Crescent City Dreaming

Alone, walking the streets of New Orleans the wind scurries around the corners and blasts down the Cobble stones. It's dry as a bone and cold really cold. My usual experiance in this town is "steam bath", wet electric blanket set on high. Today is biting, something else is awry here. Missing. What strikes me first, no garbage, and the Pomme of the French Quarter is missing. That indefinable "air" of age rotting garbage, alcohol steaming off the streets, and the punge of liquid human detress. Gone, some I suspect with the cold stiff wind, gone with the new respectable early morning quiet. A quarter so lightly peopled I am a little creeped out. So New Orleans is clean, fresh on a Monday morning in January. It is nearly three years post Katrina.



Much more is bordered up, the frayed seams of this old broad are truly comming apart. So many buildings lean and show their tatty outsides with inner secret courtyards, fountains, foliage, and iron work patio furniture. So many little ladies denuded sans boufont. Bricks and Tile, Plaster and Lathe intermingle in piles. Heaps of three hundred years, the mortor and hand made brick of Artizans. French, Creole, Cajun, Spanish, French and finally American. Madames' long slim shutters missing galousies, made from Cypress appear deranged, askew. Massive double doors strapped closed and padlocked. An unlikely chastity belt for Les Belle Grand.



The Antique stores on Royal Street look more antique than the goods and wares behind the dusty windows. As it's Monday most are closed. A few doors cracked open against the chill leak hot Jazz or Blues onto the nearly deserted streets, windows glittery baubled bedecked. Such gauchere can be found all year, just now it is abounding for Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) leaps upon this years calender in cold untimelyness. The Three King cakes are out, I find them at Walgreens. Purple, Gold and Green glory, with the secreted baby inside. If you find the baby in your hunk of cake you are entrusted to buy the cake next year. Hawkers press masks at me, the all important cloak of animinty one must acquire for high jinks of adult pervue. The crazies seem to have been diminished, the only people that are talking to themselves at the moment are those rushing for appointments with their bluetooths snugged to the folds of their ears. Hunh the mouths move, eyes out of focus looking into an inner world I'd say the crazies are just better dressed then they used to be.



On Canal Street I make my pilgramage stop on the corner of Talouse Street. It is a personal homage. I stayed here ten years ago at the Talouse (La Trec) hotel. A very difficult even dark period of my life. It was there in the hotel courtyard, by the fountain that I had my epifany. Here in the Crescent City I found a way to go forward, forming a life long personal mission statement.



A bowl of indifferent Shrimp Creole and Rice at the Market Cafe, astride the French Farmers Market still bare and unopened. The Cafe is open and indoor, staff personable. I am really saving myself for Cafe Du Monde, hot chocolate and Beignet. Having dreamed of these shirt pocket sized doughnuts for four years, long years, I am at last in the vicinity. Ready for the crazy white powder that floats and coats everywhere. Up the nose and poofing over your cloths. Divine. Alas I am foiled I haven't a soux or penny cash and time is pressing. Cash only drat Merde, I have to fly accross town to the Convention Center to meet Barry at his poster site. Not even a whiff of the holly grail, okay tomarrow I will get powdered with xxx!!



Tuesday I meet more people out on the street. It is almost balmy compared to the last three days. The Quarter is more alive noisier, but the small dinn is sadly underpowered still. Dr. Love is here with his crazy quilt out fit of cloths topped with a heavy over coat and layers of chains and medals hang over his lapel onto his chest. He happily roams Nola with his signiture outfit and THE Golf club of the day. He sogourned for two years in the Northeastern Diaspora with one of his daughters. He crows that he is back and out of retirement, again wandering himself all over. Street musicans so integral to the flavor and spice of the square display their talent and the music vies with itself for attention. Twenty fresh crisp singles I disperse slowly to the talented and intrepid. Not all of talent perhaps, but I give full measure to those with passion and a mark for the creative. Street performers covered from head to toe in staged outfits and then spray painted silver, gold or bronze man their posts, manniqined or pantomime they all look thinner older to me.



