It was two years and a lifetime ago that HK hit NOLA and I am too tired to process all of the information that's been coming at us from all sides this week. (Maybe this is the year I'll call her HK, 'cause we're tight like that, now). Anyways, Wednesday is also my busiest teaching day. I have classes from 9:30am until almost 9pm.
We did have a power outage on campus this afternoon, which brought the days of our early post-storm livin' back. Yeah--that made me feel hurricaney. That brought a lot back.
But right now I am too tired to process this anniversary-bit, so I will just say goodnight to it and to all things Number Two. Tomorrow, after I help my best friends pack their U-Haul so they can leave the city, maybe I'll be sad and inspired and ready to write.
Blerck.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
So many hurricane recovery summits, so little time...
As I drove to school this morning, I listened to local columnist Chris Rose on NPR. It was a nice enough piece. I liked that he was defiantly explaining why we stay. He said that here, one is necessarily living a meaningful life, and I think he's right; this recovery makes everything you do, say, hear, think, and feel "mean more," somehow.
I worry, though, that the rest of the country tires of hearing romantic tributes to our home--especially because those romantic tributes rely not just on what New Orleans is, but on what the rest of the country is not. How long can we tell the rest of the country that "You just don't get it" before the rest of the country says, "You're right! And not only don't we get it, but we also don't want to hear no mo' about how you think you DO!"?
I worry that they tire of our stories, of our musings on food and culture and whatnot. It's like how we down here tire of listening to New Yorkers go on and on about New York. (Actually, I kind of think everyone tires of New York-nationalism, no?)
Anyways, the inability to explain "Why New Orleans" is an ongoing theme in many-a-writer's coffer down here. Strangely (or perhaps not so), it was an outsider who did it best for me: Dan Baum for The New Yorker. Read it. It's good.
In some ways, the way New Orleans was before is dead not because of the loss of housing or culture or even the loss of life, but because the meaning that is attached to everything has altered our ability to Just Live. Now, there is the national attention. Now, there's recovery summit after recovery summit after recovery summit . There's march after march after march. There are media events (I like how the city's media schedule brief has "Celebrity Holds" scheduled.) To commemorate the Katrina, two years later, there are vigils, memorials, bell-ringing ceremonies, and even a "hands around the Superdome" event. There is so much darn meaning being made that it's hard to make sense of it all. And anyway, do all these meaning-makers, summit-havers, and celebrity so-and-so's know what it all means anymore than we do? I doubt it. I doubt it...
So, today at UNO, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mary Landrieu, and others are discussing our recovery right this very minute. I wish I could go. I hope there are some disgruntled residents who will raise a stink. A streaker would be nice.
Me, I'm here, blogging, teaching. My students are student-ing. The city is being. Meaning? Meaning, meaning...
I worry, though, that the rest of the country tires of hearing romantic tributes to our home--especially because those romantic tributes rely not just on what New Orleans is, but on what the rest of the country is not. How long can we tell the rest of the country that "You just don't get it" before the rest of the country says, "You're right! And not only don't we get it, but we also don't want to hear no mo' about how you think you DO!"?
I worry that they tire of our stories, of our musings on food and culture and whatnot. It's like how we down here tire of listening to New Yorkers go on and on about New York. (Actually, I kind of think everyone tires of New York-nationalism, no?)
Anyways, the inability to explain "Why New Orleans" is an ongoing theme in many-a-writer's coffer down here. Strangely (or perhaps not so), it was an outsider who did it best for me: Dan Baum for The New Yorker. Read it. It's good.
In some ways, the way New Orleans was before is dead not because of the loss of housing or culture or even the loss of life, but because the meaning that is attached to everything has altered our ability to Just Live. Now, there is the national attention. Now, there's recovery summit after recovery summit after recovery summit . There's march after march after march. There are media events (I like how the city's media schedule brief has "Celebrity Holds" scheduled.) To commemorate the Katrina, two years later, there are vigils, memorials, bell-ringing ceremonies, and even a "hands around the Superdome" event. There is so much darn meaning being made that it's hard to make sense of it all. And anyway, do all these meaning-makers, summit-havers, and celebrity so-and-so's know what it all means anymore than we do? I doubt it. I doubt it...
So, today at UNO, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mary Landrieu, and others are discussing our recovery right this very minute. I wish I could go. I hope there are some disgruntled residents who will raise a stink. A streaker would be nice.
Me, I'm here, blogging, teaching. My students are student-ing. The city is being. Meaning? Meaning, meaning...
Friday, August 24, 2007
Lucky Us.
So by now you all know that Dean missed us, thankfully. Thankfully. I've been mired in the whatnot of the first week of school: faculty meetings, first day introductions, syllabus design and distribution, getting stuck in traffic on my way to teach on the Westbank, missing my officemate, reading, writing--whatnot.
There is some excitement to report (not that the first week of school isn't exciting, 'cause I think it is and in fact I still can't sleep before the first day each semester). For instance, there's Tuesday: the day I almost met Brad Pitt. As you may or may not know, he and Angelina are part-time residents of New Orleans. Also, you may or may not know that I am happy about that fact. We can use all the help we can get, and having arguably the most famous people on the planet loving your limping city--and doing something about it--is a very good thing, indeed.
Anyways, I am in the process of writing both about the Global Green Project in Holy Cross, and about my almost-meeting Brad Pitt. Until I finish that piece, here's the short version:
I was touring the beginnings of the Global Green prototype house with another member of the HCNA, and when we left, there was Brad. The VIP-group was coming in to tour, and because I was wearing my HCNA T-shirt, I was able to see the house with the president of Global Green, the Home-Depot lady who's spearheaded the material-stuff, and Brad. Oh, and one scary dude in a suit and a few choice reporters.
I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't "supposed" to be in there, and that my shirt was my ticket. So I listened. Raptly. And tried very hard not to look at Brad. Luckily, the reporters were snapping pictures, and so I felt okay snapping away with my dinky Powershot. I felt almost as though Mr. Pitt wanted to align himself with me because of my shirt. He stood close. Like, close. I'd had this plan to get him to sign the back of my Holy Cross T-shirt. I had the Sharpie and all. In my plan, I would thank him for his work, tell him how the project helped seal the deal for two teachers who couldn't afford to buy elsewhere to take the plunge into the Lower Nine. He would sign my shirt, "I HEART HOLY CROSS--Brad Pitt," and I would wear that mofo with pride.
Instead: I could barely breathe.
Instead: I stood right... next... to... him... and took his picture with my dinky Powershot. He looked at me and I said, meekly, "Thank you." I'm pretty sure he said "No problem."
Ever since then, I have been hating on myself for being like everyone else. I have been hating myself for not being me. WHY did I take an f-ing PICTURE? WHY didn't I introduce myself?
Anyways, I am a retard, as I told Pam Daschiell (the past-president of the HCNA and a veritable buddy of Brad's in this Global-Green Holy-Cross project) at last night's HCNA meeting. She laughed and said he's a nice guy.
"I know," I said. "So why couldn't I be me? I'm a nice girl!"
"Yes, you are," she said.
Yes, I am.
So, I guess the lesson is that I am a bona fide product of American popular culture. However much I may ignore the Dan Akroyd's of the world so they can have their lives (Liv Tyler, too, and Roman Polanski, and Mos Def... all of them I've "left alone"), when I come face-to-face with Brad Pitt--someone with whom I share a genuine interest and actual common ground, I do What We Do: I take a picture and say, "thank you."
ARGH!
I know you are dying to see my pictures, and they ARE spectacular! I can say two things of Brad in Real Life: 1) he is not shorter than he looks, and 2) dude can wear a hard hat. But I am saving the pictures for my piece. After all, I know there are forreal freaks out there, who will re-publish my pics all over (right?--I mean what would you do with really great pictures of Brad Pitt in a hard hat? And don't say sell them). Since I plan to write about the event for nolafugees.com, I'm going to publish the pictures there. That way they can get all the hits and this blog can cruise along in relative anonymity.
So: that's how I almost met Brad Pitt. Now, I am going to have a margarita. Happy Friday.
There is some excitement to report (not that the first week of school isn't exciting, 'cause I think it is and in fact I still can't sleep before the first day each semester). For instance, there's Tuesday: the day I almost met Brad Pitt. As you may or may not know, he and Angelina are part-time residents of New Orleans. Also, you may or may not know that I am happy about that fact. We can use all the help we can get, and having arguably the most famous people on the planet loving your limping city--and doing something about it--is a very good thing, indeed.
Anyways, I am in the process of writing both about the Global Green Project in Holy Cross, and about my almost-meeting Brad Pitt. Until I finish that piece, here's the short version:
I was touring the beginnings of the Global Green prototype house with another member of the HCNA, and when we left, there was Brad. The VIP-group was coming in to tour, and because I was wearing my HCNA T-shirt, I was able to see the house with the president of Global Green, the Home-Depot lady who's spearheaded the material-stuff, and Brad. Oh, and one scary dude in a suit and a few choice reporters.
I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't "supposed" to be in there, and that my shirt was my ticket. So I listened. Raptly. And tried very hard not to look at Brad. Luckily, the reporters were snapping pictures, and so I felt okay snapping away with my dinky Powershot. I felt almost as though Mr. Pitt wanted to align himself with me because of my shirt. He stood close. Like, close. I'd had this plan to get him to sign the back of my Holy Cross T-shirt. I had the Sharpie and all. In my plan, I would thank him for his work, tell him how the project helped seal the deal for two teachers who couldn't afford to buy elsewhere to take the plunge into the Lower Nine. He would sign my shirt, "I HEART HOLY CROSS--Brad Pitt," and I would wear that mofo with pride.
Instead: I could barely breathe.
Instead: I stood right... next... to... him... and took his picture with my dinky Powershot. He looked at me and I said, meekly, "Thank you." I'm pretty sure he said "No problem."
Ever since then, I have been hating on myself for being like everyone else. I have been hating myself for not being me. WHY did I take an f-ing PICTURE? WHY didn't I introduce myself?
Anyways, I am a retard, as I told Pam Daschiell (the past-president of the HCNA and a veritable buddy of Brad's in this Global-Green Holy-Cross project) at last night's HCNA meeting. She laughed and said he's a nice guy.
"I know," I said. "So why couldn't I be me? I'm a nice girl!"
"Yes, you are," she said.
Yes, I am.
So, I guess the lesson is that I am a bona fide product of American popular culture. However much I may ignore the Dan Akroyd's of the world so they can have their lives (Liv Tyler, too, and Roman Polanski, and Mos Def... all of them I've "left alone"), when I come face-to-face with Brad Pitt--someone with whom I share a genuine interest and actual common ground, I do What We Do: I take a picture and say, "thank you."
ARGH!
I know you are dying to see my pictures, and they ARE spectacular! I can say two things of Brad in Real Life: 1) he is not shorter than he looks, and 2) dude can wear a hard hat. But I am saving the pictures for my piece. After all, I know there are forreal freaks out there, who will re-publish my pics all over (right?--I mean what would you do with really great pictures of Brad Pitt in a hard hat? And don't say sell them). Since I plan to write about the event for nolafugees.com, I'm going to publish the pictures there. That way they can get all the hits and this blog can cruise along in relative anonymity.
So: that's how I almost met Brad Pitt. Now, I am going to have a margarita. Happy Friday.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Dean-watch, Day Two.
Here's Dean's probability cone:
Bob Breck (my favorite local meteorlogist) is doing less shrugging and more sideways glancing, which means we now really need to watch. Yesterday I failed to get a cat carrier, so it's on tomorrow's shopping list.
I was in a BAD MOOD yesterday until we went to church--the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association meeting, that is. There's nothing like a group of people banding together to get things done to make you feel better. Among my favorite moments from last night's meeting:
--A young black mother asking that we help each other out with home renovations. She was holding her antsy four-year old, and when she announced that this weekend she'd like volunteers to help her "mud her drywall," her daughter squealed, "MUD?!" before wriggling free to bang on the gospel church drum set.
--An older man who's bought a large building that he plans to call "The Village" (after the phrase, "It takes a village..."). He stood at the pulpit and said, "I'm not gonna lie. Originally I bought the building because I like to work on cars. But then God gave me a mission, and I don't know about you, but I'm not gonna fight God." He was asking for help with the project, which he plans to be a community center for neighborhood kids.
"I grew up in the village, if you know what I mean," he said. "When I was a kid, if you got into something, the whole village knew before you got back home. You couldn't get away with stuff like these kids do now, and I'm here to tell you that it's our fault that they're going wrong."
The attendees (mostly women) nodded in agreement. Then, eighty-something year old Miss Maybell got up and said she could help teach kids how to sew. Warenetta passed around a survey form and Simon and I offered to work with kids with reading and writing.
The Global Green Project has started work on their Greenola project (the mixed-income housing and community center built from sustainable materials and focused on energy-efficiency--it's down at Forstall and Egania in Holy Cross). They announced a dinner at MLK Elementary on Monday. One neighbor, Ann, was worried about there being enough food and somehow the meeting turned into this funny critique of Global Green's not organizing an RSVP-list so we could be sure to get a seat (presumably next to Brad Pitt).
--Finally, there was a somber moment when HCNA president Charles Allen asked if everyone had a plan to evacuate. There were no No's, but plenty looks that said, "I dare you, Dean."
Anyways, I'm feeling better and renewed today. That neighborhood is home like nobody's business.
Bob Breck (my favorite local meteorlogist) is doing less shrugging and more sideways glancing, which means we now really need to watch. Yesterday I failed to get a cat carrier, so it's on tomorrow's shopping list.
I was in a BAD MOOD yesterday until we went to church--the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association meeting, that is. There's nothing like a group of people banding together to get things done to make you feel better. Among my favorite moments from last night's meeting:
--A young black mother asking that we help each other out with home renovations. She was holding her antsy four-year old, and when she announced that this weekend she'd like volunteers to help her "mud her drywall," her daughter squealed, "MUD?!" before wriggling free to bang on the gospel church drum set.
--An older man who's bought a large building that he plans to call "The Village" (after the phrase, "It takes a village..."). He stood at the pulpit and said, "I'm not gonna lie. Originally I bought the building because I like to work on cars. But then God gave me a mission, and I don't know about you, but I'm not gonna fight God." He was asking for help with the project, which he plans to be a community center for neighborhood kids.
"I grew up in the village, if you know what I mean," he said. "When I was a kid, if you got into something, the whole village knew before you got back home. You couldn't get away with stuff like these kids do now, and I'm here to tell you that it's our fault that they're going wrong."
The attendees (mostly women) nodded in agreement. Then, eighty-something year old Miss Maybell got up and said she could help teach kids how to sew. Warenetta passed around a survey form and Simon and I offered to work with kids with reading and writing.
The Global Green Project has started work on their Greenola project (the mixed-income housing and community center built from sustainable materials and focused on energy-efficiency--it's down at Forstall and Egania in Holy Cross). They announced a dinner at MLK Elementary on Monday. One neighbor, Ann, was worried about there being enough food and somehow the meeting turned into this funny critique of Global Green's not organizing an RSVP-list so we could be sure to get a seat (presumably next to Brad Pitt).
