Kate Ingold: All New Orleans, All the Time

It's Time

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:11:01 GMT

I've been frustrated as hell with Radio and Salon for months now (sorry sorry sorry for the absence), so I'm finally making a move. It's not finished yet, but here's a link to the new site: www.kateingold.com. I'll have Broken Windows over there along with info about the art and poetry I'm working on (and a CV, yadda yadda). I hope to have it up and running in the next couple of weeks.

We went down to NOLA a couple of weeks ago and S passed his oral exams. We ate gumbo and fried chicken at Jacque's place (Dunbar's is still closed :<) and scrumptuous malt chocolate chip ice cream at Creole Creamery, a little slice of heaven right on Prytania. Some of our friends have left forever. Some are consumed with finding stability in a city that's still lying in pieces. It made me sad. We came back and voted early and now we're campaigning for Tammy Duckworth who very well might beat that sorry ass opponent of hers. More to come, I promise! Meanwhile, take care y'all.

When it started to sink in...

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:34:38 GMT

What a very sad day

New Orleans was always a city of contradiction to me -- beautiful and heartbreaking; unbelievably kind and loving though callous and heartless too. Mardi Gras seemed to gather and collapse these contradictions into a compact two weeks: millions spent on plastic beads and curios made thousands of miles away from the city (bought by the city's wealthiest few to throw down to the city's most) and an outlandish celebration of the love of life by everyone, regardless of station in life. It was a garish expression of wealth and excess, but also an expression of community and togetherness, as families from all over came together on the streets of St. Charles Avenue with their ladders-turned-stands, their filled-to-the-top coolers.

We lived on the corner of Washington and Carondelet, on the northern border of the Garden District, itself a study in contradiction. Some of the largest and most expensive homes blocks away from falling-apart public housing and small shotguns which really were shacks. Our apartment was in a centuries old mansion that had been converted years ago into three apartments, one snaking around from the back of our apartment to the top of the garage, a half-doughnut shape, and two others, one on top of the other, in the bulk of the house. We were on the top floor (and our roommate Rebecca still is -- or at least her stuff still is, we hope) with outlandishly tall windows looking out into the branches of live oaks and to the 'ghost house' across the street, a peet-green chopped-up mansion where the ghost of a twelve-year old girl had breakfast each morning with our neighbors, Eric, Molly, and their baby Etienne, in their apartment that was in such disrepair it was nearly no longer an apartment. Below us were Johnie and Steve, a couple that know love and give love in ways that are still surprising to me years after we first befriended each other. Steve works on the oil rigs outside of town for two week stretches, leaving Johnie home with Larry, a gentle man who has battled the effects of HIV and AIDS for years. Steve and Johnie invited us to our one and only Mardi Gras ball for the Krewe of Amon-Ra, the largest gay krewe in the city, and it was there that I saw what Mardi Gras is really about, a supersonic exclamation of the power of life over hardship.

Behind us was George, a voodoo-practitioning filmmaker who had a radio show on WWOZ, one of our nation's truly great independent radio stations. He cleared our place of evil spirits before we moved in because the man who had lived there before had an appetite for violence and usually fed on his girlfriend. When Rebecca moved in a year before us, she found an apartment splattered with blood, and this after she had just returned from a year in Angola operating emergency medical centers during a war. The spirits were definitely gone by the time S and I moved in with her; George had not only pissed on a coconut and kicked it out the door (yelling "Out! Out! Out!"), but in most of the corners and crevices of the place we had earthen-black statues stuffed with nails and shanks Rebecca had brought back from west Africa, guarantees that our place was full of good juju, not bad.

Kiddy corner to us was a one-level, impossibly small apartment complex jutting up to the sidewalk incredibly close, which children would ride around on tricycles while their mothers sat in lawn chairs inches away from sewer drains. The windows in that building, not much bigger than slats already, were covered in tin foil to reflect away the burning sun and heat. Across from them was "Amie's Paradise," a sprawling mid-century complex where two Mardi Gras Indians lived, a mother and a son who were kind enough to let me photograph them a couple of years ago.

Behind our building on Carondelet was a building you would miss if you weren't looking, it looked so much like so many other sliver-thin brick buildings built during the Vietnam War. Last summer a drug dealer moved in there, bringing with him more gun shots and more nervousness around the neighborhood as all of us watched our backs when we parked our cars or walked back home from the jingling street car. Next door was a shotgun in the process of renovation, butter yellow with black trim, owned by a nice gentleman who would sit on his placemat porch with friends, smoking cigars, and make small talk with us when we walked by with our dog. He complained about the bands of wild dogs that ran through the city, some with their collars and leashes still attached, who would scavenge for food and poop on the grass. (The first time I saw these dogs I thought of Mexico, where there are yellow dogs and black dogs and muddled dogs running around town too.)

Our neighborhood was one of many across the city, a neighborhood of neighbors. We knew each other. We looked out for each other. New Orleans had heartless people who would rob you at gunpoint, or worse, rob you at the government level and beyond (the president of KBR lived on St. Charles), but it also had the most generous, loving people I've ever met in my life. People who, though they had little themselves, would give you the chair they were sitting on, a warm bowl of red beans and rice, or a lift to the market. They gave smiles in stores, even when the lines were long and people were frustrated. They called you "baby" and "honey" and "sweetie" even as they were clearing your plate or filling your water glass. There was a sense of community like no other place I've been.

And now they have been abandoned. Our government has abandoned them, and our community, our larger community, has let it happen. I can't hold back my tears. What a very sad day.

11:04:08 AM September 2, 2005

A city of rough edges

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 04:11:51 GMT

I've been fighting the mild depression these long, silent periods seem to bring me. That brief conversation with S on Saturday morning was not enough. He left his old base nearly three weeks ago now, and since then I've talked to him twice via sat phone ("the phone that talks to the moon," as the Afghans call it) and both conversations were not much more than short reportage: "I'm just calling to tell you I'm okay" and "I don't know when I'll be able to call you again," the mantras of separation.

I did get a wonderful surprise call today, though. One of my New Orleans neighbors, Eric Julien, called me this afternoon from the steps of the Shedd Aquarium down on the edge of Lake Michigan here in Chicago. He and his wife Molly Day and their darling son Etienne (pronounced the Haitian creole way, "Eh-shawn") moved to Chicago a little over a week ago. Since Katrina they have been nomads, floating across the country from relative's house to relative's house, friend's to friend's. Though our area of New Orleans didn't flood much, their house, the famous ghost house of Carondelet and Washington, was badly damaged by the winds. The roof blew completely off (did the ghosts finally escape?), and now the house is uninhabitable, though Eric said a couple of their neighbors are living there anyway, "basically camping out." Since he and Molly have a baby son, "camping out" was not an option, especially since no one knows when, or if, the city will resurrect.

Imagine having your entire life jumbled and tossed about, thrown out like dice on a craps table. And then think the same thing happened to 500,000 other people who used to be your neighbors. It's hard to comprehend the vastness of it all. New Orleans has become Pompeii; her people roaming, homeless nomads and my neighbors are nearly my neighbors again, but now in this shockingly different place. Here it is winter already. Even when it's bright, it's bitter. Tonight the temperature is supposed to drop even further, and tomorrow evening there may be snow. And it's only going to get colder in the months to come.

How sad Eric sounded. They lost about 50% of their things, if you don't count their way of life, their community, their home town. And their jobs. Both of them are now looking for something to tide them over while they squeak out a living as all of us restless artists are condemned to do. We're going to talk again tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to see them soon. They're living down in Hyde Park, though I don't know exactly where. I want to take them around and introduce them to everyone I know so they won't be alone. I want to help them get started here if I can.

This is a city of rough edges. I hope Chicago is kind to Eric and Molly and baby Etienne.

Apparently some families have found better places for their kids since fleeing Katrina and being washed out of New Orleans. The schools cheated them there. I know this because I met so many incredibly bright freshmen who had graduated unprepared for even basic introductory classes. They had been abandoned by a system that seemed designed to keep the basic social and political structures of the city in place, to keep it "authentic." I remember the first time I was told "this is all you can expect from these kids."It was my first semester teaching at Delgado Community College and I was in the copy room where I spent most of the first month of class xeroxing my own thrown together text book. (I couldn't bear the thought of teaching from our uninspired text book, so I put together my own with some of my favorite essays and poems I'd collected over the years. The beauty of no-code copy machines!) The teacher who said it was one of the full-timers, a tenured professor who the next semester would be my 'mentor.' I had to give her a stack of graded papers so she could review them and tell me whether or not I was grading correctly, even though I'd had to do the same thing my first semester there, and even though I had been awarded because so few of my students failed. I had one student my second semester, an artist with a mop of black hair and horn-rimmed glasses, who turned every essay into a short story. His essays were so smart, so funny, each punctuated with little snips of dialogue. Of course my "mentor" said his As were Fs and that the kid would fail the exit exam if she had anything to do with it. Well, he passed. She was wrong about a lot of things.

I only bought one piece of art down in New Orleans and that was one of Eric's Haiti photographs. His photographs are visions, not mere documents. My photo, "Temps," floats next to our bed and dances on our fuschia-red wall. It's beautiful. I remember Molly told me that to get pregnant she had kept a special sugar bowl next to her bed so the spirits would get enough sweetness and wouldn't want to taste hers. I always meant to ask her what kind of sugar, what kind of bowl. Now I'll be able to, though I wish I could ask her over a glass of wine in our leaky apartment on Washington Avenue instead of over coffee, perhaps, in this city of rough edges. I wish they hadn't had to go through these piled-on weeks of hardship, that everything was still as it was. But it's not. The roof's been blown off, and here they are in my blustery, brumal city.

Forgotten Already

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 06:01:25 GMT

Ray is in New Orleans and the devastation has left him without words. Imagine. It is so bad a writer can't write about it, photos can't show it.

We are a nation in love with forgetting. Given the opportunity to push what's ugly, what's difficult into the netherworld of distant memory, we do. It's curious, really, this infatuation with forgetfulness. Tonight I glanced a show about Katrina and Rita and Wilma on discovery channel or maybe travel, and the hurricanes were spoken of as history, as if the effects of these storms weren't still being felt across the gulf.

Well they are. Hundreds of thousands are still homeless, are still without adequate shelter. Many are being evicted from apartments because FEMA's vouchers don't begin to cover rents in most American cities. Most of New Orleans is still uninhabitable. None of my friends have been able to return to their city though more than two months have passed. One friend, a poet from our workshop, lost nearly everything. She estimates 95% of her belongings melted away in the standing floodwaters that took over her Mid-City apartment for weeks and weeks. And this loss followed the horrific trip out of town, a journey punctuated by lack of drinking water, gas, and a sleepless night on the side of the road.

In today's Times-Picayune, the editors wonder whether or not the nation has completely forgotten their city, and whether or not that includes Congress. Across the city, they say, are signs of nascient life, that even as the roads continue to be littered with unusable refrigerators, residents continue to filter back in to rebuild their lives:

This fragile but unmistakable resurgence of life makes Congress' growing indifference to our area's fate all the more frustrating. The creeping abandonment of greater New Orleans could be deadly for us. But it should also appall many others -- Floridians who are almost as vulnerable to hurricanes as we are, Californians who live in fear of earthquakes, residents of the many cities that could fall victim to terrorist attacks.

Ours is an uneasy place to be. Help is easy to come by when people are suffering on camera. But the needs exist long after those images recede, and it is a frightening prospect to fear being forgotten.

Yes, when the cameras are on, when the images are flooding our living rooms and kitchens with helplessness and despair, we respond. We care. But as soon as those images are catalogued in the underground vaults of distant memory, we forget about the need.

This isn't just about New Orleans, of course. While running at the gym tonight, I saw a 60 Minutes segment about a group of New York City doctors who went to Pakistan on their own to help victims of the earthquake. What they found were vast areas of the country that had not been visited by a single relief worker or government official. They worked in a forgotten valley, treating infections and lifethreatening disease, and since they are from New York, the news started to cover them and soon relief organizations came to the valley. When they did, the doctors packed up their mules (that's the only way to travel through the devastated borderlands) and headed to the next forgotten valley to treat more forgotten people.

Perhaps it is because there is too much to worry about, too much flooding of information for us to deal with it all. Perhaps that is why we push it into the depths.

We need to remember. We need to remind ourselves and our leadership. And we need to demand more from our government, because a handful of New Yorkers, a handful of North Carolinans or Chicagoans or Texans can't do it all.

Las Lloronas, The Crying Women

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 02:00:22 GMT

Coyolxauhqui, daughter of Coatlicue, as a broken woman at the base of Templo Mayor.

Las Lloronas/The Crying Women

As she cried,
she drowned her children,
wrung them breath-
dry in the river
after he left.

He left with cudgels, rifles, and short knives,
perhaps with another woman's
                                                wet
on his lips, she tells me.

I know about crying.
I tell her my words left
under river stones and broken-
down bridges failed
to come up that day.
I found only an inadequate list:
weep, wail, bawl, keen,
a collection of girl-words
soaked in absurdity.

Yes, I killed them, she tells me,
like a man, then I wept
like a woman.

We part at the end of the river
where the water turns
                                  brackish.

Her laments follow me
home, entangle in my damp
hair, sway me to sleep.

I wake when the night
                                   dawns
with a splatter of stars across the ink-blood sky.
Outside, the mourning
                                   doves speak little cries,
feed the young and feather-
cover their eyes. Tear-
stripped naked, I swim
in the river next to her, run
my fingers in the hair
of her first-born son
as he descends.

c Kate Ingold, November 2004, New Orleans

S and I spent the summer of 2003 in Oaxaca City, a colonial town of 75% indigenous population in the thick of the largest state in Mexico, the state Cortes described to the Spanish crown by crumpling up a piece of paper and throwing it on a table. To walk through the mountains of Oaxaca, he said, was to walk through that crumpled parchment.

That summer I studied Spanish and S worked at an archaeological site on the road to Mitla about 35 miles outside of the city. The site was an ordinary household in a Zapotec suburb of 1,000 years ago, a collection of patios surrounded by rectangular structures each with the family's dead entombed beneath the patio and in front of an altar. Many of the men S worked with were from a nearby Zapotec village, Maquilxochitl, which means "Five Flower" in Nahuatl. Some day in the future, after he's done with this war, S will do his doctoral research in Maquilxochitl, where families live in the same patio-structure compounds their relatives did those years ago and where the tlyudas are made on adobe stoves fired by craggled mesquite.

I was flooded with the stories of the women I met there, particularly the women of Maquilxochitl who fed us stewed squash with onions, chile, and Oaxacan string cheese, and those miraculous tlyudas made from corn they'd ground themselves on volcanic metates. So many of the stories were about goodbyes. Women had said goodbye to their children years ago before the children went north to cross the border, and some hadn't seen them since. Others had said goodbye to their chidren before they had left to cross the border themselves, returning years later when their children were no longer children. One woman had four daughters and only one was still in Oaxaca. The other daughters were scattered from San Jose, California down to Baja and Mexico City, where one daughter worked in a plastics factory. This woman had crossed the border herself several times, outwitted coyotes and was beaten by one, but ended up coming back to Oaxaca for good and married one of S's good friends, Procopio. Her cousin crossed fifteen years ago and she never heard from him again. He was presumed to be dead.

