Murder, Crow-Style

Like a certain other New Orleans blogger, I've always had a fascination with crows. I don't know what it is about them--I guess I just think they're incredibly cool birds, with their jet black feathers and eyes that, to me at least, have always seemed to emanate intelligence.

As mentioned in a couple of previous posts, I work on the roof of the Tidewater building, now the Tulane SPHTM. Next time you're driving into the city on I-10 and get close to Canal Street, look for the Tidewater/Tulane building--the relatively tall building right next to the now-defunct Radisson (which is right next door to the now-defunct UNO Technology Building, which is right next door to the now-defunct Days Inn--thanks, Katrina!) that has the big red and white antenna on top.* See that trailer attached to the roof up there? The one with the Tulane logo on it? That's my office. Sometimes it scares the hell out of me that my office is a trailer on the roof, which makes up the 25th and 26th floors of the Tidewater Building, but it survived the Cat 3 winds of Katrina, so I figure I'm okay. (And the view is amazing--I can see the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain, depending on which window I'm looking out of.)

Horror Movie Setting, Anyone?

About 12 years ago, I guess, the City of New Orleans got its very own amusement park. At first, it was called Jazz Land--it was a pretty dismal failure, with pretty lame rides. Still, it was an amusement park, so we went to it a lot. It had one truly good rollercoaster, a wooden one named the Mega Zeph and modeled after the Zephyr of bygone days at Pontchartrain Beach.

Around 2003, Six Flags bought the amusement park, made a few minor improvements, and added a couple of new rollercoasters. The park was still pretty much a dismal failure. Six Flags New Orleans was about the last place that the tourists wanted to visit when there are so many other options here, and the park was built in the middle of a piece of swampland, basically. It was a horrible place to be in the summertime, with very little shade coverage. But still, I have some fond memories of goofing around there with friends--this was long before parenthood came into the picture for me.

The park closed on August 27, 2005, in preparation for Hurricane Katrina. It has never reopened. I'm sure it was a relief to Six Flags to have the park flooded during Katrina so that they could claim their losses with their insurance company and move on. But it has always shocked me that they were allowed to just completely walk away from it and leave their mess behind. (Other than when they dismantled and moved the Batman rollercoaster to another Six Flags park somewhere else.)

Here's how Six Flags New Orleans has remained for almost 5 1/2 years. According to this video, it's finally going to be demolished in January (H/T, Jeffrey).

Parlez-vous Francais?

Tonight, Emmeline and I were reading a book, and I was asking her to count the different items she saw on the page. And for the first time since starting at her new French immersion school, she automatically began counting in French rather than in English. What a wonderful new world we live in, where my little girl, who's only five years old, is already well on her way to becoming bilingual. I wish someone had thought of that 40 years ago, but I'm afraid there's not much hope for me now. (Although, thanks to Emmeline, I now know and can correctly pronounce about 10 colors in French. Next up, she's going to teach me how to count to 20.)

My favorite "immersion" story so far is when, a few weeks in, I asked Emmeline if she could understand what her teacher was saying. Her response? "I can't understand what her mouth is saying, but I can usually understand her hands."

It was a bit of a rough go for E at first--she cried for the first three weeks every morning when I dropped her off at school. And I felt so bad, knowing how frustrated and scared she was that she couldn't understand what her teacher was saying to her. But her teacher is wonderful, one of those people who was just born to work with children, and she reassured Emmeline that all would be well and that she could always come to her and express her feelings in English and that she would always repond--in English--if Emmeline was upset. That seemed to very much put Emmeline's mind at ease, and now she's thriving.

It will be fascinating to watch as she progresses. Although I'm already dreading the day that Emmeline is a teenager and makes plans with her friends to do something she knows she should not be doing--all in front of me, and all in French....Mon dieu!

11.03.10

I'm back, finally, after a looooong month of the federal grant application from hell and a myriad of problems in my personal life.

So, I'd like to say that I'm surprised and disappointed by the outcome of yesterday's elections, but we all saw that coming, didn't we? Sadly, I'm used to the fact that all of my votes are pretty much cast in vain--a blue woman in a very red state. Hopefully, we'll bounce back in 2012.

I found out today via Facebook about a post written by a friend of a friend, and it put it all in perspective for me.

An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum

You, who could not survive the thought of minimal health care reform, or financial regulation, or a marginal tax rate equal to that which you paid just 10 years earlier, perhaps are under the illusion that everyone is as weak as you, as soft as you, as akin to petulant children as you are, as unable to cope with the smallest setback, the slightest challenge to the way you think your country should look and feel, and operate.