--Finally, there was a somber moment when HCNA president Charles Allen asked if everyone had a plan to evacuate. There were no No's, but plenty looks that said, "I dare you, Dean."
Anyways, I'm feeling better and renewed today. That neighborhood is home like nobody's business.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Home... home.
[I apologize in advance to my small out-of-town readership for the "going off" that is to come in this entry... Your girl's on edge, as anyone would be looking at this:]
Ordinarily I swell with pride when we drive over the I-10 high rise into New Orleans, back from another of our trips back east to Atlanta. The high rise affords a spectacular view of the city, and even post-K I've seen that view and gotten goosebumps.
This time was different, and when we finally pulled up to our house, I switched off the car's ignition and said, "I don't want to be here."
The truth is, I don't want to be anywhere else, either. We found a good Mexican restaurant in Copperhill, Tennessee. We stopped for fried pork skins at "Carol Sue's Unique Funnel Cakes." We giggled at the sign in Ducktown, TN, endearing: "Welcome to Ducktown--A Quacking Good Place." There was evidence of a life we could enjoy in the N. Georgia and Tennessee mountains.
But what we missed were minorities. In fact, I'm always missing minorities when we go to whiter areas of the country. I don't get why on earth people would want to live around a whole bunch of people carbon copies of themselves, which may be one reason why I've loved New Orleans for so long--the people here who are just like me are just like me because they want the same things as I do: diversity, a joyful daily life, music.
It's just that now all of these things are what we have to fight for, and I find that I'm not feeling up to the whole push and struggle anymore. Two years later, it's still the push and struggle. Two years later things feel the same, only worse.
And then, two years later, we returned from vacation to learn that our local political hero, councilman Oliver Thomas, was guilty of accepting bribes. (Calling him a hero is a bit of an overstatement, but he was an excellent cheerleader for our city, and he had the rare support of both blacks and whites in the city. Any unifier these days makes you feel good.) We watched his speech on TV, dumbfounded. I wanted to cry.
Instead, I am diving back into my work. School starts on Monday, and I'm trying to get my syllabi revised and my new fiction-workshop planned without becoming too distracted by the movement of Hurricane Dean. Today I have an appointment for a haircut, and I plan to pick up an extra cat carrier at Petco just in case. Just in case, I'll fill up the gas tank.
In the meantime, the media has been doing its two-year bit, and relatives and friends are taking notice. No one notices when the Corps announces they've given up on Category Five levee protection--we get no angry letters to Congress written on our behalf. We are left to do these things for ourselves. Instead, when TIME magazine publishes a feature, when National Geographic publishes a feature, we get concerned emails and calls. No one comes right out and says it, but I can tell they are thinking, Why are you still there? Do you really think your city has any chance? Isn't it about time you gave up?
I get angry. I want to say: What do you care? What are you doing about it? Isn't it about time you started thinking about this city's recovery as YOUR problem, too?
I am sick, sick, sick of the way the rest of the U.S. is just tsk-tsking us and opening their worried motherly arms: come home, come here!
This is home. I know you can't understand that, but you don't need to: you just need to understand what a home is.
Sometimes, I suspect that what separates those who love New Orleans from the rest of the U.S. is our understanding of home.
And so even though I came home and felt a bit, myself, like (yes) giving, up, we will stay. We will stay because this is home. It sure would be nice if that mattered to the rest of the U.S.--enough that we didn't have to come home--every day for the past two years--to more push and struggle. That is not home. Or at least it shouldn't be.
This time was different, and when we finally pulled up to our house, I switched off the car's ignition and said, "I don't want to be here."
The truth is, I don't want to be anywhere else, either. We found a good Mexican restaurant in Copperhill, Tennessee. We stopped for fried pork skins at "Carol Sue's Unique Funnel Cakes." We giggled at the sign in Ducktown, TN, endearing: "Welcome to Ducktown--A Quacking Good Place." There was evidence of a life we could enjoy in the N. Georgia and Tennessee mountains.
But what we missed were minorities. In fact, I'm always missing minorities when we go to whiter areas of the country. I don't get why on earth people would want to live around a whole bunch of people carbon copies of themselves, which may be one reason why I've loved New Orleans for so long--the people here who are just like me are just like me because they want the same things as I do: diversity, a joyful daily life, music.
It's just that now all of these things are what we have to fight for, and I find that I'm not feeling up to the whole push and struggle anymore. Two years later, it's still the push and struggle. Two years later things feel the same, only worse.
And then, two years later, we returned from vacation to learn that our local political hero, councilman Oliver Thomas, was guilty of accepting bribes. (Calling him a hero is a bit of an overstatement, but he was an excellent cheerleader for our city, and he had the rare support of both blacks and whites in the city. Any unifier these days makes you feel good.) We watched his speech on TV, dumbfounded. I wanted to cry.
Instead, I am diving back into my work. School starts on Monday, and I'm trying to get my syllabi revised and my new fiction-workshop planned without becoming too distracted by the movement of Hurricane Dean. Today I have an appointment for a haircut, and I plan to pick up an extra cat carrier at Petco just in case. Just in case, I'll fill up the gas tank.
In the meantime, the media has been doing its two-year bit, and relatives and friends are taking notice. No one notices when the Corps announces they've given up on Category Five levee protection--we get no angry letters to Congress written on our behalf. We are left to do these things for ourselves. Instead, when TIME magazine publishes a feature, when National Geographic publishes a feature, we get concerned emails and calls. No one comes right out and says it, but I can tell they are thinking, Why are you still there? Do you really think your city has any chance? Isn't it about time you gave up?
I get angry. I want to say: What do you care? What are you doing about it? Isn't it about time you started thinking about this city's recovery as YOUR problem, too?
I am sick, sick, sick of the way the rest of the U.S. is just tsk-tsking us and opening their worried motherly arms: come home, come here!
This is home. I know you can't understand that, but you don't need to: you just need to understand what a home is.
Sometimes, I suspect that what separates those who love New Orleans from the rest of the U.S. is our understanding of home.
And so even though I came home and felt a bit, myself, like (yes) giving, up, we will stay. We will stay because this is home. It sure would be nice if that mattered to the rest of the U.S.--enough that we didn't have to come home--every day for the past two years--to more push and struggle. That is not home. Or at least it shouldn't be.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
On Vacation...
Simon and I are off to the North Georgia Mountains for ten days, and so my already spotty-blogging will now screech to a halt for a while. Sorry, Mom!
I would like to amend an earlier post, while also responding to Anonymous, who hoped that I finished Josh Clark's book, Heart Like Water.
I've just got a few pages to go, now, and I am happy to report that in fact Clark does show remorse, does feel guilt for his early post-K days of celebration and blissful ignorance. (I don't know why I'd be happy for that fact--who wants to wish the crappy feeling of guilt on someone?)
Anyway, I am now quite a fan of the book, actually, which I don't think I am supposed to admit in my writerly circles. I had an interesting conversation with one of my fellow MFA-graduates about Clark's career, which seems to have generated a good deal of envy among my cohorts. My friend said, "If anyone has a problem with Clark's book, they need to come off the sour grapes." When I'd asked what he meant, he said he thought our friends were just jealous of Clark's success. "I don't see none of y'all publishing no books!" (Not exactly true, but okay.)
I get the idea that jealousy can feed unwarranted criticism.
And since my own writing "career" took a nosedive straight the f-- down after the storm (unless you call sloppy-blogging real "writing," which I guess you probably don't, and I guess I probably shouldn't, though sometimes I actually do), maybe it was a bit of envy that had me criticizing Clark. Maybe. Okay.
But then my friend changed his tune when I told him that I didn't think it was envy, exactly, that fed most of the criticism of Clark's post-K writing. The beef has been his authenticity. Does someone like Clark--someone who moved here from elsewhere, who lives in the Pontalba apartments (read: well-to-do), and who hobnobs with the literary creme de la creme in New Orleans (his book jacket boasts a blurb by Pulitzer prize-winning Richard Ford, for Chrissakes)--does he have the "right" to speak for New Orleans?
What I now really like about Clark is that he doesn't seem to be bothered by what is arguably a really dumb question. Of course he has the right!
My friend rattled off reasons why those who need to tell The Real Stories of this post-K New Orleans are not the Josh Clark's of the city. The real storytellers understand poverty. The real storytellers have actual black neighbors and real live black friends. The real storytellers, I think my friend was saying, don't romanticize that sh*t because that sh*t ain't romantic.
But I don't think my friend is right.
And as I've continued reading Clark's book, I've seen his mood of drunken revelry sink into a stunned depression as he realizes all that he's been missing whilst living it up in the Compound. His sinking is well-paced. It's not some ta-da epiphany--the kind of redemption we so love in our American stories. It takes place over the course of many chapters--as he bemoans the fact that we evacuees will be coming back now, trying to act like we know, as he sees what happened in Gulf Coast Mississippi, and as he records the reactions of Ninth Ward residents in town to "look and leave."
What I think makes Clark's story actually wholly authentic is that he doesn't have a revelation. He doesn't join some volunteer crew, doesn't start gutting gutting houses, doesn't even keep the Quarter clean as he'd done earlier. Instead, he watches it, records its, and then, when it gets too uncomfortable (as it does when he enters the Ninth Ward to record some citizens Looking and Leaving,) he stifles a yawn. He turns away. He heads back to the Quarter and tries to capture some of that good feeling he'd once had.
Admitting to that sh*t--that wanting to turn away--ain't romantic, but it is authentic.
So I think Josh Clark has written a memoir that is actually The Transplant Story. He romanticizes the storm, revels in it, wakes up (hung over), begins to really see it--but only once it can no longer be ignored--and he writes, "From here on, finding beauty will be a complex thing."
More than anything else, I think this storm has put a hurt on the ability of us transplants to romanticize the very unromantic. The Sliver by the River, the Isle of Denial, isn't big, and it's impossible, now, to pay attention--to just be awake--without being reminded of what you have (stuff and privilege) and what you don't have (a single f-ing clue about what it's like not to be okay). And then the okayness becomes a problem, itself.
Here's a paragraph from Clark's book that I really like--that captures the conflicted grief he felt and that I think nicely suits the NOLA-transplant psyche, post-K. (Then I'm going to go eat some fish tacos at El Gato Negro, pack my bags, and head north, so this blog will sleep for a while. Bye.)
"I'd keep looking for the little details, hooks that the newspaper people seize upon, pretend they illustrate the whole: the tricycle, the Cabbage Patch Kid, the illustrated Bible, the photo of a newborn baby. They're there. But their essences is lost in the dinge. And then I'd cough to pretend I wasn't yawning, and wonder what to eat next--that breakfast burrito Ride made me that's still in the car or should I have one of those Honey Nut Cheerio cereal bars or should I go and get some Salvation Army food? And then I would realize I'm not even hungry. And I'll even have my routine back soon and then I won't have lost a single thing."
I would like to amend an earlier post, while also responding to Anonymous, who hoped that I finished Josh Clark's book, Heart Like Water.
I've just got a few pages to go, now, and I am happy to report that in fact Clark does show remorse, does feel guilt for his early post-K days of celebration and blissful ignorance. (I don't know why I'd be happy for that fact--who wants to wish the crappy feeling of guilt on someone?)
Anyway, I am now quite a fan of the book, actually, which I don't think I am supposed to admit in my writerly circles. I had an interesting conversation with one of my fellow MFA-graduates about Clark's career, which seems to have generated a good deal of envy among my cohorts. My friend said, "If anyone has a problem with Clark's book, they need to come off the sour grapes." When I'd asked what he meant, he said he thought our friends were just jealous of Clark's success. "I don't see none of y'all publishing no books!" (Not exactly true, but okay.)
I get the idea that jealousy can feed unwarranted criticism.
And since my own writing "career" took a nosedive straight the f-- down after the storm (unless you call sloppy-blogging real "writing," which I guess you probably don't, and I guess I probably shouldn't, though sometimes I actually do), maybe it was a bit of envy that had me criticizing Clark. Maybe. Okay.
But then my friend changed his tune when I told him that I didn't think it was envy, exactly, that fed most of the criticism of Clark's post-K writing. The beef has been his authenticity. Does someone like Clark--someone who moved here from elsewhere, who lives in the Pontalba apartments (read: well-to-do), and who hobnobs with the literary creme de la creme in New Orleans (his book jacket boasts a blurb by Pulitzer prize-winning Richard Ford, for Chrissakes)--does he have the "right" to speak for New Orleans?
What I now really like about Clark is that he doesn't seem to be bothered by what is arguably a really dumb question. Of course he has the right!
My friend rattled off reasons why those who need to tell The Real Stories of this post-K New Orleans are not the Josh Clark's of the city. The real storytellers understand poverty. The real storytellers have actual black neighbors and real live black friends. The real storytellers, I think my friend was saying, don't romanticize that sh*t because that sh*t ain't romantic.
But I don't think my friend is right.
And as I've continued reading Clark's book, I've seen his mood of drunken revelry sink into a stunned depression as he realizes all that he's been missing whilst living it up in the Compound. His sinking is well-paced. It's not some ta-da epiphany--the kind of redemption we so love in our American stories. It takes place over the course of many chapters--as he bemoans the fact that we evacuees will be coming back now, trying to act like we know, as he sees what happened in Gulf Coast Mississippi, and as he records the reactions of Ninth Ward residents in town to "look and leave."
What I think makes Clark's story actually wholly authentic is that he doesn't have a revelation. He doesn't join some volunteer crew, doesn't start gutting gutting houses, doesn't even keep the Quarter clean as he'd done earlier. Instead, he watches it, records its, and then, when it gets too uncomfortable (as it does when he enters the Ninth Ward to record some citizens Looking and Leaving,) he stifles a yawn. He turns away. He heads back to the Quarter and tries to capture some of that good feeling he'd once had.
Admitting to that sh*t--that wanting to turn away--ain't romantic, but it is authentic.
So I think Josh Clark has written a memoir that is actually The Transplant Story. He romanticizes the storm, revels in it, wakes up (hung over), begins to really see it--but only once it can no longer be ignored--and he writes, "From here on, finding beauty will be a complex thing."
More than anything else, I think this storm has put a hurt on the ability of us transplants to romanticize the very unromantic. The Sliver by the River, the Isle of Denial, isn't big, and it's impossible, now, to pay attention--to just be awake--without being reminded of what you have (stuff and privilege) and what you don't have (a single f-ing clue about what it's like not to be okay). And then the okayness becomes a problem, itself.
Here's a paragraph from Clark's book that I really like--that captures the conflicted grief he felt and that I think nicely suits the NOLA-transplant psyche, post-K. (Then I'm going to go eat some fish tacos at El Gato Negro, pack my bags, and head north, so this blog will sleep for a while. Bye.)
