Ray in New Orleans

June 2, 2008

Langston Hughes Charter School: Same as the old boss

When renowned Harvard golden child M.B.A. and non-educator John Alford of Langston Hughes Charter School took his entire staff to see Left Behind: The Story of The New Orleans Public Schools, who could have guessed that he was actually taking notes on how to rob the schools blind, old-school New Orleans-style, while education took a back seat.

If you'd like to see how charter schools spend public education money, join Alford, his board of directors, and his fresh-faced faculty of still-wet-behind-the-ears Ivy League "teachers" as they whoop it up at their end of the year party at Bacco, Thursday night from 6:30 on. Free dinner and open bar, all paid for with school money (how much of it is state and local funds? who can say). If you're not feeding at the public trough like the public servants from the charter school, bring your American Express because entrees at Bacco run from $17-$33.

While you're there, ask them how they can afford to party in such splendor when their kids' families certainly can't, and when their kids had to share books this year because there weren't enough books to go around for every child.

As Sly Stone once said, "there's a riot goin' on".

Posted by ray at 9:41 PM | Comments (14)

May 2, 2008

Something I needed this month

The weekend after Ashley died, one of my oldest friends Dr. Sarah came in town for a visit, and I took her down to see the Lower Ninth Ward since she hadn't been here since the storm. We drove past a few houses I'd gutted before, and saw the usual lack of progress. We drove by Robert Green's trailer on Tennessee Street and I told her the story of how he lost a young granddaughter off his roof during the flood and found his dead mother months after the storm.

And then we drove by the house on Gordon Street.

I blogged about gutting this house with the Mardi Gras Service Corps back in November '06. It was a lonely block. One house had some renovations going on that seemed to be going slowly, and a few houses were gutted and the lawns were being kept up, but the block didn't seem to have a lot of hope, and the house itself was a mess. Lots of termite damage, some tree damage to the roof joists and the back frame of the house. A sign on the front said "For Sale By Owner: Mr. Henry" with a phone number.

There was also a light switch in the back bedroom that had a Disney character floating under some balloons which got me all choked up when I ripped the moldy sheetrock down around it.

But down the street was an uninhabitable Baptist church with a FEMA trailer outside it, and that Sunday while we were gutting, three carloads of older black folks in their Sunday best, the women all wearing their crowns, all showed up, went into the trailer, worshipped, then came out and hugged each other and shook hands and drove off. So I always had kind of a fondness for this block. It seemed hopeless on the face of it, but maybe not so hopeless if you squinted just right and held your head at the right angle while you looked at it.

In November of '07 I blogged about my tour of despair, of all the houses I had gutted which hadn't been touched since I left them, and I took pictures of this house on Gordon Street, the last one in that post, and wondered if there wasn't some sign of progress.

The windows were still broken, the house was still gutted and open, but the For Sale sign was gone, there was a storage unit out front, and there was new debris which maybe was construction debris, not demo refuse.

Well, I drove by it four weeks ago with Sarah, and check this shit out:

New doors, new windows, new plumbing (see the vents in the roof?). New sidewalks, and landscaping, and brand new trees!

It's not occupied yet, I don't think, but clearly somebody has plans for this house. And three other houses on the block are occupied now too, whereas back in '06 we felt like we were in the middle of Siberia until those church folks showed up.

Progress. Little bits of progress bring me such huge bunches of joy sometimes. Sometimes at the times that I most need them.

Posted by ray at 9:23 PM | Comments (11)

April 18, 2008

Ashley Morris: The Liner Notes of the Album of the Soundtrack of the Movie

Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing. -- Rob, High Fidelity

If I was an artist like Greg Peters, or a photographer like dsb or Galfreaka, or had the design aesthetic of dangerblond, or had kept up with my musical training like the Hot 8, I could have created something original for Ashley. Instead, I do what most former zine editor/rock critic/college radio DJs do...I rearrange other people's art to express my feelings.

This is the mix CD that was played during the visitation at Ashley's funeral. Probably most of you didn't get to hear it, or only heard snippets. Maybe you can take this list and turn it into your own version, or I can burn a couple copies for people to pass around if anybody wants. I kinda like it. I used to be a mix tape fanatic back in the day, and it felt good to make this. Keeping it down to one CD was the hardest part.

Many thanks to Greg Peters for the vast collection of vintage funeral jazz to dig through.

Warren Zevon "Keep Me In Your Heart" The Wind
Everybody's seen Greg's video that goes with this song. It still makes the tears flow, two weeks later. This song is going away in the vault with Sigur Ros "Staralfur" and Martin Sexton's "Wasted" as songs that are so associated with pain that I don't think I can listen to them ever again.

Treme Brass Band "The Old Rugged Cross" Gimmee My Money Back
Classic jazz funeral dirge done with modern Treme flair. Plus I think Ashley is gonna be reincarnated as Uncle Lionel. Seriously. When Uncle Lionel passes, Ash is gonna sneak into his body before anybody notices and live the life for a few years (with Lionel's blessing, I'm sure).

Steve Riley & The Mamou Playboys "La Toussaint" La Toussaint
La Toussaint is the Cajun French name for All Saints Day, the day we pay respects to our ancestors who have passed on. This song is beautiful and haunting.

Queen "Love Of My Life" A Night At The Opera
Requested by Hana.

Professor Longhair "Tipitina" Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens: The Big Ol' Box Of New Orleans
We had to have the most classic of all New Orleans songs by the most classic of all New Orleans musicians, and this is one of the most stellar studio versions. I never went to Tip's with Ashley, although we always talked about this show or that show. Always thought there was plenty of time.

Warren Zevon "Accidentally Like A Martyr" Excitable Boy
Looking for an older Zevon song that was funeral-appropriate, I happened on this and it was such a fucking obvious winner.

Louis Armstrong "St. James Infirmary (Gambler's Blues)" Birth of Jazz
Liam's choice, a classic version by the man who made it famous.

James Booker "Over the Rainbow" Spiders on the Keys
Recorded live at the Maple Leaf, the last place I ever saw Ashley, played by another man who lived too loud and too fast and too crazy and left the world too soon without realizing how much he was truly loved.

Lyle Lovett "If I Had a Boat" Pontiac
Requested by Hana.

Kermit Ruffins "What is New Orleans?" The Barbecue Swingers Live
Ashley Morris IS New Orleans. Kermit needs to re-record this.

Flogging Molly "If I Ever Leave This World Alive" Drunken Lullabies
This song brought me to tears in the first days of April. Check the lyrics if you don't believe me.

Cheap Trick "I Want You to Want Me" Live At Budokan
Requested by Hana.

Eddie Bo "When The Saints Go Marching In" Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album
A brilliant post-Katrina mellow-sad version.

Queen "You're My Best Friend" A Night At The Opera
My choice. Nuff said.

Davell Crawford "Gather By The River" Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album
My favorite post-Katrina gospel recording that is heavy with tragedy, brotherhood, and redemption all at the same time.

George Lewis "Just A Closer Walk With Thee" Funeral Songs (Dead Man Blues)
Supplied by Greg Peters. A 1920's recording of a classic jazz funeral dirge.

New Orleans Wanderers "Perdido Street Blues" Funeral Songs (Dead Man Blues)
Another 1920's vintage recording from Greg Peters. Ashley would have wanted at least one title with a political subtext to it. Gotta get that last dig in.

Henry 'Red' Allen "Canal Street Blues" Funeral Songs (Dead Man Blues)
The third selection from the huge library of vintage jazz Greg Peters sent me. We started Ashley's journey homeward at the funeral home on Canal Street, and we definitely had the blues.

Allen Toussaint "Tipitina And Me" Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album
A post-Katrina recording that renders the Fess classic slowed down and in a minor key, taking our happiest of happiests and producing a dirge with a hint of triumph.

Posted by ray at 12:00 AM | Comments (12)

April 16, 2008

Chris Rose on Ashley

Chris Rose writes about Ashley today and gets it pretty damn close for somebody who barely met the man. He writes about Ashley the way we all wrote about Ashley, and the way Chris writes about most topics...through the lens of his own personal sense of loss.

He identified himself. Turns out, he lived across the street from me. That pain in the ass Ashley Morris was my neighbor!

And it turns out I loved this guy; he gave my kids candy (and me a cigar) on Halloween, and he often invited me over to drink fresh Abita beer from the kegerator he kept plugged in on his porch.

I never accepted the invitation. I don't know why, really, other than I am generally anti-social. And I had no idea who he was.

What I loved most about this neighbor of mine was that he, like me, still has not taken down his Christmas lights. Our street shines prettier than most. That's such a New Orleans thing, the not taking down Christmas lights.

So Morris, now identified, invited me over for a beer and a smoke. "When I get back to town," he wrote to me in an e-mail dated March 29. And this time, I accepted.

