NYCweboy

Notes on New Orleans

I just got home from six nights in New Orleans - a mix of business and pleasure (the city would have it no other way), traveling with the man and meeting with non-profit folks and public housing resident-activists.  On my first morning there I joined several residents and activists in solidarity at another's hearing at NO's Criminal Court.  Some thoughts on that are here.

My relationship with New Orleans is a tense one - the intensity of the inequity is something this uptight, machine-politick-reared New Englander cannot abide.  My work there takes me through a morning at the Criminal Court, and I pass another listening to another former resident weep over the loss of her home and sitting with her through one family crisis after another.  In an effort to escape from the despair, I trundle over to Magazine Street and spend hours wandering the boutiques full of relatively inexpensive, funky and fun dresses (I marvel at the affordable and independent designs they have down there - I'm not aware of any equivalents up here in MA).  But it's difficult to overcome the cognitive dissonance of watching families cope with trauma and injustice and then pay an excessive amount for two sandwiches and glasses of wine with the man at an overpriced (if delicious) bakery shop decked out in fantastic pinks and blues.  Surreal is often a word folks use to describe their experiences in post-Katrina New Orleans, and they're not wrong. 

I finally verbalized that one of the things I can't stomach about the city is its lack of government - I live in a city with a strong mayor and a city and state with a long history of liberal patronage and paternalism (we have our own public housing up here, for example).  This sentiment, of course, made me feel both like a loser and a teeny bit fascist - but at every turn it seems like there's a new outrage - and the civil and non-profit sectors can only do so much.  I hope Pelosi et al. are listening slightly more carefully than they've been during this whole FISA nonsense.

But despite my links o' grief above, with each passing day I relax a little bit there.  Drinks with friends help.  As does excellent food.  And hot, humid weather (I may be alone on this one) and lush parks and foliage.  And the endless little new stores opening up here and there.  And the sheer breadth of experience I have there, in a way that my rather cloistered world here in MA cannot match - for better and worse.  It's a rarefied city, and writing about it off and on for three years now (I know, I'll never be from or of there!!) - well, I'm starting to feel a little cliched.

August 29, 2008 is the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.  The city is slowly returning, but unevenly and precariously.  The Democratic Convention ends on August 28. Gulf Coast organizations and their national allies are pressing Sens. Obama and McCain and the Democratic and Republican Parties to prioritize Gulf Coast recovery in the upcoming administration.  Because while the scale of Katrina's devastation is exceptional, its physical and social aftermath is strikingly less so.

I leave you with an excerpt from a Times-Picayune piece on New Orleans volunteers helping out after the Iowa floods:

Unlike the brackish water that surged over the New Orleans area, the Cedar River's fresh water spared the green grass and flowers. Except for the vegetation, though, the vacant neighborhoods could be Gentilly or Old Metairie or Meraux after Katrina.

In the Cedar Rapids neighborhood of Time Check, named for merchants' 19th century practice of honoring the postdated paychecks of railroad workers, references to the 2005 hurricane are ever-present.

"I sat at home. I watched TV. I saw the pictures of Katrina. But you just don't get it until you're actually living it," said Janette Schorg, who drove last week from Davenport, Iowa, near the Illinois border, to help her parents muck out their two-story home of 40 years.

It just angers me every time I drive into Cedar Rapids that it goes from beautiful to a war zone," Schorg said.

Some residents admit the recent flooding has forced them to reconsider their notions of New Orleans.

"We all watched during Katrina and said, 'Why would people live in a bowl?' " said Bill Polton, whose 85-year-old father lives just three blocks from the levee that runs along First Street Northwest, on the Cedar River's west bank.

"Well, here we are sitting in almost the same scenario," Polton said. "Nobody realized how far the flood plain would go."

- Redstar

Prelude to the Flowerlude

Classic Americana: Outdoor cafes in strip mall parking lots.

Hope you're enjoying a beautiful July afternoon.

Everytime I Breathe, Everytime I Try To Leave

So here I sit in Towson, Maryland, typing away at another Starbucks.  I had hoped to mention traveling - or at least to have done a joint post with the J in town... but that didn't happen. Sorry for the silence.  As Red notes, all the important news happened in the sports world, anyway.

Except, maybe, for the loss of Cyd Charisse.

In any case, as Red noted overnight, it's a moment of feeling a bit beaten down. J and I had a long conversation - all evening, really - about coming to grips with Obama. I try to come up with ways to get comfortable myself... and nothing seems to work. If it's not the tired rhetoric of his Father's Day speech, it's the dull, conventional nature of his advisement choices (I don't necessarily have the issues others do about his economics team... but his foreign policy team is dull dull dull).

Perhaps more instructive was the man who struck up a conversation with me waiting for the Light Rail to bring me to J. He's a painter by profession, 32 years, and work's been hard to find. First day he'd worked in 3 weeks, he told me. When I said "Vacation?" he laughed bitterly and said, "if only."

Notes From A Vacation

As Nevermind noted in comments last night, my discussion of TV watching from my trip may seem "one sided and strange"... I suppose there's no point to mentioning that a blog is pretty much a one-sided affair (mine), but I agree, my tastes can be... strange.

