them out for dinner and margaritas at Trudy's, and then we took the boys home with us for a sleepover with Liam. They destroyed the upstairs. Made tons of noise. I loved it.

Mark and Anne:

Mark Jr, Liam, Haley, Chris, and Cass:

Everybody. We probably annoyed the fuck out of nearby tables. This one time, I don't care.

Tomorrow I'm back at the Red Cross, plus we're hitting the benefit at Shoal Creek Saloon and will be taking the visitors to the pool, so hopefully another day of happiness and productivity and not so much damn TV and computer.

Posted by ray at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)

Detailed NOAA satellite images of flooding

Tonight my brother Mark and I were able to see the flooding at his house very close up. Detailed enough that we could tell that his car in his driveway was in water but the trunk and hood of the car were not covered. These are the best photos yet of the damage, very useful if you want to check on a specific neighborhood or property anywhere in the path of the hurricane:

http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/KATRINA0000.HTM

Judging from the photos, he's expecting that there is probably water in the house, but only the ground floor and not very deep.

I was insanely busy today and thankfully nowhere near a TV or computer for the past nine hours. I'll post details in a little while, but I have a couple of informational posts I want to put out there.

Posted by ray at 9:29 PM | Comments (0)

September 1, 2005

More good news. It's been good the past hour.

MSNBC reports that Fats Domino is safe, was helicoptered out.

My mom calls, and my step-dad's brother Alan is safe in Baton Rouge. We were afraid he might have tried to ride out the storm at his house in Bay St. Louis, which was flattened.

Some of my crazy Yat relatives snuck back into Marrero today and all of that side of the family still have homes. Didn't even get any water in them, and it's unlikely they'll be looted because their neighbors are patrolling with shotguns. Badass!

Brother Mark's family has got the boys enrolled in a school in the Houston area, and have a lead on a 2-bedroom apartment that they can move into in a couple of weeks. We're still hoping to get them in to visit us in Austin soon. Word is that residents with ID will have a 12 hour window to get essentials out of their homes in Jefferson Parish on Monday, so Mark will be heading down there. Hopefully with Bill's crazy friends who own guns.

No word from Austin CERT on whether they will call us up. I have left my number with the Austin Red Cross to volunteer. They say they have enough volunteers for this week, but are taking messages to make a list for people to call in the coming weeks.

The past hour has lightened my load considerably.

Donate, people. Donate. This will take months, years, and many are still hurting. But right now I feel very fortunate.

Posted by ray at 8:33 PM | Comments (1)

The Menards are safe!

They're fine, the water didn't even make it into the house. They have plenty of food and water, but no electricity and no phone.

Hot damn, this calls for ice cream.

Posted by ray at 7:50 PM | Comments (1)

August 31, 2005

Update: Found! (Slidell Missing Persons: Menard Family)

UPDATE: They're all fine!

Posted by ray at 4:47 PM | Comments (3)

August 30, 2005

Baton Rouge update and family status

Finally heard from brother Bill in Baton Rouge. They lost a tree, lost some roof tiles, have no power, but the house is OK, no water damage or anything. They're hanging out at mom-in-law's condo; she's on the same part of the power grid as Our Lady of the Lake hospital, so power has been restored in that area.

Apparently the Mall of Louisiana is open for business, with power and AC and all, so a few of his friends with no power are packing their SUVs with food and lawn chairs and and going to camp at the mall and let the kids run around Sears all day to keep them entertained. That mall is gonna be a zoo, let me tell you.

Rumors going around in Baton Rouge about the Ninth Ward in New Orleans are pretty grim, so I'm not gonna repeat them here...but they're pretty grim.

Brother Mark's family in Houston has no word on their house in Metairie, but they talked to somebody who rode out the storm Uptown and apparently the power is back on Uptown, with lots of trees down but no real serious flooding. I don't know where exactly in Uptown that would be, unfortunately...it's a pretty broad area. Mark's house is in Old Metairie near the railroad tracks, but we can't find out anything about that neighborhood at all.

They're going to come to Austin tomorrow for a few days, then Dallas for a few days, then take stock on Sunday to figure out what to do. Clearly my nephews aren't going to be starting back to school any time soon, so do they get an apartment here and try to enroll them in a school in Texas? So many questions about the mundane aspects of life.

Even after the cleanup, New Orleans is going to be hurting. This city lives off its tourism money, and right when they're trying to rebuild, the tourism industry is going to take a huge hit. The practical aspects of day-to-day life are going to be affected for years.