Thing is, Ashley never made it back to town. He died April 2 in a hotel room.

I don't know the cause, but he was huge and he lived too large and laughed too loud and that kind of behavior can kill a man.

Exactly right. My last emails to Ashley are about plans we had, things we were going to do, "when I get back in town". And when he finally got back in town, it was by plane in a slate blue fabric-covered extra-large casket, which we later filled with cigars, drumsticks, Jameson, Abita Amber, Mardi Gras beads, a copy of Confederacy of Dunces, a muffaletta, and all the other trappings of a life cut too short which is hopefully being carried on joyfully on the Other Side, free of the bondage and weaknesses of mortal flesh and blood.

Thanks, Chris. We all needed that.

Posted by ray at 12:41 PM | Comments (1)

April 12, 2008

What Is Ashley Morris?

I'll have more details and links to photos of Ashleys' funeral later this weekend, but people have been asking me to post the eulogy that I read at the service this morning.

For those of you who haven't heard the original, it's a take on Kermit Ruffins's song "What Is New Orleans?"

------
(My most heartfelt apologies to Kermit Ruffins for what I’m about to do here.)

What is Ashley Morris?

What IS Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is a fiery spirit who inspires and energizes anyone whose life he touches.

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is a poet, a patriot, a teacher, scientist, comedian, cook, gadfly, bulldog and warrior.

What is Ashley Morris?

What IS Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is theology and geometry, never lacking in taste and decency even while strapped to Fortuna’s wheel, scribbling on the modern Big Chief pad he called his blog.

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is the bass drum. Ashley Morris is the snare drum. Ashley Morris is the high hat. Ashley Morris is the tri-tom. And Ashley Morris never claps on 1 and 3 and hates anybody who does.

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is smoked duck poor-boys from Crabby Jacks, shrimp poor-boys from Domilise’s, roast beef poor-boys with extra gravy from the Calhoun Superette, and any kinda poor-boy you wanna get on a lazy Sunday on a barstool with the afternoon sun shining in the window at the Parkway Bakery, y’all. What is Ashley Morris?

What IS Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is Krewe du Vieux. Ashley Morris is the Mystik Krewe of Pan. Ashley Morris is “Buy Us Back Chirac!” and “Bring Back Competent Corruption” and “The Cult of Lafcadio”.

Ashley Morris is at the top of Harry Shearer’s list of favorite mimes. (It’s a short list.)

What is Ashley Morris?

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is daddy to the beautiful Katerina, to the charming Annabel Lee, and to Big Rey d’Orleans Morris.

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is the roller derby husband of the best blocker the game is likely to ever see, and woe be to the first jammer who thinks she’s gonna sneak by Soviet Block without a serious ass-whupping.

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is an Abita ale, a wee dram of Jameson, a fine Cuban cigar, and an endless supply of stories and experiences both sacred and profane, enough to while away many a late night.

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is the Saints 12th Man, the first to arrive and the last to leave in section 635, the Gentilly of ticket sections, reachable only by an arduous three-quarter mile journey by escalator, escorted by sherpas, where you WILL stand and you WILL cheer until the end of the fourth quarter regardless of whether Dem Boys are up by 6 or down by 17.

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is he who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds New Orleans through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the saver of lost cities. And he will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy New Orleans. And you will know he is Ashley Morris when he lays his verbal vengeance upon thee. What is Ashley Morris?

What IS Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is Lenny Bruce and Bob Dylan and Bill Hicks. Ashley Morris is Che Guevara. Ashley Morris is Thomas Jefferson. Ashley Morris is Michael Collins. Ashley Morris is any separatist rebel patriot anywhere who ever said “Sinn Fein”, “Ourselves Alone”, or “Let ‘em freeze in the dark without any shrimp or coffee until we get some real levees up in here.” What is Ashley Morris?

What IS Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is the exposer of FMooks, and Ashley Morris is…(all together now) F Y Y F-ing F.

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is a whole fried chicken from Dooky Chase’s with baked macaroni, collard greens, cornbread, and candied yams as sweet as bread pudding, eaten out of a box on the front steps of a condemned housing project on a cold drizzly January day saying, “This is the life. You know what they’re eating in Houston right now? Quiznos.”

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris is our voice. Ashley Morris is our rage. Ashley Morris is our laughter, our tears, our heart, our soul.

What is Ashley Morris?

Ashley Morris IS New Orleans.

And Ashley Morris is my friend. Ashley Morris will always be my friend.

And I will always miss him. Forever.

Posted by ray at 2:09 AM | Comments (17)

April 7, 2008

Ashley Morris funeral arrangements, and how you can help

Ashley's funeral will take place this Friday:

SCHOEN FUNERAL HOME, 3827 CANAL ST.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Public visitation will be from 10:00 am until 1:00 pm.
Funeral service 1:00 pm.
Interment to follow in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3

I'm told by his wife Hana that Saints-wear is an acceptable substitute for traditional funeral attire.

Also, if you could, please click below to donate to the "Remember Ashley Morris" fund.

Remember Ashley Morris and DONATE!

Ashley was the sole breadwinner in the house and leaves behind three children ages 5 and under, and they have very little in the way of extended family, so those of us who count ourselves as friends and fans must step up as surrogate aunts and uncles for Katerina, Annabel, and Rey d'Orleans. Funeral and living expenses are an immediate pressing need.

Posted by ray at 2:15 AM | Comments (4)

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)

April 3, 2008

For Ashley

Our council member Shelley Midura's speech at today's City Council meeting:

I wanted to honor the life and passing of one of my district's neighborhood activists, Professor Ashley Morris, who we lost to an early passing yesterday morning. He was a friend to my office and a champion of his neighborhood. More than almost anything though, he was a fierce lover of New Orleans. He spent much of his time during the week teaching at an out-of-town university, yet he had no desire to move there. He preferred to commute.

To Chicago. From New Orleans.

Why would he do that? Why do so many others in our city do such things? I believe it was because Professor Morris wanted to be able to tell people, "I'm from New Orleans." He wanted people to know that New Orleans was his home and that this truth was not only conscious and deliberate, but perhaps also something fated. He seemed to believe that New Orleans chose him as much as he chose us, as if it were some quantum entanglement that could not be logically explained or rationalized. It was a matter of the heart and knowing in the bottom of your soul exactly where you belong. It was a deep yearning for a city he loved, cherished, and felt gratitude and appreciation towards every day, despite the challenges and the ups and downs of post-Katrina life.

On his blog only a couple months ago, he wrote about going out to lunch with his friend Ray to Willie Mae's and grabbing take-out there and how "There on the stoop, we tore into a whole fried chicken, macaroni and cheese casserole, mixed greens, and candied yams that tasted more like bread pudding. An excellent meal, as you can see… anywhere else, we'd be having lunch. Here in New Orleans, we were having a world class meal. For lunch." Ashley knew that any moment in New Orleans was unlike any moment anywhere else in the world, that typical days here are not typical days anywhere else on this planet, and that being a New Orleanian, especially now, comes with a special badge of honor.

And so I honor my fellow New Orleanian, Professor Ashley Morris. He will be so dearly missed by so many, of whom I am only one. New Orleans aches for him today and wishes his wife, young children, family, and loved ones its heartfelt condolences.

Posted by ray at 8:10 PM | Comments (5)

April 2, 2008

Ashley Morris, RIP

1963 - 2008

I miss you, old man. More than you can ever know.

Posted by ray at 11:42 PM | Comments (19)

March 21, 2008

Remember those other levees? The ones we actually blew up once?

T-P: High river puts city on alert

Here's some cool close-to-realtime data on the Carrollton river gauge, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is actually located a few blocks downriver from Carrollton Avenue at the Army Corp of Engineers site on Leake Ave.

Yes, Leake Ave. is what the Corps calls home.

Kinda like David Vitter renting a condo on Bangenhooker Boulevard, I suppose, but that's likely apocryphal.

Posted by ray at 1:02 AM | Comments (0)

December 25, 2007

This is the life

Ashley describes our pre-Christmas lunch from the other day, sitting on the steps of the Lafitte Projects eating take-out from Dooky Chase's.

While we were there, the mist turned to a light drizzle, and I turns to him, and I says, "Ya know, we're sitting on the steps of a hurricane damaged, boarded up, abandoned and condemned public housing project, in the cold wind, in the rain, eating take-out food, and all I can think is 'This is the fucking life, man. This is it.'" And he agrees.

And I tasted the candied yams and said, "This is a vegetable? Jeezus, it tastes like bread pudding" and when I was done with my half I handed the cup to Ashley and he tasted it and he literally squealed with delight. I doubt any of y'all have ever heard Ashley squeal over his veggies before.

Later that day I called Tom Fitzmorris on The Food Show and told that story on the air and he agreed that New Orleans is pretty much the only place where a story like that makes perfect sense.

