As the Katrina Anniversary approaches, emotions are running high in the church I serve and in the greater New Orleans area. What happened to us would be unreal if it weren't that we have to look at the evidence of it every single day. There are still neighborhoods even Uptown -- not just Lakeview, Gentilly, and the Lower 9 -- with ruined boarded-up houses, streets with no street signs, blue FEMA tarp everywhere, and Grand Canyon potholes in the streets (even major arteries). You can always tell experienced native drivers, because they're the ones automatically making wide swerves around the known road hazards, while the newbies plow straight ahead, dropping off "cliffs" and falling into big gaps in the road. Things that ought to be fixed RIGHT AWAY are left to rack and ruin -- like the smashed wooden utility pole looming dangerously over the corner at Felicity and Simon Bolivar, apparently held up by nothing except the electric wires.
Amazingly, proving the old saying that you can get used to anything, we begin to be inured to these sights and experiences.
I was asked by the Mayor's Office to participate in the city's interfaith Katrina Memorial in Jackson Square on Friday evening. My disgust with the poor performance of the incumbent Mayor and U.S. president over Katrina made me think twice about accepting. (I wasn't sure I wanted to share a platform with the Mayor.) In the end, I decided it was more important for me to be there than to make some kind of flimsy, ineffective protest by staying away. It's been a REAL challenge, trying to compose something that doesn't indict, even if only by implication, the Mayor and the president and the Corps of Engineers and the insurance companies and .... (Well, you get the idea.) I'm sure I'll have all these feelings under control (mostly) by the time the event rolls around at the end of this week.
My church will hold its 3rd annual Katrina Dinner on Saturday night, along with the ritual based loosely on the Passover seder that was developed by Justin Lundgren, a New Orleanian, soon after the Storm . We eat our favorite New Orleans foods (pralines for sweetness, dill pickles for bitterness), the youngest children present ask ritual questions, and we always keep an empty chair for all those New Orleanians who have not been able, or have not been allowed to, come home.
The rebuilding and recovery of our poor building goes very, very slowly. (If it went any more slowly, it wouldn't even be happening.) I'm still preaching from a flimsy and rusty music stand, trying to be a good sport about it. The floor in the Sanctuary is still scarred and pitted bare concrete, the water line is still visible above the new paneled wainscoting, and the ceiling shows missing and drooping acoustic tiles (which weren't attractive even before Katrina). The chapel has no electricity, but at least now has a new bamboo floor. The RE wing, with the exception of the new admin and minister's offices, has no floor, except for painted (pitted) concrete. The area where the kitchen and old board room used to be has at least been cleared and gutted, and is ready for the construction of the planned commercial kitchen that will be shared with a local AIDS agency. We hope to begin construction this fall, as soon as engineering plans and permits are taken care of.
So much of church life seems on hold -- we can't easily hold regular potlucks or dinners or social gatherings without a kitchen, and the unfinished, even ugly, appearance of the Sanctuary requires a suspension of feelings and awareness for a good worship atmosphere. Sometimes it all seems overwhelming.
And yet...
And yet there are many hopeful, happy signs. The people who live here, who've always lived here or who've moved here since It happened, are determined and committed, and absolutely united in their/our love for the city. As Ned Sublette wrote in the coda to his new book, "The World That Made New Orleans": "They refused to cooperate in their own erasure." He was writing about Mardi Gras Indians, but it now stands as a fitting declaration for all of us New Orleanians.
We refuse to cooperate in our own erasure, our own Disneyfication, our own irrelevance. We stand together, united in our affection for our culture, our music, our food, our way of life, our beloved, still beautiful city. We will not be erased or removed.
We are New Orleans. We go on.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Drink and Draw
Add this to the long list of "Only in New Orleans" stuff:
The Circle Bar, St. Charles at Lee Circle (the one in the gorgeously decaying old house that was once, I believe, the home of the first woman physician in the city), has a new offering to attract customers on Sunday afternoons. It's called, appropriately enough, "Drink & Draw," and it features a live nude model and Happy Hour pricing on all drinks. You pay $20 for two hours, bring your own drawing pad, stretched canvas, or illustration board (or, knowing how folks are, blank typing paper or an old legal pad) and your favorite drawing and painting media (ball point pens, anyone?), and sketch away. For slight extra fee, there's an actual art teacher to help you improve, if you're that interested.
Regularly, there's a "show" of the works produced at the weekly Drink & Draw, at places like Surrey on Magazine (the food there is divine, but don't try to go for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays -- the waiting line practically goes around the block). From what I could observe, the finished works of "art" are pretty much what you would expect from folks who are drinking and drawing on a Sunday afternoon, but what the hey, most people are definitely NOT going to Drink & Draw because they are, or have aspirations to be, Great Artistes.