Posted by ray at 10:13 AM | Comments (1)

August 29, 2005

Ohmygawd it's arriving . . .

I talked to Bill very briefly, and Gina talked to him again 20 minutes later. He was sleeping when I called, which I guess means it's not so bad in Baton Rouge, so I'm not too worried about him. They lost power at 6am this morning, and Gina says she lost the call with him. Eh, cell phones. For all I know that was just Sprint being Sprint.

Somebody at the Times-Picayune is blogging the hurricane from their bunker, here. They've still got connectivity, believe it or not, and enough power for mission-critical computers.

Apparently windows are blowing out of high-rise hotels downtown (where tourist refugees are hunkered down), there's a building collapse reported on Laurel near Washington, and somebody on Air America reported that levees are starting to be overcome in the Lower Ninth Ward. The next 3 hours are when the bad stuff will happen, if it's gonna happen.

I can't find any local NO live audio news feeds. WWL and WTIX both reject any attempts. Local news radio here in Austin sucks...mostly sports and conservative talk shows, and Sergeant Sam bitching about this causing high gas prices on KVET. No TVs at work. I fucking hate this.

It's a hot sunny regular work day here but my mind and my heart are 500 miles to the east.

Posted by ray at 8:28 AM | Comments (2)

Overnight

The Superdome lost power at 5:00am. Including AC. 25,000 people are gonna get hot and cranky.

WWL TV is off the air, including the streaming video on their website.

nola.com is still updating. Those guys fucking rock.

Police, EMS, and fire crews have been dismissed from duty by dispatchers and told to take shelter. God, can you imagine? You can't call 911, they're just going to say "sorry, can't help you".

The national coverage on CNN and the Weather Channel sucks. I could give a fuck that the rain is going sideways in Biloxi or that there are big waves in Destin. What about the storm surge? What about the lake levees? Is there flooding from the rain, or are the pumping stations keeping up? Damn it, what's going on in New Orleans? You can only get useful info from nola.com at this point.

The Baton Rouge reporter was just on, and it doesn't look too bad there. He keeps talking about rain going sideways, but the camera doesn't show rain going sideways. I've seen rain go sideways, idjit, I know what it looks like.

Lots of trees down in Covington, north of the lake, from the looks of things.

Life goes on in Austin. Work, school, then I'll try to get an update from the Baton Rouge family.

Thanks for the love, peoples.

Posted by ray at 6:53 AM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2005

Katrina evacuee status of people you don't even know

I don't know why I feel compelled to blog this stuff, since y'all don't know any of these people, but it helps to talk about this.

Stepbrother Mark's family is safely in Houston.

Stepdad's siblings saw the light and abandoned the Westbank for the relatively safer location of...Baton Rouge.

My little brother Billy's family...is staying put in Baton Rouge. All his wife's family is staying, his friends are staying, all his neighbor's are still there, and so the peer pressure on him there is just a whole lot greater than the peer pressure we can put on him long distance. Even though Doxy is telling me, "dude, this is Andrew all over again", and it doesn't matter that Baton Rouge is above sea level because this hurricane might just scrub a swath of Louisiana clean of all trees and buildings.

Really, I'm not panicking. Just a little queasy is all.

I'm trying to imagine New Orleans as a third world country. This isn't like a flood anywhere else where the waters will recede naturally. The water there will stay put, stagnant, filled with sewage, snakes, rats and alligators, until pumping stations can be repaired to start pumping it out.

I'm remembering one of the pictures of the 1927 Mississippi Delta floods, from John M. Barry's book Rising Tide, of refugees camped on top of the levee. An 8-foot wide swath of the top of the levee was dry, with the river rushing by on one side, and the town flooded to a height equal to that of the river on the other side. If I find a copy online, I'll link to it.

Posted by ray at 1:37 PM | Comments (4)

Katrina links

Streaming video of WWL-TV Channel 4 in New Orleans.

Various city cams from nola.com. Not much to see there yet, although it's starting to cloud up, whereas at dawn this morning it was crystal clear and sunny.

Latest word is that Billy's family is staying put, although this is just second-hand info from Mark. I can't get through to Bill, I get voice mail at home and cell phones aren't really working any more.

So...if you're in Baton Rouge and you see my brother (imagine me, no goatee, no tattoos, a little fatter, dressed like a good-old boy lawyer), kick his ass for me and tell him "Ray says to get of of town, ya dumb little shit." I can still beat him up, when I can reach him. He never could fight back much.