Broadcasting from a gated property inside a gated community in a development near a suburb of a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas (i.e., the in-laws place): Merry Christmas again, y'all.

Posted by ray at 2:58 PM | Comments (6)

December 24, 2007

All I want for Christmas...

...all anybody wants for Christmas, is Home.

Santa, bring everybody home.

Posted by ray at 11:03 PM | Comments (4)

December 23, 2007

I missed Bastogne

I appreciate all the kind words, folks. I'm OK. That post was done right after I got home from taking the pictures so I was feeling pretty crappy. I didn't mean for it to be a big pity party for myself.

Lisa, your Oskar Schindler comment cracked me up.

I talked to Karen on the phone, and Karen has done more to save houses in this city than probably anybody else, and we both agreed that when you get emotionally involved in a house, then the first time you drive by and see an empty lot where it used to be, it feels like a punch in the stomach. And she's taken way more punches than I have, and she still feels it.

I think what goes on in my head when these things bother me, and one of the reasons I try to volunteer so much when I wasn't that big of a volunteer-type before the storm is a weird sort of survivor's guilt.

Mark, you're probably the only one that knows exactly what I mean when I explain this. New Orleans is where I grew up, it's where I'm from and it's the city that made me the person that I am. It's a city that I love more than any other place, but for various reasons, like Mark, I moved away a long time ago, and so on 8/29, I was a mere spectator. Other than making sure family members were safe, I had very little at risk personally other than memories.

It reminds me of a person portrayed in HBO's Band of Brothers, Private David Webster. Webster was part of Easy Company, landed during the D-Day operation behind Utah Beach and was wounded there, fought in Operation Market Garden in Holland and was wounded again, received the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, and stayed with the company throughout the entire war. But he was in the hospital recovering from wounds received in Holland when the unit was besieged that winter at Bastogne. Which was probably the defining moment of any American military unit during the war. And when he returned to Easy Company after Bastogne to finish out the war with them, he was never really fully accepted back by the other men. Because he wasn't at Bastogne. What he did before didn't count, and what he did afterward didn't count. Simply because he didn't go through hell at Bastogne. So he wasn't really one of them any more.

I feel like him a lot some times. Not that I wish I was flooded out, that would be nuts. But like a 101st veteran who got to avoid Bastogne, I am a New Orleanian who did not have to survive Katrina. I will always be lacking probably the most important experience that defines a New Orleanian of this generation.

I have another high school friend who is Nth generation Y'at, born on Mardi Gras Day in the back seat of a taxi stuck in parade crowds, and she has told me that amongst her writer friends, that division was not implicit, it was explicit. Writers who had lived here only a few years treated her as a tourist because during the storm she was teaching at a university in another state. "Sorry, honey, but you weren't here for it, so you don't really know." I know it hurts her quite a bit.

So I gut other people's houses not just because I want my city back, but because I did not have to gut out my own house. I wasn't here when the power was out and the only food was MREs. I was never displaced from my home, I never lost my job. I've never had to deal with Road Home, or Allstate, or FEMA.

And I cannot help but feel that that makes me somehow less of a New Orleanian than the people who did, even the people who moved here from other places only a few years ago, or the people who came home to unflooded houses and business as usual. And like my writer friend who now lives elsewhere, it stings a little. Even though I know none of you think of me that way, and really, I'm not posting this to generate a lot of "you're doing great, Ray" stuff in the comments, it's my own personal issue that does bother me and I have to work through it.

Posted by ray at 8:01 PM | Comments (9)

December 22, 2007

Mrs. Cora Foster's house is gone

I've blogged about gutting Mrs. Cora's house. I've blogged about driving by it a year later seeing it slowly decay. And I've blogged about thinking about trying one more time to get into her house and see if we can salvage some important and historic family heirlooms.

And now it's all gone.

And of course I didn't do any of the things I planned to do. I got the phone numbers for the Foster daughters, but I didn't get around to calling. Every day I planned to call and every day it fell through the cracks and I just didn't do it. Just like I came up with the idea and registered a domain name for the Care Forgot project and then never did anything with it.

Today I feel like I'm all talk.

I feel like those guys in Do The Right Thing who sit on the corner all day long and talk and bitch about the Koreans who run the convenience store across the street and talk about how they should open their own store, til one of them stands up and says "'I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that.' You ain't gonna do a goddamn thing! I tell you what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go across the street and give them damn Koreans some more o' my money."

I possibly had it in my power to do something for somebody, and I didn't do anything.

Merry Christmas.

Posted by ray at 4:31 PM | Comments (7)

December 20, 2007

Time has come

I've been doing lots of late-night writing these days, cranking out my third short story and up to three chapters in a potential novel, but my muse refuses to come out at home. Not sure if she hates kids or pets or unfolded laundry; regardless, I must coax her out with beverages, usually triple espressos.

I like to walk from the house up to Oak Street with my laptop. Did the usual midnight shuffle tonight when Rue shut down, down to Zotz which keeps later hours...alas, Zotz is keeping pussy advent hours, so I decided to take a chance on Carrollton Station. It was loud, so I doubled back down Dublin thinking to see what the Maple Leaf was like.

Halfway between Willow and Plum, I see a young man peek at me around the fence on the corner. A few seconds later he peeks around the corner again. As I get closer he disappears. As I arrive at Plum and think about crossing, I see him standing a half a block down. He sees me and starts toward me at double time. Me a big fucking target, obviously carrying a computer, likely a wallet, and it's that time of night when the hunting is good looking for all the drunk college students at the edge of the herd. I already knew that the closest populated area was back on Willow, so I turned around and double-timed it back. A look over my shoulder and the guy is now slowly hovering around the opposite corner.

Sometimes I hate this fucking city. I hate always looking over my shoulder like that. I hate having to mistrust people by default at certain times of night or certain situations. I hate that a Lusher middle school kid was robbed at gunpoint at Freret & Lowerline at 7:30 in the fucking morning and the school downplayed the incident, and now I worry when my kids are on their way home from school, and I don't like them out after dark. And we live in a safe neighborhood.

So Carrollton Station it is, because the crocs are out on Plum tonight. And I gotta tell you, if there's no live band playing and you don't mind loud classic rock, this is a great place to isolate. Endless supply of O'Doul's, and even wifi. And even though you have to put up with the odd Boston or Stevie Nicks swill, right now I am wallowing joyfully in the full eleven minute version of the motherfucking Chambers Brothers.

Now the time has come
There's no place to run
I might get burned up by the sun
But I had my fun
I've been loved and put aside
I've been crushed by the tumbling tide
And my soul has been psychedelicized

P.S. That was the abridged Sullivan Show version. Here's the acid-drenched original LP version:

Posted by ray at 12:54 AM | Comments (4)

December 18, 2007

Oh, ferchrist fucking fucks

Hulk Hogan to reign as Bacchus 2008.

Whatever happened to the days of Jackie Gleason?

Better choices:

Brad Pitt
Bill Murray
Dan Akroyd
John Goodman ('cept he's on the wagon)
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Paul Prudhomme

Speaking of, I mean, if we're all integrated and shit, and we've already had one cryogenic replicant (1996), one Belgian sociopath (1994), two white local jazz musicians (1980, 1993), and now next year one roided-up space alien, isn't it about fucking time we had a black Bacchus?

Bill Cosby
Denzel Washington
Chris Rock
Bernie Mac
Anybody named Marsalis, Jordan, or Batiste (or Baquet for that matter)
Kermit motherfuckin' Ruffins
Uncle Lionel
Al "Carnival Time" Johnson

Come on, y'all. Hulk Hogan is the best that the greatest minds of Uptown can come up with?

Posted by ray at 6:46 PM | Comments (13)

December 10, 2007

Too little, too late, I know, I know

An open letter, emailed to the whole motley crew. And I didn't say fuckmook even once!

Dear Councilmembers,

I am writing to you today as a citizen of New Orleans to urge you to oppose the impending destruction of public housing buildings in the city.

At a time when we are suffering a critical shortage of affordable housing;

at a time when a shortage of workers for working class and service industry jobs is hampering our reconstruction;

at a time when I and many of my friends are giving up weekend after weekend, neglecting our own families and our own lives and careers in order to volunteer to repair a pitifully small number of homes using volunteer labor and donated materials;

at THIS time in our history, you want to intentionally demolish a huge stock of low income housing that could easily and cheaply be put back into service to house the working class, the backbone of our city?

It is an outrage. I know, I know, I've heard the theories that "these projects were concentrations of crime and poverty and drugs." Ladies and gentlemen, have you lifted your heads up from your laptops and looked around at your home town lately? Even without public housing, this city is thick with neighborhoods that are concentrations of crime and poverty and drugs. What kind of fantastic logic would lead a right-thinking person to believe that the solution to crime and poverty and drugs is to bulldoze buildings? You aren't solving the problem, you're moving it. Tearing down the projects will not lift one person from poverty; will not pull one addict into sobriety; will not save one teenager from being gunned down or one shopkeeper from being robbed. What it will do is take thousands of hardworking, struggling, temporarily homeless New Orleanians and make them permanently homeless.