Only in New Orleans. Sit in a decadent old mansion on a Sunday afternoon, look at a naked woman, drink low-priced drinks, and draw or paint (or pretend to draw and paint). How can you beat that?
I love this city.
The Circle Bar, St. Charles at Lee Circle (the one in the gorgeously decaying old house that was once, I believe, the home of the first woman physician in the city), has a new offering to attract customers on Sunday afternoons. It's called, appropriately enough, "Drink & Draw," and it features a live nude model and Happy Hour pricing on all drinks. You pay $20 for two hours, bring your own drawing pad, stretched canvas, or illustration board (or, knowing how folks are, blank typing paper or an old legal pad) and your favorite drawing and painting media (ball point pens, anyone?), and sketch away. For slight extra fee, there's an actual art teacher to help you improve, if you're that interested.
Regularly, there's a "show" of the works produced at the weekly Drink & Draw, at places like Surrey on Magazine (the food there is divine, but don't try to go for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays -- the waiting line practically goes around the block). From what I could observe, the finished works of "art" are pretty much what you would expect from folks who are drinking and drawing on a Sunday afternoon, but what the hey, most people are definitely NOT going to Drink & Draw because they are, or have aspirations to be, Great Artistes.
Only in New Orleans. Sit in a decadent old mansion on a Sunday afternoon, look at a naked woman, drink low-priced drinks, and draw or paint (or pretend to draw and paint). How can you beat that?
I love this city.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
No Such Thing as a Private Conversation in NOLA
Big Man leaned across the restaurant table to the transplants from Tennessee, his eyes alight with merriment. "I'm serious," he said, "Unless you're in your car with the windows rolled up, or in your own home, there's absolutely no such thing as a private conversation in New Orleans." Our guests were already agape since a few minutes before, our waitress had "butted in" to the table's discussion of the exact boundaries of the Irish Channel, and given us the benefit of her opinion and experience. The good folks from Tennessee had never before experienced such a thing.
It happened to us again on Sunday, during the Satchmo Festival. We had taken refuge inside Coop's on Decatur for a seat, a restroom, and air-conditioning (drat the heat!), and had stayed to eat from their excellent fare. (You gotta love those lamb ribs! Man, I could eat like 5 orders!) We were seated at the long table that faces the entrance, and since there were only two of us, another couple was already seated at the other end. It didn't take more than a minute for us to be in conversation with the people at that end of the table, after the male half of the couple overheard part of our conversation and joined right in. When they were finished and left, and as the place got more crowded, more people were seated at that end, and the whole thing started up again.
I do not know of any other city where this is true, that strangers so readily talk to each other, where "eavesdropping" in order to join a conversation already in progress is so widely accepted, where at any moment in public you have to be ready to respond to the remarks of someone who, up to now, you didn't know at all. Big Man says you're likely to get comments from passersby while you are making groceries ("Oh, that's good stuff, we use it at my house" or "Honey, don't buy dat, it's a rip-off) and if your car windows are rolled down, somebody is apt to comment if they can overhear any part of your conversation, or even if they can just hear your radio.
This is SO characteristic of New Orleans. One time, the year after Katrina, my sister L accompanied a friend to Manhattan for a buying trip for furniture and decorating fabrics to rebuild the friend's flooded family home. I joined them just for the day from where I was living in suburban Philadelphia. At the end of our day-long "forced march" -- my sister does not believe in taking the subway, a bus, or, God forbid, a taxi, when you can just as well walk and "see more" -- we ate dinner at a little Spanish restaurant in Greenwich Village. While we were there, it began pouring rain, trapping us inside with the staff and the few customers from the neighborhood. The three of us were talking about New Orleans and the recovery process, and my sister noticed a man seated near us who seemed (to her) to be listening to us, and she began including him in our conversation. He was at first uncomfortable, but soon warmed to our Big Easy style. L ascertained that the man was from the neighborhood, and ate in this little restaurant several times a week. Spotting the only other customer in the place besides us and our new friend, L asked, "Do you know that guy?" Looking over, the man said, "I don't know him, but I've seen him in here before." "That's ridiculous," declared my sister, and she marched over to where the second man was seated, and introduced herself to him. "We're from New Orleans," she said, as if that explained everything, "and we can't stand to see people eating alone." She then introduced the two men to each other, and admonished them not to be strangers to each other. "Y'all see each other in here all the time," she chided them, "you don't have to be strangers."