How many have died in the river of two names, Rio Grande, Rio Bravo, or in the dusty, waterless desert? Can you imagine how many?

I had been reading about Mexico for a few years before that summer we spent in Oaxaca, including books about Mexico's rich religious and cultural heritage. The country is crawling with stories. legends, myths. When I got home, I started a series of poems about women facing what we face at this beginning of the third millennium, and how these stories relate to the histories of our anscestors and my own life. Las Lloronas is one of these poems.

I wrote this poem the day after S was "called up," one week and two days before Thanksgiving last year. They really did call. Early, before 7. We were both still in bed in our leaky New Orleans apartment because it was a Tuesday and neither of us had class. They called on the cell phone we shared and they told him he was to report to his base in Indiana the following Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving. We were supposed to leave that day for New Jersey to spend Thanksgiving with S's family, but suddenly everything was uncertain, unknown. S was in his final semester of classes in his PhD program. In just a few months he was to take his comprehensive exams then his orals, and then the following autumn (right now in fact) we were to go back to Oaxaca where S was to begin a dig at the temples ringing the small chapel on top of Cerro Danush, the symmetrical mountain that sits prominently inside the village of Maquilxochitl, a mountain that the entire village ascends on May 3rd to celebrate the Festival of the Cross. Now we weren't even sure he'd be able to finish his semester. I was a full-time instructor at University of New Orleans and I knew I had to make some decisions too. Should I stay in New Orleans or go back to Chicago to be near my mother? This all happened in an instant, and as a stark reminder that nothing is constant, all is change, our lives were changed instantly.

Yes, you'd think that there would have been a little more consideration for national guard soldiers, an understanding that they would have to "tie up loose ends" and make arrangements at work, school, home. But no. There was none of that until S and the other four men who were called (the unit had been split up and splintered the previous August, with some of the group sent to Afghanistan and others ordered to stay home to help train new members) complained so bitterly they were given a reprieve. But this happened a few days later, just before we were to leave for New Jersey, and just after we called the airline to see if we could change our tickets (the answer was no, by the way). It was the first of several mid-play changes, some good, some not, that would define our next several months and demonstrate how absolutely incompetent and confused the military brass were.

After that call I yelled at S, told him he clearly didn't love me since he had put our relationship and our future in jeopardy for the army (why he was still in is for another day). I cried and yelled, then cried again. He said that of course he loved me and that he regretted this as much as I did. I had to get away from him. I was too angry, too upset. I went into our roommate Rebecca's room. She was awake and had her coffee, which was curious. Usually she woke much later, but she was studying for her comps too and at the side of her bed was a mountain of books she was studying from. Her days were beginning early and ending late as she filled out note cards and typed out synopses of anthropology and archaeology texts. I went into her room and she took me in her arms and said "What's wrong, honey?" and I told her and she cried with me.

That day S and I talked a lot. We talked about what would happen. We talked about how much we loved each other and how surprised S was because he was certain, dead certain, that Kerry would win and he wouldn't get called up. He apologized and apologized again, and then I forgave him.

The call had come after weeks of disappointment. The three of us were still in mourning over Kerry's loss, still stunned and stressed and dreading another four years with Bush in office. Election night we had sat together in the living room batting away brown june bugs and the occasional flying cockroach that had moved in through the open windows, and watched the results come in. When it started to look bad, Rebecca and I ran around the house and found things that represented the contested states: a Pretenders disc for Ohio; a chunk of cheese for Wisconsin; a book of poems by Florida poet David Kirby. Rebecca had spent eight years in West Africa working with Doctors Without Borders, so she gathered up her super-fine African juju sculptures like the two figures with nails and shanks sticking out of their bodies, and I gathered my Zuni fetishes (buffalo, toad, bear, Corn Mother). We placed it all on the table in the living room then rang the booty with La Virgen candles, curios, small bowls of our just-finished dinner, and several shots of tequila. Rebecca got sage out of the refrigerator and burned it, blew the smoke across the table and at the windows, and we both begged the spirits to help John Kerry win, to help all of us escape the Bush-born madness. As the night wore on and things got even more dire, we knocked on the door of our neighbor George, a voodoo practitioner who had helped Rebecca rid the apartment of evil spirits when she'd first moved in two years before. George wasn't home, which we should have taken as an omen, I guess. When we knew it was over, Rebecca went to her room and we crawled into our bed for a sleep deep enough, we'd hoped, to erase the night and start us over again.

Well, obviously it didn't work. S knew it wouldn't, but then he's much more practical than me. It was that morning after when I started to worry. I knew it would take more good juju than we had in our leaky apartment to prevent S from being called up. Three weeks later I was proven right.

The story of the La Llorona, the Crying Woman, comes from Mexico and it varies from the scorned harlot who kills her children out of revenge, to a scorned woman who kills her children to protect them from poverty, to a woman whose children are murdered by their father, to a woman who has a vision of her children being wisked away by floodwaters, only to wake up and find her nightmare had come true. In every version La Llorona dies, usually from her own hand, on the banks of the river that also took her children. For her crime she is condemned to die and to walk the banks as a ghost. In most versions of the story she feels regret and remorse for her rashness, and cries in longing for the children she will never see again. In the version of the story told around fires and at bedside by malicious babysitters, she roams the banks looking for children to snatch and take as her own.

When S was called up, I became a crying woman myself. The original version of the poem had allusions to the fact that we hadn't gotten pregnant yet (and that I therefore had no children to drown), but the wise ladies in my poetry workshop urged me to take that stuff out, and as usual they were right. But when I let loose the river inside of me and mourned for the forced separation that was to come, I felt an affecton for las lloronas who had come before me, and the thousands who are struggling with difficult goodbyes right now.

(I wonder, even, if Cindy Sheehan feels like la llorona too. She is trying to 'right' the wrong of her son's death, a death she feels all of us, including herself, are responsible for because we allowed Bush to be elected. She is wailing for her dead son on the banks of concrete rivers across the country.)

The photograph above is of Coyolxauhqui, the daughter and murderer of Coatlicue. She is part of the web of legends and myths that La Llorona is a part of. In this picture of the stone at the base of Templo Mayor in Mexico City, she is a broken woman, beheaded and shattered to pieces, the work of her just-born brother. Wikipedia has decent versions of the stories of Coyolxauhqui, Coatlicue, and La llorona.

I decided to post this poem and this story today after reading two excellent posts yesterday about Lashaun Harris, a severely mentally ill woman who drowned her children and who faces execution for her crime. Dr. Omed's wife Elsbeth has a powerful personal essay about living with a manic-depressive, knowing a man who'd "sacrificed his arms to a train," and the possibility for mercy. And Phila at Bouphonia talks about Harris and the question of hearing voices. Of course Lashaun is a version of la llorona and Coyolxauhqui (she is certainly a broken woman), and sadly, her fate may be the same as the women of those legends. She may not die by her own hand, but rather by the groping hands of the state.

Why Astrology Works Better Than Therapy

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 04:38:42 GMT

Tonight I sit on my couch with a half-flamed fire in the fireplace, alone. I've just finished a thrown-together dinner -- simple sauteed pork chop, leftover black beans, sauteed white onions with tomatoes -- made from a handful of groceries I picked up just an hour ago at the Whole Foods on Ashland Avenue. I spent the day with my mom. Lunch at Flo, a little shopping at the shoe store next door, a trip up Milwaukee Avenue to Max Gerber to check out affordable kitchen sinks. Afterwards we went back to her place and made a couple of decaf cappuccinos before heading out to the Boyd Gallery on Wells for the opening of their newest show, a collection of square canvases by an Italian abstract painter. Painted on the canvases were different shades of the same color, like white and white and white or black and black and black or blue and blue and blue. All of the colors were in squares or rectangles and were differentiated by texture, not just tone, like rough and smooth and some with brush strokes and some with none. At the gallery I talked to several people about how much better free internet phoning is than any phoning that's not free and how hard it is to paint black oil enamel over kitchen cabinets and how, miraculously, one writer's house across the road from Delgado Community College got only an inch or two of water and no real damage at all. I don't know this writer. My writer friend whose house is close to Delgado got several feet of water, I found out today, which meant the loss of over 350 books. It was like losing 350 family photographs because each book had a story and a place and a time it was associated with, though most (not all) can be replaced, unlike photographs. He and his wife are in Santa Fe because they still can't live in their water-logged house, their house without those 350 books.

My mom and I were to meet her boyfriend Howard at the gallery then go to dinner. But when he got there, after I'd talked with those several people for an hour, maybe more, and when we left the gallery and were walking toward the car, I had this overwhelming desire to leave and get home to be alone. The last thing on earth I wanted to do, suddenly, was go out to dinner with the two of them.

So now here I am: alone on the couch with my half-flamed fire and my thrown-together dinner cooked from a handful of groceries I picked up at the Whole Foods on Ashland. It's one of the saddest ironies that depression brought upon by loneliness makes you want to be alone.

It's not that I didn't see my abrupt departure coming. All day I was grumpy. I was quick to tear up. Over lunch, I found myself weepy over our uncertain financial future, over the house, and mostly over the fact that I feel like my writing is going nowhere and even the blog I find no purpose in at all most days.

I am, again, completely irrational, and I know it. That should make me feel better, in theory, but instead it makes me feel worse. I ought to be able to do something about it if I can see it for what it is. This irrationality is cyclical, but it's not connected to the cycles of the moon or of the waves or even of the sun. It's not even connected to when I speak to S (though it most certainly is connected to the fact that he's in Afghanistan and not here next to me in front of this half-flamed fire). I talked to him this morning via Skype for fifteen minutes, maybe more, about the beastiality some of his ANA troops participated in this past week (and no, I'm not joking), about how he blinked and blinked while boxing a guy on base (it's been a few years since he last sparred), and how today was "Fuck Off Friday," the Afghan equivalent of our Sunday, a day of rest and of doing-whatever-you-damn-well-please. I talked to him this morning and still I spent the day feeling out of control and irrational. It's the cycles within my heart that move from deep in the crater and out again, over and over without end.

The insecurity over my writing came up when my mother told me she showed the post I wrote about nanotechnology and Carmen and green building and passion to Howard and how Howard had forwarded it to Chuck. Suddenly I felt a twinge of panic. Did I write something offensive? What the hell is wrong with me writing about people I know and posting it to a public blog? Even conversations? And, worse, why did I feel so betrayed when she told me this?

I've had a hard time being around my mom and Howard these past few weeks and I've tried to figure out why. I've wondered if I'm jealous or if I miss having my mother to myself. I've wondered if it is that when I'm with them, a couple, and without S, I'm therefore not a couple. I've wondered if it is that I'm sick of being around my mom's friends because I have no friends of my own here in Chicago after being gone so long, except for a couple who I hardly ever see and none of them are writers. In New Orleans I had friends, a lot of friends, and I had S. I had the poetry group and I had our roommate Rebecca, and I had S. Now New Orleans is a flooded wreck of what it was. The poetry group is scattered and I haven't even talked to any of them in weeks, and Rebecca is in Nigeria, and I haven't talked to her in weeks either. And, of course, S is still in Afghanistan, still away from me, and I know I feel his absence more acutely now because we spent those two weeks together and they were such good weeks. We're still not pregnant and we're still not parents. It's only the last two days that I haven't felt completely exhausted.

On my drive to my mom's place this afternoon I passed two trees on Lake Shore Drive that looked to have been dipped in red candy, the kind candied apples are dipped in. Just the leaves at the tops of the trees were red while the rest were still green. I didn't think there would be much fall color this year because our summer was so dry and so hot, but I was wrong. The city is goldenrod and ochre now with hints of chartreuse and crimson, though that is most rare. So many of the old trees have died the past decade -- oaks, elms, maples, hickories -- from foreign bugs and diseases, and they've been replaced with these thin-trunked Kentucky Coffees and others similar that have groups of petite, diamond-shaped leaves rather than the hand-sized, star-shaped leaves of the maples or the Dadaesque leaves of the elms. These new trees turn yellow and nothing else.

It is, I know, impossible to lessen this loneliness through activity because though I miss my friends and even that crawling, stinky city, I really only miss S. It's his absence that I feel most, and it's his absence that I can do absolutely nothing about. Which is why this loneliness is so irrational.

I'm writing every day. I'm applying for work. I'm getting the house together. I'm not exercising or meditating or doing yoga or any of the other things I know I should, but I am reading and I'm reading good books. I'm eating right and I'm trying to dress appropriately so I can avoid getting that deep chill I had last spring when I first came back from New Orleans, when I felt cold even if the temperature outside was in the upper 60s. I'm leading a workshop for NWA at a library in Uptown (it's all mine starting next week) and I'm writing, every day, even if I think it's all a bunch of crap. None of it seems to matter.

By the sliding glass doors at the Whole Foods on Ashland was a pink paper flyer: "Why Astrology Works Better Than Therapy." I'm not the only lonely heart in town, I guess. But tonight in front of this half-flamed fire that doesn't matter either.

Making sense out of senselessness

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 20:39:41 GMT

I think I'm finally getting a handle on my house situation, this place that has left me tired and obsessed for weeks. Today a contractor who worked for my mom and her neighbor came by and he can do both of my projects, hopefully for a reasonable price. What a relief. I can't wait. Meanwhile, I talked to my neighbor last night and she made an effort this morning to shuffle instead of stomp, to turn the television down to a low murmur instead of the usual carry-through-the-house volume. I still woke up when she did, but I was able to fall asleep for stretches which helped a lot. I'm really tired of being tired. It's hard to write when my mind is soggy with sleep.

Since it is Thursday, there are outrages and outrages though they could have come yesterday and more could come tomorrow since that is the state of things right now. Crooks and Liars has video from Keith Olbermann/NBC about a FEMA whistleblower who was inside the Superdome during the Katrina debacle. He blackberried our despot Mike Brown about the growing desperation of the situation only to receive a brief email from Brown's press secretary saying how important it was for Brown to get a good dinner and how the restaurants in Baton Rouge were packed with all the New Orleanians swirling about. So why exactly hasn't he been criminally charged and why hasn't Chertoff been fired? And why oh why hasn't Bush been impeached? I know. Stupid, living-in-a-dreamworld questions.

On Bill Maher's show last night Larry Miller (who was hilarious) wondered why anyone has been surprised by the corruption in New Orleans that Katrina exposed because "the concept of corruption is part of the fabric of the city." He said visitors weren't offered keys to the city because "it's always open," and so it is. Now we know it's not just New Orleans that is open to thieves and plunderers, but the federal government as well. Even open to horse and pony show operators aching for a pot of gumbo and a whiskey-sauced bread pudding for dessert on a steamy August evening in Baton Rouge.