We will go from being a poorly educated, crime-ridden city with a housing shortage to a poorly educated, crime-ridden city with a catastrophic housing shortage.

For the record, if it counts for anything, if it helps you see past assumptions of demographics and rhetoric, I am a white, college-educated, financially well-off homeowner living in an affluent Uptown neighborhood. And I say we need to re-open public housing in this city and get our people back home.

And then let's get off our asses, as our mayor once said, and start working on REAL solutions for crime and poverty and drugs. And throw in education while you're at it.

And then maybe we can really start talking about building a better New Orleans in recovery.

Posted by ray at 3:11 PM | Comments (10)

December 7, 2007

Mrs. Cora Foster's house

Mrs. Cora Foster's house, slow-mo demolition in progress.

August 2006, right after salvaging some family heirlooms and giving up on gutting halfway through due to the structural unsoundness:

October 2007, I drove by to see what it looked like. Of all the houses I've done, this was one of the special ones because of the history involved:

Karen said she saw Mrs. Cora's daughters approving the demolition a couple of months ago, so I wasn't sure it would still be there, but this is what it looks like today:

The foliage is coming back, somebody has ripped the porch roof half off, and somebody pushed the front window right out of the frame. I thought about climbing in and looking around, but I didn't have a mold mask with me (the mold is still really bad), and something about that open window said "crackhead" to me.

Apparently the city's demolition plan is to let vandals and crackheads and the elements take these houses apart over a series of decades, so that we can all grow old watching it while we pass around Klonopin and Zoloft in candy dishes.

I harbor this fantasy that one day I will happen to drive by and they'll be knocking it down, and that back closet will be ripped open by a backhoe, that closet that we could never search well because it was on the other side of a collapsing floor and a head-high ramshackle pile of moldy rotting bedroom furniture. And the demo contractors will listen to me explain what might be in that rubble, and instead of having me arrested, they'll let me dig through the pile and I'll find all that documentation on Buddy Bolden and Honore Dutrey from the Smithsonian that we never found.

And I harbor this other fantasy that one day Karen says "Ray, whatcha doin' today?" and we just fucking go over there with some masks and trespass and go Katrina-spelunking and take one last crack at finding it now that the house is a little bit drier.

If I'd had a mask, I might have been tempted today, but it's not a safe house to be alone in. At this point, I imagine it's haunted. Buddy Bolden was a crazy motherfucker at the end, and they're making a movie about him now so his ghost is probably on the prowl.

Posted by ray at 5:48 PM | Comments (5)

The 49 States strategy marches on

I've ignored the so-called Netroots for a long while now in favor of the NOLA-Roots, so I didn't realize til today that YearlyKos actually beat the Commission on Presidential Debates to the punch in declaring New Orleans "not ready to hold conventions". Reminds me of the manager of Spinal Tap writing off their canceled gigs in Boston by saying "It's OK, it's not much of a college town".

The real reason they're going to Austin and not here in 2008 is that the Austin liberalocracy worships Markos and everything having to do with him and will be lining up to suck his dick when he gets off the plane, whereas half the New Orleans blogosphere wants to kick his ass for kicking us when we were down (calling for a boycott of the state mere months into the recovery because of one stupid Meemaw decision). One of them (him or Atrios) said he couldn't put his pregnant wife's health on the line in a state that would compromise health care by restricting abortion rights, back when we didn't even have doctors or hospitals. As if Louisiana is the only state with an anti-choice statehouse. They're at the top of my liberal clueless Fuckmook list.

Plus they got their asses handed to them when they tried to meddle in our "New Orleans politics is localer" election by putting it all on the line (with MyDD) for Karen Carter, without ever trying to grasp the nuances of New Orleans Democratic machine politics. Democrats have had a few congressional victories in the Austin suburbs lately so they'd rather go where they can rock out with their cock out than come here and look befuddled again.

Fuck DailyKos and their "50 state minus 1" strategy. Markos wouldn't even be able to show up, he hasn't retracted his boycott yet.

Besides, I'm sick of people showing up here with laptops and microphones wanting to help us. Bring lumber and sheetrock and checkbooks and investment. Bring teachers. Bring carpenters and electricians. Bring psychiatrists. Armchair activists, stay the fuck up in Dirt Farmer Land and tend to your own fucking country.

Sinn Fein. Orleans for the Orleanians. Carpetbloggers raus!

Assholes.

Posted by ray at 3:40 PM | Comments (15)

December 4, 2007

Sandrine

I've been having trouble with William Gibson's latest one for weeks, only managing a couple of pages a night before falling asleep and not being able to keep track of all the intertwined plots and the dozen or so key characters. I finally gave up and grabbed the next thing on my pile, one I'd been looking forward to: Dedra Johnson's Sandrine's Letter To Tomorrow.

I could have read this in one sitting. I had to force myself to put it down at 2am the first night because I had work the next morning, but I read it some more at lunch and finished it the next night. It was like a punch in the stomach to me, the first night my heart was racing, and I'm still not completely over it days later. Others might react differently but if you or a loved one have lived through similar circumstances as Sandrine, reading this will be an emotional experience that you won't soon forget. I know for me it picked at some scabs that should have healed long ago.

Sandrine is a bookish light-skinned black girl growing up in New Orleans in the 1970's, being handed off between parents and stepparents with varying degrees of parental involvement. It's moving and it's shocking and it's sweet and it's brave, sometimes all at the same time.

This is brilliant and I want more like it.

Posted by ray at 11:30 PM | Comments (7)

November 28, 2007

This one time at band camp...

Exactly two people are going to kill me for this, but I got a scanner and like Ashley I just can't help myself.

Franklin band trip to Orlando, 1980.

The hottie on the right in the red shorts is Robin Kemp of Every Poet Needs A Patio. It would figure that the only photo taken inside the Magic Kingdom that survived was an ass shot:

The surprised young man on the band bus with the fashionable afro and Sonny Rollins glued to his ear is Delfeayo Marsalis:

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

November 21, 2007

Wreck this house: the happier side

There are some signs of hope in gutting land. I think Road Home money is hitting enough people that things are slowly creaking to life. I talked to Shannon (ex-AWK, now at Common Ground) and she sees the same in the Lower Nine. And when things start happening, they seem to happen in clusters.

Case in point: I took some of my pictures from my last post on one of the "Godot" nights in the Lower 9, and while driving around I took one last swing down Urquhart near Andry, the place I mentioned last week as being bereft of life, where Common Ground had their block party near the first anniversary. And fuck if there weren't at least three houses being worked on. I just drove through, didn't take any pictures, but right at dusk there were two houses being attacked with tools and another house with a stack of new building materials on the porch.

Just like that, overnight, this block is creaking back to life.

My son's music teacher is one of the Jordan clan, and during teacher conferences a few weeks ago I told him how I'd worked on gutting his dad Kidd Jordan's house, and asked how they were getting along. He says the house is still gutted, they've got their money but haven't decided yet what to do with the house. They now have an apartment in Baton Rouge and a trailer at SUNO where Kidd is on faculty, and they go back and forth. It was a sad loss because they had just finished a nice remodel right before the storm, but I get the sense that they are empty nesters now and aren't sure they still need the big house where all the Jordan kids were raised. At any rate, Kidd spends more time in Europe than in New Orleans anyway; his style of jazz is too "out" for local tastes, whereas France has knighted him, and the very far out experimental jazz scene where Kidd fits in is centered in places like Paris and Berlin. And there are still Jordans in the neighborhood...one of the daughters is back in her house a few blocks away from the parents.

And Lisa's house, which we helped her gut this summer, will be occupied one of these days. Although it's still in contractor limbo, the gutting was major progress made possible by Lisa's stubbornness and the help of a few blogger friends.

And then there is Morwen.

Morwen, Morwen, Morwen.

I have never seen a bigger "FUCK YOU" to the Federal flood and all floods that may follow it than Morwen's castle, currently being reborn in Gentilly.

Before:

After (or at least in progress):

Morwen is using green building techniques, thermal wells, and a strong flood and windproof foundation, and she's WAY above the floodline now, as you can see.

This one to me is a miracle, because as everybody knows the day we started the gutting, this house was a bitch to knock down. I didn't tell Morwen at the time because she was in a low place and I didn't want her spirit to take any unnecessary knocks, but at the end of that day Sheik actually pulled me aside and said "are you sure you want to keep working on this? are you sure they're coming back? because this house is a mess and it's going to be a huge job to gut it out". She ended up getting a professional team to finish the job but I'm still proud of the work the bloggers and readers did, with the help of the Arabi Wrecking Krewe. We put a good-sized dent in it, and seeing that house way up in the air above the floodline, visiting with Morwen a couple of weeks ago while contractors of three or four varieties clambered all over the house in various places...that's the payoff.

