Category: New Orleans

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The Cos on the Cleanup

Bill Cosby spoke at a rally in NO,LA about reconstruction:

Cosby, whose criticism of some aspects of modern African-American culture has stirred controversy in recent years, told a rally headed by black leaders that the city needed to look at the “wound” it had before Katrina struck.

“It’s painful, but we can’t cleanse ourselves unless we look at the wound,” Cosby told the rally of about 2,000 people in front of the city’s convention center.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you had the highest murder rate, unto each other. You were dealing drugs to each other. You were impregnating our 13-, 12-, 11-year-old children,” he said.

“What kind of a village is that?”

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Pastor Johnny Ray Youngblood also discussed the introspective portion of the rebuilding process:

With Katrina, as with East Brooklyn and North Philadelphia and Southeast Washington, the way out is straight ahead. We have to act our way out of this — as in constructive action by hopeful actors who work with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other.

We have to raise our own money, not just wrestle over government money. We have to find our own housing sites. We have to hire and monitor builders and developers who work for us, not for some bureaucrat in Washington.

We have to deflect all the hustlers and talkers within our community who see this catastrophe as just another opportunity to shake people down and line their pockets.

We have to see this as a generational struggle — 10 years, maybe 20 — not as a quick fix.

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The Morning After

We’re married! The wedding was wonderful! The guests danced, ate, drank, and otherwise made merry! I have NO pictures yet! (but as soon as we get them, I’ll start posting stuff)

As wonderful as the whole evening was, as great as our first dance was, as lovely as Amy looked in her wedding dress, the hands-down best moment of the evening came after we left the venue.

The photographer wanted to shoot some pictures of us outside, with Jackson Square in the background. When he was done, Amy & I walked over to our hotel, passing the Cafe Du Monde. A ton of people were having late-evening beignets and coffee at the open-air cafe. Someone saw us in tux and gown and shouted, “Congratulations!”

Then another. Then another. Then the entire cafe was applauding and congratulating us as we walked by. I stopped and gave Amy one of our great husband-and-wife kisses, which led to a great cheer from the cafe-goers.

It was magic.

Wedding bonus: Here are the readings we asked our friends Scott and Cecily to perform before we got to the vows:

Amy’s reading

Excerpt from a 1950s home economics textbook titled The Good Wives Guide

Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs.

Prepare yourself: Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking.

Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.

Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to see him. Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first. Remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquillity where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit. Don’t greet him with complaints and problems. Don’t complain if he’s late for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.

Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low soothing and pleasant voice. Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgement or integrity.

Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

A good wife always knows her place.

–Author Unknown

A Word to Husbands

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

–Ogden Nash

Gil’s reading

Laughter

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lanceflower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in your joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.

–Pablo Neruda

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Today we drink, tomorrow we marry!

We got our marriage license Friday morning. The woman at the clerk’s office of the parish courthouse knew Amy from childhood, so her part of the process was pretty smooth. However, when it came to asking me, “Which state was your father born in?”, we discovered that they weren’t prepared for the answer of “Cluj, Rumania.” But everything went off pretty smoothly.

We made it into our hotel in the city yesterday and met up with numerous early-arriving wedding-guests, including my parents (both Scylla AND Charybdis!). Ate beignets at Cafe Du Monde, had dinner at the Asian Cajun, and drank a bunch of gin with friends.

Today, we meet with the DJ, pick up tuxes, get a spa treatment-thing that Amy booked, and get all our parents in the same room for the rehearsal dinner (heavy on dinner, light on rehearsal). Then we hold court at Pat O’Brien’s for more of the early-arriving guests.

Bourbon Street was pretty lively last night. A group of us, including one guest’s 13-year-old son, walked down a ways to meet up with Amy & her group of buddies. I laughed about the idea of being 13 and walking down that street, but the kid didn’t seem too fazed.

Haven’t taken any pix since I got here, but I’ll try to take a couple tonight. They’ll be stupid candids in a bar, but those are cute, I guess.

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Before the flood

Just finished reading Rob Walker’s Letters from New Orleans, which I enjoyed much more than Tom Piazza’s Why New Orleans Matters. I found the latter to be far too preachy, bordering on a sort of “White Man’s Burden” for why no expense must be spared in rebuilding the city. Walker’s book, on the other hand, made me care much more for the city and what it means and has meant.

Maybe the big difference is that one writer was discussing NO,LA pre-Katrina, and the other post-Katrina.

Or maybe it’s that one writer is a journalist, and the other is a novelist.

Or maybe one guy is someone you could just chill out and have a beer with, and the other guy is a douche.

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Year Zero?

A week or so ago, I mentioned a whole lot of reading that I’m doing as part of my attempt to understand what can be done to help New Orleans recover from the devastation of last August’s hurricane.