I could go into the long, er, strange, history of how my Memorial Day trip came to be - there was a plan to travel to Salt Lake City which fell through over finances, and this was an alternative that fit the moment, and the planned companion - but that story takes too long and probably only matters to maybe 10 people (5 of whom don't read this blog, though I try to convince them, repeatedly).

In any case, the trip that was an odd combination of convenience, circumstance, and opportunity became an object lesson in understanding who I am and what I actually like... and don't. Like decorating programs. Herewith, with no determination to offend anyone, but a likelihood to offend or puzzle all, some notes for myself on what I like in a vacation:

• I don't like being stranded in the woods. That is, I really like to show up at places like the one I went with a car of my own and the opportunity to run to the store at my convenience, not others.
• I'd rather be at the ocean than at a lake, and at a beach rather than in the woods.
• I don't like the way "the woods" has become an extension of suburbia; this lakeside development amounted to a piece of gated suburbia for the second home set, giving "back to nature" a thoroughly commodified, managed air (the lake nearest us, as it turned out, had been drained and not refilled, which made yesterday's run to sunbathe a lost cause).
• I also don't love the way "the woods" has bcome an extension of a kind of suburbia where the most basic services are 30-40 minutes away.
• No more Wal-Marts. Ever.
• When you, as an individual, go on a trip with a couple, you are reminded, very quickly, that it's called "third wheel" for a reason.
• Apparently, though, dinner conversations about politics when everyone is interested are even fun with Republicans.
• I really must learn not to overpack.
• I need wifi; dialup will not do it, anymore.
• I am no longer a night person. Oh well.
• I agree one should leave a guest house much the way one found it... but there's clean, and then there's sterilized within an inch of its life.

I know, I know... who's ever going to want to invite Debbie Downer on another trip? A getaway is a getaway and one should be grateful to one's hosts. But I do think one should also know one's likes and dislikes enough to know when an offer may not be the right one. And so, though I feel like the girl who's unpacked her adjectives, I think I'm just chalking this one up to learning a little more about my own likes... and sticking up for them.

Teh Stupid. It burns.

I heard there's some primaries going on tonight... (I'm about all primaried out after a record-breaking day over at The Hillary 1000.)

So how about a humor break?

I'm stuck in terrible rush hour traffic at the Mass Pike E/Rt. 95 interchange in MA yesterday, after smooth sailing home with the man from an anniversary break in Portsmouth, NH.  We're slowly merging into traffic, cutting off and being cut off by the hordes of road-enraged Massholes all around us.  A Chevy Tahoe rolls up, a woman - gabbing on her cell phone - behind the wheel.  I notice an enormous peace sign sticker stuck on the gas tank.  As we crawl along beside her, I see it says "1.20.09" in small letters. I get it...

This driver is protesting President "National security consequences if we limit oil supply reserves; let's just ask the Saudis for more! more! more! Since murderously plundering another country for their supply seems to be slightly more costly than anticipated" Bush at the gas tank....of her gas-guzzler...

Actually, maybe it's TEH IRONY that burns...it burns!!!!!!

Living History with Dreams from My Father

In the last month, I've made a 500 mile round-trip journey between Louisville and The Highlander Center in one day, and driven 750 miles this weekend between Boston and DC.  To pass all the time in the car, I listened to Hillary Clinton's memoir, Living History and am now 80% of the way through Barack Obama's story, Dreams From My Father.  Consider this part of my desire to "know" better both potential nominees, given how undecided this race remains.

Given I've been on the road and couch surfing with friends and family since Thursday now, I've barely been following the election with my usual rabid zeal.  Nonetheless, my time remains dominated by conversations and thoughts about race, gender, class and inequality.  Sat night with my potential future in-laws offered hours of dinner table debate about the candidates and the state of the race, where, as my man's dad put it, I compellingly laid out my case for Sen. Clinton.  I've been conducting interviews about community organizing and development in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast these last few days, and the backdrop of this historic election and the possibility of Democratic victory looms large in these discussions.  With the 2 memoirs under my belt, I feel like I have a better understanding of both candidates than ever.

Let me say this about the 2 books: Living History is guarded and fairly dull.  It's interesting if you're hazy on the details about Starr et al. and the "vast right-wing conspiracy," but it's plodding and ends on what seems like a fairly disingenuous note, given the current circumstances: that Sen. Clinton is cajoled into and surprised by her own accepting of the offer to run for the Senate.  What it did reveal to me is that Sen. Clinton is culturally conservative (vs. politically conservative), and that she deeply believes in traditional notions of democracy, service to our country, and patriotism.  She also was a tour de force in her work with women and children around the globe during her time as First Lady, and a significant voice in Pres. Clinton's administration, whether he took her advice or not, as she routinely made clear what decisions she supported or those she would have handled differently.

I'll Take Manhattan, And The Golden Ticket

I don't know if it's the salutary effect of having Red join me here or what, but lately the "inequality" discussions that she's raised (and raised, with me, even longer than she's been blogging), have spilled over into the topics I care about.  As with the union discussion, I've been thinking a lot about inequality in relation to the just failed "Congestion Pricing" plan of Mayor Bloomberg.