But, surprise…they are not.

Halloween 2010

I guess it's time to accept the fact that I am raising a native New Orleanian. Case in point, I give you the Who Dat Cat (her idea).

Dear WWL Executives

I get it. I know that your political views are about as right-wing conservative as you can get, and I know that that's primarily what your audience wants to hear, as evidenced by the calls you take over the air. I get it. I mean, hell, it's not real hard to figure out--there's no doubt in my mind that you would still be happily broadcasting Rush Limbaugh for 3-4 hours a day if WRNO/Clear Channel hadn't stolen him from you. (Remember when WRNO used to play rock music? That was nice.)

But really, you've been getting a bit excessive in your fear-mongering. Yesterday, you ran a story during the hourly news about the power of self-healing. The basic gist of the story was that if you bang your shin into a piece of furniture or something similar and then rub it with your own hand, your mind for some reason makes it feel better, as opposed to someone else rubbing your shin, which would make it hurt worse. A very innocuous story. But you guys couldn't just air a little fluff science story without getting a jab in there. The lead to the story by your news guy (whose name escapes me) was "Worried about what it's going to cost you now that Obama has enacted his new health care mandate? Here's a story that might help you save costs." Really? You turned a story about self-healing into a jab at health care?

Today, the same news guy intro'd a story about BP's oil by saying that some scientists are still insisting that there's oil in the Gulf--it's kind of like you're implying that all's well, the oil really has disappeared, nothing to see here, move along, everything would be fine if those effete liberal elitists who work at universities and such weren't insisting that the oil was still there.

You guys are ridiculous.

Note to self: Renew subscription to Sirius.

P.S. Clear Channel, you're just as bad. Could there be a more vile, racist show than Walton and Johnson in the morning? Every time I tune my channel to 95.7, I can last about 15 seconds before I'm completely repulsed by the latest shit they're spewing.

Ode to the South

I'm in Seattle right now, at a conference on global health. What can I tell you about Seattle? It's so clean here. So green here. So walkable. So Pacific Northwest. Temperatures in the 60s, which feels like a godsend, considering our unrelenting 90+ degree heat in New Orleans.

It took me 12 hours to travel here yesterday. Apparently, it takes less time to travel to Peru from New Orleans than it does to travel to Washington State. And last night, I had a really weird dream where I decided to turn around and fly home for the night and was then in a panic, trying to figure out a way to get back here again in time for the conference this morning.

Did I mention that I can see the Space Needle from my balcony? The balcony which, by the way, I can't smoke on unless I want to forfeit a $250 deposit. (Don't tell anyone, but I've snuck out there a couple of times and smoked anyway. And yes, I recognize the irony of the fact that I'm sneaking cigarettes on the balcony while attending a global health conference.)

Google Search of the Month

Oh, you people on the google. You never cease to entertain me. This month's search? "What are the chances of a live bullet going off if hit by a lawn mower?" I don't know. What are the chances? And why would you have live bullets lying around in your lawn?

Jours d'école*

Emmeline's first day of kindergarten. It would have been completely anti-climactic, as she spent a year in Catholic pre-K last year and we had planned to send her back. But we got a call over the summer, saying that there was an opening at one of the charter language immersion schools, and after much agonizing over the decision, we decided to enroll her there.

I was worried that it would be difficult for her, as she really loved her other school. But my daughter has proven once again to be amazingly adaptable and has finished her first week with no problems. She seems to have already become completely comfortable in the new school, which is a big relief.

I'm amazed at her ability--at any young child's ability--to learn a new language so quickly and wish I'd had the opportunity to do so when I was a kid. She already knows the French words for the primary colors, as well as for man, woman, boy and girl. So basically, her French vocabulary is already larger than mine.

I still don't have a clue as to how this whole language immersion thing will work in the long run. I mean, how do I help her learn how to read when I can't read the language myself? (I know, I know--I just focus on the reading in English part.) But still, it will be very strange to not be able to help her pronounce a word correctly, as I long ago realized that I'm incapable of speaking French properly. Spanish I can do. There's just something about French that is impossible for me--ask my French-Swiss co-worker or my Belgian boss. (Although it did become much easier for me to even attempt to pronounce a French word when my Francophile co-worker pointed out to me the biggest differences between English and French--English is primarily pronounced with the tip of the tongue and the front of the mouth, while French is primarily pronounced with the back of the tongue and the mouth. I don't know why that had never occured to me before.)