Last night I watched Voices in Wartime, a documentary about poetry of war and the Poets Against the War movement prompted by an invitation Sam Hamill received from Laura Bush. I wonder if Laura knows how much she's helped the world of poetry in the United States by being such a dolt. She asked poets to join her for a symposium about Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Langston Hughes on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. What the hell did she expect? Apparently she hadn't actually read any of their work. If she had, she'd have noticed that they were rather progressively political poets, even Emily, and that if they were alive today they would have refused her invitation too.

The documentary isn't the best, but it is something. Later this month Occupation: Dreamland is playing at Facets Media Center. It sounds similar to Gunner Palace, though perhaps with more insight. The New York Times said it is"a compelling study of composure and decency in the midst of overwhelming pointlessness," which could describe so much of the absurdity this administration has produced as good-hearted, everyday Americans try to make sense out of senselessness in our wars abroad and here at home. Clif Hicks, Op Truth's newest Vet of the Week, tells his story of absurdity, and is it ever absurd:

My squadron lost three soldiers, one killed by an EID, the other two in a vehicle accident. They were riding in a humvee and a tank was coming down the road. Each vehicle had a headlight out and in the darkness they couldn't tell where the edge of the tank was. The two vehicles went right into each other and the tank killed them both...One of the duties my platoon was tasked with was to go around collective all sorts of information from local officials. We went to schools, water plants, gas stations, local police, etc. and had them fill out surveys and tell us what was going on and how we could help.

Well, during this time we were supposed to go around interviewing imams at all the local mosques. An 'imam' being the muslim equivalent of a christian preacher. The first imam we spoke to was murdered the next day. There had been a large crowd watching the whole thing as we did not enter the mosque for the interview. Well we went out the next day and interviewed two more imams in the same manner. They too were murdered the next day. I realized what was happening and told everyone what I thought. These men were being murdered by the insurgents for collaborating. I couldn't realize why, none of them were particularly cooperative, they were blatantly not happy about us being around their mosques, but they were killed just for speaking to us. We went out again several times that week with same results. Finally my lieutenant (a fresh fish butter bar just out of OBC) decided to tell our CO about this and these missions were put to a stop. The fifth imam was murdered that night.

Occasionally we would knock down a gate with a Bradley and raid a house, usually the wrong house, and when it was the right house the bad guys would already have caught wind of us and be long gone most of the time.

His story is a litany of pointless actions and an indictment of incompetence and foolish military hierarchy. He and his unit weren't allowed to eat in the KBR compound and were threatened with article 15s if they did, among other insanities. It is a really, really long list.

On a completely random note, Paula Zahn and CNN have just now discovered "cage fighting," the promoters' newest name for Mixed Martial Arts. When I first started kickboxing in the early 90s, an even younger kid at my gym who rode his skateboard everywhere and listened to Pink Floyd before every fight built an octagon in his mom's basement to grapple with friends. They used to compete in these "cage" matches held in bars and Catholic school gymnasiums. So Paula, "cage fighting" is nothing new.

Our Waterlogged Carousel, Spinning into Oblivion

Sat, 15 Oct 2005 18:03:00 GMT

How about war with Syria? Anyone? Anyone?

It seems we're already "engaged" on the Iraq/Syrian border:

A series of clashes in the last year between American and Syrian troops, including a prolonged firefight this summer that killed several Syrians, has raised the prospect that cross-border military operations may become a dangerous new front in the Iraq war, according to current and former military and government officials.

[...]

Some other current and former officials suggest that there already have been initial intelligence gathering operations by small clandestine Special Operations units inside Syria. Several senior administration officials said such special operations had not yet been conducted, although they did not dispute the notion that they were under consideration.

Whether they have already occurred or are still being planned, the goal of such operations is limited to singling out insurgents passing through Syria and do not appear to amount to an organized effort to punish or topple the Syrian government.

And you thought I was joking.

I know, I know. You're saying to yourself that we already have a shortage of troops in the overstretched military, that we're already spending billions that we don't have (and that we're borrowing from China) to sustain our ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the corporate pillaging in the Gulf Coast, and you're wondering how we can afford, in the fullest sense of that word, yet another war. And I say to you, have faith! Faith in our president and his leadership!! With God telling him what to do he will not lead us astray.

Is it just me or is it becoming increasingly difficult to write about politics? I feel like I write the same argument over and over again in response to the same outrageous actions by the administration, and nothing ever changes. It's as if we are on a carousel in the middle of the drowned Ninth Ward, fighting the waters slapping all around us just as the mad carnival operator operates the machine with a remote control high up in his Blackhawk enjoying every minute of our suffering. I read a comment today on another blog about how evil homosexuality is but how it's okay if the army turns their blind eyes from gay soldiers who have been activated for Iraq, even if those soldiers have been open about their homosexuality and therefore have violated the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Several commenters even said that gay soldiers fighting in a war zone are "patriotic" but that when they get back from their war service they should be "prosecuted" and given a dishonorable discharge because "their lifestyle is evil." There are still neanderthals out there that think this way.

And then there was the comment on Op Truth from a soldier who participated in Bush's Q&A the other day that was "outed" by the AP as being staged. The soldier said that he and the others weren't prodded at all, that they are firm supporters of the war in Iraq, and that they are "preserving YOUR freedom of speech." I have no doubt that this soldier, and probably the other nine who were handpicked by the military to talk to the president, is behind the war. And I have no doubt, too, that the vast majority of soldiers who are serving in Iraq are "for the war" when their superiors are standing next to them or behind the cameraman facing them, and that many remain supportive even when they get home and get the hell out of the military. This doesn't mean that tens of thousands of soldiers aren't against the war, but who can deny that many are for it? When they are trained to fight in wars and, especially the younger ones, are eager to 'test' their training in the field, it's not exactly a surprise. I also have no doubt that not a single soldier fighting in Iraq, not a single soldier who has died in Iraq or lost a limb in Iraq or lost his or her mind in Iraq, is or was "preserving" my freedom of speech.

The carousel spins and spins, waterlogged and rotten.

And speaking of the Ninth Ward and Lakeview and New Orleans East, apparently animal rescue workers are finding more dead than alive, except for the feral dogs roaming the streets and no doubt feasting on the corpses of their dead cousins and neighbors. I wonder how many of these wild dogs became wild the past month and a half and how many were already wild, members of the roving bands we'd encounter walking our dog down Carondelet and driving down Louisiana Avenue or even Napoleon. Sometimes the dogs still had their leashes attached. Many had remnants of collars, but many more had no leash, no collar. They were pure-bread dogs and mongrels, the females with fat nipples hanging down toward the ground, the males free to piss on every patch of "who" grass along the crackled sidewalks. They were sometimes intimidating, their free-spirit struts and power in numbers, and our dog Casey would breathe heavy until they passed or we made it home. The first pack of wild dogs we saw on our trip to New Orleans before deciding to move there, the same trip we heard from the real estate agent (who was, in theory, trying to sell us a house) that any house would "get flooded and get termites," and probably have to be shorred up, and the same trip where we saw then-mayor Marc Morial on our B+B room television set standing before a green-screened animated computer graphic of the city filling with water like a baby's bath tub under the spout, and telling us that the levees along the lake were certain to be breached and overflowed from even a category 4 hurricane. I remember S turned to me when we saw the dogs and said, "I feel like I'm in Mexico," and after Mayor Morial's half hour plea to get the hell out of the city if he tells you to, "We are definitely not buying a house down here."

One Saturday when we lived on Magazine Street near the "dog park" levee at the turn of the river, we encountered a yellow/brown dog hanging out at the gravel parking lot next to an abandoned, condemned shop. The dog was clearly abandoned too, and was making a home for himself in the upturned insides of the building that just a few days before had been torn apart by a drunk driving a pick-up (the driver had plowed into the building, scraping two cars parked there and barely missing ours, and then abandoned his car and fled. Since it was New Orleans, it took about two weeks for the truck to be removed and the wall to be patched up with plywood.) The dog wasn't quite feral yet when we first saw him. He accepted food and water from us and didn't growl. We called the humane society (the police didn't have a K-9 or animal control unit. At least that's what they said when I called.) and were told that it would take at least two weeks for someone to come for the dog because there were so many reports, always, of near-feral dogs and they were horribly understaffed. The man on the phone told me we had two options: feed the dog and hope for the best, that the dog could survive the two plus weeks it would take for a professional to collect him, or take the dog in. We couldn't do the latter -- our leaky apartment was already too small for my husband and I and our dog -- so we kept feeding the animal, but within a week he was gone, and I'm quite certain he wasn't picked up by SPCA. He just joined the others, leashed or not, to hunt for rats in the bushes and undergrowth of New Orleans, or take a spin on that waterlogged carousel.

So my cousin Bobby couldn't come up this weekend after all. He was offered a job he couldn't refuse. I'm completey excited for him and I don't mind waiting until S comes home to install our new kitchen. Bobby and his wife have started their own housebuilding business and they break ground on their first spec-house in just two weeks. They both have to keep their regular jobs -- with four kids between them they really have no choice -- and any extra income from overtime weekend jobs helps a lot. Oh well! I know "we can do that," and I don't much mind waiting. I've lived with this kitchen for six years, so what's a few more months?

This means that I can enjoy this beautiful fall day, though I'm not sure how I'll do that. S is stuck in Kabul for another couple of days, away from his cold-weather clothes and he's already sick. I'm sure the depression he's dealt with ever since landing back at Bagram doesn't help. He knows it's only a handful of months, but every day feels long and those months seem impossibly so. Hopefully he'll be able to call again today. For that reason I selfishly wish he could stay in Kabul, even if he was stuck for the next few months with the "mofrakies" he's dealing with there (or the "PX soldiers" as my cousin Bobby, a former Blackhawk pilot, calls them). It's so wonderful to hear his voice, even if it is crackled with static and delayed from its long travel up to space and back down again.

The Horrific Face of One-Party Rule

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:19:09 GMT

Bob Herbert, whose column is only available on-line through Time Select, nails it today by taking to task the "liberals" who are "no longer hopeful" that Bush will address poverty and race when dealing with the Katrina disaster. He questions how anyone could have believed a word Bush said in front of the cathedral at Jackson Square those weeks ago:

As the president spoke, it never occurred to me that anyone would buy into the notion that Mr. Bush and his supporters would actually do something about poverty and racism. Someone who believed that could probably be persuaded to make a bid on eBay to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

Mr. Bush is the standard-bearer par excellence of his party's efforts to redistribute the bounty of the U.S. from the bottom up, not the other way around. This is no longer a matter of dispute. Mr. Bush may not be the greatest commander in chief. And he may not be adept at sidestepping the land mines of language. ("I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here.") But if there's one thing the president has been good at, it has been funneling money to the rich. The suffering wrought by Katrina hasn't changed that at all.

As usual, Bob Herbert is right.

As I've said before, I think of the Bush administration's privatization schemes as a gangster-style money laundering system: take money from the people, filter it through government, then hand it out to corporations, all the time wearing the pastor's cloak to lend "legitimacy" to your actions. They are pillaging our country in the same fashion the PRI pillaged Mexico (and as it continues to today). Last week I heard on Chicago NPR's WorldView (an outstanding show, btw) that the US now ranks third in economic disparity and corruption, under Mexico (#1) and Russia. We are going through a dramatic "Mexicanization," which certainly doesn't bode well for our future seeing that Mexico is going through a transformation too, what Margarita calls "Colombiazacion," as the government is being taken over by drug cartels. Frankly, I don't see us too far away from that, it's just that our drug cartels don't peddle in heroin and cocaine but oil and other natural resources, including human beings.

The Chicago Tribune ran a series last week, "Pipeline to Peril," about KBR's subcontracting for third world labor in Iraq. The series focused on twelve Nepalese workers who were kidnapped and executed by insurgents on the road to Baghdad from Jordan. Most had been promised high-paying jobs in luxury Jordanian hotels by labor brokers who took $3,000+ brokerage fees from each of the men in exchange for the "opportunity." The average annual salary in Nepal is about $270, so the families of these men had to borrow a decade's worth of salaries (some at 36% interest) to pay the fee, only to have the men end up in Jordan and told there was no work there after all. It's a horrendous story and not so different from what is happening now in New Orleans, except the Ecuadorian men my friend Lisa met are still alive. Apparently, though, slavery (or at least indentured survitude) is making a come back wherever we're "rebuilding".

Like Herbert, I am shocked when anyone trusts anything Bush says. And frankly I'm insulted when a liberal claims to. When have Bush's words jived with his actions? Not once! Instead, it is nationalistic rhetoric laced with religiosity delivered on a patriotic, well-lit set, bleeding the language of all meaning through his repetitive use of a handful of words and phrases. Herbert calls the Bush cabal a "regime," which is more appropriate than "administration." Our one-party rule is becoming increasingly similar to those of other totalitarian regimes, which seems to suit the ruling party just fine. They see no disconnect between "democracy" and one-party rule. If Stalin had "state-capitalism," what do we have when the state funnels money from the people to well-connected corporations? Has such a monster been named yet?

I lost hope years ago that Bush et al would suddenly reform and see the light on any issue, let alone the important ones. He "took responsibility" for the government's negligent response to Katrina by acccepting Brownie's resignation then quickly turning a blind eye to Chertoff's hiring of Brownie as a consultant. Apparently Bush knows we are fools. A few mentions in a column or two, and then we're on to the next photo-op. He can do this without worry of ramifications because we are living in a state not so different from other totalitarian regimes where there are no real checks and balances. Last night MSNBC was back on Aruba. You'd have thought we'd left Iraq months ago and all was peaceful around the world, not that there had been more killed in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday, or that tens of thousands had been killed in an earthquake in Pakistan.

I'll say I was suckered the past couple of weeks into thinking our national attention had changed, that maybe, just maybe, enough people had woken up to the truth to force our news agencies and politicians to start talking about what's important. But perhaps optimism is an American trait, something given to me simply by this accident of birth. Clearly it is irrational in the face of this one-party rule.

I'm in the middle of kitchen redo preparations, which has left me with less time to write. I''ve posted an ad for the cabinets and I've cleaned out half of them. Today I clean out the rest. My cousin Bobby and his wife are coming up tomorrow evening and we get to work on Saturday. I'll post before and after pictures. We don't have all of the wall cabinets in yet (two are missing -- good for me, one of them wasn't in our plan, and since it was the designer's oversight, we don't have to pay for it!), but we have all of the floor cabinets, so I ought to have a working kitchen within a week or so. What an adventure.

I've already got another home improvement project in my sights. I have a new neighbor upstairs and she has no carpets. She gets up about 6 every morning, so now I do too. The sound is unbelievable. I hear the clickety-clack of her heels, of course, but also the opening and closing of drawers, the hyper patter of her yellow lab, the low murmur of her morning television fix. This place has very thin ceilings. I don't know how I'm going to fix it (or how we're going to afford it), but I'm going to start asking around seriously and see if I can get some material prices. Perhaps S and I can do it together next year when he's home. Right now he's at Camp Julien in Kabul which is being torn down now that the Canadians are moving out. He's living in a deconstructed base just as I'm living with a deconstructed kitchen! Soon he'll be returning to his fire base near the border and then it will be time to worry again...