Palmest and Tarot readers are positioned around the park outside of the iron worked fence. Set up with card tables, camping chairs and sleeping bags in carts. Surrounded with the tools of their trade and handmade toutboard posters. It seems they are a kind of cult, following a gent who is a Tarot Pimp. He is out today having his own set of cards published. It depicts the figures of the Quarter and some of his followers. Tongue in cheek I believe. We discuss the merits of different decks and I glean their Katrina stories. Most were drifters who lived in flop houses and have drifted back. I am not sure about the available flop housing though, I think they are mostly living rough now.



Lunch is another indifferent meal, this time a Shrimp Poorboy. I am discouraged with my less than memorable meals.I have had wonderful food on preceding visits, although,as a recovering vegetarian I was hopeing to finally truly eat New Orleans. Barry and I had a wonderful dinner Monday night. We went to a place I was familiar with from years past, Bacco. A planet in the steller constillation of resturants under the Brennan family. Creole cuisine with Italian flair. Some changes to the interior I note, but our dinner, after drinks at the well stocked bar was memorable. Service was as it should be. We may have had a Jerry Springer sighting, he and a companion had a nice secluded spot, overlooking the larger room. Barry and I had a nice secluded spot all by ourselves.

Still I have not scored Beignets, I am waiting for my beloved so we can look foolish and saited together. Art is hanging on the black wrought iron fence cloths pins and metal brackets secure the flimsy paper and bits of board. Jamie greats me with a big smile, she is the young artist a New York transplant who also has just returned after two years of exile in Brooklyn. We share a bond her mother grew up in Levittown. She gives me her web site www.NamelessArt.com. I like her work dark and quirky, what else should be here. She tells me she is half Jewish half Italian. I had noticed her huddled together with a very wan looking pale almost bedraggled girl, holding hands and sitting on the curb. As Jamie and I talk about the world up North the silent girl hitches her skirts over her bike and pedals away. I was sorry we didn't get to chat, and sorrier she felt the need to leave.


There are boutiques of every kind this boutique has the stuff I love to look at with the price tags I need to avoid. So on to Chatres Street and I spy two large plump beautifully marked felines in the window. I am drawn as a moth to a flame. Oolie's Barry would exclaim if he were here. Five Oolies actually each one larger and more luxurious than the last. Some Coon, some Persian mixed. They are lush content and just friendly enough to entice me further into the store. The room is brick, built with fantastic wood floors. What's on the walls though are splended enormous woven rag rugs. Ronda Rose is an artisan of rare quality. She has three looms one over one hundred years old. Most of her work are custom orders and her clever weaving has the most surprising results when you walk accross them. They have a lenticular effect depending on the pattern of the material and the color of the weft. Our new home is all Porcelan Tile, gorgous but cold and echoing. I am decorating it in my dreams while we wait to take possesion. These rag rugs may be too homespun in flavor for the big modern spaces we need to cover, yet with the right colors...I'd love to own Artisan rugs, in a perfect world Goli and I would be shopping for Persian or Turkish rugs and carpets right now. When I was in Turkey I was agog with the types, colors, patterns and materials. Packed away in my suit case was a modest runner, my personal majic flying carpet. When I entered the states and they opened my luggage the customs man laughed, there were hardly any cloths and a honking rolled up carpet instead.