"I'd keep looking for the little details, hooks that the newspaper people seize upon, pretend they illustrate the whole: the tricycle, the Cabbage Patch Kid, the illustrated Bible, the photo of a newborn baby. They're there. But their essences is lost in the dinge. And then I'd cough to pretend I wasn't yawning, and wonder what to eat next--that breakfast burrito Ride made me that's still in the car or should I have one of those Honey Nut Cheerio cereal bars or should I go and get some Salvation Army food? And then I would realize I'm not even hungry. And I'll even have my routine back soon and then I won't have lost a single thing."
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
"It's absolutely vital that the community is part of the crime fighting effort," Riley said. "But more important is that it trusts the police..."
Many of you have emailed me about my last post. Thanks for your concern and support.
I did, in fact, try to follow up on the case, but ran into a problem: the rude buttholes who staff the Fifth District police station.
The poor relations between the NOPD and the public are by now notorious, but by all published and broadcasted accounts, the NOPD has been working at repairing their "public image." As you'll read in the letter I penned after trying to communicate with the Fifth District, though, (and as you can read in this post by Dangerblond [a blogger whose writing I really enjoy]), this ain't workin'.
Funny (or not so funny) thing: when I emailed this letter to the address published on the City of New Orleans Website--the address provided after I followed links to the "Citizen Complaint Procedure" page--it was returned to me as a failed message.
Of course, the irony of that would be lost on them, completely.
Me, it makes sick.
I did, however, come across this very detailed and user-friendly crime map. So far, the stats go up to 7/9--the day before our report. I'll keep checking back to see what becomes of the call we made, statistically-speaking.
Anyway, it looks like I shall have to rely on the mail of the snail to get my complaint heard. Given the dead-end I've already come upon, I don't have any confidence that my letter will make it into human hands.
(Another not-so-funny thing: the paragraph that precedes the dead-end email address on the City website reads, "In order for the NOPD to effectively function in ridding the city of crime and disorder, it is essential that the public has confidence in the integrity of its law enforcement effort. To maintain this confidence, the Department of Police provides a means to investigate and adjudicate complaints made against its members by the community which it serves. Grievances will be thoroughly and impartially handled." Ha, ha, f-ing HA!!)
I may just have to hand-deliver the thing. Even so, I can just see the officers laughing at my expectations. She thinks we're going to communicate with her?! She thinks we should CALL?! Over some trespassing! PSHAW! Gawd, it makes me sick to think of, but I don't think my assumption is off. At. All.
Here's my letter:
To the Commander of the NOPD Public Integrity Division:
On the night of July 10th, at around midnight, my husband I awoke to an intruder in our backyard (in the 2800 block of N. Rampart Street). I called 911, and much to my surprise, had a nearly-immediate response. Evidently the intruder had been pulled over for a traffic violation on St. Claude, and so the police were already in the area but had lost track of him. It was the military police who pursued the intruder, and the military who communicated with us. The two military officers were kind and helpful. I wish I could say the same for the NOPD.
After the suspect was apprehended (from the yard of our neighbors across the street,) the military police left. The NOPD was about to pull away when my husband approached the car to ask about what had happened. He explained that we were the ones who'd placed the call to 911. The officers seemed surprised--as though they'd not known who we were--and exited the car to search our property (they found a watch but no contraband). It seemed odd that they had not planned to interact with us at all. The only interaction we had with the NOPD after this harrowing experience, and after our call (a call which resulted in an arrest), came per our initiation.
But I am not writing to complain about that interaction.
I am writing because both my husband and I placed calls to the Fifth District Station--and both of us were treated rudely. I don't think a detailed account of the call is necessary. The bottom line is that we both had two incident report numbers related to the arrest made after our call, and we were calling to follow up on them. We were told that the suspect had been arrested for trespassing.
No one we spoke to knew the name of the arresting officer. No one had any additional advice for how to find out more about the case, other than to (and I quote), "Go to the Municipal Court and find out yourself." We spoke to a male and a female that night--both of whom interrupted us repeatedly, and both of whom acted as though we were somehow stupid to think that calling for more information would result in any real information being attained.
Evidently, their attitudes toward us reflect a reality--one that we weren't privy to: there is, indeed, no point in calling to follow up on a case, as no one at the Fifth District (unless they, themselves, are the arresting officer) will have a shred of information to share. If this is the case, I nonetheless think it is vital that the officers at the phones communicate in a respectful manner.
When I lived in Atlanta many years ago, our house was burglarized. The DeKalb County Police called us some weeks later when the suspect was apprehended. We were given the suspect's name and a case number. We found that call deeply reassuring--as well as surprising. Imagine that: a police force who demonstrated a real understanding of the importance of clear communication with residents impacted by crime.
I understand that the NOPD is stretched thin these days. I attend neighborhood meetings regularly and have met captains from the Fifth District. I do not doubt that those who are doing their best are, in fact, doing their best.
But to simply require officers (or perhaps station administrators) to treat citizens with respect and dignity should not be considered the "best" work of the police force's "finest."
Treating citizens with respect--which will indeed sometimes require patience and understanding that is hard to come by in this post-Katrina New Orleans (as a teacher I know this very, very well)--should be a pre-requisite; it is something that even the most inexperienced officers should be able to call part of their expertise. If this is not the case, then I find it no wonder that the distrust of the public for the NOPD is so astronomically high.
It's a no-brainer that clear and helpful communication with citizens (especially with victims) would result in a greater sense of trust from the citizenry of New Orleans. I think the officers on night-duty at the Fifth District could stand to be reminded of this very obvious and plain truth. While they may not have had any more information to offer, there was no reason to be dismissive and rude to crime-victims--especially when the cooperation of those victims led to an arrest.
I believe strongly that if there were more citizens out there--citizens like my husband and myself--who were proactive about crime, there would be less of it in our neighborhoods. However, after the treatment we received, it is easy for me to understand how distrust of the NOPD could so quickly take root, and how that distrust could lead to a lack of cooperation of the part of even the most proactive of citizens.
I fully support the call of the New Orleans Crime Commission, which "encourage[s] all community members to get involved with the Community Policing program to end violent crime in New Orleans, and reconnect with the NOPD officers in their neighborhoods.” We made that call. We made that connection. I do not think it should be too much to expect that when we do connect with officers in our neighborhoods, that effort will be rewarded--if not with the information we request, than at the very least with a modicum of respect. If we are met with such discouragement--if our calls are not heard but are instead and dismissed by those hired to serve us--then how can we be expected to trust the NOPD? For how long can the citizens endure abuse at the hands of their "protectors"? (As those of the frontline of cases involving domestic abuse, the demoralizing effects of even minor but persistent mental abuse should be abundantly clear to all of those who serve the NOPD.)
I am strong enough--and I care deeply enough about my community--to remain proactive, in spite of this negative experience. But it does seem to me that with some very minimal guidelines and training in communicating in a civil manner toward citizens (esp. victims), the NOPD could do a lot to reaffirm its role as a supporter of the community. A good start would be to remind the officers on duty at the Fifth District that those who call deserve to be treated with the same respect that they would like to be afforded.
If I can be of any assistance, please let me know. I am a writing tutor and English teacher and I am happy to provide free tutoring to officers who need help with what we call "audience-awareness," or an understanding of the importance of communicating with the reader/listener. If there are officers with literacy or writing issues, I am again happy to provide free tutoring or teaching in writing and communicating, as well.
With my sincerest thanks for the good work you do, I am yours,
Sarah
I did, in fact, try to follow up on the case, but ran into a problem: the rude buttholes who staff the Fifth District police station.
The poor relations between the NOPD and the public are by now notorious, but by all published and broadcasted accounts, the NOPD has been working at repairing their "public image." As you'll read in the letter I penned after trying to communicate with the Fifth District, though, (and as you can read in this post by Dangerblond [a blogger whose writing I really enjoy]), this ain't workin'.
Funny (or not so funny) thing: when I emailed this letter to the address published on the City of New Orleans Website--the address provided after I followed links to the "Citizen Complaint Procedure" page--it was returned to me as a failed message.
Of course, the irony of that would be lost on them, completely.
Me, it makes sick.
I did, however, come across this very detailed and user-friendly crime map. So far, the stats go up to 7/9--the day before our report. I'll keep checking back to see what becomes of the call we made, statistically-speaking.
Anyway, it looks like I shall have to rely on the mail of the snail to get my complaint heard. Given the dead-end I've already come upon, I don't have any confidence that my letter will make it into human hands.
(Another not-so-funny thing: the paragraph that precedes the dead-end email address on the City website reads, "In order for the NOPD to effectively function in ridding the city of crime and disorder, it is essential that the public has confidence in the integrity of its law enforcement effort. To maintain this confidence, the Department of Police provides a means to investigate and adjudicate complaints made against its members by the community which it serves. Grievances will be thoroughly and impartially handled." Ha, ha, f-ing HA!!)
I may just have to hand-deliver the thing. Even so, I can just see the officers laughing at my expectations. She thinks we're going to communicate with her?! She thinks we should CALL?! Over some trespassing! PSHAW! Gawd, it makes me sick to think of, but I don't think my assumption is off. At. All.
Here's my letter:
To the Commander of the NOPD Public Integrity Division:
On the night of July 10th, at around midnight, my husband I awoke to an intruder in our backyard (in the 2800 block of N. Rampart Street). I called 911, and much to my surprise, had a nearly-immediate response. Evidently the intruder had been pulled over for a traffic violation on St. Claude, and so the police were already in the area but had lost track of him. It was the military police who pursued the intruder, and the military who communicated with us. The two military officers were kind and helpful. I wish I could say the same for the NOPD.
After the suspect was apprehended (from the yard of our neighbors across the street,) the military police left. The NOPD was about to pull away when my husband approached the car to ask about what had happened. He explained that we were the ones who'd placed the call to 911. The officers seemed surprised--as though they'd not known who we were--and exited the car to search our property (they found a watch but no contraband). It seemed odd that they had not planned to interact with us at all. The only interaction we had with the NOPD after this harrowing experience, and after our call (a call which resulted in an arrest), came per our initiation.
But I am not writing to complain about that interaction.
I am writing because both my husband and I placed calls to the Fifth District Station--and both of us were treated rudely. I don't think a detailed account of the call is necessary. The bottom line is that we both had two incident report numbers related to the arrest made after our call, and we were calling to follow up on them. We were told that the suspect had been arrested for trespassing.
No one we spoke to knew the name of the arresting officer. No one had any additional advice for how to find out more about the case, other than to (and I quote), "Go to the Municipal Court and find out yourself." We spoke to a male and a female that night--both of whom interrupted us repeatedly, and both of whom acted as though we were somehow stupid to think that calling for more information would result in any real information being attained.
Evidently, their attitudes toward us reflect a reality--one that we weren't privy to: there is, indeed, no point in calling to follow up on a case, as no one at the Fifth District (unless they, themselves, are the arresting officer) will have a shred of information to share. If this is the case, I nonetheless think it is vital that the officers at the phones communicate in a respectful manner.
When I lived in Atlanta many years ago, our house was burglarized. The DeKalb County Police called us some weeks later when the suspect was apprehended. We were given the suspect's name and a case number. We found that call deeply reassuring--as well as surprising. Imagine that: a police force who demonstrated a real understanding of the importance of clear communication with residents impacted by crime.
I understand that the NOPD is stretched thin these days. I attend neighborhood meetings regularly and have met captains from the Fifth District. I do not doubt that those who are doing their best are, in fact, doing their best.
But to simply require officers (or perhaps station administrators) to treat citizens with respect and dignity should not be considered the "best" work of the police force's "finest."
Treating citizens with respect--which will indeed sometimes require patience and understanding that is hard to come by in this post-Katrina New Orleans (as a teacher I know this very, very well)--should be a pre-requisite; it is something that even the most inexperienced officers should be able to call part of their expertise. If this is not the case, then I find it no wonder that the distrust of the public for the NOPD is so astronomically high.
It's a no-brainer that clear and helpful communication with citizens (especially with victims) would result in a greater sense of trust from the citizenry of New Orleans. I think the officers on night-duty at the Fifth District could stand to be reminded of this very obvious and plain truth. While they may not have had any more information to offer, there was no reason to be dismissive and rude to crime-victims--especially when the cooperation of those victims led to an arrest.
I believe strongly that if there were more citizens out there--citizens like my husband and myself--who were proactive about crime, there would be less of it in our neighborhoods. However, after the treatment we received, it is easy for me to understand how distrust of the NOPD could so quickly take root, and how that distrust could lead to a lack of cooperation of the part of even the most proactive of citizens.
I fully support the call of the New Orleans Crime Commission, which "encourage[s] all community members to get involved with the Community Policing program to end violent crime in New Orleans, and reconnect with the NOPD officers in their neighborhoods.” We made that call. We made that connection. I do not think it should be too much to expect that when we do connect with officers in our neighborhoods, that effort will be rewarded--if not with the information we request, than at the very least with a modicum of respect. If we are met with such discouragement--if our calls are not heard but are instead and dismissed by those hired to serve us--then how can we be expected to trust the NOPD? For how long can the citizens endure abuse at the hands of their "protectors"? (As those of the frontline of cases involving domestic abuse, the demoralizing effects of even minor but persistent mental abuse should be abundantly clear to all of those who serve the NOPD.)
I am strong enough--and I care deeply enough about my community--to remain proactive, in spite of this negative experience. But it does seem to me that with some very minimal guidelines and training in communicating in a civil manner toward citizens (esp. victims), the NOPD could do a lot to reaffirm its role as a supporter of the community. A good start would be to remind the officers on duty at the Fifth District that those who call deserve to be treated with the same respect that they would like to be afforded.
If I can be of any assistance, please let me know. I am a writing tutor and English teacher and I am happy to provide free tutoring to officers who need help with what we call "audience-awareness," or an understanding of the importance of communicating with the reader/listener. If there are officers with literacy or writing issues, I am again happy to provide free tutoring or teaching in writing and communicating, as well.
With my sincerest thanks for the good work you do, I am yours,
Sarah
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
A lot of experience, but very little learning...
Before we finally went to bed last night--for the second time--I said to Simon, "I don't think I'll blog about this one." And all day I've been thinking about not blogging about the events of last night.
My mom is my most consistent reader, after all. She reads my blog weekly, as regularly as I write, and each post inspires an email whose naked concern for my well-being is only very thinly veiled. "You're in my thoughts, Dear Heart," she writes, and by "thoughts" I know she means "prayers." But she has spared me the God-talk ever since the holy-wars of my adolescence.
The prayer I hear her reciting goes, Please, God, keep my daughter safe.
Because she knows that this prayer is a heartfelt one no matter my location--and because she knows I love New Orleans fiercely, defensively, even--she doesn't pray, Please, God, keep my daughter safe in New Orleans. She's no fool; to utter "daughter" and "safe" and "New Orleans" might jinx things. Better to offer general prayers with maximum coverage.
In spite of my frequent reassurances, though, my mother worries about my safety in a sense tied closely to my setting. She's heard a thing or two about crime in New Orleans. She reads the papers, after all. She reads this blog.
So: better not to write about last night, I thought (and thought, and thought).