Violence Erupts

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 03:44:43 GMT

The earth opened up in Pakistan and 20,000 or more are dead. First we offered $100,000 in aid, then we were shamed into giving $50 million, a substantial sum though only one-third of the $148 million we gave in military aid this year. (There is always money for guns and bullets, only less for bottled water and medical supplies). Right now hundreds of thousands of people are sleeping without shelter in a mountainous place that nurtures chilly winds this time of year. Doctors Without Borders has sent teams and supplies and they need our help.

Across the border in Afghanistan, five suicide bombers have blown themselves up in two weeks, a chinook has crashed, and another US soldier has been killed along the eastern border. Iraq is, perennially, Iraq, where every day brings more despair, more tragedy. Most Americans are against that war, but does it matter? The violence continues, more and more people die, more families are torn apart by the deaths of those they love and our president continues to offer empty platitudes, desperate calls for patriotism. He is trying to convince himself, no doubt, just as he is trying to convince us. Doesn't he know we already know the truth?

In Guatemala, the clouds erupted in a flood of tears, leaving hundreds buried in rivers of mud. This time last year the story was drought, showing that April does not own the market on cruelty.

Many of our water-soaked neighbors in Louisiana and Mississippi are still suffering on this Columbus Day, or Indigenous Peoples Day, including the United Houma Nation. Katrina and Rita left nearly 5,000 of their tribal members homeless and many others unable to inhabit their homes. Organizations like Veterans for Peace have been helping them, but not the Red Cross or FEMA, who has only worked with a handful of families so far. You can help them directly here.

On Democracy Now today, the United Houma Nation's Principal Chief, Brenda Dardar-Robichaux, talked about the troubles her tribe has faced these past five weeks and why Christopher Columbus, the Italian adventurer working for the Spanish crown who never set foot on the land that would become the US, should not be honored with a national holiday. "Let's face it," she said, "Columbus was a slave trader and an Indian killer...This shouldn't be a day of celebration, this should be a day of mourning."

And so it is.

Temper That Heart (the links are fixed!)

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:55:41 GMT

I've realized that I'm becoming angry again. I'm not surprised; I'm missing S badly and it seems when I do I lash out at those around me, even those I don't actually know. I've gotten snippy in comments on other blogs (not here, because my snippy comment to one wingnut was appropriate, thank you very much!), and that's not good. I need to find myself again. This afternoon I'm meeting with my former co-workers at the Neighborhood Writing Alliance. We're hoping to find a new location for a workshop that I'll facilitate. Their workshops are brilliant, really. They are free and open to all adults in the city. They're held in neighborhood locations that don't require much travel for the writers. They're based on the idea that "every person is a philosopher" and all work is valid. As a facilitator, I won't "teach" but rather make a safe place for everyone to share their poetry, prose, rants, snippets without fear of ridicule. Later, work by every writer who participates will be published in NWA's quarterly magazine, the Journal of Ordinary Thought, should they want to be published. This little magazine has won two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards (one when I was ED), going against well-known journals like Another Chicago Magazine and Rhino. And in support of this magazine and the workshop, our group will host readings that are free and open to the public, where writers can meet one another, exchange ideas, and share their work with family, friends, and strangers. Cool, huh?

As usual, there's some fine writing floating through cyberspace:

Sam at Feral on loss and laundry (beautiful);

Clayton at Operation Eden on Charity Hospital, New Orleans, and the "Third World version" of America;

Rob at Realtique on cleaning house, rescuing pets, and being harassed by NOPD;

Harry Connick, Jr. at Habitat for Humanity on humanely rebuilding New Orleans;

Yan at Glutter on dissent and censorship, American-style;

Joe the Heretik on the "Tragedy of the Real" in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan;

and a shout-out to Daniel at All the Kings Horses, whose name and writing I came across at n+1.

Last night I saw Bill Maher's Real Time and Salman Rushdie asked what the difference was between yellow and orange fear, the daily alerts put out by what Rushdie calls Bush's "Ministry of False Alarms." I was shocked to find myself agreeing with nearly everything Andrew "Sully" Sullivan said. Ann Coulter was on too, but really, is there anything to say about her that hasn't already been said? The fact that she's still invited to be on television shows all that's wrong with our country.

I need to erase her face from my memory if I'm ever to get past this angry phase. Temper that heart, girl!

Here and There

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 05:39:36 GMT

Last night I went to see Luna Negra Dance Theater's performance at Millennium Park featuring my friend Luis' backdrop for the world premiere of Quinceañera, a dance piece about the latin american coming-of-age party for girls on their fifteenth birthdays. The backdrop was beauitful: a lush sunshine dress with a fully opened rose around the waist, the folds and shadows reminding me of the pedals of Georgia O'Keeffe's desert flowers. Luis also created three stand-alone dresses that the dancers slinked up from behind at the beginning of the performance. Along with the Quinceañera piece, there were several others including one about Don Quixote that was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival last year and a fabulous piece called Flabbergast, where couples dressed in mid-century housedresses and ties with trousers moved among bead curtains carrying brightly-colored suitcases. Sometimes the suitcases overwhelmed the dancers, a clear visual metaphor for the difficulties of taking your life with you when you're forced for political or economic reasons to leave your home for a new place.

Just minutes before the show began my friend Lisa called from her home on Napoleon Avenue near Fountainbleu in Mid-City, New Orleans. This afternoon we finally got a chance to talk while she was taking a break from cleaning out her basement. Luckily the floodwaters missed the living area by inches, elevated as it is about eight feet above ground, but the basement was wrecked with debris smashed against the walls and mold crawling through the insulation. She and her roommate are staying with her sister in Metairie (which along with Kenner is coming back again) and driving into town to clean and assess every day. Before the storm, Lisa parked her truck in the neutral ground, the New Orleans name for the parkway separating the north-bound traffic from the south-, hoping that it would be spared. Normally it would have been. During Isidore and Ivan, the neutral grounds of many Uptown boulevards were safe because the waters only rose a feet or so. Of course this storm was different, and the water line on her truck comes just below the top of the vehicle. When she called her insurance company, they settled the claim over the phone based solely on her address. Knowing how much the neighborhood flooded was enough.

Lisa told me that today was a beautiful day in New Orleans, the temperature perfect and the full light of the sun shone down on them while they worked. In all directions, she told me, were piles of debris pushed in front of houses by the waters or stacked there this past week, waiting to be cleared. She drove around the city a little, where she was allowed, and said the place is essentially a ghost town. Most residents still haven't come back in, and it seemed the guard troops were driving out as Lisa was driving in, though she has seen a couple of humvees cruising down Claiborne Avenue.

Lisa's family is originally from Mexico. They moved to Texas several generations ago and then settled in New Orleans during the middle of the last century. Her father speaks Spanish though Lisa does not. This past week her dad met three men from Equador who had been brought over the Mexican/US border by coyotes trafficking in laborers to work in New Orleans. They were hired by a local meat shop owner who wanted them to clean out the coolers sick with rotten steak and chicken breasts, and repair the outside of the building. He told them to cook up some meat and take a couple of drinks from the shop when they asked for food and water, and they were locked in the shop to sleep. After several days of hard labor, the owner refused to pay them, telling them he would call immigration if they didn't work for free. That night after they'd labored for hours the men sneaked out and escaped and found themselves at a latin american market. Lisa's dad met them later and hired them to help them clean out his family's home.

During the eighteenth century New Orleans played a major part in the slave trade. Men and women stolen from their west African homelands were taken to the Caribbean, through the Gulf of Mexico to Veracruz, and then to New Orleans, where they were sold by the French then the Spanish then the French again (and then Americans) to wealthy landowners and homesteaders. New Orleans, "the city that care forgot," became one of the major slave trade ports just as it was home to the most free African-Americans in the country, who helped create a culture world-renowned for America's indigenous music, jazz, and our most distinctive indigenous cuisine. One of the neighborhoods badly flooded by Katrina was Faubourg Tremé, the birthplace of Louis Armstrong and home to the notorious Storyville. It is the oldest, continuous black neighborhood in the United States.

Lisa and I talked about how this one disaster has caused the displacement of so many New Orleanians, scattered as they are across the country (even in rural Arkansas), and how it has simultaneously brought displaced persons like these three men from Ecuador to New Orleans. How will New Orleans change in the coming months, years? When so many of its residents, new and old, are here and there?

I talked to S this morning and he was in somewhat better spirits. He had felt some of the earthquake that struck the Pakistan/India border yesterday, but he had no idea how tragic or devastating it was until I told him. Our conversation was typically short. Perhaps we'll be able to talk longer tomorrow.

A few good reads and links

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 03:35:29 GMT

As usual, a few good reads out there in the blogosphere these days:

Phila at Bouphonia lays out a pandemic flu scenario that is the stuff of nightmare. Sadly, he's probably not far off from what will happen should the avian flu spread and evolve to grotesque proportions. As if there weren't enough to worry about these days! Yikes.

If you missed poet Sharon Olds' letter to Laura Bush, read it here. She was invited to come to the White House and she refused.

Diane at DED Space points to another Katrina-related loss, the death of chef Austin Leslie. I shook his hand a few years ago at Jacques-Imo's. His fried chicken really was the very best. I bought his cookbook and S attempted the gumbo. First time he burned the roux, the second time didn't cook it enough. It's just a matter of time, though, before S masters it. I wonder how many were lost in the days after Katrina, killed indirectly by the stress and horrors of the storm. Leslie was rescued from his roof, taken to the Superdome, and finally evacuated out of Louisiana. It was clearly, sadly, too much.

Doc, marooned on the broken blog isle Sam has on her site, takes a cue from my master's thesis and improves on it: The Spiro site is now a State Park and closes before sunset, but I'd like to lie on my back on top of a mound on a clear night, to see their stars, and the spaces between their stars, the stars the long dead people mapped their myths on. Surely, some of our stars are the same, and some of our dark spaces, too. I feel honored to be honored by him.

Our president is now counting plots we've supposedly stopped, trying to distract us, again, from the reality all around us, as another soldier died in Iraq, making the total now 1945. I'm becoming so pessimistic these days, as the number goes up and our country continues to be governed by one incompetent party.

Daedalus at Washington Rox talks about surrealism and corporatism in an excellent post about the abstraction of war. S and I talked a bit about abstraction last week, though not in the political sense. He bought a copy of Claude Levi-Strauss' Myth and Meaning, a collection of addresses the structural anthropologist gave in the 1970s. I read it one afternoon and was struck by his dualist approach to myth and culture, and how he made no mention of the abstract nature of myth. I started thinking about myth as abstraction and how abstraction can be closer to "truth" than strict representations of "reality." Writers often talk about the truth of fiction, how it is through story that the heart is revealed. The same is true of abstract art, I think. A realistic painting of a bridge over the River Seine, say at twilight, shows the bridge and river as they appeared, but may not show the truth of the bridge and the river: the lovers who have crossed it; the blood that has spilled into it during the revolution, during everyday crimes; the salty tears that have added to its flowing waters; the joys and conversations and awkward silences that have happened in houseboats along the river's edges or on cruising boats as they passed under the changing light; all that has happened under the bridge, the scrapping up of foodstuffs by those who are sleeping there, the sharing of half-burned cigarette butts, or a stack of newspapers held down by a chipped-edged coffee cup. Through abstraction of color and shape, some of these truths can be revealed to us, even as they aren't shown representationally. To me, myth is no different than this. The most moving myths touch us in ways straightforward recantations cannot. Myths often have only a loose basis in "reality" but they often demonstrate more clearly the contradictions in life, the emotional renderings that are harder to show in strict historical accounts.

I'm not sure how this relates to the wars and the hurricane and our crooked leadership, but perhaps that is because right now we are in the documentation phase of history, too busy trying to record what is happening around us as it comes at us at this flushed, information-age pace. In the coming years we'll be translating it all through abstraction, revealing the truth hidden beneath the facts.

Katrina and the War on the Poor

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:55:49 GMT

First LBJ and then Reagan had the "War on Poverty," but we all saw it for what it was, a war on the poor. Twenty-five years later, and here we are with an ever-rising percentage of us living below the poverty line, tens of millions without health care, and all making a wage nowhere close to life-sustaining. It took a disaster of epic proportions, and the disturbing images that it produced, for us to start talking about poverty again. All over the place are little hints and discussions about the role of class and race in the mess left from Katrina, and what role both should play in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Seeing that NOLA is one of the most corrupt cities in the country, making even the corruption of Chicago pale in comparison (well, maybe not pale), and that it has long been run by and for elites (first white, now mixed with the "talented tenth" of the black creole population), it will be a miracle if the city included any of its tens of thousands of poor citizens in the decisions being hatched out over martini lunches right now.

Salon ran a two-part roundtable discussion on how to rebuild, and I thought this from Angela Glover Blackwell, the founder and CEO of PolicyLink, was a highlight:

The television coverage of Katrina's impact on New Orleans, for the first time, showed the American people the reality of black poverty in this country. The American people were shocked and embarrassed. The last time the country had a sustained glimpse into the conditions in black America was during the civil rights movement -- then, however, the cameras captured the determination of black leaders and the courage of the young civil rights workers. This time it was the face of black poverty directly. Despite some early attempts on the part of some media to turn the victims of the hurricane into lawless vandals, what the American people saw was individuals and families and community members, just like themselves, trying to do the best they could for their friends, relatives and neighbors. They saw children and the elderly suffering because of decades of neglect, not just days of neglect. For the first time they saw their fellow U.S. citizens and they were ashamed that such neglect could exist in the land of abundance.

The people of the United States responded with their dollars, but where is the vehicle to allow the American people to send their political will to Washington to demand that the country do something about persistent poverty? This is the big opportunity: to have a sustained conversation about the continuing causes of poverty, why it is still disproportionately concentrated among African-Americans, and what strategies can effectively reverse this trend and open up more opportunties for all.

This is the time to help the American people understand the unsustainability of current development patterns that promote vast investments in suburban communities while concentrating poor people in areas that are isolated from job opportunity, not well served by public transit, and defined by failing public schools and the absence of essential amenities like supermarkets.

The Nation this week ran a number of essays about New Orleans and the role of class as well, including a gem by Adolph Reed, Jr., one of our country's most eloquent writers on class and race. I'm reading his book Class Notes right now on recommendation from one of his friends who I know here in Chicago. Reed was born and raised in New Orleans:

I don't have space or words to catalogue the horrors and outrages associated with the plight of New Orleans and its people. In any event, the basic story is now well-known, and we're entering the stage at which further details mainly feed the voyeuristic sentimentalism that will help the momentarily startled corporate news media retreat gracefully to their more familiar role as court heralds. The bigger picture will disappear in the minutiae of timelines and discrete actions.