The fact that I’m starting with Virginia Postrel and Jane Jacobs probably indicates that I don’t think that federal micromanagement is the way to go. One of Ms. Postrel’s early points in The Future and Its Enemies is that there is no “scratch” from which to start, in a dynamic society. Even annihilating swathes of the city doesn’t mean it’s Year Zero in NO,LA; there are tons of people who have claims on their homes, who don’t want to move away for good, and don’t want to live in federally subsidized housing projects.

All of which is to say, I’m not in agreement with Representative Baker (R-LA), who proposes an $80 billion federal program to “to pay off lenders, restore public works, buy huge ruined chunks of the city, clean them up and then sell them back to developers,” according to the Times. Or, more expansively:

Under his plan, the Louisiana Recovery Corporation would step in to prevent defaults, similar in general nature to the Resolution Trust Corporation set up by Congress in 1989 to bail out the savings and loan industry. It would offer to buy out homeowners, at no less than 60 percent of their equity before Hurricane Katrina. Lenders would be offered up to 60 percent of what they are owed.

To finance these expenditures, the government would sell bonds and pay them off in part with the proceeds from the sale of land to developers.

Property owners would not have to sell, but those who did would have an option to buy property back from the corporation. The federal corporation would have nothing to do with the redevelopment of the land; those plans would be drawn up by local authorities and developers.

So, from what I gather, the plan will involve massive federal involvement and funding, coercive land sales (why not just employ eminent domain, while you’re at it?), and a close alliance with “local authorities and developers” who are among the crookedest in America.

One of the best things about the article — besides the line “the bill has become increasingly important to Louisiana because the state lost out to the greater political power of Mississippi last month” — is that virtually every positive quote about the program seems to be delivered secondhand by . . . Rep. Baker!

Give it a read.

And mourn the likely departure of a NYC institution, while you’re at it.

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Present Day

Made it home safe and sound yesterday afternoon, but the final approach was a bit shaky. By which I mean, the plane was wobbling from side to side for the last 10 minutes before we touched down. I pounded a G&T at the terminal bar to steady the old nerves, then Amy & I headed over to baggage claim.

The Christmas-day exchange of presents was kinda funny. Amy told her parents that they could shop for me off my Amazon wish list, but I think they misunderstood her and bought nearly everything off my wish list. When they first checked out my list (and hers), they told her, “But you guys only have books and CDs on your list!”

Not anymore! It became a running joke on Sunday afternoon, as I opened package of books after package of books:

Virginia Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies and The Substance of Style

Paco Underhill’s Call of the Mall and Why We Buy

Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker

Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History

Collections of essays from Emerson and Orwell

Robert Strassler’s Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, for when I feel like redelving into that subject.

Her father said, “That oughtta keep you occupied for a week or so.”

Now, I was mighty appreciative of all the books (on top of the aforementioned copy of Black Hole), as well as the 5-quart stand mixer, but the problem arose the next day, as we began packing. We started to consider shipping all the books home (including the stuff I bought at Faulker House, and the Sam Cooke bio I just finished, and the copy of Little, Big that I brought down, as well as the multiple books that Amy received), before a severe redistribution of clothes, toiletries, etc., enabled us to get all the books into our one suitcase. Fortunately, Amy’s clothes don’t take up too much space. All I brought with me on the flight was The Future and Its Enemies and the Jane Jacobs book.

At the terminal yesterday morning, we discovered that the suitcase weighed more than 60 lbs., which should’ve led to a $25 overweight charge. Fortunately, they waived the fee because of my Elite status on Continental. Then we were allowed to cut into the security line, right in front of some crippled kids and nuns. Yay!

On Monday, we returned to the French Quarter, got more beignets at Cafe Du Monde, and walked around for a while. Plenty of people were out walking; nowhere near pre-Katrina numbers, but it was still heartening to see so many people vacationing there.

That led us to wonder about who’s choosing to go. Were they people who’d booked their trips pre-Katrina, or did they decide to go after, to boost the economy (and find cheap deals)? We should’ve asked, but we’re morons, so hey.

Instead, we bought cheap T-shirts at a souvenir shop! We picked up a couple of “I (Heart) NO” shirts, a NOPD (Not Our Problem Dude) shirt and a great one that read “I Stayed in New Orleans for Katrina and all I got was This Lousy T-Shirt, a New Cadillac and a Plasma TV.” How could we resist? If you heard some of the stories about how people are spending their FEMA money, you’d blanch.

And that’s about all I have to report on. The Quarter looks like it’s doing okay, but I can’t say anything about the rest of the city. I still don’t know how they’ll manage to get people to move back, and how they can jump start any industry besides tourism in NO,LA. Amy & I entertained some idle thoughts about what it would take for us to move down there, but were stumped as to what sort of city it could possibly become.

Maybe some of the books on my new reading list will help me answer that question.

(Update: Witold Rybczynski at Slate just posted a piece about this subject)