I'm looking forward to the housewarming party.

Posted by ray at 11:52 AM | Comments (7)

November 16, 2007

A letter from Walker Hines

Ashley and I both received this in our email last night from State Rep 95 candidate Walker Hines, and I am posting it with his permission.

Whether or not I vote for him (at this point I am still on the fence), I think it displays a lot of character for a person to personally reach out like this to two people who have trashed him publicly in the fashion that Ashley and I and our commenters sometimes do.

It was personal contact from Percy Marchand that eventually led to me supporting him in the primary, and I do think it's important that there be continual dialog between a representative and his or her constituents.

I'm also willing to post anything that Una Anderson has to say if she wants to write me. My address is in the "About Ray" link over there on right.

Ashley and Ray,
Although I never respond to your blogs primarily due to time constraints and the vast misinformation and straight up lies by many of the posters, I do read your blogs and want to address and clarify a couple of points and major differences between my opponent and I. I think you will be very pleasantly surprised by my voting record and most importantly, accessibility while in office. Lets make sure you and the other bloggers have the facts straight about Una Anderson: She was endorsed LABI whom has also contributed over $20k to her campaign. LABI is all conservative big business that opposes workers compensation, collective bargaining, the minimum wage, expanded health care, environmental regulation, labor organization and just about every single democratic principle. They met with me for over an hour and after interviewing both candidates chose Una as the most pro-business candidate. She also won the endorsement of All Children Matter, a political organization dedicated to school choice and in favor of private school vouchers. They also interviewed me. I do NOT support private school vouchers. According to Una's campaign finance reports, Ned Diefenthal, a member of the Louisiana Committee For a Republican Majority, contributed $5k to Una's campaign. In the interest of full disclosure (I'm not trying to spin you 100% my way but I do want to provide an explanation) I have also received some money from members of the LCRM, however these are merely friends of my parents, nothing more or less. I've never met any of them in person. I know you and everyone else in the blogosphere thinks I'm just some spoiled brat that doesn't understand nor relate to anyone outside of my socio-economic status. I challenge you to give me a chance. Your perception of me is completely incorrect. I'm a down-to-earth, honest, and direct person. Ashley, you should have witnessed that when someone mistakenly wrote your address down on my sign list. My opponent is an elitist. She's completely removed from the people she governs. I'm also willing to bet she's not reading bloggers comments nor giving you any time of the day. I can take criticism. I want to be a public servant because I want to give back to my community. I feel a moral obligation to give every underprivileged child the comforts that I was provided growing up. I would not be here today if it wasn't for my loving, stable family. Due to a poor economic and education system, many do not have unconditional love and stability in the home. I will do everything in my power to prove to others that I have never overlooked where I came from and why I am where I am today. I spent a lot of time to write this e-mail and am seeking your support and endorsement. You will be pleasantly surprised by my passion, personality, background, and voting record. Unlike my opponent who tells you whatever you want to hear, I will never sacrifice my principles for popularity. I'm a progressive Democrat who believes in the Catholic values of social justice. Please work with me.

Sincerely,

Walker Hines

Candidate For State Representative, District 95

Posted by ray at 2:20 PM | Comments (11)

November 15, 2007

Po-boy Preservation Festival

Dig it. I can walk to this. I'm looking for a volunteer to roll me home afterwards though.

New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival
November 18, 12 noon - 6:00pm
Oak Street at South Carrollton

Fill yer belly then head out to the BERG derby that night.

Posted by ray at 2:08 PM | Comments (6)

November 10, 2007

My life in the bush of ghosts

I don't know if Cora Foster's house has been torn down yet, but I know that Karen saw Mrs. Cora's daughter getting the demo permit approved a few weeks back, and Karen said it was obviously a painful moment for them.

The feelings I got from seeing the house and neighborhood in the state they were in got me thinking about all of the other houses I've gutted in the past 18 months, and whether any of them had shown any progress at all. I think I've had a hand in doing around 17 houses. Surely one of them would be a success story. Surely at least one of those backbreaking days would not have been in vain.

So the past few weeks I've been driving around looking for these houses to see what's going on with them.

At first I really wished I hadn't. At first I found nothing but stagnation. This post is about those houses.

There was the first house I ever gutted, in the Lower 9 on Andry Street near Urquhart. We did this one as part of a Common Ground block party. All the CG volunteers worked in the same area, we had the neighborhood residents and activists out, people pitched in food and the ladies from the neighborhood cooked that good New Orleans food for us, beans and rice and sausages and chicken and yaka mein. And the goal was to do an entire block of houses in one day. We didn't hit the goal, but it was still an uplifting experience.

Well, the house on Andry is now fully gutted. The family china I had set carefully to the side on the front porch is broken and the pieces scattered around the overgrown yard. No sign of progress.

A house around the corner on Urquhart which I pulled nails out of for Common Ground last December is finished, gutted, open, and untouched.

In fact, when I first drove by that block where the block party was, it looked like nothing was happening. Just a row of empty, gutted, silent shells of homes.

Another house I helped de-nail for Common Ground in November, on N. Villere, I can't find anywhere. I think there is an empty lot there. Same for the house I gutted with the Rice MOB with the Mardi Gras Service Corps that same day. I can't find it anywhere. Did we gut these houses just so they could be bulldozed?

And this one, on N. Villere at the end of the road by the canal levee, that we gutted with Common Ground the day I met Darrell. The weeds are higher than the house. The house hasn't been touched since the day we left it. It's wide open to the elements. Looks perfect inside, but nobody is doing anything with it but let it rot.

Even our wheelbarrow ramp is still there on the front steps, being swallowed up by nature like everything else on the property.

The house on Sere Street in Gentilly that we gutted last spring with ACORN and First Draft Krewe is not much different. The flooded car has been towed from the driveway, and the valuables we salvaged (including the old blue wheelchair) have been moved inside, but other than that, this is a house being consumed by flora and fauna.

I think this doesn't come as a surprise, really, knowing the story of the owner and seeing how termites had eaten away at the core of the house. But still...what did we really accomplish that day?

A house I gutted on Charbonnet with ACORN a couple of weeks after that seems in limbo. It has good bones, and we met the owners while gutting, they were a sweet young married couple who were working their way through the Road Home process back in March, so I had hopes for this one. But from the looks of things, they are still working their way through the process.

They had come all the way down from Atlanta that weekend to meet the volunteers who were doing their house, and they seemed like they really want to come home.

This house we did in Gentilly with Arabi Wrecking Krewe and Iraq Veterans Against the War has no remodeling work being done on it. The gutting is done, they're storing furniture and belongings in it, but there's no progress on moving back in. This house belonged to a Vietnam Vet who grew up in the house and then raised his own family in it. At least it doesn't feel abandoned.

And one final shred of something that might be called progress, so that it won't seem like this post is all bad news. This house on Gordon St. in the Lower 9, which I helped gut with the Mardi Gras Service Corps, now has a mowed lawn and a storage unit in front of it, and the "For Sale By Owner" sign is gone and could that possibly be construction debris at the curb? Is something about to happen here? Some neighbors are back, so one can only hope. Really, that's only what one can do.

Next post will tell a few stories of halting progress.

Posted by ray at 9:54 PM | Comments (2)

November 8, 2007

A country road. A tree. Evening.

Paul Chan is presenting "Waiting for Godot", starring Wendell Pierce and J. Kyle Manzay, premiering last weekend at a streetcorner in a neighborhood of empty lots in the the Lower 9, and continuing this weekend in the front yard of a gutted house in Gentilly. Admission is free, but arrive an hour early if you want a seat, because they are turning people away.

Cass and I saw the Saturday night showing of this in the Lower 9, along with Alan and Becky, and it is f-ing fantastic.

"Waiting For Godot" is the story of two men, Estragon and Vladimir, who wait on a country road by a small tree at dusk, as they waited yesterday, and the day before, and as they will wait tomorrow, and the day after, for a man named Godot. They're unsure who Godot is, or why they wait for him, and they question whether they are supposed to wait, or whether they have missed him or whether they are possibly in the wrong place. For a while they are distracted by the antics of the arrogant Pazzo and his slave/pig Lucky, but mostly they wait, and talk, and sometimes contemplate suicide, and sometimes contemplate just leaving, and they wonder.

Godot has many interpretations, but it's the existential one I find the most appealing. It seems to clearly mirror the human condition of wondering why we are here, whether there is a reason that we are here, and whether or not there is a mysterious God(ot) who will arrive to explain everything to us. Pazzo and Lucky are the master/slave, boss/employee representation of daily workaday chores and interruptions that continually distract us from wondering about the real reason why we are here.

