Only good news

Ah, how wonderful. A chance to post only good stuff.

Last night my friend Scott's wife gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Ian Richard is the newest New Orleanean, but not for long.

As I type, my friend Carolyn is in labor preparing to welcome her second child, Jennifer, into the world. (At least, she thinks it's Jennifer-- those ultrasounds have beeen known to be wrong).

And last week my high school friend, Melissa (from Massachussetts), gave birth to her first child, Jackson "Jack" Samuel.

All of this begs the question-- what the heck was going on in May?

Welcome to the world, Ian, Jennifer, and Jack!

UPDATE: Jennifer Ann was born at 12:03pm today! Less than 14 hours behind Ian.

Shout out from The Chocolate City

I don't normally make it my business to apologize for other people's mistakes. Especially people I don't know. Especially politicians. But I'm having a hard time keeping my mouth shut about this particular "whoops."

Today when I logged on to AOL to check my email, the banner news read: "'God is mad at America'" New Orleans Mayor Sounds Off." Yesterday, Garland Robinette, local talk-show host extraordinaire, cancelled all of his call-in interviews in order to take calls from ticked-off locals who were in a lather over Nagin's, now infamous, MLK Day "Chocolate City" speech.

Brother Ray is in a pickle, to be sure.

So, here's the extent of my apology on behalf of Brother Ray: Brother Ray said some stupid-sounding things that made for really lousy soundbites, and for that I am heartily sorry. Moreover, I'm sorry that news organizations nationwide have taken portions of his speech and broadcast them wholly out of context and have made Brother Ray look like a stark-raving mad fool.

The end.

What astonishes me is that 99% of the people I've heard sound off on the "Chocolate City" speech have not heard the speech. In fact, I'm starting to believe that I'm one of a teeny weeny minority of people who actually took the time to listen to the speech in its entirety. It was published today in the newspaper, but hidden and in small type, away from the article that talked about how much heat Nagin has taken for his comments. Unfortunately, as of right now, the speech is unavailable on the internet, otherwise I'd repost it here.

The speech was delivered to approximately 60 people prior to an MLKjr march. The tiny crowd was almost 100% African-American. He set up the speech by saying that in light of the shootings at Sunday's second-line, he didn't know how to talk about unity. The morning of the speech, he struggled, and "then [he] decided to talk directly to Dr. King."

He continued: "Now you might think that's one Katrina post-stress disorder. But I was talking to him and I just wanted to know what he would think if he looked down today on this celebration. What would he think about Katrina? What would be think about all of the people who were stuck at the Superdome and the Convention Center?... and he said, 'I wouldn't like that.'"

The speech continued as a litany of questions addressed to Dr. King. What would he think of the policemen who blockaded the Mississippi River Bridge to prevent people from leaving Orleans Parish during the storm? What would he think of Black America and Black New Orleans? What would he think of Black leadership in a America, back-biting and cutting each other down? What would he think of the "knuckleheads" who shot people during Sunday's second line? What would he think of the black-on-black crime that plagues our city? What would he think of the 70% of children being born to single mothers?

Dr. King's response, always, was "I wouldn't like that."

"Dr. King, if he was here today, he would be talking to us about... the problem was have among ourselves."

Then, yes, he launched into the "God is mad at America" section of his speech. Yes, he did claim that God had sent these hurricanes because He was mad at us. That God didn't approve of the war in Iraq. And yes, perhaps that was a bit off-the-wall. I'll give the critics that (although, I too believe that God doesn't approve of the War in Iraq. Amen to that). But he continued: "Surely [God] is mad at Black America, also. We're not taking care of ourselves. We're not taking care of our women. And we're not taking care of our children... "

He closed with the infamous "Chocolate City" declaration: "We ask black people: it's time. It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans; the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be a chocolate city at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city; it's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans any other way; it wouldn't be New Orleans."

Make no mistake, I am an Uptowner. And yes, Nagin made the mistake of painting with a broad brush here. But I'm smart enough to know what he means, and I take zero offence. Because, frankly, since the day the Hurricane hit, there have been plenty of folks-- and most of them Uptown-- who have seen this disaster as an opportunity for cleansing. And that's just a damned polite way to mask horrible racism.

New Orleans is a Chocolate City. It's always been that way. And it should be that way again. Nagin was telling the good folks at the MLK Rally that they should stop pissing away their time griping about the racist attitudes that will (unfortunately) never go away, stop wasting their energy with conspiracy theories about how the powers-that-be want to whitewash this city and keep the black people from coming back. His concluding words were: "It's time for all of us good folk to stand up and say 'We're tired of the violence. We're tired of black folks killing each other. And when we come together for a second-line, we're not going to tolerate any violence.' Martin Luther King would want it that way, and we should. God Bless all."