Let me just say up front that, like London's downtown congestion pricing, I thought the Bloomberg plan was genius.  It had problems, but it was a real attempt to solve something that needs solving; and if we're not going to build a major highway in or around Manhattan (see New York: A Documentary by Ric Burns for the discussion of Robert Moses and highways across Manhattan), then something, really, has to be done about traffic.

Still, I'm not surprised that the plan failed: too ambitious by at least half, the proposal was a reminder that solutions to things like "congestion" have no friends and lots of enemies. More to the point, the plan had the perverse effect of proving to people that the worst of what they think of it - that it's elite and exclusive and isolating - is all too true.

And while David Paterson promises that some elements of the plan will be considered down the road, I'd say: don't hold your breath. No one, really has a good answer here, and we're not getting one soon.

Only Connect

My errand done, I'm preparing to get back on the road.

The speed of my mission allowed for some extra time to reconnect with my Starbucks pals up here, especially my former Manager ("old" manager... doesn't really work), who I bonded with in our short couple of months together. I did miss seeing Jo Biv, and two of my other fave supervisors (one apparently by minutes), which was sad, but also an excuse to come back... soon.

Indeed, it was a day of missed connections; as far as I can tell, at one point RedStar and I were less than 100 feet apart, but with no way to connect. I spent all morning missing my Mom by phone.

The nicest part, though, was walking along the Charles on this bright, sunny day, cold but beautiful. Watching MIT Crew practice in the early morning air, passing the runners (I told you Boston is a town of constant athletes), I felt connected to things that were real, not just the flickering words and images on the pooter screen.

And so, there's my thought for the day: an old familiar one, perhaps, to remember the human interactions, our need to only connect.  The Web does amazing things to give us the illusion of connectedness, but it can't replace the real, human connections; the smiles, and hugs, and warm words we can share in person. I'm going to try - and I hope you will too - to remember in the heat of a blogfight that the person on the other hand is real, and human, and flawed... and probably sincere.  Sure, this will be a great post to remind me of when I get all snarky and mean somewhere down the road ("yeah, yeah, aren't you the one who said we should all hug each other?") - guilty as charged. But if I want this blog to stand for something, I hope it will be the passion of ideas... and the humanity in us all.  One without the other... is missing the connection.

808 State

...which refers to the fact that I was in Connecticut at 8:08 this evening, and that I was quite peaceful.  Yes, I am back in Boston for the evening (a small errand to do tomorrow), and I am tired, but a few notes from the road:

• For music, I went all lounge-y and ambient: first up, Jose Padilla's Navigator.  Jose was the original deejay of Cafe Del Mar (I wrote about that a while back), and this is a gorgeous collection that always manages to improve the setting I am in, as if seeing things for the first time (today that was Waterbury, Connecticut). It also contains simply the most beautiful song I've ever heard - Adios Ayer, sung by Seal.  Navigator was recommended to me by Felix Cutillo, while he was deejay at Louis, Boston (now he's at Bergdorf Goodman Men), and I followed Navigator with his Music Bar collection for Louis (which was a wonderful surprise Christmas present from RedStar), and also listened to his Visage collection (a present from Jennifer... I am a lucky, and grateful, weboy).  It was a lovely ride.
• In my road travels, I often sample fellow Starbucks. I must say, the folks in the Southington store do a great job - always a tasty beverage, and very friendly. Right off Route 84, too.  So convenient. :)
• And I still love me some Zipcar... but this one I have was... how shall we put it... rode hard and put away wet. Pardon my French.
• The high variability of gas prices, I think, makes it hard to nationalize the problem: compared to the $3.60 they're charging round my Mom's house, the $3.35 they're charging in Connecticut seems like a bargain.
• But you can tell the gas prices are being felt... or at least I can; the roads were deserted.  It was like 5 or so years ago when you could drive in the evening hours and not hit any traffic anywhere (after rush hour).  I don't think people are driving for pleasure really at all anymore. Which makes me wonder about our "open road" culture coming to an end - if we can't have cheap gas it's hard to see how we can keep our auto driven culture and the lure of wanderlust (except for the extremely well heeled). Or, is it that people will skimp on everything else, just to be able to take to the roads?  I just think we haven't thought about it. At all.

Anyway, I am quite tired, and off I go to bed.  More tomorrow.

Love One Another

It may seem odd to have traveled to Boston for one day just to see one person, but such is the power of Red.  Actually, I came up here, I realized this morning, because I never really gave the place - and the friends I have here - a proper goodbye.  Today feels, in some ways, like a necessary part of closure... better than the feeling of having absconded in the middle of the night.

Seeing friends I love - Red last night, the Goddess Jo Biv this morning, along with other old Starbucks pals - I am feeling much more in tune with my positive nature. Though I love politics and arguing over ideas, and debating the way of the world... I really just want a gentler, more loving world.  So sue me. I can't spend a lot of time hating, or judging.  Live and let live.

As you might guess, it's Pisces season... my season, the season of The Birthdays. Let Love Rule.  And love one another.  Please.  For my sake.