Anyway, I'm already dreading Emmeline's teenage years, when she will be capable of calling me horrible things, and/or discussing her plans to get a belly ring and tongue piercing, and/or making plans to sneak out of the house, all directly in front of me, as I will have no idea of what she's saying.

But I'm glad she's happy, and I'm glad that she has this opportunity.

Vive le France!

*Thank you, Google translator!

Five Years On

I debated about whether to put this post up or not--I feel like all of us are suffering from Katrina fatigue--or at the very least, Katrina anniversary fatigue. In some ways, it seems like it happened yesterday--in others, it feels like a lifetime ago.

So, I'll give you the option of whether you want to read my five-year post or not. If you do, it's here.

No One Will Ever See It Again

Katrina Memory #5

Sunday night, August 28th - My mother and I got to Atlanta on Saturday. It's been a weird day of alternating between pretending that nothing's wrong and wallowing in the deepest depths of fear. We go out for take-out and come back to my sister's house to eat dinner in front of the tv. Of course, we tune into the Weather Channel to see what's going on. The streets are flooding from the rain, and we get the obligatory shot of the latest dumbass that decides his small car will be the car that can make it through the eight feet of water that always accumulates on the portion of I-10 underneath the Metairie railroad tracks in a hard rain. Predictably, he doesn't make it and some other guy races into the frame, wading out through the chest-deep water to save this yahoo that's just driven right into the water. We all laugh, as it's a brief moment of levity in an otherwise overwhelming night.

Monday, August 29th, around 8:00 a.m. - We're sitting on the floor in my sister's living room, clicking the remote from news channel to news channel, desperate to find out what's going on. We stop on NBC, where Brian Williams is in the Superdome, showing the roof lifting up off of its supports and eventually tearing apart, resulting in a hole where you can see the sky from inside the dome.

Monday, August 29th, around 12:00 p.m. - I'm sitting on my sister's front porch, and my mom comes out to join me. She starts to cry, telling me that she feels incredibly guilty that, from what we've seen on the news, it's likely that my house might be in trouble. I tell her not to worry about it and desperately don't want to be the cause of my mother's pain.

1927-2005

Google Search of the Month

The person who's trying to figure out how to insert or extract his or her boob from a vacuum cleaner is back.

Dear weirdo: go away.

Get Used to It

This makes me happy. One of these days, people are going to realize that trying to legislate who other people are allowed to love is ridiculous. I've never understood the argument that somehow, gay marriage is a threat to straight marriage and I never will. If two people love each other, they should be entitled to the same rights and benefits as anyone else in this country, regardless of their sexual orientation.

My favorite part of the article is this: Andy Pugno, a lawyer for the backers of the ballot measure "called it disturbing that the trial court, in order to strike down Prop. 8, has literally accused the majority of California voters of having ill and discriminatory intent when casting their votes for Prop. 8." Well, um, yes. In what other way can you explain this vehement opposition to gay marriage other than through ill and discriminatory intent?

I also love the fact that the judge who overturned Prop. 8 is "a Republican appointee with libertarian views." I bet heads are exploding over in Freeperville.

Katrina Memory #4

Kenny and I are in Bay St. Louis, in December of 2005. I've just gotten back to New Orleans within the past two weeks, and it's my first chance to see Bay St. Louis, where Kenny and I had lived for about five years, and where a large portion of our families had lived.

We drive down Main Street, trying to get as close to Beach Boulevard as we can. We end up parking a few blocks away, where the road stops existing, and walk the rest of the way to the beach. Dan B's is gone. The Good Life is gone. The Dock of the Bay is gone. The Fire Dog is still there, sort of, but all that's left of it is an empty shell. We stand looking at what used to be a thriving, beautiful (and yet crazy) little beach town. We walk down what used to be Beach Boulevard, trying to wrap our minds around the fact that storm surge can be this powerful--how can water be strong enough to rip up a road? Huge sections of asphalt, six inches thick and 6-8 feet long, are lying around in crazy angles everywhere.

All that's left of the old bank building is the vault. (Way to go, vault makers!) It's just sitting there, a 10' x 10' bank vault, out in the middle of a vacant lot, nothing left of the building that used to surround it but the slab.

We walk to City Hall and peer into the window of what used to be my office, a long time ago. The front doors are covered in plywood, the glass having been forced out by the surge; the doors are locked with a chain and padlock.

We walk further down the beach. There's a lawnmower on the beach. And a couch. And a fake Christmas tree, decorated with beer cans, with a washed-up teddy bear propped underneath it. It's surreal.