The trouble with this is twofold (why do I feel the need to rationalize?):
For starters, the purpose of this blog is to inform my (three) readers of what it's like to live in New Orleans, post-K. In that sense, an experience-any experience--becomes part of the larger "what" that it's like.
Secondly, it itches. After the events of last night, I feel like I NEED to get it out. I want to throw up this story, flush it, clean myself up, and go on with my getting drunk on this city, renewed.
But it's not just that I don't want my mom to worry about me that I hesitate to write about last night's events. It's also that I am painfully aware of how writing can alter meaning. If I write it, it becomes something. (In her book Trauma and Recovery, which I've been re-reading for the purposes of an academic paper on teaching writing, post-Katrina, Judith Herman Miller writes that "In the process of reconstruction, the trauma story does undergo a transformation, but only in the sense of becoming more present and more real." Perhaps it would be better, then, for me to adopt the stance of my husband's British homeland: chin up! carry on!)
Also, it becomes something not just in the telling, but something else in the hearing, the reading. (Again, Herman: "Testimony has both a private dimension, which is confessional and spiritual, and a public aspect, which is political and judicial.") In telling last night's story, in airing it publicly, it also becomes a "political" story of The Crime Problem in New Orleans. It becomes What It's Like to Live in New Orleans, post-Katrina. It becomes A Story instead of just my story, since public psychology and political positioning makes any New Orleans story resonate so, so differently after the storm. (God, these stories! The f-ing weight of them!)
I want to make this perfectly clear: I am not sharing this experience in order to illustrate some larger point about New Orleans. I am not going to tell you about last night because I want you to see how our city has descended into crime, or fear (See How Even the Privileged White are Now Touched by the Dark Hand of Desperation!). I am sharing this because it happened. I am sharing this because I have a big fat writerly mouth. I am sharing this because... okay?
Okay.
Now that you've made it past all that build-up, a spoiler (or for Mom, some comfort): In this story, no one gets hurt.
Last night, Simon and I were just turning in--turning to our respective nightstands to put away our books and turn out our lights--when we heard a loud noise just outside our window.
Because we live next to a house that has been under renovation for ages upon ages, and because the drunken contractor/nephew-of-the-owner now squats there at night (blaring adult soft rock on his ghetto blaster, tossing empty cans of Budweiser from the upstairs windows into the alley below), we've become used to the occasional woozy-clamorous whatnot. So we looked at each other briefly. I said, "It's probably some drunk dude next door." We decided to settle.
Almost immediately, though, we heard another noise--like wood breaking, and then the tumbling of something, this time very clearly on our on our side of the fence. We looked at each other again. I can't remember this part--what we did--I just remember thinking something along the lines of That's not good. "Someone's in the yard," I said. And immediately: "Call the police."
Simon was still listening, so I leapt up and called 9-1-1. The operator answered right away (oh miracle of miracles!).
"There's an intruder in our back yard," I said.
"What's the address?"
I gave her the address.
"Do you have a description?"
"No."
"Is he still there?"
"I don't know."
Simon was at the window, lifting the shade. I said "Please get away from the window, Simon. Come in here, please."
Then I heard something knock against the radiator. "He's under the house," I said.
Simon and I were in the front of the house together now.
"Someone will be there shortly," the dispatcher said.
I didn't want to hang up. I didn't believe her, and I didn't want us to be there alone, for something to happen without her knowing.
I hung up.
For the next few moments we didn't hear anything. I told myself maybe it was just a big dog. I'd had run-ins with big, thuggish, NOLA-dogs before, after all. A pack of dogs ate one of my cats one night. Or maybe it was a ballsy feral cat. Feral cats often got into scraps with our own in the crawlspace underfoot, their tossing bodies banging against the radiator.
Much to our relief, the cops were there right away. I don't think I exaggerate when I say they arrived in less than a minute. Later we both talked about what we'd expected: we expected it would take forever. We expected them to knock, tiredly, to blase-ly take a report, to do nothing. The one time before that I'd called the cops from my house, it had gone something like that. That time they didn't even take a report (I'd thought someone had tried to break in--there were bang marks on the gate's lock, and my key was a struggle to fit in). The cops even suggested that perhaps I should move. What was I doing living alone--and in this city, no less?
But this time it was the military police who arrived, and they came military style--banging and announcing their presence, like something from Cops, for real.
There were two military police-members at the door--a skinny, scrawny kid barely out of puberty, and a black woman with a plain ponytail under her camouflaged hat. She was yelling toward the street that they were here, and that "he" was here. We saw several more guardsmen approach. It was clear by then that they knew something we didn't, and that in fact they'd been looking for this guy. It was, in fact, a guy, not a dog. And he was, in fact, here.
We unlocked the front and back gates--both of which open onto our kitchen--and the two, plus a couple more, went back. We heard them say, "Oh yeah, he's here." Simon was doing his usual bit of trying to be involved. I asked him to stay with me. We locked ourselves in the bathroom.
A lot of this is a little fuzzy to me now--who said what and exactly when, I can't get quite right. I guess it's true what they say about the unreliability of the memory of victims.
At any rate, I remember being in the bathroom and shaking. We heard a banging under the bathroom. He was just underneath us. I gripped my phone. I was looking for someplace to be where we couldn't get shot. We couldn't leave because the doors were open and we might confront them there. I thought about climbing in the iron claw-foot bathtub; surely it was bullet-proof. We heard a guardsman say, "I think he's under the house." "He's under the bathroom," we yelled. "We can hear him." We were both pushing against the door.
Simon said, "I'm locking the doors. I don't care if they get him or not, I don't want him coming in the house." He went out and locked the gates and returned to the bathroom. Hugged me.
Then, we heard scrambling again under the bathroom--this time more of it. "He's out, he's out!" they yelled. We opened the bathroom door, and the pimply tugged at the bars on the rear door. "Why'd you lock it?! Why'd you lock the door?!"
Simon unlocked it and I unlocked the front, and then they were all gone and we were standing there, all What happened? We locked the doors again and Simon went to the front of the house to look out the shutters' slats. "He's across the street," he said. He'd gone into our neighbors' backyard. The guardsmen were banging at their door to come in. Finally, Joe opened the door at about the same time as they got him. The guardsmen were saying, "What were you running for? Why'd you run?" They were holding his elbows. He was handcuffed. He was a black male, young-ish I think. I couldn't see.
In a few moments, we were outside. The two guards-members who'd chased him cam over to "thank" us. "Thanks for calling us, " they said, which I thought was odd. "No problem," I said. "We were just trying not to die." There was a little laughter.
"That's what we're here for. We're here to help," the woman said. Simon thanked her. They left.
We realized when they left that we had no idea what had just happened. A State Trooper car had pulled up, and appeared to be just a quickly preparing to leave. Simon ran out and told them we'd been the ones to call. They seemed surprised to learn that. They asked if they could search the yard for "drugs or a gun or anything he may have tried to get rid of." In the side alley, we found his watch, but there was nothing else. the cops asked us to take a look in the daylight. One took our numbers. When we asked what the guy had done, he said, "We don't know yet." Evidently they'd stopped him on St. Claude for some traffic-related-something, and he ran.
When we went back to bed, Simon asked if I'd been thinking of Helen Hill.
"Yeah."
"Me, too."
There didn't seem to be a lot to say, so we lay in bed, awake for a long while. I read some academic article on Ethics in the Writing Classroom. Simon read Zadie Smith's White Teeth. Three-ish, we both tried to sleep.
Today I've been tired as all get out. While eating breakfast, I watched the Federal DA present a boatload of terribly grim information on the state of the local judicial system to the New Orleans City Council. I wrote down grim and grimmer numbers that he'd armed himself with: of 801 arrests between January of '06 and '07, less than 10 percent received indictments in the local courts. Of those 801 arrests 109 were referred to the Feds--all on federal firearms charges. Among those 109, there've been 275 collective previous arrests, 116 previous drug arrests, 93 previous violent crime arrests, 11 murder charges, and 55 previous firearms charges. What this says: our local judicial system is utterly broken.
More evidence of the broken-ness of our local judicial system: DA Eddie Jordan dropped charges against those charged with two of the most high-profile murders of the past year, claiming cold cases. In the case of Dinerral Shavers, the problem is a cultural one of witnesses refusing to come forward--partly because of inherent suspicion of the police, and part because of fear of retribution. In the Central City case, Eddie Jordan was simply wrong (the police easily found the witness just hours after the DA's announcement--further evidence of the rift between the DA's office and the police). Now, many residents are calling for Jordan's head.
As far as we go...
I told Simon that what happened last night made me feel exposed. I said I'd like to be logical now, to tell myself that yes, this could have happened anywhere. I reassured him that I won't allow this expereince to send us packing. And it won't.
But really, how much can one take? When you've experienced the trauma of the loss of your city, when you're experiencing the trauma of an ongoing failed recovery, and when even your sense personal safety has been socked in the gut, how much more can you take? How hard should we fight? What do we learn from this? For f*&#%^'s sake, what is there to learn?
Simon and I have agreed to keep fighting for now. We've decided to follow the case of our backyard intruder, to see where it leads and what it can tell us about crime and the judicial system in our city. In short, we'll try to find out what there is, in fact, to learn. I can only hope that the lesson will reasure us--that it will reaffirm our commitment to living in New Orleans.
My mom is my most consistent reader, after all. She reads my blog weekly, as regularly as I write, and each post inspires an email whose naked concern for my well-being is only very thinly veiled. "You're in my thoughts, Dear Heart," she writes, and by "thoughts" I know she means "prayers." But she has spared me the God-talk ever since the holy-wars of my adolescence.
The prayer I hear her reciting goes, Please, God, keep my daughter safe.
Because she knows that this prayer is a heartfelt one no matter my location--and because she knows I love New Orleans fiercely, defensively, even--she doesn't pray, Please, God, keep my daughter safe in New Orleans. She's no fool; to utter "daughter" and "safe" and "New Orleans" might jinx things. Better to offer general prayers with maximum coverage.
In spite of my frequent reassurances, though, my mother worries about my safety in a sense tied closely to my setting. She's heard a thing or two about crime in New Orleans. She reads the papers, after all. She reads this blog.
So: better not to write about last night, I thought (and thought, and thought).
The trouble with this is twofold (why do I feel the need to rationalize?):
For starters, the purpose of this blog is to inform my (three) readers of what it's like to live in New Orleans, post-K. In that sense, an experience-any experience--becomes part of the larger "what" that it's like.
Secondly, it itches. After the events of last night, I feel like I NEED to get it out. I want to throw up this story, flush it, clean myself up, and go on with my getting drunk on this city, renewed.
But it's not just that I don't want my mom to worry about me that I hesitate to write about last night's events. It's also that I am painfully aware of how writing can alter meaning. If I write it, it becomes something. (In her book Trauma and Recovery, which I've been re-reading for the purposes of an academic paper on teaching writing, post-Katrina, Judith Herman Miller writes that "In the process of reconstruction, the trauma story does undergo a transformation, but only in the sense of becoming more present and more real." Perhaps it would be better, then, for me to adopt the stance of my husband's British homeland: chin up! carry on!)
Also, it becomes something not just in the telling, but something else in the hearing, the reading. (Again, Herman: "Testimony has both a private dimension, which is confessional and spiritual, and a public aspect, which is political and judicial.") In telling last night's story, in airing it publicly, it also becomes a "political" story of The Crime Problem in New Orleans. It becomes What It's Like to Live in New Orleans, post-Katrina. It becomes A Story instead of just my story, since public psychology and political positioning makes any New Orleans story resonate so, so differently after the storm. (God, these stories! The f-ing weight of them!)
I want to make this perfectly clear: I am not sharing this experience in order to illustrate some larger point about New Orleans. I am not going to tell you about last night because I want you to see how our city has descended into crime, or fear (See How Even the Privileged White are Now Touched by the Dark Hand of Desperation!). I am sharing this because it happened. I am sharing this because I have a big fat writerly mouth. I am sharing this because... okay?
Okay.
Now that you've made it past all that build-up, a spoiler (or for Mom, some comfort): In this story, no one gets hurt.
Last night, Simon and I were just turning in--turning to our respective nightstands to put away our books and turn out our lights--when we heard a loud noise just outside our window.
Because we live next to a house that has been under renovation for ages upon ages, and because the drunken contractor/nephew-of-the-owner now squats there at night (blaring adult soft rock on his ghetto blaster, tossing empty cans of Budweiser from the upstairs windows into the alley below), we've become used to the occasional woozy-clamorous whatnot. So we looked at each other briefly. I said, "It's probably some drunk dude next door." We decided to settle.
Almost immediately, though, we heard another noise--like wood breaking, and then the tumbling of something, this time very clearly on our on our side of the fence. We looked at each other again. I can't remember this part--what we did--I just remember thinking something along the lines of That's not good. "Someone's in the yard," I said. And immediately: "Call the police."
Simon was still listening, so I leapt up and called 9-1-1. The operator answered right away (oh miracle of miracles!).
"There's an intruder in our back yard," I said.
"What's the address?"
I gave her the address.
"Do you have a description?"
"No."
"Is he still there?"
"I don't know."
Simon was at the window, lifting the shade. I said "Please get away from the window, Simon. Come in here, please."
Then I heard something knock against the radiator. "He's under the house," I said.
Simon and I were in the front of the house together now.
"Someone will be there shortly," the dispatcher said.
I didn't want to hang up. I didn't believe her, and I didn't want us to be there alone, for something to happen without her knowing.
I hung up.
For the next few moments we didn't hear anything. I told myself maybe it was just a big dog. I'd had run-ins with big, thuggish, NOLA-dogs before, after all. A pack of dogs ate one of my cats one night. Or maybe it was a ballsy feral cat. Feral cats often got into scraps with our own in the crawlspace underfoot, their tossing bodies banging against the radiator.
Much to our relief, the cops were there right away. I don't think I exaggerate when I say they arrived in less than a minute. Later we both talked about what we'd expected: we expected it would take forever. We expected them to knock, tiredly, to blase-ly take a report, to do nothing. The one time before that I'd called the cops from my house, it had gone something like that. That time they didn't even take a report (I'd thought someone had tried to break in--there were bang marks on the gate's lock, and my key was a struggle to fit in). The cops even suggested that perhaps I should move. What was I doing living alone--and in this city, no less?
But this time it was the military police who arrived, and they came military style--banging and announcing their presence, like something from Cops, for real.
There were two military police-members at the door--a skinny, scrawny kid barely out of puberty, and a black woman with a plain ponytail under her camouflaged hat. She was yelling toward the street that they were here, and that "he" was here. We saw several more guardsmen approach. It was clear by then that they knew something we didn't, and that in fact they'd been looking for this guy. It was, in fact, a guy, not a dog. And he was, in fact, here.
We unlocked the front and back gates--both of which open onto our kitchen--and the two, plus a couple more, went back. We heard them say, "Oh yeah, he's here." Simon was doing his usual bit of trying to be involved. I asked him to stay with me. We locked ourselves in the bathroom.