What will be lost is the central point that the destruction was not an "act of God." Nor was it simply the product of incompetence, lack of empathy or cronyism. Those exist in abundance, to be sure, but they are symptoms, not ultimate causes. What happened in New Orleans is the culmination of twenty-five years of disparagement of any idea of public responsibility; of a concerted effort--led by the right but as part of a bipartisan consensus--to reduce government's functions to enhancing plunder by corporations and the wealthy and punishing everyone else, undermining any notion of social solidarity.

[snip]

Natural disasters can magnify existing patterns of inequality. The people who were swept aside or simply overlooked in this catastrophe were the same ones who were already swept aside in a model of urban revitalization that, in New Orleans as everywhere else, is predicated on their removal. Their presence is treated as an eyesore, a retardant of property values, proof by definition that the spaces they occupy are underutilized. And it's not simply because they're black. They embody another, more specific category, the equivalent of what used to be known, in the heyday of racial taxonomy, as a "sub-race." They are a population against which others--blacks as well as whites--measure their own civic worth. Those who were the greatest victims of the disaster were invisible in preparation and response, just as they were the largely invisible, low-wage props supporting the tourism industry's mythos of New Orleans as the city of constant carnival. They enter public discussion only as a problem to be rectified or contained, never as subjects of political action with their own voices and needs. White elites fret about how best to move them out of the way; black elites ventriloquize them and smooth their removal.

Also in this week's Nation, Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenat ask 25 questions about the "murder" of New Orleans, and Naomi Klein calls for a "people's reconstruction." I don't have much hope at this point that the reconstruction will be mindful of class given how rents have already skyrocketed in the city, landlords are evicting tenants before they even return, and soaked-through houses are being gobbled up by hungry developers. It's sad, truly sad, that so many who were left behind when Katrina first stormed in are being left behind again, and will most likely continue to be. When I read Clayton Cubett's blog about his mother's loss, I thought of how many tens of thousands of others like her there are down in the Gulf Coast, and how most of them don't have a child or relative who is financially capable of helping them out.

I was struck by the lack of philanthropy in New Orleans when I first moved there three years ago. It was so different than Chicago, where though there is poverty and shameful segregation, there are also a lot of individuals and organizations commited to social change and working hard in neighborhoods across the city to make life better for the city's residents. When I first moved to New Orleans a close friend introduced me to two of her cousins, local socialites, because she thought they might be able to help me get a job in the non-profit sector. Before moving to New Orleans I was Executive Director of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance, a small community arts program in Chicago, and I wanted to stay in the same sort of job. They told me in very frank terms that New Orleans was about church and family and Mardi Gras, and that it was to those three areas that money went. Over the next three years I found out how true this was. There was money in New Orleans, no doubt. Dick Cheney came to town for a lunch before the election and raised $500,000 in an hour for David Vitter's successful senate campaign. But the money wasn't going into the communities that needed it the most, unless you count the aluminum doubloons made in China that were thrown out to the masses during the many days and nights of Mardi Gras.

The poverty was obvious in that city to anyone who lived there. I wrote about it the day the hurricane struck, thinking like so many others that New Orleans had once again been spared the worst. Reading over the note I sent to that prominent Sir back in the fifth grade, I thought how my grammar and spelling were better when I was "9 1/2 going on 10" than many of my college freshman students in New Orleans. It was heartwrenching and frustrating to see how low their level of skill was. They had so many interesting ideas, so many stories they wanted to tell, but they were crippled by their failed educations. (And it wasn't just the public school students, by the way.) Many had to take remedial English for several semesters (with no financial assistance) before they could take my freshman comp class. And many others failed my class, then failed again, trying to get to a basic level of competence. That level was far below what was expected of me when I was a freshman in high school (the students had to write a four-paragraph argumentative essay at the community college and a five-paragraph essay at the university). The class ended with a pass/fail exit exam that was neither administered nor graded by the instructors that determined whether the student passed out of freshman comp or had to take it again. Some of us instructors talked about how much cash the public university system was making off of this freshman comp business and how, perhaps, the elementary and high school system was kept at a lower level on purpose to create legions of low-wage workers unable to critically think (and therefore question their lot in the city) while simultaneously being sold the idea that they needed college educations to earn anything more than minimum wage, only to go to college and pay to take the same class over and over again because they were so lacking in skills. It seemed like a racket, and perhaps it was.

Part of me thinks that the evacuees I met in Houston are better off there -- their kids will get better educations, the parents higher-paying jobs. But the other part of me thinks this is a monumental failure of the city of New Orleans and its elites and they owe it to these residents to include them in the city this time around. I've never understood how some people can be so blindly selfish as to think that if they protect their own little corner of the world that's enough. Don't they realize that everyone benefits when everyone is taken care of?

In the Garden District, signs are posted on telephone poles declaring that the neighborhood is "Patrolled by Off-Duty NOPD." We lived on the northernmost edge of the Garden District Private Patrol route, which was fine with us since we heard gun shots nearly every night. (Not that the private patrol made any difference -- after all, we heard gun shots every night even with them rolling around in their Ford SUVs). The first time I saw that sign I thought how absurd it was -- why wouldn't the neighborhood be patrolled by on-duty NOPD? -- and how completely opposite it was to my hometown Chicago where you can't go a night or day without hearing sirens (this is a fortified city with 14,000 sworn officers) and where even in my working-class and immigrant neighborhood cops respond to calls within minutes. I got rear-ended on St. Charles one fall and called 911 to have a cop come by and write up a report. Several cops drove by and told us we had to wait for a "traffic cop" who, they promised, was "on the way." After a full five hours of waiting for the mythical "traffic cop" we drove ourselves to the police station on Magazine and Napoleon and got harangued by the lieutenant in his office lined with Rex posters about how we were supposed "to wait at the scene of the accident and not move the vehicles." It was infuriating, and we were two white women with out-of-state plates and on the main tourist drag outside of the Quarter. Imagine the lack of service in the 9th Ward.

Will New Orleans change for the better? I don't know. But if I still lived there I'd stock up on supplies and pretend I lived in the middle of nowhere with no prospect of governmental support. Because that's probably the way it will continue to be.

Operation Eden: One family's struggle after Katrina

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 16:22:55 GMT

Ray in Austin pointed to Operation Eden on his site and I followed it. What I found was a heartbreaking story of one family's struggle after their home and their community were destroyed by Katrina. Clayton James Cubitt is a successful professional photographer in New York who came from a "poorer than poor" family in the New Orleans area. For a week he agonized over whether his mother and young brother had lived through the storm, and since then he has documented their experiences in unbelievable photographs and expert prose. He purchased a trailer for his family in March, and now that trailer is gone. He is raising funds to rebuild his family's life by selling prints of some of his photographs (I've already purchased two: Katrina Gothic and Mary's Left). Take his advice: scroll to the bottom of his page and read the entire story, from the day before Katrina struck. It'll break your heart.

There are thousands still working down there, volutneering their time to help their neighbors. Michael Moore is documenting the work of Veterans for Peace and other groups affiliated with Cindy Sheehan as they distribute food, goods, and health care in Covington (a north shore community on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain from New Orleans). Talk about true peacemakers! Man, there are a lot of goodhearted people out there.

Last weekend we talked to one of S's former unit buddies who is a professor at a small university in southern Mississippi. He's still in the national guard (a PR unit) and he worked for a month along the devastated coast, taking pictures for the military and helping with the distribution of aid. He was able to travel all over the place, on land and in air. I'm going ot twist his arm a little and see if I can post some of his photos here. We'll see! His darling daughter drew that picture of me that's underneath the calendar on the right of this page. I hope he's not called up for Iraq. He's got a few years left on his contract. Frankly, they need the guard in Mississippi right now. There's so much left to do.

The Second Goodbye

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 22:10:13 GMT

I've been trying to get my mind back in order these past two days, still a little delirious from our two weeks together and the heavy days I've had since he left. It was so good to see him, to touch him. I hated saying goodbye to him again.

It turns out we were both apprehensive about seeing each other. I started to get nervous about it down in Houston, worrying that we would not know each other anymore, or worse that we would be irritated with one another after such a long absence. His flight was changed at the last minute so he ended up leaving Dallas later than he'd hoped. I was to pick him up near 11 p.m. instead of 8, and since it was a Friday night, there was crawling traffic around the airport made worse by late-night construction work. He'd told me I could get a pass and meet him at the gate, so I left the house early to get to the airport on time to get the pass. With the traffic, though, I missed that chance. I called him when his flight was supposed to land and left a harried message while my car idled near the exit for 294, still a mile or so away from the airport, then rolled down the windows and sighed. What the hell can you do.

I drifted to him waiting at the car pick-up area at Terminal 1, a dead-end traffic-wise. He put his bags in the back seat, sat down in the front. I burst into tears. We hugged and kissed and the light from the bug-juiced overheads streamed inside, surrounded him, made me cry more. He was in the car with me. Right there! It took a couple of minutes before I could drive us home, a couple of pets on his shoulders, his arms, his legs. A brush of my lips against his cheek. It was too much, finally seeing him, touching him. It had been more than seven months, and really two more before that when we'd said our first goodbye. I'd driven him to a buddy's house in the south suburbs, a mid-century ranch with a large American flag pinned to the garage door, a handful of smaller flags stuck in the frozen lawn around the walkway, and helped him load up the van for the drive to Indiana to catch a bus for Ft. Hood. It was a blinding-bright day, deeply cold. The sun's shadows were long and black, each bare hickory and oak cast across the salt-rimmed frontage roads as Brancusi sculptures. I hated that drive home.

When I drove away from S in Ft. Hood two months later it didn't feel as final as it had that day in Chicago. I wasn't driving home alone to an empty house but rather back to Austin to check in my car and fly away. (Perhaps it was that sense of false goodbye I wanted to preserve these past months, traveling as I have.) I have only a few solid memories of Kileen, Texas, those days were so blurred with worry and so intense. There were the crashed cars at the fort's entrances with LCD signs giving how many days since the last person was killed in a crash ("13 Days," "16 Days," then back to "0 Days"); the tanks and anti-aircraft guns sprinkled in front of dusty brown administration buildings and barracks, the 1st Calvary's and 4th Infantry's very own sculpture gardens; Hell on Wheels Avenue, Tank Destroyer Boulevard; the cardboard tents set up on tables in the PX advertising life insurance -- at a special Military price, of course! -- and the hollow-eyed men quietly eating pulled pork sandwiches and pepperoni pizza together, or alone; the tent-covered book sale outside the PX, where soldiers could buy, at a discount of course, romance novels, self-help books, and countless versions of the illustrated Bible; the internet cafe run by a middle-aged Vietnamese woman in a strip mall near tattoo parlors and pawn shops, and her stories of buying homes, renovating them, and selling them again; the screaming "We Support Our Troops!" banners hanging in the windows of competing car dealerships that sold brand new cars at high interest rates to young boys before they flew off to Kuwait and then to war; the check-in den at the mouth of the fort, not so different than a check-in den at a prison or jail, with every "visitor" required to show ID and car registration after taking a number and sitting and waiting, waiting to prove who they were to the tired bureaucrats behind the counter (I went in once and there was no one in line so I went straight to the counter. The man told me to take a number -- "we have a procedure" -- and to wait my turn, which was, surprise, next.); the "welcome home" messages outside the cav's staging area made out of green and red and blue and white plastic cups stuffed in chain-link fence pockets; the boy-young soldier with a prosthetic where his right forearm and hand used to be, shopping in the Target off the frontage road; and the mass of blackbirds howling at dusk in the squat tree across the road from my pasty room at the Super 8.

We drove home from the airport and it was a warm Chicago summer night, and when we got home he told me stories he'd stored for the past seven months, then I told him how I needed him to write me more while he's gone. We got it out, then made love and made love again, and filled ourselves with each other so much so that when I discovered yesterday that I'm not pregnant, again, I was more puzzled than sad. How could I not be when it was so intense, so true? (I already know the answer to that.) By our third day together we both said "It's as if I/you never left," and went on to just be together, again and again, day after day, as if there was no war and no hurricane and no political turmoil. We talked about our dog Casey and how silly and adorable he was. We went to silly movies and S baked three apple pies (he is the best baker I've ever known -- better crusts than my mom's or my grandmother's, which, honestly, were the best crusts ever baked, ever, before S started baking them). We both gained a few happy pounds, made every bite count as we filled up with that luscious goodness.

Saturday night we stayed up late getting his stuff packed. We stuffed four pairs of boxing gloves, thai leg kick pads, focus mitts, hand wraps, and a pair of five-ounce Harbingers into his green duffle, then topped it off with his shower sandals and a couple of mud brown towels. The rest of his gear he crammed into his sandy backpack, including one newly cleaned and pressed uniform, a little scruffy at the seams from river-stone washings and life in the harsh mountains. The next morning we rose early, stopped at the coffe shop to get a couple of lattes, drove to the airport and parked the car on White Sox, 3rd level, 3rd aisle, and I wondered out loud why the parking czars would have levels and aisles both numbered, not one with letters instead. He got to check in at the special "group" check-in, which on first glance seemed to be a shorter line but was in fact as long as the others. I was issued a special pass to go with him to the gate, then we went through security, and since S is a soldier he is also a potential terrorist, so they searched him and his gear, rubbed his hands to test for bomb-making residue, then confiscated his beard-trimming scissors. The TSA man felt bad, really, then threw the scissors in the trash. S told me that he was searched extensively on the way to Chicago too, and he said he resented being treated like a terrorist when he's fighting in this supposed "war on terror." "They treat us like kids," he said, "and fucking criminals."

We roamed the United terminal, reminiscing about all of the flights we missed in the late 90s when that airline was so greedy they booked flights they had no intention of flying, and when the customer service lines stretched the length of the terminal in either direction (and if you've been to O'Hare, you know just how lengthy that is) filled with irate customers trying to get home. We stood around and held hands and made small talk. It's impossible to have a real conversation when you know it is going to be interrupted sometime soon with that call, "All rows are now boarding." I walked away when he handed his ticket to the check-in woman. I knew he wouldn't look back -- it's not his way -- and I didn't want to see him walk away from me down the aluminum tube to his plane. I follwed the signs out of the airport and found my car and drove home, where I stayed holed up until last night. I cooked an omelette, watched foolish shows on television and pretended to read "Massacre of the Dreamers," a collection of essays by Ana Castillo. In reality, though, I flipped through the pages, my eyes glossed over, and glanced up at the TV which may as well have been showing snowy static. That night just disappeared.

I have finally emerged, quicker this second time. The first time I stayed in my house for three days straight, only tumbling out to walk our sickly dog. I cleared our cabinets of canned goods that week and watched Sex and the City, the entire series, straight through. I feel like I've come a long way since then, seeing that my time-of-distraction was only a little more than 24 hours after this latest goodbye.