Wednesday, Barry and our friend Jack rush over for our assignation. Stealing away for a late lunch at Mothers. Venerable and seedy this old dame has seen it all. The boys split a Shrimp Poorboy and slurp down steaming bowls of File Gumbo. Crawfish Etouffe explodes out of my bowl the rich brown sauce staining the white short grains of Louisana rice. Inhale and it's all good the world is all good. Barry is lucky I hate greens and pass mine over to him, they are redolent of smoked ham hocks. He is in heaven and Jack hasn't come up for air down over by his dish. Okay I fell wicked greedy but visions of Beignets still dance in my head. We drink our iced tea, I've sweetend mine as a reminder of the Southern Custom. As one of the staff is clearing I tell Jack I missed getting their biscuits hot with butter. Mothers has the best in town. With that my benafactress brings two fat fluffy hot biscuits, jelly and yellow butter. A feast. We three fall over them Barry with his beloved jelly, me with a modest slather of butter and Jack with a combo. Saited the men dash back to their meetings at the convention center, while I skip back to the room. It's cold again and my body is comming up with more complaints. Blistered toe, sniffles, shin splints ughh. Lunch doubly makes up for no dinner last night. After rounds of "cocktails" with Penn State Alum, WASIS, and some electronics company, we returned to the room too burned out to venture out. As always I had my secret surprise. It's my magic act always having something in my bag, usually off beat and gourmet in style. So my stash from the New Orleans Southern Candy Makers sees the light of night. B' is impressed, we each choose a dark chocolate swirled and enrobed marzapan. A few sips of water and we tuck our selves up.

Tonight is the banquet for the AMS awards. We hope to go to Bourbon Street at the very least later. After the dinner we meet Jack and a few other for drinks then we wander over to Bourbon street. There are conventioneers, Kodak and our lot. A sorry collection of souls, so few it's a pitiful sight. We have a destination, the Funky Pirate and Big Al. We lose the others at the entrance of a bar with a lousy band. To my joy and dismay we get a table right up front. Big Al blows us away with his singing and his playful lyrics. Big Al is to pornographic lyrical lovemaking as Shakspere was to literary profanities. He belts them out rolling the sound around the timpany of his four foot wide diaphram up through his prodigous chest and exhaling it out of the recess of his throat. His set ends, it's one a.m. and we head over to Cafe Du Monde halleluah. We expect to wait on line. No one is there, the staff are napping or texting, waiting for the bar crowds, we get the hot out of the fryer batch. Barry has coffee, mine is sweet hot cocoa. We neither speak, when it is but a sweet memory, I exhale with such repletion, the waiter laughs a knowing laugh. Now we trudge back ready for bed and our trip home tomarrow.

Time to address Miss Katrina. Really talk about her. On Sunday we took a three hour "Katrina" tour. I did not humm the song. The notes are too tragic. Safe in the bus glancing out of rain spotted windows mile after mile roles by. They say it is an act of nature, its finale is beyound understanding and belief. I am a mere mortal and my fellow mortals from New Orleans are among Princes and Kings. They began again with nothing, nothing at hand. They helped neighbors haul and lug scrape and tear down, pick up stick by stick. The Army Corps of engineers removed the ruble from the streets, the rest the restoration was left to a pitiful few. With little or no resources. With heart and soul and little miracles in the form of volunteers they soldier on daily. Scoured once vibrant neighborhoods feature crumbling homes, shops, schools. Bare foundations where homes were swept away in their stead tiny trailors cling to the sides of the lawn just off the street. Some parking lots have become trailer villages. Not just the lower ninth ward. Neighborhood after neighborhood gone, wrecked, fallow. Homes without their innerds, mold from head to toe. Brick buildings with the ghost of water lines telling the tale of tradgedy. One restored home among the ruins alone in a vast sea of perpetual piles. No neighbors no schools no stores. There is a stillness a holding of the breath. We as a group are holding our breath. I am in turmoil, I am uncomfortable with the role of observer behind the glass partition. Observers of habitat, (where are the Tigers, the rare animals). Musicans village, a few homes bird of paradise colored. Built among carnage with sweat equity and donations headed by Winton Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr.. A few owners step out on their porches to great us as we alight our white coaches. At first I stayed on, uncomfortable with the Tigers at the zoo vouyer aspect. No, it's alright, the New Orleanians want us to see what has taken place, what is being done. They pose for our cameras. Hug some of the women of our party. Personally I wanted to plant my feet where once there had been a wall of water, maybe ten, fourteen feet of water. We see some of the pink prefab homes Brad Pitt has organised, they are layed out and ready to be built.