And the practical reality of the existential question is made crystal clear, seeing it in the Lower 9th Ward, surrounded by overgrown empty lots, with a half-collapsed house behind us, and behind the stage one block distant the brightly lit FEMA trailer of lone neighborhood resident Robert Green, Sr., flying his American flag as barges quietly ply the canal waters behind the patched levees beyond his home. Why is Robert Green here, still, today, and why will he still be here, tomorrow? What does he wait for? What lies in store for him in his solitary existence on a (now) country road, near a tree, in the evening, waiting for a Godot who may never come, wondering what will come, will anything come, while the Pazzos and Luckies careen about and argue and posture and distract us all from the big nothing that transpires daily on that country road, Tennessee Street and North Prieur, Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans.

Where is our God(ot), and when will he come? Or have we missed him? Or are we waiting in the wrong place?

Posted by ray at 9:03 PM | Comments (2)

October 28, 2007

Rep 95: Marchand endorses Una Anderson

Elevating this from the comments. I completely agree with this statement from Percy Marchand and will support Una Anderson in the run-off:

After meeting several times for numerous hours with both remaining candidates in the District 95 race, I have chosen to give our full endorsement to UNA ANDERSON.

Although I have not always been on the same side with Ms. Anderson, she shows a genuine interest in coalition building in order to find the best solutions.

Ms. Anderson has committed to addressing many of the issues our campaign raised including, bringing a high school to the area and re-opening neighborhood schools, parks, and playgrounds.

She has also committed to addressing the needs of the entire district and being accessible and responsive to all constituents.

In addition to not being satisfied with Mr. Hines' responses to our questions and concerns (ie: no real education plan other than getting rid of the school board and allowing the governor or mayor to appoint all the members), we want to make a personal statement to Mr. Hines. Money does not entitle any individual to any more rights, privileges, votes, or endorsements when it comes to public service.

There is no question that Mr. Hines wants this position and has and will continue to work hard to attain it. The question is why he wants it and what he will do if he gets it.

I was also disappointed with Mr. Hines absurd accusation that the only reason I am endorsing Ms. Anderson is because "she promised her seat on the school board" to me. As I am sure you all are aware, Ms. Anderson does not decide who takes her place on the school board.

The fact is that I am more comfortable with Ms. Anderson. There are no party affiliation concerns, she has a comprehensive platform, and she has developed long-standing relationships across the district. I can not say the same for her opponent.

I ask that everyone who supported me strongly consider Ms. Anderson - the clear choice for State Rep. - District 95.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ABOVE REPRESENTS MY INDIVIDUAL OPINION.

Thanks for all the support you all have shown me.

Posted by ray at 9:47 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2007

Cora Foster's house fourteen months on

I happened to be riding my bike around Hollygrove checking out the progress in the neighborhood (a few blocks are back, but most of it is deserted), and I swung by Mrs. Cora Foster's house on Monticello just to see what things looked like.

I'm still so sad and so angry.

We partially gutted this house and salvaged a lot of personal belongings out of it on the first anniversary of the storm, along with some Rising Tide volunteers and the Arabi Wrecking Krewe, and a few weeks later some volunteer rollergirls organized by Brian Denzer cleared the lot of weeds and overgrowth. There's a blog entry about it here, and Scout from First Draft put together a great video of it here:

Back then we were so full of energy and optimism. Volunteers filled the city, the Road Home program was just getting rolling, and we knew it would just be a matter of time before we would be getting people back into their houses.

Fourteen months later, for this part of Hollygrove, I have nothing but despair.

Two lots have been cleared around the Foster house. Most of the rest are gutted houses, untouched by rebuilders. Within a two block radius of her house, you can see one house occupied, and one gutted with an occupied FEMA trailer in the yard. The rest of the neighborhood, at least up at the top end by Monticello, is just gutted and abandoned.

If you look inside, it looks pretty much how we left it on that day in 2006. You can see the hole in the living room floor where we almost dropped the fridge, and the hole in the hallway where Oyster fell through (both events captured in Scout's video).:

I talked to Sheik from the AWK last spring, and he was discouraged. Said of the almost 100 houses he had done, only one person had moved back in, and a few of the houses had been demolished (against owner's wishes), including Al "Carnival Time" Johnson's house.

I wonder how Mrs. Cora is doing, up in Detroit. It saddens me to think that she may never see New Orleans again, and if she does, it won't ever look like home.

All of my recent pictures of Mrs. Cora's house, taken last month, are in a flickr set here.

I've been taking a library of recent photos of all of the houses I've gutted in the past fourteen months, and I'll post a summary later in the week.

Posted by ray at 8:06 AM | Comments (6)

October 18, 2007

The Ray ticket

Here's what I'm gonna do when I do it:

Governor: My choice in the "Anybody But Jindal" field is Foster Campbell, who despite all his faults at least doesn't consider his Democratic party affiliation to be just a temporary tactical move which shifts with the winds.

Lt. Governor: Mitch Landrieu. No question. I'm a big fan, I just wish he'd give me a goddamn yard sign already.

Secretary of State: I think I'll just skip this one.

Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry: Bob Odom. He may be a crook, but he's our crook, and ain't nothing like the status quo when all your alternatives are Republicans.

State Senator, 6th District: Monica Monica. I just have this vague hope that she won't be voting 100% with the American Family Association the way the wife-swapping incumbent does. This is a big deal, since this is the first time in my life that I've ever voted for a Republican for any office. But there aren't any Democrats, so what're you gonna do?

State Representative, 95th Representative District: Percy Marchand. I've chatted with him quite a bit, I think his heart is in the right place. He's thoughtful and accessible. I wouldn't be sad about a John T. Parker win either, and honestly I don't think Una Anderson would be a total disaster. I think Walker Hines and Evan Wolf would be total disasters.

Judge, Criminal District Court, Section A: Laurie White. Just because my friends told me to.

BESE, District 2: No clue. Quick, somebody give me a crash-course in this race. I don't know anything about either candidate, Givens or Marcelle.

Councilmember at Large: Virginia Boulet. I do think she's competent and her heart is in the right place; I think she got played by forces more powerful than her in the mayoral election, and I think she's smarter now and ready to do battle with the mayor this time around, which is what we need. Plus her brother on the NOPD is doing a fine job and makes a good shrimp poor boy. I could also accept a Vassel win here. Everybody else, including Quentin Brown, just depresses the fuck out of me.

Judge, Municipal Court: Charbonnet? Davillier? Roby? Beuller? Help a brother out here, I'm clueless.

Posted by ray at 11:17 AM | Comments (19)

October 16, 2007

What's wrong with SUNO?

There was a rally last week to protest the lack of progress in rebuilding SUNO, the historically-black university which was hard hit by the storm. Dillard is back, Xavier is back. SUNO looks, as the cliche goes, "like the storm was yesterday".

I missed the rally, but I took some pictures later that afternoon, and I have nothing but questions and outrage.

Who is in charge of the rebuilding? Where is the money coming from? How much has been spent, and on what? What is the plan?

From what I know about rebuilding, step one is clearing the moldy flooded contents from the building. Before you can muck it out, before you can remove moldy sheetrock and ceiling tiles and ruined fixtures, you have to haul out the furniture, the carpeting, the books, all the stuff that sat in the flood for so many weeks. That's step one.

From what I can tell, at SUNO, they have not done step one yet. Faculty offices:

and libraries:

and classrooms:

look like they have never even been entered. They look no better than the elementary schools in the Lower Ninth Ward, but this is a university.

The only work that seems to have been done is that these giant things that look like ventilation units surround all of the buildings:

They're new, they have stickers indicating installation in May of 2007:

But what purpose do they serve? What good do they do for a building still shoulder-deep in moldy books and furniture? Did rebuilding money go to a big fat contract for somebody to staple expensive ductwork to the outside of ruined buildings?

There is a rat here. I can feel it. There is a reason SUNO students are going to class in trailers, while money goes somewhere else and time ticks away.

An army of volunteers, from ACORN and Common Ground and SUNO students, could at least clear the muck out of these buildings, but even that seems beyond reach, when there is no leadership.

[More pictures in a flickr set here.]

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

October 15, 2007

Oh, kick ASS

From the AP via Nola-Dishu:

NEW YORK -- David Simon has made the streets of Baltimore famous with gritty television dramas such as "The Wire," "Homicide: Life on the Street," and "The Corner." Now he wants to take on the Big Easy.

The next series he hopes to produce for HBO is about musicians reconstituting their lives in New Orleans, he told The New Yorker for its issue hitting newsstands Monday.

Filming on The Wire wrapped up last month with the final season airing starting in January.

And Wire star and Ben Franklin alum Wendell Pierce will take part in a presentation of "Waiting for Godot" in November, in the Lower 9th Ward and Gentilly.