I worry about the people who can't leave if they wanted to. New Orleans is a town with much poverty, and your average housing project resident can't just book a hotel in Texas and scoot out of town. People without cars, people without money...where do they go? Shelters will definitely fill up.

Posted by ray at 11:02 AM | Comments (5)

Mandatory

Ray Nagin just declared a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, and declared the right for city officials to commandeer any structure or vehicle. Says the storm surge will likely overcome the levees, and the Superdome will be used for a shelter of last resort.

Both sides of I-10 are one way going out of the city. In the city it's completely gridlocked. It's all bridges to get out of the city, so there are not a lot of options for alternate routes.

I checked in with the family. Mark and his family are already in Houston. Bill and his family are getting on the road out of Baton Rouge to Houston within the hour, but I-10 switches back to 2-way right around Baton Rouge so traffic is expected to be horrendous. It's all swamp to the west of Baton Rouge, so it's not like you can easily take back roads to avoid the freeway. I-10 is one long bridge through there.

Funny story: Mark says if Bill makes it to Houston, he'll stay there, otherwise he's bringing the family to Austin to visit with us and my sister. Backstory is that Mark and Bill work for the same law firm...Mark is a senior partner, Bill is a peon attorney, so Bill's take on this is that if he makes it to Houston Mark will drag him into the Houston branch of the firm and put him to work.

My stepdad's brothers and sisters, being the stubborn Gretna yats that they are, are staying put. I don't know how to explain it, it's just a native mindset there to ride it out, and whatever happens happens. Yeesh.

I worry about my high school friends who are still there, and I worry about my city being gone when I wake up tomorrow. New Orleans is special like no other place. I can't imagine the French Quarter being wiped out, the trees of Audubon park being levelled. My immediate family will be out of harm's way, but you can't rescue a place. You can't pick it up and move it to safety.

Posted by ray at 9:25 AM | Comments (0)

Katrina

The nightmare has come to pass.

A Category 5 direct hit on New Orleans. It's wiggled around a little bit the past 24 hours, but only varied between "Will it pass over my old house in Algiers?" to "Will it pass over my brother's house in Metairie?"

Although this isn't the perfect storm scenario, where a major hurricane strikes from the East and pushes the storm surge into the lakes behind the city, it's pretty much almost as bad as it can get.

My brother Mark and his wife and kids are the only immediate family still living in the city. Brother Bill's family is somewhat safer in Baton Rouge, and the rest of us are scattered in Texas and New England. I haven't talked to Mark yet, but in recent hurricanes he's been remarkably stubborn about staying put...and he's always been right. There hasn't been a major hurricane to hit New Orleans during our adult lifetimes. Betsy was a moderate storm, and Camille struck a glancing blow, and both happened when Mark was a toddler and I was still in Boston.

In case you've never seen it, here's a fascinating NPR story about the devastation that a direct hit on New Orleans would cause.

And just across the Mississippi River, Walter Maestri is struggling to help New Orleans prepare. Maestri is the czar of public emergencies in Jefferson Parish (that's the county that sprawls across a third of the metropolitan area). He points to a map of the region on the wall of his command post.

"A couple of days ago," explains Maestri, "We actually had an exercise where we brought a fictitious Category Five Hurricane into the metropolitan area."

The map is covered with arrows and swirls in erasable marker. They show how the fictitious hurricane crossed Key West and then smacked into New Orleans.

When the computer models showed Maestri what would happen next, he wrote big letters on the map, all in capitals.

"KYAGB—kiss your ass good bye," reads Maestri.

"Because," says Maestri, "anyone who was here when that storm came across was gone—it was body-bag time. We think 40,000 people could lose their lives in the metropolitan area."

And some scientists say that figure is conservative. People have known for centuries that New Orleans is a risky spot — the biggest river in North America wraps around it; and most of the land is below sea level. But researchers say they've been learning just how grave the problem is, only in the last few years. And they say the city and the nation aren't prepared to handle it.

Posted by ray at 6:52 AM | Comments (1)

August 5, 2005

Random Vacation Pics That Aren't All Family

My old high school friend Eric always wanted a sports team called The Nads, so that the crowd could yell "Go Nads!" during games. This was one of his many running jokes all through high school. Yeah, he was kind of a dork.

Well, now Eric has season tickets to the Washington Nationals, affectionately known as the Nats.

Sure enough, the crowd yelled "Go Nats!" all night long. Eric seems very pleased w