I know we're at the shorter end of this mess now. We don't think he'll be gone longer than five more months, so the worst is behind us. But I still miss him. I still worry. I can't wait to see him again and know, finally, that there will not be a third goodbye. Some, like my friends Daniel and Zach, have no idea when their last goodbyes will be. The army will not let them go. They've served tour after tour, their contracts long ago expired, and their families ache for them just as I ache for S. It's a travesty.

Here are S and Casey standing below a Live Oak at Audubon Park, New Orleans last December. The picture at the top of the post is from Ireland soon after we married six years ago.

The slow trickle of the truth

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 23:28:14 GMT

So here it is, almost exactly one month after Katrina roared into New Orleans, and the police chief has quit, and the rumors of violence that fueled so much of the racist-tinged discussions during those darker days have been proven false:

That the nation's front-line emergency management believed the body count would resemble that of a bloody battle in a war is but one of scores of examples of myths about the Dome and the Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials, including the mayor and police superintendent. As the fog of warlike conditions in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has cleared, the vast majority of reported atrocities committed by evacuees have turned out to be false, or at least unsupported by any evidence, according to key military, law enforcement, medical and civilian officials in positions to know.

"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. ... Ninety-nine percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."

The AP is covering the story today, but they are still perpetuating the myth that the National Guard soldier shot in the Dome was shot during a fight for his gun, when actually the attacker was not going for his gun at all, and the soldier shot himself in the leg during a moment of chaos.

Why do these corrections matter? Because still there is a stigma, an expectation, of crime and violence from the thousands and thousands of New Orleans evacuees who are poor and black. When I was in Houston there was talk of the "sky-rocketing" crime since the evacuees came into town, and rumors of looting when New Orleanians were seen walking out of Target with shopping bags. The speakers may not have said "black evacuees" but it was understood that was who they were talking about.

And shock and surprise, FEMA continues to bungle up their efforts, now just west of New Orleans in Beaumont, Texas:

County Judge Carl Griffith said today he has become so frustrated with the federal relief effort that he has instructed all local officials to use police force if they have to to take supplies from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"If you have enough policemen to take it from them, take it," Griffith said.

If they "steal" from FEMA will they be looters? Or heroes? Perhaps it will depend on their skin color.

S and I are enjoying our last few days together before he flies to Dallas this Sunday and then to wherever (the list of stops will be long, that's certain), and then finally back to Afghanistan. Our "tasting" dinner at Alinea was spectacular, but it was also breathtakingly expensive. Too much to even admit to spending on one meal. It must be the most expensive restaurant in this city, and probably one of the most expensive in the entire country. Oh well!! Too expensive for us is clearly not too expensive for many, many others. Two couples seated near us fly in from Philly once a month just to eat there. All of the tables were full. The couple sitting right next to us were celebrating their sixth anniversary too, but they were smart enough to have a simple glass of wine each and not indulge in the wine tasting option, a steady trail of fifth-filled glasses to go with each of the forteen courses (and we chose the "middle" tasting menu -- the largest has twenty-eight courses and was a "serious commitment" according to our waiter). We were in food- and drink-induced funks yesterday and literally didn't leave the house. We started moving about in the afternoon and cooked dinner, curled up again, and watched the first half of Scorsese's documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home.

Today we've spent hours running errands to prepare for S's trip back, and fuming at the radio as we heard the maddening testimony of Mr. Brown who has decided, suprisingly of course, that the failures in New Orleans were the fault of everyone involved except him. According to Raw Story (via Salon), he's been hired by FEMA as a consultant, which makes sense in Bush World and absolutely no sense here in reality. It's just so maddening!

And in Iraq? We've killed the number two guy, again (doesn't the story sound familiar?), and still more soldiers are being killed, more Iraqis forced to live under constant threat of death (and forced to see their friends and neighbors killed). As for this, I hope it's not true:

In Karrada this summer, Mohammed and the neighborhood watched as American soldiers on patrol grew irritated at an Iraqi who had left his car in the street to run inside a store on an errand, blocking their armored convoy.

The Americans took one of the empty plastic water bottles they use to relieve themselves when on patrol, Mohammed said. When the Iraqi driver ran out to move his car, an annoyed American plunked him with the newly filled bottle and rolled on, Mohammed said.

But it wouldn't be surprising if it were true. This is what can happen when limits are pressed, when there is no end in sight to deployments let alone the war. Who knows what Bush's goals actually are for Iraq, how those goals will be achieved or when. He's not offering squat and neither is anyone else with even a smear of power. S had an excellent idea about it today, though. He says we should build democracy at the local level first, then let the government grow upwards from those local elected governments. As each locality was secured and governed, our troops could leave, eventually leaving the country all together. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately!) S is a peon (self-described) and no one gives a damn what he thinks. Still, it was nice to hear an actual idea today, nicer still that it was such a good idea.

If you weren't able to go to the massive peace march on Saturday in DC, check out Matt's reporting. He's got pictures. Cool pictures. Rock on, Matt.

Why, it's our anniversary!

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 22:44:41 GMT

Today is our sixth anniversary. How fortunate that S is home right now, and how wonderful! Tonight we are going to a new restaurant that is supposed to be spectacular, Alinea, for a very late dinner. We couldn't get a reservation until 9. Last year we were living in New Orleans and spent our anniversary at Le Pavillon, a classic hotel that serves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hot coco in the lobby late into the night, and had dinner at the world famous Galatoire's in the Quarter. The food was, well, okay, but the atmosphere! My god. Really, everyone who visits New Orleans ought to go there once. Hopefully one day both the hotel and the restaurant will again serve eager guests in the top-notch way they have for over a century.

We've been doing all the things we love to do together (some too secret to write in a blog - ha!) and having loads of fun doing them. Yesterday we saw Penn State, one of S's alma maters, beat Northwestern 34-29. It was all the more sweet because as an alum of U of I, I love ot see Northwestern beaten by any team at all, and because the game was full of late-quarter drama with the Lions squeaking out a victory in the last ten minutes or so. Plus it was one of those dreary early fall days, not to cold, with the threat of rain all afternoon. Lucky for us the sky didn't open up until we were waiting in line for the shuttle bus back to downtown Evanston. And Penn State won! Did I mention that already?

Friday night we went to the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum and hooked up with our friend Luis who had a piece in their exhibit in honor of Carlos Chavez, a Chicago artist and activist who died last year. Afterwards, we went to Flo for delicious nouveau Mexican. The place is owned by a couple of local artists who we know by a degree or two of separation. It's intimate and fun and the food is fab (plus it's definitely in our budget). The joy never ends.

Here's S in front of the score board. Ah, sweet victory.

Here's Luis next to his piece. Unfortunately, the museum didn't hang it on the wall, so it was hard to see that on the front of the doors there were also images, skeletons of the coyotes painted on the inside. Luis is a talented artist whose work connects the contemporary Mexican-American experience with the culture of pre-Colombian Mexico and modern politics. He's got a number of interesting projects going on right now. I'll post about them as they come along.

Friday Baja Blogging

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 23:39:53 GMT

If only Rita could produce such beautiful and gentle waves. Instead, some have already died and the worst has come to pass in New Orleans, again. The only good news is Rita is weakening and most people have gotten away from the coasts, hopefully to areas that won't be subjected to the storm's land-locked watershed the experts predict will come in the days after. I think the weather-worry is that much worse since we now know (and many of us have known) that we have failed leadership, an atmosphere that compounds disaster again and again.

S and I are having a wonderful time together, though neither of us can stay away from the thrice-daily hurricane updates. In between though, we have gone to some of our favorite eating places, seen The Corpse Bride (wow!) and tonight we're headed to the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum for the opening of their Día de los muertos exhibit. A friend of ours, Luis De La Torre, has a piece in the show.

Our friends are safe -- most still scattered across the country after being left homeless after Katrina -- and hopefully Rita will drift away from the most populated places. And this weekend is a massive protest against the Iraq War. (We'll be there in spirit.) If you've not seen it yet, check out Phil Donahue's mop-up job on the O'Reilly Factor. It's almost enough to give me hope.

So we wear long pants

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 23:58:10 GMT

I took this photo of the Stables Restaurant in Houston a couple of weeks ago when I was down there with Rebecca volunteeering at Reliant Park. The sign said "So we wear long pants," a complete puzzle to me like the billboard we passed earlier that day asking Houstonians to report "Smoking Vehicles." I asked Rebecca if it got so hot there cars would spontaneously combust. She laughed and told me that, no, it didn't get that hot, and that "smoking car" was what the locals called cars that let loose nasty exhaust from their tailpipes. The pant leg thing was about cowboys, Rebecca thought, because they don't wear shorts. They're so tough they gotta wear pants!

I called Rebecca today and talked to her dad who said they were headed north to a cousin's ranch to ride out Rita. Rebecca wasn't home, so I didn't get to find out what's happened to Steve and Johnie and Larry, if they were also evacuating for a second time in less than a month. I'm not as worried about Houston, perhaps naively, because they have so many more resources and stronger infrastructure than New Orleans. I expect they'll be able to get residents out or at least to proper shelter. All new construction since the late 80s (early 90s? I don't remember) have been required to withstand strong hurricane winds. And, of course, we should expect FEMA to finally act like a federal agency with limitless resources now that they've been shamed, rightly, by their criminally negligent behavior after Katrina. We can't expect anything more from Bush, naturally, and that's why he is still busy resting up from his hard work spreading chaos and disaster around the world instead of actually paying attention to what's going on in our country.

The numbers keep getting grimmer in Iraq. Afghanistan is on the national radar for a moment, with the recent election and Karzai's call to have the ANA in charge of all major military operations. S has talked about how already the Ministry of Defense is in charge of ANA operations (and the American ETT soldiers accompanying them), which has been a disaster because most of the ANA officers bought their status with bribes and have little or no actual military leadership experience. This is made worse because many of the American officers are only slightly more competent and are nearly always disconnected from the reality on the ground. The ANA colonels and generals tell their American counterparts how competent and brave they are over tea (they are known for braggadoccio), and the Americans don't bother to check it out to see if what they're saying is true, leading to ANA/ETT missions without maps, plans, or logistical support, clearly a recipe for disaster. The Afghans' incompetence (along with the incompetence of many of the American officers) has led to the deaths of Afghan soldiers and the endangerment of the American ETT soldiers who work with them.

Soon (only months from now! yea!), S will be able to write about all of this and in particular the egregious incompetence of much of the national guard leadership in Afghanistan. The national guard has been in charge of the last three rotations of ETTs, in theory one of the two most important jobs (along with finding al Qaeda members) in Afghanistan. If we are ever to leave Afghanistan, they have to have a competent, cohesive national army, and that is what the ETTs are in charge of creating. Right now the ETTs are still considered an afterthought, just as the plan-less missions some of them are being sent off on are dismissed by the higher-ups too. At this very moment, one of S's friends, an officer he worked with the first six months he was over there, is trying to find his way through an unexplored province with no map, no plan, and no logistical support, with only one other American and a platoon of Afghan soldiers with him. The American colonels said the Afghans were in charge, and didn't bother to look over the ANA's order. If they had, they'd have discovered it was a one-line mission followed by a blank piece of paper, giving the men nothing to go on but their own intelligence. More evidence of that great support we're giving our troops.

It's wonderful to talk about this somewhat in the abstract, only possible because S is right here next to me on the couch, working on his own iBook. We're having so much fun together it's hard to articulate the pure joy I'm feeling these days. I'm so happy he's home, even if it is only for a couple of short weeks. I'm so lucky!

Bush's banana republicanism and S's homecoming

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 18:31:55 GMT

Jackson Square is the center of the French Quarter. Tarot card and palm readers are usually set up on the pedestrian ways on the side of the square, with mimes and street performers sprinkled between them along with a handful of artists selling prints of Quarter scenes. The Quarter represents New Orleans to most Americans, though when I lived there I went to the Quarter infrequently, and when I did it was usually to eat at a specific restaurant or to go the market. The heart of the city was out in the neighborhoods where there were fewer tourists and more day-to-day living, where a tuba player might walk down the street playing his horn while a handful of uniformed school children made their way home at the end of the day.

Last night Bush chose to give his speech at Jackson Square in the heart of the only New Orleans he knows, a place he spent forgotten time during his long, cloudy days of alcohol and drug abuse. From his speech, we learned that Bush is still capable of reading a speech someone else wrote and that Jackson Square sustained no visible damage. That's good.

My maternal grandmother Marceline used to say "the proof is in the pudding," and when it comes to Bush's endless promises gift-boxed in righteous rhetoric, his words are meaningless until his actions rise up to them. So far, there's been no pudding, only rotten leftovers here at home and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm sure his speech worked for many who don't seem to mind when his actions mismatch his rhetoric so profoundly. Bush's numbers will rise again, and Rove will be triumphant once again, secure in the president's popularity and giving Rove the time and energy to devote to his new project, the rebuilding of New Orleans. It's a sick joke, really, having Karl Rove, a political opportunist and manipulator and nothing more, in charge of the most massive rebuilding effort since FDR's New Deal. Considering how hostile Bush and his crew are to government (in terms of service, not in terms of budget -- they have grown the largest, most inept government in our nation's history, spending trillions and getting only chaos in return), I think it's fair to say Rove will fail just as his boss has failed time and time again.

Yes, Bush has taken "responsibility." But what does that matter? What are the consequences of Bush taking responsibility? Will he fire Chertoff? Remove FEMA from the National Security umbrella, and appoint actual emergency management experts as the directors of both agencies? Will he order an independent investigation, and courageously acknowledge that such an investigation might find him most at fault?

Frankly, I have no tolerance for excuses or his words words words. Too much has come to pass. He has failed on so many levels, for so many years now, that I trust nothing he says and expect nothing but more failures. Bush is a corrupt, greedy liar whose policies have caused the deaths of thousands here and elsewhere. His only interest is in enriching corporate interests (and that goes for corporate churches, too). Considering that Halliburton has already received the first rebuilding contract, and we already know that they are a corrupt corporation that cheats the government at every opportunity, it is pie-in-the-sky foolishness to expect anything other than our continued swift spiral downward to the bottom levels of banana republicanism.

Iraq is in a civil war. In Afghanistan, a seventh candidate has been shot dead. Louisiana and Mississippi were already bastions of corruption and cronyism, which means things will only get worse with Halliburton in town. And tens of thousands of Americans are still stuck in shelters, some ineptly run, with no hope in sight for a future away from our toxic policies.

There are no excuses for such failed governance. Bush should be impeached. I think Nagin should be fired, too, and while we're at it, why not fire Blanco. I think she and Nagin are at significantly less fault than Bush, but they are still at fault. The entire government, on all levels, failed the people of New Orleans, and there is no reason to think they will be capable of rebuilding the city in the thoughtful manner we need right now. Blanco and Nagin were inheritors of a tradition in Louisiana of catering to the few wealthy residents at the expense of the many not-wealthy residents. The "talented tenth" of the African-American community ruled New Orleans just as the white political families rule the state. They all have had narrow interests and I doubt that will change now. In terms of the federal government, there is no reason to think that an administration who has said they are "rebuilding" Iraq while deconstructing it and throwing it deeper into chaos can do any better in New Orleans, a disaster that was made worse by their ineptitude and negligence.