I still get a little teary thinking about that incident, how three women from New Orleans, in the immediate wake of the Worst Thing That Could Happen, could still represent the spirit of our beloved city so well, introducing these New Yorkers to each other. I often think about those two men and wonder if they ever sat together after that, or if at least they nodded in a mildly friendly way to each other, remembering those crazy women from the Big Easy and how they spoke so easily to strangers.
There is no such thing as a private conversation in New Orleans because we're all just dying to get in your business, to contradict, to embellish, to share a clue about a restaurant, grocery store, or music club you haven't heard of, to give you directions, to offer unsolicited advice, to become your new best friend. We talk to people in elevators -- now how crazy is that? (A young adult parishioner of mine said she was so glad to home, where, she said, no one would think she was a bag lady if she greeted them on the street or in an elevator.) We don't know why Yankees think you can't say "good mornin'" on the street or "hey y'all" on elevators; we feel sorry for their self-imposed isolation.
Us, well, we've never met a stranger. There's just folks you haven't spoken to yet.
It happened to us again on Sunday, during the Satchmo Festival. We had taken refuge inside Coop's on Decatur for a seat, a restroom, and air-conditioning (drat the heat!), and had stayed to eat from their excellent fare. (You gotta love those lamb ribs! Man, I could eat like 5 orders!) We were seated at the long table that faces the entrance, and since there were only two of us, another couple was already seated at the other end. It didn't take more than a minute for us to be in conversation with the people at that end of the table, after the male half of the couple overheard part of our conversation and joined right in. When they were finished and left, and as the place got more crowded, more people were seated at that end, and the whole thing started up again.
I do not know of any other city where this is true, that strangers so readily talk to each other, where "eavesdropping" in order to join a conversation already in progress is so widely accepted, where at any moment in public you have to be ready to respond to the remarks of someone who, up to now, you didn't know at all. Big Man says you're likely to get comments from passersby while you are making groceries ("Oh, that's good stuff, we use it at my house" or "Honey, don't buy dat, it's a rip-off) and if your car windows are rolled down, somebody is apt to comment if they can overhear any part of your conversation, or even if they can just hear your radio.
This is SO characteristic of New Orleans. One time, the year after Katrina, my sister L accompanied a friend to Manhattan for a buying trip for furniture and decorating fabrics to rebuild the friend's flooded family home. I joined them just for the day from where I was living in suburban Philadelphia. At the end of our day-long "forced march" -- my sister does not believe in taking the subway, a bus, or, God forbid, a taxi, when you can just as well walk and "see more" -- we ate dinner at a little Spanish restaurant in Greenwich Village. While we were there, it began pouring rain, trapping us inside with the staff and the few customers from the neighborhood. The three of us were talking about New Orleans and the recovery process, and my sister noticed a man seated near us who seemed (to her) to be listening to us, and she began including him in our conversation. He was at first uncomfortable, but soon warmed to our Big Easy style. L ascertained that the man was from the neighborhood, and ate in this little restaurant several times a week. Spotting the only other customer in the place besides us and our new friend, L asked, "Do you know that guy?" Looking over, the man said, "I don't know him, but I've seen him in here before." "That's ridiculous," declared my sister, and she marched over to where the second man was seated, and introduced herself to him. "We're from New Orleans," she said, as if that explained everything, "and we can't stand to see people eating alone." She then introduced the two men to each other, and admonished them not to be strangers to each other. "Y'all see each other in here all the time," she chided them, "you don't have to be strangers."
I still get a little teary thinking about that incident, how three women from New Orleans, in the immediate wake of the Worst Thing That Could Happen, could still represent the spirit of our beloved city so well, introducing these New Yorkers to each other. I often think about those two men and wonder if they ever sat together after that, or if at least they nodded in a mildly friendly way to each other, remembering those crazy women from the Big Easy and how they spoke so easily to strangers.
There is no such thing as a private conversation in New Orleans because we're all just dying to get in your business, to contradict, to embellish, to share a clue about a restaurant, grocery store, or music club you haven't heard of, to give you directions, to offer unsolicited advice, to become your new best friend. We talk to people in elevators -- now how crazy is that? (A young adult parishioner of mine said she was so glad to home, where, she said, no one would think she was a bag lady if she greeted them on the street or in an elevator.) We don't know why Yankees think you can't say "good mornin'" on the street or "hey y'all" on elevators; we feel sorry for their self-imposed isolation.
Us, well, we've never met a stranger. There's just folks you haven't spoken to yet.
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