Posted by ray at 7:56 AM | Comments (4)

October 12, 2007

You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours

I don't know why it's taken me this long to notice, but this practically leapt out at me last night from some campaign workers t-shirt:

"Vote 69 Virginia Boulet"

I swear, you boys, it's true.

Finally, somebody who can get on top of the issues and face them head on.

I am fully behind her.

Posted by ray at 5:08 PM | Comments (11)

Culchah and fundraising out da wazoo

Other than the film festival and the ALCS series vying for your time tomorrow, there are two very worthy and badass events taking place that should keep your feetses and your belly happy all day and all night.

Tomorrow from 3pm til, at Vaughn's in the Bywater, a benefit for the Jena 6 featuring Kermit Ruffins, Treme Brass Band, John Boutte, Craig Klein, Bob French, and a whole bunch of others. $20 for a truly great cause. See Maitri for all the details.

Later in the evening, the Ashe Cultural Arts Center hosts a Special Building Benefit Concert, with music by Rebirth Brass Band, the Mardi Gras Indian Collective, Rev. Lois DeJean and the Johnson Extension, Jo Cool Davis, Mother Tongue, Ashé Drum Circle, and the New Orleans Renaissance Society. $25 donation gets you all that and dinner.

Enjoy. And enjoy the fun stuff on my blog while you can, 'cause I'm loading up my Flickr with some anger and misery and expect some pretty depressing posts once the weekend is over.

Posted by ray at 4:47 PM | Comments (0)

Guy's opening Monday

I made my daily phone call to Guy's Po Boys this morning, and for the first time in months, somebody actually answered.

They're re-opening Monday. It's gonna be a gravy-soaked lovefest, and call your order in ahead of time, 'cause it's gonna be packed.

Posted by ray at 10:34 AM | Comments (1)

October 10, 2007

State Rep 95: Percy vs. Una

Ashley and I were talking on the phone about the SR 95 race this morning; we were laughing about Wolf and Hines, he was offering me his highly negative take on Una Anderson, and we both were impressed that Percy Marchand seems to be reaching out in the blogosphere.

A couple of questions I had about Percy were whether he was related to Charmaine Marchand, whose signs I had seen along St. Claude this weekend while doing some gutting work with ACORN. Political dynasties are neither good nor bad in and of themselves (Landrieus, Kennedys good; Morials, Bushes bad), I was just wondering. And I was also curious whether Percy was associated with any of the sometimes controversial Democratic organizations such as BOLD, SOUL, etc.

Quite by accident I ran across this post by Percy on the nola.com forums which answers both questions (in the context of discussing housing projects and affordable housing):

I wish this discussion would have occurred before judgment was cast. Moving forward:First - The major issue here is access to affordable housing. Like you, residents of the projects (citizens of New Orleans) have every right to return (keep reading). Do you remember the uproar people had about the limited access to their property (land, buildings and personal)? These residents were locked out and basically left with few options. Do agree that this is not fair - absolutely.

Second: My Stance on affordable housing and home ownership (as posted on my website's issues page):• Increase affordable housing and home ownership to instill pride and strengthen the family unit

I don't believe in any system that does not promote and demand forward progress. POVERTY AND HOMELESSNESS IN NEW ORLEANS IS REAL. What do you propose to do...have these residents sleeping in your alley or in front of the store at which you shop?

I think that housing projects as they existed in New Orleans need to be greatly modified...used as places to help people as they better their lives and gain the resources to move out. Projects should not be long-term housing units.

What we need to do is revitalize the numerous blighted, abandoned, and unsecured properties and get residents into those units.

We say it starts at home; lets get them into homes - homes they own - and see the differences.

Again, I request that you read my platform and get the facts on where I stand on issues and who I represent.

I DO NOT belong to any political organization. As I stated in my previous post, I am primarily funding my campaign (it helps that I own and operate a printing company). While I have received some contributions from family members (less than $5,000 - and I don't see a problem with family contributing, much better than these large companies who expect contracts in return), I have not received any funding from Charmaine or her immediate family (and if they do contribute I will accept).

This whole family issue should not even be a basis for discussion. If you owned a company and there were two related candidates for employment - would you automatically rule hiring both of them out just because they are related? If you would, I think you would be over a failing company. You would look at each one's records and abilities and make a decision based on that.

Don't be a part of "any change" "reform" movements. They encourage irresponsible leadership selection and the results are evident today.

Platforms, Ability, Records, Qualifications, Accountability, in my opinion, these are the qualifiers for selecting our leadership.

My last name should not be the basis for support or opposition.

I note again that you are still basing my candidacy on my cousin and what she stands for as opposed to me and what agenda I am pushing.

I have been endorsed by the AFL-CIO, Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee, LELA, IDEA, and YAPA. Each active candidate in this race has sought and/or received endorsements. I'm assuming you were hoping I was with BOLD (many of its members including OT are/were backing Ms. Anderson), SOUL, LIFE, Progressive Dems., etc. I have not even met with any of those organizations - nothing against them, but I made the personal decision to run a clean, independent campaign.

Thanks for your time.

I admire a guy who will take the time to wade into hostile forums like that to engage on the issues. Whereas Ashley will relate to you how he could never get the time of day out of Una when she was on the school board.

Posted by ray at 2:30 PM | Comments (5)

Evan Wolf and Walker Hines: Are there any less worthy?

State Rep 95 candidates:

Walker Hines. 23 years old, has lived almost none of his adult life in New Orleans, he's already a lobbyist, and he has a rich lawyer daddy. Y'know, if you want your dad to buy you something shiny, why not start with a nice new Lexus and work your way up to a seat in the House? No fair skipping ahead in line like that.

Evan Wolf. I was already disliking this guy because of his snarky tone in defending himself on Ashley's blog a few weeks back. Sarcasm and condescension aren't attributes I look for when choosing somebody to represent my interests in Baton Rouge. You're going to have to work with people when you get there, dig?

Well, now, looka here in this morning's T-P:

Evan Wolf, a Democrat from the Carrollton area, encouraged a friend to enter the race as a Republican to siphon votes from [Una] Anderson and Hines, both centrist, business-friendly Democrats who might appeal to conservative and independent voters.

That candidate, a Tulane medical student named Erin Anderson, happens to share a last name with Una Anderson and will appear ahead of her on the ballot. Wolf said his friend is not actively campaigning, and she did not respond to several efforts by the newspaper to contact her by phone and e-mail.

What's more, Karen Gadbois recently asked him whether he had anything to do with the Erin campaign and he allegedly denied it. Then this morning he confesses it in the local daily.

I don't know what's worse, lying about it, or doing it and then being stupid enough to admitting to it. With Evan Wolf, it's the best of both worlds. He's a liar and he's stupid. With this much attitude and dishonesty going into the race, imagine what kind of shit he'll get up to once in office.

Bottom line: Don't vote for Walker Hines, he hasn't earned it yet. And don't vote for Evan Wolf, 'cause he's kind of a dick.

P.S. And obviously, don't vote for ERIN Anderson because she's not actually running for office. She's studying for her Gross Anatomy mid-terms, no doubt.

Posted by ray at 10:55 AM | Comments (5)

October 8, 2007

Gumbo party

K-Ville. The gumbo party. Everybody thinks "how stupid! Those writers ain't from here. We don't have gumbo parties. We have parties, we have parties where there is gumbo, we have crawfish boils, we have all kinds of celebrations, but who ever heard of a gumbo party?" Hell, Loki and I keep threatening to have a maque choux cookoff party, but that's different.

Myself, I think, "why the fuck didn't I think of that?" What a great idea. Gumbo party.

It helps you think.

We got two frozen ones from Langenstein's tonight, one seafood and one chicken and andouille. Was aight. We hope to make this a more elaborate tradition in the future. I'll have to cook it on Sunday because Monday is just not a day designed for gumbo. Not unless you already got stock in the freezer.

Whether I watch K-Ville though depends on what happens in the next 10 minutes of the Indians/Yankees game.

Posted by ray at 7:21 PM | Comments (11)

You love despite

Overheard near the foot of Poydras Street, mid-September, 2005:

"Man, then why you here? Huh? Why you down here in the bottom of the United States of America livin in a city thas surrounded by water? And specially why you here now that you ain even sposed to be here now? Now that water's left your city in all these mean ashes you talking bout?"

"Cause I ain lovin any other place."

"You lovin it? Oh you loving all this? Whas there to love bout all this, man? You lovin this because of what?

"You cain be loving somethin because -- cause a this and cause a that. Thas nice, but that ain love. You love despite. When you love it despite the way it is, thas when you know you loving somethin."

From the extraordinary Heart Like Water, by Joshua Clark.