A lot of this is a little fuzzy to me now--who said what and exactly when, I can't get quite right. I guess it's true what they say about the unreliability of the memory of victims.
At any rate, I remember being in the bathroom and shaking. We heard a banging under the bathroom. He was just underneath us. I gripped my phone. I was looking for someplace to be where we couldn't get shot. We couldn't leave because the doors were open and we might confront them there. I thought about climbing in the iron claw-foot bathtub; surely it was bullet-proof. We heard a guardsman say, "I think he's under the house." "He's under the bathroom," we yelled. "We can hear him." We were both pushing against the door.
Simon said, "I'm locking the doors. I don't care if they get him or not, I don't want him coming in the house." He went out and locked the gates and returned to the bathroom. Hugged me.
Then, we heard scrambling again under the bathroom--this time more of it. "He's out, he's out!" they yelled. We opened the bathroom door, and the pimply tugged at the bars on the rear door. "Why'd you lock it?! Why'd you lock the door?!"
Simon unlocked it and I unlocked the front, and then they were all gone and we were standing there, all What happened? We locked the doors again and Simon went to the front of the house to look out the shutters' slats. "He's across the street," he said. He'd gone into our neighbors' backyard. The guardsmen were banging at their door to come in. Finally, Joe opened the door at about the same time as they got him. The guardsmen were saying, "What were you running for? Why'd you run?" They were holding his elbows. He was handcuffed. He was a black male, young-ish I think. I couldn't see.
In a few moments, we were outside. The two guards-members who'd chased him cam over to "thank" us. "Thanks for calling us, " they said, which I thought was odd. "No problem," I said. "We were just trying not to die." There was a little laughter.
"That's what we're here for. We're here to help," the woman said. Simon thanked her. They left.
We realized when they left that we had no idea what had just happened. A State Trooper car had pulled up, and appeared to be just a quickly preparing to leave. Simon ran out and told them we'd been the ones to call. They seemed surprised to learn that. They asked if they could search the yard for "drugs or a gun or anything he may have tried to get rid of." In the side alley, we found his watch, but there was nothing else. the cops asked us to take a look in the daylight. One took our numbers. When we asked what the guy had done, he said, "We don't know yet." Evidently they'd stopped him on St. Claude for some traffic-related-something, and he ran.
When we went back to bed, Simon asked if I'd been thinking of Helen Hill.
"Yeah."
"Me, too."
There didn't seem to be a lot to say, so we lay in bed, awake for a long while. I read some academic article on Ethics in the Writing Classroom. Simon read Zadie Smith's White Teeth. Three-ish, we both tried to sleep.
Today I've been tired as all get out. While eating breakfast, I watched the Federal DA present a boatload of terribly grim information on the state of the local judicial system to the New Orleans City Council. I wrote down grim and grimmer numbers that he'd armed himself with: of 801 arrests between January of '06 and '07, less than 10 percent received indictments in the local courts. Of those 801 arrests 109 were referred to the Feds--all on federal firearms charges. Among those 109, there've been 275 collective previous arrests, 116 previous drug arrests, 93 previous violent crime arrests, 11 murder charges, and 55 previous firearms charges. What this says: our local judicial system is utterly broken.
More evidence of the broken-ness of our local judicial system: DA Eddie Jordan dropped charges against those charged with two of the most high-profile murders of the past year, claiming cold cases. In the case of Dinerral Shavers, the problem is a cultural one of witnesses refusing to come forward--partly because of inherent suspicion of the police, and part because of fear of retribution. In the Central City case, Eddie Jordan was simply wrong (the police easily found the witness just hours after the DA's announcement--further evidence of the rift between the DA's office and the police). Now, many residents are calling for Jordan's head.
As far as we go...
I told Simon that what happened last night made me feel exposed. I said I'd like to be logical now, to tell myself that yes, this could have happened anywhere. I reassured him that I won't allow this expereince to send us packing. And it won't.
But really, how much can one take? When you've experienced the trauma of the loss of your city, when you're experiencing the trauma of an ongoing failed recovery, and when even your sense personal safety has been socked in the gut, how much more can you take? How hard should we fight? What do we learn from this? For f*&#%^'s sake, what is there to learn?
Simon and I have agreed to keep fighting for now. We've decided to follow the case of our backyard intruder, to see where it leads and what it can tell us about crime and the judicial system in our city. In short, we'll try to find out what there is, in fact, to learn. I can only hope that the lesson will reasure us--that it will reaffirm our commitment to living in New Orleans.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Yesterday I set my alarm so we could get up and watch the Men's Final at Wimbledon. Federer managed to pull of a win over Nadal, and I was happy for that. Federer is a lovely winner. He cries. Like a baby. So in spite of his whoring himself out to Nike (this year he wore not only a corny off-white blazer, but also matching trousers), I still cheered his win. I really wanted him to match Borg's record of five Wimbledons in a row. Plus, Nadal is a young tiger and has plenty of game left in him. Also, Nadal hates tomatoes. That's right--I'm anti-Nadal because he's anti-tomato. I learned this from reading his blog. Truthfully, I love a blogger, so tomato-hatin' or no, I say Go Nadal.
Yesterday afternoon I went with my friend J__ to eat Vietnamese food on the Westbank. J__ is taking a new anti-depressant, and I could tell she was having a hard time adjusting to it. J__ had a very harrowing experience after staying in New Orleans after the storm, and ever since then she has struggled with depression. Her roommate is no help; she also suffers from depression. J__ described it as living with someone who is "Always trying to out-sad me." I could empathize. We talked about how hard it is to process Katrina-grief when you didn't technically "lose" anything.
We are both glad to have our things, but in some ways, those who lost things have had a way to focus and channel their grief. You mourn your favorite recliner, your wedding albums, your 45-collection, and then (I imagine) you take some comfort in knowing that here you are, still intact, still okay, even without those things.
For us, there's the survivor's guilt, which is obvious and an unpopular subject. (Get over yourself, right?)
Then there's the very burdensome, amoebic grief.
It's like when someone dies, you lose them, you remember them, and then time (and time and time) lessens that grief.
But what about when it's survivor's guilt? And a whole city? Had we lost everything, no one would have faulted us for picking up and moving on, but to do so when we didn't "lose" anything would be like abandonment. How ungrateful would we be? How lucky and ungrateful.
I've been reading a book that's brought a lot of these feelings to the surface for me. Heart Like Water, by Joshua Clark, is a memoir of his experience staying in the French Quarter during and after the storm. The first 150 pages went quickly, in spite of the overwrought writing, seen here in the book's first lines:
"... and America returns whispering this time.
A tic, air-conditioning, falling, soft, a tock, the ceiling fan beginning to turn stirring it in, a closet light suddenly spilling an absurd yellow line past its open door, across this bed, my eyes, pulling the plug on some dream."
One of the many jacket-blurbs praises Clark's style as "written in surrealistic bursts of purple and crimson and goth black, as vivid as the storm itself and as uncompromising as the survivors of New Orleans" (Curtis Wilkie). Below that, Clark's author's photo shows him young and blond. He looks like Marty Stauffer, the former host of the PBS program Nature. I imagine that Clark would like to BE a bit like Marty, too: an observer, a lover of the world. Non-threatening. A wholly trustworthy, wise character.
He's no Marty Stuaffer, though, and to call him a "survivor" is a bit of an overstatement. He chose to stay. What the blurber calls "surrealistic" I call affected. I mean, dude's a survivor like I'm a survivor. Well--so he survived something different--but he chose to stay, and his reousces and privilege made it more like freaky camp than the hell you've all heard about. (Incidentally, the book's subtitle: "Life in the Disaster Zone" illustrates the publisher's awareness of What Readers Want... The French Quarter--"the disaster zone"? Puh-lease.)
I have been trying to articulate my "problem" with this book to Simon. I read the first 150 pages yesterday. It's absorbing, and I know very well many of the locations he writes about. I shopped at Robert's grocer store. I've been a regular at Molly's on Decatur Street. I sang in the band he mentions on page 5. Like Clark, I survived the storm without any real tangible loss.
And I struggle with that.
What bothers me about his book, I think, is that he's shameless. Even as he criticizes a father of six for not-evacuating with his children, he tromps around the Quarter in swimtrunks and Aqua Socks, recording whoever will have it on a Radio Shack tape recorder. When he hears of neighborhoods underwater, he goes--not to help so much as to document the loss. He chronicles evening fetes by the pool in "The Compound," where he and a bevy of friends passed the time with bottles of wine looted from Roberts, but without any acknowledgment or concern for those on the other side of the Industrial Canal. He has no guilt. None.
It's not that I believe that one could be shameless about staying and even enjoying it--it's that by god I'd think you should acknowledge your comparative privilege. Not to do so is, well, rude. Rude isn't the right word. It's something., though, and it's something bad.
And yet...
I feel like those of us who have lost so much and yet so little do feel that our stories have been devalued. I was just telling some friends of our not getting covered by This Old House, and I said, "I guess no one wants to see a gentrification story. I know I wouldn't." No one with an appropriate sense of shame wants to hear about reveling in the Quarter while Katrina was happening.
And yet...
There's something really unsettling about the de-valuing of politically-unpopular survival stories. We are supposed to be suffering more. We are supposed to be having a harder time. And if not, well we are at the very least supposed to be feeling Really F-ing Bad about it.
Clark doesn't. And I envy him that. How nice it must be to write your story with no guilt, no sense of shame, no disclaimers. I can't do it. (A fact you can see in nearly every shame-laden post on this guilty-as-hell blog.)
But I realized as I was reading that Clark has done something that I have not been able to do: he has told his story. Appropriate sense of shame or no, dude got it down.
I haven't been able to. My guilt paralyzes me. I know my own post-K story is not nearly devastating enough, nor is it interesting to those wanting to hear about exploding buildings, rooftop rescues, or Quarter clean-up.
I've been reading over the early posts on this blog, and I realize that when I first began posting, I felt my story might be interesting. We were all interesting back then--we Katrina survivors.
And to see how the value of my story has changed as my positioning in the survivor's "diaspora" has changed makes me a little sad. It says something about what we value. It says we value tragedy and loss and redemption, but not We're doing fine, thank you--and certainly not guilt and shame.
I feel as if listening to my story is like reading the sappy blog of a young volunteer. He gives up his summer break to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. He has a Katrina awakening and hands over his loaded Ipod to a pathetic teenaged returnee. He is proud of himself and urges his readers to give, to volunteer, too.
I want him to shut up because it's mildly embarrassing, his thinking that he's been somehow transformed.
I want him to shut up because these personal stories of redemption give the rest of the world the idea that one, or two, or even a church group of do-gooders can fix this place.
I want him to shut up because I've not been transformed, and so I don't want to hear his story of hope.
So the truth is, I've been majorly disappointed--not redeemed. The truth is, I am simply working at liking survival enough to to actually survive.
Yesterday afternoon I went with my friend J__ to eat Vietnamese food on the Westbank. J__ is taking a new anti-depressant, and I could tell she was having a hard time adjusting to it. J__ had a very harrowing experience after staying in New Orleans after the storm, and ever since then she has struggled with depression. Her roommate is no help; she also suffers from depression. J__ described it as living with someone who is "Always trying to out-sad me." I could empathize. We talked about how hard it is to process Katrina-grief when you didn't technically "lose" anything.
We are both glad to have our things, but in some ways, those who lost things have had a way to focus and channel their grief. You mourn your favorite recliner, your wedding albums, your 45-collection, and then (I imagine) you take some comfort in knowing that here you are, still intact, still okay, even without those things.
For us, there's the survivor's guilt, which is obvious and an unpopular subject. (Get over yourself, right?)
Then there's the very burdensome, amoebic grief.
It's like when someone dies, you lose them, you remember them, and then time (and time and time) lessens that grief.
But what about when it's survivor's guilt? And a whole city? Had we lost everything, no one would have faulted us for picking up and moving on, but to do so when we didn't "lose" anything would be like abandonment. How ungrateful would we be? How lucky and ungrateful.
I've been reading a book that's brought a lot of these feelings to the surface for me. Heart Like Water, by Joshua Clark, is a memoir of his experience staying in the French Quarter during and after the storm. The first 150 pages went quickly, in spite of the overwrought writing, seen here in the book's first lines:
"... and America returns whispering this time.
A tic, air-conditioning, falling, soft, a tock, the ceiling fan beginning to turn stirring it in, a closet light suddenly spilling an absurd yellow line past its open door, across this bed, my eyes, pulling the plug on some dream."
One of the many jacket-blurbs praises Clark's style as "written in surrealistic bursts of purple and crimson and goth black, as vivid as the storm itself and as uncompromising as the survivors of New Orleans" (Curtis Wilkie). Below that, Clark's author's photo shows him young and blond. He looks like Marty Stauffer, the former host of the PBS program Nature. I imagine that Clark would like to BE a bit like Marty, too: an observer, a lover of the world. Non-threatening. A wholly trustworthy, wise character.
He's no Marty Stuaffer, though, and to call him a "survivor" is a bit of an overstatement. He chose to stay. What the blurber calls "surrealistic" I call affected. I mean, dude's a survivor like I'm a survivor. Well--so he survived something different--but he chose to stay, and his reousces and privilege made it more like freaky camp than the hell you've all heard about. (Incidentally, the book's subtitle: "Life in the Disaster Zone" illustrates the publisher's awareness of What Readers Want... The French Quarter--"the disaster zone"? Puh-lease.)
I have been trying to articulate my "problem" with this book to Simon. I read the first 150 pages yesterday. It's absorbing, and I know very well many of the locations he writes about. I shopped at Robert's grocer store. I've been a regular at Molly's on Decatur Street. I sang in the band he mentions on page 5. Like Clark, I survived the storm without any real tangible loss.
And I struggle with that.
What bothers me about his book, I think, is that he's shameless. Even as he criticizes a father of six for not-evacuating with his children, he tromps around the Quarter in swimtrunks and Aqua Socks, recording whoever will have it on a Radio Shack tape recorder. When he hears of neighborhoods underwater, he goes--not to help so much as to document the loss. He chronicles evening fetes by the pool in "The Compound," where he and a bevy of friends passed the time with bottles of wine looted from Roberts, but without any acknowledgment or concern for those on the other side of the Industrial Canal. He has no guilt. None.
It's not that I believe that one could be shameless about staying and even enjoying it--it's that by god I'd think you should acknowledge your comparative privilege. Not to do so is, well, rude. Rude isn't the right word. It's something., though, and it's something bad.
And yet...
I feel like those of us who have lost so much and yet so little do feel that our stories have been devalued. I was just telling some friends of our not getting covered by This Old House, and I said, "I guess no one wants to see a gentrification story. I know I wouldn't." No one with an appropriate sense of shame wants to hear about reveling in the Quarter while Katrina was happening.
And yet...
There's something really unsettling about the de-valuing of politically-unpopular survival stories. We are supposed to be suffering more. We are supposed to be having a harder time. And if not, well we are at the very least supposed to be feeling Really F-ing Bad about it.