His speech was a call to action to the black community to fix the problems within the community. His promise of a Chocolate City was indeed just that-- a promise that he would not give up fighting for the return of Black New Orleaneans. He was, in my mind, telling them not to worry about that-- to worry, instead, about the problems that they had control over.

Critics have said over and over: "If a white mayor promised that a city would be a vanilla city, he would be drawn and quartered." And perhaps that's true, but just as wrong. If hundreds of thousands of white Americans were displaced from their home and forces beyond their control were trying to keep them from returning, a mayor who champions their return should be hailed as a hero.

So, I'm sorry that Brother Ray is no Dr. King. Dr. King would have put it better for sure. But I think Dr. King would have shared Nagin's underlying sentiment. And I'm sorry that the media are crucifying him for comments taken out of context and away from the intended audience.

New Orleans by the Numbers

Today's Times-Pic published a fairly exhaustive list of current New Orleans statistics.

Pre-Katrina Population of Orleans Parish: 462,269
Current population: 134,400
Percent change: -71%

Pre-Katrina Hotels/Motels open in Metro Area (includes 'burbs): 265
Current: 100
Percent change: -62%

Public school student population in Orleans Parish, pre-K: 64,270
Current: (approx) 12,000
Number of public schools in Orleans Parish, pre-K: 117
Current open: 18
Percent Change: -81%
Number of Orleans Parish school employees scheduled to be laid off on January 30: 7,500

Pre-Katrina general acute care hospitals in Metro area: 20
Current: 12
Percent change: -40%

Hospital beds, pre-K: 4,000
Current: 1,700
Percent change: -58%

Electric Service in Orleans Parish, Pre-K: 212,761
Current: 86,678
Percent change: -59%

Restaurants in Orleans Parish, Pre-K: 3,718
Current: 768
In Metro area, Pre-K: 6,651
Current: 2,114
Percent change in Metro area: -68%

How do you keep on keeping on?

Today three people were shot at a second-line parade meant to welcome home people to the city.

This is the New Orleans that was. How can it still be the New Orleans that IS?

After 9/11, I truly, passionately believed that we would be a better generation, a better country, a better people. And, to be honest, we're worse. Much worse.

I believed that post-Katrina, we would be a better city. Rich, poor, black, white-- we suffered the same. We all suffered. How could it be that hearts were not turned? How could it be that souls were not saved? It's heartbreaking.

Can we truly expect that the powers-that-be will look upon our city with hope and with kindness after this? How do we go forth pleading for our survival when this is what our survival has wrought?

I ache for the New Orleans that was, and for the New Orleans that should be.

Yesterday, I spent hours with Hal talking about how important it was that the powers-that-be look kindly upon his neighborhood, a neighborhood that, according to the most recent maps, will be a park unless he and his neighbors can rally enough support in the next four months to save it. We are all in battle with the politicos to save New Orleans... and today's events have set us all back... can we reclaim our stand? Our moral and ethical standing?

This may be the New Orleans that I know... the city that drives people away (including Jas) by the masses... I will keep the faith, y'all. This doesn't have to be who we are or where we are.

Three days ago, I came home from work at 4pm. In the distance, I heard the sound of Xavier Prep's marching band practicing. It was, no joke, the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. It was the sound of return, rebirth, rejoicing. It was the promise of Mardi Gras to come. The sound of teenagers returned. The sound of New Orleans in all it's creaky trumpet glory. Hope. Joy. The sound of long-absent students who have come back to this city to laud the return of the rest of the city. Bliss, man. I welled up with tears and shook my little booty on my front porch until I could hear them no more.

THIS IS HOW WE KEEP ON KEEPING ON, folks! And I will...

Goodbye 2005

Greetings and Happy New Year!

Never before have I felt so much that a new year is bringing a new beginning. It’s not a romantic feeling of relief or epiphany. It’s not as though the clock set her hands upon midnight and then wiped my slate clean or anything. It’s just been the gradual realization that this year will bring new things to my life, for good or for bad—hopefully good, and I need to make room.

Jason beat me to the most eloquent New Year’s letter. He sent it out to the Writers Retreat Workshop community and I’m going to post a bit of it here. Hope he doesn’t mind.