Posted by ray at 3:05 PM | Comments (0)

October 4, 2007

State Rep 95 and State Senator 6

For State Senator district 6, I'm guessing I'll go with Monica Monica, since she at least makes noises about Charity other than "close it and tell the poor to stop getting sick all the time". If I didn't know better I'd think she was a stealth Democrat, judging from her web site, although nobody has actually outright asked her about internment camps for homosexuals.

Plus Julie Quinn used to be on MTV and I've always hated her for that. I was more of a Kennedy man myself.

State Rep district 95...OK, I'm new here, I have no idea who all these people are. I look at the League of Women Voters guide and right off the bat I can disqualify Erin Anderson and Marc Napoleon for not even showing up, and John T. Parker for his atrocious spelling. [Update: John T. "My friends call me Jack" Parker provides some humorous commentary on his spelling in the comments, and requests a link to his campaign site. Consider it done.]

So, the real and semi-real candidates:

Percy Marchand, who seems to have a passion for the problems faced by poor and working folks.

Walker Hines, who looks and talks like a Republican, and went to (ick) Country Day. Plus he probably gets carded when he tries to buy beer, and he puts signs in yards of people who don't want them, which is a typical Grinchy trick.

Evan Wolf, who like many adjunct professors manages to take a long time to say very little.

Una Anderson, who has an impressive and detailed take on a wide variety of issues, but whose husband wears the blue oxford and khakis uniform, and we all know what that means.

Desiree Cook-Calvin, who must be smart because she went to Franklin, and must be a lot of fun because her campaign includes a birthday bash, but I'm a little concerned that her platform is a little thin.

I'm leaning Una, but I don't have a yard sign yet so there's still time to convince me otherwise. Somebody tell me something I don't know.

Posted by ray at 8:48 PM | Comments (32)

September 25, 2007

It's been a long long summer...

...and we're very very hungry.

Guy's Po Boys on Magazine was gutted by fire months ago. There have been slow signs of progress, but never a sign as joyous as this one.

Posted by ray at 3:59 PM | Comments (3)

The downside of telecommuting

The church a block away from here always plays a lovely tune on their church bell speakers at noon. You can hear it all over the neighborhood; it reminds me of when I was a kid, living only a block away from St. Andrews in Algiers, hearing their church bells every day. It's so cute and quaint and comforting..

Except for today.

They're playing goddamn "Kumbayah".

Posted by ray at 11:41 AM | Comments (7)

September 24, 2007

Head where on the what?

I only DVRed the last half of K-Ville. Now I wish I'd watched the whole thing and skipped the Saints game completely. Scenes from next week? New Orleans brothel politics. Fucking bad-ass.

So I understand that shooting locations aren't always chosen for continuity that makes sense to the locals. That's just the nature of filming. Hell, Saving Private Ryan's Omaha beach landing was filmed in Ireland.

But explain this to me:

"Here's the keys. My truck is parked on Esplanade at Decatur. Head toward Algiers on the 428, there won't be any roadblocks that way."

What the fuck is he talking about? Is there another bridge I don't know about? And what's he gonna do when he gets to Algiers? Lay low in Park Timbers?

The only thing I can think is that he meant 420, making "head" a kinda sorta pun, in which case he could hide out at the Pink Floyd midnight movie at the Abalon. If it was still 1980.

Posted by ray at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2007

Bob and "Jerry"

When I fell asleep last night, WVUE meteorologist Bob Breck (who has been around longer than anybody now that Nash is really really retired) was explaining his take on the lastest satellite scans of Invest 93L and poo-pooing the hype that has been bubbling up just because the models show a direct hit on New Orleans.

His latest blog entry (yeah, he has a blog, and he updates every day) provides a voice of reason:

So many people are speculating/scaring people to death. I won't do that. If a storm does form and goes to our west or near us, it will be the first test of our levees since Katrina. Whatever develops is not likely to be much stronger than a Cat. 1 hurricane so the levees should be able to handle a 6-10 foot surge.

To be honest, I kind of want this storm. I want us to get hit by a reasonably weak hurricane, as a test. We need all the new flood gates, the levee repairs, the pumps, the whole system to undergo a real shakedown cruise, and if we do it with a moderate storm and come through it OK, it is going to change things for the better. It will be good for our mental health, it will be good for perceptions nationally, and it will make us more enticing to investors.

I got in a bad bicycle accident a few years ago, and broke some bones, and would have broken my skull if I hadn't been wearing a helmet. And the first few times I got back on my bike after that, I wrecked again. Twice, in fact. Both were minor wrecks, but both were caused almost completely by mistakes I made out of fear and nervousness. I questioned even my most basic abilities, and it made me do stupid things that made me make stupid crashes. The original accident had changed me, had made me a different rider, a tenative rider, a worse rider.

It took me a long while to be able to go down certain kinds of hills, or over certain kinds of obstacles, but once I could prove to myself that I could successfully do the things I used to do before the wreck, but do them safely, without crashing, without going over the handlebars, the fear left.

We need to show that we are a city that knows how to survive hurricanes, and we haven't had that chance yet. We only remember that we are a city that gets its ass kicked, and we're deathly afraid of another ass-kicking, and it makes us crazy.

Posted by ray at 3:41 PM | Comments (7)

September 18, 2007

Jerry!

Less of this, preeze:

and more of this:

Sank you.

Posted by ray at 4:28 PM | Comments (6)

September 11, 2007

No fear at all

According to the T-P, a rape occurred Sunday night at the corner of Milan and Magazine.

Which is practically on the front steps of the NOPD 2nd District station.

Posted by ray at 12:18 PM | Comments (3)

August 28, 2007

Midura: An Open Letter to President George W. Bush

This is how we do things Uptown.

------

An open letter to President George W. Bush:

August 28, 2007

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you for visiting New Orleans for the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the worst federal levee-failure disaster in United States history followed by the worst federal disaster response in United States history. We’re also grateful for the $116 billion federal allocation for the Gulf Coast. That $116 billion has served you well, as your spokesmen often cite it as an indicator of your dedication to our recovery. But, it hasn’t served us as well -- it’s not enough, it’s been given grudgingly, and only after our elected officials have had to fight for it. So I feel I must correct the record about you and your administration’s dedication to our recovery and implore you to take action to make things better.

Indeed, you have allocated $116 billion for the Gulf Coast, but that number is misleading. According to the Brookings Institute's most recent Katrina Index report, at least $75 billion of it was for immediate post-storm relief. Thus only 35% of the total federal dollars allocated is for actual recovery and reconstruction. And of that recovery and reconstruction allocation, only 42% has actually been spent. In fact, while your administration touts "$116 billion" as the amount you have sent to the entire area affected by Katrina and the levee failures, the actual long term recovery dollar amount is only $14.6 billion. This amount is a mere 12% of the entire federal allocation of dollars, billions of which went to corporations such as Halliburton for immediate post-storm cleanup work, instead of to local businesses. Contrast that to the $20.9 billion on infrastructure for Iraq that the Wall Street Journal reported in May 2006 that you have spent, and it’s an astonishing 42% more than you have spent on infrastructure for the post-Katrina Gulf region. The American citizens of the Gulf region do not understand why the federal obligation to rebuilding Iraq is greater than it is for America's Gulf coast, and more specifically for New Orleans.

New Orleans has more challenges and fewer resources than we've ever had in my lifetime in the City of New Orleans. Yet, other than FEMA repair reimbursements, the only direct federal assistance this city has received from you has been two community disaster loans that you are demanding be paid back even though no other city government has had to pay back a these types of loans for as long as our research can determine (at least since the 70’s). These loans are being used to balance the city budget to provide basic services to citizens who need far more than the pre-Katrina basics.

Despite this obvious contradiction, your administration blames local leadership for our continued need for federal assistance. But this argument is disingenuous, Mr. President. There are a host of tasks that only you and your administration can accomplish for our recovery. These are some concrete steps you can take to make good on your 2005 Jackson Square promise:

* Completely fix the federally managed levees
* Fully fund our expertly crafted recovery plan
* Give New Orleans all that you have promised to Baghdad - schools, hospitals, infrastructure, security, and basic services
* Forgive the community disaster loans, as authorized by the new Congress
* Appoint a recovery czar who works inside the White House that reports daily and directly to you and whose sole job is the recovery of New Orleans and the rest of the region
* Restore our coast and wetlands
* Work with Congress to reform the Stafford Act
* Cut the bureaucratic red tape

In turn Mr. President, the people of New Orleans are more than willing to do our part. We have already:

* Consolidated and reformed the state levee board system.
* Consolidated and reformed our property assessment system.
* Passed sweeping ethics reform legislation.
* Created an Ethics Review Board.
* Hired an Inspector General.
* Submitted a parish-wide recovery plan.

Much has changed in New Orleans for the better since the storm, and more progress is coming. Civic activism is at an all time hig