Clark doesn't. And I envy him that. How nice it must be to write your story with no guilt, no sense of shame, no disclaimers. I can't do it. (A fact you can see in nearly every shame-laden post on this guilty-as-hell blog.)
But I realized as I was reading that Clark has done something that I have not been able to do: he has told his story. Appropriate sense of shame or no, dude got it down.
I haven't been able to. My guilt paralyzes me. I know my own post-K story is not nearly devastating enough, nor is it interesting to those wanting to hear about exploding buildings, rooftop rescues, or Quarter clean-up.
I've been reading over the early posts on this blog, and I realize that when I first began posting, I felt my story might be interesting. We were all interesting back then--we Katrina survivors.
And to see how the value of my story has changed as my positioning in the survivor's "diaspora" has changed makes me a little sad. It says something about what we value. It says we value tragedy and loss and redemption, but not We're doing fine, thank you--and certainly not guilt and shame.
I feel as if listening to my story is like reading the sappy blog of a young volunteer. He gives up his summer break to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. He has a Katrina awakening and hands over his loaded Ipod to a pathetic teenaged returnee. He is proud of himself and urges his readers to give, to volunteer, too.
I want him to shut up because it's mildly embarrassing, his thinking that he's been somehow transformed.
I want him to shut up because these personal stories of redemption give the rest of the world the idea that one, or two, or even a church group of do-gooders can fix this place.
I want him to shut up because I've not been transformed, and so I don't want to hear his story of hope.
So the truth is, I've been majorly disappointed--not redeemed. The truth is, I am simply working at liking survival enough to to actually survive.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Last night I called my mommy, who was eating pizza at a Pizza Hut in Lavonia, Georgia. Mom and Dad were on their way back from a family-baby visit in Columbia, SC. I think if Simon and I hold out much longer on procreatin', my mother may just forgo subtle hints and start a-beggin' for some grand babies. I'm all about it... in a way. I'm going to have one helluva time giving up wine for nine months. (Do I really HAVE to?)
I was calling Mom because, well, have felt like I Want My Mommy a lot these past two weeks. My online job continues to kick my butt. I did get a paycheck this week--one that announced my hourly pay to be $16-something. That is a) too high of an estimate given the amount of time the job requires, and b) still not enough for my efforts, even if it were the correct figure. All of my research and personal goals for summer have been put on hold. In the meantime, Simon has been putting up with my complaints and saving my life by washing all of the dishes. Yes, all of them. He is a good man. A great man.
I'd worked at trying to get ahead earlier this week so I could have all of the Fourth off, but I did end up having to put in a few hours on Wednesday morning.
It rained all day on the Fourth. First with summer downpours that made the power flicker, and then later in England-style spit. I made a huge batch of The Best Potato Salad Ever (I am perfectly willing to share my mother's recipe, BTW) and a creole tomato salad for the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association BBQ. Packed a cooler, some folding chairs, and a grill, and headed down to Vaughn's for a pre-BBQ drink with Jackie. Some bratty boys (who should by now be men, but who are stuck in a perpetual NOLAdolescence) were setting off mounds of those seemingly-pointless firecrackers that boys love so much--the ones that do nothing but explode eardrums. I was too sober to find it funny, so I left for Holy Cross.
The HCNA BBQ was uplifting, as ever. Common Ground provided the BBQ (which was late, so that all the sides were gone by the time the chicken was ready), the bayou-researching gang from Wisconsin provided the crab-boil, and we neighbors (look at me with my "we," already) provided the rest. Among the other attendees was a friend and colleague of mine who called it "the most racially integrated event I've been to in New Orleans" (one of the reasons we love Holy Cross), a boatload of kids (yay!), and a number of delegates from Indonesia and Thailand. I spoke to one man from Aceh province--as in the Aceh province nearly wiped away by the 2004 tsunami--whose translator explained his dismay. The delegates from Thailand and Indonesia had spent the past several days touring the city, and they were "appalled" by the US government's neglect of the city. Evidently they spoke with residents who had been forced out of the St. Bernard Housing Projects, and the delegates were so appalled that they decided to pen a letter to the Times-Pic. I've been keeping my eye out for that. I'll also post more about the group here from SE Asia once I've researched their project.
One of my favorite moments: I walked to the church to go to the restroom, and a family out dancing on their porch asked me to join them. They were doing a Tootsie-roll-ish line dance, and they all got a kick out of my catching on--especially on the get-down turn. Later, the little girls who I'd danced with ran up to me at the BBQ and latched onto my legs.
Me: "Y'all must've gotten a kick out've teasing me, huh?"
Daysha: "No. We like you! My dad says you're all right."
Later, when the food was gone and the fireworks began, we all gathered on the levee. One of the older men from the neighborhood association gave us the history on the event: "Before the storm, wasn't nothin' like this many people down here." I asked him why that was--why did he think there were so many people down here now?
"I don't know... It's exciting, I guess."
I couldn't tell if he thought it was a good or a bad thing that so many people were down in the Lower Nine for the Fourth. The group was very integrated--but most of us whiteys were with volunteer groups, and I think those of us who intend to stay... well, we all wonder how long their excitement will last.
I've been picking up on more of this sort of ambivalence about post-K interest in the 'hood. Simon said that one long-time resident told him, "Let's don't tell too many people about this, all right?"
But it's clear that what we do need are more residents, and with the Holy Cross school leaving, it appears it will be a long road to recovery.
Still, we are, in fact, excited as hell. Whoo-HOOOOO!!!! Holy Cross! We're NUMBER ONE!!!
I was calling Mom because, well, have felt like I Want My Mommy a lot these past two weeks. My online job continues to kick my butt. I did get a paycheck this week--one that announced my hourly pay to be $16-something. That is a) too high of an estimate given the amount of time the job requires, and b) still not enough for my efforts, even if it were the correct figure. All of my research and personal goals for summer have been put on hold. In the meantime, Simon has been putting up with my complaints and saving my life by washing all of the dishes. Yes, all of them. He is a good man. A great man.
I'd worked at trying to get ahead earlier this week so I could have all of the Fourth off, but I did end up having to put in a few hours on Wednesday morning.
It rained all day on the Fourth. First with summer downpours that made the power flicker, and then later in England-style spit. I made a huge batch of The Best Potato Salad Ever (I am perfectly willing to share my mother's recipe, BTW) and a creole tomato salad for the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association BBQ. Packed a cooler, some folding chairs, and a grill, and headed down to Vaughn's for a pre-BBQ drink with Jackie. Some bratty boys (who should by now be men, but who are stuck in a perpetual NOLAdolescence) were setting off mounds of those seemingly-pointless firecrackers that boys love so much--the ones that do nothing but explode eardrums. I was too sober to find it funny, so I left for Holy Cross.
The HCNA BBQ was uplifting, as ever. Common Ground provided the BBQ (which was late, so that all the sides were gone by the time the chicken was ready), the bayou-researching gang from Wisconsin provided the crab-boil, and we neighbors (look at me with my "we," already) provided the rest. Among the other attendees was a friend and colleague of mine who called it "the most racially integrated event I've been to in New Orleans" (one of the reasons we love Holy Cross), a boatload of kids (yay!), and a number of delegates from Indonesia and Thailand. I spoke to one man from Aceh province--as in the Aceh province nearly wiped away by the 2004 tsunami--whose translator explained his dismay. The delegates from Thailand and Indonesia had spent the past several days touring the city, and they were "appalled" by the US government's neglect of the city. Evidently they spoke with residents who had been forced out of the St. Bernard Housing Projects, and the delegates were so appalled that they decided to pen a letter to the Times-Pic. I've been keeping my eye out for that. I'll also post more about the group here from SE Asia once I've researched their project.
One of my favorite moments: I walked to the church to go to the restroom, and a family out dancing on their porch asked me to join them. They were doing a Tootsie-roll-ish line dance, and they all got a kick out of my catching on--especially on the get-down turn. Later, the little girls who I'd danced with ran up to me at the BBQ and latched onto my legs.
Me: "Y'all must've gotten a kick out've teasing me, huh?"
Daysha: "No. We like you! My dad says you're all right."
Later, when the food was gone and the fireworks began, we all gathered on the levee. One of the older men from the neighborhood association gave us the history on the event: "Before the storm, wasn't nothin' like this many people down here." I asked him why that was--why did he think there were so many people down here now?
"I don't know... It's exciting, I guess."
I couldn't tell if he thought it was a good or a bad thing that so many people were down in the Lower Nine for the Fourth. The group was very integrated--but most of us whiteys were with volunteer groups, and I think those of us who intend to stay... well, we all wonder how long their excitement will last.
I've been picking up on more of this sort of ambivalence about post-K interest in the 'hood. Simon said that one long-time resident told him, "Let's don't tell too many people about this, all right?"
But it's clear that what we do need are more residents, and with the Holy Cross school leaving, it appears it will be a long road to recovery.
Still, we are, in fact, excited as hell. Whoo-HOOOOO!!!! Holy Cross! We're NUMBER ONE!!!
Saturday, June 30, 2007
If only...
It's been a long week, and for most of it, I've been sitting Indian-style in a chair with my laptop. My online teaching job has been KICKING MY BUTT. In addition to responding to the nearly-constant submissions of my 13 reliable middle-school aged students, I've had to chase after two laggards. This is one reason why I am so happy to teach college and NOT middle school--if a college student doesn't show up or fails to do the work, I don't have to chase them down. I simply apply the standards to their work and performance, and they reap what they sow. When teaching middle-schoolers, though, you've got parental involvement to deal with, and I find the position it puts me in ethically questionable and down-right uncomfortable. Basically, I become the Customer Service Representative. I resent being put in that position. Especially because I care so deeply about my teaching.
My supervisor has told me that I should "write less," and she's right. But when I say I care deeply about teaching, I mean it. Not only does "writing less" mean that I may not be able to accomplish all I'd like to, it also requires a lot of skill. I haven't mastered the skill of offering perfectly-concise critiques of student-writing. My solution in the classroom has been to make very brief notes at the end of the essay which I then address in student conferences (also time consuming). Obviously this isn't possible in online teaching.
Anyway, I've been at it every day from 9 until 5, and I am STRESSED. The only break I got from teaching this week was the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association (HCNA) meeting--which was uplifting and eventful. Among the highlights: the shared appreciation of this article chronicling the "green rebuilding" efforts in the Lower Nine, and a heated "discussion" (read: rant) on the subject of the Holy Cross School Board's decision to rent their modulars to the State's Recovery School District (RSD)--without consulting the neighborhood's residents.
The Holy Cross campus has yet to be gutted. Instead of gutting the buildings, the board decided to abandon ship, and so they brought in trailers and let the rest of the campus go. They'd already decided to move the school to Gentilly--a decision that will inevitably mean a much longer recovery-time for the Holy Cross neighborhood, and one whose motives appeared to be at least partly related to racial tensions between the mostly-white, upper-class private school and the mostly-black, lower-class Lower Nine. As you might expect, the board denies this. But when has white-flight ever been openly acknowledged in public spheres (unabashed racists aside)?
At any rate, the RSD school that will be housed in the trailers on the moldy campus is to be an "alternative school." At the HCNA meeting, a 31-year veteran of the Orleans Parish Public Schools (OPPS) explained that "alternative" is a politically-correct way of saying "a school for bad kids." They'll be students who have either not chosen or were too late in registering for other schools (I may not have mentioned that New Orleans is now a giant petri dish for the grant charter-school experiments so popular these days). They'll also be students who have been expelled from other schools. High school students. The attitude toward the students is epitomized by one HC resident's cry: "These kids are BAD." Another neighbor said, "You know, comparing the Holy Cross school to this alternative school is like apples and oranges. Holy Cross was the good kids. The alternative school? We don't want those kids around here."
As you might imagine, these complaints are hard for a young, idealistic teacher like me to hear. From what I gathered, my feelings are shared only by my husband and one other woman--a beautiful sister who graduated from Douglass. She said, "The way I see it, we can either see the kids' presence as an aberration to be ignored, or an opportunity to embrace them." This inspired poorly-disguised groans and harrumphs, and the rant continued:
"I'm not trying to say that these kids are a bunch of jail birds, but they are. They will set fire to their school and watch it burn. Hell, they'll set fire to their own house and sit on the stoop and watch that burn, too. These kids will do anything."
"We are living at Ground Zero here. These are the kids that nobody wants--that's why they're sending them down here."
I felt like crying. Instead, I stood up and introduced myself.
I was trembling I was so nervous. I was keenly aware of being This White Girl. This White Girl from across the canal, no less. I wasn't there before the storm, so what do I know? I teach at a University, so who do I think I am to speak on behalf of the kids of OPPS? My privilege, my age, my naive hope--who did I think I was to suggest that we could be "neighbors" to the school, that we could volunteer to tutor, or invite the kids to meetings, or say hello to them before they have a chance to burn our houses down. Who did I think I was?
"Truthfully," I said, "the idea of an alternative school in the neighborhood scares me, but I just feel like, I don't know, we can be angry and lock our doors and the shades, or we can do something else..." (real articulate.)
"We can confront our fears," Pam suggested.
I nearly shouted. "Yeah!"
Truthfully, I think that the issue is we have different ideas about confronting our fears. The 31-year veterans think we should be threatening grannies. The idealists think we should be kooky, loving aunts.
So I learned a bit more about my neighborhood this week.
Also, we got the second bid back, and it's too high. I am so sad about this I can hardly speak. To know that we--two degreed professionals--can't afford a 1200-square foot home in a devastated neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward tells me Something Is Seriously Wrong. In my opinion, the Preservation Resource Center (who's selling us the house) should eat more of a loss in order to get us in that home. The Operation Comeback Mission Statement reads: "Restored houses will be sold to low and moderate income buyers at attractive prices. Because post-Katrina construction costs make it difficult or impossible to repair homes at an affordable price, the Operation Comeback Revolving Fund will cover financing gaps of up $25,000 per buyer. Additionally, we have access to a small pool of HOME funds for low-income buyers and are strengthening ties with other non-profits to ensure buyers get the financial help they need to buy our houses. Returning New Orleanians need every bit of help they can get, and our discounts will help put them on the road to personal recovery." But they have told us they are only willing to take a 10K loss, which means we have to fork over at least 25K more than the initial estimated price.
We aren't quite sure what to do about this. We may have to lose some serious square footage. We will definitely not be able to have the welcoming porches from the original drawings. We're going to have a "demo-party" to remove the rear shed. We're going to have a yard sale. We're going to win the lottery.
What we're not going to do is be on This Old House. The sad news came today, and I am royally bummed. It appears that our story is not good enough. (Stephanie at the PRC put it perfectly: they come in from out of town with Our Stories already written; they don't tell our stories as they really are.) The fact that we weren't living in our house before the storm was the issue. I suspect it also had something to do with our being white and moving into a black neighborhood. Nobody wants to see a gentrification story.
Well, folks, this is my story, our story. It's messy, it ain't carefully proofread, and it's happier than what you may have had in mind. But that don't mean it's not worth telling.