We pass Fats Dominos home, restored and waiting for his return. He and his dog were plucked off the roof by rescuers. Fading but still ledgeable are the spray can markings scrawled on the standing homes. Messages to each other: D.O.A., the most chilling, a close second TFW Toxic Flood Water. Modern Hyroglyphics, the number of cats, dogs rescued etc. Driving, listening to our wonderful tour guide, who anticipates daily, moving into her rebuilt home carries us along. An Irish transplant with a wicked sense of humor, Carol tries to impart the truth of this disaster with comic relief. It is still over whelming best intentions aside.

After the tour we attend a little dinner with a panel of experts. They relay the story of recovery. "They" are not talking heads, "they" are citizens victims of the storm a few even members of the AMS, American Meteorlogical Society. The soldiers, Calvary so to speak. As the Federal Government did not send in the Calvary nor did they deem it important to rebuild any part of the area up to modern specks. Step by step the Social Scientists, local Church Leaders, and citizen activists treated us to a birds eye view of the Hurculian effort to restore and rebuild vibrant communities. They are all fearfull, every Hurricane season they fear. The Senior citizens are fearfull, of not living and dying in their home, and of dying from another storm in their home. The loss of possesion for the women and loss of control for the men haunt them, beleger them. Here are communities whose roots go back six maybe seven generations. They have family all around, hand down their homes deeds so old they may not even exist anymore. Later, I spoke privately with a few of the Panel, the new charter schools have no mandate for programs that include children with disablities. Nothing is in place for the most disadvantaged, from mild dyslexia to the fully disabled. It appears the white children are enrolled with religious institutional charter schools, heavilly funded. The minority poorer working class families have the new experimental public charter schools. So we have formal segregation. Another troubling product of the mass out migration is they are finding young teenage boys returning alone, living in ruined and Toxic buildings. Here to attend their schools, on their home turf with out the rest of their displaced family.

Barry and his fellow scientists discuss the merits of rebuilding here below sea level, in a vulnerable area. It strikes me that the Dutch and other countries with low lying areas comparable to Nola, have levees and Dykes that are enginered with every intention of keeping the populus safe. Why not here? They have set up a system of block captains, they each keep lists of the homeowners, where they are located, phone numbers, insurance companies, and all members of household. This will all go into a larger data base. If they need to evacuate again all info is handy and relevant. It would be wise for Coastal Texas, Florida, And the East Coast in general to adopt many of their innovations as a pre-emptive of the big one. Barry adds California for "their" big one.

With the change in government we are sure to have, I hope that attention will be paid albiet late, to the on going struggle and tragedy of New Orleans. It is also my hope that they do something to change the pitiful budjet of the Weather Service. Out dated and dying technology, under staffed and hanging together with the perverbial paper clip is not how we want the frontlines of Natural disasters to function. The young people comming through the pipe, with their ideas, ideals and tremendous work ethic need to have their energies and abilites matched with top notch technology. Funding for research is essential. We personnaly have suffered from the crunch of shorted funding. The best and brightest need to stay with this service. I have met such dedicated brilliant innovative scientists at these conventions. A geek fest to be sure, yet these geeks are our first line of defence. The National Weather Service are in our backyards not in some remote Corporate central local. Each office attuned to the nuance of their particular local. I think of Barry as an alchemist. He takes the hard science, the data models and finally adds the intuition and gut of one who hears and feels what we do not. His forcasts, research are among the top, he doesn't just disgorge data. They go to our schools educate and out reach. They provide tours of the facilites and work with local orginizations. These are the people who have the most invested in our welfare. Not a corporate board with political, ego and bottom line raison d'etre.

Hopefully you all will take a trip to New Orleans still one of my favorite cities and we can swap food notes, and resturant critiques. Let the good times roll.