I continue to be shocked and dismayed that so many Americans are comfortable with our shift toward fascism. On my brighter days I think it is ignorance that is driving so many to continue to support this disaster of an administration, but on my darker days I think it is greed and selfishness and false patriotism. The future is always uncertain, but sometimes it is at least bright. Now it's not so bright at all.

Yesterday I had lunch with two New Orleans friends who are up here staying with their folks in the suburbs. They are engaged, Dave and Dianne, and Dianne is from England so she is not eligible for FEMA assistance. The whole thing has been incredibly hard on her. She has been depressed and anxious, aggravated by living with her future in-laws, of course. Their car is floating somewhere in New Orleans, so they took the train in from Dave's parents' house thirty miles away, then I picked them up and we went to Devon Avenue for a delicious Indian lunch. After, I drove them to the Red Cross down at Racine and Roosevelt, a community center surrounded by our city's newest incarnation of public housing. I just got an email from Dianne and it seems the Red Cross was extremely helpful, giving her a debit card with over $600 to help them the coming weeks. They bought plane tickets back to New Orleans for next Friday. They don't know if they'll be able to stay at all (probably not), but they should be able to get into their apartment and collect some of their belongings, and if by chance the car hasn't floated away, they'll take a road trip to Houston or somewhere else and sleep on someone else's couch. I know so many nomads, and they are the lucky ones, people with family and friends and resources. Imagine all who aren't so lucky.

Tonight my darling S comes home for his 15 days. He gets in after 8 p.m after traveling for more than 48 hours: Baghram to Kuwait, Kuwait to Germany, Germany to Dallas, Dallas to Chicago. He called from Kuwait yesterday morning to tell me what flight he will be coming in on and to tell me how he had been stuck there for hours, waiting and waiting. I've been a crafty beaver around the house since I returned from Houston, hanging curtains in the living room, straightening up and doing a deep clean. I've been on the road for months now, leaving the place to the peculiar dust the city produces and sends floating down around us. The weather has cooled off here. The trees are losing their leaves, though not from fall color. They are starved for water and their leaves are turning brown in patches. We had a sprinkle last night. What we need, though, are days and days of soaking rain.

I don't know how much I will post the coming two weeks. I suspect I'll continue to write fairly frequently, now with S seated next to me on the couch, he on his ibook, me on mine. I know he's got a lot of writing to do himself, from sending emails to the miriad of friends who he's not had time to write, to the grants he needs to look into for his fieldwork in Mexico next year. There will be a time after this war for him, we hope. I have no idea what he will want to do the next two weeks. Our kitchen cabinets arrived and I'm going to store them here in our place. Who knows. He gets antsy after a few days of not doing much, usually. This is a different situation, though, so maybe he'll want to just hang around and not do or think too much. I'm flexible.

I'll try to post a few homecoming pictures tomorrow. I can't believe this day has finally come. It's been seven months since I saw him last, and nine since he left our house. So much time has passed. It's crazy.

The possibility of malice and the reality of humanity

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 06:20:31 GMT

"Thinking of you in our time of greed...Halliburton."
(One of Bill Maher's "greeting cards" on Real Time tonight)

Since Bush has finally accepted responsibility for his administration's criminally negligent response to Katrina, and since we still don't know if his acceptance will have any consequences, here's some evidence that it was not just incompetence that led to the compounded disaster but lack of political will, or worse, malice:

Mel Brooks once said, "it's good to be king." Well when it comes to hurricanes, it's even better being the President's brother. Especially in a vital swing state. In an election year. Louisiana's Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco is learning that the hard way. While her state suffered through a disastrous, disorganized and delayed response to Katrina from FEMA and the Bush administration, Florida governor Jeb Bush had no such problems as his state weathered four hurricanes in 2004.

Go ahead and read the rest. It's detailed. And it's damning. (via Dave Pollard)

And if you're still debating whether or not New Orleans was exceptionally bad in the crime department, here's a first-hand account of how many New Orleanians behaved exceptionally well, coming to the aid of others at the risk of their own safety:

I will not mince words. This was in a really rough neighborhood and we came across five seemingly unsavory characters. One had scars from what seemed to be gunshot wounds. We found these guys at a two-story recreational complex, one of the only two-story buildings in the neighborhood. They broke into the center and tried to rustle as many people as possible from the neighborhood into the center. These guys stayed outside in the center all day, getting everyone out of the rec center onto boats. We approached them at approximately 6:30 p.m., obviously one of the last trips of the day, and they sent us further into the neighborhood to get more people out of homes and off rooftops instead of getting on themselves. This at the risk of their not getting out and having to stay in the water for an undetermined (you have to understand the uncertainly that all of the people in these accounts faced without having any info on the rescue efforts, how far or deep the flooding was, or where to go if they want to swim or walk out) amount of time. These five guys were on the last boat out of the neighborhood at sundown. They were incredibly grateful, mentioned numerous times 'God is going to bless y'all for this'. When we got them to the dock, they offered us an Allen Iverson jersey off of one of their backs as a gesture of gratitude, which was literally probably the most valuable possession among them all. Obviously, we declined, but I remain tremendously impacted by this gesture.

I don't know what to do with all of this, but I think we need to get this story out. Some of what is being portrayed among the media is happening and is terrible, but it is among a very small group of people, not the majority. They make it seem like New Orleans has somehow taken the atmosphere of the mobs in Mogadishu portrayed in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down," which is making volunteers (including us) more hesitant and rescue attempts more difficult. As a result, people are dying. My family has been volunteering at the shelters here in Houma and can count on one hand the number of people among thousands who have not said "Thank You." or "God Bless You." Their lives shattered and families torn apart, gracious just to have us serve them beans and rice.

This was written by Robert LeBlanc, a friend of Interdictor, a livejournal blogger who has stayed in New Orleans throughout the storm and aftermath. LeBlanc stayed too, and he's been rescuing people from their rooftops and flooded homes for nearly two weeks now. He is a true bona fide hero. He is also a self-described conservative. Read his entire entry, then go read what Interdictor has been writing about the past two weeks. His entries are important.

Rebecca and I had a similar experience with thankfulness in the face of hardship that night at the Reliant Center when a group of men who had cared for Louis grabbed our hands and took us into their prayer circle. They gave thanks for so many things, saying over and over again how lucky they were. All of you who read this blog know I am not a religious person in the slightest, and though Rebecca is spiritual, she's not exactly a garden-variety church goer. It wasn't the religious gesture that moved us. It was the fact that people who had lost so much could be so grateful. One of the men we had talked to earlier who, like Louis, was separated from his entire family, still didn't know if his loved ones were alive or dead, but he stood there and gave thanks for shelter, food, and life itself.

We are actually not so different, y'all. That realization is enough to keep us going, even as our administration divides us up by political donations, spoiling some and starving the rest.

Our slippery days at the beginning of the end of the American Empire

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 01:56:11 GMT

You will emerge from the flood
In which we have gone under
Remember
When you speak of our failings
The dark times too
Which you have escaped.

(from "To Those Born Later" by Bertolt Brecht)

"They didn't have to die", the coroner tells us when talking about the deaths at St. Rita's Nursing Home in the floating parish of St. Bernard. No, they didn't have to die, and neither did those who died from lack of water, who died of gunshot wounds, who died of rising waters, their bodies then consumed by water reptiles, wild dogs, carried away in a toxic slumber. How many didn't have to die? We may never know.

We know of the deaths at St. Rita's and now the home's owners' wrists are ringed in steel, their fingers licked with printing ink. Where are the other arrests? Why hasn't Chertoff been arrested for gross negligence, Brown for negligent homicide? Why is there no talk of Bush's culpability? He has taken responsibility for the failures of his government, but he has not faced the consequences of those failures. Will he ever? Or will we choose to forget the failings, shameful as they were, and let him slip into the drifting sands of history?

We are living in a soaking wet, cardboard house, and the walls have already collapsed around us. We are fooled by the dark night that fills in the space, giving us the appearance of shelter. The stars don't shine -- the air is too polluted. The moon is hidden behind storm clouds. We are here in the floodwater, and many of us are unable to swim. Though the waters haven't succumbed us we know we are losing to the deluge. We can't stand. The ground is slick with petrol and the slippery mess left from the dead.

It is too much to think of all this just days after the anniversary of that failure of the imagination four years ago. Here in Chicago the leaves of young trees are ringed in umber; they are thirsting for water this summer of drought. Storms circle our eastern coasts while the sun shines mercilessly on grain fields across our country's center. Our leaders fight against science, insist we are living in the American Century of progress and hope, oblivious to the thermometer on the back porch and its ever-rising temperature. We are drowning in a flood of our own making and dying of thirst.

On CNN, a doctor cries in Houston after his rescue in New Orleans, after he was forbidden to practice in the makeshift hospital of Louis Armstrong Airport by the feeble-minded minions of a horse show operator. He has nothing, again, the same feeling of emptiness as when he fled Saigon thirty years ago, but now he and his wife have no assumption of a better future. Minutes later, a young girl grieves for the death of her lover, a man she saw die in the waters around her house as he swam between two wafting houses.

A haggard white couple tells us why the Crescent City Connection failed to connect New Orleanians with safety, dry ground. The police chief of white flight Gretna tells us, "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged." His officers shot above the looters-to-be and turned them away, certain that the dozens of wheel-chair bound grandparents and women with young children would breach their "locked down and secure" village. Still Bush's faith-filled supporters insist the man-made disaster that came after the nature-made catastrophe had nothing to do with race.

And to think that now we are in the time of "good news" spreading. Steven Segal has his SWAT suit on, ready for action, in the parking lot of Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas, and now we know forty-five people died in Tenet Hosptial, that Uptown shelter that called out for help just a day after the levees broke. Remember them? Heretik Joe forwarded their email to me. But still it was days and days before they were rescued, leaving the already dead and the recently dead in the hospital-turned-bathtub.

I wondered where our heart was, then went to Houston and found it in the overflowing numbers of volunteers. Our leaders and their followers have no moral center. Their souls are bankrupt, running black with the blood of these four years of death in New York, Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans. And they have the gall to call themselves "pro-life." All evidence shows that they are in bed with Santa Muerte herself, and like her, dangle our stolen hearts around their sinewy necks.

I'm still heartsick, as you are too. Even now, when I know that it is just days before I will be with my husband again, my heart is broken. S called me today and he might leave tomorrow, getting him here in our house sooner, sooner. I can't wait to be with him, to be held by him for days in our little house, our domus, our shelter. It feels like a card house without him.

In Brecht's closing lines is the assumption that there will be an emergence from the flood and that through it the past will be remembered and learned from. But clearly we have no sense of history, no sense of the past. Across the blogosphere are discussions, pronouncements, of how exceptional this event was ("unprecedented!"), and how even the violence that followed the flood was unique to this catastrophe. Only a few decades after violence peppered Louisiana (remember the white picnickers who ate their red beans and rice while the lynch-dead's feet rustled through their bonnets?), violence so extreme and so random that it led to a mass exodus to Chicago and Saint Louis, there has been another exodus of internally displaced persons, Americans forced to flee in their own country, again from a lack of security and the black hole left by failed government. This isn't exceptional and it wasn't a surprise. Ask the raped women of Sarejevo, the torn-apart children of Rwanda what happens when there is no security, when government fails. They will tell you.

Still, over forty percent of our neighbors and relatives think Bush is doing a good job. They think this is all government is capable of (or worse, should be capable of), forgetting, as usual, that this is all this government is capable of. How can we last three more years? Will there still be a United States of America at the end of this running disaster's term, or only varying states of misery here and in those corners of the world we can't seem to stay away from? Today I passed a bargain-basement fortune teller on Ashland Avenue who promised $10 readings for all walk-ins. I thought about going in and asking her for a story of the future of this place that defines who we are, but I knew my ten dollars would be better spent with a donation to Red Cross.

The future is made of the present moment, and our actions are our only true possessions. It's no wonder our house is soaked through, contaminated with human waste and chemicals, and that we're here without a roof under a blood hot sun. Four and a half years into this disaster and here we are. We've got no choice but to rebuild. I just hope we have the good sense to reinforce the levees, restore the shorelands, build on higher ground. Meanwhile, we've got to get out of the house and start helping our neighbors swim out of this mess. If we don't do it, no one will.

Back to Chicago

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:55:39 GMT

Tomorrow I fly back to Chicago where I'll rush to get our house in order for S's visit home this coming weekend. I can't believe he's finally coming home, even if it is for just fifteen days. I'm nervous about it. We've had so little contact, really, the past seven months. We've talked occasionally, and we've emailed some, though truthfully I've been the one writing him, keeping in touch with him, while he's sent me painfully short emails that leave me with no real idea what he's experienced and seen these long months. I worry that we've grown distant, just as I trust that we haven't and that these two weeks will be as if he never left. I ocsillate between being blindly supportive and therefore elated that we'll finally be together again, and angry that he's put me through this in the first place. I wish he kept in better touch with me.

I'm sad to leave Houston and Rebecca and her wonderful family. This week has been amazing. I'm so glad I came down, even if it was for a short trip. There are now only 5,500 evacuees at the dome and center. I don't know how many remain in the medical shelter, but no matter. I know it is only a matter of time before they find better shelter. The Red Cross has done an amazing job of reuniting families and finding temporary, comfortable housing for tens of thousands of evacuees. When I arrived just a week ago there were more than 10,000 evacuees in the dome alone. Imagine! We've moved from worrying about immediate needs -- food, shelter, medical assistance -- to how to help evacuees find lives for themselves these next months before they can go back home.

During our training at the Red Cross yesterday Louis' mother Hilda called me on my cell and I was able to connect her with the Red Cross volunteer social worker at the shelter that I'd met the day before. The Red Cross volunteer told me that they were "unbelievably close" to getting them together. I feel confident that they will find each other soon, and that once they do, things will be better for Louis. I wish I had taken the Red Cross' Family Services course before coming down here so I would have been able to connect them myself. But since there will inevitably be a next time (hopefully not on this scale), I will take the course in Chicago in November and be prepared to help the victims of the disaster of the future.

It took a disaster of this sort of magnitude to get me back into the non-profit world and into the Red Cross for the first time. I don't think I'm unique. Most of the students in our Shelter classes today had been moved to action by the images splashed across the front page of the New York Times and flashed on CNN. And I wasn't the only one who flew from far away to help, either. I met a man from San Francisco and a couple from northern California, as well as an EMT from Columbus, Ohio. People have stepped up. And they'll continue to, as the effects of this disaster will be felt for months to come. Our shelter instructor said that after hurricane Andrew families went back to Florida after a month or so thinking they would go back home, but since they had no homes to go to, they had to live in tent cities put up by the Red Cross for months. I had no idea. Did you?