So there, This Old House. You can take your $10,000 in appliances and shove 'em. (Gawd--if we'd had that money, maybe we could afford the house. How's that for a sob story, TV land? Sad enough for you?)
A final note: today was to be the sale date for our house. Oh, if only...
My supervisor has told me that I should "write less," and she's right. But when I say I care deeply about teaching, I mean it. Not only does "writing less" mean that I may not be able to accomplish all I'd like to, it also requires a lot of skill. I haven't mastered the skill of offering perfectly-concise critiques of student-writing. My solution in the classroom has been to make very brief notes at the end of the essay which I then address in student conferences (also time consuming). Obviously this isn't possible in online teaching.
Anyway, I've been at it every day from 9 until 5, and I am STRESSED. The only break I got from teaching this week was the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association (HCNA) meeting--which was uplifting and eventful. Among the highlights: the shared appreciation of this article chronicling the "green rebuilding" efforts in the Lower Nine, and a heated "discussion" (read: rant) on the subject of the Holy Cross School Board's decision to rent their modulars to the State's Recovery School District (RSD)--without consulting the neighborhood's residents.
The Holy Cross campus has yet to be gutted. Instead of gutting the buildings, the board decided to abandon ship, and so they brought in trailers and let the rest of the campus go. They'd already decided to move the school to Gentilly--a decision that will inevitably mean a much longer recovery-time for the Holy Cross neighborhood, and one whose motives appeared to be at least partly related to racial tensions between the mostly-white, upper-class private school and the mostly-black, lower-class Lower Nine. As you might expect, the board denies this. But when has white-flight ever been openly acknowledged in public spheres (unabashed racists aside)?
At any rate, the RSD school that will be housed in the trailers on the moldy campus is to be an "alternative school." At the HCNA meeting, a 31-year veteran of the Orleans Parish Public Schools (OPPS) explained that "alternative" is a politically-correct way of saying "a school for bad kids." They'll be students who have either not chosen or were too late in registering for other schools (I may not have mentioned that New Orleans is now a giant petri dish for the grant charter-school experiments so popular these days). They'll also be students who have been expelled from other schools. High school students. The attitude toward the students is epitomized by one HC resident's cry: "These kids are BAD." Another neighbor said, "You know, comparing the Holy Cross school to this alternative school is like apples and oranges. Holy Cross was the good kids. The alternative school? We don't want those kids around here."
As you might imagine, these complaints are hard for a young, idealistic teacher like me to hear. From what I gathered, my feelings are shared only by my husband and one other woman--a beautiful sister who graduated from Douglass. She said, "The way I see it, we can either see the kids' presence as an aberration to be ignored, or an opportunity to embrace them." This inspired poorly-disguised groans and harrumphs, and the rant continued:
"I'm not trying to say that these kids are a bunch of jail birds, but they are. They will set fire to their school and watch it burn. Hell, they'll set fire to their own house and sit on the stoop and watch that burn, too. These kids will do anything."
"We are living at Ground Zero here. These are the kids that nobody wants--that's why they're sending them down here."
I felt like crying. Instead, I stood up and introduced myself.
I was trembling I was so nervous. I was keenly aware of being This White Girl. This White Girl from across the canal, no less. I wasn't there before the storm, so what do I know? I teach at a University, so who do I think I am to speak on behalf of the kids of OPPS? My privilege, my age, my naive hope--who did I think I was to suggest that we could be "neighbors" to the school, that we could volunteer to tutor, or invite the kids to meetings, or say hello to them before they have a chance to burn our houses down. Who did I think I was?
"Truthfully," I said, "the idea of an alternative school in the neighborhood scares me, but I just feel like, I don't know, we can be angry and lock our doors and the shades, or we can do something else..." (real articulate.)
"We can confront our fears," Pam suggested.
I nearly shouted. "Yeah!"
Truthfully, I think that the issue is we have different ideas about confronting our fears. The 31-year veterans think we should be threatening grannies. The idealists think we should be kooky, loving aunts.
So I learned a bit more about my neighborhood this week.
Also, we got the second bid back, and it's too high. I am so sad about this I can hardly speak. To know that we--two degreed professionals--can't afford a 1200-square foot home in a devastated neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward tells me Something Is Seriously Wrong. In my opinion, the Preservation Resource Center (who's selling us the house) should eat more of a loss in order to get us in that home. The Operation Comeback Mission Statement reads: "Restored houses will be sold to low and moderate income buyers at attractive prices. Because post-Katrina construction costs make it difficult or impossible to repair homes at an affordable price, the Operation Comeback Revolving Fund will cover financing gaps of up $25,000 per buyer. Additionally, we have access to a small pool of HOME funds for low-income buyers and are strengthening ties with other non-profits to ensure buyers get the financial help they need to buy our houses. Returning New Orleanians need every bit of help they can get, and our discounts will help put them on the road to personal recovery." But they have told us they are only willing to take a 10K loss, which means we have to fork over at least 25K more than the initial estimated price.
We aren't quite sure what to do about this. We may have to lose some serious square footage. We will definitely not be able to have the welcoming porches from the original drawings. We're going to have a "demo-party" to remove the rear shed. We're going to have a yard sale. We're going to win the lottery.
What we're not going to do is be on This Old House. The sad news came today, and I am royally bummed. It appears that our story is not good enough. (Stephanie at the PRC put it perfectly: they come in from out of town with Our Stories already written; they don't tell our stories as they really are.) The fact that we weren't living in our house before the storm was the issue. I suspect it also had something to do with our being white and moving into a black neighborhood. Nobody wants to see a gentrification story.
Well, folks, this is my story, our story. It's messy, it ain't carefully proofread, and it's happier than what you may have had in mind. But that don't mean it's not worth telling.
So there, This Old House. You can take your $10,000 in appliances and shove 'em. (Gawd--if we'd had that money, maybe we could afford the house. How's that for a sob story, TV land? Sad enough for you?)
A final note: today was to be the sale date for our house. Oh, if only...
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Happy Birthday, Terrence, and Thank you, U of Wisconsin!
Our dear neighborhood friend, Terrence, turned 16 on Friday, which made me sad (surprise, surprise). Mostly I am sad because Terrence didn't call us--as he usually does--to say, "It's my birthday!!!" and now I worry that he's turned jaded teenager--too cool for the square white teacher-couple from his old New Orleans neighborhood.
No. That can't be true. Not my Terrence!
Actually, he probably wanted to call but was unable to, which makes me feel badly (surprise, surPRISE) because the last time we spoke he was asking us to by him minutes for his cell phone. We said no, thinking we were protecting him from himself. You know: Terrence watches too much TV, Terrence plays too many video games, Terrence gives too much of a crap about his darned cell phone. All of this is true.
But so do Terrence's parents work too hard. And so does Terrence have to share with Jabari, who isn't his real brother (or cousin, or related, even), and who is living with Terrence and his family, now, in Houston (thank God--since Jabari's mother is a Lost Cause of perpetual front stoop-dom). And so does Terrence miss New Orleans. I know he does.
The last time I spoke to Terrence he asked if we were still moving "down the other side of the canal."
"Yes, we're still moving," I told him. "Someday."
"Well, then I don't even want to move back to New Orleans if y'all movin' down there."
"Terrence, it's close enough that you can ride a bike, so don't even go trying to make me feel guilty."
Terrence is good at making me feel bad. He's got me that way. But then again, everyone/everything does, I suppose.
Terrence has been saying for months that they are moving back, and I've never believed it, but recently, the house they lived in was fixed up (finally--shoddily but at least and finally). So maybe he will come home.
Part of me doesn't want him to, as much as I miss him. He's older now, and I think this is a bad place for a sixteen-year-old male whose best friends are the white teachers up the street. We can't protect him.
But the more I think about the way that we forged a relationship with Terrence's parents, the more I realize that it really does take Getting to Know Your Neighbors to quell irrational fears. So that is what we will do when we (finally--ever?!?!?!) move to Holy Cross.
Last Thursday, we went to a Holy Cross Neighborhood Association meeting. I'd not been since the Christmas party, and since then, the venue has changed from a Holy Cross School trailer to a little old restored church near the river.
When we entered the church, there were video cameras rolling. The cameraman's assistant told us to skooch on by. So we did, and sat down in two of the folding chairs.
The topic was crime, and the first thing I noticed was how many young and altruistic-looking white folks were busily scribbling notes. I was sitting next to a young man who seemed to be a reporter. He had New Yorker tennis shoes on--hip and nerdy ones, and he seemed unhurried and had good reporterly penmanship. He made me feel as though I should be jotting down notes, too, so I did.
The first note I wrote: "We're not used to seeing the police."
One late middle-age white woman was sharing her cop-sightings: two cars in one week.
Simon and I have noticed the lack of police presence in Holy Cross, but we try not to think about it. Evidently, though, the lack of presence has meant continued problems with theft. One elderly black woman reported that her generator and compressor were stolen from her house-in-progress. She called the cops at 1 pm, at 2, and then at 6. No one ever showed. Later the next day, she saw a patrol car and she stopped to tell the cop about the robbery and the lack of response. He told her that for issues like that, she should call the guard.
"But we don't have a number for the Guard," she told him.
She reported that he looked at her like, "I'm just doing what I gotta do." "He was just down her to lock up his mama's house," she said.
There were other stories like this one, and later, commander Schaubhutt (sp?) from the 5th District explained the real problem: There are simply not enough police to go around.
"Do y'all even realize that we have issues down here?" one woman asked. "I mean, don't you think that if the criminals know y'all are all over Central City, and they know that there's no one looking after the Lower Nine--don't you think they're smart enough to come down here?"
Officer S said, "Look, Ma'am" (never an encouraging way to begin a sentence), I'm just hear to listen, I can't say anything that'll get me into trouble."
"Well, what would you say that could cause trouble?"
He chuckled. "Now, there you go again! I'm not going into that."
"Well, so what are you doing here listening? If you say you are here to listen, then what, exactly, do you plan to do with that information?"
There was no answer to that question.
Now, you might think that this would scare us away, but I have to say, this meeting was UP-LIFTING!!! It was IN a church, and it felt like GOING TO CHURCH, because here were all these different people--tough-as-nails old ladies, middle-aged black couples, white ladies (come to think of it, I don't recall seeing many white men)--and they were all coming together, asking questions that mattered. And when the cop left, they all--we all--banded together and made a plan to make calls and write letters and to stick together. It was neighborly, damnit, and it felt really, really good.
On Friday, in fact, we went to an HCNA crab boil at Caffin and Florida in the Lower Nine north of St. Claude. The crab boil was sponsored by some of those altruistic white folks, a group of graduate students from the University of Wisconsin who are working on a wetlands restoration project.
When Simon and I arrived, we asked the group's leader-- wiry Asian man named Herb--what their work was all about.
For starters, he showed us the Bayou Bienvenue wetlands, which I had no idea were just on the other side of Florida Avenue. Herb explained that at one time, the wetlands were filled with cypress trees--a fact confirmed by arial photos from the 50s, and by one elderly resident from the Lower Nine who remembered fishing in the swamp there as a boy.
Now, the wetlands look like this:
Those specs are dead cypress stumps and knees. I asked if this was what the bayou looked like because of the storm.
"No," Herb said. "This was caused by saltwater intrusion--most likely by MR-GO."
Briefly: the MR-GO is the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. It was built in the 60s to provide a quick and easy link for shipping traffic between the River and the Gulf. Since it was built, it has seen scant use (but those who do use it are, of course, rich-as-hell shipping interests), and it has caused major wetlands loss due to saltwater intrusion. The Army Corps of Engineers (I'm sure you could've guessed they were behind this debacle) has debated the validity of those obvious correlative claims (MR-GO built in 60s--major and rapid wetlands loss begins in the 60s), as they have also denied that the storm surge from MR-GO was responsible for the devastation of St. Bernard Parish and much of the Lower Nine.
As I stood on that levee and looked out at the devastated wetlands, I felt so unbelievably sad. Also making me sad: to the east of the S&WB plant was a what looked like a levee. A big one. It was, in fact, a very large mound of land created by dumped debris from Hurricane Betsy. And we did have refrigerators then, people. So it's possible that the Corps destroyed Bayou Bienvenue, and our own garbage did, too. (The good people from the U of Wisconsin have sicked [sp?] a smart grad student on that, too.)
Yes, the folks from the U of Wisconsin bring hope (as many energetic out-of-towners have done for those of us simply trying to do the day-to-day thing here). They are working on a study that will likely confirm all that the Corps wishes to deny--and that will hopefully lead to a radical wetlands-restoration project that I can describe in simple terms, this way: the filtered poop from Orleans parish will no longer be pumped out in the Delta (killing fish and clogging parts of the river with plant-life that thrives on poo-water), but it will be pumped into Bayou Bienvenue.
So that one day, maybe my kids will have a crab boil by the bayou with crabs they caught themselves in a restored, rich, greeny-green swamp.
No. That can't be true. Not my Terrence!
Actually, he probably wanted to call but was unable to, which makes me feel badly (surprise, surPRISE) because the last time we spoke he was asking us to by him minutes for his cell phone. We said no, thinking we were protecting him from himself. You know: Terrence watches too much TV, Terrence plays too many video games, Terrence gives too much of a crap about his darned cell phone. All of this is true.
But so do Terrence's parents work too hard. And so does Terrence have to share with Jabari, who isn't his real brother (or cousin, or related, even), and who is living with Terrence and his family, now, in Houston (thank God--since Jabari's mother is a Lost Cause of perpetual front stoop-dom). And so does Terrence miss New Orleans. I know he does.
The last time I spoke to Terrence he asked if we were still moving "down the other side of the canal."
"Yes, we're still moving," I told him. "Someday."
"Well, then I don't even want to move back to New Orleans if y'all movin' down there."
"Terrence, it's close enough that you can ride a bike, so don't even go trying to make me feel guilty."
Terrence is good at making me feel bad. He's got me that way. But then again, everyone/everything does, I suppose.
Terrence has been saying for months that they are moving back, and I've never believed it, but recently, the house they lived in was fixed up (finally--shoddily but at least and finally). So maybe he will come home.
Part of me doesn't want him to, as much as I miss him. He's older now, and I think this is a bad place for a sixteen-year-old male whose best friends are the white teachers up the street. We can't protect him.
But the more I think about the way that we forged a relationship with Terrence's parents, the more I realize that it really does take Getting to Know Your Neighbors to quell irrational fears. So that is what we will do when we (finally--ever?!?!?!) move to Holy Cross.
Last Thursday, we went to a Holy Cross Neighborhood Association meeting. I'd not been since the Christmas party, and since then, the venue has changed from a Holy Cross School trailer to a little old restored church near the river.
When we entered the church, there were video cameras rolling. The cameraman's assistant told us to skooch on by. So we did, and sat down in two of the folding chairs.