When can we say the new year isn't new anymore? I wrote my first 2006 check today so we're still fresh. At some point we do wrap-up the new part of new and it's just 'happy year.' Why drop the happy? Maybe that's what happened to 2005. Couldn't we catch-up later in the year and greet one another with a "happy year?" Like a check-up.

I know this, though: 2005 can bite me. I understand many of you had milestones this year. Fabulous moments. I don't know anyone for which 2005 was the best year ever, but I'm sure it was for someone. Maybe someone in... I can't even think of a country where there weren't riots, wars, famine, or other signs of the Apocalypse. That's gotta' stop and if the "authorities" won't do it, we gotta' figure out how to do it for them.

I suppose I'm biased as I watched a community, a world-renowned city, fall apart. WRW lost an angel in Jo Kohn. We watched over 150,000 deaths in the Indonesia area as the year started, we count the dead in New Orleans even today. Yes, they are still finding bodies (around 1200 so far). The city is coming back, though. While only 24% of the citizens have returned, they estimate 40% will return within the month. That will be the plateau. That will be the new New Orleans. Nothing has happened to the levee system as our government has fallen apart beyond recognition. I would say there are only five to six months until hurricane season begins as last year our first storm made a direct hit on New Orleans in June (TS Cindy). But, for the second time in history, a tropical storm, Zeta, has developed in January. It won't make any kind of landfall, but I'm not sure we can say hurricane season begins in June if it really never ended.

We spent New Year's Eve in the Mid-west, in Minnesota, to attend a dinner and a three-hour show with the cast of Prairie Home Companion. We left St. Paul, MN., the morning of January 1. The temperature was 32, the snow was piled six or seven inches, the lights the previous night along Summit Ave were gorgeous. Garrison Keillor said St. Paul never looked more beautiful, and I don't know how it could. Arriving back in New Orleans on January 2, around 11:30am, it was 81 degrees. …

On his blog (www.bigbonedmovie.com) our friend Roman says that he isn't making any real resolutions this year, and I admire that. Good resolve. I've never made them myself because I find them restrictive. If I change my mind and decide in March that I do want to put on ten pounds, drink more, take up smoking, stop writing, be more mean to friends and family, I don't want a list making me feel guilty about it.

However, after New Year's Eve in St. Paul, I changed my mind just a bit. There aren't concrete lists to be made, but I think it is healthy to reevaluate just about now. Billy Collins, the poet, read during our New Year's Eve party, and he talked of how a new year is sort of a second birthday:

Everyone has two birthdays
according to the essayist Charles Lamb
The day you were born,
and New Year's Day (from his poem New Year's Day)

Garrison said he was inspired while in the New York City subway to resolve to follow the guidelines to riders: If You See Something, Say Something.

It's in this vein that I make a resolve. Not necessarily to say something when I see something because I usually end up in trouble for what I've said. But we each sculpt our own lives by chipping away at the enormity of choices that face us. I haven't sculpted enough for myself this past year. Few years? As a result, I probably haven't done enough for others. I think it works this way. We take care of ourselves and others reap the reward.

No lists. Just a chisel, an honest look, chipping away. And, much like what Roman wrote, it comes down to eating, sleeping, laughing, working, loving. More of it all. Chipping away at the choices. I'd add college basketball to that list. More college basketball.

I've always partied on New Year's Eve, I've always had a countdown, and there was always a ton of noise. This year, at 11CST (but midnight on the east coast) Keillor stopped the show and we all hummed Auld Lang Syne for the first U.S. arrival of 2006. It was so quiet. The most reflective thirty seconds of my year. But near midnight in our world, in the Central Time Zone, Keillor talked about life and his year as the crowd stood. Then he looked down, then he looked up, leaned into the microphone and in his unique style said in a near whisper, "Happy New Year."

It came in a whisper this time, not a countdown nor with a bang, and I thought, "Finally, 2005 is history." So, happy birthday. Let's try again.

I’ll just leave the New Year reflections there. He did a good enough job for both of us, I suppose. One thing I truly am thankful for is that I have a very thoughtful cohort.

Christmas was a lovely 4000+ mile road trip to New England, Indiana, and Minnesota. Even during the evacuation, I was always most at peace when on the road. Rubber on pavement, temperatures rising and falling as we drive, gas station stops for crappy coffee, Shake and Steak in the middle of the night. I’ve learned that a comfy blanket is a passenger’s best friend; Jason keeps the heat down low so he’s not lulled to sleep. I bring my Las Vegas throw pillow. Sirius satellite radio is the greatest gift to roadtrippers since the 24-hour diner.