We run into some acquaintances from the Bay, people we knew in passing. They tell us about riding out the storm in their house. And how they didn't really get scared until they had five-foot waves in the living room.

We drive to one of our former rental houses. It's gone. We drive to another house. It's gone. We drive to the house where my parents lived during my high school and college years. It's gone. We drive by Kenny's grandmother's house. It's gone. We drive by Kenny's sister's house. It's still there but is located several hundred feet further down the road, collapsing in on itself. We drive by the houses of a couple of friends we haven't been able to get in touch with. Gone, gone, gone.

Katrina Memory #3

I'm driving around the Lower 9th Ward, March of 2006. It's probably about the tenth time I've been there in the past few months, because I've had this weird compulsion, since moving back, to drive around the most severely damaged neighborhoods, over and over and over again, taking non-stop pictures. I don't know why I felt the need to do it--I guess it was my way of grieving over what had happened---it made me feel better, for some reason, to wallow in the horror of it all.

I stop in front of yet another decimated house and get out of my car to walk around the property and take pictures. The front door is partially open, and, as I've done before, I walk up onto the front porch and cautiously peer into the mouldering darkness inside. The smell of death hits me immediately and I walk back to my car, thinking that a wild animal must have gone into the house and died.

I go home and tell Kenny about it and the next night, when the evening news is on, he calls me into the living room. The news reporter is standing in front of the very same house, reporting that a neighbor has discovered a body in it--yet another Katrina victim that hadn't yet been found until then, more than six months after the flood.

And I know rationally, or at least I think I do, that a human body would long since have been past the point of decay where it would've given off an odor by then, wouldn't it? It had to be a recently dead animal that I smelled. And I try not to think about the fact that in our supposedly first-world country, we could let a dead body sit in a house for more than six months before someone finally recovered the body and laid him or her to rest.

Synchronicity

All of my life, I've had feelings of self-doubt, feelings of self-consciousness, feelings of not measuring up. Oftentimes, as I get older and somewhat more sure of myself, those feelings will subside for awhile. But they're always there, waiting just beneath the surface. I've been in therapy for it. It helped a little. I took anti-depressants for it. It helped a little. I can thoroughly describe for you the origins of these feelings and can convincingly tell you that, rationally, I know these feelings are ridiculous--that if I were as hard on the people I love as I am on myself, they would crumble under the pressure. But for some reason, in my mind, it's always been acceptable--required, even--to catalog my failures and shortcomings and to judge myself--harshly--for them.

Cat People

Don't get me wrong, I love cats. I think I've had at least one cat, sometimes two, in my life since around the time I was four. But some people take it a bit too far, I think. Like the woman in the elevator on Friday. She was deep in conversation with another woman, who asked her about the picture pinned to her chest. They then proceeded to have a long conversation about her "babies"--their ages, how they were doing developmentally, etc. I assumed the entire time that they were talking about the woman's kids. And although I thought it strange that she would have a picture of her children pinned to her chest, I was willing to let it go. But no. The woman had a picture of her three cats pinned to her chest. I'm sorry, y'all, but that's just weird.

I suppose I also have "crazy cat people" on the brain lately because my next-door neighbor is one of them. This is the woman who, when my 12-year-old cat died about a year ago, asked if she could keep him. She wanted to have him cremated and keep his ashes. I thought it was a bit strange, but it spared me the trouble of having to dig a hole in the backyard, so I said sure. I had another cat, Betty Kitty, who decided to move in with the next-door neighbor shortly after Emmeline started walking. Let's just say that Betty Kitty wasn't one of E's biggest fans. Betty Kitty lived to the ripe old age of 17 and died a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure you can guess what became of her earthly remains.

A Letter to My Daughter, 07/10

Dear Emmeline:

And so it begins. You're five now, and there's very little baby left in you. Now, your father and I spend most of our time marveling at how grown up you are. You now roll your eyes at us when you're exasperated. You can finally pronounce "computer" and "penguin" correctly. You prefer iCarly to the Wonder Pets and Dora (although I turn the channel most of the time). You are most definitely, officially, now a little girl.

And a girly-girl at that, I might add, which never ceases to crack me and your father up. (As you will one day figure out, I am not very girly--other than when it comes to shoes.) Your favorite colors are pink, purple and red, and you have reported to me that when you grow up, you will live in a pink house with purple polka-dots. (You have also graciously informed me that your dad and I can come and live with you in the pink house, but that Tchoups must stay here.) You scream when a bug comes anywhere near you.