The topic was crime, and the first thing I noticed was how many young and altruistic-looking white folks were busily scribbling notes. I was sitting next to a young man who seemed to be a reporter. He had New Yorker tennis shoes on--hip and nerdy ones, and he seemed unhurried and had good reporterly penmanship. He made me feel as though I should be jotting down notes, too, so I did.
The first note I wrote: "We're not used to seeing the police."
One late middle-age white woman was sharing her cop-sightings: two cars in one week.
Simon and I have noticed the lack of police presence in Holy Cross, but we try not to think about it. Evidently, though, the lack of presence has meant continued problems with theft. One elderly black woman reported that her generator and compressor were stolen from her house-in-progress. She called the cops at 1 pm, at 2, and then at 6. No one ever showed. Later the next day, she saw a patrol car and she stopped to tell the cop about the robbery and the lack of response. He told her that for issues like that, she should call the guard.
"But we don't have a number for the Guard," she told him.
She reported that he looked at her like, "I'm just doing what I gotta do." "He was just down her to lock up his mama's house," she said.
There were other stories like this one, and later, commander Schaubhutt (sp?) from the 5th District explained the real problem: There are simply not enough police to go around.
"Do y'all even realize that we have issues down here?" one woman asked. "I mean, don't you think that if the criminals know y'all are all over Central City, and they know that there's no one looking after the Lower Nine--don't you think they're smart enough to come down here?"
Officer S said, "Look, Ma'am" (never an encouraging way to begin a sentence), I'm just hear to listen, I can't say anything that'll get me into trouble."
"Well, what would you say that could cause trouble?"
He chuckled. "Now, there you go again! I'm not going into that."
"Well, so what are you doing here listening? If you say you are here to listen, then what, exactly, do you plan to do with that information?"
There was no answer to that question.
Now, you might think that this would scare us away, but I have to say, this meeting was UP-LIFTING!!! It was IN a church, and it felt like GOING TO CHURCH, because here were all these different people--tough-as-nails old ladies, middle-aged black couples, white ladies (come to think of it, I don't recall seeing many white men)--and they were all coming together, asking questions that mattered. And when the cop left, they all--we all--banded together and made a plan to make calls and write letters and to stick together. It was neighborly, damnit, and it felt really, really good.
On Friday, in fact, we went to an HCNA crab boil at Caffin and Florida in the Lower Nine north of St. Claude. The crab boil was sponsored by some of those altruistic white folks, a group of graduate students from the University of Wisconsin who are working on a wetlands restoration project.
When Simon and I arrived, we asked the group's leader-- wiry Asian man named Herb--what their work was all about.
For starters, he showed us the Bayou Bienvenue wetlands, which I had no idea were just on the other side of Florida Avenue. Herb explained that at one time, the wetlands were filled with cypress trees--a fact confirmed by arial photos from the 50s, and by one elderly resident from the Lower Nine who remembered fishing in the swamp there as a boy.
Now, the wetlands look like this:
Those specs are dead cypress stumps and knees. I asked if this was what the bayou looked like because of the storm.
"No," Herb said. "This was caused by saltwater intrusion--most likely by MR-GO."
Briefly: the MR-GO is the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. It was built in the 60s to provide a quick and easy link for shipping traffic between the River and the Gulf. Since it was built, it has seen scant use (but those who do use it are, of course, rich-as-hell shipping interests), and it has caused major wetlands loss due to saltwater intrusion. The Army Corps of Engineers (I'm sure you could've guessed they were behind this debacle) has debated the validity of those obvious correlative claims (MR-GO built in 60s--major and rapid wetlands loss begins in the 60s), as they have also denied that the storm surge from MR-GO was responsible for the devastation of St. Bernard Parish and much of the Lower Nine.
As I stood on that levee and looked out at the devastated wetlands, I felt so unbelievably sad. Also making me sad: to the east of the S&WB plant was a what looked like a levee. A big one. It was, in fact, a very large mound of land created by dumped debris from Hurricane Betsy. And we did have refrigerators then, people. So it's possible that the Corps destroyed Bayou Bienvenue, and our own garbage did, too. (The good people from the U of Wisconsin have sicked [sp?] a smart grad student on that, too.)
Yes, the folks from the U of Wisconsin bring hope (as many energetic out-of-towners have done for those of us simply trying to do the day-to-day thing here). They are working on a study that will likely confirm all that the Corps wishes to deny--and that will hopefully lead to a radical wetlands-restoration project that I can describe in simple terms, this way: the filtered poop from Orleans parish will no longer be pumped out in the Delta (killing fish and clogging parts of the river with plant-life that thrives on poo-water), but it will be pumped into Bayou Bienvenue.
So that one day, maybe my kids will have a crab boil by the bayou with crabs they caught themselves in a restored, rich, greeny-green swamp.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
The Priorities in Jefferson Parish
This is just awesome: let's get rid of the taco stands. Yeah, that's important!
Well, I won't be sad if the one's that get kicked out of Jeff immigrate to Orelans Parish. Gawd, Jefferson Parish is The Worst!!!!
My damn head-ness...
Yesterday we had a hefty afternoon storm, and lo and behold, we lost power. I was in the midst of stewing a chicken for a batch of Indonesian fried rice, so after pulling the chicken from the carcass and putting the chopped onions into a little plastic baggie, I waited in the almost-dark for the darker. I called 1-800-OUTAGE to report the outage and learned that it would be 10:30-11:00pm before the power was restored.
So Simon and I went out for dinner at Pho Tau Bay, and then to see Waitress, which I would have found wholly charming were I not suffering from over-education. I explained to Simon that I hated how the waitress didn't leave her husband until she had a sure thing in her lover, and she didn't leave her lover until she'd been given a big ol' heap o' cash by another man who'd died. I'm pretty sure that I wasn't supposed to "go there," and that instead I was to see it as an uplifting movie about women supporting women (or something?), but once again my cynical noggin' ruined it for me.
A wonderful respite from thinking was the week that Simon and I spent in Fort Morgan, AL. (We returned two days ago.) We were with friends and colleagues, including two of our very bestest friends who are moving away come August. On our last night at the beach, I said, jokingly, "Let's all get really drunk and sad!", which I then did. Okay, so it is impossible for me to get away from my head-ness, altogether... something I commented on to Simon while we were walking along a beautiful path through the National Wildlife Reserve that ended at an untouched beach and with an encounter with a blue heron. "I'm already missing this," I said. My pre-emptive nostalgia makes the present harder.
But I am feeling really, really sad about losing yet another (and another) New Orleans friend. Even though their leaving is more about graduate school than it is New Orleans-fatigue, I still feel as though they are abandoning ship, and I hate that. Stop abandoning the ship, I say! Of course, I am already missing them, too.
So now that we are back in New Orleans, I have officially fallen into my summer funk. I really hate summers because of the unstructured time. And compounding my feelings of funk-dom is the fact that a) we have sooo much to do in the house (but really it's mine to do, as it involves sorting through and getting rid of 8 years of my stuff), and b) I also have so much to do, professionally (I'm up for my third-year review next year at the University, and I need, need, need, to make myself look like a pro with a folder and all, and I need, need, need, to publish), and c) my dear husband has No Problem with productivity. None. He gets up and writes. Then he cleans. Then he reads. Then he works out. Then he writes and reads. And throughout all of this productivity, he experiences no anxiety, feels no inferiority, has no self-doubt. This makes me feel even crappier about my procrastination and pack-ratting and, and, and...
The bright spot for me is work. I have started my summer online teaching gig, and I really love getting to send encouraging emails and playing coach to a group of web-students. The only problem is this: I may need to make this blog private, as my web-savvy students could Google my ass and then witness me writing shoddy blogs, and, well, "ass." What do you think? Make blog private or no?
Speaking of shoddy entries, I apologize for my long absence, but I must say that it's just gonna be that way until I get outta this funk. And I don't know if that is going to happen, so...
You know, I'd really feel better if I could spend the whole summer at the beach. I love digging in the sand, walking along the water, finding shells and critters, watching no TV, and sleeping hard from real physical exhaustion. The thing about the summer in New Orleans is that you are absolutely stuck indoors. You are entirely dependent on AC. So you are stuck inside, and in my case, stuck with yer damn head-ness.
So Simon and I went out for dinner at Pho Tau Bay, and then to see Waitress, which I would have found wholly charming were I not suffering from over-education. I explained to Simon that I hated how the waitress didn't leave her husband until she had a sure thing in her lover, and she didn't leave her lover until she'd been given a big ol' heap o' cash by another man who'd died. I'm pretty sure that I wasn't supposed to "go there," and that instead I was to see it as an uplifting movie about women supporting women (or something?), but once again my cynical noggin' ruined it for me.
A wonderful respite from thinking was the week that Simon and I spent in Fort Morgan, AL. (We returned two days ago.) We were with friends and colleagues, including two of our very bestest friends who are moving away come August. On our last night at the beach, I said, jokingly, "Let's all get really drunk and sad!", which I then did. Okay, so it is impossible for me to get away from my head-ness, altogether... something I commented on to Simon while we were walking along a beautiful path through the National Wildlife Reserve that ended at an untouched beach and with an encounter with a blue heron. "I'm already missing this," I said. My pre-emptive nostalgia makes the present harder.
But I am feeling really, really sad about losing yet another (and another) New Orleans friend. Even though their leaving is more about graduate school than it is New Orleans-fatigue, I still feel as though they are abandoning ship, and I hate that. Stop abandoning the ship, I say! Of course, I am already missing them, too.
So now that we are back in New Orleans, I have officially fallen into my summer funk. I really hate summers because of the unstructured time. And compounding my feelings of funk-dom is the fact that a) we have sooo much to do in the house (but really it's mine to do, as it involves sorting through and getting rid of 8 years of my stuff), and b) I also have so much to do, professionally (I'm up for my third-year review next year at the University, and I need, need, need, to make myself look like a pro with a folder and all, and I need, need, need, to publish), and c) my dear husband has No Problem with productivity. None. He gets up and writes. Then he cleans. Then he reads. Then he works out. Then he writes and reads. And throughout all of this productivity, he experiences no anxiety, feels no inferiority, has no self-doubt. This makes me feel even crappier about my procrastination and pack-ratting and, and, and...
The bright spot for me is work. I have started my summer online teaching gig, and I really love getting to send encouraging emails and playing coach to a group of web-students. The only problem is this: I may need to make this blog private, as my web-savvy students could Google my ass and then witness me writing shoddy blogs, and, well, "ass." What do you think? Make blog private or no?
Speaking of shoddy entries, I apologize for my long absence, but I must say that it's just gonna be that way until I get outta this funk. And I don't know if that is going to happen, so...
You know, I'd really feel better if I could spend the whole summer at the beach. I love digging in the sand, walking along the water, finding shells and critters, watching no TV, and sleeping hard from real physical exhaustion. The thing about the summer in New Orleans is that you are absolutely stuck indoors. You are entirely dependent on AC. So you are stuck inside, and in my case, stuck with yer damn head-ness.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Home Again...
I've just returned from a long trip home to Atlanta, where I traveled to the mountains with my parents, celebrated Aalia's 30th birthday, shopped a lot, fought a little, and slept badly. The weather was beautiful and the trip generally relaxing, but one thing I've begun to hate about going home again is how it reminds me of aging--my own, my parents'--and how when I return to New Orleans, everything is the same--Murder Capital, devastated landscape, messy house, hurricane season. I don't want to be any younger, mind you, I just don't want to get any older anymore.
In more uplifting news, Simon and I met with producers of the TV show, This Old House this morning, and it seemed to go as well as it could. We don't have the exciting "story" they're probably looking for (couple caught behind during the storm struggles to rebuild historic home), but we are camera-ready, and I wore my "Make Levees, Not War" T-Shirt, which the director seemed to really dig. The executive producer asked us why we were moving down to a devastated neighborhood, calling us "urban pioneers." The real reason is a complex one, largely dictated by our wanting a lot and being able to afford very little in any other neighborhood. But of course there's our love of the neighborhood, and the house, and our city, and so we recited that list (also: having the levee--the largest lawn we will never have to mow--for our future kidlets to play on).
Anyway, I don't know if our "story" will be compelling enough, so I am hoping that the house, itself, for This Old House; perhaps our good looks and charm will get us on board.
Meanwhile, I have been catching up on sleep--all day--and looking at the piles of crap I need to confront. We'd agreed we'd spend a good bit of the summer preparing the house for our end-of-the-year move, and I'm realizing that what that really entails is my getting rid of a lot of my crap. I wouldn't call myself a hoarder, but I do hang onto a lot of books, papers, music, shoes, and clothes, fearing that if I throw them away I may someday miss them. So I will try to get into my most zen-like state and throw, throw, throw stuff away (or, rather, sell it at a yard sale so we can finance our champagne taste in furniture).
I'm doing what I do every summer, too: cutting down on TV watching. Simon says he is proud of me, but really my giving it up has more to do with his not having so much work to do; during the school year I make every effort to get my work done during the day so we can be all couple-y at night, but Simon always, always has to bring work home, so I wind up keeping myself company with TV. Giving up TV is pretty hard to do in our house, where we don't have many good, well-lit and uncluttered spaces for reading. (This is what happens when two lives converge, with their historic crap, on one 900-square foot house.) Simon, however, is not giving up his reruns of The Sopranos on A&E, and so here I am catching up on this blog.
This is a lame entry. I am in a poo mood. I will try to do better soon--complete with pictures and narrative and meaning and whatnot.
Yeah, that's it: meaning and whatnot.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Progress and Our Old House
I watched "Live With Regis and Kelly" (broadcast from New Orleans) this morning before an early summer rain dumped inches upon inches on us in a matter of hours. The show was taped before the rain, on a steamy morning. I could see poor "Reg" wilting a bit in the heat and I was reminded of how it takes a different breed to live here.
I'd planned to leave this morning, and I was packed and ready to leave for a week in fully-functioning Atlanta, but the weather foiled me. So instead I travelled to the West Bank to eat Vietnamese food with a girlfriend of mine. After dinner we watched the "American Idol" finale (my friend exclaimed "Justice!" when Jordin won, but I have a soft spot for beat-boxing Blake... it must come from my years of growing a room away from all of my brother's DJ-ing), and then I came home and watched the news, where I learned of a literal "SIGN of progress" (this play on words was not lost on corny news writers, of course). Evidently a state senator raised a stink about the sign welcoming you to "New Orleag" from I-10 East. And finally, it's being fixed.
So when I return from my Atlanta trip, I'll return to New Orleans, not New Orleag.
Now, what does it say about me that I have a soft spot for that "New Orleag" sign, too?
I think it means New Orleans is my home.
Oh, and: Oooh, ooh, OOH!!!!!!...
I got an email yesterday from a producer for This Old House. Never in my wildest PBS-kid dreams would I have imagined that I would be on that show. In fact, I can clearly recall feeling tortured when my dad would watch that show (I felt like my parents were The Worst for not allowing me to watch commercial telvision back then). Now, I feel a certain amount of pride that Our House is no commercial Regis and Kelly house. Nuh-UH! Our house is Bob Villa fodder!
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