I’ve been more joyful since I’ve been home than I have been since August. Perhaps the level spoonful of family time evened me out a bit. Saw Beth, beautiful with baby in belly. And my grandmother Vange, who received a laptop for Christmas (this should help me keep my language in check). And nearly the entirety of the Massachusetts and Connecticut Clans. Nana has not been well and is not well, so it was an especially meaningful Christmas with her. It was the first time I saw my family since the hurricane, and there was a decidedly different feel. People hugged harder, the standard greeting stressed the “are” in “How are you?” I said in an email to friends that it was a bit like being back from the dead. Lazarus.

School began on Tuesday, and if it weren’t for the fact that working part time keeps my piggy bank echoing, I might actually really like my “new” job. (It’s amazing how empty your fridge is when you have no money. Right now—I kid you not—my fridge contains: pickles, mayo, salad dressing, soy sauce, mustard, parmesan cheese, a half bag of month-old shredded cheddar, a month-old block of muenster, a pitcher of water, six beers, half a pint of milk [still good], two eggs, a stick of butter, and two half-empty bbq sauces.) I teach two 12th grade English classes, four days a week, and a half-credit Drama class two days a week. I have Fridays off, and I’m done with work by noon on M-Th.

Starting at the end of the month, I’ll be taking three classes at the University of New Orleans. After much finagling, I managed to beg my way into their Masters of Fine Arts program (“But we never admit people in the Spring.” “Come on, now, we can’t say ‘never’ any more in this city.”). I think this will be a great thing. Keep me busy. Keep my idle hands away from devil’s work. Maybe get me “really” writing again. It will be good to be among like-minded people, away from teaching, away from the house. I applied for financial aid and because they base aid on the previous year’s tax forms, the government’s FAFSA form says that I ought to be able to pay $10900 out of pocket. That was good for a nice, long laugh (right now, that is equal to more than 10 months of my current take-home pay). Honestly though, even pre-K, I couldn’t possibly have paid that much—I don’t know how my students do it. (Thankfully, UNO is considerably less than $10900 per year).

As predicted, New Orleans is indeed much busier these days. And while the curfew was lifted while we were away for the holidays, I haven’t seen any significant changes since I’ve been back. It’s the same, tiny city, only more crowded. Our first trip to the grocery store was almost comical. No milk left except gallons of skim and whole. No bottled water at all. The broccoli bin looked like Animal from the Muppets had climbed into it and devoured the lot (it was on sale). Yesterday I went to the store to find it sold out of both rosemary and thyme.

A few of the stoplights near my apartment have been fixed. But the one on Napoleon and Magazine still blinks, and the newcomers to the city don’t know that for the past four months we’ve been treating the blinking light as a four-way stop. I’ve seen four near-accidents at that crossroads since I’ve been back; newcomers flying through their blinking yellow even though it was the other person’s “turn to go.” I admit, one of those near-misses was my own. I slammed on the brakes, hollered a mild obscenity, and then held up four fingers to the driver (four, not one). “HEY! FOUR-WAY STOP!” I yelled, articulating the words carefully, so he could read my lips through the windshield. His lips made a surprised little “oh” as he drove by and saw my pre-coffee, 7:30am, fit. I think he got it.

We haven’t ventured out on the town yet. I’ve been trying to make good on my resolution to “be better to the world around me” by starting with my apartment, which, even on a good day looks like someone’s junk drawer exploded. (There ought to be a law against two packrats cohabiting). The best my apartment ever looked was in the weeks after we got home from Katrina exile. I spent the better part of two or three weeks cleaning. And now I’ve spent the better part of two or three months messing it up. My other resolution is unarticulated but has something to do with procrastination (I’ve been putting off finding the right words for it). So, I started with the really ugly jobs like finally disposing of the wall-sized entertainment center we inherited from Jas’s bachelor pad in favor of a smaller sleeker corner unit I bought in the New Haven Ikea and then matching all the stray CD’s with CD cases. (Also on my resolution list—listen to less talk radio and more music).

Politically, things seem to be getting a bit better in the city—perhaps too little too late, but I’m going to try to be a bit more optimistic than that. Work on the levees will begin soon, decisions are in the works as to where to put FEMA trailers in the city (no, for those of you who’ve been keeping track, I’ve still not gotten any money from FEMA), Bush is coming again to visit this week… sigh. And Mardi Gras is on, for sure. Routes have been ironed out, the schedule has been slashed by six days, and if the New Orleans New Years celebration is any indication, it will be a celebration of renewal and joy.

Speaking of which, Happy Mardi Gras! The season began yesterday. King Cake for everyone.

Be well. Happy New Year.