The past two days we took four classes: Introduction to Disaster Services, Mass Care I, Shelter Operations, and Shelter Simulation. We also signed up for the disaster services register with the national Red Cross so that we can be called up for future disasters (or to help with this one in the coming months). Rebecca has extensive experience in disaster assessment and direct service and I have none, but it doesn't matter in bureaucratic America. Here we are treated the same, illogical as it is. Rebecca has a term for this tangle mess of forms and cards and revoked cards and unfulfilled promises that has defined the post-hurricane paper storm: Bureaucane. And is it true! The bureaucracy has taken over with nearly as much ferocity as Katrina. Over 350,000 evacuees have registered with FEMA, the first step toward getting that coveted $2,000 of assistance. Since the FEMA money is going to come in that future Bush keeps insisting will be bright, the Red Cross has been handing out stop-gap funds to give immediate relief for evacuees. They originally handed out pre-paid debit cards, but soon realized they didn't have enough cards as the number of evacuees in the Houston area alone grows every day. Now they are handing out checks and/or direct wire transfer to Western Union storefronts. Even this plan B has had its wrinkles, of course. Today they stopped handing out funds at 12 noon at one of the local shelters, which I'm sure led to hundreds of angry phone calls to the Red Cross phone bank.

In order to be a part of the disaster services section of the Red Cross you have to have the right combination of cards. Cards are given out after every class you've completed. I half expected to get a pin or a patch for my junior sash, especially since our classes were in the Girl Scouts of America building (Mmm! Thin Mints!!). I'm sure there are some volunteers out there who have the sole goal of earning as many cards as possible, with no real intention of using the skills they've learned. Most are like Rebecca and me, though, and look at the whole process of card-gathering with ambivalence and perhaps a little hostility. The level of bureaucracy has been a little discouraging, but it hasn't overshadowed the level of commitment of most Red Cross volunteers. Our instructor today has been working non-stop for a week at the park, yet this weekend he taught ten hours worth of classes both days. And he's a volunteer, not paid staff, so he's doing it all for the joy and fulfillment it allows and nothing else.

I'm exhausted again tonight, but it is entirely my own fault. Yesterday we found out a number of good things: first, the New Orleans apartment has minimal damage and no flooding. Rebecca's subletter, an attorney who had moved to New Orleans to clerk for a judge just a couple of weeks before the storm (he arrived just a few days before I left New Orleans for that last trip up), went into the city yesterday with federal marshals in order to bring court documents to Baton Rouge where his judge has set up an interim shop. He stopped by the apartment to check on things for Rebecca and thankfully found the place still standing and dry, with only a handful of window panes blown out and some damage to our neighbor Steve's car. What luck!

The second was that last night we toasted to New Orleans with Steve and his near-husband (near- because they aren't allowed to be married. Yet.) Johnie and another dear friend, Larry. They called us yesterday to tell us they'd come to Houston to live for a few months before going back to New Orleans. They have been nomads since the storm, travelling to Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arkansas before settling in Houston. The three of them are some of my dearest friends from New Orleans. It was so exciting to see them. We stayed out way too late, though, leaving me groggy as hell this morning and tired as hell tonight. Of course it was worth it.

Steve told us the harrowing story of one of his co-workers. He works for a marine salvage company, going out on large oil-type barges for two week stretches. He evacuated off the barge, but several decided to stay behind and try to ride out the storm. They anchored the barge about five miles away from the twin spans that connect New Orleans to Slidell, those highway river bridges that looked like mismatched DNA sequences after the storm hit, with large sections moved this way and that, out of step with the direction of the roads. During the first wind piles of the storm, the barge was torn from its anchors and landed at the base of one of the spans. The water was not deeper than the barge there, so though the barge sank, it was still above water. Steve's co-worker was blown off the barge and swept to the second span. He managed to grab hold of a pilon, climb up to a bit of shelter underneath the lanes, and hang on for eight hours as the storm slashed him. When the winds died down, he crawled his way up to the top and walked as far as he could, rescued somewhere near Chef Monteur Highway. No one from the barge died that day, miraculously.

There are so many stories. I'll write more of them later today when I'm back in Chicago. Now, though, I have to go catch my plane. I fell asleep halfway through writing this post last night!

Here's a picture of Johnie and me at Mardi Gras this year, just months ago and only a few days after the last time I saw S.

Here's Rebecca and me during that same trip to New Orleans, seated in the bar at Emeril's Delmonico on Saint Charles Avenue.

Houston, TX, on a steamy Friday in September

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 18:23:18 GMT

I've been away from the political spin this past week, thankfully, but from what I'm reading in the blogosphere the administration is up to its same old-same old (or as Basquiat said, SAMO) crap of diverting attention away from their failures while simultaneously politicizing all aspects of tragedy. Phila has an excellent post on the ongoing discussion prompted by the stark image of school buses floating in toxic soup, and questions the logic of those who are fixated on the ability of a handful of buses to miraculously avert disaster. I can tell you that if we let the right steer us to meaningless arguments about minute details within this larger scheme, we will have learned nothing from this and have changed nothing, leaving us no better off than those stranded buses.

The focus must be on FEMA and Homeland Security and their failures, which are a direct result of the failures of this administration. Bush must be impeached. Mike Brown and Mike Chertoff must be fired. It's not that complicated.

Speaking of FEMA, they're busy making life more difficult for many here in Houston, just as the Red Cross and the local community are getting more and more organized and helpful to evacuees. Part of the parking lot has been cordoned off for FEMA, who seem much more concerned with snacking and looking important in their secluded 2nd floor hallways (no longer open to evacuees, btw) than actually working. All of the makeshift federal offices at the dome close down precisely at 5, regardless of how many people are still standing in line waiting (often for hours and hours) to talk to someone about housing, unemployment, insurance, or whatever the hell FEMA is in charge of. In order for the bureaucracy to maintain itself it must obey all the rules, and the rules say that they work from 9 to 5 and not a minute later, no matter the need or situation.

The good news is the local government is doing an amazing job of making up for much of this nonsense. There are stations set up to register kids for local schools. Surrounding the dome and Center are signs -- printed, not hand-written -- for kids to line up for specific schools at specific times. "Jones Elementary, 7:50 a.m.", that sort of thing. Outside of the dome yesterday, a crew was setting up a playground and basketball courts for the kids. One of the guards said Oprah was funding it, but who knows. This place is alive with rumor, most unsubstantiated. The dome is still the ragged step-sister in this whole project, full of dark hallways and has a dank, leaky feel because of its age. Unfortunately, it was the first shelter evacuees were taken to, so those with the most needs are there, including a number of wheel-chair bound people. I say unfortunate because the difference between the dome and the center is stark: at the dome, food service is on the fourth level, which means that people have to walk up a number of slanted walkways to get to breakfast, lunch, and dinner (the red cross is bringing meals down to immobile evacuees on the floor); by contrast, the center, a large convention hall, has food service at one end of the room and dozens of round lunch tables that each seat 10 or so, making it a snap for someone in a wheelchair to get dinner and roll over to a table and eat. There are no tables at the dome. You have to eat on your lap.

Every day brings major changes, some good, some nonsensical:

All evacuees have been moved out of the arena and into the center now, and many of the medically needy have been moved to the Brown Convention Center. The Arena is now used for quarantined evacuees. They're trying to rid the park of dysentery and quarantine is the only way to do it. On first glance, it seems there are more evacuees at the center than at the dome now, but it is hard to tell because there are still hundreds of families and single people staying in the ringed hallways above the floor of the dome.

There is a security entrance into the Center now, where they frisk everyone before letting them in the building. But in our nonsensical world, just down the building a short way there are entrances that aren't secure at all and that are open for evacuees and volunteers to go in and out of freely. Maybe that security entrance was set up for a photo-op with a politician or FEMA yahoo. This administration is all about the illusion of competence and control, like PRI governors in Mexico erecting massive hospitals in the middle of Chiapas, equipping the place for one photogenic day, then clearing the place of all staff and supplies. FEMA has taken over the second floor of the center and set up their little meeting tables and snack areas in the hallways. Evacuees aren't allowed up there at all anymore, even though this place is their house.

Continental Airlines has been contracted by FEMA (they do know how to draft contracts, that's obvious) to fly evacuees one-way to anywhere in the US, so there are Continental travel agents set up at computers in the dome to assist evacuees with connecting with their families. Rebecca and I both noted how positive it is that they contracted a local airline. I have no idea if the other shelters across the states have this too, but my guess is no. I think Houston is the most organized and most supported. We have a friend, Angela, working at a shelter in Pensicola and she says things are basically in disarray there. Angela is an Africanist (a cultural anthropologist) and by default she is now in charge of the daycare facility though she has zero experience running such an operation. Today we're going to stop by the daycare center set up at the Reliant Center here in Houston and pick their brains for info to pass on to her. Angela says that materiel is not being passed out to evacuees either. It's being horded and guarded, though all of it was donated in the first place. (There is such a feel of "by the seat of your pants" leadership across the nation, it seems, because we have suffered such a profound failure of leadership the past five years. And yet still 40% of Americans think Bush is the man. Go figure.)

The Red Cross continues to bus people to their families anywhere in the country for free. So just because Continental got that contract, don't think the Red Cross doesn't need your help. They're the glue that's holding this whole enterprise together. Honest.

We found out yesterday that the computer labs at the park (there is a large one at both the dome and the center and a smaller one at the arena) were set up not by Yahoo but by Technology for All, a local NGO focused on bringing technology opportunities into low-income Houston neighborhoods. (Like everything in the dome, their center is hidden away and difficult to see, and like everything in this whole operation, it is not even known of by half the volunteers running around the place. Rebecca and I noted, though, that many of the evacuees do know about it. The volunteers might be the last to know!) At the center last night, hey were adding more computers and sectioning off an area just for kids, leaving more computers for family searches. Family reconnection remains the most important issue. We talked to a gentleman last night who had family living on the east and west banks of New Orleans, but hasn't been able to find anyone. He is alone in the world and heartbroken over it. There are new "families" being formed on the floor of the dome and at the center, as evacuees band together to help one another, but those are now being torn apart as evacuees link up with their blood families. The gentleman said two of his friends from the center had left in the morning, bound for Wisconsin on a Red Cross bus.

We had excellent news about Milton, who in my tired daze of a couple of days ago I called Winston. He is the blind and immobile diabetic whose brother Ernest had been hospitalized somewhere (we didn't know where). It seems a man from Dallas who is an expert in elder care came down to Houston and took Milton and two other evacuees and placed them in permanent, long-term care facilities. He worked out their social security and medicare benefits and also located Ernest, who was in one of the local public hospitals. Rebecca's cousin drove to the hospital and picked up Ernest and brought him back to the dome, where he was reunited with Milton before they were both transfered to the care facility. It if weren't for the ingenuity and generosity of everyday Americans thousands more would have died and would still be abandoned today.

(Think that there are over 600 shelters across the US housing Katrina evacuees. 600!! It's overwhelming.)

Yesterday the red cross started handing out pre-paid debit cards to evacuees. Our friend Louis stood in line for four hours but didn't get one. They had run out by the time he got to the front of the line. Hopefully he'll be able to get one today. Our so-called president said that the government was going to give $2000 to every evacuee family, a paultry sum given that these people have lost everything: house, furnishings, clothes, community, job, etc. It makes sense, I guess, given what kind of family Bush was raised in, one of such privilege as to be completely and utterly disconnected from reality.

Louis. We found him asleep last night and woke him up to get him dinner. We were worried he would miss it because in the dome they run out of food sometimes and they stop serving at 7 p.m. As it turned out we had no reason to worry because everything is better at the center and dinner is served until no one is hungry and when one kind of food runs out (last night was lasagna) then another main course is brought in (fried chicken). If it weren't for the men who have taken Louis in at the center, I'm not sure what he would do. He is incapable of taking care of himself. After he ate, we took him to the computer lab and checked his email. A volunteer from Dallas, a different one than the one we'd talked to the day before, emailed him (we'd posted his email address on the family messages site) and said that she'd talked to his mother Hilda. The volunteer wanted Louis to know his mother was safe and signed the not "God Bless." I emailed her back and asked that she talk to Hilda and the local red cross about how to connect the two of them together. Frankly, they don't need more blessings, they need action. Louis needs to be sent to Dallas or Baton Rouge to be with his family. He can't be here alone. We're going back over there today to find a national red cross person to take over his case since I'm going back to Chicago on Monday. And he is a "case"; volunteers who have no training except big hearts are being deputized as social workers, Rebecca and I included. We don't have the knowledge or resources to really do it, though, unlike that man from Dallas who knew how to get things done for Milton. Imagine how many of us are out here in the country, desperate to help but unable to.

The good news is here in Houston the situation is well under control. Students started school yesterday and today. People are being moved into permanent housing or reconnected with their families. Systems are finally in place and running smoothly. Even the national red cross volunteers are getting some rest, now that there are others here to replace them every 12 hours or so. We were both amazed and heartened by the dramatic change of just one day. We were hardly needed at all. Rebecca feels like it's okay for her to get on with her research and head over to Africa. And I feel like it's okay for me to go home on Monday to prepare our house for S's visit. It really is all good.

There will be a lot to do in the coming months as many of these evacuees try to make new lives for themselves away from New Orleans. Health care, jobs, assistance, education, decent housing. There are so many issues at work here. I don't know if Houston or Dallas or San Antonio or Pensacola or any of the other areas of shelter are financially and politically ready for what will come next, especially given the nature of our facade of a federal government and their habit to take pictures and get the hell out. I suspect we will need to keep on the government in the coming months. Hopefully we'll get Chertoff and Brown fired (and then there's the pipe dream of impeachment...as if that would ever happen); that is step one. But soon after will be the hard work of welcoming in thousands and thousands of New Orleans' poor and making them a part of our communities. Maybe we'll do it right for once. I hope so. But I won't be holding my breath on that one.

Matt emailed me (yesterday? the day before?) and asked me about rumors he'd heard coming from the dome that rapes and murders were happening there and the military were recruiting heavily. I emailed him back and told him that I'd heard of only one rape that happened late last week, and that now the dome was crawling with law enforcement and military. I told him, too, that I hadn't seen any recruiters, only groups of soldiers bored out of their minds mulling about in hallways and leaning against stadium chairs. Yesterday, though, I think I saw two recruiters. I didn't ask them if they were, but they had the hallmarks: pressed camos, shined shoes; hungry, salesman eyes; packets of papers in their left hands; and they were quick to smile and say hello, making eye contact right away. Since I didn't ask, I can't confirm that they were recruiting. But of all the rumors Matt presented to me, it was the one I was most likely to believe because it's so likely to be true. If I see those guys again today, I'll go up and ask.

Oh, and Tom -- The levees broke. If our presence in Iraq is compared to those levees, what does that say?

Thanks everybody for your kind words and encouragement in the comments. I'm not special, you know. People are taking days off work to help at these shelters. It goes to show that right now we are not living in a representative democracy. Our heartless government does not represent its compassionate people. Let's change that, shall we?